What does jesus say about same sex marriage
This article is part of the What Did Jesus Teach? series.
Silence Equals Support?
In a article for Slate online, Will Oremus asked a provocative question: Was Jesus a homophobe?1
The article was occasioned by a story about a gay teenager in Ohio who was suing his high institution after school officials prohibited him from wearing a T-shirt that said, “Jesus Is Not a Homophobe.”
Oremus was less concerned about the legal issues of the story than he was about the accuracy of the statement on the shirt. Oremus suggests that Jesus’s views on homosexuality were more inclusive than Paul’s. He writes,
While it’s justified to assume that Jesus and his fellow Jews in first-century Palestine would have disapproved of gay sex, there is no document of his ever having mentioned homosexuality, let alone expressed particular revulsion about it. . . . Never in the Bible does Jesus himself suggest an explicit prohibition of homosexuality.
Oremus seems to suggest that since Jesus never explicitly mentioned homosexuality, he must not have been very concerned about it.
There are at least two reas
The Bible on Homosexual Behavior
One way to argue against these passages is to make what I call the “shellfish objection.” Keith Sharpe puts it this way: “Until Christian fundamentalists boycott shellfish restaurants, stop wearing poly-cotton T-shirts, and stone to death their wayward offspring, there is no obligation to verb to their diatribes about homosexuality being a sin” (The Gay Gospels, 21).
In other words, if we can disregard rules like the ban on eating shellfish in Leviticus , then we should be allowed to disobey other prohibitions from the Old Testament. But this argument confuses the Old Testament’s temporary ceremonial laws with its everlasting moral laws.
Here’s an analogy to assist understand this distinction.
I remember two rules my mom gave me when I was young: keep her hand when I cross the street and don’t drink what’s under the sink. Today, I have to follow only the latter rule, since the former is no longer needed to protect me. In fact, it would now carry out me more impair than good.
Old Testament ritual/ceremonial laws were like mom’s handholding rule. The rea
What does the Bible say about gay marriage?
Answer
The Bible says nothing about gay marriage directly, but it does establish down the foundational principles of what constitutes marriagein God’s eyes. Every reference to marriage in the Bible indicates a union of male and female. The first description of marriage coincides with the creation of Eve in Genesis 2. According to that passage, marriage takes place when “a guy leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Genesis ).
In passages that contain instructions regarding marriage, such as 1 Corinthians –16 and Ephesians –33, the Bible clearly identifies marriage as being between a male and a gal. Biblically speaking, marriage is the union of a human and a female in a lifetime commitment. Primary purposes of marriage are to illustrate the relationship between Christ and the church (see Ephesians –33) and to verb a family and provide a reliable, secure environment for that family to grow. As families prosper, so does society at big, and stable families contribute to reliable soci
Leviticus
“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”[1] It is not a surprise that this verse seems to say that gay male sex is forbidden in the eyes of God. The dominant view of western Christianity forbids same-sex relations. This verse is one of the clobber passages that people cite from the Bible to condemn homosexuality. This essay first looks at the various ways the verse is translated into the English Bible and then explores some of the strategies used to create an affirming interpretation of what this passage means for the LGBTQ community. More specifically, it presents the interpretation of K. Renato Lings in which Lev. refers to male-on-male incest.
While Lev. is used to condemn homosexuality, we must realize that the term “homosexuality” was only recently coined in the English language. So did this term be in ancient Israel? Charles D. Myers, Jr. confirms that none of the prophets in the Hebrew Bible speak of homosexuality.[2] He also contends that in ancient Israel same-sex relations were viewed as an ancient Near East obstacle. The anc