Recently, a Christian shared a post celebrating his wife's transformation from a member of the LGBT community to the faithful Christian wife and mother she is today. I congratulated them both, stating that I am also an ex-gay, and that God can transform and use any sinner. To this, a rather angry bisexual woman commented "There's literally nothing wrong with LGBTQ people. Are you good". I asked her what methods she used to reach her conclusion, but she instead began attacking and insulting me.
Nevertheless, I decided to give her a chance, and calmly repeated the challenge, telling her that insulting random strangers online is fruitless. I then reminded her that I am an ex-gay, so cannot be reasonably accused of ignorance, nor of bigotry. I have changed my views because I have thought about them. She, by contrast, will not change her views because she cannot.
After this little scuffle, she finally said "so you think being gay is wrong? When the Bible doesn't even mention it at all. God loves all. Even gays." On this ministry, I have made a number of brief summary, overview, and defence articles, but thus far, I have not done so with the LGBT controversy. Following, and with reference to, this conversation, I have decided it is about time I did so. For future reference, if I speak of the girl who inspired this article, I will call her "Katie".
It was never about love
The first and most important thing to get out of the way is that while LGBT advocates constantly shout about love, they do not have the slightest understanding of what it means. To them, love has two functions: Sex, and approval.
On the one hand, they equate love with sex because they talk about how everyone should be allowed to "love" who they want, even if they are the same gender. However, literally the only same-sex relationship opposed by Christianity is a sexual one. Many relationships involve love, but not sex, and sadly, many relationships involve sex, but not love. There is no love in one night stands, in sexual manipulation, in porn, in prostitution, especially in rape. These all involve sex, but not love, and in fact are the antithesis of it. On the flip side, many relationships involve love, but should never involve sex. The chart above illustrates a few of these. In an ideal world, sex would only happen between a married couple. If you absolutely have to involve sex in a same sex relationship, that's not about love, but rather about lust. You desire each other in a sexual manner, and that is wrong.
The second way LGBT advocates understand love is approval, but this, too, is false. Let's briefly read what God says about love:
"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a).
Most of that is the exact opposite of the LGBT agenda. Love is not boastful or conceited, but the LGBT community literally dedicates the month of June to "Pride". Love does not act improperly, yet we could go on for 5 times the length of this article explaining the improper behavior of the LGBT community. Love is not provoked, yet the very existence of this article will provoke most LGBT advocates who simply read the headline. They will not have read this far into the article, and if they do, they will be seething with rage. To such people, I say well done for reading this far, and ask that you see it through to the end, it will be worth it. Love keeps no record of wrongs, yet we are seeing an increase in legal retribution for using the "wrong" pronouns. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness, yet Pride is all about finding joy in sexual immorality.
Need I go on? According to the book of the God who literally is love (1 John 4:8), there is absolutely nothing loving about the LGBT agenda. In reality, you do not have to approve of someone's actions to love them, and you do not have to hate someone to disapprove of their actions.
But perhaps the easiest way to refute the unconditional approval view of love is to point out the Ukraine flag in Katie's profile picture. Supporting Ukraine at this dreadful time is a noble thing, and is genuinely an expression of love. But we are not dealing with earthquakes or tsunamis here. There are people flying those planes, and there are people giving orders to the people flying those planes. These attacks are the ultimate display of human evil, and we absolutely should be condemning them. "God loves all" may be true, but it does not excuse bloodlust, pride, greed, murder, or the many other sins Russia is currently committing against Ukraine. God may love Vladimir Putin, but it would be a blessing to the world if that despicable man caught a bullet right between the eyes today.
Now of course, I am not advocating going out and punishing gay people. At least, not for the crime of homosexuality. Theft, assault, and other crimes, yes, punish them when they commit those. But as far as the sexual immorality goes, that's for God to sort out in the end (more on that later). Nevertheless, because God is love, He takes zero pleasure in their iniquity, and so in spite of His love for them as people, but for the Gospel, He must punish the sin in Hell.
