Note: This post gets quite descriptive and is not appropriate for young children.
I have made no secret of the fact that I am a Christian who is affirming of the LGBTQ+ community. This makes me a bit of a unicorn, especially within my own faith tradition. I meet Christians all the time (usually from the safety of a social media page) who argue that my position is wrong. They claim the Bible “clearly” forbids same-sex behavior, and many go so far as to condemn the orientation, the same-sex attraction. When I decided I needed to understand this topic, I delved into researching what the Bible actually says on the topic. It didn’t take me very long to change from only accepting of and loving toward the community to being fully affirming. Most people take longer, but God had already led me quite a way down the path, so I really didn’t have much farther to go.
I discovered that there are only six Bible passages that most likely mention homoerotic behavior. I have written about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah already: part one and part two [include links]. That one is the easiest to dismiss. The short version is that the sin of Sodom was inhospitality, not homosexuality. The next two passages are in Leviticus, and eventually I will write on them. The reality is, not everything in Leviticus applies to us today. This leads some people to dismiss those texts, though not everyone. That leaves three passages in the New Testament, all written by Paul. Two of them are based on an obscure Greek word that only appears in lists. But it’s hard to definitively define a word that only appears in lists.
Romans 1
I’ll deal with all those texts eventually, but I figure I might as well get to the most crucial verses. This is the hardest passage to ignore. That would be Romans 1, specifically verses 26–27. Non-affirming Christians consider these verses to be the most definitive teaching against homosexuality. Let’s take a look at them in context and see what comes up.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error (NIV).
There are so many ways we can look at these verses:
- Context of the chapter
- Motivation for the behavior listed
- Historical/social context
- Parallels in other Jewish writings
- Definition of “natural use” and “against nature”
Of course, this is just a start. But covering these points should be enough to get started and to help us better understand the verses in question.
As you read, I recommend that you grab your Bible and open to Romans 1 to follow along. I will not be quoting every verse, and you will want to verify what I am saying.
Context of the Chapter
Let’s start with the context of the chapter. After his salutation and greetings to the church, Paul begins to discuss his desire to visit Rome. Some have described his letter as a missionary letter sent to the Roman church. He hoped to get support from them for his plans to go on to Spain (see Romans 15:24, 28). As he talks about visiting them, he tells them why: because he is passionate about the gospel (Romans 1:13–17). His thesis statement for the whole book of Romans is found in verses 16 and 17 (NIV):
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
Then he begins to discuss why so many people reject God, and what the result is. He makes a distinct contrast between righteousness and unrighteousness. The words that are translated righteousness and unrighteousness both have the same root (dikaios). The negative prefix used on “unrighteousness,” making the contrast he is making clear. The righteousness of God in contrast to the unrighteousness (or wickedness in the NIV) of those who suppress the truth. Then he goes on to discuss what that wickedness looks like.
He brings up God’s wrath (which really deserves its own post), and then begins to talk about who this wrath is directed against. He points out that the wicked have no excuse for not knowing about God, because His attributes are clearly displayed in nature (verse 20). Then he talks about the results of not glorifying God, which we can summarize as a descent into idolatry (verses 21–23). As a result, God gave them up to sinful desires (verse 24), shameful lusts (verse 26), and a depraved mind (verse 28). (This is how God’s wrath is manifested—He allows people to reap the consequences of their choices.) This resulted in their choosing idolatry (verse 25), illicit sexual interactions (verses 26–27), and all kinds of wickedness (verse 29–31).
The Root: Rejection of God
Throughout this chapter, we see that all of the things that happened—idolatry, lust-driven sex, or any of the other sins listed—are rooted in a rejection of God. He introduces each kind of wickedness with words like, “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles,” “exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator,” and “just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God.”
These words spell out the foundation of idolatry. People want something to worship—just go to a football game if you don’t believe me!. Whether it’s animism (the worship of animals), celebrity worship, sexual immorality, or some other form of depravity, it is in effect a substitute for God and thus falls under the broad heading of idolatry.
Shame
After that general overview of the context of the chapter and the motivations for the wicked behavior described, let’s zoom in on the verses in question. Verse 26 (NIV) begins this way: “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.” When you see words like “because of this,” it means that this thought is building on what came before. If you look carefully, you’ll see that verse 24 begins with “therefore.” This is another indication that it is building on what came before. It leads us back to verse 21, where people didn’t know God or acknowledge Him, and this led them to begin their descent into idolatry. Sexual impurity is introduced in verse 24, but not with the Greek word that is usually translated sexual immorality or fornication (that is a whole other topic). Paul discusses degrading practices and shameful lusts (verses 24, 26) as being the result of idolatry. Perhaps it is even as the evidence of it.
