If we know one thing about guys in ancient Rome, it’s that they swung both ways. “Roman society almost unanimously assumed that adult males would be capable of, if not interested in, sexual relations with both sexes,” as John Boswell noted back in his 1980
Later in this month of May, many Christian denominations will celebrate Pentecost, which challenges us to go out to the whole world with the Good News of Jesus Christ. Soon thereafter we enter the month of June, in which we celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride. In Christian
Scholarship on the Bible and ‘LGBT issues’ is proving to be very startling lately. Here are a few recent papers to check out: 1. Biblical-era Jews were maybe not so ‘anti-gay’ Most men in the ancient world were assumed to be bisexual, so it’s not
The next time you’re confronted with a homophobic or transphobic person who wants to bully you with the Bible, try this simple four-step formula for dealing with the situation, courtesy of the chorus of the Kenny Rogers hit “The Gambler,” whose first four lines go
Photo credit: Wendy van Zyl A curious, enigmatic, debated, and often dismissed, verse is found in the nineteenth chapter of the New Testament’s Gospel of Matthew. Some scholars for the past forty years or so have argued that it includes a reference to men who
A tale of the relationship of two women, Ruth and Naomi, is tucked within those books in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian “Old Testament”) that are called historical because they portray a legendary history of a people from its beginnings as a tribe to its
According to what we’re told in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian “Old Testament”), Jonathan, a king’s son, loved a man who would become a more famous king, David – and David in turn loved Jonathan. No matter what the actual history behind the story, what
Jesus and homosexuality: A lens It’s common for more progressive Christians to defend LGBTQI people by saying that Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. But is that true, if we’re referring to the versions of Jesus that have made it down to us in the collections
People bring their prejudices with them when they come to the Bible. It’s why the most popular of the choices of how to interpret those passages used to clobber LGBTQI people is the one that is historically less probable but supports a dominant cultural prejudice.
There are people who just get their jollies by arguing about “What the Scripture says.” It energizes them. They aren’t really interested in hearing the many sides of how people understand those old texts. They just find that being in the argument gives them a