Scripture, Science, and the homosexual identity
To this, LGBT advocates often like to reply by saying that's like punishing people for being black. But there is a crucial difference: Traits like skin color are immutable, whereas homosexuality and the like is about an action. You can "be" black, you cannot "do" black. You can "be" gay only because you can "do" gay things. Homosexuality is not an immutable trait. It can only become a part of one's identity through habitual action.
"But God still made them gay", the reply will come. There is a cultural narrative that gay people were just "born that way". It's not just the action God punishes, but the desires He supposedly gave them.
Biblically speaking, this is not true. We read, first of all, that no one undergoing temptation can claim God is the one tempting them, for He neither tempts anyone, nor can He, Himself, be tempted (James 1:13-14). Therefore, if there is some external temptation, it does not come from God. James further explains that temptation comes when we are drawn away by our own desires, and this breeds temptation, which breeds sin, and it is the sin that brings forth death.
But according to God, we do not have to cave to temptation. In 1 Corinthians 10:13, we read "No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it."
In fact, the Bible tells us of Jesus "For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are,yet without sin." (Hebrews 4:15). Therefore, "For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted." (Hebrews 2:18).
All of this to say no matter how unbelievably difficult it is to resist temptation, you literally never have to act on it. God Himself will help you fight it. If you do not have a choice about who you're having sex with, that's called rape. Victims of rape suffer no punishment, only the rapist does.
But the idea that we are born gay does not hold up scientifically either. The first and most obvious evidence against this hypothesis is that homosexuality halts reproduction. Only one form of sexual union is able to produce offspring, thereby allowing the future continuity of the parents' inborn traits. Yet, homosexuality is naturally opposed to this union. That doesn't mean it never happens, of course, but people of the LGT persuasion don't typically seek out healthy heterosexual relationships. Thus, if homosexuality was an inborn trait, we would expect to see it decrease, not increase, as it has.
Further evidence against the so-called "gay gene", ironically, frequently comes from efforts to prove its existence. The most famous example is the Bailey Pillard study. This study is often cited as evidence for the gay gene, as indeed it was initially intended to be. However, when studying identical twins, this study found that a mere 50% of their identical twin subjects were both gay.
This tends to be the result of scientific attempts to prove homosexuality is inborn. The fact is, LGBT advocates do not do real science. Every study is, in some way, flawed. But even with heavily biased methods designed to skew the results in a specific, pro-LGBT direction, these studies never yield the desired results. Instead, as with the Bailey Pillard study, these studies often do more to challenge the LGBT narrative.
Ultimately, psychology is an inexact science, far less developed than other fields, and deservedly so. Human beings have a thing called "free will", and so it will never be possible to fully understand us (Jeremiah 17:9). Only one thing is ever truly guaranteed: We will sin until the day we die. Thus, the true origins of homosexuality will never be truly discovered, and so the absolute best thing LGBT advocates will be able to say, and say it though they may, they have yet to prove, is that there is some genetic link to homosexuality.
Feelings, Facts, and the foundation for morality
Yet, as we have already established, feelings are not a valid justification for immorality. In fact, a genuine homophobe may utterly despise gay people, but no LGBT advocate will ever agree these feelings justify treating members of the LGBT community with contempt. Biblically speaking, in fact, while it is our natural tendency to hate our enemies, Jesus says we are obliged to love them. "“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:43-48).
It is clear from the above that even when people justly invoke our anger via persecution (like when radical LGBT advocates rob hundreds of thousands of dollars from small businesses because the Christian owners refused to cater to their "weddings"), we, as Christians, must ignore our feelings, trusting God to give us justice, while praying that our enemies will ultimately repent and find forgiveness.
But what's particularly interesting about Katie is that although she brought up the Bible, claiming "God loves all", she does not, in fact, believe it. Checking her profile in order to have some idea of who I was dealing with, I found she had two religions listed: Wiccan, and Buddhism, neither of which give any credence to the morality of the Bible.
