The Old Testament "Clobber Texts"
This section is a bit longer than the previous one, but it’s not as long as you might think. The meatier scriptural teaching about sex and marriage is coming up in the section after, Bible Sex & Marriage. This section covers the main Old Testament “clobber” texts, and their scriptural commentaries, cited by traditionalists. They include texts I myself used to quote to support the traditionalist position. But they also include three other less obvious texts “discovered” by Professor Robert Gagnon, the leading traditionalist theologian. We’ll look at them in the following order:
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The story of Sodom & Gomorrah
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The Levitical “sexual immorality” laws
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The Council of Jerusalem’s application of those laws
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The “homosexual” Ham theory in Genesis 9
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Sodom’s “twin” story in Judges 19
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Jude’s interpretation of Sodom’s sin
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For those who want something snappier you can just head over to the summary version here.
However, for those who want to delve deeper into these key Old Testament “clobber” texts, please read my full essay which I will link here. This includes a more detailed look at the surrounding cultural context and the meaning of the key Hebrews words and what, I believe, they really teach us.
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​Please note - to examine this topic it was necessary to include occasional references to specific sexual activities
​"Surely the story of Sodom & Gomorrah show us exactly what God thinks about gay sex?"
What it said
The story of God’s judgment on Sodom & Gomorrah in Genesis 19:1-29 has become quite legendary as a vivid picture of God’s condemnation of “homosexual” acts. But, I believe, this narrative is not actually borne out by a careful analysis of Scripture. I set out below the summary of my reasons for my conclusions.​
For my full analysis of the passage, its context and more detailed reasons for my conclusions, please read my more essay I will link above.
In Genesis Chapter 18, Abraham, the father of God’s chosen people, the Hebrews, is visited by three men, two of whom turn out to be angels and one (it seems) God the Son, in a pre-Jesus human form.
As a righteous, caring man, Abraham honours the good hospitality practice of that ancient Eastern culture of taking great care of guests that come under your roof. Even before he knows the visitors are angels, he offers to wash their feet, and has Sarah rushing about to bake bread for them and his servant killing the choicest calf. During the meal, the Lord tells Abraham that he and Sarah will have a son next year despite their advanced years (much to their amusement - their laughter prompting the Lord to name their future son, "he laughs" - Isaac!) The Lord also reveals to Abraham that he has in mind to mind destroy the nearby cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, because “The outcry against [them] is so great and their sin so grievous, that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me…” Abraham then persuades the Lord not to destroy the cities if there are at least 10 righteous people living there.
​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​In chapter 19, the two angels go off to investigate Sodom & Gomorrah. They are met by Abraham’s nephew, Lot. Being a caring, righteous person like his uncle, Lot also follows the best practices of Eastern hospitality by inviting these “men” into his home, offering to wash their feet, baking bread for them and insisting they take shelter for the night in his home.
The chapter continues:
“Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.” 6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.” 9 “Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.10 But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. 11 Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.12 The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, 13 because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the LORD against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.”
What it meant
The immediate text and context of Genesis 19 indicates that, in righteous Lot's eyes, what made the mob's attempted rape particularly egregious was not that it was (apparently) against other men, but that it was against (apparently) male guests who had come under the protection of the host’s roof. We see just the same focus in a remarkably similar story in Judges 19.
The Old Testament itself gives the clearest explanation of what were the sins that led to Sodom & Gomorrah’s destruction in Ezekiel 16:49/59, and the answer is not what many assume: “Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. They were haughty and committed abomination before me; Therefore I took them away as I saw fit.” (NKJV).
So, the wickedness that led to Sodom’s judgement were sins of arrogant pride, greed and neglect and abuse of the poor.
​The culminating reference to an abomination may just refer to a sum of her sins against God, which likely had idolatry at its heart. However, it leaves open the possibility that the abomination was the attempted abuse of angels.
The New Testament’s letter of Jude (discussed later) seems to fill in the blank here by highlighting Sodom’s ultimate sin as the attempted rape of angels - not as a “homosexual” sexual offence, but a “heterosexual” one; sex with beings of a different, higher kind and order, which has always been particularly egregious in God’s sight.
Peter’s reference to Sodom lends some support to this (2 Peter 2:4).
