Garbage In, Gospel Out: Was the Apostle Pl Gay?

Contents:

• WAS THE APOSTLE PL GAY?
• SOME FACTS SUGGT PL WAS GAY
• WAS THE CENTURN REALLY GAY AND IF SO, WHY DID PL SPEAK AGAST HOMOSEXUALY?

WAS THE APOSTLE PL GAY?

The persons Pl nmns are maniftly not homosexual: what he rogat are homosexual acts mted by apparently heterosexual is not clear that Pl distguished his thoughts or wrgs between gay persons ( the sense of permanent sexual preference) and heterosexuals who simply engaged perdic homosexual behavr. It is fact unlikely that many Jews of his day regnized such a distctn, but is que apparent that--whether or not he was aware of their existence--Pl did not discs gay persons but only homosexual acts mted by heterosexual persons.

Contrary to the hasty claims of the prs, there is no five evince that homosexualy is termed by physlogil factors (see “Jt Dog What Com Naturally, ” Clear Thkg, Sprg, 1997). If Pl did not unrstand genue homosexualy, though, then how n one say he excepted nstutnal homosexuals when he wrote that they “exchanged the natural functn for that which is unnatural”? Wouldn’t Pl warn agast both typ of vlatn--heterosexuals mtg cent acts wh members of the same sex, and homosexuals mtg cent acts wh members of the oppose sex?

” Homosexuals do not abandon natural sir; they abandon natural functns: “For this reason God gave them over to gradg passns; for their women exchanged the natural functn for that which is unnatural, and the same way also the men abandoned the natural functn of the woman and burned their sire toward one another...

SOME FACTS SUGGT PL WAS GAY

Not only do ancient thors repeatedly e the phrase “para phys” to refer to homosexual activy (not gog agast one’s orientatn), Pl go to great lengths to state that his posn is rooted the creatn narrative of Genis 1-3. Do not be ceived: neher the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexualy (malakoi and arsenokoai), nor thiev, nor the greedy, nor dnkards, nor revilers, nor swdlers will her the kgdom of God.

Unrstandg this, that the law is not laid down for the jt but for the lawls and disobedient, for the ungodly and sners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murrers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexualy (arsenokoai), enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is ntrary to sound doctre. ” It’s a term that nveys actn, which is why the NIV translatn of the word “men who have sex wh men” is preferable to one like the NASB’s which simply reads “homosexuals. Some terpreters, seekg to migate Pl’s harshns, have read the passage [ Romans 1] as nmng not homosexuals generally but only heterosexual men and women who experimented wh homosexualy.

WAS THE CENTURN REALLY GAY AND IF SO, WHY DID PL SPEAK AGAST HOMOSEXUALY?

“Homosexualy this era may have ceased to be merely another practice of personal pleasure and began to be viewed as an sential and central tegory of personal inty, exclive of an anthetil to heterosexual orientatn.

“As a classicist, I have to say that when I read Plato’s Symposium, or when I read the acunts om the early Roman Empire of the practice of homosexualy, then seems to me they knew jt as much about as we do. Once unlocked, the msag not only cease to be hidn but they bee obv, glarg at the rear, who wonrs why such obv meangs had not been seen have suggted that that Pl was plagued by homosexual fears.