Christians and Gays, Part 4

This is the fourth installment of my series “Christians and Gays” where I explore why some Christians have it in for gays. I have concluded that those Christians believe the Bible directs them to attack gays because being homosexual is a sin.

We will examine the Bible text in this segment as it pertains or does not pertain to homosexuality.

It is important to realize that “homosexuality” as a sexual orientation did not exist in Biblical times. Actually, the study of sexual orientation or sexual development did not begin till the 1950s. Even today, there are people that think heterosexual men desire homosexual contact because they are sinners. If they truly believe that then they are very naïve and have sexual issues of their own. Homosexuals are born that way – period!

In Biblical times homosexual acts did occur. We are told that when an army defeated another army, the losers were sometimes raped by the victors as a sign of dominance, etc. I really have a hard time imagining a victorious soldier getting an erection so he can rape a defeated soldier.

We are also told by historians that a number of religions had temples where men and women were so called “Temple Prostitutes”. These prostitutes represented the specific god that the temple honored. Having sex with these temple harlots (male or female) somehow represented having sex with the actual god – figure that out! Anyway, the Jews were very much against this type of activity and wrote about it in the Old Testament.

Also, in Greek culture it was accepted that a mature Greek citizen would take a younger Greek male under his wing to teach him how to be a good Greek citizen. Sex was part of the deal. We now call it pederasty.

Historians have a little trouble with this Greek custom. The men had wives and led normal lives. We also know that only the upper class practiced pederasty. The big thing to remember here is that their society accepted this behavior as normal.

Romans, to a certain extent, also practiced pederasty but for strictly sexual pleasure. This was not considered homosexuality because there was no homosexuality just homosexual acts.

Also at this time, slavery was common, normal and accepted. Treating women as total crap was also accepted; it was after all, a patriarchal system. This is still seen in Islamic societies and a few others.
Remember that the Bible accepted these practices.

The Bible is filled with rules and regulations that would never be accepted in our time; they belong to another age, another time, another civilization.

We also know that the Bible has been translated, copied, interpreted, rewritten……………….etc. according to our modern understanding. There was no word for homosexuality because homosexuality was unknown at the time the Bible was written but we have managed to interpret Biblical text in a homosexual way.

For that matter, anyone can find Biblical justification for about any position one holds. You can find justification in the Bible for opposing views. Hell, Shakespeare even said the devil can justify his actions in the Bible.

The trick here is to discern if the Bible actually condemns homosexuals and instructs Christians to persecute homosexuals because they are sinners against the Christian God.

Well, this took longer than I thought. I promise to get into the text of the Bible next time. We will look at mainly: Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Judges, Kings, Romans, Corinthians, Timothy and Jude. These are the passages that matter most to the anti-gay Christians and these are the passages they use to justify their feelings and their actions.

Janusz