Where in the bible does jesus talk about homosexuality
This article is part of the What Did Jesus Teach? series.
Silence Equals Support?
In a article for Slate online, Will Oremus asked a provocative question: Was Jesus a homophobe?1
The article was occasioned by a story about a gay teenager in Ohio who was suing his high educational facility after school officials prohibited him from wearing a T-shirt that said, “Jesus Is Not a Homophobe.”
Oremus was less concerned about the legal issues of the story than he was about the accuracy of the expression on the shirt. Oremus suggests that Jesus’s views on homosexuality were more inclusive than Paul’s. He writes,
While it’s reasonable to assume that Jesus and his fellow Jews in first-century Palestine would have disapproved of queer sex, there is no document of his ever having mentioned homosexuality, let alone expressed particular revulsion about it. . . . Never in the Bible does Jesus himself offer an explicit prohibition of homosexuality.
Oremus seems to suggest that since Jesus never explicitly mentioned homosexuality, he must not have been very concerned about it.
There are at least two reas
The Bible on Gay Behavior
One way to argue against these passages is to make what I call the “shellfish objection.” Keith Sharpe puts it this way: “Until Christian fundamentalists boycott shellfish restaurants, stop wearing poly-cotton T-shirts, and stone to death their wayward offspring, there is no obligation to pay attention to their diatribes about homosexuality entity a sin” (The Gay Gospels, 21).
In other words, if we can disregard rules like the ban on eating shellfish in Leviticus , then we should be allowed to disobey other prohibitions from the Old Testament. But this argument confuses the Old Testament’s temporary ceremonial laws with its everlasting moral laws.
Here’s an analogy to aid understand this distinction.
I remember two rules my mom gave me when I was young: grip her hand when I cross the street and don’t drink what’s under the sink. Today, I have to follow only the latter rule, since the former is no longer needed to protect me. In fact, it would now perform me more hurt than good.
Old Testament ritual/ceremonial laws were like mom’s handholding rule. The rea
If homosexuality is a sin, why didn’t Jesus ever mention it?
Answer
Many who endorse same-sex marriage and lgbtq+ rights argue that, since Jesus never mentioned homosexuality, He did not reflect on it to be sinful. After all, the argument goes, if homosexuality is bad, why did Jesus treat it as a non-issue?
It is technically accurate that Jesus did not specifically address homosexuality in the Gospel accounts; however, He did speak clearly about sexuality in general. Concerning marriage, Jesus stated, “At the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh[.]’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, enable no one separate” (Matthew –6). Here Jesus clearly referred to Adam and Eve and affirmed God’s intended design for marriage and sexuality.
For those who follow Jesus, sexual practices are limited. Rather than take a permissive view of sexual immorality and divorce, Jesus affirmed that people are either to be s
What the New Testament Says about Homosexuality
The Fourth R Volume May-June
Mainline Christian denominations in this state are bitterly divided over the question of homosexuality. For this reason it is important to demand what light, if any, the New Testament sheds on this controversial issue. Most people apparently consider that the New Testament expresses strong opposition to homosexuality, but this simply is not the case. The six propositions that follow, considered cumulatively, command to the conclusion that the New Testament does not provide any control guidance for understanding and making judgments about homosexuality in the modern earth.
Proposition 1: Strictly speaking, the New Testament says nothing at all about homosexuality.
There is not a single Greek word or phrase in the entire New Testament that should be translated into English as “homosexual” or “homosexuality.” In fact, the very notion of “homosexuality”—like that of “heterosexuality,” “bisexuality,” and even “sexual orientation”—is essentially a modern concept that would simply have been unintelligible to