Why is being homosexual a sin?

Okay. Hello. Hello. Welcome everybody to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino and I'm your host. And today I'm honored to welcome a new guest, Dr. Tim Yontz. We didn't go over your bio, but I did bring up one of your Standing for Freedom intros.

And according to the internet, you are an adjunct professor at Liberty University. You teach courses in ethics, theology, apologetics, and worldview. You have a master's of divinity from Liberty Baptist Theology Seminary and a PhD in theology studies on Christian ethics.

I literally had to take a breath. This is so many credentials from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. So you have a lot of specialties and you also are a chaplain. You also served as a chaplain assistant for the US Army National Guard.

You're a writer, you're a contributor, and you're also a podcast host, which is how we got connected through Psych and Theo because Sam Landa reached out to me and came on to my lives. And he's actually going to be on a podcast episode coming up, but glad to be.

Connected, Tim. Dr. Tim Yontz. Yeah. It's great to be here. Yeah. The brand new baby podcast called Psych and Theo, me and Sam tackling cultural issues from the perspective of psychology and theology together.

So I'm the theologian. He's the professional mental health or mental health professional, I should say. And so we tackle issues together from those two angles. So we.

Cover all kinds of different issues. That's amazing. I sometimes wish we had that in church of like somebody to be like, this is your attachment theory to Jesus. And this is what scripture says about it.

Like that would be phenomenal. Yeah, I mean, well, that's one of.

The one of the episode topics that we we did early on was we we ask a question, is it a sin to go to therapy? Because a lot of people think that the only form of counseling that's right is, quote, unquote, biblical counseling, or what's called newthetic counseling.

And Sam can talk about that when he comes on and does his episode. I'm sure he'll get into that a little bit. Oh, yeah. But yeah, we tackle that issue. Because a lot of Christians, there's a lot of misunderstanding about what counseling is and what mental health is.

Some people tend to over spiritualize it all. And some people tend to just ignore the spiritual completely. And so absolutely, we ignore neither. We cover all the bases. Yeah. So when did you guys start that?

Our first episode released in the spring, I think we're up to like 20 or 21 episodes now. And we try to release once a week. We're taking a little break right now just because of our schedules not lining up.

We've both been doing a lot of traveling. But we're about to start season two coming up. And season two is starting with a bang. We're going to be blowing up the myth of the alpha male. So we released that in.

One of the episodes. And I was like, Where is that? Where is that coming? It's coming? Yeah,.

We're going to take on this alpha beta paradigm that the manosphere says men have to be an alpha and no one wants to be a beta. No one wants to be a beta whatsoever. You can't be a beta. That's the worst thing ever.

So we're just going to blow up that paradigm. And then we actually are interviewing some other men. And we're calling this gentle, dangerous men, men who model what it means to live for Christ, but are quite dangerous in themselves.

And so it's a series.

Of interviews that we're doing on that topic. Or is it just random guys off the street you're.

Pulling in? Or like specific? Yeah, we see it. Hey, you want to be in it on the podcast? It's like Dumb and Dumber. You've seen Dumb and Dumber when they're driving down the road. It's like, Hey, there's some people.

Pick them up. I can't wait to hear that. That's going to be a great episode. Yeah. The first two are military veterans. One is an associate dean here at Liberty University where I work. And then another is a personal friend of ours who's a former Marine and involved in politics.

And both those guys are really kind, gentle people. You wouldn't guess that they're deadly killers from the outside. And then another one that I was supposed to talk to him yesterday, but we had to cancel or postpone it.

So I'll get to him later. But he's the founder of a orphan ministry in a country that I won't name because it's a closed country, but he has endured lots of persecution and even threats and assassination attempts on his life.

But his work is adopting hundreds or tens of thousands of orphans off the street and training a lot of them, those who want to be trained in the Bible, and then commissioning them as pastors to go out and plant churches as well.

