Part 1: Sodom and Gomorrah

There is a whole category of sex named after a biblical city that was destroyed by God.

When I was a teen, the message was simple:

God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality. The church says so. The English language says so. Except… I actually read the story again as a young adult, and I realized… I had completely missed the point.

In the story, two angels visit Sodom to scout it out for God, and a mob of men attempt to sexually assault the angels. This is why god destroys the cities. It’s about domination, violence, and the dehumanizing abuse of power.

I didn’t need a seminary degree to see I’d been misled. I wanted to honor God’s Word with my beliefs and I was learning that my cultural lens had caused me to do violence to the text.

And it made me wonder:

If I misunderstood this story, what other verses have I been reading through a lens that I didn’t even realize I was wearing? Regardless, I knew the Bible condemned homosexuality… right?

Part 2: The List

“…homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

—1 Corinthians 6:9 (NKJV)

I grew up in a culture where homosexuality was clearly labeled a sin. Verses like this one (and 1 Timothy 1:9-10) seemed to seal the deal. “Homosexuals” were lumped into lists with murderers, slave traders, adulterers, and others and they were going to hell. I remember feeling uneasy about that comparison, but I was told, “All sin is equally detestable to God.”

So I accepted it.

It wasn’t until much later that I learned something that changed everything:

When this verse was written, there were no categories like “homosexual” or “heterosexual.” The idea of a person labeled by their sexual orientation only came around in the 19th century. In fact, the English word “homosexual” wasn’t even used in any English interpretation of the Bible until 1946. When Paul wrote these verses, he couldn’t have been talking about a group of people defined by their sexual orientation. That just didn’t exist.

But surely it was at least talking about same-sex acts in a negative light. I mean there were still verses like Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, and Romans 1:26-27.  Even if Paul wasn’t saying that everyone labeled as a “homosexual” is going to hell (because that kind of category didn’t exist), he clearly viewed all same-sex lust and action as sin… right?

Again, I was left wondering how my cultural lens was influencing my interpretation of Scripture in ways I didn’t even realize.

Part 3: “Different Imaginations”

Sodom and Gomorrah didn’t hold up as an argument (see Part 1). “Homosexual” wasn’t even a category of person when Paul wrote 1 Cor. And 1 Tim. (see Part 2). But what did the word “homosexuals” in English translations mean? And clearly Leviticus 18:22, 20:13, and Romans 1:26–27 prove same-sex acts are sinful… right? Isn’t God clear here? Or could my cultural lens have shaped my reading more than I realized?

When I read Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, saying “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman,” what came to mind were people I knew that were in same-sex relationships. That was the only context I had for such acts. But then I learned that the picture in my head would be far from the ancient Israelite imagination.

The Ancient Israelite would have pictured their enemies worshiping other gods through temple prostitution earning the gods favor through ritualized sex acts. They would remember those (maybe even themselves) who were sexually assaulted on the battlefield as a form of domination. They would remember being enslaved in Egypt and being used by their oppressors for sexual exploitation or living in fear that they would be used that way. That was their context.

The modern Western imagination reads this passage and thinks of two people in love. The ancient Israelite imagination reads this and thinks of domination, violence, oppression, and idol worship. I could go on, but I think this is key. This passage was written to a group of Jews who escaped slavery. They knew what it was like to be oppressed. They were being called to to use their new freedom and power to live counter-culturally. The people of this God were to display love amongst other cultures where domination was the norm.

To be clear, there have always been men who had sexual and romantic desires for men. But in the Ancient Near East the places to fulfill those desires were very limited. Marriage was primarily about financial gain and procreation, not romance. So even those who would have identified as gay (if they lived today) would have married someone of the opposite sex for the survival of their family and tribe. The desire to be with someone of the same sex would be fulfilled by prostitutes and enslaved people if they had the money.

This realization was no nail in the coffin for me. How much could knowledge of their culture change such a straightforward command? I would need to go back to the New Testament where things were even more clear. My cultural lens couldn’t change the meaning of the scriptures I already knew so well… right?

I was leading bible studies and wanted to be faithful to God’s word—not to affirm what God condemns, but also not to condemn something God had not.

