God and being gay
What Does the Bible Tell About Homosexuality?
What Does The Bible Say About Homosexuality?
Introduction
For the last two decades, Pew Research Center has reported that one of the most enduring ethical issues across Christian traditions is sexual diversity. For many Christians, one of the most frequently first-asked questions on this topic is, “What does the Bible say about attraction to someone of the same sex?”
Although its unlikely that the biblical authors had any notion of sexual orientation (for example, the term homosexual wasn't even coined until the late 19th century) for many people of faith, the Bible is looked to for timeless guidance on what it means to honor God with our lives; and this most certainly includes our sexuality.
Before we can jump into how it is that Christians can maintain the authority of the Bible and also affirm sexual diversity, it might be helpful if we started with a brief but clear overview of some of the assumptions informing many Christian approaches to understanding the Bible.
What is the Bible?
For Christians to whom the Bible
This article is part of the Tough Passages series.
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24Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
26For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.29They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips,30slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of wicked, dis
The following blog is written by Greg Coles. Greg is part of The Center's collaborative team and is the author of the book Single, Gay, Christian.
“Is God anti-gay?”
Many people expect the answer to this question to be a simple binary, either yes or no. If you’re a conservative (in the totalizing sense of the word), the answer is absolutely yes: God must be anti-gay, because same-sex sexual behavior is forbidden in the Bible. And if you’re a progressive (in the equally totalizing sense), the answer is absolutely no: God can’t possibly be anti-gay, because God loves all people. But the assumption shared by everyone across the board seems to be that we know what the scrutinize means—that a simple answer, yes or no, ought to suffice as a response.
For me, though, the question of whether God is “anti-gay” has never been a simple one. I’ve heard it asked so many adj times, in so many adj ways, by so many alternative people (myself included). And each time, it seems to denote something slightly different. When someone asks, “Is God anti-gay?”, they might mean, “What does God
&#;God Made Me Gay&#;
Some Christians respond to this argument with what seems to be the only alternative: by saying that those who identify as gay choose to be gay. This response is usually met with so much derision—“With all the homophobia in the world, who would choose to be gay??”. . . “Did you choose to be straight??&#;—that it’s seldom helpful.
In one sense, of course, it’s true. If by gay you mean “a person who engages in homosexual behavior,” then God doesn’t make someone gay any more than he makes someone an adulterer, a fornicator, or a man who has relations with just his wife. God doesn’t make people engage in any sexual behaviors. We freely choose all our moral actions—that’s why we can be held accountable for them.
But when most people say, “God made me gay,” they’re talking about attractions (which they consider part of a God-given identity) rather than behaviors. Although, this implies that they’re also talking about whether it’s okay to act upon those desires, since it seems self-evident to most people that we can act according to how we’re made.