And so I pointed out the irony. You don't see me consulting or appealing to the Tipitaka (the collection of Buddhist sacred texts) for my moral views, so why would Katie immediately jump to "...the Bible doesn't even mention it at all"? There are only two possible reasons.
The first is that while she doesn't believe it, she knows I do, and sought to use it to manipulate my beliefs. After all, like many people in our culture, she bases her moral views on her own feelings, and so it's only natural for her to assume I do too. The problem she has is I actually don't. In fact, while I did initially resist the teachings of scripture, the inconsistency began to eat away at my conscience, and I made a choice between facts and feelings. I chose facts, and the fact is, if the Bible is not true, you can readily dismiss whatever it says. It could say "the sky is blue", it would be nothing short of a coincidence, or an accurate assessment by men who just so happened to possess a functioning pair of eyes. Much like any other human work, it would be a collection of opinions, maybe right, maybe wrong, each subject to observation.
But if the Bible really is, as it says, the true word of the infallible and Holy God, all other moral views are irrelevant, and subject to it. It is possible, therefore, that the reason Katie brought the Bible up is that she is well aware that it is true, she just doesn't want it to be true. Either that or she simply doesn't care, because when she claimed the Bible doesn't mention homosexuality, she genuinely believes it.
The irony of it all
The ultimate irony of Katie's appeal to the Christian scriptures is the position she has with regard to it. Whatever she believes about it, she clearly has not studied it, because as we will see shortly, it does indeed mention, and outright condemn, all forms of sexuality outside of heterosexual marriage. But the question is, why did she expect I wouldn't know this? She may not know that I run a Christian ministry, but as a faithful Christian, surely she would expect I would have some degree of familiarity with my religion's Holy texts? Clearly, she does not, at least with regard to the issue of sexuality.
As it turns out, God Himself is quite defensive of His book. In Psalm 50:16-17, we read "But to the wicked God says: “What right have you to declare My statutes, Or take My covenant in your mouth, Seeing you hate instruction And cast My words behind you?" With God, it really is "my way, or the highway". The highway to Hell, that is. Put simply, you don't get to talk about what the Bible says unless you A. study it (1 Timothy 2:15) and B. Love God enough to personally apply it. If you hate God's instruction, it is the ultimate hypocrisy to cite it.
But it is possible, and I dare say very likely, that Katie is at least vaguely aware that the Bible does speak on homosexuality. See, she is not alone in her hatred for Christian sexuality; even many pro-LGBT professors appeal to scripture in defence of their views. References to homosexuality, they claim, are actually mistranslations. Rather than being gay, they claim, these are all condemnations of being a paedophile.
The number 1 proof that this is wrong is you can't blame English translations for views that existed before the English language. Judeo-Christian tolerance for homosexuality is a brand new thing, unique to our era. Long before the first English translations, even long before the existence of the Latin Vulgate, both Jews and Christians consistently taught that homosexual relationships were sin, and gay "marriage" is an oxymoron.
In fact, the celebration of homosexuality is a cultural shift that has occurred even within my lifetime, and I am not yet that old. The majority of my readers will likely remember a time when accusations of homophobia were typically reserved for genuine homophobes, who at the very least were able to speak freely. If I could send this article back in time a mere 50 years, half of England would be chanting "preach it brother", and the other half would be shocked at just how much I'm saying LGBT advocates would get away with in the future.
So if religious opposition to homosexuality preceded translation, how can we possibly attribute it to translation errors? Put frankly, it's because those "errors" are not errors at all. No scholar worth his salt would ever claim Biblical references to homosexuality are actually references to paedophilia. The sole reason anyone does so is because they are not worth their salt. They have an agenda, and will tell any lie they can to defend it.
Leviticus 18:22, and why it's not hypocritical to cite it
But the truth is, the lie is indefensible, because the infallible word of God does tell us about homosexuality. The number one verse all LGBT advocates are familiar with is Leviticus 18:22: "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination." They are most familiar with it because, sadly, it is the most commonly quoted. In fact, the irony is, this verse was quoted to me by an atheist in the early days of my faith (when I was still gay), hoping I would agree with him that this is wrong, and therefore Christianity couldn't be true.