So that's been his lifelong ministry. So he's a gentle, he's a giant, but he is quite dangerous in his own respect. So. Yeah. They all sound pretty alpha to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they don't beat their chest.

You know, the, the manosphere says the alpha has to be, you know, like a, like a Chad King. If you know those,.

If you're familiar with those terms. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's exciting. I can't wait to hear.

It when it comes out. When does season two start? Uh, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to punt and defer to Sam on that because Sam is running the technicals. I think we, I should know this. I should be ready for these questions, but I'm not, I'm such an amateur when it comes to podcasting.

So it'll be out in a couple of weeks, I think. Okay. You guys are how to meet to me. I'm like, it's just a really long season. One never ending story. It just keeps going on. I think we're on episode 25.

It's like grazing at me. Like it's just go in and go in like 15 seasons or something. Exactly. Yeah. But it's episodes. It's just so long. This topic is super sensitive. So I just want to come out of the gate right away and talk about it in a sensitive matter that it's probably not safe for younger ears.

If you do listen to this podcast with like, as a family with children around, we're going to be talking about some pretty graphic Bible verses and just more sensitive topics on the topic of same sex, same sex attraction and homosexuality from the biblical perspective.

Um, but I think Tim, you did a really good job in the episode at psych and Theo, when you talked about this, that you're not trying to talk about this in a judgmental or a negative way. You're simply just reflecting on the idea of homosexuality and what the Bible says about it.

And in no way, shape or form, is this supposed to be a shameful or a finger pointing episode.

Of who is right and who is wrong? Yeah. You know, when Sam and I were dealing with that subject, one thing that's really important, uh, and people, I think everyone needs to put this into practice, but it's something that was ingrained in me going through my studies in apologetics, which is a defense of the Christian faith, any sort of philosophy classes you're, you're trained to steal man, the other argument.

So that way you're not the opposite of that as a straw man, where you're setting up a weak version of your opponent's argument. And so you can easily knock it down and maybe sell some books, but you can easily get exposed.

If someone comes along and says, Hey, that's not what we actually believe. And you are misrepresenting our argument. So you want to do the opposite of that. And you want to steal man, another your opponent's argument.

So that way you present them in the strongest, best, and most charitable light possible, and then refute that in a way that's professional, factual, and that doesn't, you know, alienate them. You know, we can get into some of the issues of like, is, is it hateful just to disagree with someone?

You know, that's, that comes up in this, in this topic a lot, but I would say, no, you're like, we don't, we shouldn't be conflating disagreement with hate. Those are two different things, but yeah, we can disagree respectfully and be firm in our positions and be informed, but it's important to be calm, cool, measured when we do.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm not going to lie. I'm kind.

Of scared to talk about this topic, but with somebody who is so experienced and eloquent in the topic, of course we had to have the conversation. I'm not going to gerrymander around different scriptures in the Bible just because some are more sensitive than others.

I don't think the Bible is really here to keep us content. Yeah. Gerrymandering. That's a good word. Thank you. Hot topic these days. Okay. So getting into it. I mean, we were talking so much before this episode and I feel like I was just meant to get you to talk about the meat of it, but is there a way that you like to preface this topic?

Because I have tons of questions. I think that I'm going into this with being a part of this world and unsure how to love my friends that, you know, support same sex, same sex attraction who might be homosexual.

Obviously I love them. Obviously I want what's best for them, but I also want to abide in the Bible. I want to be set apart. So am I wrong? How do I love them? I don't want them to be wrong, but I also want us all to be encouraged.

But I also, I I'm smiling, you know, like, how do you go about this?

So this is the way I frame it to my students. And what I like to do with my students is I like to give them contemporary stories or news, news stories, anything that's happening in their world to say, Hey, look, you're going to be dealing with this.

And so you need to be ready. You know, our culture is shifting. The reason we're doing episodes on LGBT type issues is because our culture is moving in such a way that these are becoming celebratory in our culture.

