Gay Priest: What The Bible Teaches On The Subject

Homosexuality is a hot button topic. It isn’t PC to say anything critical related to it.

With a religious denomination recently appointing a homosexual priest as Bishop persons are asking what does the Bible teach on this subject. A different newspaper in the area recently ran parallel columns by two priests stating contrary views on the subject.

One priest defended the ordination by saying the sin of Sodom and Gomorra was not homosexuality but inhospitality. For those not familiar with the story Lot, who lived in Sodom, was visited by two angels in human male form (Genesis 19). The men of Sodom demanded that Lot bring the men out to them. Why?

The same thing can be said using different expressions to communicate it. Various translations of the Hebrew text interpret it using different words to express the same thing: “that we may be intimate with them,” “rape them,” “abuse them,” “know them carnally,” “have intercourse with them.”

Other Bible passages related to the same incident give further insight. The Book of Jude refers to the men of Sodom and Gomorra as “having given themselves over to sexual immorality, and gone after strange flesh” (Jude 7).

What happened in the two cities was disciplined by God “…turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorra into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly” (II Peter 2:6).

Neither of these passages sounds like they are related to inhospitality, but rather immorality.

That period had a different code of law. It was for that period not this and for those people not people today. Some persons say there are people today who want to return to that form of civil law. I’m not one. Theirs was for that era not ours. Their law stated, “If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them” (Leviticus 20:13).

For today that is a pendulum swing too far in one direction. However, our nation seems to be poised to let the swing be too far in the opposite direction. Though the civil law response to the act has changed the moral law abides. Jude referred to it as “sexual immorality” and Peter as “ungodly.”

I have friends who are homosexual who contribute vitally to the community and live discretely without flaunting their sexuality. They accept me and I them. We know we differ greatly in our opinions but we also know we have to live together accepting of each other while espousing diverse moral standards.