What the Bible Actually Says About LGBTQ+ People — A Linguistic, Historical, and Theological Examination

*As always, my posts are not intended to teach, but rather to challenge all to take a deeper, more honest dive. Never take my word for it. Search for yourself. The whole point is to not follow blindly.

For decades, a handful of Bible verses have been wielded as weapons — stripped of their language, severed from their history, and hurled at an entire community of people. The LGBTQ+ population has been condemned, excluded, and in some cases subjected to violence, all in the name of scripture that was never written to say what it has been made to say.

This is not an argument against the Bible. It is an argument for reading it correctly — with the tools its own language demands: Hebrew, Koine Greek, historical context, and an understanding of the ancient cultures in which these texts were written.

What follows is a systematic, text-by-text examination of the passages most commonly cited against LGBTQ+ people, alongside what they actually say, what they were actually addressing, and who is actually responsible for the distortions that followed.

I. The Passages — What They Say and What They Don't

Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13 — The Holiness Code

"Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination."

— Common English translation | Original: Classical Hebrew, 7th–6th century BCE

What the Text Actually Says

These verses appear in what scholars call the Holiness Code — a section of Levitical law written specifically for ancient Israel's ritual purity, not universal moral law for all people across all time. Understanding what the verse says requires understanding what each word actually means in Classical Hebrew.ָ

Zakhar:  Translated as "man," but used broadly in the Hebrew corpus to include males of any age or status — including boys and male slaves. It is not a precise social category.

Mishkevei ishah:  Literally "the beds/ways of a woman" — a phrase referring to the manner in which a woman is used in ritual or for subjugation, particularly in the context of Canaanite temple practices.

Tishkav:  "Lie with" — but frequently in contexts connoting nonconsensual or power-coercive acts, not mutual intimacy.

To'evah:  Almost always translated as "abomination," but the Hebrew word specifically denotes ritual impurity — a violation of ceremonial boundaries, not moral wrongdoing. The same word is used for eating shellfish (Leviticus 11:10–12) and wearing blended fabrics (Deuteronomy 22:11).

This is not a minor technical detail. Christians routinely eat shrimp, wear cotton-polyester blends, and ignore hundreds of Levitical commands without a second thought — because they understand the New Covenant releases believers from the ceremonial law of ancient Israel. The selective enforcement of a single verse from this same ceremonial code, against one group of people, is not theology. It is politics dressed in vestments.

What Leviticus 18:22 most plausibly condemned: the use of male bodies — often enslaved or captive — in Canaanite fertility rituals. It was a prohibition against ritual sexual exploitation, not a commentary on the existence of gay people.

Romans 1:26–27 — Paul's Letter to Rome

"…women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones; men committed shameful acts with other men…"

— Common English translation | Original: Koine Greek, ~57 CE

What the Text Actually Says

Paul is not writing a systematic theology of sexuality. He is constructing a rhetorical argument about the consequences of idolatry — specifically, the abandonment of the God of Israel in favor of Greco-Roman cultic religion, which frequently involved ritual sexual acts.

The Greek is precise in ways that most translations obscure:

μετήλλαξαν τὴν φυσικὴν χρῆσιν / metēllaxan tēn physikēn chrēsin:  "Exchanged natural use" — the word metēllaxan implies deliberate abandonment, a turning away from something one previously possessed. This is not a description of innate orientation; it is a description of cultic ritual adoption.

φυσικήν / physikēn:  "Natural" — but in Stoic Greek philosophy (the intellectual tradition Paul is clearly drawing from), physis did not mean biologically normative. It meant one's authentic telos — one's genuine purpose or role. Physis was individual and relational, not statistical.

χρῆσιν / chrēsin:  "Use" — a word used in both philosophical and political contexts, frequently with connotations of instrumental or ritualistic function.

ἄρσενες ἐν τῇ ὀρέξει αὐτῶν / arsenes en tē orexei autōn:  "Males in their appetite" — orsexei refers to uncontrolled, excessive desire, the kind associated with ritual ecstasy and cultic abandonment. This is not the vocabulary Paul uses for covenant love or mutual relationship.

Paul's argument here is specifically about people who knew God and chose to abandon that relationship for idolatrous ritual. He is not describing gay people who have always been gay, living faithful lives. He is describing religious apostasy expressed through cultic sexual rites — a very particular and very ancient phenomenon that has nothing to do with contemporary same-sex love.