Both these New Testament references appear to focus on a sense of arrogant disrespect of the divine order – apostacy against the living God highlighted by their attempted sexual abuse of higher angelic beings. This in turn links with their sin of arrogant pride highlighted by Ezekiel. This seems to reflect an attitude of “I can do whatever I want to whomever I want and even God and his angels can’t stop me.”
​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​So, in Sodom and Gomorrah it seems we see a combination of sins of greed and sex, probably best explained by the chain of sinful lifestyle described by Paul in Romans 1: they start with rejecting God and worshipping idols, then lose their moral compass, driven by lusts of the flesh overriding any interests of others - to pursue worldly desires for money, power, sex, drink, food, etc. without moral boundaries. Of necessity this involved riding roughshod over the poor, so that they exploited them both sexually and economically. The sins of economic exploitation and sexual immorality were ultimately part of the same depraved lifestyle that had totally turned against God and therefore against their fellow humans.
One thing seems very clear to me - contrary to popular myth, the stand out sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was not “homosexual intercourse”.
What the Story of Sodom & Gomorrah really teaches us
​​This perhaps offers an important lesson for the church today about where God’s priorities are. Whether we take a traditionalist or revisionist view of same-sex relationships, the stand out social message in both Old and New Testament is not God’s condemnation of any same-sex sexual practices (which the Bible mentions in only a small handful of verses), but his concern for the poor and against those who exploit or ignore their plight. In stark contrast to the minimal reference to same-sex sexual acts, his concern for the poor is highlighted 100s of times throughout Scripture. If we wish to avoid God’s judgment I believe it’s a lesson we especially need to heed in the West. I include myself in that warning. This should affect how we use our time and money and also who we vote for.
"Don’t Leviticus 18 and 20 set sexual conduct standards that still apply today, which strictly bans all homosexual sex acts?"
No, not entirely and not necessarily in the case of homoerotic sex. I set out below a summary of my findings and the main reasons for them. For a more detailed account, please read my lengthy essay which I will link again here. This includes a full exploration of the meaning of key Hebrew words and concepts like “toveah” and other “abominations”, the surrounding historical context, and how and why I concluded the Leviticus-based traditionalist arguments I’d previously embraced are deeply flawed and wrong.
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What it said
Leviticus 18:22 states: “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable (toevah)".
Leviticus 20:13 states: “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable (toevah). They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”
These passages banned only one very particular same-sex sexual activity - male-only anal intercourse, albeit it imposed the severest of punishment for that offence – death.
Yet neither Leviticus nor the additional Hebrew regulations in the Talmud made any other same-sex erotic acts an offence at all – not even a minor one carrying a lesser punishment like temporary isolation. So, there was no ban of all-male oral or manual sex, even though logic and ​​​​​​​​​​​historical context strongly suggests this must have happened.
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Likewise, neither Scripture nor the Talmud ban any all-female sexual acts. Yet the historical evidence shows (as you’d expect) such acts did happen in the country they’d just come from, Egypt. See below a statue around the time of Moses, which almost certainly commemorates an Egyptian lesbian marriage. Although there is certainly no evidence of lesbian marriages happening amongst the ancient Hebrews, there is certainly evidence of all-female sexual activities taking place. The Talmud acknowledges that some women engaged in mesolelet – two women rubbing their genitals together. Yet it noted that most rabbis accepted such acts did not harm a woman’s purity so as to prevent her marrying a priest. (See e.g. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/history-of-jewish-lesbianism)
What it Meant - Why was Male-Only Anal Intercourse the Only Homoerotic Act Banned by Leviticus?
So, what was the reason for the Lord’s very heavy-handed approach to male-only anal intercourse when all other homoerotic acts escaped any censure?
My deep dive into the Hebrew Scripture and surrounding historical evidence found the following six reasons why, I believe, the Lord had to make male-only intercourse a stand-out capital offence for his new people as they entered the promised land. ​​​
1. It violated boundaries separating Israel from the surrounding nations’ idolatrous religious practices.
Promiscuous, ritual male-only intercourse was a central feature of the dangerous competing Canaanite idolatrous religion. This threatened to draw Israel away from God and into all sorts of wickedness, including sacrificing their own children. This also explains why child sacrifice to Molech is included as an offence in the same Levitical passages as the sexual ones.
2. In that patriarchal society there was a need to separate the roles of men and women, so that men sexually ruled over their wives.
