why people thought the Bible was against homosexuality

I've been wondering a lot about the issue of homosexuality and why readers of the Bible see it as being against homosexuality. You'll see from my earlier posts that I think this is a mistake, but below is a more general view of how I think this has happened.

The first clue is that the concept of homosexuality (and consequently heterosexuality) allegedly only emerged in the late 19th Century (according to the philosopher Foucault). Before then, if you had talked about homosexuality, it would have been a meaningless concept.

Of course, homosexual practice did happen much, much earlier than this. Yet nobody would have thought of this as being a result of sexual orientation. Rather, it would have been seen as sexual practice - often linked to pagan temple rites, hedonism or pederasty (a man having sexual relations with a boy).

To the religious mind, this kind of behaviour would have been considered disgusting and sinful, for fairly obvious reasons.

When we read about homosexuality in the Bible, it's really important to understand that the early Bible writers did not use the term "homosexual". Instead, they would have said things like "lying down with a man as with a woman". When Bible translators started to translate the scriptures into modern English, they had to work out how best to translate these things. The Bible would invariably talk of these things in a negative light - and right up until the mid 20th Century, homosexuality was illegal. This combination would mean that just translating the concept into "homosexual" would have made perfect translation sense.

A good example of this kind of translation issue is found in the King James Version of the Bible (a relatively old translation). One passage, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 says:

"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God."

There are 2 things to note in this passage. Firstly, they did not use the term "homosexual". Instead, they said "abusers of themselves with mankind", reflecting the lack of use of this term when the King James was written (originating in the 17th Century). The second thing is that there is a curious expression of "effeminate" here. A more modern translation, such as the New International Version, translates this as "male prostitutes".

Why is this interesting? Because it shows us that modern translators appreciated that the Bible could not really have been talking about effeminate people - after all, why would an effeminate man not be able to enter the kingdom of heaven? Yet male prostitutes (often associated with pagan temple worship) would clearly be going against the will of God.

Yet the King James tells us that those who abuse themselves with mankind won't enter the kingdom of heaven. This is fascinating, because the word "abuser" suggests a crime and a victim. In the early 20th Century we can forgive translators for assuming this meant homosexuals, because it was widely accepted that this was wrong (and illegal). However, we now have a much more enlightened understanding of sexuality and therefore it would seem logical that a new translation is required that more accurately translates the original scriptures, in a way that is not influenced by our cultural understanding of right and wrong.