Leviticus 20:13 and 18:22 call male same-sex intercourse 'an abomination' worthy of death; Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, and 1 Timothy 1:10 reaffirm condemnation of homosexual acts in the New Testament.
Refutation
This deserves direct, non-evasive engagement rather than deflection. Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 use to'ebah ('abomination'), a term denoting serious cultic/moral transgression within the Holiness Code that distinguishes Israel from surrounding Canaanite practice; scholars debate how much weight to put on cultic-prostitution context specifically, but Robert Gagnon's extensive philological and comparative-law study (The Bible and Homosexual Practice) argues persuasively that the prohibition is broader than cultic prostitution alone and reflects a comprehensive creation-order sexual ethic, against more revisionist readings (e.g., John Boswell). Romans 1:26-27 situates the condemnation ('against nature,' para physin) within a specific theological argument about idolatry inverting the created order (Rom 1:18-25), echoing similar language in the Hellenistic-Jewish Wisdom of Solomon — it is not an isolated proof-text but part of a sustained argument. 1 Corinthians 6:9's arsenokoitai is, per David F. Wright's philological work, very plausibly Paul's own compound coinage drawn directly from the LXX wording of Leviticus 18:22/20:13, linking Paul's usage explicitly back to the Levitical prohibition rather than to some narrower ancient practice like pederasty alone. Honest concession: 'sexual orientation' as a fixed identity-category is a modern conceptual development largely absent from the ancient world, so pastoral application to persons with a same-sex orientation requires real care and cannot simply be read off the ancient text mechanically; historic Christian ethics (across Catholic, Orthodox, and Reformed traditions, despite other disagreements) has consistently distinguished orientation/temptation, which is not itself sin, from chosen sexual acts, and calls for chastity outside heterosexual marriage generally, not a rule uniquely targeting same-sex-attracted persons.
Positive case
The consistent whole-canon sexual ethic — sex ordered to the marital covenant between man and woman rooted in the creation ordinance (Gen 1:27, 2:24, reaffirmed by Jesus in Matt 19:4-6) — gives Christian sexual ethics a coherent teleological grounding (the purpose and meaning of embodied sexual difference) rather than treating each proof-text as an isolated, arbitrary rule.
Steelmanned objection
Scripture categorically condemns homosexual acts across both Testaments, in the harshest available moral and legal language, applied to people whose orientation was not chosen and is not well understood by the ancient authors; this represents unjust discrimination that inflicts real harm on real people and should be judged wrong by any adequate modern ethic, regardless of its ancient pedigree.
Incoherence of the alternative
A purely secular ethic grounded only in consent has no principled, non-arbitrary stopping point for evaluating any consensual sexual arrangement between adults, since consent alone cannot generate a teleology of the body; Christian sexual ethics, by contrast, derives its norms from a coherent account of what sexuality is *for* within a created order, giving it an internal logic that consent-only frameworks structurally lack.
Fallacy tags
none tagged
Sources cited
- Robert Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice — on the scope of to'ebah and comprehensive scholarly defense of the traditional reading
- David F. Wright, philological studies on arsenokoites — on the term's derivation from LXX Leviticus
- Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament — on Romans 1 in its theological argument-context
Scripture referenced
Lev 18:22, Lev 20:13, Rom 1:26-27, 1 Cor 6:9-11, 1 Tim 1:10
Confidence
moderate
Review status
no content-completeness issues flagged
Source locator
Specific Issues → row 25 locator: medium confidence
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