(Summarized from D. A. Helminiak, What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality)

The Key Issue is not what the Bible says but how one interprets what it says. Every reading implies some interpretation, including the supposed "literal reading," the Fundamentalist approach. Mainstream Christian Churches follow historical-critical method. It determines the text's meaning by understanding the text within its original historical and cultural context. Once understood, its lesson still needs to be applied to today, a different historical and cultural situation. Interpreted in this way, the Bible texts that treat homosexual behavior are only four and do not mean what a "literal reading" would suggest.

In general, our understanding of homosexuality as a fixed, core aspect of a person and current concern for loving, adult, homosexual relationships raise questions the biblical authors never imagined. So it is not to be expected that the biblical texts provide answers to those questions. A text by text analysis supports this general conclusion.

A Pseudo-homosexual Text: Genesis 19:1-11, The sin of Sodom was inhospitality. The Bible itself gives this interpretation in Ezekiel 16:48-49, Wisdom 9:13-14, Matthew 10:5-15. The sodomites' desire "to know" the visitors means to have sex with them. Thus, the inhospitality and gross abuse in question here include rape—which is a very different thing from gay sex in general. Comparison with the parallel account of a heterosexual rape in Judges 19 shows that concern about hetero- versus homosexual activity was foreign to ancient Israel.

The Jewish Testament Text: Leviticus 18:22: "You shall not lie with a male the lyings of a woman; it is an abomination." (Leviticus 20:13 prescribes the death penalty. Cursing one's parents, adultery, incest, and bestiality merit the same punishment.) The literary context is the Holiness Code for Israel. Its intent is religious. Its stipulations are to keep the Jews "set apart," "holy," "clean." Practices like mixing of kinds (different seeds in the same field, different fibers in one cloth) defile. Sea creatures are to have scales. Land animals with cleft hoofs are to chew the cud. Likewise, sexually men are to penetrate, women are to be penetrated. So sexual penetration of another male (to experience with a male the sexual receptivity, the "lyings," that a woman offers) mixes kinds and is unclean — but not other kinds of male-male nor female-female sex. As in the “Clinton defense,” so also for the ancient Hebrews, only penetration counts as real sex. The concern of Leviticus was not the nature of sex nor even homosexuality but a cultural taboo. It takes on religious implications when cultural practices are used to set the Jews apart, make them “holy,” in comparison with other peoples. * The term abomination occurs throughout the Code and means nothing worse than uncleanness, impurity. * The use of the Hebrew term toevah (impurity, abomination, taboo) instead of zimah (injustice, wrongdoing) and, in the 300-150 B.C.E. Greek translation, the term bdelygma (impurity, uncleanness) instead of anomia (injustice), poneria (evil), or asebeia (ungodliness) confirms this interpretation. * Conclusion: For the Jewish Testament penetrative male-male sex acts are a matter of ritual or religious impurity, not a matter of sexual ethics. Betrayal of Judaism, not a sex act, is condemned.

Jesus on Purity Issues: Jesus and the Christian Testament abrogate all purity concerns. What matters is "purity of the heart": justice, honesty, compassion, peace-making. See Matthew 5:8, 15:11, 18-20; 1 Corinthians 7:19; Galatians 5:6; Romans 2:29, 14:14, etc. * Matthew 8 and Luke 7 recount Jesus' curing the centurion's "servant." The Greek reads pais (boy, slave), contrasted in the passage with the other term doulos (servant, slave). Luke also notes that the boy was "dear" to the wealthy centurion. Not cost nor experience and skill, but only emotional attachment, would explain “dear.” There is also evidence that pais was sometimes used to mean a young male lover. Most likely, the boy was the centurion's lover. Jesus cured the boy, only commending the centurion's faith. The evangelists made no issue of the sexual situation.