At the time, I had not yet read my Bible past Genesis, and so this was all I knew about the Bible's teachings on homosexuality. Sadly, it is all many LGBT advocates know, too. But they do know Leviticus teaches other things most Christians do not practice, whether they know it or not.
The most commonly cited examples are the Old Testament dietary laws. "You eat pigs and shellfish, so why do you only believe Leviticus 18:22?" Other commonly cited commands are wearing mixed fabrics, trimming the sides of your beard, and especially for me, having tattoos.
But when you do more than a cursory reading of scripture, you see that this is a poorly thought out response. See, the Old Testament, while it is still very important, does not apply in the same way to Christians today as it did to Jews in the Old Testament. Old Testament law, also referred to as Mosaic law, is a very specific covenant made between God and the people of Israel. Traditionally, this is divided into two or three (depending on whether you're Jewish or post-Westminster Christian) segments: Moral law, civil law, and ceremonial law.
Ceremonial law distinguished the Jews from other nations around them. Civil law, also known as judicial law, dealt with the way Israel was governed. Prior to the Westminster Confession in 1646, these two categories were merged. Moral law is fairly self-explanatory, governing all people at all times.
Personally, I find it more helpful to distinguish instead between moral law and covenantal law. As shown in the Venn diagram to the left, moral law remains the same as it is traditionally held: Applicable to all people, at all times. Covenantal law, by contrast, only applies to those with whom the covenant in question is made. One might think of this as the distinction between criminal and contract law. Theft is a crime; nobody in the UK is allowed to swipe your wallet. However, while you are contractually obligated to pay your phone bill, I don't pay a penny, no matter how much data you use, how many texts you send, or how many hours you spend on the phone.
The law of Moses, which includes Leviticus 18:22, contains elements of both. In order to maintain their relationship with God, the Jews were required to keep certain moral laws. Strangely, God did not hold them entirely to moral laws. For example, God hates divorce, and made that entirely known to His people in verses like Malachi 2:16. Yet, due to the hardness of their hearts, the Jews were given significantly more divorce rights than God would have preferred (Matthew 19:8). In a similar manner, God made other covenants with other people that were not applicable within the Jewish theocracy. Noah, for example, was permitted to eat everything, so long as it did not have blood still in it (Genesis 9:1-4), as indeed are post-crucifixion Christians (see Romans 14).
Ultimately, Mosaic law had a purpose, and that purpose, according to scriptures like Galatians 3:24-26, was to prepare the New Covenant in Christ. Now that Christ has come, we are rather explicitly told we are no longer under that law.
But if we're no longer under it, how can we use Leviticus 18:22 to say homosexuality is a sin? Maybe it was only a sin for the Jews, but Christians are not under that covenant? There are a few simple answers to this, starting with the fact Leviticus 18:22 does not bear any marks of being mere covenantal law. Aside from flat out saying "it is an abomination", it is also nested among several other quite obvious abominations which, thank God, are not yet commonly approved in our culture. It forbids sleeping with your neighbor's wife (18:20), burning people as sacrifices to Molech (18:21), and sleeping with livestock (18:23).
Furthermore, God says "‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants. You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations, either any of your own nation or any stranger who dwells among you (for all these abominations the men of the land have done, who were before you, and thus the land is defiled), lest the land vomit you out also when you defile it, as it vomited out the nations that were before you. For whoever commits any of these abominations, the persons who commit them shall be cut off from among their people. ‘Therefore you shall keep My ordinance, so that you do not commit any of these abominable customs which were committed before you, and that you do not defile yourselves by them: I am the Lord your God.’ ”" (Leviticus 18:24-30).
This clearly tells us God is laying down some moral laws by which all people, even non-Jews, will be judged, simply because He tells us He has indeed judged non-Jews for it. The reason God cast out the prior nations from Israel is because they committed the abominable deeds, including homosexuality, before the Jews got there.
