Anti-gay Evangelicals admit the Sodom story is NOT about homosexuality.

[Calllaris]

The Genesis 19 story has been used to attack gays and lesbians for hundreds of years but it is time for all Christians to admit the truth. After centuries of false teaching about what happened in Sodom 3800 years ago, anti-gay evangelical scholars admit the truth in writing judgment on biblical Sodom had nothing to do with gays and lesbians.

Despite the facts, some Christians still teach that the Sodom story is about homosexuality. Isn't it time for everyone to admit that Genesis 19 is not about consensual gay relationships? Secular history and many statements in the Bible provide us with facts which flatly contradict the anti-gay view.

For 1800 years after the events in S@dom, Jewish prophets in the Bible and Jewish authors outside the Bible, understood that the issue was Inhospitality, not homosexuality.

Sodom is mentioned 48 times in the Bible and never in those 48 passages is homosexuality given as the cause of God's judgment. Isn't that interesting? Have you given that astonishing fact the weight it deserves in your thinking about this Bible story?

(1) Dr. Richard Hayes,of Duke Divinity School,

A well-known evangelical author. He wrote The Moral Vision Of The New Testament, in which he defends the anti-gay viewpoint. Yet in spite of the fact that he regards all gay relationships as sinful, Dr. Hayes admits that:the Sodom story “is actually irrelevant to the topic." [of homosexuality].

According to Dr. Hayes, the attempted gang rape in Genesis 19 shows the depravity of the Canaanite people who lived in the cities of the plain but:

"there is nothing in the passage pertinent to a judgment about the morality of consensual homosexual intercourse."-- From Dr. Richard Hayes, in an article entitled, “Awaiting the Redemption of Our Bodies”.

(2) Dr. Robert Gagnon, of Pittsburg Theological Seminary

A prominent anti-gay author, admits the same thing in, 'The Bible And Homosexual Practice'.Although he too believes all gay relationships are sinful, on page 71 of his book, Dr. Gagnon tells us, The Sodom story in Genesis 19 is usually viewed by modern Christians as the classic Bible story about homosexuality.

"However, to the extent that the story does not deal directly with consensual homosexual relationships, it is not an “ideal” text to guide contemporary Christian sexual ethics.”

(***) Dr. Mark Allan Powell, of Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, OH.

He expresses a similar view. Writing on page 23 of the book, 'Faithful Conversation - Christian Perspectives On Homosexuality', Dr. Powell says concerning the rape stories in Genesis 19 and Judges 19:"Such stories reflect a mindset that regards the rape of men by other men as abhorrent, but with regard to current questions concerning homosexuality, these texts have little to offer.

The stories speak only of the sin of homosexual rape and say nothing at all about consensual relations between persons of the same sex."

(4) Dr. William Brownlee, of Claremont Graduate University, Claremont CA

Dr. Brownlee, 1917-1983, an internationally renowned expert on the Hebrew language and the Dead Sea Scrolls said about the Sodom story:

"The oppression of the stranger is the basic element of Genesis 19:1-9 [and] ‘sodomy’ in Genesis is basically oppression of the weak and helpless." -- Dr. William Brownlee, Professor of Religion at the Claremont Graduate School and Professor of Old Testament at the School of Theology, Claremont, California.

(5) Dr. Guenther (Gene) Haas, Professor of Religion and Theology, Redeemer University College

"The context demonstrates that the demand of the men of Sodom was to have intercourse with the angels. This is evident in Lot's attempt to appease their desire to "know" the angels by offering them his two daughters who have never "known" (yada') a man (Gen. 19:8)...Similarly, in Judges 19:23, when the men of Gibeah demand to "know" (yada') the stranger, his host offers them his own virgin daughter and the visitor's concubine. The concubine is given over to the men who "know" (yada') her all night. The clear meaning here is rape. Thus, the obvious conclusion is that yada' is used consistently in both instances to refer to sexual intercourse...

Thus, the sin of the two groups of men in Sodom and Gibeah is, in both instances, the desire to engage in homosexual rape. But there is validity in connecting this sin to the violation of the norm of hospitality. There is weight to the suggestion that the desire to rape the visitors is less the expression of homosexual desire and activity per se, and more the use of forcible homosexual rape to express dominance over the strangers. This practice occurred in the Ancient Middle East when armies were defeated, and it occurs today in certain all-male settings, such as prisons.

