Leviticus and same sex sin - homosexuality

You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination. (Leviticus 18:22)
If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them. (Leviticus 20:13)


These passages in the book of Leviticus are abundantly clear in their rejection of homosexuality as a practice or a proclivity. Homosexuality then and now is not compatible with biblical morality; it is not acceptable to God. Both sides of the same-sex controversy readily admit the clarity of these passages; therefore, those who advocate the acceptability of homosexuality in either deed or in desire must do something with these passages. They must answer the searing indictment from this portion of God’s Word.

The first and most common approach to these passages by those who advocate the consistency of homosexuality with biblical morality is to present them as irrelevant to the discussion. 

This approach recognizes the prohibition against homosexuality in the book of Leviticus as real but argues that the prohibitions only applied to the Jews of a previous era. The argument claims that these proscriptions of Leviticus applied to the Jews of that day, not to us, and, therefore, ought not to be considered binding today. 

Usually someone utters the often used and misunderstood phrase, “After all, we are not under Law, but under grace.” Let us consider the words of those who would dismiss the Leviticus passages in this way.

Daniel Helminiak, a Roman Catholic priest, has attempted, in part, to blunt the sharp edge of the Leviticus prohibitions by asserting the Jewish distinctiveness of these passages. According to Helminiak, the restrictions were something exclusively Jewish. He commented succinctly, “Not sex, but violation of Judaism is what was prohibited."

Previously he argued,

"The condemnation of homogenital acts occurs in a section of Leviticus called “The Holiness Code.” This list of laws and punishments spells out requirements for Israel to remain “holy” in God’s sight.… According to Jewish belief, Israel was God’s “chosen people.” Israel was bound to God by a covenant, a pact. That covenant required that the Israelites show themselves different from the other nations. They were God’s People. They were to maintain their own traditions. They were not to do things the way that other nations did. They needed to preserve their religious identity.… They now were to have nothing to do with the Gentiles.… So a main concern of The Holiness Code was to keep Israel different from the Gentiles.… The point is that The Holiness Code of Leviticus prohibits male same-sex acts for religious reasons, not for sexual reasons. The concern is to keep Israel distinct from the Gentiles. Homogenital sex is forbidden because it is associated with Gentile identity. It departs from the Jewish understanding of how things should be."

Similarly, L. William Countryman, by relegating the prohibitions against homosexuality to (his understanding of) Israel’s purity laws, conveniently concludes that they can only have reference to the Jews and Jewish culture of that time. Countryman said, 

“Every culture’s purity law must be understood as expressing the culture’s uniqueness as well as our common human interest in purity.” 

For Countryman, the Levitical opposition to homosexuality was a cultural matter. Rejecting the biblical standards of morality, he wrote,

For present purposes, it is enough to say that what marks particular sexual acts as violations of purity rather than of some other ethic is that the acts are deemed repellent in and of themselves, like snails or slugs on a dinner plate. One rejects them because they seem self-evidently unacceptable, not because of any identifiable concrete harm which they threaten to a society or to a person participating in them.

The late John Boswell linked Leviticus’s prohibitions of homosexuality to “those Jewish sins which involve ethnic contamination” and commented that the “manifest purpose” of Leviticus chapters 18 and 20 “is to elaborate a system of ritual ‘cleanliness’ whereby the Jew will be distinguished from neighboring peoples.”


And finally, Letha Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott argue that these prohibitions, while previously applicable to the Jews who received Leviticus, do not apply to us today since we do not follow other Levitical prescriptions and prohibitions. 

Their contention, at this point, is the classic “We are not under Law but under grace” argument. 

This argument is, by far, the most common employed by those who maintain that homosexuality is consistent with biblical morality. Typically, they make some reference to the 

• Older Testament’s dietary laws (Leviticus 11; Deuteronomy 14). 
• The Jews were not to eat pork or shellfish (Leviticus 11:7, 10–12). 

The argument is that since this legislation is not followed today, neither should we follow Leviticus when it comes to the prohibition of homosexuality. The case is supposedly closed. 

Scanzoni and Mollenkott present this type of argument as they comment on Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13:

These verses are part of Israel’s Holiness Code, which includes commandments not to eat meat with blood in it, not to wear garments made of two kinds of yarn, not to plant fields with two kinds of seed, and not to be tattooed, as well as specific instructions on sexual matters. Forbidden activities include bestiality (sexual conduct with animals), incest (sexual conduct with relatives—children, parents, siblings, in-laws, and so on), male homosexual acts, adultery, and sexual intercourse with a woman during her menstrual period. The reasons given for these proscriptions involve several factors: (1) separation from other nations and their customs (Lev. 18:1–5), (2) avoidance of idolatry and any practices associated with it (Lev. 20:1–7), and (3) ceremonial uncleanness.

Are the Leviticus prohibitions only commandments for the Jews of some previous day? 

• Are we to see Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 as mere cultural indicators that separated Israel from the surrounding nations? 
• Is there a blatant inconsistency for Christians who believe that the Bible condemns homosexuality and then discuss such matters at dinner—over a rare steak while wearing a polyester blend garment? 
• Are Christians in the contemporary church selective and hypocritical in their opposition to homosexuality since they do not offer animal sacrifices during the worship service and may happen to enjoy an occasional lobster dinner or eat ham during a holiday meal?
• What response can be made to these arguments? 

The contention is that the prohibitions that are found in the book of Leviticus are arcane, obsolete, or inapplicable to the controversy before us. The truth of the matter is, however, that the condemnation of homosexuality as found in the book of Leviticus stands with present-day relevance—that homosexuality, then and now, was and is sinful and not approved by the Creator, the God of the Bible. The arguments offered to justify homosexuality as a biblically acceptable practice are scripturally indefensible.