DOES THE DESTRUCTION OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH TALE CONDEMN GAYS?

In 1861, the word homosexuality was devised.  It was only an updated word for what since the Sodom story in the Bible was referred to as sodomy.  Don't be fooled by those who will tell you that on the basis of the word being rather new that the Bible does not refer to homosexuality.

Christianity is defined by the New Testament and Jesus has having the rock - the rock is firm unchangeable teaching.  Even if Jesus was not thinking of homosexuality directly here he was thinking of it as part of the religious ethic he represented.  He claimed that God is morality - his morality.  That is an idea that Jesus being son of God is getting at.  Jesus is the word of God and God's morality in human form.  The sermon on the mount stresses that Jesus has provided no sandy foundation.

Jesus rejected any vagueness so adultery to him meant that only a married man and a married woman could commit it.  Otherwise his teaching was not a rock.  He refused to give any social, legal and moral protection to anything other than man-woman marriage.

He loved his Old Testament.

In Genesis 18, 19 he read that God wanted to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their sin was "very great."

The story is that God told Lot and his family to leave Sodom for the sin there was terrible and it and Gomorrah which was its match needed destruction. Angels pretending to be men came with the warning and the men wanted to "know" ie have sex with them.  Lot tried to get rid of them by telling them to have sex with his daughters but this didn't happen.  The angels struck them blind.  Some say the sodomites were into gay rape so their condemnation does not signify condemnation of homosexuality in itself. In that part of the world, it was known for soldiers to use homosexual rape to humiliate their enemies by treating them as women. But there is no hint of anything like that in the text.  The text simply is against male on male sex and it is only those looking for a loophole who invent contexts for it that don't need to be there.

The people of Sodom did not say they wanted to rape the angels. It could be that they broke into Lot’s house not to rape the angels but to defy Lot and tempt the angels to join them in naughty intimacies. The angels were strangers not enemies and the sodomites were not soldiers. There is no hint of rape in the text. The men obviously were so gay that they thought they would have no trouble getting the angels to comply.

Some say that Lot was holy and would not have been living among such bad company for it would corrupt good morals. But we don’t know the circumstances. Perhaps Lot was unattractive and he and his family kept to themselves. The story stresses that every man in the city came to look for sex with the angels indicating that homosexuality must spread when it is tolerated. Lot and his family would not have been there unless the city was meant to be just an ordinary city and not a gay ghetto.

The miracle blindness is a step too far and thus it indicates that they could not see their homosexuality as sin.  So they were punished by physical blindness.  So they are called gay.  Anti gay Christians say the story is a hint that gays will distort God and Jesus to validate their sin.  It certainly is true that gay activists insult gay rights by lying that homophobe Jesus was an ally.

The verse, "Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house," might imply child abuse.  This matches the time old prejudice that gay men want to involve male children in their activities.  But it probably just means young and old men.

The young men being as bad as the old caters to the homophobic prejudice that gay men corrupt younger men.

The text does not say they necessarily knew they were angels not men. 

It might seem that the sex offered to the angels would have been regarded as sinful because it was physical and devoid of love. But the Bible never commanded that a husband must love his wife. The levirate law is one case where a man is forced to marry his dead brother’s wife to raise children for the brother and that is as far from romantic as you can get. Also, the woman did not take the marriage vow and was too young to know what was happening. Purely physical and cold sex was encouraged by the Law of Moses. Marriage was a business arrangement in those days. It is undeniable that the absence of love in sex was not what bothered God for it couldn’t have annoyed him to the extent that he sought to destroy the cities. It must have been the homosexuality. It is too far fetched to imagine that anybody in the Bible would have been accepting towards homosexuals.

Lot was considered worthy and holy by God despite offering his own daughters to be ravished by the mob. The girls were virgins and some say there is no doubt that Lot wanted them to rape his girls. Again the text never calls them rapists so he probably expected the girls to consent.

The message anyway is that it is better to desecrate your own flesh and blood than to tolerate homosexuality. If Lot had gay feelings presumably it was better for him to rape one of his daughters to avoid going with another man. When Lot offered his daughters it seems to some that the sodomites were bisexual. But it could also be that Lot believed from the angels who were speaking from God that homosexuals are lying when they say they can’t change their feelings and being gay is just hatred for God so they could have converted to heterosexuality easily for homosexuality was so unnatural.
 
