page_title: History of Christianity and homosexuality
section_title: Early Christianity
hierarchical_section_title: History of Christianity and homosexuality / Early Christianity
context_page_description: Christian leaders have written about homosexual male–male sexual activities since the first decades of Christianity; female–female sexual behaviour was almost entirely ignored. Throughout the majority of Christian history most theologians and Christian denominations have viewed homosexual behavior as immoral or sinful.
  However, in the 20th century some prominent theologians and Christian religious groups have espoused a wide variety of beliefs and practices towards homosexuals, including the establishment of some "open and accepting" congregations that actively support LGBT members, which they consider biblical in light of other rebukes in the New Testament that Christians might gloss over, such as wealth, women refraining from speaking in church or covering their heads while praying, and Protestant churches' lack of support for adults who do not want to marry, such as building monasteries, even though New Testament verses speak of the virtues of remaining single, such as the example of 144,000 males who are not to be "defiled" with females before being redeemed in the Apocalypse.
context_section_description: Prior to the rise of Christianity, certain sexual practices that people today call "homosexual"  had existed among certain groups, with some degree of social acceptance in ancient Rome and ancient Greece (e.g. the pederastic relationship of an adult Greek male with a Greek youth, or of a Roman citizen with a slave). It is believed by some interpreters in recent times that Paul was only addressing such practices in Romans 1: 26–27, while others usually see these verses as condemning all forms of homoeroticism.
  The Judaic prohibitions found in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 address the issue of sex between two men. The latter verse (20:13) says: "And if a man also lies with mankind, as with womankind, both of them have committed abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."
  In his fourth homily on Romans, John Chrysostom argued in the fourth century that homosexual acts are worse than murder and so degrading that they constitute a kind of punishment in itself, and that enjoyment of such acts actually makes them worse, "for suppose I were to see a person running naked, with his body all besmeared with mire, and yet not covering himself, but exulting in it, I should not rejoice with him, but should rather bewail that he did not even perceive that he was doing shamefully." He also said: "But nothing can there be more worthless than a man who has pandered himself. For not the soul only, but the body also of one who hath been so treated, is disgraced, and deserves to be driven out everywhere."
  The writings of the early church contain strong condemnations of same-sex acts. Tertullian wrote, "When Paul asserts that males and females changed among themselves the natural use of the creature in that which is unnatural, he validates the natural way". Ambrosiaster wrote, "Paul tells us that these things came about, that a woman should lust after another woman, because God was angry at the human race because of its idolatry. Those who interpret this differently do not understand the force of the argument. For what is it to change the use of nature into a use which is contrary to nature, if not to take away the former and adopt the latter, so that the same part of the body should be used by each of the sexes in a way for which it was not intended?... It is clear that, because they changed the truth of God into a lie, they changed the natural use (of sexuality) into that use by which they were dishonored and condemned". John Chrysostom wrote, "No one can say that it was by being prevented from legitimate intercourse that they came to this pass or that it was from having no means to fulfill their desire that they were driven to this monstrous insanity... What is contrary to nature has something irritating and displeasing in it, so that they could not even claim to be getting pleasure out of it. For genuine pleasure comes from following what is according to nature. But when God abandons a person to his own devices, then everything is turned upside down." Cyprian wrote, "If you were able... to direct your eyes into secret places, to unfasten the locked doors of sleeping chambers and to open these hidden recesses to the perception of sight, you would behold that being carried on by the unchaste which a chaste countenance could not behold. You would see that it is in an indignity even to see... Men with frenzied lusts rush against men. Things are done which cannot even give pleasure to those who do them.”
  John Boswell, in his book published in 1994, contends that adelphopoiesis, a Christian rite for uniting two persons of the same sex as "spiritual brothers/sisters", amounted to an approved outlet for romantic and indeed sexual love between couples of the same sex.  Boswell also drew attention to Saints Sergius and Bacchus, whose icon depicts the two standing together with Jesus between or behind them, a position he identifies with a pronubus or "best man".  Critics of Boswell's views have argued that the union created was more like blood brotherhood; and that this icon is a typical example of an icon depicting t
caption: Saints Sergius and Bacchus
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