What Does the Bible Really Say About Gay People?
Let me tell you a little story.
One day, I heard a man with a megaphone, chasing children around in my neighborhood, condemning the children to hell, because the man thought they were dressed a little weird.
From his megaphone he yelled, “you’re going to hell!” To children. For dressing different.
A few feet away, somebody with a “God Hates Gays” sign was “livestreaming” the harrassment.,
and the police observed.
So I stood in between the man and the kids. I’m tall, I’m used to bullies, better me than them.
And I blasted “A Whole New World” to contain the situation (and demonetize the man’s footage).
Then, the man, no longer able to attack the children, looked at me and said,
“They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”
A perfectly accurate recitation of Romans 1, except that he completely inverted the meaning of the passage by cutting it short.
So I said to the man, “Finish the sentence. If you quote Romans 1, you need to finish the sentence with Romans 2. Therefore you have no excuse when you condemn others, for in doing so, you condemn yourself.”
At that moment, I believe that the man realized two things:
This funny-looking Queer is a sibling in Christ
The Bible isn’t going to be a weapon against us
And he said, “ok, I’m leaving.”
The Six Passages
The Bible contains six passages that are known to address same-sex acts relationships. Let’s take a look:
Genesis 19: Sodom
You might have heard that “God destroyed Sodom because of homosexuality.”
The text: The men of Sodom surround Lot's house and demand that he bring out his visitors "so that we may know them" (Genesis 19:5). This is attempted gang rape of strangers, a violent assertion of dominance, not an expression of sexual orientation. Lot offers his daughters instead (19:8).
The curious thing about this passage, is that scripture actually offers an explanation. This is what the sodomites did wrong:
Ezekiel 16:49: "This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy."
Jesus references Sodom twice, in Matthew 10:14-15 and Luke 10:10-12, both times about cities that refuse hospitality to his disciples.
Isaiah 1:10-17 calls Jerusalem's leaders "rulers of Sodom" and specifies their sin: empty religious ritual while oppressing the vulnerable.
Every biblical reference to Sodom's sin names injustice, inhospitality, exploitation, and arrogance.
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13: The Holiness Code
You might have heard that “Leviticus calls homosexuality an abomination punishable by death.”
The texts: "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination" (18:22). "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death" (20:13).
These appear in Leviticus 17-26, the Holiness Code, laws setting Israel apart from surrounding nations. The code is explicitly framed: "You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt... or in the land of Canaan" (18:3). The context is Canaanite fertility cults involving ritual sex acts in worship.
The Hebrew word translated "abomination" is toevah, meaning ritually unclean, culturally taboo. Not absolute moral evil, which would be zimmah. The same word toevah is used for eating shellfish (Leviticus 11:10-12). The same Holiness Code prohibits wearing mixed fabrics (19:19), trimming beards (19:27), and getting tattoos (19:28). Other things requiring the death penalty in Leviticus include cursing your parents (20:9), adultery (20:10), and working on the Sabbath (Exodus 31:14-15).
Christians do not follow the Levitical purity system. The Jerusalem Council ruled that Gentile Christians don't need to follow Mosaic law (Acts 15). Peter's vision declared "unclean" foods clean (Acts 10). Paul wrote that the law was a "guardian until Christ" and that believers are no longer under it (Galatians 3:23-25; Romans 14).
Here’s something to consider: do you wear anything with cotton/polyester blend? If so, you’re in violation of the ancient Hebrew Law, and you’re in good company.
Romans 1:26-27: The Rhetorical Trap
Here’s another one: “Paul condemns homosexuality as against nature."
The text describes "degrading passions," women exchanging "natural intercourse for unnatural," men consumed with passion for one another, as consequences of idolatry (Romans 1:18-27). This is the most frequently cited passage against LGBTQ+ people. It is also the most frequently misread.
Three problems.
First, context. Romans 1:18-27 is about idolatry, not sexuality. Paul describes people who "exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images" (1:23) and were "given up" to consequences. The same-sex acts are presented as results of idol worship, not as the sin itself, but as evidence of a society that has abandoned God for statues. The passage does not describe people with a same-sex orientation living in committed relationships. It describes the chaos that follows when a society worships idols.
