Sodom and Gomorra were neither Judged by God as wicked nor destroyed because of homosexuality

I also accept your rejection of the notion that sexual orientation is not a choice, but I must remind you to provide evidence to back up your assertion. The 18th chapter of Genesis starts off by God, who is surrounded by His Angels, personally visiting with Abraham. After Abraham played the proper host, God relayed his plans to carry out an investigation of the behavior of the citizens of Sodom and Gomorra. Verse 23 shows us that God plans on destroying the city if he finds it to be wicked. Genesis 18:20-21,23: “20And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; 21I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know. 23And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? ” After persistent negotiations from Abraham, God agrees to not destroy the cities if ten righteous people can found (Genesis 18:24-32). The nineteenth chapter finds God’s Angel’s entering into the gates of Sodom. Lot notices these foreigners and implores them to receive the hospitality of his home for the night. The Angels accept Lot’s offer, and they retire to his home for the evening (Genesis 19:1-3). And then the so-called incident of ‘homosexuality’ happens within the next several verses. I will attempt to analyze each one separately to prove my point. Genesis 19:4: “4But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:” This verse tells us that ‘all the people’ surrounded Lot’s house. Are women and girls not people? We’ll see later why the possibility of women surrounding the house (along with the men) is an important detail. Genesis 19:5: “5And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. ” The Hebrew word used here is Yada’ (pronounced ‘yah-DAH’), and its literal translation is ‘to know’. However, there are different meanings of this word, and it has been used to mean to get ‘to know’ someone sexually. It all depends on the context of the particular verse. Is there a sexual connotation provided in this instance? Let’s find out. Genesis 19:6-8: “6And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, 7And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. 8Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. ” We see here that the word yada’ is used again in verse eight, but this time it is written with a clear sexual connotation. For example, Lot precisely links the word ‘know’ with a sexual implication by saying that his daughters have never known a ‘man’. Obviously they know of men in a literal context, because their father is a man and I assume they’re well acquainted with him. Thus the only logical conclusion is that the context of ‘knowing’ in verse eight is implying a sexual nature. However, when the men demanded to know Lot’s guests (verse 5), there were no other words in the verse to back up any kind of supposed sexual implication to their intentions. But perhaps the fact that Lot sexually offered his daughters to the mob in exchange for them pardoning his guests is evidence that the people of Sodom wanted to have sex with the Angels? And that this was just a way for Lot to offer other sexual alternatives. But where is the evidence for this? The word yada’ is mostly used biblically in a literal sense of coming to know someone, rather than sexually knowing them. So who’s to say that the people of Sodom didn’t really want to just know who these strange men were that visited their city? But if they were there to simply inquire about the angels, instead of having sex with them, then what wickedness was Lot talking about in verse seven? Could the people of Sodom been intent on trying to aggressively know the Angels in an effort to kill them? Is it possible that the crazed mob was intending on killing Lot’s guests, and Lot tried to bribe them against their intentions, by offering all the sex they could possibly have with his virgin daughters? And as mentioned above, all of the people surrounded Lot’s home, which implies women and girls were also present. Did these women and girls also plan on having sex with the angels? If so, could anyone still honestly claim that it was homosexuality that caused God to destroy Sodom and Gomorra? The ambiguous context, and lack of clear sexual connotation to the word ‘know’, introduces a problem into the argument that the people of Sodom were intent on having sex with God’s Angel. I'll get more into this lack of evidence after my opponent has had a chance to provide his opening argument. As of now in this debate, we have no conclusive evidence to prove what exactly the word 'yada' was implying in verse 5. So let us assume that there IS a sexual connotation to the word ‘know’ in the case of the people’s intentions towards Lot’s guest, and that only the men of the city would partake in it, then does their intentions fall under the definition of ‘homosexuality’ as listed above? Genesis 19: 9-11: “9And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door. 10But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door. 11And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door” Remember, we are under the assumption that the men of Sodom wanted to sexually know the angels. In verse nine, the men say that they will deal worse to Lot than with his guests. This implies that they did not come to have a ‘good’ time sexually, but to carry out some sort of negative action towards the strangers. The fact that even after Lot basically said no to their demands, and they still insisted on sexually knowing the angels (even trying so hard as to force their way into Lot’s home), implies rape. Verses ten and eleven tell us that this specific assault by the people of Sodom is what determined that the city was wicked, and that God would destroy it. But can rape, even if between people of the same gender, be labeled as homosexuality? Not according to the definition of homosexuality. And if the charge against the men of Sodom is attempted rape, then what are we to conclude but that it was the threat of sexual assault that caused God to realize that the cities were wicked, instead of the presence of homosexuality (as defined above), that was not even described in this story in the first place?