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I make the case that you can be gay and a child of God. Not just with existing in your sexuality, but also practicing in your sexuality. I'm a born-again, Bible is inerrant, Pentecostal believer in Christ. This is the place I make my case from.

- Anonymous.

Teach me, and I will be silent; and show me how I have erred. 

(Job. 6:24)

My Testimony

Why Now?

Link here for new content 

Why the blog name

Playing Reindeer Games

I'm going to say this one time and leave it here. With all the current debates being made of believing the Bible is accepting of homosexuality from hermeneutics, I was one of the first to challenge others in open debate on social media with those hermeneutics in 2012 and before that in prior website/blog forums going back to 1998. I was, and still am, the only one who makes this argument from the Pentecostal perspective. I have been blessed by incredible saints, from John Boswell to John Shore, and others who paved the way before me in showing I didn't need to compromise the Bible as the inspired and inerrant Word of God to affirm Christ-centered gay sexuality. I ran with that to do my own research, which I put out as my own work, with a ministry I was called to do before most theologians publicly came into the fray and when no name was attached to what was then still a new study of gay-affirming from THE BIBLE outside of a few in academia and the clergy.

I did what Paul told me to do, give credit where credit is due (Romans 13:7). Some have difficulty doing that with me.

I'm not going to lie and say I don't sometimes resent the blessings and praises others have received when I have said and debated the same things years before they came out and said it like it was never said before. I know they got it from me because what they said was unique to me, arguments and apologetics no one made before. Others making money from it is further insulting when it should cost nothing. 

I do understand and accept why I am not acknowledged. I wanted to remain anonymous by putting the message before the messenger. This makes no real human-to-human connection that many find important. This will never change. 

Many don't know, or care, where the original source of my arguments came from and those who take from me will never say they did. I am constantly finding plagiarism. It's easier to plagiarize me than to thank me. I understand, but don't excuse, them not wanting to admit they got their Biblical arguments from a website called "Rotten Queer Christian." 

I'm always blown away when I check how many times this place gets view hits from around the world (my favorites are small islands in strange places and areas deep in the heart of Russia that need that light). Multiply those weekly numbers of site views, and years, and it would be incredible if you haven't heard about, or come across, this site if you did any serious study on homosexuality and the Bible.

My Lord tells me He knows what I do. Seeds I put out for the Kingdom that grow in secret that only He knows and that one day will be counted for me in Glory, but sometimes it would be nice to get a few more "Thanks for being one of the first few to put this out there."

...  2 Corinthians 11:17,18.

"WE NEED to combat poor practice in the Church.

The poor practice is this; people whose inner and outer lives are deeply impacted by an issue, and who become angry as a result, are discounted precisely because of their anger. 

This has been the age-old fate of women in the West, and the fate of any oppressed group, and it is the fate of many LGBT people in the Church today. The advice from the men at the top (and they usually are men, and they are always at the top) is the old, infuriating, demeaning advice: ‘Calm down, dear.’

"Calm down, and clam up. Don’t feel what you feel, or at least don’t express it. Behave. Let’s hear an argument, not a cry. Deny your deepest pain, and your deepest love. Instead play our game, our arguments-only game, our game that believes people only really exist from the neck up; calm down, dears, because your game is not legitimate, and we have decided that, and we are always right."

In the face of this old and cold advice I want to offer an even older, warmer, Biblical encouragement to those on the edge in the churches, and in this season to LGBT Christians in particular: be warmly angry, be hot with anger, but do not boil away. Be warmly angry, but do not boil away.

Feel what you feel, and turn the feeling to strength. Don’t mourn, organize. Let the person you are in God speak out, so that your own desires and your own anger become the engine for a just world.

Come as you are. Be as you are. Leave differently. Love differently. Bring your heart’s desire to bear on the life of our community. Make yourself heard, and if people like me act as if we know you better than you know yourself, then set us to rights, tell us the truth, motivate and stir and provoke us to know your anger as you know it.

