Religious Beliefs Based only on the Christian Bible Must Condemn Homosexual Relationships

When determining which religious beliefs are specifically supported by the Christian Bible and which are not, it is paramount to review specific scriptures relating to the topic. The Christian Bible only mentions homosexual behavior 3 times in the New Testament, they are as follows: "In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error." -Romans 1:27 NASB "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God."- 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 NASB "realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching,"- 1 Timothy 1:9-10 NASB In addition, there is one scripture in the Old Testament that refers directly to homosexuality, the well known Leviticus 18:22. But, It should be noted though that the commandments given to the Israelites in the Old Testament do not apply to Christians, and therefore those scriptures have no bearing on religious beliefs based on the Christian Bible. This is illustrated in the following scriptures: "But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor." Galatians 3:23-25 "by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace"- Ephesians 2:15 As such, this debate should center around scriptures in the New Testament as it can been seen that the New Testament does not require the Old Testament Commandments to be upheld. Now to specifically analyze the New Testament scriptures that mention homosexuality. 1 Corinthians mentions a list of offenders that will not enter the kingdom of heaven and, in the NIV and NASB versions of the bible, homosexuals are mentioned among the other deviants that will not enter. In theses versions, the word in the original Greek text that gets translated to homosexuals is arsenokoitai. This is a compound word made up of the greek words "arsen" meaning man, and "koitai" which is a distinctly feminine verb meaning "to have sex with". The literal translation of arsenokoitai is "male-bedder". The word arsenokoitai is found only twice in all of the literature ever written in the history of the world, once in 1 Corinthians, and once in 1 Timothy. This word is only translated to mean homosexual in 2 out of the several hundreds of translations of the Bible. The first English Translation of the bible translates the word as "those who masturbate" for example, and several other version translate arsenokoitai as "defilers of themselves with humanity". The most accurate translation of arsenokoitai would be the "temple prostitutes", as arsenokoitai is most closely related to the Hebrew word "quadesh". Quadesh is found in 1 Kings 14:24 (as well as elsewhere throughout Kings) and refers specifically to male prostitutes that loitered in Pagan temples. This relationship becomes even more clear when you look at the preceding type of deviant mentioned in the Corinthians list, the effimanite, or Malakos. Malakos literally translates to "soft" and has never been used in greek liturature to describe someone who is effiminate. Every other usage of malakos refers to someone with moral weakness or excess. Another example of mis-translation. It should be noted that even under the incorrect translation of arsenokoitai, only male homosexual relationships would be condemned and not female ones, as "arsen" refers specifically to men. Let it also be observed that there was no word to describe homosexuals in any language until the late 1800's, and someone wishing to describe a homosexual in writing before that time would have used a descriptive phrase, not a single word. [1] 1 Timothy 1:9-10 mentions homosexuals a similar manner as 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and also uses the same incorrect translation of arsenokoitai. The argument against an anti-homosexual reading of Romans 1:27 is summarized best by Jeremy Punt, a Doctoral student in the department of Old and New Testament at the University of Stellenbosch: "The nature of Paul's argument in Romans 1 suggests that it is in a certain way an elaborated version of the argument found in 1 Thessalonians (1 Th 4:3-6 in particular), and cannot simply be cited in arguing against homosexuality today. Paul is concerned about the purity of followers of Christ from Gentile stock and they should thus avoid the sexual practices of Gentiles who do not know God, inevitably practices in which people are wronged. Paul did not, however, provide specific directives for either lesbigays who know God or lesbigays in committed relationships that do not exploit anyone, because such identities were not readily available options in the first century CE. A sexual ethic informed by perspectives from the New Testament challenges the assumptions which make reproductive sex into a norm. For example, when Jesus or Paul talks about marriage, neither of them insists upon procreation "as a rational or functional justification". Sexual orientation or "constitutional" or "core" homosexuality was not considered options in ancient thinking about sexuality; neither were committed, caring same-sex relationships seriously contemplated in a context where homoerotic acts were necessarily conflated with "immorality, debauchery and licentiousness". In short, Paul's argument in Romans 1 cannot be applied directly to what modern people know about homosexuality" [2] Another less in depth critique of the Romans scriptures (one that is found in the entirety of Punt's paper) hinges on the idea that Romans 1:27 mentions that men "gave up" the natural function of women, which indicates that the men discussed in this scripture are men who have slept with women before. Paul is talking about straight men in this scripture not gay men who have never touched a woman, as in order to give something up you must have had it in the first place. What Paul is referring to here, given the context of the time it was written, is ritualized pagan sex acts. It is obvious from this scripture that Paul is telling a story of past events at the beginning of Romans. It is also worthy to note that Paul never mandates that homosexual relationships are wrong and this scripture never mentions women having sex with women. My three main points are as such: 1. The Bible presents no anti-homosexual stance and the cause of people deriving anti-homosexual beliefs from the bible all stem from mistranslations and a non-understanding of the context of the scriptures. 2. Even if the mistranslations in the Bible were correct, the bible would still only condemn men having sex with men. The Bible never condemns celibate homosexual relationships, homosexual marriage, or adoption by homosexuals. Therefore the condemnation of such things by Christians has no basis in the biblical text. 3. The Bible at no point ever mentions women having sex with women and therefore the condemnation of Lesbian relationships by Christians also has no basis in the biblical text. [1] http://fogarty.org... [2] http://www.hts.org.za...