1 Corinthians 6:9 & 1 Timothy 1:10 — The Invented Word

"…nor men who have sex with men…"

— Common English translation | Original: Koine Greek, Corinthians ~53–55 CE; Timothy arguably post-Pauline, ~60–100 CE

What the Text Actually Says

This is perhaps the most egregious case of translation dishonesty in modern Bible history. The English word "homosexual" did not exist in any Bible in any language until 1946, when it was inserted into the Revised Standard Version's rendering of 1 Corinthians 6:9. It replaced two Greek words whose actual meanings are the subject of ongoing scholarly debate — and neither of which refers to what we understand as sexual orientation.

ἀρσενοκοῖται / arsenokoitai:  A compound of arsēn (male) and koitē (bed/lying) — a rare term, possibly coined by Paul himself, most likely referring to men who use others sexually for exploitation or economic gain. Scholars including Robin Scroggs, William Loader, and David Fredrickson widely associate this with pederasty (the exploitation of boys by adult men) or male prostitution in temple contexts.

μαλακοί / malakoi:  Literally "soft ones" — used in Greco-Roman culture to describe men who were considered effeminate, often in the context of those who allowed themselves to be used sexually for money or social favor. It does not refer to sexual orientation.

Neither term describes a gay person in a mutual, loving relationship. Both describe exploitation, power imbalance, and economic coercion. The 1946 RSV translators collapsed these two distinct social categories into one English word that had never appeared in scripture — and in doing so, created a theological framework for anti-gay discrimination that had no basis in the original text.

II. What Jesus Said — and Didn't Say

Jesus never once addressed same-sex relationships. In the four Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — spanning his entire recorded ministry, there is not a single statement about homosexuality, not a single condemnation of gay people, not a single teaching that touches on sexual orientation.

What Jesus did address, repeatedly and with urgency:

Religious hypocrisy:  Matthew 23 is an extended condemnation of religious leaders who weaponize law against the vulnerable while exempting themselves.

Abuse of power:  Luke 11:46 — "Woe to you experts in the law, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them."

Judging others:  Matthew 7:1–5 — "Do not judge, or you too will be judged." The log-and-speck teaching was not metaphorical advice. It was a warning about the arrogance of condemning others.

The Eunuchs — Matthew 19:12

"There are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it."

— Matthew 19:12 | Koine Greek, ~80–90 CE

In the ancient world, the category of "eunuch" (εὐνοῦχος / eunoukhos — literally "keeper of the bed") included not just castrated men, but people who were intersex, gender-nonconforming, or same-sex attracted. They were categorically excluded from most Jewish temple life (see Deuteronomy 23:1).

ἐκ κοιλίας μητρὸς / ek koilias mētros:  "From the mother's womb" — the origin of the phrase "born that way." Jesus is acknowledging that some people's gender identity or sexual nonconformity is innate.

Rather than condemning or excluding these people, Jesus praised them as uniquely positioned for the Kingdom of Heaven. He held up as examples the very people that religious institutions of his day rejected. This was not incidental. It was deliberate, pointed, and counter-cultural.

The Centurion's Servant — Matthew 8 & Luke 7

A Roman centurion comes to Jesus asking him to heal his pais — a Greek word that can mean servant, boy, or in Roman military culture, a younger male companion with whom a relationship of deep personal bond (often physical) was understood.

Jesus does not ask what their relationship is. He does not interrogate the centurion's sexuality. He does not withhold healing pending moral review. He heals the man — and then says, explicitly: "I have not found such great faith even in Israel" (Matthew 8:10). He holds a man whose relationship with another male may have been intimate up as a model of faith for the Jewish crowd around him.

Galatians 3:28 — Paul's Radical Equality

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

— Galatians 3:28 | Koine Greek, ~48–55 CE

This verse dissolves the identity-based hierarchies that religious and social systems depended on. Paul's list of binaries — Jew/Greek, slave/free, male/female — was not exhaustive. It was paradigmatic. He was establishing a principle: in the Body of Christ, the categories used to exclude people from belonging no longer hold.

III. How We Got Here — The History of Distortion

The 1946 Problem

The most pivotal moment in the modern misuse of scripture against LGBTQ+ people was 1946. That year, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible translated arsenokoitai and malakoi — two distinct Greek terms referring to exploitative sexual practices — with a single English word: "homosexual." It was the first time that word appeared in any Bible translation in any language.

The translators who made this decision later acknowledged uncertainty about its accuracy. But the damage was done. A generation of American Christians built entire theological frameworks on a single invented word placed into an ancient text. The RSV became the blueprint for moral panic, and that word became the cornerstone of anti-gay religious campaigns for the rest of the twentieth century.