Marriage, sexuality, and the New Testament
But personally, I like to skip all of the above and not mention Leviticus 18:22 when explaining Biblical sexuality. While Leviticus 18:22 tends to be the only thing amateurs know about the Bible's teaching on homosexuality, it is not all the Bible teaches about homosexuality. A good rule of thumb when trying to decide which Old Testament laws are moral laws is New Testament reiteration, and the New Testament does say rather a lot about sexual morality.
First and foremost, of course, it says to avoid it. "Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body." (1 Corinthians 6:18). When you commit sexual sin, you are actually sinning against yourself. But obviously, we are quite sexual creatures. We love sex, we seem to talk endlessly about sex, we seek sex. How, then, do we legitimately obtain it? "Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge." (Hebrews 13:4). It's obvious, then, that the only legitimate context for sex is marriage. But what is marriage?
When the Pharisees confronted Him on the topic of divorce, Jesus answered this exact question: "And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?” He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." (Matthew 19:4-8). And again, "And Jesus answered and said to them, “Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”" (Mark 10:5-9).
From the above, we see that marriage is based on Adam and Eve. This immediately refutes all sexual unions outside of monogamous, heterosexual marriage. Even polygamy, while again permissible to hard-hearted, pre-Christian Israel, is easy to dismiss when we see that Adam had only one Eve. He did not have Evelyn, Eva, Evolet, and Emma. He certainly did not also have Eric or Emile. Jesus could not be clearer: If it's outside of Adam and Eve, it's outside of the will of God.
Homosexuality is unnatural, and brings its own punishment
But the New Testament does not simply leave the issue at implied condemnation. Rather, it flat out condemns homosexuality as unnatural behavior resulting from a rejection of God, and resulting in some rather harsh penalties. After explaining how nature itself testifies to God's invisible attributes, and yet sinful men instead reject Him in favor of the creation, Paul tells us in Romans 1:24-32 "Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them."
This is one of those passages it feels quite redundant to unpack. It says it all there, plain as day: Men leave the natural use of women and burn in lust for each other. It would be more prudent to explain what it means that God "gave them up" to this apparently atrocious fate. The simple answer is that they were already resistant to Him. It's not that God just randomly decided "right, I really don't like you guys, so I'm going to make you gay". No, these are people who, "...although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened." (Romans 1:21). So to give them up, God just lets them go their own way.
But as the passage says, this really is quite unnatural. You don't even need the scriptures to tell you this, as every part of the body abused during homosexual activity has a real function. The penis, of course, is used for peeing, and for real sex. Preferably within the context of marriage, but it at least works outside of marriage. But it does not work with other men. It cannot produce a child without a female. The anus serves no sexual function in either gender. While it can be pleasurable to stimulate it due to its proximity to the reproductive system, it is designed as an exit for waste, not an entrance for anything.
Furthermore, when penetrated, the anus can be quite severely damaged. Suffice to say, given the waste products that go through that passage, you really don't want to tear any tissue within it, nor stretch it beyond its intent. The infections that can result from injuring it aren't worth speaking about, much less enduring.
And indeed, infection is quite a nasty risk for the LGBT community. These are particularly at risk from STDs and STIs, and they well know it. Some gay dating platforms (indeed, all the ones I've ever used) encourage users to display their HIV status by default, something I don't see on other platforms. The Bible was not joking when it says they receive "...in themselves the penalty of their error which was due".
Aside from the physical sicknesses homosexuality can lead to, it doesn't take much to show that children overwhelmingly thrive in secure family environments. The absolute best model, without contest, is one father and his wife. Of course, this is not always available. Single parent households, step parents, foster care, these are all unfortunate features of our world. Nevertheless, while there is nothing immoral about these (and indeed, fostering/adopting children is a noble thing), stable marriage dominates all other family models. Homosexual adoption? It's so much less than ideal that adult children of gay parents, like Robert Oscar Lopez, who was raised by two lesbian moms, speak out against the practice.
