challenge.html

Here's an article published by the UFMCC which adresses Homosexuality and the bible teaching, posted on two Christian bible forums, and debated between a Homosexual Minister and Theo Book.

For those of you who do not know Hebrew and Greek, just skip over those issues, but at least acknowledge that when your antagonist DOES reference the original language, SOMEONE has to meet them with knowledge sufficient to correct misrepresentations of what it says.

UFMCC HOMOSEXUAL POSITION ON SCRIPTURAL TEACHINGS: Many people have been taught that the Bible condemns homosexuality. Metropolitan Community Church believes that this is not the truth. We believe that gay and lesbian people are completely loved and accepted by God. How can there be such a difference between parts of the Christian Church over this issue?

Largely because unproven ideas have been taught for centuries about some Scripture passages. In recent times, scholars have finally begun to study these passages in depth, with the support of historical and archaeological information about biblical times.

There is no factual support for an anti-gay interpretation of Scripture, the facts are only quickly summarized here. Such brief statements cannot do justice to an interpretation of Scripture. There is a continuing and searching endeavour. But this summary is a starting place. It is an assurance that clear authority points to acceptance of gay and lesbian Christians.

Deuteronomy 23:17-18; These verses have been applied to homosexual behaviour because of a mistranslation of the Hebrew. The King James Version reads "whore" and "sodomite." The Hebrew actually uses the same noun in its masculine and feminine forms, the words are best translated "temple (or cult) prostitute."

These verses have nothing directly to do with homosexual behaviour. Cult prostitution flourished throughout the ancient world and this fact sheds important light on the other passages in this brochure. Fertility cult worship involved sexual activity in the temple, often with a sacred prostitute who was like a priest or priestess. This sacred sexual activity was believed to encourage the god(s) to bestow fertility on the earth and its creatures.

Genesis 19:4-11 The sin of Sodom is clearly explained in Ezekiel 16:49-50. It was not homosexual behaviour, but for its deep and general sinfulness, the men in the story may have intended sexual abuse of the divine visitors (the translation of the verb "know" here is not clear). The issue is not that the objects may have been homosexual but that it was to be abuse. This was in character with the whole of their uncaring, greedy and Godless lives.

Leviticus 18:22; 20:13-14 These verses are found in the "Holiness Code" which emphasized to the Israelites that they were to be set apart to God. The context is prohibition of practices found in the nearby fertility cult of Molech.

"Abomination" is a translation of the Hebrew word which specifically means idolatrous practices (not necessarily sexual). The condemnation here is a reference to the fertility worship which the Israelites were to shun. The seriousness of this idolatry in Hebrew eyes was compounded by the belief that "to lie with a man as with a woman" violated the dignity of the male sex. Women were property but men were the direct image of God. To treat a man the way a woman was treated was to reduce him to property and, thereby, to violate the image of God. The issue was idolatrous activity which failed to acknowledge God's creation.

1 Cor 6:9 and 1Tim 1:10 - At issue are two words: malakee (found only in 1Corinthians) and Arsenokeeteh, which is in both verses. Tradition assumes a homosexual meaning of the words. Actual study reveals that in its use there, malakee means "morally weak" or, perhaps, "immoral persons" - (The translation "effeminate" in the King James Version was an archaic one and, in any case, did not imply homosexuality in Greek--as it does not today.)

Arsenokeeteh means to refer directly to cult prostitution, again. Such practices were common both in Corinth and Ephesus (where Timothy was). It clearly refers, in this use and later uses in other writings, to prostitutes who engaged in both homosexual and heterosexual cult practice. Neither of these words can possible be translated to mean "homosexual" or any similar distortion of their meaning.

Rom 1:26-27 This is the only passage in Scripture which, apparently, talks about homosexual behaviour among women as well as men. The dangerous, traditional interpretation come from failure to relate it to the whole chapter. Paul talks about idolatrous people who put things or concerns before their devotion to God. As an example, he refers to fertility cult worship prevalent in Rome. The homosexual activity to which he refers is idolatrous. He implies that all of the cult worshippers engaged in it. (The interpretation that he is writing about homosexual behaviour in general would force this to say that all idolatrous people become homosexual- -an obviously spurious interpretation.) The final sentence referring to their just reward is a reference to the venereal disease which was epidemic among such cults. This specific reference to fertility cult worship cannot be construed to condemn homosexual behaviour in general.

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Theo Book