Part 4: Paul Made Up a Word

Learning Greek and Hebrew was eye opening. One important rule for interpretation is to look for the original word outside of the passage to see how it was used elsewhere. This gives interpreters a sense of the range of meaning a word carries. But the word poorly translated as “homosexual,” in 1 Cor. 6:9 and 1 Tim. 1:10 could not be found before Paul wrote it in this passage. And after, there was not much more use except in lists like this a century later. In situations like this the interpreter leans into the root words a bit and does their best to draw on the context of the verse while understanding any interpretation will have the potential for error.

The word Paul creates is a combination of two root words—male and bed. These are the same two Greek words found side-by-side in the Greek translation of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 (see part 3 where we already discussed this). This new word would fill the ancient Jewish mind with concepts like domination, abuse, and cult rituals with temple prostitutes. This makes the placement of this word in a list with murderers, adulterers, sexually immoral, and idolaters make much more sense. While we can’t know exactly what was meant by this new word (man-bedder), it definitely has deep ties to acts of domination, exploitation, and idolatry.

I was starting to realize how placing one combination of words from one culture into another could so easily cause misinterpretation. But I was scared to admit that my interpretation might be wrong. It was strange how this one issue—something that seemed to be standing on shakier ground than I had realized—felt like a litmus test of my Christianity. The pressure to maintain a non-affirming theology was felt deep within. It was almost as if deciding to change my mind on this one issue made me a heretic who was leading people to hell. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a single, non-salvific issue.

Very few issues felt this big. Why was this issue so scary to people? Why was it so scary for me to explore honestly? If you get rid of the references to Sodom and Gomorrah (which you should) there are literally only five  mentions of homosexual activity in the entire Bible. And, as mentioned, there is a clearly different context in mind. Why is this the litmus test for who is in and who is out? When I questioned how a good God could flood the whole earth and even kill babies (Gen. 6-9) my questions were met with care, concern and understanding. But my questions of homosexuality in scripture were met with frustration and a kind of anxiety that I didn’t feel with my other questions. That was Progressive Christianity. Not calling homosexuality a sin was letting the culture determine my morals. It was demonic. It was the end of the slippery slope. I can’t help to wonder how much this struggle to change our mind on this topic is more about our own biases than what scripture actually says.

Yet, I still struggled. I couldn’t shake the moral lens and imagination that was placed on me from a young age. If I was going to continue to argue that Paul was calling all homosexual acts sinful, I’d need more evidence than this strange Paul-ism (“man-bedder”) that is directly tied to the oppression and cult worship of Leviticus 18 and 20. I was pretty sure Paul had settled this in Romans 1. I would follow good hermeneutics and use the clear passage to interpret the less clear passages.

Romans 1 could help me stay in the in-group… right?

Part 5: The Clobber Verse: Romans 1

Whenever I start telling this story to conservative friends, they usually acknowledge that the points I’ve made so far hold some interpretive weight. They may not fully agree, but they are quick to move to the big one: Romans 1. They are certain that if I just read this the issue is clear.

We’re not yet at the part of my story where the last domino falls, but reading Romans 1 with fresh eyes definitely shook it.

Let’s look at verses 26–27:

“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another…”

This used to feel like a slam dunk. But by the time I revisited it, I had learned about how same-sex acts in the ancient world were tied to domination, exploitation, and idolatry—not loving relationships. So maybe there was more to this verse too.

Romans 1 isn’t a moral checklist. It’s the beginning of Paul’s argument that all people—Jews and Gentiles—need grace. He starts by echoing common Jewish critiques of Gentile idolatry and excess, drawing his Jewish readers in with rhetoric they had used to point out how wicked the Gentiles are.

The picture he paints would be a common critique of Romans engaging in local cult parties and rituals that included drunkenness, frenzied sexuality, and statues of humans, animals, and hybrids. A couple hundred years earlier some of these parties got so bad even Rome banned them. Paul seems pretty intentional about getting the Jewish reader to imagine these parties as bait to then turn their judgement around on them.

Just listen to how Romans 1:23-25 sets up the discussion on same-sex activity in a way that reminds us of the Roman context.

