This thread is intended as a reference for a discussion elsewhere. This is the only forum in CF where I can describe why liberal Christians accept homosexuality and transgender identity.
[I’ve just rewritten this because the old posting was too wordy.]
In my opinion, the New Testament doesn’t talk about relationships that Christian homosexuals are asking about, and the Old Testament is not relevant to us.
* The Sodom story is about rape. That’s prohibited whether same-sex or opposite-sex. There are many references to Sodom elsewhere in the Bible, listing many of its sins, and none is homosexuality.
* The laws in Leviticus are part of a purity code that Christians don’t accept. It’s based on a whole approach of respecting boundaries, and Christians don’t otherwise accept it (mixing fibers in clothes, kosher laws, etc). The Hebrew is also a lot less clear than the English about what it really means.
* Rom 1 wasn’t about homosexuality, which is by definition people whose sexual orientation is to the same gender. It was an attack on the morals of pagans. Start reading with 1:18. 1:23 makes it clear that what he's talking about in 18-23 is pagans, who worship idols. Starting in 1:24, Paul says that as a result of idolatry, people ended up with disordered morals. As part of that, they became bored with normal sex and turned to unnatural sex. (26-27) What I’ve read about Romans agrees with that. The culture saw same-gender sex as a result of excessive passion (26), which couldn't be satisfied by opposite-gender sex. That's why Paul talks about pagans who in their passion abandon natural relations for unnatural. But gay Christians aren't pagans, and aren’t turning to the same sex because they’ve gotten bored with heterosexual relations. It is their normal sex.
Incidentally, if you understand Paul’s argument in the early chapters of Romans, it appears that Rom 1:18-32 is actually not his opinion. It’s something he is quoting in order to reject it. He does that in Rom 2. However this isn’t the place for a detailed exegesis of Romans. (In Rom 1 - 3 he is dealing with claims that Christians need to become Jews because Judaism is superior. He responds in 2 ways. 1 - 2 answers claims that Gentiles are inherently immoral. 2 - 3 answers claims that Jews are inherently moral. 1:18-32 quotes a standard Jewish polemic against gentiles, saying that all Gentiles are rejected by God. But Rom 2 rejects this, saying that indeed there are Gentiles that are acceptable, inspired by an internal law. He then looks at the opposite error, that all Jews are automatically accepted, and rejects it. Note that 2:2 quotes 1:32. 2:3 and following rejects it. Initially because the Judaizers are hypocritical, but through the rest of 2 he makes the case that some pagans have the Law in their heart. This rejects the argument of 1:28-32, which is that pagans are inherently immoral. )
* The two sin lists, 1 Cor 6:9 and 1 Tim 1:10, use words that we don’t entirely understand. The key one is made from roots meaning “male beds.” But there isn’t enough use outside the Bible to be sure what it means. It can be understood as male prostitutes, and at one point was even understood as a reference to masturbation. The current trend seems to be saying that it and the next word referred to what today we’d call “tops” and “bottoms,” but I've seen credible arguments against that, so I'm far from sure that this is any better than other guesses.
Why differentiate top and bottom? Because in that culture it was unacceptable for an adult male to be a “bottom.” He could only take the active role. Bottoms were slaves or children. So if this current conjecture is right, Paul is pointing to relationships in which an adult takes advantage of either a slave or a child. Maybe. If the current guess about what the words mean is right. (The difficulty with this is that if the guess is right, Paul is condemning the victims along with the perpetrators. I hope that Paul wouldn't do that. The bottoms typically didn't have much choice in the matter. I'd prefer the guess that "soft" means morally soft, not the recipient in same-gender sex. That seemed to be the usual view before the current arguments over homosexuality.)
Furthermore, if you join 1 Cor 6:9 to Gal 5:21, which uses the same language, between them there is something for everyone. This is not a list of special sends the send you to hell. Rather, he is counseling his new Christian converts that becoming Christian has implications. In logic saying "Christians don't do that" logically means anyone doing that isn't a Christian. But this is rhetoric, not logic. He's trying to get people to take seriously that they need to change their behavior.
* Both the creation story and Jesus (Mark 10:6 ff) refer to men and women marrying. But the Bible often describes the normal pattern. In other cases this isn’t understood as preventing exceptions. Imagine prohibiting wheelchairs because God created mankind with legs. Jesus focused on intent. If someone attracted to the same gender wants to have the same kind of relationship Jesus referred to, I don’t see that there’s a problem with that.