And then, please, for all our sakes, exercise your courage, the virtue by which your aggression becomes reasonable. And bring your courage to bear on the councils of the Church. And share facts and logic and truth and history and perspective, and (yes, of course!) argument. But never lose your anger, even after you’ve let it blow through you as the sun goes down, and refused to allow it to consume you. Bring your next-morning anger, your tempered anger, your reasonable passion, the truth of how you feel, and contribute it to the whole community, which desperately needs to listen to it. 

Make a difference. Return, day after day, in the face of discouragement and misunderstanding and opposition, to make a difference again.

Keep on making a difference until things are different.

And thank you for bearing with us still, and for enriching our half-awake lives, and for waking us up further. And thank you most of all for the passionate word of Christ that you have received and that you – and only you – can speak forward into our church’s symphony today, a word of the heart, the word of love and anger."


- Bishop of Liverpool, Rev. Paul Bayes.

Οὐ θέλομεν δὲ ὑμᾶς ἀγνοεῖν ἀδελφοί περὶ τῶν κοιμωμένων ἵνα μὴ λυπῆσθε καθὼς καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ οἱ μὴ ἔχοντες ἐλπίδα εἰ γὰρ πιστεύομεν ὅτι Ἰησοῦς ἀπέθανεν καὶ ἀνέστη οὕτως καὶ ὁ θεὸς τοὺς κοιμηθέντας διὰ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἄξει σὺν αὐτῷ τοῦτο γὰρ ὑμῖν λέγομεν ἐν λόγῳ 

I was my mother's son. I love you mom. I'll see you in Glory.

Connie and her Christmas Fruitcakes

When I set out to make this blog a source for affirming theology in understandable terms, I not only went to the names on the tags below who made the argument opposite to mine, but I also went to other blogs to see what they had to say. One that kept on coming up was one I once named here, but then took off then I realized I was sending traffic his way. It really was an ugly place with spider webs in the corner and packed with virulent content against homosexuality. He has a list on his "about" page with what he calls his inspirations naming benign "ex-gays," but look closer at his postings and you get a different story. In one post he hints that homosexuality should still be considered a mental illness and he tries his best, bless his heart, to link the Catholic pedophilia scandals with homosexuality. I can only stay at his blog for a few minutes before it starts making my skin crawl.

Years ago I made a comment on his blog post he made about the Frisch and Brønnum-Hansen study (gays have a higher mortality rate) with me saying he neglected to mention the study was done at the height of the AIDS epidemic. The authors of the comparative study said that their study shouldn't be twisted by those like that blog author with what is a; “agenda-driven, pseudo-scientific gobbledygook.” The authors also went on to say that the mortality rate between married gay men and straight men was the same after 1996.

This blog author responded amicably as I did in return, but later he tried to get back at me by linking to what Gagnon said about what I wrote on my Centurion post (he actually did me a favor because it gave me the chance to refute Gagnon yet again). We came across each other again in the comments of another blogger and I was glad I had the chance to refute him, again, which I hope will be a final banishment back to his blog full of witches.

The debate with this author was gracious and civil, but he didn't post my last comment that corrected him. This was my response to him he didn't post:

"You're mistaken. Three men are heterosexual with families, two have a Ph.D. and two are not Americans. If Solberg wanted men and women with PhDs, I could have given him a laundry list if that was his criteria. They also aren't all 'gay social activists.' Their writings and work are in the framework of the Church and minorities with respect to social injustices like women and other minorities. I also take exception to him saying; "I would encourage you to consider the wider body of Judeo-Christian scholarship on this issue. There are hundreds of brilliant luminaries whose names are widely known and have valid insight to  well." What was the whole point of our conversation? That the bible translators, early church fathers, and many in-between really had an axe to grind with homosexuality or were just wrong with it, a historical PROVEN fact with the links I gave him. If their bias can be shown, their opinion, no matter how brilliant in supposed scholarship, amounts to nothexceptn of excluding a group from the Kingdom of God. The Church has been horrible with its history of how it saw the Jews, the indigenous, women, minorities, animals, and those who didn't believe as they did at a given time remember, they also pointed to specific Scriptural verses to justify how they believed."

