The Sodom story is not about homosexuals.
Even anti-gay evangelicals admit that the Sodom story in Genesis 19 was never about gays or lesbians.
The Genesis 19 story has been used to attack gays and lesbians for hundreds of years, but it is time for all Christians to admit the truth. After centuries of false teaching about what happened in Sodom 3800 years ago, anti-gay evangelical scholars admit the truth in writing. God-s judgment on biblical Sodom had nothing to do with gays and lesbians.
Despite the facts, some Christians still teach that the Sodom story is about homosexuality. Isn't it time for everyone to admit that Genesis 19 is not about consensual gay relationships? Secular history and many statements in the Bible provide us with facts which flatly contradict the anti-gay view.
For 1800 years after the events in Sodom, Jewish prophets in the Bible and Jewish authors outside the Bible understood that the issue was inhospitality, not homosexuality.
Sodom is mentioned 48 times in the Bible, and never in those 48 passages is homosexuality given as the cause of God’s judgment. Isn’t that interesting? Have you given that astonishing fact the weight it deserves in your thinking about this Bible story?
Dr. Richard Hayes
of Duke Divinity School
Dr. Hayes is a well-known evangelical author. He wrote The Moral Vision Of The New Testament, in which he defends the anti-gay viewpoint. Yet in spite of the fact that he regards all gay relationships as sinful, Dr. Hayes admits that:
the S@dom story “is actually irrelevant to the topic [of homosexuality].”
According to Dr. Hayes, the attempted gang rape in Genesis 19 shows the depravity of the Canaanite people who lived in the cities of the plain, but “there is nothing in the passage pertinent to a judgment about the morality of consensual homosexual intercourse.”
From Dr. Richard Hayes, in an article entitled “Awaiting the Redemption of Our Bodies”
Dr. Robert Gagnon
of Houston Baptist University
Dr. Gagnon is a prominent anti-gay author and admits the same thing in The Bible And Homosexual Practice.
Although he too believes all gay relationships are sinful, on page 71 of his book, Dr. Gagnon tells us that the Sodom story in Genesis 19 “is usually viewed by modern Christians as the classic Bible story about homosexuality. However, to the extent that the story does not deal directly with consensual homosexual relationships, it is not an ‘ideal’ text to guide contemporary Christian sexual ethics.”
Dr. Mark Allan Powell
of Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, OH
Dr. Powell expresses a similar view. Writing on page 23 of the book Faithful Conversation—Christian Perspectives On Homosexuality, Dr. Powell says concerning the rape stories in Genesis 19 and Judges 19:
“Such stories reflect a mindset that regards the rape of men by other men as abhorrent, but with regard to current questions concerning homosexuality, these texts have little to offer.
“The stories speak only of the sin of homosexual rape and say nothing at all about consensual relations between persons of the same sex.”
Surprising facts about S@dom
Genesis 19 never mentions homosexuals in S@dom.
Genesis 19 never mentions a homosexual act being committed in S@dom.
Genesis 19 never mentions a same-sex relationship in S@dom.
Genesis 19 never tells us that the inhabitants of S@dom were homosexuals.
Genesis 19 never tells us that God destroyed S@dom because of homosexuality.
In Scripture, the word sodomite never refers to homosexuals. Every use refers to cult, shrine or temple prostitutes who worshiped the Canaanite fertility goddess.