Part of Eve’s punishment for disobeying God and leading her husband Adam to do the same was that her husband would now “rule over” her (Genesis 3:16). This included the man sexually ruling over the woman’s body in the act of intercourse by penetrating his wife. It was therefore seen as a violation of the man’s role for a man to sexually submit to another man or for a man to make another man do so.
3. Male-only intercourse was a clear breach of the Mosaic ritual purity codes against mixing kinds in a way other homoerotic acts wouldn’t be.
Part of Mosaic purity codes was separating things into “kinds” which should not be mixed, e.g. don’t sow different types of seeds together or mix different types of cloths, don’t interbreed different kinds of animals, don’t intermarry with other nations, men don’t dress like women. This division into kinds was part of the intended markers to show surrounding nations and God’s people they were like their God in trying to keep “perfect” and were different to the other nations. A man “lying with a man as with a woman” involved one man acting sexually as if he were a woman and therefore outside his kind/category. There was a similar objection to the mixing of kinds in most of other sexual offences banned in Leviticus, which mostly involved incest: someone shouldn’t be both your father, mother or sister and your lover.
It's the context of the Mosaic purity codes which sheds some light on the significance (or not) of describing male-only intercourse as an “abomination”. The Hebrew word used here was toveah. This was one of the three words used in the Hebrew Scriptures which are generally translated as “abomination” or “detestable”. The other two are tevel and zimmah. Those last two words are only ever used in Scripture to refer to acts that we would find morally reprehensible today and not acts that merely offended ritual purity laws. By contrast, toevah is the only one of the three “labels” used in Scripture to describe both offences we would find immoral today and things we would no longer object to but were considered ritually unclean at the time. For example, Deuteronomy 14:3 uses toveah to describe eating “detestable” foods on the banned list like rabbit or pig or shellfish. (This may help explain Peter’s horror when God invites him to eat these abominable banned foods in Acts 10!) It’s this morally ambiguous abomination label which is attached to male-only intercourse. So, to describe male-only intercourse as toveah no more marks this out as some all-time wicked offence than eating a pork chop or prawn cocktail!
4. Keeping clean - safeguarding sacred life-fluids
Again, this was about the Mosaic purity codes. These required special care be taken over life-fluids – an animal’s blood, a woman’s menstrual flow and a man’s semen, which should be contained within their proper vessels. Life-fluids should not be touched if they spilled out of their vessels. So, eating bloody meat, contact with a woman’s menstrual flow or even spilling semen in marital sex made you unclean. In male-female sexual intercourse the woman’s body was seen as providing the proper incubator space for a man’s seed, potentially leading to new life. Male-only sexual intercourse would make both participants ritually unclean, because a discharge of man’s seed went into another man’s body rather than proper place of a woman’s body. Other sexual acts involving male ejaculation, masturbation or oral sex made a man ritually unclean until evening (Leviticus 15: 16-18), but no punishment as such was prescribed. All-female sexual acts would not make the participants ritually unclean as this would not involve the loss of a life-fluid.
5. Compromising production of male heirs to fulfil Abraham’s promise and to hold the land
A man’s semen was seen as a precious life-fluid, but what made it especially precious to the Hebrews was that it was God’s means of fulfilling his promise to Abraham to “multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven” and “in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed …” (Genesis 22: 17-18 KJV). In passing their seed onto their women, Hebrew men fulfilled their religious and patriotic duty to expand God’s people. So it was important to ancient Hebrews that their men’s seed, ultimately Abraham’s seed, was not wasted in sexual acts with no hope of procreation.
Three other factors would have heightened the importance of this “issue” issue. First, until Jesus Hebrews mostly only saw an afterlife in the general sense of living on through your children and grandchildren. Second, in their patriarchal society it was important for a man to produce a male heir to whom he could pass on his property, his stake in the future enjoyed through his seed. (This explains why the sin of Onan was seen as so serious - Genesis 38:9 ) Third, in a time of greater infant mortality one son may not have been enough to provide a male heir.
This procreative priority is another reason why all-male intercourse would have been so strictly banned. It potentially involved two men wasting their seed, and if such a sexual act became a habit the waste (rather than new life) would be multiplied. Again, the procreative priority had no implications for all-female sexual acts.