You notice that we, we don't typically talk like in podcasts and Christian conferences or whatever. We're not dedicating a lot of time to alcoholism or drug addiction. Like, is it wrong to be addicted to drugs?

Or is it wrong to be an alcoholic? We kind of know those, those are destructive to us. Our culture is celebrating this form of sexuality as good. It's calling it good. It's calling it brave and courageous and virtuous and things like that.

And so because the culture has shifted, we now must address what the culture is saying as Christians, because we're called to be salt and light in the culture. So we need to figure out how to do that in a way that is judicious and prudent.

I think there's a lot of, you know, trauma embedded within that community. And I think that trauma is a very complicated topic and, you know, it's hard to control yourself when you feel hurt or abused or anything.

But I think I'm more so curious when it's in the Bible, it feels like homosexuality. Like, why does it feel worse than sex before marriage? Like why maybe biblically, we are in church and we're like, don't have sex before marriage.

But if you're gay, you're like, not even allowed in the front doors. It feels, I'm not saying that's the rule. I'm just saying we've heard of it. We've had a friend that happened to, they feel unwelcome.

But I would say a lot of people have had sex before marriage and they still go to church. They still make friends. They still find a place. So is there a biblical basis for that? Sort of, you know,.

Yes and no. There's the way that some Christians talk about this, I think lacks clarity. And so I think maybe we can get into this, into the episode, how all sin is sin. All sin alienates us from God, from lying to all the way to murder and everything in between.

All sin separates us from God. However, the Bible does treat some forms of sin in a different way because of either because of how they start or because of the consequences that follow from them, even the natural consequences.

So like, you know, like here's an example, like let's say a young person who's kind of being dishonest and they're being kind of an unruly young person, you know, you're supposed to discipline them. It's kind of, there's a known, that's a typical thing for teenagers to kind of be that way.

But something like murder, okay, that's a much more severe thing that the Bible speaks of because there's serious moral violations there and serious consequences that follow from that. Right. Yeah. So there seems to be in scripture scale where someone can slide and get into worse and worse forms of sin to the point where it completely destroys their life.

I mean, James talks about this, that there's sins that lead to death and destruction and that we need to turn our brothers and sisters away from those things. Yeah. So that's.

A good way to look at it. Yeah. So would you say then with sex before marriage, the sliding is single motherhood and a child, like that's kind of the next step versus with same-sex attraction, it could become more perverse versus.

Is that what you're trying to say here? Okay. Yeah.

With the difference between something like heterosexual relations before marriage versus something like homosexuality, the Bible seems to treat them both pretty harshly in the sense that they're both really severe sins.

In general, sexual sin throughout the Bible is a pretty serious matter because it's part of like sex is a really, really important part of human nature. And it helps, it's reserved for the marriage covenant between the man and the woman.

And we usually start this subject is before we talk about what's wrong, we need to look at what the Bible says is right or the picture of sexuality that the Bible paints. Let's get into it. Yeah. Yeah.

But in terms of which of those sins is worse, I think that the scriptures would say that both of them are pretty severe that if we're wondering which one is worse, we're probably starting out with the wrong question.

I'm not saying you're starting out with the wrong question, but if Christians are like, well, that one's worse than this one, they're both pretty severe.

Sins. That's really interesting. Okay. Yeah. Then what does the Bible say is good then?

Let's get into that. Yeah. So typically on this subject, if we're talking with Christians and there's some Christians who they love the Lord, but they are maybe wondering, does the Bible actually prohibit same sex romantic relationships as we see in our culture today?

Does the Bible actually call that sin? So some Christians are really wondering that they hear what seemed like persuasive arguments to that effect. So we need to deal with how does the Bible say that this is actually sin?

Okay. What's helpful first is to see what the Bible says about sex in general, how the Bible portrays and frames the sexual relationship between human beings. And universally throughout the scriptures, from beginning to end, sex is portrayed as a loving physical union between a man and a woman in marriage.