Some say when Lot offered his daughters to the men of Sodom to rape them he was acknowledging that the men were heterosexual. That isn't necessarily so and is unlikely. Perhaps Lot was desperate and not thinking straight. Perhaps Lot couldn't understand how men could resist his daughters even if these men only had sex with men. The men must have went with women enough to keep the city populated. But that doesn't mean they were heterosexual.
 
The angels brought Lot inside when the men of Sodom vowed to do to Lot what they would do to the angels and then the angels struck them blind from the oldest to the smallest but they still tried to find the door to break into the house. This suggests that homosexuals are predatory and put sex first. Even when they are struck blind miraculously sex and rape is all they are interested in doing.
 
If the angels had appeared as ugly men there might have been no trouble so they were to blame for all this as much as were the sodomites. So God likes to send angels to attract weak people to sin. What kind of God sends angels disguised as hunks to a gay den of iniquity? The episode is wholly consistent with the Old Testament view that God likes tempting people to sin. It should be taken literally in this for the Devil was invented later to take the rap for tempting so when the texts would have been interpreted as blaming God that is what they are doing.

In Genesis, the angels were going to stay in the square and not with Lot. It was mistakenly assumed by readers that nobody else would put them up for the night. But the angels may not have had to stay with anybody for they were angels and maybe the square was a heterosexual ghetto or a safe army base.

No matter what sins these cities were committing, were they really any worse than other cities of the time?  If they are two gay cities that would make them stand out.  God talks about their sin as being very great and doesn't even seem willing to describe it.  It was something exceptional then!  Traditionally the virtual consensus that the sin was homosexuality.  The text says it between the lines - that is partly why we read that not log after leaving Sodom the daughters of Lot had to have sex with him as if it was never an option until then.

LGBT activists go as far as to say the text does not link with homosexuality at all.  Ezekiel said there was a problem with the sin of inhospitality.  The activists want us to think refusing to give people shelter is all inhospitality means. For a homophobe like Ezekiel, a city would be inhospitable or unhomely for a straight person.

They continue that the sin was lack of hospitality and hospitality in those dangerous times was lifesaving. So they say it wasn't about mere manners.  But why those two cities only?  Do you really think any city or town in an isolated area like those two wanted to welcome strangers?  And besides few were going to be looking for shelter in the middle of nowhere.

God, like a Christian conservative or religion, then if they are right must have been using inhospitality as an excuse for cruelly incinerating the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Children and teenagers died too in the conflagration.   Christian conservatives hate gays but won't admit it and use something else to attack them for. Sexual inhospitality is a thing.   If God did destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for inhospitality in whatever form then he is like a religion that pretends to love people no matter what their sins but uses excuses for attacking gays. And why single out cities where men went after men when the world was full of towns that openly condoned rape of females?

These were Canaanite cities. The Bible rails against the idolatry, the burning of babies in worship, homosexuality, sexual abandon and bloodthirstiness of the Canaanites.  Leviticus 18:24,25 after condemning sexual sins such as homosexuality then says that the pagan nations should know not to be committing them and are condemned and to be made outcasts for them.  So the ban on gay sex is for everybody not just Israelites.

Lot and his wife and daughters were safe enough there which tells us a lot.  The cities were okay for ordinary people to live in.  They only left for God said he was going to blast the cities into atoms.  Elsewhere, nobody is allowed to stay near idolatrous people for example for the temptation to adore new gods is always there.

Some tell us that Genesis does not say that the sin was homosexuality alone. That is a lie for no other type of sin is mentioned in the chapters.  Nobody thinks the cities only committed one sin homosexuality.  They must have had many sins.  But there was one sin that caused God to act so drastically.

Genesis uses Lot to tell us that the men's sin was terrible which was why he offered them his virgin daughters. The girls being virgins shows the men of the city didn’t want their bodies. Also as God said he would spare the city if a few good people were in it it follows there were no babies or children there.  Reading between the lines, the sin was homosexuality.

