Gay Marriage and the Bible

I will NOT be a hypocrite here. I have far too many faults, flaws and sins to judge anyone else. I am just presenting a short historical background and some verses from the Bible. YOU can make ALL of the judgments yourself.



The first recorded homosexual couple in history is commonly regarded as Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, an Egyptian male couple, who lived around the 2400 BC.

Homosexuality in China has been recorded since approximately 600 BCE.

In Ancient Rome the young male body remained a focus of male sexual attention. All the emperors with the exception of Claudius took male lovers.

Homosexuals were common among civilizations in Latin America, such as the Aztecs and Mayans.


During this 4000 year time frame from 2000 BC to about 1850 AD many people were fined, imprisoned and even killed over the practice of homosexuality.

There were some places where this was freely practiced. Greece was very loose with morality laws and in Medieval France there was a legal category called "enbrotherment". They effectively lived as a legal married couple.


Brain Chemistry and sexes.

In August of 1991, a San Francisco neuroanatomist, Simon LeVay, published an article in the respected journal Science. It reported his finding that a localized cluster (a "nucleus") of cells in the brains of "homosexual" men was twice as large by volume on autopsy as in "heterosexual" men. He also reported that the hypothalamus, which is involved in sexual behavior, tended to be smaller in gay men.

Ivanka Savic of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and her colleague Per Lindstrom first used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, to compare the symmetry of the brains of 25 straight men and 25 straight women with those of 20 gay men and 20 gay women.

Gay men tended to have brains that were more like those of straight women than of straight men -- the right and left sides were about the same size, the researchers found. Gay women's brains tended to be more like those of straight men than of straight women -- the right side tended to be slightly larger than the left.

They also used positron emission tomography (PET) scans to examine how a part of the brain involved in processing emotions -- the amygdala -- was connected to other brain regions. Again they found that gay men tended to be more like straight women, with a stronger link between the amygdala and regions involved in emotions. Gay women tended to be more like straight men, with stronger connections to motor functions.

The findings support the idea that there tend to be fundamental differences in brain structure, supporting the idea that sexual orientation is inborn.


Gay Marriage and the Bible

The Old Testament Law was abolished by Jesus. Galatians 3:23-25

Meaning that the codes, customs and morals that were expected of the Jews under the Law of Moses was no longer expected now.

Some of this had to do with time and science. People learned how to prepare and store foods that used to be illegal.

Some had to do with the circumstances. The Jewish people had to be different and look different from the others in their lands. Some of the native tribes used slaves for sex in both heterosexual and homosexual acts during religious services. The Jews needed to be and look different from those people. They had many laws that were abolished. They used to stone women for not being able to prove they were virgins. (They had to bleed on their wedding night.) The intent was to keep a pure bloodline and NOT take a chance of mixing with the native tribes already there.

Most people think that this kind of thing was in play in Leviticus 20:13.
Leviticus 20:1 starts talking about it being a sin to sacrifice children to Molek.
In verse 23 You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them.
The idea of setting themselves APART from the customs of others is a BIG part of the reason for Leviticus but because that idea doesn't help the cause of some people; only one line of the chapter is used when talking about Gay people.

In the Old Testament men were trying to obey Laws to enter Heaven.

In the New Testament those Laws were no longer enough. Belief in Jesus as our Savior took the place of the Laws and the sacrifices.

Ephesians 2:8, 9: "For by grace are ye saved through faith: and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Gal 3:2 “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing with faith?”

Some people think that when Paul complied with a request to obey the Law and do circumcisions, in the book of Acts, that it proved the Law was still valid.
In Acts they were telling Paul that the circumcision issue was going to cause some people to stumble spiritually. They said "all of them are zealous for the law".
Paul went along in Acts because we are to make sure that we don't hinder another's spiritual growth.

1 Corinthians Chapter 8 talks about this. Paul talks about how the Law about eating foods offered to idols no longer applies and we are free to eat it UNLESS eating it confuses a younger (in spirit) believer and might cause them to stumble.

Sometimes you do things that are not necessary to help another person. Paul went along with the Jews because they had been brought up to believe IN the Law. It would have caused too much distress to go against them because it doesn't matter. If they obey the Law and accept Jesus then they are saved just as if they hadn't obeyed the Law but still accepted Jesus.


Sodom and Gomorrah

GENESIS 19:1-14
2 strangers came to visit Lot. (They were angels.) ALL of the men in town came to Lot's house and demanded to have sex with the 2 strangers. (Gang rape. AND being inhospitable to visitors (which was a huge crime in itself.) Lot offered his virgin daughters to be used by the gang for sex. (That is horrible beyond belief.)
So Sodom and Gomorrah had MANY antisocial and evil problems. The people that claim homosexuality was the reason for the destruction are ignoring many many reasons to justify something that isn't based on the Bible.

There is NO mention in the Bible about Gay Marriage.
Every time it talks about marriage it talks about men and women. (NOT always a man and a woman as some would like to say.) The Bible mentions marriages of several women and a man. The Bible mentions marriages of just a man and a woman. Same sex marriages are never mentioned in the Bible.

The Bible also talks often of "Be fruitful and multiply" which would not happen in a same sex marriage.

Marriage was established (Biblically) as protection for the family.


Gay Marriage Today

I fully understand that Gay Couples want and NEED laws that offer them the same legal and financial rights as Married Couples. They need insurance, estate planning, inheritance rights...

Many in the Church will have a hard time with this if the word Marriage is used. Very few will have any problems if "civil union" or some other word is used. Many are applying a value to the word Marriage that it may not really have.

I don't think that the word Marriage has a specific religious value. It was an idea of how to care for your family. I hate to see so much trouble over a word, especially when a different word would prevent some of the problem.

I often told my kids; that adults have to pick their battles. They have to decide which ones they can win and which ones are too costly for what you might win.


Clint McLaughlin


Copyright protected from 2011 to date.