Absence of Malice

One of the most overlooked, if not the most glaring, arguments against a condemnation of all homosexuality from the Bible is the absence of any condemnation of lesbianism.

God is not a God of loose ends to not complete the loop of prohibiting homosexuality with men, but not women, yet that's exactly what you see when you read all the supposed anti-gay Bible passages. God or those He inspired to write like the Apostle Paul, weren't of the mindset of most human heterosexual males in having an abhorrence of male homosexuality, but is just dandy with the titillation of two women together. Lesbianism, or lack thereof, is never really addressed by anti-gay Bible apologists because it's a stumbling block for them. They gloss over it in hopes you do too.

It starts with Leviticus ("man shall not lay with male") where "woman shall not lay with female" is absent. If you look at all the other Levitical passages on what is prohibited (incest, bestiality, etc) woman are named in a separate catagory covered by all the same prohibitions as the men.*

(I leave out the Sodom story because the obvious is the women of Sodom played no part in it)

Next we move to Romans. Now many will say this is the 'smoking gun' passage that mentions lesbians. A little history lesson needs to be told here.

No writing from a church Father in commentary ever saw lesbianism in the Roman 1 passage, that is until John Chrysostom in the 4th century all of a sudden saw lesbians in the passage like it appeared out of thin air when it wasn't there before. This one reading from this one early church father put lesbianism on the map for the first time and centuries later it became as good as Gospel. The Church with bated breath couldn't wait to swallow it fast enough with wanting to close the homosexual loop. Paul DID have several word choices to describe lesbians (hetairistria, tribas), but they are never used by him in Romans or in anything he wrote.

We next go to 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy. The word "arsenokoite" is found in both books and is translated as "homosexual" in the New Revised Standard Version edition of the Bible, the version most quote from because it gives a supposed condemnation of all homosexuality without ambiguity. The prefix of arsenokoite is 'arseno,' that in the Koine Greek (Paul's Greek) translates as "male" (koite means "lying the bed"). Now since the word "homosexual" covers both male AND female homosexuality in a broad term, we know the word "homosexual" shouldn't be there because it only states males with 'arseno.' Those who know the Greek breakdown of the word arsenokoite like to keep quiet about why the word "homosexual" shouldn't be in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy because it fools you into thinking women are included.

Ironically, it's female homosexuality that is the strongest argument against ALL condemnation of homosexuality in the Bible.

*My argument has always been the Levitical prohibition of "man shall not lay with man" is only in the context of idolatry and shouldn't be taken further than that.