It's a heterosexual union between a man and a woman. I won't get into the polygamy issue because there's instances of polygamy in the scriptures. We don't have to get into that issue. But at the bare minimum, if we're just making a minimum case, the Bible reserves sex for the heterosexual marriage union between the man and woman.

And marriage, the reasons in marriage is because marriage is a covenant and a commitment that is supposed to model God's relationship to humanity. And as we see in the New Testament, Christ's relationship to his church.

So there's this imagery going on in scripture where as in heaven, so on earth. The things in earth are supposed to mirror the things in heaven. And marriage is one of those pictures of the man and the woman mirror Christ and his church on earth.

But from the beginning, and Jesus says this, from the beginning in Genesis 1 and 2, a man leaves his father and his mother and is joined to his wife. And the two of them become one. And that is the picture that we see throughout scripture.

So anything sexual relationship outside of that is considered sin. It's considered outside of what the Bible would say is good. That includes heterosexual relationships outside of marriage. That includes bestiality.

It includes homosexuality. That includes lust and pornography. It includes OnlyFans. You know, that's a whole other topic that's come up in our culture now. Anything like that, any form of sexuality outside of the marriage union is,.

The Bible says is wrong, and we're not supposed to do it. Okay, so it kind of isolates. It's not just about homosexuality. It's really just the marriage covenant. And that's where you end and where you begin.

And there's not really anything else that you need to focus on. But I was curious, I mean, if we're looking at what's natural, and I think, you know, what's natural is a man and a reproductive organs are literally made for each other.

What can we do about, like instances of like homosexuality and like animals, you know, where we see it, like in the natural world that isn't influenced by culture, or whatever it might be? Is that something where we're like, look, God was actually lying?

And is that something where it's just like, that's a completely set of different set of rules. And we can't apply that to the human nature. Yeah, I would say that's.

Exactly what you just said there. It's a non sequitur, which means it doesn't follow. If someone points to the animal kingdom and says, look, animals do this, therefore it's okay for humans. That's a non sequitur.

It's called in the ethics world, we call this the naturalistic fallacy, because it's pointing to nature and saying, something is this way, therefore ought to be. It's called the is-ought fallacy or the naturalistic fallacy.

So it's saying something is this way, therefore it ought to be this way. But we can see what's wrong there, because there's all kinds of things that happen in nature that ought not to be. In the animal kingdom, there's predation in nature.

Animals prey on one another, they kill one another. Animals sexually abuse one another. And we would say, well, we probably shouldn't do that. So there's all kinds of things that animals do that we would not apply to ourselves.

We have, at least at the bare minimum, we have moral inclinations and intuitions that lead us to think these things are wrong. Sexual abuse is wrong. Sexual coercion is wrong. Animals don't seem to mind when they do those things.

Murder is wrong, just killing wantonly. Cannibalism, animals eat each other. So there's all kinds of things that happen in nature that we do not apply to ourselves. Now, someone might say, well, it's just evolutionary biology and evolutionary ethics.

We don't have to get into refuting evolutionary psychology, I should say, and morality. But that's something that in the ethics world we deal with. In the Christian apologetics world, where does morality come from?

But at the bare minimum, if someone is making a case saying, look at nature, there's same sex relationships in nature. Therefore, we're natural beings too. Why can't we have it this way? Well, that's a non sequitur.

That's not a valid argument on its face. Okay, thanks for addressing.

That. Getting back to the Bible, you kind of mentioned that the biblical depiction of a marriage is two people that are loving. And I would argue that a lot of people today who are in same sex relationships love each other.

They're happy. They're gentle with one another. Is there a difference between how same sex relationships and marriages, how they are depicted today and what people are defending passionately because they love their husband or wife?

Is that the same case as it was biblically? Was it just written at a different time and it was a different culture? I don't know. Is it apples to apples is what I'm saying.

That's the key objection that you're bringing up. This is the number one way that, let's just say like a pro LGBT position, or maybe I'll say that a gay Christian position would be, because there are organizations that claim to be Christian and pro LGBT or gay, like gay Christians will make these kinds of arguments.

But that's the number one objection. If I were to argue and say the Bible says this kind of sexual relationship is wrong, they would say, well, it's apples and oranges. You're comparing the Bible's talking about some sort of sexual relationship that's not equivalent to what we see in our culture today.

So what I have to do now, again, to steel man the argument is to address that specific argument head on. And we need to look at the background literature in the Bible to really figure out is the same sex relationships that the Bible is addressing.

Are they really that different than what the culture is celebrating today? And I would say, no, they're not actually that different. There are different forms of the Bible addresses, but what's included in that are the romantic relationships between same sex couples even today.

Let's get into it. I mean, I feel like in Genesis, we kind of see it right off the bat as far as like as early as Sodom and Gomorrah. And with the angels that tried, you know, having lots of children and that are his guests, sorry, his the angels that visited him.

But even I was listening to your episode with Theo and Syke, and you guys talk about the defilin. So I'm really, I'm really eager to jump into the scripture here, starting chronologically in Genesis. So what scripture do you see that kind of supports that biblically, the context of same sex relationships is very different from what we see today.

And how there's, I guess, harm in it. Yeah. Well, podcast rule.

Number one, if you mentioned Nephilim, you're going to get a 20 bump in your viewership. The SEO goes off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, just put it in the description title, like Nephilim, question mark, and you'll get.

All right. So yeah, chronologically, I want to open up by saying I'm not a Hebrew scholar. I'm a philosopher and an ethicist by training. But as my teachers taught me, ethicists, we have to be versant in a lot of different subjects.

And we have to sometimes rely on guys who are deeper authorities on those subjects that we are. But we have to be really versant in a lot of different things. So I'll say that by saying if there's a Hebrew scholar, or a Greek scholar who's listening, they're going to know a little bit more about Greek syntax or Hebrew root words than I would.

But I might know more about this topic than they do. So, okay. So we'll just leave it at that. So as we walk through Genesis, I think it's important for our readers to, our readers, our listeners to remember that Genesis, as a conservative evangelical, I take the view that Genesis was written by a single author, maybe with later editors kind of tidying things up.

But I take the view that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. That's not a controversial view. Conservative evangelical scholars hold that view, and it can be defended. With that in mind, then it does help to understand the connection between the stories in Genesis, the law in Leviticus, and in Deuteronomy, and then how that later connects to the other stories in the Bible that talk about these kinds of sexual issues.

So right away, chronologically, Genesis 1 and 2 opens up, man and woman are created. That's the first marriage union. That's the famous passage where it says, a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

And they become the parents of all living human beings. We see the first instance of a violation of the sexual, of that sexual boundary in Genesis. Now, I take the supernatural view of Genesis 6. So here's the Nephilim subject.

What do you mean by supernatural? Like not literal?

No, so there's a natural view of Genesis 6, which is sometimes called the Sethite view. That the sons of God in Genesis 6 refer to the line of Seth and the daughters of men refer to the line of Cain. And so the sin there was an ungodly mixing of righteous people and unrighteous people, sort of like being unequally yoked together.

I don't think that makes much sense, given the context. There's a scholar by the name of Michael Heiser. He's passed away now, but he's credited with really putting forward a really good defense of the supernatural view, which is that the sons of God in Genesis 6, 1 through 4 are angelic beings that break.

They cross over and they transgress a boundary and engage in some sort of sexual relationship with human women. And from that come the Nephilim in some way. Now, there's some views of like, were they already fallen angels that possessed human men and then they copulated with women and that's how it happened?

Or did these angels take on corporeal form, like actual body form, and do this? There's some theories about that, but that's the first instance of the violation of the sexual boundary. Before that, you see some instances like, I think it's Lemmick.

One of the sons of Cain takes two wives. So you see that's the first instance of polygamy that occurs. So Genesis 6 is the first kind of real serious sexual violation, and that's a.

