HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE BIBLE

eA gay Kenyan man was talking about how people use the Bible to condemn homosexuality. Well i always felt that the bible anyone can use the Bible to say anything.
Anyway, I decided to do a quick recap of verses in the Bible that mention homosexuality. I couldn't help throwing in my own editorial comments.
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I

The vengeful Yahweh destroyed Sodom for its lechery. The last straw was when the men of Sodom attempted to rape two angels. The punishment against Sodom was not against homosexuality per se but the immorality of its residents. The story about Sodom does not mention God’s anger, or otherwise, in relation to consensual acts of homosexuality.
What I find interesting about the Lot story- which to me illustrates the double standards people apply to the interpretation of the bible- is towards the end where Lot and his daughters are living in a cave. The daughters conspire to get their father drank and have carnal knowledge of him and huko he is blacked out.
Now that would make Njoki Ndungu gag but Yahweh is easy. The offspring of that liaison (Ammonites and Moabites) are about the only people Yahweh doesn’t instigate a war against. In fact they are considered cousins to Israel.
(Compare that with the purported crime and its subsequent curse in Genesis 9:20-27, which was Christendom's biblical justification for slavery and apartheid.)
In the bible, then, incestuous sexual abuse is tolerated, but if your father gets drank and you happen on him sleeping naked, your ancestors will forever be slaves.

Another time homosexuality is mentioned is in the incidence of the Levite and his concubine. (Judges Ch: 19). This again as verse 22 indicates is a case of homosexual rape:

“[Now] as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, [and] beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him.”

If you care to read how that story is resolved in the next two chapters, you will think God writes Hollywood movies and men wrote the bible. (That is one of the worst sex, gore and objectification of women stories you will ever read.) But as I always say, what do you expect when God is a bloodthirsty Patriarch.

The act of sodomy is mentioned in 1 kings 14:24:

“And there were also sodomites in the land: [and] they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel.”

(The internet version I am using here uses the word sodomite instead of pervert
In the hard copy I am reading from, which happens to be my mum’s New King James version. In relation to the word ‘perverts’ it gives a footnote to this effect: “That is those practicing sodomy and prostitution in religious rituals.”
In my view then it is not clear whether the crime is in the action or the situation- is it the, what that is wrong or the where?)

The book of Leviticus provides the only outright condemnation of homosexuality in the Old Testament:
Ch. 18:22
“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it [is] abomination.”
Ch. 20:13
“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood [shall be] upon them.”

Now according to the New Concise Bible Dictionary (Ed. Derek Williams), the warnings in Leviticus “are also primarily aimed at idolatry using the word ‘abomination’, which is a religious term often used for idolatrous practices."
(I am taking that dictionary on its own authority since I cannot speak Greek, and as I have once mentioned to the Pink Blogger, Linguistics is not my forte. That word 'abomination', though, is what his Kikuyu Bible translates into: thahu.)

II

Then came the one whom much had been written about: Jesus Christ. He that came to die that we may live. The lamb of Pentecost. The blood of the New Covenant. Moses’ pension plan or is it Nemesis? He was God- Incarnate- walking amongst men, teaching about the way to the father. He taught about this and that but he never mentioned homosexuality. Yet he spoke of sin- and the forgiveness of sin- and his word was God.

The only outright condemnation of homosexuality in the New Testament comes from the reformed Pharisee, Paul of Tarsus.
1 Cor. 6:9
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,”

1 Tim. 1:9
“For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;”

(Incidentally, Paul/Saul never met Jesus and had spent his early years persecuting the so called Christians, yet he became the most influential protagonist- in Acts- and author- the Epistles- of the Christian Canon. He is even considered more Orthodox than Peter, who was the Rock upon which Christ was to build his church to a point where he won a doctrinal tiff between them: Gal. 2:14 and Acts Ch. 15)

This is just my reading from the bible,I have used quotations from the Blue Letter Bible.

Maybe now that I am at it, I should attempt what I call: ‘Sermons of the Anglican’….later!