This blog is acting wonky (sentences that act like they are trying to escape through the window, postings that bleed into each other so they look like one gigantic post, fonts changing on their own, and now it wants to try different languages on me كيف يتم ذلك؟). One day that black bar just showed up on the upper right side I can't get rid of. Years back I tinkered with my blog codes to make it scratch-n-sniff capable and now my blog has taken on a life of its own. I swear I can hear it moving around at night like it's coming for me and that's why I have a baseball bat next to my bed "just in case."

 

   

   My blog probably on the prowl again.

Trouble Finds Me

The site equip.org gives a poorly put together post on arsenikoitai.


C. Wayne Mayhall, who wrote the article, starts with telling us about his meeting with the Reverend Robyn Provis of MCC in Minneapolis. By his account, she stated that the sure fire way to stop inter-faith dialogues is for Evangelicals to bring up the supposed "Clobber Passages," what she believes is an underhanded tactic. First, this is the opinion of one woman. I, and all who advocate gay-affirming theology from the standpoint the Bible is God-breathed, not only want to engage these passages, we HAVE to engage these passages. Second, I believe he only brings this conversation up is because he's implying gay affirming Christians try to avoid having to look at these passages.

This article is big on personality and little with explaining arsenokoitai. I'm asking my self now why am I even at this party?

He next quotes Theologians Douglas Stuart and Gordon D. Fee. Now Fee is a respected theologian giving a sound approach to the quote. What Mayhall might have missed is Fee admits arsenokoitai is 'almost never (?)' used to mean "homosexual" and Paul would have used other terminology if he in fact wanted to convey that. Reading Fee, who's a prominent member of the First Assembly of God Church, you come away with a sense, at least with the 1 Corinthians passage, that he knows it probably doesn't mean homosexuality as we understand it today, but his church saying; "Clearly the Bible states homosexual practice is sin" stops him from coming right out and saying it. I wish Fee would man up and be true to the Gospel instead of pandering to the prejudices of men that keep him in the contented place he has in the AoG church I once belonged to. Only you will answer for your cowardice Gordon. God forgive you.

Not to take away from Mel White being a relevant voice in the dialogue with the Church on homosexuality, but I really don't see why his opinion is here in what should be a hermeneutics discussion on arsenokoitai. He is not a legitimately credentialed "Theologian" as claimed in the article and the only reason I see White here is that it's of his opinion; "... the Greek word arsenokoitai, used for “homosexual” in 1 Corinthians 6:9, seems to refer to same-sex behavior," what the author of this article wants to establish.

Mayhall then quotes White in saying; "Some scholars believe Paul was coining a name to refer to customers of ‘the effeminate call boys’ (White is talking about Boswell).

White says a biased translator put the word "homosexual" in the 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy passages (he's talking about Bruce Metzger, translator and editor of the RSV Bible).

Stanton L. Jones is a Psychologist and is as much as a Theologian as White. As with White, I don't know why his opinion is here in a hermeneutics discussion. Asking an Evangelical Psychologist about asenokoitai is like asking an Evangelical pastry chef about malakoi.

I do give credit to Mayall for including a gay-affirming theologian with legitimate credentials and whose opinion should be the only one that matters here. Even this biased article had to admit; "Theologian John H. Elliott has written one of the most thorough studies of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 to date."

This ends on Gagnon giving his 2 cents.

This is yet another example of why of this blog dedicates so much time on Robert Gagnon. Over and over Gagnon will be cited in discussions like these as the final say.

This is my response to Gagnon's 4 "propositions."


1. Ironically, Gagnon is broadening the Levitical prohibition from it's unqualified nature of Moloch worship forbidden to the ancient Jews entering the land of Canaan to narrow the ambiguous nature of arsenokoitai.

Proposition 2 is deceptive. The accounts of arsenokoitai being used outside of vice lists are exploitative acts of homosexual rape or pederasty (Zeus raping Ganymede, Nass sexually exploiting Adam).