Prelude to the Flood. After the Flood... Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. When you're talking about like the first sexual violation, maybe like, was there not homosexuality? You're just saying just like the open...

What's recorded, yeah. Before that, there's no mention of like a serious like transgression, sexual transgression. Oh, just the sexual transgression. It's just sex openly. Well, I wouldn't say that. It's not.

Genesis 1 through 5 isn't addressing.

The sexual issues yet. I see. Okay, so Genesis... I see. So it's just saying this is the first time that inappropriate unions between beings, because it's from angels that crossed over, versus.

The same species. Yeah, yeah. Okay. At least that's the first... It's the first mention, like the first.

Problem, okay, in the story, let's say. That makes it way less like clickbaity, in my opinion. I feel like whenever I like see about the Nephilim online, it's like giants that are like ravaging women, and it's like, that's not at all what you just said.

Well, actually, that follows. The Nephilim.

Are the... I should have kept going. So the Nephilim, in the supernatural view, the Nephilim are the offspring of this union. Oh, okay. And they are... The scriptures call them, they were the mighty men of renown.

And so these were these mythical or ancient guys who were basically destroying the earth. But the scriptures don't... What's the word I'm looking for? They don't exonerate human beings from this. This rebellion that takes place is a rebellion of both human and angelic rebellion.

So because God says in Genesis 6, 5, all human flesh is corrupted in this. But Noah, Genesis 6, 8, but Noah finds grace in the eyes of the Lord. So it was a pretty bad situation. So anytime you see like an angelic rebellion in scripture, there's always a human side to it as well.

So humans are not exonerated from... We can't just blame everything on the devil, basically. We're guilty too of these things. So anyway, I digress. But it's important to kind of keep this in mind, keep that story in mind, because later on after the flood, Ham, he does something very bad to his father, Noah.

The passage says he uncovers Noah's nakedness.

And that could... That verse always confused me. I was like, what's the big deal? Aren't they related? What's wrong with seeing your brother or dad undressed?

Yeah. So it's a Hebrew euphemism. Uncovering one's nakedness is a euphemism. Now there's two prominent theories to that passage. One theory is that Ham, he basically has incestuous relationships with his mother.

And that's where Cain, his son Cain, or Cainan comes from. And that's why Noah curses Cainan. Or the other one, the other prominent theory is that Ham actually, because Noah's passed out drunk, and Ham actually has...

He basically sexually abuses his own father. And you might be wondering, why would someone do that? Well, this is something that in the ancient Near East cultures, to do something like that would be basically to exert dominance and to say, I'm now the one in charge.

Yeah. The scriptures don't shy away from these things. They speak in euphemisms, but they're painting a picture that's, this is how bad things get at times. We know the story of Lot and his daughters after Sodom and Gomorrah.

These things can happen. The scriptures don't ignore them. So Ham does something really wrong. And so I think the stronger theory is that Ham actually.

Sexually abuses Noah because... Versus just seeing him naked? It sounds like that's the only.

Solution if that's a Hebrew euphemism. Well, it's either he sexually abuses his father, or he has some sort of relationships with his own mother. It basically takes Noah's wife. So he's exerting some sort of dominance over Noah.

Because again, Noah has three sons, and Ham wants to be in charge. So that's what part of Ham's curse and the curse of Cainan is that he will serve the other brothers. So he's going to be the lowest. Yeah.

I mean, if there's only like.

Five people left on earth, I can imagine the stakes are pretty high. Yeah. So I think the.

Stronger theory is that he actually does abuse Noah because the other two sons are mortified by what's happened. And they cover over their father. They put a blanket over him and cover him up and kind of take care of him until he wakes up and realizes what happened.

But yeah, it's a pretty dark story. So fast forwarding, once we get the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and that's the really famous proof text that people will point to for homosexuality. So we've come full circle now.