So why do I say the Bible supports gay marriage? In the passage containing 1 Cor 7:7, Paul recognized celibacy as a gift. People shouldn’t be alone unless they have that gift. Otherwise they’re asking for trouble, because sexual desire will pull them into relationships they should be in. This is just as true for people attracted to the same gender as opposite gender.
This thread contains references with more detailed treatments of the issue, including my view of Paul's concept of "natural": Can anyone give me some names of LGBT-affirming christian theologians,philosophers?. You will note that there are pro-gay treatments that I do not recommend, because they make Paul say things that he evidently didn’t say. "Natural" pretty clearly means typical, according to the nature of things, or even customary. It has nothing to do with whether same-gender sex occurs among animals in nature. (It does.)
Please follow the discussion for the next couple of pages, since there are other concerns that aren't dealt with in this posting.
Recent followups start here: liberal approaches to homosexuality and transgender
----------------
I’m not an expert in transgender identity. I’ve read actual experts, but I find it hard to cite any one specific reference. It does seem clear that there are people that have problems with their sexual identity, and that these problems are serious enough to justify treatment. Many reports suggest that transition helps. (I had an employee go through transition, and the results seem to have been good.) It’s also not a cure-all. Suicide rates still remain higher among people who have transitioned (though there are some recent studies that say this isn't true if the people around them support them). Personally I’d suggest it as a last resort. But the problem seems real, and I have no problem with people who adopt some or all of a sexual identity opposite to their physical gender to deal with it. I can’t quite understand why many Christians judge these people.
I really don’t see a Biblical issue here. There are plenty of cases where for good reasons we change people from how God made them. We treat birth defects. We amputate parts of the body when survival is at risk. God ordained suffering for childbirth as a punishment, but we deal with it with pain killers or anesthesia. As far as I can see there’s no rational reason why we use legalistic approaches on this one issue.
Here’s an article that discusses the problems that lead to people living as transgender: Opinion | How Changeable Is Gender?. This article is fairly moderate. It points out that gender reassignment isn’t perfect, though the article doesn’t cite the evidence that it often helps. The Wikipedia article Gender dysphoria - Wikipedia is a reasonable summary, and does cite that evidence. (It perhaps isn’t quite skeptical enough, which is why I cited both.)
I remind people reading this that this posting is in the Liberal forum. It is a violation of the SOP of this group to condemn gays or trangenders, or Christians who advocate for them.
[I’ve just rewritten this because the old posting was too wordy.]
In my opinion, the New Testament doesn’t talk about relationships that Christian homosexuals are asking about, and the Old Testament is not relevant to us.
* The Sodom story is about rape. That’s prohibited whether same-sex or opposite-sex. There are many references to Sodom elsewhere in the Bible, listing many of its sins, and none is homosexuality.
* The laws in Leviticus are part of a purity code that Christians don’t accept. It’s based on a whole approach of respecting boundaries, and Christians don’t otherwise accept it (mixing fibers in clothes, kosher laws, etc). The Hebrew is also a lot less clear than the English about what it really means.
* Rom 1 wasn’t about homosexuality, which is by definition people whose sexual orientation is to the same gender. It was an attack on the morals of pagans. Start reading with 1:18. 1:23 makes it clear that what he's talking about in 18-23 is pagans, who worship idols. Starting in 1:24, Paul says that as a result of idolatry, people ended up with disordered morals. As part of that, they became bored with normal sex and turned to unnatural sex. (26-27) What I’ve read about Romans agrees with that. The culture saw same-gender sex as a result of excessive passion (26), which couldn't be satisfied by opposite-gender sex. That's why Paul talks about pagans who in their passion abandon natural relations for unnatural. But gay Christians aren't pagans, and aren’t turning to the same sex because they’ve gotten bored with heterosexual relations. It is their normal sex.
Incidentally, if you understand Paul’s argument in the early chapters of Romans, it appears that Rom 1:18-32 is actually not his opinion. It’s something he is quoting in order to reject it. He does that in Rom 2. However this isn’t the place for a detailed exegesis of Romans. (In Rom 1 - 3 he is dealing with claims that Christians need to become Jews because Judaism is superior. He responds in 2 ways. 1 - 2 answers claims that Gentiles are inherently immoral. 2 - 3 answers claims that Jews are inherently moral. 1:18-32 quotes a standard Jewish polemic against gentiles, saying that all Gentiles are rejected by God. But Rom 2 rejects this, saying that indeed there are Gentiles that are acceptable, inspired by an internal law. He then looks at the opposite error, that all Jews are automatically accepted, and rejects it. Note that 2:2 quotes 1:32. 2:3 and following rejects it. Initially because the Judaizers are hypocritical, but through the rest of 2 he makes the case that some pagans have the Law in their heart. This rejects the argument of 1:28-32, which is that pagans are inherently immoral. )
* The two sin lists, 1 Cor 6:9 and 1 Tim 1:10, use words that we don’t entirely understand. The key one is made from roots meaning “male beds.” But there isn’t enough use outside the Bible to be sure what it means. It can be understood as male prostitutes, and at one point was even understood as a reference to masturbation. The current trend seems to be saying that it and the next word referred to what today we’d call “tops” and “bottoms,” but I've seen credible arguments against that, so I'm far from sure that this is any better than other guesses.
