faq essay on homosexuality someone referred to my faq essay on homosexuality since it hasn t been posted for some time and i ve modified it somewhat since the last time i m taking this opportunity to post it there is another entry in the faq containing comments by some other contributors they can be retrieved from ftp rutgers edu as pub soc religion christian others homosexuality it contains far more detail on the exegetical issues than i give here though primarily from a conservative point of view this posting summarizes several issues involving homosexuality and christians this is a frequently asked question so i do not post the question each time it occurs rather this is an attempt to summarize the postings we get when we have a discussion it summarizes arguments for allowing christian homosexuality since most people asking the question already know the arguments against it the most common but not the only question dealt with herein is how can a christian justify being a homosexual given what the bible says about it first on the definition of homosexual many groups believe that there is a homosexual orientation i e a sexual attraction to members of the same sex this is distinguished from actual homosexual sexual activity homosexuals who abstain from sex are considered by most groups to be acceptable however in a lot of discussion the term homosexual means someone actually engaging in homosexual sex this is generally not accepted outside the most liberal groups in this paper i m going to use homosexual as meaning a person engaging in sexual acts with another of the same sex i haven t heard of any biblical argument against a person with homosexual orientation who remains celebate i think most people now admit that there is a predisposition to be homosexual this is often called a homosexual orientation it is not known whether it is genetic or environmental there is evidence suggesting each the best evidence i ve seen is that homosexuality is not a single phenomenon but has a number of different causes one of them is probably genetic there are several groups that try to help people move from being homosexual to heterosexual the best known is exodus international the reports i ve seen and i haven t read the detailed literature just the summary in the minority opinion to the presbyterian church s infamous report on human sexuality suggest that these programs have very low success rates and that there are questions about how real even the successes are but there certainly are people who say they have converted however this issue is not as important as it sounds those who believe homosexuality is wrong believe it is intrinsically wrong defined as such by god the fact that it s hard to get out of being a homosexual is no more relevant than the fact that it s hard to escape from being a drug addict if it s wrong it s wrong it may affect how we deal with people though if it s very difficult to change this may tend to make us more willing to forgive it one more general background issue it s common to quote a figure that of the population is homosexual i asked one of our experts where this came from here s his response kinsey see below is the source of the figure percent he defines sexuality by behavior not by orientation and ranked all persons on a scale from zero completely heterosexual to completely heterosexual according to kinsey one third of all male adults have had at least one experience of orgasm homosexually post puberty ten percent of all adult males have most of their experiences of homosexually that was in the percentages held true in a followup study done by the kinsey institute based on data in the early seventies but not published until the early s or so by bell and weinberg i believe i can t put my hand on this latter reference but here is the online information for kinsey s own study as it appears in iris the catalog at rutgers author kinsey alfred charles title sexual behavior in the human male by alfred c kinsey wardell b pomeroy and clyde e martin publisher philadelphia w b saunders co descrip xv p diagrs cm notes based on surveys made by members of the staff of indiana university and supported by the national research council s committee for research on problems of sex by means of funds contributed by the medical division of the rockefeller foundation bibliography p other aut pomeroy wardell baxter joint author martin clyde eugene joint author subjects sex u s moral conditions lc card this figure is widely used in all scholarly discussions and has even been found to hold true in several other cultures as noted in the recent newsweek coverstory is this child gay feb a journalist is running the rounds of talk shows this season promoting her book that allegedly refutes kinsey s study but the scholarly world seems to take her for a kook i ve seen some objections to the kinsey s study but not in enough detail to include here if someone would like to contribute another view i d be willing to include it most christians believe homosexuality at least genital sex is wrong not all however a few denominations accept it the metropolitan community churches is the best known it was formed specifically to accept homosexuals however the united church of christ also allows it and i think a couple of other groups may as well the episcopal church seems to accept it some areas but not others in churches that have congregational government you ll find a few congregations that accept it even among southern baptists though the number is probably only one or two congregations but these are unusual few churches permit homosexual church leaders how carefully they enforce this is another issue i don t have any doubt that there are homosexual pastors of just about every denomination some more open than others as to the arguments over the biblical and other issues here s an attempt to summarize the issues the most commonly cited reference by those favoring acceptance of homosexuality in previous discussions has been john boswell christianity social tolerance and homosexuality u chicago press the argument against is pretty clear there are several explicit laws in the ot e g leviticus and in rom paul seems pretty negative on homosexuality beyond these references there are some debates some passages