3. This is refuted by 1 Timothy's absence of malakoi. Koites when used as a suffix in compounds always denotes a penetrative aggressor, never the passive. A passive homosexual would not be prohibited here.

4. A circular argument (what Gagnon does often). Romans speaks on 1 Corinthians as prohibitive of homosexuality - 1 Corinthians echoes back to Romans prohibiting homosexuality.
Romans should be unpacked according to its own context. It also begs the question. If Romans prohibits homosexuality regardless of its idolatry context, why doesn't Paul use arsenokoitai in Romans?



Equip also has less-than-fair article writers like Joseph Gudel who wrote these little tidbits:

" ... even from a secular perspective, the unbiased reader is forced to admit that homosexuality is neither a healthy nor a natural lifestyle.

"... influencing children at a very early age is part of the "gay rights agenda."

"It is extremely revealing to note that almost every pro-gay group within the church shares one thing in common: they reject the Bible as being fully the Word of God [italics his]."

Nope, no personal bias from Mr. Gudel here.

I also commented (RQC) on this site and my reply button was yanked away, stopping me from furthering the debate by making me look like I stopped responding. A Catamite is not a type of "homosexual." The closest you can come with catamite to any 'type' of homosexuality is a boy being feminized for sexual purposes or as an insult you are one to a grown man.

Brent Bolin wrote an excellent post on the error of people like Bruce who think Strong's Concordance should interpret the Bible.

Connie Fell On The Icy Sidewalk Again

The blogger Lyndon Unger (AKA Mennoknight) wrote about my favorite word arsenokoites. 

He starts the post by mentioning Gagnon (Gagnon doesn't believe the Bible is completely inspired, especially the writings of Paul, but that's glossed over by anti-gay Bible believers for the sake of embracing Gagnon), "Brownsville Revival" leftover Michael Brown, THAT Mohler and "Fake On-Line Degree" James White who have all been talked about on my own fine little site. He then goes into insulting my comrades in arms in this homosexuality and the Bible debate by saying they're part of a “Christian” QUILTBAG mafia (I'll make that my costume for Halloween). He has my man Brownson's book cover on a post for some reason, a book he never read (I can't really knock him for that because I didn't read it either), and bad stock photos that he thinks drive his points home.

Was the Bible unreliably translated by uninspired men who tried their best or other translators who let their bias bleed into what they translated? Absolutely. There isn't a scholar on either side of this debate who would say otherwise. Was Paul inspired by the Holy Spirit in what he wrote? Absolutely. We aren't talking about the words of Paul, we're talking about what happened to those words once they left Paul and fell into the hands of others with the book of Revelations saying what will be the consequences for those who change those words.

I'll just respond to what he wrote on his 5 points and leave you to go to his blog with what I was responding to. 

1. Saul, Paul to his Gentile friends, was a Pharisee who became an Apostle to the GENTILES (Galatians 2:8). That’s rather important to this all. Actually, Paul did bow to Greek social convention with terminology and he says so in Galatians 2:15. He used Greek slang and the ironic example is "koitai" which is vulgar slang for f*cking (Paul goes vulgar slang again in Philippians 3:8 saying the Greek slang for "sh*t").

Paul never saw himself as a lofty prophet, just the opposite (1 Corinthians 15:9, Ephesians 3:8).
The fact Paul DOESN'T use any Greek word for a homosexual man or even the slang word for a lesbian (Tribas) common in Paul's day (tribas) proves MY point Paul never meant to condemn homosexuality. If he did, he would first go to words that would have been absolutely clear he was talking about homosexuals (Greek slang Kinaidhos and Kolombaras for passive and masculine homosexuals) and not the mysterious Arsenokoite or the "I have an endless slew of meanings" word Malakoi. Remember, the Hellenistic Jews hearing Paul were as fluent in koine Greek as the Gentiles sitting beside them.

When this blogger writes; "The Spirit wrote in harmony with what he had previously written (which is important to remember)," He's only talking about Romans in the context of idolatry (Romans 1:22,23), that nasty habit man had of worshiping images of Goddesses and animals since he was created.