Okay. Yeah. And we're like, what are we, 35 minutes in? We're already just getting started. I'm sorry. I'm a teacher and I'm long-winded. So when you get to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the story goes that three angels or divine beings come and visit Abraham.

One of them is Yahweh in bodily form. The other two are angels in bodily form. Yahweh sends those two angels on ahead to go to Sodom and Gomorrah, and he's going to judge the city. Once they get to the city, they are going to sleep in the middle of the city.

And they know Lot is there, Abraham's nephew. Lot sees them and he recognizes them as they're coming into the city. He knows that they're, and so he says, you can't stay in the middle of the city. This is too dangerous.

Come stay with me in my house. And the story goes that the men of Sodom, they come to Lot's house and they say, Hey, who are these two guys with you? Who are these two men? So that is kind of a clue that these angels are appearing like men.

They see them as men. That's like, bring them out here so we can know them. And that's another euphemism for know them sexually. And this seems to be a pretty clear indication of sexual dominance. They were basically going to rape these two angels.

Whether they knew they were angels or not, I don't know. But again, there seems to be some sort of allusion here to Genesis 6 in some way. But Lot's like, don't do.

This detestable thing. I just have a quick question. Like was, I'm just trying to understand the context of it here. Was same sex always a very aggressive, like power dominance type of relationship? Or was like, for me, Sodom and Gomorrah was the type of city where it was like very open and like, kind of like today, like celebratory, enjoying, pleasurable, hedonistic.

Is that the vibe of Sodom and Gomorrah? Or was it like, I only had a same sex relation in the.

Instance of putting dominance on another? So this is where, I'm going to summarize, but I will defer to my Hebrew scholar brothers on this one. They're ancient Near East scholars. But essentially, it wasn't like the relationships we would think of today, because it was a shameful thing for a man to take on the quote unquote feminine role.

If you know what I mean. It was. It wasn't accepted in that society at that time. Yeah, it was like, it was very detestable and gross. Interesting. They had terms for people like that. Now, there were, even in like Syrian culture, there were people that performed that role in these sort of relationships, but it was not seen as something honorable.

Or basically, you didn't want to be that thing. Yeah, it was.

Something that they like served as, but it wasn't like an openly proud position in the relationship.

Yeah, yeah. I see. And in the Hebrew world, I guess this is true in the ancient Near East as well, to treat a man as though he is a woman was a bad thing. Yeah. The scriptures paint this as, so in the story of Lot and these two angels, Lot offers up his daughters.

Look at that through 21st century eyes. We're like, how could you do that? Yeah. But in the moral calculus of Lot in ancient Near East, all sexual violence was wrong to the people of God. The scriptures don't paint sexual violence in any way as good, but in Lot's moral calculus, it was worse for them to treat men as women.

To commit sexual violence in that way to a man, to basically, I'm sorry for the graphic language, but to penetrate, for one man to penetrate, sexually penetrate another man, to treat him as though he were a woman was, the scriptures call that detestable thing.

So Lot was essentially saying, look, here's two women. If you're going to do this, here's two women. I see. Yeah. That's the calculus that's going on. It's the lesser of two evils. Yeah. Essentially the lesser of two evils is what Lot is trying to get them to see.

But they say, no, give us these two guys. And then it turns into this whole struggle and then angels get

So it wasn't like a lust type of thing. It was a power struggle type of thing.

It seemed to be common in Sodom and Gomorrah to do this to strangers that would come into the town. So what I want to caution my conservative evangelical brothers and sisters against is just pointing to Sodom and Gomorrah as though that's proof that homosexuality is seen as sin in the scriptures.

It certainly is suggesting that, but we need more to our argument than just if you know what I mean. Because the pro-LGBT side will point to that story and say, well, that's sexual violence. Okay. That's not the same thing as a loving relationship.

And they are right in a sense. So we need to add some things to our argument, not just the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

That was the conclusion I was drawing. So thanks for pointing that out. Yeah.