often cited on the subject probably are not relevant e g the sin which the inhabitants of sodom proposed to carry out was homosexual rape not homosexual activity between consenting adults there s even some question whether it was homosexual since the entities involved were angels it was particularly horrifying because it involved guests and the responsibility towards guests in that culture was very strong this is probably the reason lot offered his daughter it was better to give up his daughter than to allow his guests to be attacked if you look through a concordance for references to sodom elsewhere in the bible you ll see that few seem to imply that homosexuality was their sin there s a jewish interpretive tradition that the major sin was abuse of guests at any rate there s no debate that homosexual rape is wrong i do not discuss leviticus because the law there is part of a set of laws that most christians do not consider binding so unless nt justification can be found lev alone would not settle the issue the nt references are all in paul s letters a number of the references from paul are lists of sins in which the words are fairly vague boswell argues that the words occuring in these lists do not mean homosexual here s what he says the two greek words that appear in the lists i e i cor and i tim are malakos and arsenokoitai unfortunately it is not entirely clear what the words actually mean malakos with a basic meaning of soft has a variety of metaphorical meanings in ethical writing boswell suggests wanton as a likely equivalent he also reports that the unanimous interpretation of the church including greek speaking christians was that in this passage it referred to masturbation a meaning that has vanished only in the th cent as that practice has come to be less frowned upon he cites references as late as the edition of the catholic encyclopedia that identify it as masturbation he translates arsenokotai as male prostitute giving evidence that none of the church fathers understood the term as referring to homosexuality in general a more technical meaning suggested by the early latin translations would be active mode homosexual male prostitute but in his view paul did not intend it so technically for a more conservative view i consulted gordon fee s commentary on i cor he cites evidence that malakos often meant effeminate however boswell warns us that in greek culture effeminate is not necessarily synonymous with homosexual though it may be associated with some kinds of homosexual behavior given what boswell and fee say taken together i suspect that the term is simply not very definite and that while it applies to homosexuals in some cases it isn t a general term for homosexuality while fee argues against boswell with arsenokotai as well he ends up suggesting a translation that seems essentially the same the big problem with it is that the word is almost never used paul s writing is the first occurence the fact that the word is clearly composed of male and f k unfortunately doesn t quite tell us the meaning since it doesn t tell us whether the male is the subject or object of the action examples of compound words formed either way can be given in theory it could refer to rapists etc it s dangerous to base meaning purely on etymology or you ll conclude that goodbye is a religious expression because it s based on god by with ye however since boswell fee and niv seem to agree on homosexual male prostitute that seems as good a guess as any note that this translation misses the strong vulgarity of the term however something which fee and boswell agree on but do not attempt to reproduce in their translation in my opinion the strongest nt reference to homosexuality is romans boswell points out that rom speaks of homosexuality as something that happened to people who were naturally heterosexual as a result of their corruption due to worshipping false gods one could argue that this is simply an example that if a homosexual worshipped false gods he would also fall into degradation and perhaps become heterosexual however i find this argument somewhat forced and in fact our homosexual readers have not seriously proposed that this is what paul meant however i am not convinced that rom is sufficient to create a law against homosexuality for christians what paul is describing in rom is not homosexuality among christians it s homosexuality that appeared among idolaters as one part of a whole package of wickedness despite the impression left by his impassioned rhetoric i m sure paul does not believe that pagans completely abandoned heterosexual sex given his description of their situation i rather assume that their heterosexual sex would also be debased and shameless so yes i do believe that this passage indicates a negative view of homosexuality but in all fairness the shameless nature of their acts is a reflection of the general spiritual state of the people and not a specific feature of homosexuality my overall view of the situation is the following i think we have enough evidence to be confident that paul disapproved of homosexuality rom seems clear while i cor and i tim are not unambiguous and general condemnations of homosexuality they do not seem like wording that would come from someone who approved of homosexuality or even considered it acceptable in some cases on the other hand none of these passages contains explicit teachings on the subject rom is really about idolatry it refers to homosexuality in passing the result of this situation is that people interpret these passages in light of their general approach to scripture for those who look to scripture for laws about issues such as this it not surprising that they would consider these passages to be nt endorsement of the ot prohibition for those whose approach to the bible is more liberal it is not surprising that they regard paul s negative view of homosexuality as something that he took from his jewish upbringing without any serious reexamination in the light of the gospel as readers of this group know by now the assumptions behind these approaches are so radically different that people tend to foam at the mouth when they see the opposing view described there s not a lot i can do as moderator about such a situation a number of