Second, the word physin. Translated "nature." Paul uses physin elsewhere to discuss hair length (1 Corinthians 11:14: "Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him?"). Paul's "nature" means social convention, not biological design. He is describing people who act "against" their own social norms in the context of pagan worship. He is not making a scientific claim about the inherent wrongness of homosexuality in the context of the 21st century.
Third, and this is the part almost nobody reads: Romans 2:1.
"Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things."
Paul set a trap. Romans 1 describes pagan sin in terms calculated to get his religious audience nodding along. Yes, those terrible idolaters with their degrading passions. Then Romans 2:1 springs: therefore you have no excuse when you judge them. The entire argument drives toward Romans 3:23 ("all have sinned"), Romans 8:1 ("no condemnation"), and Romans 8:38-39 ("nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God").
1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10: The Word That Didn't Exist
Another claim: Paul lists "homosexuals" among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God.
The Greek word is arsenokoitai. It appears in exactly two passages in the entire Bible. It appears almost nowhere else in all of ancient Greek literature. Paul may have coined it. Scholars genuinely do not know what it means.
The word's components, arsēn (male) and koitē (bed), tell us something about sex between males. But compound words don't always mean the sum of their parts. "Understand" does not mean "stand under." "Butterfly" has nothing to do with butter.
For 564 years of English Bible translation, from Wycliffe in 1382 through 1945, no translator used the word "homosexual." The KJV (1611) rendered it "abusers of themselves with mankind." The word "homosexual" was coined in German in 1869, entered English in the 1890s, and first appeared in any Bible in the 1946 RSV. One translation committee, in one year, imported a 19th-century psychological category into a 1st-century text and gave English-speaking Christianity a proof-text it had never had before.
What Paul's world knew: temple prostitution, pederasty (adult men exploiting children), the sexual use of slaves. What Paul's world did not know: the concept of sexual orientation as an innate identity, or of two adults of the same sex in a committed, consensual, loving partnership. The concept literally did not exist.
The paired word malakoi, sometimes translated "effeminate," literally means "soft ones." The KJV used "effeminate." The NRSV uses "male prostitutes." The NIV uses "men who have sex with men."
I think you’ll find that the translations that explicitly name “homosexuals” were edited by scholars who specifically oppose homosexuality, and of the many translations that do not mention “homosexuals,” only a handful of them were edited by people who specifically support homosexuality.
Yes, “homosexual” is one possible translation of arsenokoitai, but it’s just that: one translation.
What Those Six Passages Have in Common
Not one of them describes a consensual same-sex relationship between adults. Not one of them addresses sexual orientation. Not one of them envisions two people of the same sex building a household, serving the community, keeping covenant, bearing the fruits of the Spirit.
The passages describe gang rape (Genesis 19), purity violations in the context of Canaanite fertility cults (Leviticus), the chaos of idol worship (Romans 1), and something sexually exploitative that we genuinely cannot translate with certainty (1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1).
But let’s be real… what if the Bible really does oppose gay people?
That’s OK. It’s very possible that same-sex relationships were repulsive to ancient scribes and writers, even loving healthy ones. That’s fine. It’s very normal for modern, faithful Christians to disagree with Leviticus and Paul. I like to joke that Paul might have thought differently if he knew about lubricating products. But in serious, Christ never mandated us to follow the law literally, and he certainly never mandated us to take every word of Paul as immutable law.
Rather, if Christ did mandate one thing to his followers, it’s this:
tolove God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and to love your neighbor as oneself.
What else does the Bible say?
Those are the six passages to the question: “what does the Bible say about homosexuality?”
Those are the classic passages, the cases of (possible) condemnation.
But here’s another question:
“does the Bible have anything nice to say about gay people?”
This is important because, after so much of the rough stuff, a lot of us can use a reminder of what else is true according to scripture:
The Image of God
"So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27).
Every person bears the image of God. Not every straight person. Not every cisgender person. Every person. The text does not condition the imago Dei on sexual orientation. LGBTQ+ people are made in the image of God, and the burden of proof falls on anyone who claims otherwise.
Jesus Welcomes Outsiders
In Matthew 19:12, Jesus says: "For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven."