And so clearly, as the Bible says, homosexuality is unnatural. Beyond the lust felt by LGBT people, there is simply no reason it should exist. It's dangerous, it goes beyond the natural human function, it's actually damaging to society and directly threatening to its most vulnerable members, it could not survive in a Godly culture.
Scripture lists homosexuality among sins that bar us from Heaven
Homosexuality is so incapable of surviving in a Godly culture that it will actually be completely absent from the ultimate Godly culture. In the Kingdom of Heaven, there is no sin. There is no blasphemy, there is no theft, there is no murder, there is no deceit, there is no sexual immorality. To that end, Paul tells us "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God."
Lacking the rest of scripture (which, realistically, you shouldn't do, but for sake of discussion), this could be simply summed up as "gays don't go to Heaven". Of course, it is by no means that simple. Indeed, with that short list alone, no one would go to Heaven. This goes back to the whole identity thing we spoke about earlier. You cannot do black, because it is a physical characteristic. But you can be gay because you find your identity in the habitual performance of homosexual acts. Christians will still sin. If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, the truth is not in us, and we're calling God a liar (1 John 1:8-10). God cleanses us from all unrighteousness, and thus it is entirely possible for a Christian to struggle his entire life with same sex attraction, and yet, through confession, repentance, and most importantly faith, obtain mercy from the Lord, theoretically even being saved if he died in the act of committing gay sin. Nevertheless, you have no need to confess or repent of that which is not sin. "Dear Lord, I'm so sorry I drank that lemonade...". For all you lemonade drinkers, I am pleased to inform you God will not be kicking you down to Hell. But Paul clearly tells us, in no uncertain terms, that homosexuality, but for repentance, does bar a man from Heaven.
The futility of homosexuality
And of course, He does list a number of other sins, including heterosexual sin. One thing that absolutely boggles my mind about homosexuality is the way in which everyone on every side of the issue treats it like some special thing. If you're against it, you may cast gay people aside with the rapists and murderers, all the while you've got 10 different porn sites bookmarked as if God's totally cool with your sin. If you're for it, you'll go ballistic if someone calls it a sin, but you won't blink twice if someone says God doesn't like sex before marriage. Why is this such a hot button issue? What is so special about homosexuality that it deserves its own special class in people's eyes?
In fact, what is so special about it that its practitioners are literally willing to burn for it, both burn themselves and burn others? Are they under the delusion that they are immortal? They will one day die. We all will. And after that death? Judgement. Judgement by the laws of God. And no one shall be spared. As many as have sinned without the law will perish apart from the law, and as many as have sinned within the law will be judged by the law (Romans 2:12-16). Either way you are judged. So is homosexuality worth God's eternal fire? Is the temporary pleasure of depravity in any way worth an eternity of damnation?
The Gospel
But praise be to God, He does not desire that damnation for us. His word tells us that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23, 32; 33:11), that He wants no one to perish (2 Peter 3:9), but He would rather all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:1-4). Therefore, although it is incumbent that God punishes the sin of homosexuality, who bears that punishment is optional. On the one hand, the sinner themselves may justly receive it. Every sinner has the absolute right to go to Hell forever. But there is an alternative, which God has offered so freely to all who believe.
2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, entered creation through the womb of the blessed virgin, Mary. Right into His adult years, Jesus maintained His innocence, sinning a grand total of 0 times. Not only did He avoid sin, but He did the maximum amount of good, right up until He was arrested by sinful men, whom He offended with His truthful, yet convicting teachings. They delivered Him up to capital punishment, hanging Him on a cross, where He suffered the full wrath of God for sin. Sin He never committed. Sin we committed.
Because our sins have been paid for in Christ, we no longer need to pay for them ourselves. The Gospel is simply this: Repent of your sin, believe in Jesus, from His Lordship to His resurrection, and you will not be punished. Instead, you will be saved, being adopted by God as children, and receiving an everlasting inheritance in His Kingdom.