discussions in the past centered around the sort of detailed exegesis of texts that is described above however in fact i m not convinced that defenders of homosexuality actually base their own beliefs on such analyses the real issue seems to rest on the question of whether paul s judgement should apply to modern homosexuality one commonly made claim is that paul had simply never faced the kinds of questions we are trying to deal with he encountered homosexuality only in contexts where most people would probably agree that it was wrong he had never faced the experience of christians who try to act straight and fail and he had never faced christians who are trying to define a christian homosexuality which fits with general christian ideals of fidelity and of seeing sexuality as a mirror of the relationship between god and man it is unfair to take paul s judgement on homosexuality among idolaters and use it to make judgements on these questions another is the following in paul s time homosexuality was associated with a number of things that christians would not find acceptable it was part of temple prostitution among private citizens it often occured between adults and children or free people and slaves i m not in a position to say that it always did but there are some reasons to think so the ancients distinguished between the active and passive partner it was considered disgraceful for a free adult to act as the passive partner this is the reason that an active mode homosexual prostitute would be considered disgraceful his customers would all be people who enjoyed the passive role this supports the idea that it would tend not to be engaged in between two free adult males at least not without some degree of scandal clearly christian homosexuals would not condone sex with children slaves or others who are not in a position to be fully responsible partners however fee s commentary on i cor cites some examples from ancient literature of homosexual relationships that do seem to involve free adults in a reasonably symmetrical way thus the considerations in this paragraph shouldn t be pushed too far homosexuality may have been discredited for jews by some of these associations but there surely must be been cases that were not prostitutes and did not involve slaves or children some people have argued that aids is a judgement against homosexuality i d like to point out that aids is transmitted by promiscuous sex both homosexual and heterosexual someone who has a homosexual relationship that meets christian criteria for marriage is not at risk for aids note that there is good reason from paul s general approach to doubt that he would concede homosexuality as a fully equal alternative apart from any specific statements on homosexuality i believe his use of the genesis story would lead him to regard heterosexual marriage as what god ordained however the way paul deals with pastoral questions provides a warning against being too quick to deal with this issue legally i claim that the question of how to counsel homosexual christians is not entirely a theological issue but also a pastoral one paul s tendency as we can see in issues such as eating meat and celebrating holidays is to be uncompromising on principle but in pastoral issues to look very carefully at the good of the people involved and to avoid insisting on perfection when it would be personally damaging for example while paul clearly believed that it was acceptable to eat meat he wanted us to avoid pushing people into doing an action about which they had personal qualms for another example paul obviously would have preferred to see people at least in some circumstances remain unmarried yet if they were unable to do so he certainly would rather see them married than in a state where they might be tempted to fornication i believe one could take a view like this even while accepting the views paul expressed in rom one may believe that homosexuality is not what god intended that it occured as a result of sin but still conclude that at times we have to live with it note that in the creation story work enters human life as a result of sin this doesn t mean that christians can stop working when we are saved the question is whether you believe that homosexuality is in itself sinful or whether you believe that it s a misfortune that is in a broad sense due to human sinfulness if you re willing to consider the latter approach then it becomes a pastoral judgement whether there is more damage caused by finding a way to live with it or trying to cure it the dangers of trying to cure it are that the attempt most often fails and when it does you end up with damage ranging from psychological damage to suicide as well as broken marriages when attempts at living as a heterosexual fail this is going to depend upon one s assessment of the inherent nature of homosexuality if you believe it is a very serious wrong then you may be willing to run high risks of serious damage to get rid of it clearly we do not generally suggest that people live with a tendency to steal or with drug addiction even though attempts to cure these conditions are also very difficult however these conditions are intrinsically damaging in a way that is not so obvious for homosexuality many problems associated with homosexuality are actually problems of promiscuity not homosexuality this includes aids i take for granted that the only sort of homosexual relationships a christian would consider allowing would be equivalent to christian heterosexual relationships in the course of discussing this over the last decade or so we ve heard a lot of personal testimony from fellow christians who are in this situation i ve also seen summaries of various research and the results of various efforts for conversion aside from the presbyterian report mentioned above there s an faq that summarizes our readers reports on this question the evidence is that long term success in changing orientation is rare enough to be on a par with healing miracles the danger in advising christians to depend upon such a change is clear when conversion doesn t happen which is almost always the people are often left in despair feeling excluded from a church that has nothing more to say but a requirement of life long celibacy