The same sex controversy is over the authority and interpretation of the Bible

The clamor for the acceptability of homosexuality, which is heard even in the church, is not without a stated authoritative base. The people making this claim appeal to the Bible and assert that a homosexual lifestyle is perfectly compatible with its teaching.

The same-sex controversy is, at its core, a controversy over the authority and interpretation of the Bible. Throughout the history of the church, and revealed in the historical understanding of Scripture,5 homosexuality has been seen as contrary to the morality set forth in the pages of the Bible. Today, however, we are being told that the moral opposition to homosexuality, based in and upon Scripture, is actually a rather recent phenomenon. We are being “informed” that the Bible nowhere condemns homosexuality as it is predominantly known and practiced today and that, as a matter of fact, a lifestyle of committed homosexuality is consistent with biblical morality.

Ironically, this makes for a remarkable case of selectivity in submitting to biblical authority. What we are observing is, on one hand, a mocking rejection of much of the teaching of the Older Testament and, on the other hand, a claim that the Bible endorses homosexuality. It is not uncommon to hear ridiculing murmurs about many things in the Bible, including the authority and observance of the Sabbath, dietary and cleanliness (or purification) laws, legislation regarding slavery, the death penalty, the sacrificial system, and the priesthood, just to name a few. Yet these criticisms are uttered with the same breath that exclaims with incredulity, “Why do you quote the Bible regarding homosexuality but ignore these other matters?”

While suspicious of the Older Testament’s laws and practices, the proponents of the acceptability of homosexuality in the church will wax on with great deference and approval about the passages that speak of close personal relationships between members of the same sex (Jonathan and David or Ruth and Naomi, for example).6 They claim these as examples of beautiful homosexual relationships worthy of emulation. Supposedly, we are not to follow the Bible in some areas (deemed irrelevant or inconvenient), but we are to follow its lead in other places. Selectivity indeed.

This claim of biblical support for a homosexual lifestyle is surprising to many. After all, is not the Bible clear in its prohibition of homosexuality? Historically, has not the church consistently rejected homosexuality since it is out of accord with biblical morality? What about all of the passages that … well … so clearly condemn homosexuality? What about these? Have they been misunderstood and misinterpreted and misapplied for all these years? One thinks of God’s institution of marriage—it is to be between one man and one woman. How does the current agenda challenge this design? What of the account of the destruction of the city of Sodom or the clear prohibitions of homosexuality that one finds in the book of Leviticus? What of the apostle Paul’s writing on the subject in Romans, 1 Corinthians, and 1 Timothy? Has there been any question that Paul considered homosexual longing or behavior to be inconsistent with a God-pleasing life?

Those advocating the compatibility of homosexuality with the Bible appeal, of necessity, to these very passages, for they claim that the Bible does not condemn but does condone such a practice. More and more the Bible is seen to somehow fall in line with modern “science” and modern impulses. Wherever the Bible opposes homosexuality, these passages are reinterpreted and re-presented so that the modern reader can now “understand” the original context, which was apparently hidden, lost, or buried under a load of cultural bias. The net effect of this revisionist approach is a novel and destructive twisting of Scripture: each passage is considered and, lo and behold, we find that same-sex intimacy is not even being considered, or that the passage addresses an abuse of the supposedly proper place of same-sex intimacy.







White, J. R., & Niell, J. D. (2002). The Same Sex Controversy: Defending and Clarifying the Bible’s Message about Homosexuality (pp. 14–17). Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers.