or Why Paul is Anti-Anti-Gay
You find yourself stuck in a conversation you don’t want to be in. You hear some pretty outrageous things about GOD and the Bible and homosexuality and it is upsetting. You’ve already talked about love and how Jesus works with people and doesn’t care about that stuff, but still they persist. So they break out Romans 1.
And you don’t know what to do.
Or perhaps it is a Congressperson praying before a gathering of his associates who plan to block legislation intended to protect LGBTQ persons from discrimination.
Or you read Scripture faithfully and you get to Paul and honestly don’t know what to do with it.
However you come to this, you may be looking for a way to respond. Here’s one.
Romans 1 – Paul as the only (supposed) Christian clobberer
Romans 1:24-27 is one of the favorite passages often referred to as “The Clobber Passages”. The phrase suggesting that one who quotes this passage does so to not only condemn homosexuality but also clobber those who don’t subscribe to the idea that GOD despises people based on sexuality.
On the surface, this passage is pretty pernicious, and a far cry from the Paul who describes in 1 Corinthians that Jesus supports radical equality. It reads:
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen.
For this reason, God gave them up to degrading passions. 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.
This does sound like judgment. To find the first trouble with reading this as an anti-gay tirade, however, we start with all the text that comes before it and after it.
Trouble #1: Context
Before the passage
Beginning in verse 18, Paul describes a people who are wicked because of their separation from GOD, for their abusive behavior toward one another, and for their idolatry. Verses 22-23 read
Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.
The “they” Paul refers to are not homosexuals or LGBTQ persons in committed relationships or exploring their own sexuality in life-affirming ways with one another. He doesn’t speak to this at all! He is speaking of Israel. He is speaking of his people. That they went away from GOD and worshiped other gods in their history. They actually did this. Go read Kings and Chronicles for more on that.
Or perhaps he is speaking more broadly to all of humanity, arguing that it has fallen away from its creation.
These are the “they” Paul speaks to.
After the passage
A similar problem happens immediately after those offending verses in 24-27. Paul begins to list the many ways this “they” or this wider community became abusive to one another. Verses 29-31:
They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious towards parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
Many try to argue that these are the depraved characteristics which follow from being homosexual. This argument is no more an honest reading of these verses than it is of the earlier passage.
LGBTQ persons are not more likely to gossip, slander, or invent evil than anyone else. So these as descriptors of LGBTQ persons as individuals doesn’t work.
What does work and works best is to point out that this better describes the whole of humanity and of Paul’s target: the Jewish audience in Rome. It fits far more to say humanity has been these things; we’ve been destructive and inventors of evil. Not because of those “passions” described in 24-27, but as a consequence of the previous issue: our distance from GOD and our perversion of creation.
Paul condemns the distance of the people from GOD and how that manifests as abuse.
Trouble #2: Creation
Creation
For Paul, the idea that we have perverted creation is our great sin. He is looking at the big picture and the long game. He isn’t into condemning individuals or segments of the population. He focuses instead on what GOD creates and its nature.
Of course, this way of talking about what is natural has often been understood as reinforcing the idea of 1 Man + 1 Woman = Marriage. It does sound a lot like that. Hmmm. But…
What then about the natural orientation of 10% of our population? The very same line of thought which many argue about Paul’s understanding of “natural” coupling (man/woman coupling) would also force us to ask about what we know about nature today.
Ten percent of our population is gay. We find a similar percentage throughout the animal kingdom. To call these naturally occurring elements of creation perversions casts doubt on GOD’s very creation. I dare you to bring that one to Paul and see if that would fly. (Hint: I will shortly.) Keep reading in Romans and you’ll see he makes this same type of argument about the Law in chapter 3.
The first words
Try to reread these verses 24 and 25 without the intention to clobber or without “the gay stuff” in your head. Think of something else. Think of bodybuilding or club sports or even standardized testing when you read:
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen.
Notice that Paul’s focus isn’t the act, but the faith; not only in adhering to ritual purity laws, but the spirit of the Law which orders humanity and gives us a way to praise GOD in hope, faith, and love.
Paul abhors the idolatrous and the abusive. He hates the perversion of our bodies and subordination to our urges. This says as much, if not more, about my addiction to coffee and my neighbor’s inability to park straight in a parking place as it does about our mutual neighbor’s sexuality. And given that they live in a monogamous relationship and are married, these words really then only apply to me and the first neighbor with the big pickup truck.
The second words
The trouble for anyone reading these texts as condemning anyone’s sexuality is that to do so, they have to make significant leaps from one phrase to another and add meaning to it to make their point.
Paul doesn’t say that sex between lesbians is unnatural. It says people traded natural for unnatural and went against their nature. What we know now is that it would be unnatural for a lesbian to have sex with a man. Just as it would be unnatural for a straight man to have sex with any other man. That isn’t how we’re wired. To do that is unnatural to us.
That Paul would even conceive of other ways of coupling or brain wirings is ridiculous. So is ignoring this linguistic leap required to make these words plainly and unequivocally anti-gay.
In other words, all of Paul’s condemnation comes from how we fill in those gaps.
Paul’s deep meaning, however, is found in the words he actually uses. These are the problems he names:
- degrading passions
- exchanging natural for unnatural
- committed shameless acts
Notice that Paul doesn’t spell out which acts are shameless, but I will repeat myself: Paul focuses on belief and faith (the stuff going on inside) way more than on any actions in the particular. What he has frequently condemned throughout has included those very same three ideas: actions which 1) are abusive, 2) reject the goodness of our creation, and 3) negatively affect the spiritual health of another.
