MENTION OF HOMOSEXUALITY IN HISTORY
The writers of Leviticus first expressed this abhorrence when they wrote: ‘If a man lies with a man as with a woman, both of them shall have committed an abomination: they shall be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.’ It should be pointed out that in the same chapter, death was the penalty if you cursed your father or mother, if you committed adultery, if you fornicated with your father’s wife or with your daughter-in-law.
Jesus does not mention homosexuality, either to condemn or to condone. Paul does. Writing to the Corinthians, a people notorious for their depravity, he says, ‘neither adulterers, nor fornicators, nor idolators, nor homosexuals (whether active or passive), nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers will possess the Kingdom of God’ (1 Cor. 6: 9-10). Later, writing in Rome, which was also considered a depraved city, Paul, in condemning idolatry, argued that those who persisted in worshipping idols would be abandoned by God and would, therefore, ‘take up dishonourable passions’ as divine retribution for their sin. Women would ‘exchange natural relations for unnatural’; and men would, after ‘giving up natural relations with women, burn with passion for one another’; and would commit ’shameless acts with each other . . .’ Continuing, Paul says that those who return to idolatry will ‘break all the rules of conduct’. They will be ‘filled with every kind of injustice, mischief, rapacity and malice’; they will be
‘one mass of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery and malevolence . . .’ (Rom. 1:18; 1:22-8).
*288/16/1*