A Christian Testament Text on Homosexuality: Romans 1:18-32 (especially 26-27: "Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men.") * "Unnatural" mistranslates the terms para physin, which in Paul's usage means rather "atypical," "beyond what is ordinary or usual." There can be no moral condemnation implied in this term because, in Romans 11:24, God is said to act para physin. * The other two Greek terms applied to the same-sex acts (atimia=ill-reputed; aschemosyne=uncomely) imply social unacceptability, not moral judgment, as attested by Paul’s every other use of these terms elsewhere. Paul is appealing to Jewish purity sensitivities, announced in verse. 24. In contrast, terms implying real wrongdoing, unethical behavior (asebeia=godlessness, impiety; adikia=wickedness, injustice, wrongdoing), occur in vs. 18-19 and 28-31, before and after the section of same-sex acts. The contrast must be intentional. * Paul's point is that the idolatry of the Gentiles resulted not only in real wrongdoing but also in "dirty" behaviors. * Why bring up purity issues, which Jesus disqualified? To echo the prejudices and gain the sympathy of the Roman Jewish Christians, who took pride in keeping the Law. The structure of Romans shows an initial appeal to Jewish self-righteousness (1:18-32), then a turn of the tables where the Jews themselves are shown to be sinful (2:1, 17), then a shift to a Gentile perspective (9:3), and finally insistence that the Gentiles also respect the Jews (11:13). 14:14 makes clear that the purity issue was raised only for rhetorical reasons: "I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself." Paul's concern is to keep the community from splintering. * Why use same-sex acts as the purity issue? Because it would work. Penetrative male-male sex was an obvious issue, known clearly as a purity concern among the Jews, evidently not a bone of contention like circumcision and the dietary laws, and not likely to offend the Gentiles, who knew the Jews' peculiarity in this matter and Paul's status as "apostle of the Gentiles." * If verse 26 refers to homosexual acts, it would be the sole biblical reference to lesbianism—very unlikely. Lesbianism, unlike male-male sex, is not mentioned in the Hebrew Testament as an uncleanness, so it does not fit Paul's announced topic, impurity (verse 24). So para physin in verse 26 could refer to any sexual activity forbidden as unclean, like sex during menstruation or with an uncircumcised man. Conclusion: Attention to Pauline terminology, structural analysis, and the overall rhetorical structure of the letter show that Romans presents male same-sex acts only as a purity issue. No ethical judgment against same-sex acts is at stake here. Rather, the epistle mentions them precisely to counter the Jewish Christian position and to make the point that supposed "impurities" among the Gentile Christians have no importance in Christ.

Two Obscure Texts: 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 1:8-10. The meaning of these texts, said to exclude homosexual people from the Kingdom of God, hinges on the meaning of two Greek terms, malakoi and arsenokotai. Throughout history these terms have been translated variably (masturbators, practicers of heterosexual anal sex, sodomites, catamites). Suggested translations today still vary (morally loose, masturbators who waste their property, boys and their pederast partners, male temple prostitutes serving men and women, gold-digging male hustlers who pursue the elderly). No one really knows for certain what these terms mean. * Arsenokoitai clearly involves men (but not women), sexual penetration of some kind, and foul play around money. This word might refer to some form of prostitution or to abusive and/or pederastic male-male sex, which was widely berated in the first-century Roman empire. Conclusion: there is no good reason to suppose that these texts apply to consensual, respectful, homosexual acts per se, especially since such an interpretation would be in conflict with all the rest of the Bible.

Adam and Eve: The fact that the creation stories speak of a heterosexual couple allows no valid conclusion about homosexuality (argumentum ad ignorantiam). Nothing in those accounts suggests an intended lesson on sexual orientation. Similarly, the fact that the Bible speaks frequently of dogs but never of cats does not mean the Bible condemns cats. Besides, in the Bible's explicit teaching about same-sex acts, there is no condemnation of homo-sexuality. The stories of Jonathan and David, Ruth and Naomi, Daniel and the palace master, and Jesus' cure of the centurion's servant likely also provide positive biblical instances of same-sex relationships.