Deuteronomy 23:1 is one of the “verse grenades” that bigoted, intellectually lazy Christians lob at trans and gender-diverse people as part of a specious claim that this short passage “proves” that God opposes us having any surgeries. But before I get into that, I’d like
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
What is a eunuch ‘by birth’? A curious, enigmatic, debated, and often dismissed, verse is found in the 19th chapter of the New Testament’s Gospel of Matthew. Some scholars for the past 40 years or so have argued that it includes a reference to men
We have all heard the fundamentalist sound-bite, “It was ‘Adam and Eve,’ not ‘Adam and Steve.’” This saying is shorthand for identifying that the speaker is a believer in the doctrine of the Natural Order of Creation. Just what is this doctrine, and does it
During the reign of Hezekiah from 726-697 the southern kingdom of Judah was prosperous. Judah had been made a vassal state of Assyria after the Syrio-Ephraimite war in 734-732 and was flourishing under these conditions despite paying heavy tribute to Assyria. Material wealth among the
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1) Well, that seems plain enough. It’s particularly true when you tie it to our main focus passage: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this. (Deuteronomy 22:5) One verse that every transgender person needs to come to terms with is Deuteronomy 22:5. This verse seems to be
When I first began attending to Internet newsgroup threads about homosexuality and the Bible, I held the conventional view: the Bible condemns it. I knew of ways to discount each of the standard texts; I thought a person could in a piecemeal way discount all
Part of a series of essays on the Bible and homosexuality. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah Genesis 19 describes how two angels visited Sodom and were welcomed into Lot’s house. The men of the city gathered around the house and demanded that Lot send
Part of a series of essays on the Bible and homosexuality. Temple prostitution in Deuteronomy Deuteronomy 23:17 (KJV) states: There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel. This is an “error” by the authors of