Now here is why this blogger and almost all anti-gay apologists who breathe think the word means "homosexuals." They say Paul got it from Leviticus 18:22 and to them, this is their "Gotcha!" moment. But this is the problem. If Leviticus doesn't condemn "homosexuality," neither will 1 Corinthians and you can put enough doubt with their claim Leviticus condemns homosexuality as a general rule by going to the actual Hebrew of the Leviticus verse that shows it's not so clear-cut as they want it to be. He links to the verse in the Hebrew that proves nothing and a follow-up link to the poor translation of the verse in the same Hebrew that proves the same nothing. I'm glad he brings up Numbers 31:17-18 and Judges 21:11-12 because it shows the variations of 'arseno' (male) and 'koiten' (beds) found in other places in the Bible have nothing to do with homosexuality, but in fact referenced hetero sex, MY point. I don't picture the Jewish believers pulling the gentile believers aside and saying; "O.K. So Paul is trying to tell you he's getting 'arsenokoite' from one of our ancient books you've never heard of. Thank G-d you had us explain it to you because how would you have known otherwise??? Now pass me the pork ribs I couldn't eat before."

Another blogger made a good point saying; "The idea (Paul got the word from Leviticus) is based upon the existence of the words αρσενος κοιτην in that verse, but this is flawed scholarship. Since αρσενος means male, and κοιτην means bed, ANY Greek sentence that mentions a male and a bed will have forms of those two words in it. Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are not the only verses in the Septuagint containing those words."



"Not all scholars are created equal…"

 …and not all are honest... including bloggers like yourself who thinks all Pentecostals are heretics.



2. What's funny is Unger starts off his 2nd point by saying; "The Bible decides what the Bible means by the terms it uses, not some pagan writers who come centuries later... "
Yet who does he go to later down on his point? Pagan writings that used the word closest to the time of Paul prove the opposite of what he's saying. The Sibylline Oracles puts the word in the category of SOCIAL injustice.

[This is how it works. If you can't find a context of a Bible word in other places of the Biblical narrative, arsenokoite is put in a vice list by Paul that gives it no context, you then go outside the Bible that uses the word at the closest time of it's Bible usage. There isn't one Bible scholar who doesn't do this]

Now this is where the blog author tries to fool you.

He first links to a part of Aristides Apology 13 in saying it's condemning "homosexuality," but this is only talking about Greek Gods who transform themselves into animals to lay with men AND women. It says more about bestiality or God/human sexual relations than homosexuality. Aristides wrote this to the notorious homosexual Emperor Hadrian as a goodwill gesture in explaining the worship practices of those in Hadrian's empire. It would have been stupid to write a condemnation of homosexuality, what Unger believes Aristides is doing here, to the gay emperor who might have pulled a Harod with John the Baptist act on him. This is all shown by Unger in his further examples below of putting what uninspired writers have to say on the level of the Holy Spirit-breathed inspired writers of the Bible, a favorite practice of Ungers' crowd because they expect and get the hatred of homosexuality from the writings of Catholic Church fathers.

He then says; "That would suggest that the usage of the term is in harmony with the previous uses of the term in the Bible (1 Cor. 6:9 & 1 Tim. 1:10) as well as outside the bible (Sibylline Oracles 2:70-78, the Epistle of Ignatius to the Tarsians [which is a citation of 1 Cor. 6:9], The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians [again, a citation of 1 Cor. 6:9], the Acts of John 36, Clement of Alexandria’s Instructor 3.11 [again, citation of 1 Cor. 6:9])."

Well yeah, it would put the term in the harmony it was intended, but the Epistle of Ignatius or Polycarp he names give no indication it's about homosexuality. It's just another word put in their vice lists like with Paul's. The Acts of John 36 text reads as; " ...so also the poisoner, sorcerer, robber, swindler, and arsenokoitēs, the thief and all of this band…” To put "homosexual" between 'robber,' 'swindler,' and 'thief' breaks the flow in the verse, but sex traders (for profit), also linked to the arsenokoitai word, would make perfect sense here. Notice Unger doesn't bring up other Christian writings like The Epistle of Barnabas who uses the word for pederasty or John the Faster who uses it for oral/anal sex between men and women? Unger will leave these and other sources out because they disprove his entire argument it was unanimous in the Church record the word means 'homosexual.'