“[They] exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles… Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts…”

This is when Paul says “because of this…” and goes into giving into lusts and unnatural desires. This is not a condemnation of same-sex acts within the context of intentional, consensual, mutual love and respect—again there wasn’t really category or space for that (see part 3)—this is a trap set for the reader to judge Roman hedonism and feel superior.

To use this passage to condemn all homosexuality is to miss Paul’s rhetorical strategy—which he flips in Romans 2 by turning the judgment back on the reader. It also misses the difference between the cultural imagination of the first century reader and the modern westerner.

Still, Paul labels same-sex acts as “unnatural.” Was that his label, or was he drawing on Jewish rhetoric to make a point? Isn’t God’s original intent one man and one woman? That has to tell us something about God’s intent for human sexuality… or does it? Genesis, here we come.

Part 6: “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”

I remember the first time I heard this little quip. In the garden of Eden (the ideal place) God made one man and one woman. This actually was pretty convincing to me for a long time. Maybe this is what Paul meant when he said same-sex sexual activity was “unnatural.” The garden is the ideal… the prototype… the blueprint… the intent for all… or is it?

In the beginning of time we have a garden. But in the end we have a garden-city (Rev. 21-22). In the beginning we have one tree of life. In the end we have a river of life with the tree of life on “either side” and it bears twelve fruits (Rev. 22:1-2). In the beginning we have a homogeneous couple (basically the same person split in two). In the end we have a great diversity of people from everywhere speaking every language (Rev. 7:9). In the beginning a man and woman are joined in marriage… but when Jesus describes the end he says that no one will be married (Mat. 22:30). The true goal is not oneness/union between one man and one woman, but oneness/union of all.

The beginning is not the ideal/goal, it sets the stage to move towards the ideal/goal. Genesis is just a starting point. Heterosexual sex is necessary for procreation, but just because God began with Adam and Eve doesn’t mean there was never intended to be an Adam and Steve… or Madam and Eve.

Though it seemed as if the Garden was not intended to be the blueprint, the definition of marriage in Genesis 2 didn’t just go away. It still shaped part of my theology of gender and sexuality. I mean that whole chapter seems to drill home the gender norms and the meaning of marriage that I was raised to believe. If anything could keep me grounded and ensure my place in my conservative community it was the definition of marriage in Genesis 2. And it did… until I took my first Hebrew class.

Part 7: Marriage is Clearly Defined

I was sure marriage was defined as a covenant between one man and one woman in Genesis 2, and that Jesus affirmed it (Mat. 19), and Paul connected it to the Church’s relationship with Jesus (Eph. 5). I had memorized Genesis 2:24 (NKJV): “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” “Man shall…” sounds very authoritative.

I took my first Hebrew class at a conservative seminary. There, my instructor informed us that this just wasn’t a good translation. The word “shall” is wrongly added to the text. The verse is better translated, “and this is why men leave their mom and dad and are joined to their wife…”

Ummm what?!?! Not a command? Not a prescriptive definition?

My Hebrew professor wanted to make it clear that marriage is not a requirement for all, but this changed more than they had hoped. The whole passage is a poetic explanation of why the original readers treat the covenant of marriage the way they already did.

As I shifted away from this passage being a heteronormative command I was able to really grasp a theme that had been overshadowed. Using the story of Eve being created from part of Adam, and then being joined together with him was a way of saying marriage makes two people into one. The author wants to drive this point home so hard that the word he uses to say that the man is “joined” to his wife is literally translated as “fused” (some translators use “welded”). Then he doubles down and says, “the two become one flesh.”

For the first time ever, I realized the point of this passage is oneness, not prescriptive gender roles. My modern mind had overinterpreted a connection the writer was not focused on. In fact, this is exactly the same point Jesus is making in Mark 10:6-9 and Matthew 19:4-6. Again, Jesus isn’t defining marriage, he’s arguing for the binding power of marriage. Jesus is clarifying his stance on divorce, not defining marriage based on gender. And even after clarifying the two become one flesh, Jesus adds “what god has joined together let no man separate.”

Furthermore Paul draws on Genesis 2 in a way that has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with mystical union. In Eph. 5:31 Paul quotes Gen 2:24 about the two becoming one flesh. The whole passage had been about husbands and wives but then he throws a curveball.