This is supported by the fact that in both instances, when women were offered to the men, both groups of men initially rejected the offer. The conclusion, more clearly for Sodom than for Gibeah, is that the goal of homosexual rape is the male inhabitants' desire to express their dominance over the strangers."

-- Dr. Gene Haas, D. Th., Professor of Religion and Theology, Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, in a Global Journal article: Hermeneutical Issues in the use of the Bible to justify the acceptance of homosexual practice.

(6) Bob Davies, Former Executive Director of Exodus International

"Pro-gay theologians are correct in saying that this passage [Genesis 19] does not provide a strong argument [for] prohibiting all homosexual acts."

Ps;

Thank you Drs. Hayes, Gagnon, Powell, Brownlee and Haas and thank you Bob Davies of Exodus International. This testimony from respected, theologically conservative, anti-gay evangelical scholars is astonishing and quite welcome.

-- When leading, conservative evangelicals admit in writing, that the Genesis 19 story is not about homosexuality, that is a huge step forward.

[Hawken]

This is informative to say the least... But how do you explain this to the average man?

 

I know the Bible is confusing sometimes but in both Genesis and Judges 19, it looks like it was okay to rape a woman but not a man. So one would wonder if it is the act of rape that was wrong or is wrong OR just the gender that would have been involved.

[dequeen]

Yea, the Bible gets pretty confusing a times like @PauloCoelho raised a question concerning the garden of eden, was the first sin disobedience or shame? They looked at their body, what God had created and they hated it, they found it hideous, they were embarrassed by it, they were ashamed of it. No artist wants to see or hear his work receive negative criticism.

[Hawken]

But shame isnt a sin...

[dequeen]

But shame isnt a sin...

What's sin?

[Calllaris]

This is informative to say the least... But how do you explain this to the average man?

 

I know the Bible is confusing sometimes but in both Genesis and Judges 19, it looks like it was okay to rape a woman but not a man. So one would wonder if it is the act of rape that was wrong or is wrong OR just the gender that would have been involved.

 

Very constructive and interesting question

[Calllaris]

This is informative to say the least... But how do you explain this to the average man?

 

I know the Bible is confusing sometimes but in both Genesis and Judges 19, it looks like it was okay to rape a woman but not a man. So one would wonder if it is the act of rape that was wrong or is wrong OR just the gender that would have been involved.

-- Just the way you preach to perhaps, an un believer, show them from the bible how Christ died for us and how it is important that they should be saved by accepting and confessing. And when they do this, they become saved and begin to work out their salvation, gradually. This is the same way you show them from the bible what the word says about our faith, relating to our sexuality. As christians, we accept the bible as a final authority. Facts are facts

 

-- Rape is always wrong, whether it is a woman being raped or a man being raped. In Genesis 19 and Judges 19, remember that we are not dealing with modern culture. The destruction of Sodom happened 4000 years ago, around 2067 BC. The awful story in Judges 19 takes place more than 3000 years ago, around 1100 BC.

 

In both stories, rape or gang rape is an awful and wicked sin. Rape is never right. The attempted gang rape of the angel visitors in Sodom was not allowed by God to go unpunished, because of the wickedness of the men of Sodom and because of their lack of hospitality and at least six other sins, (Ezekiel 16:48-50), God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and two other cities of the plains.

 

In the Judges 19 story, an awful judgment came upon the Benjamites as a tribe, since the men who raped the woman in Judges 19 were from the Benjamite city of Gibeah, (Judges 20:4). The other tribes of Israel gathered together and fought against the tribe of Benjamin, killing thousands of them. The rest of the story is found in Judges 20 and 21.

[Calllaris]

Yea, the Bible gets pretty confusing a times like @PauloCoelho raised a question concerning the garden of eden, was the first sin disobedience or shame? They looked at their body, what God had created and they hated it, they found it hideous, they were embarrassed by it, they were ashamed of it. No artist wants to see or hear his work receive negative criticism.

One radical gay guy said the original sin in the garden was heterosexual sex?

Hilarious, and not true

 

I'll prefer to focus on the book of Genesis; story of Adam and Eve as an explanation of origins, not a dissertation on marriage relationships.