Why differentiate top and bottom? Because in that culture it was unacceptable for an adult male to be a “bottom.” He could only take the active role. Bottoms were slaves or children. So if this current conjecture is right, Paul is pointing to relationships in which an adult takes advantage of either a slave or a child. Maybe. If the current guess about what the words mean is right. (The difficulty with this is that if the guess is right, Paul is condemning the victims along with the perpetrators. I hope that Paul wouldn't do that. The bottoms typically didn't have much choice in the matter. I'd prefer the guess that "soft" means morally soft, not the recipient in same-gender sex. That seemed to be the usual view before the current arguments over homosexuality.)
Furthermore, if you join 1 Cor 6:9 to Gal 5:21, which uses the same language, between them there is something for everyone. This is not a list of special sends the send you to hell. Rather, he is counseling his new Christian converts that becoming Christian has implications. In logic saying "Christians don't do that" logically means anyone doing that isn't a Christian. But this is rhetoric, not logic. He's trying to get people to take seriously that they need to change their behavior.
* Both the creation story and Jesus (Mark 10:6 ff) refer to men and women marrying. But the Bible often describes the normal pattern. In other cases this isn’t understood as preventing exceptions. Imagine prohibiting wheelchairs because God created mankind with legs. Jesus focused on intent. If someone attracted to the same gender wants to have the same kind of relationship Jesus referred to, I don’t see that there’s a problem with that.
So why do I say the Bible supports gay marriage? In the passage containing 1 Cor 7:7, Paul recognized celibacy as a gift. People shouldn’t be alone unless they have that gift. Otherwise they’re asking for trouble, because sexual desire will pull them into relationships they should be in. This is just as true for people attracted to the same gender as opposite gender.
This thread contains references with more detailed treatments of the issue, including my view of Paul's concept of "natural": Can anyone give me some names of LGBT-affirming christian theologians,philosophers?. You will note that there are pro-gay treatments that I do not recommend, because they make Paul say things that he evidently didn’t say. "Natural" pretty clearly means typical, according to the nature of things, or even customary. It has nothing to do with whether same-gender sex occurs among animals in nature. (It does.)
Please follow the discussion for the next couple of pages, since there are other concerns that aren't dealt with in this posting.
Recent followups start here: liberal approaches to homosexuality and transgender
----------------
I’m not an expert in transgender identity. I’ve read actual experts, but I find it hard to cite any one specific reference. It does seem clear that there are people that have problems with their sexual identity, and that these problems are serious enough to justify treatment. Many reports suggest that transition helps. (I had an employee go through transition, and the results seem to have been good.) It’s also not a cure-all. Suicide rates still remain higher among people who have transitioned (though there are some recent studies that say this isn't true if the people around them support them). Personally I’d suggest it as a last resort. But the problem seems real, and I have no problem with people who adopt some or all of a sexual identity opposite to their physical gender to deal with it. I can’t quite understand why many Christians judge these people.
I really don’t see a Biblical issue here. There are plenty of cases where for good reasons we change people from how God made them. We treat birth defects. We amputate parts of the body when survival is at risk. God ordained suffering for childbirth as a punishment, but we deal with it with pain killers or anesthesia. As far as I can see there’s no rational reason why we use legalistic approaches on this one issue.
Here’s an article that discusses the problems that lead to people living as transgender: Opinion | How Changeable Is Gender?. This article is fairly moderate. It points out that gender reassignment isn’t perfect, though the article doesn’t cite the evidence that it often helps. The Wikipedia article Gender dysphoria - Wikipedia is a reasonable summary, and does cite that evidence. (It perhaps isn’t quite skeptical enough, which is why I cited both.)
I remind people reading this that this posting is in the Liberal forum. It is a violation of the SOP of this group to condemn gays or trangenders, or Christians who advocate for them.
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