Eph. 5:32 says, “This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.” Christ is one with the Church. One body. One flesh. Paul is also the person who wrote Gal. 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

To be clear, of course Paul, Jesus, and the author of Genesis assume a man and a woman would be the ones getting married. That was what their culture did. Marriage was, above all, about procreation for the survival of family and tribe. There is no way either of them was trying to set a rule that marriage had to be between a man and a woman. That was not a concern in their culture. It wouldn’t have entered their imagination to create such a rule.

On the other hand, maybe I hadn’t been over interpreting. What about the whole context of the chapter. It teaches that women come from men and that they fit together with men like puzzle pieces meant for one another! So even if the author’s main point is that marriage fuses couples, there seems to be more there than just describing marriage in the ancient context. But then again… maybe my cultural lens was shaping this reading.

Part 8: Inconsistency in Conservative Prescription

So Genesis 2 is not giving an ideal picture of marriage, nor a prescriptive definition of it. Genesis 2 is primarily emphasizing the fusing of people in marriage. But why put so much emphasis on the creation of Eve? What was that about? Doesn’t this prove that marriage was intended to be between one man and one woman?

I think the primary point in the story of the creation of Eve has to do with the human need for connection. The whole reason God plans to create another person is because God says, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). Then God gives Adam a job where he identifies his need for connection (Gen. 2:20).

In this chapter, marriage is created to fulfill the human need for connection. While procreation is in view in chapter one to answer why there are two genders, it’s not even mentioned here. Here the question is why marriage. So the point seems to be that only marital union can fulfill that human need.

To argue that this passage is a heteronormative prescription, also requires the reader to consistently argue that this passage is an amatonormative prescription (requirement to marry).

For the original audience, heterosexual marriage was the covenant required for the survival of the people, and celibacy was not an option. Marriage was a business deal, a political move, and was used to grow a nation for strength in numbers. If this passage is prescriptive for heteronormative marriage it is also prescriptive of the requirement to marry.

I was realizing that today, many conveniently avoid the amatonormative prescription, yet still cling to the heteronormative prescription. This was clearly because we live in a different culture where marriage isn’t required for our survival but it is still more common for men to marry women. Again, our lens impacts our interpretation and in this passage it created inconsistencies.

As mentioned in the last post, I think this chapter is descriptive not prescriptive of marriage. Yet, if someone wants to argue that one part is prescriptive, I think it is only logically consistent that they also hold marriage as a command to all. Furthermore, for them, celibacy should be just as sinful as homosexuality.

At this point in my story I found myself doing a lot of this kind of questioning. It was moving away from questions like, “What does Scripture say?” because that seemed less clear to me. I mean, I was seeing how much my cultural lens had impacted my interpretation and so my questions started to shift. I started asking a simple question, “Why would God care?” This would be the question that wouldn’t stop nagging at me, and no one seemed to be able to give me a good answer.

Part 9: Finally Honest with Myself

This journey has been less like dominoes falling and more like whack-a-mole. I would learn new information and it would shake values/biases that had been engrained in me but not remove them. This was why I kept wrestling with passage after passage.

In reality this was a 20 year journey where I’d circle back to the same passages again and again. I would study all the Greek and Hebrew. I would engage articles and books and fast and pray.  It wasn’t as if one new piece of information would completely do away with the weight of previous interpretations of these passages. Realizing you have a colored lens on and removing it are two different things.

About 16 years into this journey I was responsible for writing our church’s non-affirming paper on same-sex sexuality. It was through writing this that all those little bits of information really came together and forced me to make sense of my actual beliefs. At this point I felt like I was grasping for straws to try to hold this non-affirming view together.

I was defending scriptural arguments that felt logically inconsistent and weak because I felt like I had to believe this. I felt inauthentic in this process. The moral compass handed to me was at odds with the fact that no biblical argument could make sense of it.

Why did God care? It seemed like every other sin was tied to a lack of love for neighbor or God. Empathy made it clear why stealing, killing, committing adultery, and lying were sins. But two adults loving each other and committing themselves to one another… I couldn’t understand why this was a sin.