Trouble #3: Romans 2
All that may sound complicated or subjective. You might be wondering how to make these arguments on the fly. Or these words may not sound like you. I hear that. You might not have time to go into it, or the energy to parse the language. You do have one more piece, and it is the best one.
The most important trump you hold in any conversation with someone using Romans 1 is to ask them to keep reading. You don’t have to get all the way to Romans 3, with its arguments about faith and works. You get it right at the beginning of the next chapter.
Before we turn the page, however, take note of verse 32:
They know God’s decree, that those who practise such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practise them.
This, of course, is the line used to not only condemn LGBTQ persons but to threaten them and call for their deaths. But that’s not what I hear, or what we should hear when we turn the page. I hear hypocrisy about to be exposed.
Romans 2:1-2:
Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. You say, ‘We know that God’s judgement on those who do such things is in accordance with truth.’
Therefore. Hear that. Therefore you have no excuse.
All this stuff I just said is the reason why you have no excuse to judge someone.
All that anti-gay-bashing and all that about GOD wanting LGBTQ persons dead is fiction. It isn’t proof that you should judge.
“for in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself”
Romans 2 says that the person who condemns someone with Romans 1 condemns themselves. That all the evil described in Romans 1 is born in our judgment of another. We become that evil. It is not that they are evil, but that we become the “they.”
Of course, there’s more
It doesn’t end there, of course. Romans 2 continues to pour it on, showing how judgment and condemnation are the very substance of GOD’s judgment. Not that they are acting on behalf of GOD, but that they are the ones abusing one another and perverting creation and acting without shame.
This also isn’t the only way to respond to Paul or his letter to the Romans. But it compels me to see it, not as an anti-gay passage. It is an anti-anti-gay passage. He writes to support, rather than condemn and encourage our seeing how a corrupted relationship with GOD leads us to do things to hurt each other.
Step in
The reveal at the start of chapter 2 shows why verse 32 is so important. When Paul writes:
They know God’s decree, that those who practise such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practise them.
we know that he is arguing against the community, yes, but showing that even within that community, they are being rewarded for doing evil, rather than good. Heroes are made of villains.
When using the first half of the sentence to call for the death of LGBTQ persons, many also use the second half to argue that we are applauding their vileness. But when we see the turn in Paul, that judging is a symptom of that same evil (the greatest form of which is idolatry and putting other things before our love of GOD); then this verse has a very different ring to it.
It sounds like rallies of hate.
It sounds like violent rhetoric spat by preachers.
It sounds like calls for abuse and death; mistaking the righteousness Paul preaches for the self-righteous abuse he abhors.
It sounds like people applauding others for practicing such evil things.
Stand up
All of this follows from what Paul says toward the beginning of this letter to the followers in Rome. He is thankful for them and wants to come to them because he loves them.
In verse 14 and 15 he gives his explanation:
I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish — hence my eagerness to proclaim the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
All of this flows from his “eagerness to proclaim the gospel” to them. Not to judge or hate. Not to give new rules or commandments. Not to justify bigotry or violence.
To preach.
Preach because he is shameless in the gospel. A gospel revealed to the righteous and misunderstood by the wicked. The wicked who would pervert it like they pervert creation. Who would go far from GOD in their abuse, their hatred of nature, and idolatry of their bodies. Wicked who would undermine GOD’s work in the world with all manner of nastiness: of war, abuse, and weapons of hate: and the people of this world will applaud them.
To preach in light of the reality that righteousness comes from GOD, not from following rules; as a blessing rather than a payment; as a gift and not a wage.
Ours isn’t to condemn, it is to preach. To preach even when the world seems to think it is a good idea to hate. For Paul, that’s the best time to preach. For as he wrote to the church in Corinth:
woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!
What We Can Do
The next time someone cites Romans 1, simply focus on these three parts for your response:
- Context – This passage condemns humanity for abuse, idolatry, and other ways we separate ourselves from GOD by hurting each other. He will then make the case for how much we need an awesome GOD of forgiveness. It is not an exclusive condemnation of LGBTQ persons for their sexuality to be lorded over them.
- The Words of the Text – It takes an interpretive leap to make this passage a specific and justified condemnation of homosexuality. More importantly, though is Paul’s focus is not on sexual acts in particular, but in acts which are 1) abusive, 2) unnatural, and 3) idolatrous.
- Romans 2 – The very next verses flip their script upon them, making the condemner into the condemned. It says that GOD judges the judgers in the way described in Romans 1. So judging a person’s sexuality is 1) abusive, 2) unnatural, and 3) idolatrous in the eyes of GOD.
Or better yet, put a Bible app on your phone, so you can be prepared to stand up and read Romans 2. Let Paul reveal to those around you what GOD thinks of haters. Humbly and without glee, of course.
To some, this may sound like judgment. Or if you are like me, you are always afraid that someone knows Scripture better than I. I’m not suggesting this as a Bible-off. It isn’t one-upmanship. It needs to be about making things right.
This is preaching in the way of Paul. It is demanding an account for someone’s public judgment which distorts scripture, misrepresents the faith, and most importantly, uses our mutual faith to condemn GOD’s beautiful creation. For causing pain and suffering of other people. For misusing Paul’s gospel in a way he would berate them for!
If ever there was a reason to stand up and read scripture in public, in response to hatred and oppression would be it.
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