Unpopular opinion: Christianity doesn’t denounce homosexuality/LGBTQIA rights – let’s discuss

Note: LGBTQIA stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, Pansexual/Polyamorous.
It’s pride month, and I’m here to tell you Christianity is not against homosexuality or same-sex relationships. You must be stomping angrily to the beat of you thumping your Bible which you only open once a year specifically to say God hates gays (the dust you unleashed by opening it after one year made me sneeze—atchoo!). Watch me dismantle everything you believed with facts, history and Biblical analysis.

In perceiving tradition, we must ask why a rule exists, what its point is and where this belief comes from. Questioning the Bible and getting answers builds more faith than believing because you were told so.

#1 THE GREAT MISTRANSLATION

The word “homosexual” appeared for the first time in any Bible in the Revised Standard Version published on February 11, 1946. The word “homosexual” replaced the original Greek words “arsenokotai” and “malakoi” which mean “sexual pervert” or “boy-molester.” The decision to use this word instead of the accurate translation was VOTED by the RSV committee. The Bible’s homophobia doesn’t come from God, it came from men who voted their homophobic arrogance as Deputy Gods into history. Take whatever time you need with this factual information. Okay you’re panicking, calm down, slow your breathing. Oh no, you’ve fainted.

The original Greek text stated Leviticus 18:20 as “a man shall not sleep with a young boy in the way he sleeps with a woman” but mistranslation made it homosexuality in general yet it’s about paedophilia. Where Romans is translated to “homosexuals” won’t inherit the kingdom of God, it is in fact “boy-molesters will not inherit the kingdom of God.” In the Greek culture during Paul’s days, married men sleeping with young boys on the side were a social problem. Therefore, God does not condemn gays in general, he condemns the specific homosexual behaviour of paedophiles abusing young boys.

Do you smell that? The scent of facts burning homophobia? I’ll bring an air freshener whose directions are: If you’re truly an advocate for the word of God, this information changes everything.

Leviticus says “homosexuality” is an abomination, but the Hebrew word for abomination just means forbidden e.g Leviticus 11 says owls, eagles and some water creatures are abominations. Other “abominations” are eating a fruit too fast, mixing fabrics in clothing and shaving. Leviticus even says women must marry their rapists. Many can agree these rules are ridiculous, and this is because they are CUSTOMS not LAWS.

Yet people choose what to follow and not to follow like side dishes at a buffet. Leviticus 18! As you wear a leather jacket and denim, while eating your fruit salad fast. Homophobes take a literal reading of one passage and a cultural reading of another, with no reason for this other than their prior beliefs about what the Bible ought to say.

All these flavours and they choose to be salty and sour.

#2 SODOM AND GOMORRAH

Apparently, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of homosexuality, but this scripture is often referred to by people who have NEVER read it. These cities were destroyed because their citizens were “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned” and “did not help the poor and needy,” among other things [Ezekiel 16:49]. That’s right, homosexuality is none of the reasons.

People regard them as “gay cities” because when two angels warned about the cities’ impending destruction, an angry mob of men threatened to gang rape them for condemning them. Judges 19 has a similar story of a town mob threatening to gang rape a man in Gibeah but ultimately raped his concubine. Gang rape was interpreted as a threat of humiliating violence telling a visitor “you’re not welcome, we’re the big dogs” not “OMG you’re so cute!” The denunciation of this isn’t about homosexuality itself, but the dehumanizing act of violence.

#3 WHAT DOES JESUS SAY?

Jesus came to fulfill the law, not change it. In all three synoptic gospels, he doesn’t mention homosexuality AT ALL. If it were that important, in his three years of ministry, he would have addressed it, but he merely deepened the commandments and introduced new concepts. People say “that’s because he didn’t have to say it since marriages were meant to be heterosexual!” Get off Jesus’s throne, return to your wooden chair and stop speculating for him.

#4 SANCTITY OF CHURCH TRADITION

People say 2,000 years of Church tradition can’t be wrong, but we ignore times the Church was wrong and adapted to social pressures. The Bible permits slavery, but we abolished because it disregards Christ-like love. When Christians challenged interracial marriages being “sinful in God’s eyes”; when we challenged its approach to women’s rights. The Church is the body of Christ, but this body consists of imperfect humans who are still growing spiritually. The Bible didn’t fall from the sky, God’s word is there, but so are the prejudices, mistranslations and customs of the time.

#5 THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT

Any honest Christian must admit some passages a) don’t apply today; b) still apply but don’t mean what they seem to mean on the surface; or c) are overruled by other passages or biblical themes d) are contradictory. To solve this confusion, Jesus gives us the greatest commands: “love God” and “love your neighbour” to determine what constitutes sin. This standard explains why we abolished slavery and reconsidered women’s subjugation.

Romans 13:8-10 reads:

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet,’ and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Seriously, read this again. Paul says any commandment to ever exist is summed up in the rule to love your neighbour. Essentially, he says if we live our lives with a loving spirit, we automatically fulfil God’s law without needing specific rules. If you love your neighbour, you won’t kill them. If you love your spouse, you won’t commit adultery etc. Using the greatest commandment, explain how a committed, Christ-loving same-sex relationship is sinful? I must call DJ Maphorisa and Kabza de Small to make an amaPiano song for the crickets I’m hearing as I await your response.

#6 “Homosexuality is unnatural”

So are your eyebrows, Prudence. Open-heart surgery, processed food, cars, modern medicine, wheelchairs are all unnatural, but we don’t call them sins. With your logic, God’s will is for deaf people to not hear without an unnatural hearing aid. God’s will is for your heart.to fail. If homosexuality is unnatural, why is a man’s G-spot in his bum? Allegedly, God designed our bodies to work in a certain way, so using them in another way is sinful, but if we accept that, nearly everything becomes a sin. That’s not an argument, it’s an excuse.

#7 The male/female binary is crucial to holy relationships

Please find a better “argument” than “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Yeah, God said Adam and Eve and that’s why bisexuals did both. The original Greek text of Galatians 3:28 says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is no male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” It says “no male or female,” not “neither” male nor female.

This means God doesn’t care whether it’s same sex or not or for gender binaries; the Bible doesn’t care that transgenders have varying gender identities. That’s why some people are born with chromosomes that aren’t XX or XY, or have both sets of genitals or anomalies preventing classification as male or female etc. Since some of their relationships can’t be male+female because of how God created them, are they now sinners?

As a child I found it strange when people said “homosexuality is sinful because God says so” — why would God hate a committed, loving Christ-centred relationship just because it’s same sex, yet God is love? I didn’t believe God could be so arbitrary, and facts say I’m right.

We were raised to be homophobic, but if you really are Christian, you’ll open your mind to what the Bible really says. Now I call on thee, the girls, the gays and the theys to sprinkle glitter in the homophobes’ faces and disprove them with the same Bible they make a tool of oppression. As a wise YouTube philosopher said, you’ve suffered enough: you deserve to shake your ass on YACHT, in DUBAI, in a THONG.
Be gay do crime.

Sources:

https://geekyjustin.com/great-debate/

https://theconversation.com/using-the-bible-against-lgbtq-people-is-an-abuse-of-scripture-110128