paul recognized though in a different context that such a demand is not practical for most people and i think the history of clerical celibacy has strongly reinforced that judgement the practical result is that homosexuals end up in the gay sex clubs and the rest of the sordid side of homosexuality maybe homosexuality isn t god s original ideal but i can well imagine paul preferring to see people in long term committed christian relationships than promiscuity as with work which genesis suggests wasn t part of god s original ideal either i think such relationships can still be a vehicle for people sharing god s love with each other there s an issue of biblical interpretation underlying this discussion the issue is that of cultural relativism that is when paul says that something is wrong should this be taken as an eternal statement or are things wrong because of specific situations in the culture of the time conservative christians generally insist on taking prohibitions as absolute since otherwise the bible becomes subjective what is to stop us from considering everything in it as relative when looking at this issue it s worth noting that no one completely rejects the concept of cultural relativism there are a number of judgements in the new testament that even conservative christians consider to be relative the following judgements are at least as clear in the bible as anything said on homosexuality prohibition against charging interest this occurs times in the ot it s not in the nt but i mention it here because until relatively recently the church did consider it binding on christians prohibition against swearing oaths endorsement of slavery as an institution judgement of tax collectors as sinner we do not regard these items as binding in most cases i believe the argument is essentially one of cultural relativism briefly prohibition of interest is appropriate to a specific agrarian society that the bible was trying to build but not to our market economy few people believe that american judicial oaths have the same characteristics as the kind of oaths jesus was concerned about most people believe that paul was simply telling people how to live within slavery but not endorsing it as an institution for people believe that the irs is morally equivalent to roman tax farming the point i m trying to make is that before applying biblical prohibitions to the th cent we need to look at whether the th cent actions are the same when christian homosexuals say that their relationships are different than the greek homosexuality that paul would have been familiar with this is exactly the same kind of argument that is being made about judicial oaths and tax collectors until fairly recently christians prohibited taking of interest and many christians regarded slavery as divinely endorsed indeed slavery is one of the more common metaphors for the relationship between god and human beings christians are often called servants or slaves of god i am not trying to say that everything in the bible is culturally relative rather i m trying to say that some things are and therefore it is not enough to say that because something appears in the bible that ends the discussion we need to look at whether the action we re talking about now has the same moral implications as the one that the bible was talking about if christians want to argue that there are reasons to think that the prohibitions against homosexuality are still binding i m willing to listen those who claim that the question doesn t need to be looked at are kidding themselves unless they are part of the small minority who really obey all the rules listed above one thing that worries me is the great emotions that this issue creates when you consider the weakness of the biblical evidence some laws in leviticus a passage in rom whose subject matter is really idolatry rather than homosexuality and a couple of lists whose words are ambiguous the amount of concern this is raising among christians seems rather out of proportion this should suggest to people that there are reasons other than simply biblical involved this is true on both sides clearly homosexual christians are as strongly motivated to find ways of discrediting the biblical arguments as conservative christians are to find biblical arguments but i can t help feeling that the bible is being used by both sides as a way of justifying attitudes which come from other sources this is a dangerous situation for christians on the other side of the issue i would like to note some problems i have with the pro homosexual position as it is commonly presented one of the most common arguments is that homosexuality is biologically determined i e god made me homosexual and i have no choice i think god made me homosexual is a fine view for people who already believe on other grounds that homosexuality is acceptable but i don t see it as an argument for acceptability many people think that alcholism is largely biological and drug addiction may turn out to be as well that doesn t mean it s ok most of us have particular things we tend to do wrong some people get angry easily others tend to be arrogant others tend to be attraced to women who are married to someone else homosexuality if we view it as wrong wouldn t be different than any of these other things if we are going to follow god we all end up at one time or another having to work to overcome bad habits and particular temptations that cause us problems none of us can sit back and say that because god made us the way we are we can just relax as jesus said we all have to take up our cross daily this concept of dying to self which also appears throughout paul s letters seems to suggest that there are going to be things about ourselves that we we are called on not to accept paul s letters and the experience of christians throughout history show us that sin is ingrained in us and the battle against it is lifelong and difficult the fact that homosexuality is difficult to fight doesn t necessarily say it s ok maybe this isn t the place where we have to die to self but i d like to make sure that those who think it isn t are fighting the battle somewhere else and not rejecting the concept that all christians have to fight against the deeply engrained habits of sin
