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Homosexuality and the Bible by Kristin Swenson

Transcript

There are very few texts that are like Lev 18:22, which is sort of the poster child for conversations about homosexuality in the Bible. There are very few, even when we include the New Testament. As a matter of fact, there is nothing in the Bible that says anything about the love, mutual love and respect between gay couples. Yet, given the amount of religious hysterics over the issue, we would think that the Bible is chock full of critique; it isn’t.

We do not pay attention nearly to the same degree to dietary regulations, to making sure that our garments are woven of a single type of fabric, to making sure that a brother marries his brother’s widow. These are all regulations in the same collection. The Bible is full of regulations requiring justice, care for the most vulnerable members of society, for recognizing the holiness of God and God as the creator of the Earth and the one to whom all the Earth and everything in it belongs. There’s precious little in the Bible that has to do with homosexuality and [yet] loads of literature discussing it.

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Contributors

Kristin Swenson

Kristin Swenson
Visiting Associate Professor, University of Virginia

Kristin Swenson is visiting associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Living through Pain: Psalms and the Search for Wholeness (Baylor University Press, 2005) and Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time (Harper, 2010). She is presently working on a historical novel of ancient Babylon and Persia.

separate from the ordinary or profane.

A collection of first-century Jewish and early Christian writings that, along with the Old Testament, makes up the Christian Bible.

Lev 18:22

22You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.

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