6. Health and Safety
The health and safety risks of anal intercourse is not an issue arising from the text or context of scripture. However, I would suggest, an all-knowing, loving God could still have had this in contemplation to protect his people. At this time anal intercourse between two men (by definition outside of marriage) would have been a more risky form of sex than other regular forms of human sex, mainly due to thin the lining of the rectum. In particular, this heightens the risk of sexually transmitted disease. The risks are much reduced by use of condoms but that mitigation was not available to ancient Hebrews. ​​
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Do any of these reasons for the Levitical ban on male-only intercourse apply today?
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1. Violating boundaries separating Israel from surrounding nations’ idolatrous religious practices
All-male anal intercourse is not a central feature of any religion or philosophy today that threatens to draw God’s people away from him. There are plenty of “mind-temples” the devil uses today to try to draw God’s people from him, including idols of money, power, success, recreational drugs and alcohol, gambling, popularity, beauty, and yes sex. In a very broad sense promiscuous male-only intercourse could be part of an idol of promiscuous sex but no more so than any other form of sex.
2. Separating the roles of men and women - men should sexually rule over women’s bodies
Jesus’s death has lifted Eve’s curse so that in him there is now “neither male nor female.” (Galatians 3:28-29). Therefore, like many other evangelical Christians, I believe that n Christ we can all be fully equal again, including within marriage, just as we were in the beginning. (This is explored more fully in my section, Bible Sex & Marriage) This has taken time to fully realise but Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians already radically declared an equality of roles for men and women in the bedroom: “…the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.” (1 Corinthians 7: 4) Therefore, I believe, there should be no more sexual or other ruling of a man over a woman and both have equal status in Christ and indeed by our own laws today. If that's right then you can no longer devalue a man by treating him sexually as if he had the role and status of a woman because they are now equal with a man’s.
3. Keeping clean - don’t mix the types
This was simply part of the Mosaic ritual purity codes we are no longer required to follow after Christ (Colossians 2: 16-17). Otherwise, to be consistent we must also stop wearing mixed fibre clothes or eating hybrid foods like sweetcorn or strawberries!
The laws against incest did also partly stem from the separation into kinds. However, the reason why we still object to incest is not because of any ritual purity code but because we recognize such relationships are harmful, biologically and relationally, in a way that monogamous same-sex relationships today are not.
4. Keeping clean - safeguarding sacred life-fluids
Again, this was simply about the Hebrew purity codes that no longer apply after Christ.
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5. Compromising production of male heirs to the land
This only applied to the Jews before Christ to multiply Abraham’s seed. Jesus is the ultimate fruit of Abraham’s seed and his growing family are not those biologically related to him but those who follow and obey him (Matthew 12:48-50).The New Testament encourages marriage and sex within marriage (see e.g. 1 Cor 7 above), but nowhere encourages, let alone requires, procreation.
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6. Preventing harm
Male-only intercourse as an average carries certain greater risks than male-female vaginal intercourse. However, where this happens within a faithful, monogamous relationship, and any appropriate protections are taken, potential harms are limited and no greater than with more prevalent heterosexual anal intercourse. But all sexual activity carries its own risks against which we should all take care. This includes the risk of unwanted pregnancy from coital intercourse – something not greatly troubling gay men!
4. Keeping clean - safeguarding sacred life-fluids
Again, this was about the Mosaic purity codes which required special care be taken over life-fluids – an animal’s blood, a woman’s menstrual flow and a man’s semen, which should be contained within their proper vessels. Life-fluids should not be touched if they spilled out of their vessels. So, eating bloody meat, contact with a woman’s menstrual flow or even spilling semen in marital sex made you unclean. In male-female sexual intercourse the woman’s body was seen as providing the proper incubator space for a man’s seed, potentially leading to new life. Male-only sexual intercourse would make both participants ritually unclean, because a discharge of man’s seed went into another man’s body rather than proper place of a woman’s body. Other sexual acts involving male ejaculation other than heterosexual intercourse, i.e. masturbation, oral or anal sex made a man ritually unclean until evening (Leviticus 15: 16-18), but no punishment as such was proscribed. All-female sexual acts would not make the participants ritually unclean as this would not involve the loss of a life-fluid.
5. Compromising production of male heirs to fulfil Abraham’s promise and to hold the land
A man’s semen was seen as a precious life-fluid but what made it especially precious to the Hebrews was that it was God’s means of fulfilling His promise to Abraham to “multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven” and “in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed …” (Genesis 22: 17-18 KJV). In passing their seed onto their women Hebrew men fulfilled their religious and patriotic duty to expand God’s people. So it was important to ancient Hebrews that their men’s seed, ultimately Abraham’s seed, was not wasted in sexual acts with no hope of procreation.