The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae gives nothing on the word other than where you can find its placement in a vice list from Christian and pagan sources.

Boswell wrote:

"It was during the 4th Century the word became confused and lost its original significance, so by the 6th Century it was used to designate activities as different as child molesting and anal intercourse between husband and wife."

If Unger really cared about the Jewish perspective he's always bringing up, he'd know the Babylonian Talmud uses the word in the context of only pederasty with Maimonides doing the same. What? Did he forget to mention that to you? The Talmud is only second to the Torah itself to the Jews even today.



Nothing this blog writer has linked or written or pointed out what others have written indicates that this word means a homosexual or homosexuality as it stands alone, it just isn't there.

3. "I don't know of one scholar who thinks Paul was; “likely referencing an earlier Scripture about men sleeping with people that weren’t their wives.”  

It was neither Helminiak nor Boswell who make it about prostitution and pederasty). I think he's just throwing names out of gay-affirming scholars in wanting you to think he's read their books and found them unconvincing.

I agree with him here in that neither Moicheia nor Porneia would be terms used by Paul to mean homosexual sex. 


4. Number 4 says nothing.

"I've convinced myself I'm right, so I must be right. Find me more cheap-looking stock photos!"

 - Lyndon Unger.


5. Unger is right and the guy he's refuting on Facebook is wrong. Malakoi (lit; softie) ISN'T in 1 Timothy, but again this proves MY point in grand style by going back to my two points I've put on my blog before.

If arsenokoita' is the "aggressor" in a homosexual relationship and malakoi the "passive" partner in 1 Corinthians, why is malakoi absent in 1 Timothy? An arsenokoitai would be missing the other half of his relationship. If they are a word pair, no other vice list with either malakoi or arsenokoitai, and there are many with malakoi prior to Paul. Many with arsenokoitai after Paul, and never are they paired together.

If 'arsenokoitai' can be the catch-all word for both sides of a homosexual relationship, why does Paul bother using malakoi in 1 Corinthians? "Koites" was used centuries before Paul's usage and when used as a suffix in compounds it always indicated the penetrative aggressor, never the passive. That means it can't apply to both partners in an act and cannot be a catch-all term for all homosexual activity.

Now, what 5 points again? The blog author needs to take his blog title to heart or take up long-haul trucking because he isn't good at this.



  

Jewish hipsters think homophobes should Lign in drerd un bakn beygls.

Snowed: James White and Romans 1 Examined

So gay-affirming Theologian James Brownson did a bookstore speaking engagement that was posted on YouTube and like flies drawn to a honeybun, James White's followers went to the comments section (all negative comments of Brownson were deleted since this posting). When I complimented Brownson with a comment, also deleted by the posters of the YouTube video for some unknown reason, I was given a link to a podcast by a James fan refuting Brownson before all of our comments were deleted.

I've come across White fans before and they really feel strongly about him, and I mean REALLY strongly about him, but like I've said before, I never listened to any of his arguments because I suspected he would bring nothing new other than the same bad hermeneutics others of his kind have brought and sure enough I was right with what I heard from this man.

It's one thing when White puts his poor apologetics out there for the scratchy ears of his fan base who need no convincing, but it's another thing to insult respected Theologians like Brownson who I happen to like. He also has a fixation on Matthew Vines. Vines lifted a large chunk of his arguments on the Bible and homosexuality from Brownson, refute Brownson, you refute Vines. That's why White is always goading Vines to a debate, he knows he can wipe the floor in a debate setting with Vines and he's probably right because White is a seasoned debater. 

I said In the past I couldn't be bothered with White. Now I will.