What were the shameful practices? We do not live in a shame/honor culture today in the West. Therefore, we need to discuss what it looked like. For a more thorough understand of honor and shame, I recommend the book Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien.1
It is important to understand is that shame was a very cultural concept, and it wasn’t about sin, necessarily. Let’s look at a practical example. In our modern day, it would be shameful for a woman in America to go around topless. However, on a nude beach and on many European beaches, it’s not. And if you go to certain indigenous tribes in Africa and other places, all the women go topless without shame. In fact, there used to be a tribe where only prostitutes covered their breasts, and when missionaries gave women shirts to cover them when they came to church, they cut holes in them! For them, covering their breasts was shameful.
Roman Sexual Customs
We cannot understand what Paul was referring to by applying an anachronistic definition of shame onto Paul’s writings. We can’t look at our modern culture, say, “Gay sex is shameful,” and interpret Romans 1 through this lens. It is important to understand what was considered shameful in Paul’s day. 2
For the Romans, a free man stood at the top of the social ladder. Below him were married women, and slaves were at the bottom. A poor free man was lower in status than a rich free man, and so on. A virtuous man (called a vir in Latin) could have sex with anyone of lower status, as long as he didn’t have it too often. Strict self-control was absolutely essential. But as long as he kept things reasonable, he could sleep with his wife, his slaves, and maybe his poor neighbor if he wanted. Also, he had to be in the dominant, insertive role.
Sexual exploitation would have thrived in this kind of culture. Indeed, it is very telling that Romans used sexual innuendo to describe exploitation of various kinds. We do the same thing today with the F-word. We use it to refer to exploitation that isn’t necessarily sexual. Saying, “That’s F-d up,” may refer to anything that went wrong, sexual or not.
What is interesting is that heterosexuality was basically assumed, although that is not what they would have called it. They operated on the assumption that all men were attracted to women. Having children was paramount, so a man had to marry to ensure that his offspring would be his.
Acceptable or Not
Some Roman men enjoyed exploring other forms of sex when they got bored with their wives and wanted to try something new. Like the man today who keeps hunting for harder and more twisted forms of pornography, a man in Rome could explore sex with anyone of lower status, as long as he didn’t overdo it and always took the dominant role. Taking the submissive role was shameful and would result in a loss of honor. But of course, a slave had no honor to lose, so it didn’t matter if he played the submissive role. Women, of course, played the submissive role because they were already lower in status and without honor.
In this context, two men of equal status could not have sex together. That would be considered degrading and shameful to both of them. That didn’t stop some of them from trying it. But if they were discovered, they would lose honor in the eyes of their peers, and that was something most could not afford. Accusing a man of having an affair with another man of equal status was the equivalent of accusing someone of having a regular affair today. But in the shame/honor culture of that era, it was probably worse.
Roman and Jewish Agreement
For Jews, same sex relationships between men were considered shameful as well (probably because of Leviticus). So when Paul wanted to illustrate the depths of depravity, writing to a church composed of both Jewish and Gentile Christians, he chose the one sexual practice that both sides of the church agreed was forbidden: a lust-driven sexual liaison between two men of equal status.
In chapter 1, Paul was writing specifically about the Gentiles, setting up the Jews for a switch-and-bait in chapter 2. He didn’t want to completely alienate the Roman Christians before he had a chance to turn on the Jews. Thus he carefully picked things that a good Roman Christian would agree were bad. They had not been taught this from the Bible, but culturally they understood it to be wrong.
The Wisdom of Solomon
The fact that Paul was trying to get the Jewish buy-in with his choice of arguments in chapter one is supported by an interesting source: an apocryphal book The Wisdom of Solomon (written many years after Solomon). Most Jews were familiar with these writings. The parallels are striking, too much so to be a coincidence. For a brief study of the parallels, you can read here or here or here. If you can access scholarly articles (or are willing to pay for them) and enjoy reading academic literature, you might enjoy this article. Regardless, it doesn’t take a scholar to realize there is a connection.
Whether Paul agreed with The Wisdom of Solomon, or whether he merely used it as a rhetorical tool to strengthen his arguments, no one can argue that he was not unaware of it; the comparison is too obvious. He had to find a sexual depravity that even the Romans would agree was bad, so he picked the one thing both could unequivocally agree on: two men of equal status sleeping together.
Marriage Isn’t the Issue
Now, I can just hear some people saying, “See? Paul is against same sex marriage between equals.” But that’s not what Paul was talking about. Marriage is not the topic under discussion. This fact is made evident in the choice of words (from the NIV): “the sinful desires of their hearts” (verse 24), “the degrading of their bodies” (verse 24), “shameful lusts (verse 26), “inflamed with lust” (verse 27), and “shameful acts” (verse 27). Does any of that sound like marriage? A man once told me he lusted after his wife, but that is not sinful, his choice of words notwithstanding. The context is sinful practices. Degrading, shameful, lust-inflamed behavior is not what one would expect to find in a healthy marriage. Paul is not talking about marriage, but about illicit sexual practices.
Natural vs. Unnatural
Which brings up the only verse in the Bible that can potentially be construed as a prohibition of lesbian sex.
Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. Romans 1:26
But is Paul really talking about women getting together to have sex with each other? Again, we should not take a modern understanding of shame and apply it to the ancient world. Likewise, we cannot assume that “unnatural sexual relations” in the context of women refers to two women together. We need to understand what the Romans would have understood by unnatural.
First, let’s see how Paul used the words natural and unnatural (related in Greek just as they are in English by having the same root, with one having a “not” prefix). The word for “natural” in Greek is phusikos, and “nature” is phusis, so basically two forms of the same word (like natural and naturally). Paul only uses phusikos twice—both in Romans 1. Let us see how Paul uses the word for “nature” in his other writings.
Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts. Romans 2:14–15, NIV.
For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. . . . After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree! Romans 11:21, 24, NIV.
Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering. 1 Corinthians 11:14–15, NIV.
There are other examples, but these are sufficient. From these, we see that nature and natural, as used by Paul, do not refer to what is objectively right or wrong, but what is considered normal or culturally acceptable. In the Greek culture of Corinth, it was culturally acceptable for women to have long hair and men to have short hair, and not the other way around. It is “contrary to nature” to graft a branch of a wild, uncultivated tree onto a domestic, cultivated one, but it is not wrong or bad. In fact, God used it as a metaphor for the addition of the Gentile believers to spiritual Israel. Those who had God’s law written in their hearts would naturally fulfill the requirements of that law, even though they had never heard it.
In summary, natural refers to what society considered normal, including social conventions. Unnatural was what was not normal, but it was not necessarily bad. 3
Natural Vs. Unnatural Sex
Back to Romans 1. What were “natural sexual relations” and “unnatural” ones, and what constituted the “natural use of the woman”? Again, we dare not err by interpreting these words by modern definitions.
The “natural use of the woman” is a phrase that was used by secular Roman writers, so we know what it meant: penis/vagina sex with the man on top. A woman dominating was unnatural. A man using a woman in a way that could not result in pregnancy was unnatural. So no anal/oral sex. For the first three centuries, this verse was interpreted to forbid noncoital, nonprocreative forms of sex between heterosexual couples (see Bible, Gender, Sexuality by James V. Brownson, p. 225).
Some couples today enjoy oral sex (either giving or receiving, or both). In Paul’s day, oral sex was considered “unnatural” because children could not be conceived. That doesn’t make it wrong. But to the Romans, it was unacceptable. Paul used as one of several arguments to make his point. He made himself all things to all men (1 Corinthians 9:19–22) by using arguments his audience could relate to.
Application to Today
When we take in the fact that the context of Romans 1 is idolatry, we can easily see how rejecting God and turning to various “idols” (sex, money, entertainment, etc.) could very easily result in further depravity. That is precisely the argument He was making. Paul used examples that not only good Jewish Christians could relate to, but also that Roman Christians would instinctively understand and relate to as well. He appealed to what was considered shameful in his day. He set up the argument in chapter 1 that the Gentiles are sinners. Paul continued by proving in Romans 2 that the Jews are sinners, too. He culminated his argument in chapter three with, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, NIV). He was not trying to teach what is sinful or not; he was appealing to what they already believed to be sinful.
To take what Paul wrote to the first-century church and apply it to gay marriage today is anachronistic. To say that it unequivocally condemns lesbian sex is disingenuous; maybe it does, but likely it doesn’t. And anyone who tells you for sure that it does is being dishonest (even if unintentionally). This text is not talking about two people committed to a life-long, covenant, self-sacrificing marriage to another. It is talking about lust-driven affairs between men who are most likely married to women. They are not gay, just exploring more exotic forms of sex.
Therefore, I do not believe that the Bible—at least, not Romans 1—forbids same sex within marriage. Outside of covenant marriage, sure, but not within it. It may not condone it, but it does not condemn it. And my understanding of the other verses that speak of homoerotic behavior leads me to similar conclusions. Stay tuned for my exposition of them in the future.
Recommended books for further study:
- The Bible and LGBTQ Adventists by Alicia Johnston
- Bible, Gender, Sexuality by James Brownson
- Walking the Bridgeless Canyon by Kathy Baldock
- God and the Gay Christian by Mathew Vines
- Unclobber by Colby Martin
- Torn by Justin Lee
- For a more thorough understand of honor and shame, I recommend the book Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien. ↩︎
- Much scholarship has been done on this topic, and because I don’t intend to be exhaustive, I will heavily summarize what I have learned. If you want to understand this better, please see the list of recommended books at the bottom of this post for more in-depth analysis. But for now, let’s look at the big picture of Roman culture that I have gleaned from these books. Also note that rarely will I mention what I learned from a given book; some were audiobooks and I just don’t have sources. I recommend you read them all. ↩︎
- For further reading on the subject of “nature” as used by Paul in Romans 1, see the following: https://www.gaymarriageandthebible.com/unnatural-acts-in-romans-1
https://blog.smu.edu/ot8317/2023/01/13/the-nature-of-unnatural-sex-romans-126b-27/ ↩︎