Three other factors would have heightened the importance of this issue issue. First, until Jesus Hebrews mostly only saw an afterlife in the general sense of living on through your children and grandchildren. Second, in their patriarchal society it was important for a man to produce a male heir to whom he could pass on his property, his stake in the future enjoyed through his seed. (This explains why the sin of Onan was seen as so serious - Genesis 38:9 ) Third, in a time of greater infant mortality one son may not have been enough to provide a male heir.
This procreative priority is another reason why all-male intercourse would have been so strictly banned as it potentially involving two men wasting their seed, and if such a sexual act became a habit the waste (rather than new life) would be multiplied. Again, the procreative priority had no implications for all-female sexual acts.
6. Preventing harm
The health and safety risks of anal intercourse is not an issue arising from the text or context of scripture. However, an all-knowing loving God could still have had this in contemplation to protect His people. At this time anal intercourse between two men (by definition outside of marriage) would have been a more risky form of sex than other regular forms of human sex, mainly due to thin lining of the rectum. In particular this heightens the risk of sexually transmitted disease. The risks are much reduced by use of condoms but that mitigation was not available to ancient Hebrews.
Do any of these reasons for the Levitical ban on male-only intercourse apply today?
No!
1. Violating boundaries separating Israel from surrounding nations’ idolatrous religious practices
That form of sex is not a central feature of any religion or philosophy today that threatens to draw God’s people away from Him. There are plenty of “mind-temples” the devil uses today to try to draw God’s people from Him, including idols of money, power, success, recreational drugs and alcohol, gambling, popularity, beauty, and yes sex. In a very broad sense promiscuous male-only intercourse could be part of an idol of promiscuous sex but no more so than any other form of sex.
2. Separating the roles of men and women - men should sexually rule over women’s bodies
Jesus’s death has lifted Eve’s curse so that in Him there is now “neither male nor female.” (Galatians 3:28-29). In Christ we can all be fully equal again, including within marriage, just as we were in the beginning. This has taken time to fully realise but Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians already radically declared an equality of roles for men and women in the bedroom: “…the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.” (1 Corinthians 7: 4) There should be no more sexual or other ruling of a man over a woman and both have equal status in Christ and indeed by our own laws today. You can no longer devalue a man by treating him as if he had the role and status of a woman in sex because they are now equal with a man’s.
3. Keeping clean - don’t mix the types
This was simply part of the Mosaic ritual purity codes we are no longer required to follow after Christ (Colossians 2: 16-17). Otherwise, to be consistent we must also stop wearing mixed fibre clothes or eating hybrid foods like sweetcorn or strawberries! The laws against incest did also partly stem from the separation into kinds. However, the reason why we still object to this is not because of any ritual purity code but because we recognize such relationships are harmful, biologically and relationally, in a way that monogamous same-sex relationships today are not.
4. Keeping clean - safeguarding sacred life-fluids
Again, this was simply about the Hebrew purity codes that no longer apply after Christ.
5. Compromising production of male heirs to the land
This only applied to the Jews before Christ to multiply Abrham’s seed. Jesus is the ultimate fruit of Abraham’s seed and his growing family are not those biologically related to Him but those who follow and obey Him (Matthew 12:48-50).The New Testament encourages marriage and sex within marriage (see e.g. 1 Cor 7 above), but nowhere encourages, let alone requires, procreation.
6. Preventing harm
Male-only intercourse as an average carries certain greater risks than male-female coital intercourse. However, where this happens within a faithful, monogamous relationship, and any appropriate protections taken, potential harms are limited and no greater than with more prevalent heterosexual anal intercourse. But all sexual activity carries its own risks against which we should all take care. This includes the risk of unwanted pregnancy from coital intercourse – something not greatly troubling gay men!
"The Council of Jerusalem still required Christians to follow all the Levitical 'sexual immorality' laws, so doesn’t the ban on all-male intercourse still apply today?"
This is an important question. My answer is yes and no. For the reasons summarised below I believe the application of the full Leviticus sex laws was a temporary pragmatic compromise to keep church unity; not something intended for all time.