I remember fearfully asking fellow pastors to give me a reason that made sense. God doesn’t just create rules to make our lives hard… so what was it? It seemed like a mystery to everyone, and then just a calling to obey. Easy for married straight men to say. It doesn’t impact their lives much at all. But, for me, the scriptural arguments weren’t strong enough, and no one had a decent philosophical argument.

Unbeknownst to me, this topic had been on my wife’s heart too. I remember her coming home from meeting up with a church group, angry and sad. She had timidly, yet bravely, attempted to engage a conversation around the church’s inclusion of the queer community. She felt as if her curiosity was met with fear. She had been thinking about those she knew in the LGBTQIA+ community, and questioning how we would care for our kids if one of them came out one day. While I was wrestling with my head, she was wrestling with her heart.

That conversation, and future ones with her, moved me from my head to a much more honest place. Now we were on a journey together, to love others and we could both finally be honest about this and say… “I don’t know.”

This might not sound like a huge shift, but it was the beginning of my ability to explore this more honestly. I was shifting from a career as pastor to a chaplain. With this shift, no paycheck was on the line. No outside institution was telling me what I had to believe to be “in.” I could explore this with full honesty. And that’s what I began to do.

Part 10: Fully Affirming

I no longer worked as a minister in spaces where theological uniformity was expected. I was ministering in hospitals where theological diversity was cared for. In chaplaincy there are no theological gate keepers. I was no longer in charge of correcting heresy to protect my church. It was no longer my job to teach or preach a single doctrine. It was my job to listen without judgment. It was my job to understand. It was my job to be fully present to the suffering of others. It was my job to get to know others with humble curiosity. It was my job to be curious about myself. It was now my job to seek to understand why I experienced any small feeling or thought as I listened so I could work on not allowing unseen biases to unknowingly shape my care for others.

I think this was the first time I had ever listened like this to people who were so different from myself. I began to identify biases within myself that I didn’t realize I had. In fact, this is when it became clear that—what I once thought was the Holy Spirit pulling me back to a non-affirming position—was actually my unrecognized biases. Discerning between the work of the Spirit and a moral compass shaped by family, church, and culture was a 20 year journey. It’s strange how deeply moral issues can get tied to God.

Shifting to a posture of non-judgmental listening changed the way I saw the work of the Spirit. Watching queer couples care for each other at the end of their lives moved me deeply. Hearing their stories of coming out, and watching the tears come to their eyes as they had come to realize how deeply they were loved, also moved me.

I also met many queer ministers who I looked up to as spiritual leaders and caregivers. Their faith was strong, filled with calling stories, fasting, praying, and a love for scripture. Their love for God was all-consuming. Their love for people was deep and wide. I was in awe.

As I became aware of my biases, I became convinced that scripture could neither condemn nor affirm the kind of same-sex relationships we see today. It just was not on the minds of the ancient people. I could no longer use “God says” as a trump card in this issue. I couldn’t keep blaming God for my exclusive beliefs. I had to take responsibility for my own biases. After 20 years of wrestling with Scripture, praying, fasting, and caring for people, I could finally fully affirm the goodness of the whole of every person in the LGBTQIA+ community.

I want to close by saying that I am not the first person to wrestle with these questions. Countless thoughtful books, communities, and sacred voices have long been engaging this topic with wisdom and courage—especially from within the LGBTQIA+ community. As a straight, cisgender man, I recognize that I write from a place of privilege, and I want to be careful not to take up space that isn’t mine. My hope has been simply to share my journey in case it helps others begin or continue their own. And more than anything, I want to listen, learn, and stand alongside those whose stories are still too often pushed to the margins.

I hope my story has been helpful for you, and that it becomes an invitation to truly listen to those who are different from yourselves with love and humility. It has been a long journey for me to get here, but I’m thankful that I can say with love, care, and honesty: Happy Pride Month!

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FCM Member Shawn Seguin is commissioned and endorsed by FCM. He is currently a Certified Educator Candidate at Ascension Seton in Austin, TX. He received his Master of Theological Studies at Perkins School of Theology, and after 15 years of pastoring, he fell in love with chaplaincy.