Bible references to support gay marriage

Revisionist scholars have published several recent books that argue the Bible does not condemn same-sex behavior. In other words, if we can disregard rules like the ban on eating shellfish in Leviticusthen we should be allowed to disobey other prohibitions from the Old Testament.

Today, I have to follow only the latter rule, since the former is no longer needed to protect me. In fact, it would now do me more harm than good. The reason they forbade the Israelites from using certain fabrics or foods, or interacting with bodily fluids, was to keep them ritually distinct from their pagan neighbors.

Bible Verses about Homosexuality

But by the time of the New Covenant, the ceremonial laws were no longer needed to accomplish this goal and so they were repealed Mark First, notice that Leviticus is sandwiched between moral laws and not ceremonial ones. Verse 20 condemns adultery, verse 21 condemns child sacrifice, and verse 23 condemns bestiality.

Second, unlike idolatry, murder, adultery, or breaking the Sabbath, the Bible never prescribes the death penalty for violating the ceremonial laws. For example, Leviticus prescribes exile for someone who becomes unclean by having sex with a menstruating woman; but it prescribes the death penalty for adultery, bestiality, incest, and same-sex behavior, all of which fall under the unchanging moral law.

Boswell claims that the passages in Leviticus refer to sex only in the context of prostitution or pagan temple sacrifices, not consensual and loving same-sex relationships, which he claims were unheard of at the time Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality Also, do we really think that other violations of the law like bestiality or adultery would become acceptable as long as they were done in a non-idolatrous way?

If not, then why think same-sex behavior would be treated any differently? For example, saying an adult is being childish does not mean children are bad or subhuman. It simply means men are not women, and so they should not be treated like women by being sexually penetrated.

Another objection to these passages in Leviticus deals with female-female sex. Vines agrees that if Leviticus were about sexual complementarity and not patriarchy, it would have condemned female-female sexual relations as well But the reason Leviticus does not condemn lesbianism is because the prohibitions in Leviticus 18 were written for a male audience.

Leviticus 18 does not prohibit women from engaging in incest, but the fact that men were prohibited from engaging in this behavior meant that the same rules applied to women as well. Therefore, the prohibition against male same-sex relations would also apply to women. In conclusion, if the author of Leviticus were alive today, he would say that prohibitions on same-sex intercourse apply not just to Jews who were given the Mosaic Law but also to people who can understand the natural law through their moral conscience.

This is a theme St. Romans contains perhaps the most explicit condemnation of same-sex behavior in the Bible. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another.

Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error. Others revisionists say Paul would have believed the ancient notion that everyone could be attracted to the opposite sex, and so same-sex behavior was just a sign of weakness or excess The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd edition, They say that Paul had no experience of people who were attracted only to those of their own sex and could therefore form loving unions bible references to support gay marriage with those people.

If Paul had known of modern homosexuality, they say, he would not have condemned it. But the book of Acts shows that Paul had a deep knowledge of Greco-Roman culture see Acts and It would be astonishing if Paul had been unaware of the examples, in both popular literature and the bustling cities he visited, of monogamous relationships between people with deep-seated same-sex attraction.

The Roman satirist Juvenal even records his contempt for men who married other men in private wedding ceremonies Satires2.