The word "eunuch" in the ancient world was the broadest available category for gender and sexual outsiders, people whose bodies, identities, or sexual lives did not fit expected norms. Jesus names three categories of eunuch. He condemns none. He states their existence as fact and says, "Let anyone accept this who can."
The First Gentile Convert
In Acts 8:26-40, the first Gentile convert to Christianity is an Ethiopian eunuch, a person who could not enter the Jewish temple under Deuteronomic law (Deuteronomy 23:1). He is reading Isaiah on a desert road. Philip explains the Scripture. They come to water, and the eunuch asks: "What is to prevent me from being baptized?" (Acts 8:36).
Philip baptizes him.
The early church chose this as the story of their first Gentile convert. Out of every possible narrative about the gospel crossing boundaries, they led with a sexual and gender outsider who was welcomed without conditions. The trajectory from Deuteronomy's exclusion to Isaiah's promise ("Do not let the eunuch say, 'I am just a dry tree'" in Isaiah 56:3-5) to Acts' fulfillment is unmistakable.
Jonathan and David
The most intimate language in Scripture for a human relationship is between two men.
"The soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul" (1 Samuel 18:1). Jonathan makes covenant with David and gives him his robe, armor, sword, bow, and belt, intimate gifts of identity (18:3-4). They kiss and weep together (20:41). David's lament at Jonathan's death: "Your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women" (2 Samuel 1:26).
Whether or not Jonathan and David had a sexual relationship is genuinely uncertain, and serious scholars disagree. What is not uncertain is what the text says. It describes their bond in covenantal language, it compares their love favorably to heterosexual love, and it presents their relationship as one of the most beautiful in all of Scripture.
For queer Christians who have been told the Bible has nothing for them: the Bible gave David and Jonathan more beautiful covenant language than it gave almost any married couple in its pages.
The Trajectory
The direction of Scripture runs from exclusion toward ever-widening inclusion.
Gentiles. Once excluded from the covenant, included through Christ (Acts 10-15). The early church fought bitterly about this. Peter needed a vision from God to change his mind. The Jerusalem Council debated it. They decided: in.
Slaves. The Bible regulates slavery without condemning it. Pro-slavery theologians cited Scripture from American pulpits for two centuries. They had a biblical case. It was wrong, but it was biblical. The abolitionists had the trajectory, "there is neither slave nor free" (Galatians 3:28), and eventually the church caught up. 1,800 years late.
Women. "Women should be silent in the churches" (1 Corinthians 14:34) was used to exclude women from leadership for centuries. The same Paul who wrote those words also named Junia as "prominent among the apostles" (Romans 16:7) and called Phoebe a deacon (Romans 16:1). The church followed the trajectory toward inclusion. Always late. Always after damage.
The pattern is consistent. In every generation, the church has used snapshot readings, individual verses, frozen in time, stripped of context, to justify exclusion. And in every generation, the trajectory of the whole witness has eventually prevailed. The question is not whether the church will follow this trajectory on LGBTQ+ inclusion. The question is how many people will be harmed before it does.
The Fruits Test
"You will know them by their fruits" (Matthew 7:16).
Look at the fruit of the non-affirming position. LGBTQ+ youth in non-affirming environments have suicide attempt rates exceeding 40%. Family rejection makes LGBTQ+ young people 8 times more likely to attempt suicide. Family acceptance produces an 82% reduction. The theology produces the outcome.
Now look at the fruit of LGBTQ+ Christians in committed relationships. They serve churches. They raise children. They love their neighbors. They bear the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23), abundantly.
If an interpretation produces death, it is wrong.
This may be an opinion, but I stand by the opinion that any doctrine that leads to children dying is bad doctrine, even if it’s somewhat based on holy writings.
One more thing.
While laying with another man is detestable in Leviticus, do you want to know something that’s really truly awful?
Child sacrifice.
Check out Leviticus 20:2-5.
“Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech.”
That’s a lot more than one sentence, and it’s a lot more serious than “detestable” or “unclean.”
If you’re a believer, and you’re somehow still reading, here’s your challenge:
Notice where the vulnerable are sacrificed due to ancient worship practices,
and do something about it.
Hope Hilton, MDiv · noharmscripture.com