Colonialism and Cultural Erasure

Long before the 1946 RSV, European colonialism had already been exporting heteronormativity as Christian doctrine. Indigenous cultures across Africa, the Americas, and Oceania had long recognized gender diversity and same-sex relationships as natural parts of human life. Two-spirit people were honored in many Native American nations. Male-male love was present in African cultural and ceremonial traditions. Same-sex relationships appeared throughout the ancient world without systematic condemnation.

Victorian Christianity, obsessed with what it called "purity," treated sexuality as inherently suspect and heterosexual marriage as the only acceptable expression of human intimacy. Missionaries carried this framework into cultures where it did not belong, condemning practices that had existed for centuries and reframing them as sinful perversions that needed to be eradicated. This was not theology. It was cultural imperialism with a Bible held in front of it.

The Moral Majority and Political Weaponization

In the 1950s through 1970s, as civil rights, women's liberation, and LGBTQ+ visibility grew, conservative Christian institutions needed a unifying enemy. Homosexuality was constructed as a threat — to the family, to the nation, to God himself — despite the fact that Jesus never mentioned it.

Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, founded in 1979, was explicit about its strategy: mobilize evangelical Christians as a political force. Anti-gay messaging was central to this effort — not because scripture demanded it, but because fear is an effective organizing tool. The Religious Right used pulpits as political platforms and turned biblical illiteracy into a feature rather than a flaw.

Fringe groups carrying signs reading "God Hates" followed in this tradition — not quoting scripture accurately, but performing hatred for media attention. Their interpretation was rooted in rage, not exegesis. They became the face of a theology that had no actual textual foundation.

The Problem of Secondhand Scripture

Perhaps the most honest explanation for how this happened is the simplest one: most people have never read the Bible carefully. They have heard verses quoted in sermons by pastors who also have not read the original languages, who were trained by institutions with no requirement for Hebrew or Greek, who inherited a tradition of anti-gay teaching and passed it forward without examination.

It is easier to condemn a group of people than to confront actual corruption — the greed, the abuse of power, the cruelty dressed in kindness that Jesus spent his entire ministry targeting. LGBTQ+ people became a scapegoat for communities that could not tolerate honest self-examination.

IV. What the Bible Actually Emphasizes

If one were to tally the topics Jesus addressed by frequency and urgency, the list would look nothing like contemporary American evangelical priorities. The most emphasized themes in the Gospels include:

Care for the poor:  Mentioned more than 2,000 times across the full Bible. Jesus's teaching on the wealthy is consistently demanding and uncomfortable.

Justice for the vulnerable:  The widow, the orphan, the stranger, the prisoner — the people with no institutional power — are the consistent objects of divine concern throughout scripture.

Hypocrisy in religious leadership:  Jesus's harshest words are reserved not for sinners, but for religious leaders who use their authority to burden others while exempting themselves.

Love as the organizing principle:  "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind... and love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matthew 22:37–40).

A theology genuinely rooted in the words of Jesus would look radically different from one preoccupied with the sexuality of others. It would be characterized by relentless care for the marginalized, fierce accountability for the powerful, and a love that does not require earning.

V. Accountability and Repair

The treatment of LGBTQ+ people by much of institutional Christianity has not been a theological position. It has been a historical failure — a failure of linguistic scholarship, of intellectual honesty, and of the most fundamental values the tradition claims to hold.

The verses used to justify exclusion, conversion therapy, family estrangement, workplace discrimination, and violence do not say what they have been made to say. They address ritual purity, cultic idolatry, and sexual exploitation — not the existence of gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people.

Jesus included the excluded. He healed without interrogating. He praised faith wherever he found it. He held up the people his religious community rejected as examples of the Kingdom he was inaugurating.

Accountability begins with honesty: the harm done in the name of these misread texts has been real. It has cost lives. It has destroyed families. It has sent people into decades of shame for existing.

If the tradition that caused this harm is capable of the repentance it preaches, then it must start here — with the text, with the language, with the history, and with the courage to admit that what was passed down as theology was, in many cases, something far less holy.

Sources & Further Reading

Robin Scroggs — The New Testament and Homosexuality (1983)

David Gushee — Changing Our Mind (2014)

Kathy Baldock — Walking the Bridgeless Canyon (2014)

Matthew Vines — God and the Gay Christian (2014)

The 1946 Project — Documentary on RSV translation history

William Loader — The New Testament on Sexuality (2012)

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Ashley Sophia is a model, actress, entrepreneur, and engineer. She applies systems thinking from her engineering background to understanding human behavior and building community pathways to independence — translating analytical expertise into accessible resources for the public.