Some will say; "Aren't you doing to theologian Robert Gagnon what White is doing with theologian James Brownson?" I go after Robert Gagnon, the piñata of my blog, because you can't get better than him. I also detest the man's smugness in saying gays are excluded from the Kingdom with what is clear heretical teaching on homosexuality. The message my camp gives, if true, brings the LGBTQ to Christ. If false, it still brings them to Christ and God will convict their heart if it's sin with conviction. The condemnation message from Gagnon and White's camp, whether true or false, drives the LGBTQ away from Christ either way. When Christ tells us; "Compel people to come in, that my house may be filled," who do you think will be justified before God in compelling the LGBTQ to to come to God even if my theology is wrong? My leading others to falsehood would only fall on myself with having the harshest punishment. I understand the consequences if I am wrong. The consequences for them if they are wrong are even greater.

White says; "There's no such thing as Gay Christianity like there's no such thing as "Gluttony Christianity." The problem with this idiotic analogy along with the other White lumps in with homosexuality is that homosexuality does no harm to the homosexual or to others. Ask your clogged arteries if gluttony does no harm. Also, no one is advocating for identity Christianity like "Liar Christianity." Not even homosexuals are doing this. We say we are Christians who identify as gay.  

Along with his past comments on social media, I've never heard someone so paranoid with such a Christian persecution complex, and I've heard many. His podcast is from 2015 and Christians haven't been rounded up and put in cages for preaching the Gospel yet. This scary threat, made for years, will never happen in the United States because of what our Founding Fathers put on paper. Anti-gay Christians love to play the victim by saying Godless gays have it in for God-fearing men and women. You THINK they hate God because they hate YOU. You can't tell the difference between the love of Christ they will gladly accept and what you say and do that has no love of Christ they want nothing to do with. Can't you people just live your faith in peace instead of poking and pestering the LGBTQ in a way you do with no other group? You see the LGBTQ as walnuts you need to crack. instead of respecting them with the same respect you would demand for yourself. No anti-gay apologist, no matter how many times I've put out the challenge, can show me how homosexuality stops the homosexual from loving God with all their heart, soul, and mind or breaks the 'Royal Law' of love. Christ says to pray for those who persecute you, not stoke fear and anger of them. Anything White or anyone else says that makes you love your gay neighbor less or not at all is anathema to dikaiosune. 

The first 20 minutes of this video is nothing more than him killing time, giving his opinions he knows his listeners will accept as a given, and he admits Brownson is a conservative scholar, but has now turned apostate and is intentionally lying to you using the Word of God (James projects a lot of what he does in this video) about this subject because, according to White, Brownson loves his gay sister so much, he'd lead countless into error for her. He also thinks all the other theologians he names are doing the same by embracing heresy for the sake of their gay relatives (did he hire a detective to see if they all have gay family members?) they may not even be close to or like. Those who re-examine homosexuality and the Bible when a loved one comes out to them like Brownson and David Gushee, David is also mentioned by White, go back to those verses through the new lens of love without the blinders on their hearts, how they were to come to these passages in to begin with. A spiritual exchange occurred from love. I believe you can look at the plain words of the bible and they are just words to be read like any words, but I also think you can see those exact words and by the discernment of the Holy Spirit they become a truth only God can give (John 8:43, 1 Cor, 2:14). They can either be proven wrong or proven right like those who make the opposite case in their hermeneutics. If they have gay relatives who somehow swayed them to now be liars by spreading a false doctrine of gay-affirming with the Bible, they still have to give a convincing exegesis no matter what or who brought them to their Damascus moment of the Bible not condemning homosexuality. 

It's a red flag when any Christian like White starts using the slang of the unbelieving World (leftists, liberals, culture) to demean or dismiss a fellow Christian just because they disagree with them on a theological subject. The same goes for believing Christians are in only one political party. To me, this is the mark of an immature Christian, to God, it's something worse. Anything that even gives the slightest hint the Bible doesn't hate homosexuality, White and those of his kind cry "revisionism!" When they do that very thing (lesbians glued on to Romans, the corruption of Malakoi in translations, treatment of others not being the core of the Sodom narrative, on and on). White even admits many Christians tell him they won't hear the other side of this debate. These are people not wanting to budge from how they believe, which ironically, God sees as idolatry (1 Samuel 15:23) and not being the Bereans Paul calls us out to be with searching for the truth in the Word of God. NO ONE IS ABOVE CORRECTION. Not White. Not Myself (Proverbs 15:32).

