Does the Bible condemn homosexuality itself, or only when it is tied to other sins like temple prostitution or pederasty?
A viewer sends a video of a priest who argues that sodomy is always connected to some other sin in the Bible, so that Scripture does not condemn homosexuality as such but only the surrounding sins; the viewer asks Robert to evaluate this.
Answer
The priest wants to confine the condemnation to a narrow slice of society so that homosexuality itself is not really the concern, but he cannot prove that. Take 1 Corinthians 6:9, where the key words are malakoi and arsenokoitai. He says the Greek culture involved older men paying teenage boys, so Paul is only condemning that, but the text does not say that; it is only what he thinks. The word arsenokoitai comes from arsen, meaning male, and the root behind our word 'coitus,' meaning intercourse, so it means male intercourse, with no limitation to age; any males engaging in sexual intercourse are covered. Malakoi, translated 'effeminate,' means a male taking on a feminine role, degrading the masculinity God gave him. He also appeals to the Hebrew word qadesh, translated 'sodomite,' claiming it only means a temple prostitute, but there is simply a history behind qadesh and qadosh, the word for 'holy,' since without the later vowel pointing the consonants look alike. And he appeals to Ezekiel 16, where Sodom is described as fat, complacent, and neglecting the poor, to say sodomy is really about those sins; but Ezekiel says all of that led her to commit her abominations, and abomination is the key word for the sodomy itself. At each turn he twists the definition or the context, but there is no excuse for homosexuality; it is not one of the lesser sins, and Scripture says it is a sin, which is why Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.