It’s quite true that the Council of Jerusalem and subsequent New Testament teaching did require Christians to avoid “sexual immorality”. Those hearing the Council’s decision at the time would almost certainly have understood the Council meant avoiding the sexual offences listed in Leviticus. That's because this was how it would have been understood by the Jewish Christians the Council was trying to appease.
But, like many other evangelicals, I believe the Council was not intending to set a standard for all time about what parts of the law Christians must follow. In part, their ruling seems to have been a pragmatic compromise. It relieved Gentiles from the need to be circumcised or follow most Old Testament detailed rules. But it also appeased some Jewish Christians by still requiring the church to follow certain rules they felt very strongly about. This included continuing bans on eating the meat of strangled animals or with blood in it or food sacrificed to idols. Later, the application of that ruling was watered down, e.g. in Colossians 2 Paul expressly says “do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink”, i.e. in principle you may now eat bloody meat, etc.
If we’re no longer required to follow the Council’s ruling when it comes to what we eat or drink, equally we may no longer be expected to follow to the letter the sexual immorality rules of Leviticus. For sure, Paul makes very clear Christians must flee “sexual immorality” (1 Cor. 6:18), but he does not suggest this meant simply “sexual immorality” as defined by the Leviticus list. Jesus requires us to go to the heart of what was behind the law, which means in some respects a much tougher standard, e.g. not just don’t commit adultery but don’t look at another man's woman lustfully. But in other respects it was a more liberal standard, e.g. in relation to the Sabbath.
So, as the Council ruling was originally understood, both bloody meat and “bloody sex” (period sex) would have both been off the menu for Christians. However, most Christians have long since abandoned following that particular part of the Levitical sexual misconduct rules. ​
And there’s plenty of sexual misconduct not listed by Leviticus that Christians then and now would certainly see as sexually immoral and to be avoided, e.g. sex with children or with commercial female prostitutes (1 Cor 6:15).
Once again, we need to understand the spiritual and moral principles underlying the Old Testament laws to work out whether and in what ways they should apply to us. We cannot simply point to a list somewhere in the Old Testament and say the Bible said don’t do this and so we mustn’t do it today. This is especially so when we don’t apply that list consistently.
"Aren’t there Other Parts of the Bible that Teach against Gay Sex?"
The leading traditionalist theologian, Robert Gagnon, believes that Scripture reveals “a web of … interconnecting texts” which “strongly indicts all homosexual intercourse” . We will consider his views on early Genesis and his foundational “androgenous Adam theory” (his theory but my name for it!) in my Bible, Sex & Marriage section. However, Robert Gagnon would also cite the three following examples of Scripture’s condemnation of “homosexual intercourse” which he says other scholars "overlook". Having carefully considered his arguments I'm convinced his interpretation of each of these passages is fundamentally flawed and contrary to the text. In my lengthy essay about the Old Testament texts that I will link again here, I include a detailed analysis of how and why, I believe, Robert Gagnon got these these and other texts wrong. The following is just a brief summary concerning these three “overlooked” passages.
Genesis 9:20-27 - the “homosexual” Ham theory
This incident is almost universally understood as Noah’s son Ham “seeing Noah naked” when Noah uncovered himself whilst drunk. Showing yourself naked was considered to be a very shameful thing to the ancient Hebrew mind, especially a father to his children. Rather than covering him up, Ham makes a joke about it to his brothers. This leads to Noah’s curse of Ham’s son, Canaan.
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But Professor Gagnon claims the term “seeing naked” was actually a euphemism for having sexual intercourse. So, Ham’s offence was not merely seeing his father naked whilst he was sleeping drunk and drawing his brothers’ attention to it, but committing incestuous male-on-male anal rape on him whilst sleeping drunk. He claims this provides a clear link with the Canaanites’ sinful “homosexual” practices seen in Sodom & Gomorrah and later referred to in Leviticus, the clue being Ham’s offence led to Noah’s curse on Ham’s son, Cannan. And Prof. Gagnon argues that these offences of “homosexual intercourse” were the essential reasons why they fell under God’s judgment.
But, I believe, all regular English translations, including the usually most technically accurate, Young’s Literal 1898, very clearly describe the scene I summarized above. And, as I understand it, it was not merely “seeing” someone "naked" that could mean having sex with them, but actually “uncovering their nakedness". The passage is clear that Noah himself did the uncovering not Ham. The text is also very clear that immediately after Ham saw his father’s nakedness he proceeded to share the “joke” with his brothers: “Ham … seeth the nakedness of his father, and declareth to his two brethren without.” (v. 22, YLT, 1898) If he’d just raped his father, why on Earth would he then immediately tell his brothers about it?
