You can't be Gay and a Christian!
Can you be gay and Christian? What does the Bible actually say? Did the biblical writers address loving, committed, same-sex relationships?
Ample evidence exists that the ancients knew and sometimes practised gay relationships and mutuality. Paul’s discussion in Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6:9–11, and 1 Timothy 1:8–10 must include this understanding of homosexual relationships. In addition, Paul’s vice list—including “homosexuals” (arsenokoitai)—occurs in a broader context of those who “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9–11) and who should, like the person involved in sexual immorality, come under the discipline of the church or be excommunicated if there is no repentance (5:1–6:11). Homosexuals should repent, as should all those whose acts and lifestyles are condemned as an offence before God (1 Cor. 6:9–11). Obviously, the ordination of homosexuals for ministry violates biblical teaching
Homosexuality seems to have existed more widely among the ancient Greeks than among any other ancient people. Excursuses 3 and 4 provide substantial quotation of Greek sources relating to the place and forms of homosexual behavior. From those sources it is apparent that the predominant form of homosexuality was pederasty between men and boys.
The ethics of Greek love for boys was based upon “an aesthetic and religious foundation,” and it was sanctioned by the state. It was a supplement to marriage and an important factor in education, so it was decidedly bisexual. Not surprisingly, women objected to such sexual diversions. Pederasty goes back forty-five hundred years in ancient Egypt and occurs in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Solon issued laws to prevent slaves from having connections with free-born boys. The rape of boys was an established “custom.” The Greeks even used boys for paying tribute.
However, the Greeks knew and practiced additional forms of same-gender behavior. Plato, in his last work (c. 348 B.C.), both implies and speaks openly about the ubiquity of homosexuality. Plato advocates legislation to regulate it (Laws 636a–c; 835c; 836a–e; 838b–839b; 840de; 841de). There were laws against homosexuality as early as Plato’s lifetime in Greece; some prescribed the death penalty for certain behaviors. Hans Licht asserts that Christian church fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria, cite Greek poetry to “prove the immorality of paganism.”
Lyric poetry had its “origin in homosexual love.” Licht finds references in Greek culture to such forms of sexual perversion as mixoscopy, transvestitism, exhibitionism,Pygmalionismm, flagellation, sadism and masochism (although Licht discounts these forms), necrophilia, and sodomy. Licht defines sodomy as sex with animals.
Plato treated homosexual love from a philosophical perspective, which suggests that such a thing as a homosexual orientation was known. Examples of lesbianism or female homosexuality and mutual adult-adult homosexuality occur.
Plato differentiated between the “natural” and the “unnatural” (esp. Laws 636a–c, 836a–c; 838; 841de).60 In addition, it is significant to discover that Greek religion supported homosexual expression.
What was the situation in Rome and elsewhere at the time of Paul? As in Greece, homosexual pederasty and prostitution were widespread. We have seen that Philo and Josephus condemned homosexuality in general, in the Roman context, in the strongest of terms. Their comments cannot be restricted to pederasty.
Moral philosophers in Paul’s day questioned the merits of homosexuality. Seneca (c. 4 B.C.–A.D), the statesman and tutor to Nero, condemns homosexual exploitation (Moral Epistles 47.7–8) that forces an adult slave to dress, shave his beard, and behave as a woman.
Plutarch, the Greek biographer and priest, born A.D. 46, speaks of homosexuality as “contrary to nature” (Dialogue on Love 751c, d, e; 752b, c). Dio Chrysostom (A.D. 40) exposes the exploitative and lustful nature of homosexuality and commends “natural intercourse” and “union of the male and female” (Discourse 7.133, 135; 151–152; 21.6–10; 77/78.36).
Bailey also gives evidence fromthe Roman legislation of the prevalence and form of homosexuality during Paul’s day. As early as 226 B.C. the Lex Scantinia penalized homosexual practices. Cicero refers tothe subsequent application of it in 50 B.C., and other references are made to it by Suetonius (applied under Domitian), Juvenal, and others, including Tertullian. Lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis (about 17 B.C.), initially concerned with sexualoffencess against a virgin or widow (stuprum), came to be applied to sexual acts committed with boys (A.D. 3d century) then to homosexual acts between adults (4th century). Justinian’s Codex (6th century) applied Lex Julia to homosexuality with specificity, setting the legal tradition in Western civilization.
Further evidence of homosexuality comes from the poets, satirists, and historians of the day. Juvenal (c. 60–140) and Martial (c. 40–102) wrote of formal marriage unions of homosexuals. Historians and others viewed the second century B.C. as the turning point in Roman social morality. With military conquests achieved, Rome underwent, in the words of historian D. Earl, “a moral crisis from which she never recovered.” It came about from the direct influx into Rome of “Asiatic luxury and Greek manners,” including homosexuality and other sorts of debauchery.
De Young, J. B. (2000). Homosexuality: Contemporary Claims Examined in Light of the Bible and Other Ancient Literature and Law (p. 293). Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications.