The story does say that the men and male children wanted to have sex with the angels who were in the form of men but it does not say they were planning a gang rape or that they had a habit of that even if they were.

The sin of homosexuality is seen by Genesis as so bad that just for looking back at the city one could become a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26). Looking back implies that you want to go back there or are showing concern for the inhabitants. The second is the most likely for who would want to go back?

1 Kings 14:24 tells us that like all the abominations practiced by nations driven out for Israel there were sodomites in the land. By sodomites this verse is referring to the qedeshim or the “male temple-prostitutes” of the Canaanites. So we read in Albright’s Archeology and the Religion of Israel, ch. v, p. 159. It says this is about the male prostitutes who worked in temples. The word was qedeshim. It seems they sold their bodies in worship and to raise money for the gods and goddess worship and for the temple. Genesis says absolutely nothing about the religion of Sodom and Gomorrah.  It was straightforward men with men that was God's objection.
 
There is no doubt from the context that the sin in Genesis 18 and 19 is homosexuality and it does indeed declare that it is a sin that cries to God for his revenge to come down as the A Catechism of Christian Doctrine question 327 declares.

The apostle Jude, Jesus' close relative and disciple who surely knew Jesus' mind, blames “sexual immorality and perversion” as the reason for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Jude 1:7.

Jesus gave no hint that he differed from the accepted interpretation of what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah that they forced God to take action as they were homosexually debauched.  He referred to their fate with approval.  He couldn't have differed.  It is odd to say Jesus never mentioned homosexuality and then say that he did not accept the sin of the cities was homosexuality! He didn't say it was anything else!

EZEKIEL

The claim that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah that God destroyed them for was lack of hospitality towards the poor ignores the fact that it was not said anywhere in the Bible that the cities were destroyed for any other sin but homosexuality. They might have been inhospitable but that was not what they were destroyed for.  The claim made by LGBT "Christians" is dishonest for they want to distract you from Jude 7-8 "Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion.  They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.  In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings."

The claim is based on Ezekiel 16:46-51 which says Sodom was inhospitable and neglected the poor.  It says it was arrogant and overfed.  And adds "and they did detestable things before me" which could refer to gay sex.  It calls Sodom the sister of Jerusalem.  It does not say its lack of social conscience was the reason Sodom was destroyed by God.  It changes subject, "They were haughty and did detestable things before me.  Therefore I did away with them as you have seen".  The unspeakable sin then was the reason for the attack from God. 

Now the text says that Jerusalem not only copied Sodom "You not only followed their ways and copied their detestable practices, but in all your ways [inc sexually] you became more depraved than they".   Depraved means unnatural and perverse.

Even saying they were destroyed because of the abominations they committed through pride which is a general thing could cover their homosexuality.

So Ezekiel is DELIBERATELY misinterpreted. Besides, running after strangers who visit your city for sex is hardly hospitality so Ezekiel might still have had the homosexuality at the back of his mind.

Let it be repeated, Ezekiel 16 says that Sodom didn't give a damn about the poor and that was their sin along with pride and idleness. You might accuse a homosexual of the sin of pride meaning that since all sin is in essence pride that his form of pride leads him to homosexual vice. You might say a homosexual is idle for he doesn't try to overcome his sin and his temptation to it. 

Some surmise that the prophet Ezekiel got a new revelation telling him that Sodom was inhospitable to the poor. Commonsense shows that if a city is just out for sex it is inhospitable and going to hate the poor.  A revelation is not needed.  Ezekiel does not claim to be giving an exhaustive list of Sodom's sins so remember that. 

If Ezekiel misinterpreted Genesis they are trying to cover up that he erred by assuming that he got a divine revelation saying it was not homosexuality. If so then it is most probable that it was a misinterpretation. 

It is interesting that people want Ezekiel to make a case for the sin being inhospitality despite saying the Sodom tale only condemns male rape not male lovemaking.

Ezekiel speaks of male woman sex in very disgusted ways so by the rules of Bible interpretation his treatment of Sodom says he could not bear to be clear on the sexual sins.

The reference to the Jewish people prostituting with male idols - really just male? - is loaded.  It's in verse 17.  Why just male? 

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