Judges 19:16-30
This incident has some similarities to the Sodomites’ attempted gang-rape of angels. A Levite and his concubine are taken in as guests by an old man in Gibeah. We see another male mob banging on a door demanding to have sex with a male visitor. The outrage over the mob’s subsequent wicked actions was so strong it provoked a civil war between the tribe of Benjamin and the rest of Israel in which 10,000s died.
Robert Gagnon cites this incident as further evidence of the “web of … interconnecting texts” which “strongly indicts all homosexual intercourse.” But when you read the account of the incident and the reaction to it, it seems quite clear to me that the standout wickedness which prompted the civil war was not the threatened male-only intercourse, which never took place, but the actual male gang rape and consequent murder of a female concubine.
Jude
Jude 7 is of course in the New Testament, but it is commenting on the story of Sodom’s destruction recorded in Genesis 19. This verse describes Sodom’s ultimate sin as the attempted rape of angels in “going after strange flesh”. (KJV)
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The popular traditionalist evangelical speaker, Mike Winger makes, what seems to me, a rather farcical error here. He suggests that the mob going after “strange” flesh meant “strange” as in something that was not right or unnatural or improper. Therefore, he says, this must have referred to the mob’s attempted male-on-male rape of the angels come in the form of men.
But even Prof. Gagnon acknowledges “strange flesh” here could not itself refer to “homosexual intercourse” because the Greek word used is “hetero”, which means of a different kind. He therefore accepts this must refer to the attempted rape of angels as different flesh. But he then comes up with a rather convoluted way of linking this to “homosexual intercourse”: the mob "going after" angelic flesh was inadvertent as they couldn’t have known they were angels, but it was their deliberate pursuit of “homosexual” sex that led them to do this.
But I don’t think that can be correct. It seems Jude identifies the sin that led to their punishment as “going after strange flesh”, indicating their deliberate intention and motivation was to seek out “strange” (heteros) flesh and not same (homo) flesh. The mob presumably didn’t know these were angels, but the clear implication is they were aware there was something “heteros”, i.e. different, about them, which presumably made them more attractive sexual objects. If the mob's real sin were merely seeking “homosexual intercourse”, Jude would surely have said so. Instead, he identifies their sin as a hetero- rather than homo-sexual sin; sex with beings of a different, higher kind and order, which has always been particularly egregious in God’s sight. See e.g. Genesis 6:4 and the birth of the Nephilim giants from angels who slept with women (Plenty more about the Nephilim in my fantasy saga, Magi-Legends of the Space Ark!)
To sum up…
Traditionalists argue these “clobber texts” from both testaments show that God sees all same-sex sexual acts as serious sins for all time, regardless of the type of relationship in which they take place. However, having thoroughly examined all these texts, I believe it’s clear the only same-sex act Scripture condemns is all-male anal intercourse taking place within abusive, promiscuous, lustful relationships. In the Old Testament these were part of idolatrous Canaanite religious practices. In the New Testament these were part of exploitative relationships involving older/more powerful men preying upon younger/weaker men and boys. Homosexual sex within faithful, loving, relationships was then virtually never, if ever, heard of. It was therefore not the mischief that either Moses or Paul can have been addressing. Furthermore, the Bible says nothing at all about lesbian sex, even though it occasionally happened.
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However, I accept that this does not necessarily prove that it’s fine for Christians to engage in same-sex sexual activities as long as they happen within loving, faithful relationships. All this shows is that the Bible never directly addresses whether same-sex sexual activities within such relationships are acceptable to God. There are plenty of other modern day activities the Bible never directly addresses, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s fine for Christians to engage in them, e.g.: abortion, IVF treatment, using contraception, carrying a knife or a gun, driving a big SUV diesel car.
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On such issues most evangelical Christians will look for guidance from the general ethical and spiritual principles revealed in Scripture (and will often reach some quite different views!). Perhaps there are more general ethical and spiritual principles in Scripture - concerning sex and marriage – which either rule out or rule in same-sex sexual activities within faithful, loving relationships? That’s what we’ll look at in our next section, which focuses on the Bible’s teaching about sex and marriage.