I have respect for Brownson as evidenced by what I say about him here (he rips apart Gagnon's "Gender Complimentary" argument like it was a soggy paper bag), but I also have an issue with some of his apologetics. Those of us who do hermeneutics and come out as affirming will not always come to a common consensus on the different verses. Brownson approaches Romans 1 saying Paul was a Stoic and that's why Romans says what it says, others like myself don't believe he was a Stoic, but we all agree "homosexuality" is not condemned in Romans 1.

White makes it sound like John Boswell's book (Boswell wrote several books. I assume "Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality" is the one being talked about) was refuted. Nothing can be further from the truth. Richard B. Hays wrote the first and most comprehensive refute to what Boswell wrote on Romans 1 in 1986 still referenced today and is considered the final say on Boswell by everyone. But Hays admits; "(Romans 1) is neither a general discussion of sexual ethics nor an explicitly prescriptive admonition about the sexual behavior appropriate for Christians.” He further admits that Boswell's study has; "... uncovered possible biases and weaknesses in our received translations of the biblical texts." Hays concludes: "... he (Boswell) has shown that there is room for reasonable doubt about the meaning of biblical terms that have often been understood as references to homosexual persons or behavior." Theologian Michael L. Westmoreland-White who is far from biased with being a member of the non-affirming Evangelical "Gospel Coalition" group, reluctantly showed how Hays, whom he respects greatly, broke his own 4-point methodology test to refute Boswell on Romans 1.

(In 2024 Hays renounced his former view on homosexuality and is now affirming from the Bible. His son Christopher, Professor of Old Testament at Evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary, is in agreement. 

This change shook Christendom to its foundation and I respect their honesty that was a long time in coming, an honesty I wish others had in ministry)

The biggest objections critics had with Boswell's scholarship, other than him being the first openly gay theologian who had the nerve to write on this subject in the 80s, was that he was wrong on how the medieval Catholic church saw homosexuality and read gays into pre-modern historical accounts who they believe weren't there. Notice how White brings up Boswell's homosexuality to make you suspect him of bias? Even White's Twitter followers called him out on mentioning the sexuality of those who disagree with him JUST because they disagree with him. Most gay-affirming scholars/theologians are heterosexual and I could just as easily say White's heterosexuality makes him biased with Scripture and have more of a case for it. Boswell was going to tackle his critics in his next book but sadly passed from AIDS before he had a chance to write it. James White is one of the few who still believe AIDS is a judgment from God against homosexuals. From his book "The Same Sex Controversy; "… and not every homosexual offender receives this (AIDS) punishment." 

I won't dignify this with a response. 

So let's do this.

I agree with White's general argument up to the 20:11 mark. What he states in verses 18 to 22 I also don't have a problem with. His mistakes start with verse 23. These next verses aren't soaked in the Jewish world like he thinks, they're soaked in the Jewish and Gentile world of idolatry. 

He only had to go as far as Deuteronomy 4:16-18 to find the "creatures" and "images of men" he was looking for: 

"Therefore, watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground..."

Paul wasn't making a statement from the creation account, he was referencing Jewish idolatry from Deuteronomy almost word for word. The Deuteronomy verses have never been seen other than in the context of idolatry, but now that context changes to homosexuality when it's taken to Romans? The other flaw with him saying Romans 1:23 is going to Genesis is that we see these same exact objects of worship in pagan lists. From the ancient Egyptians to the cults of Paul's Corinth, they all describe almost the same order of animal creation without the knowledge of the Jewish creation order from the Hebrew Bible or having any connection to homosexuality.

He IS right, intertextuality is important because you'll see Deuteronomy links the Canaanite cult priests in Leviticus 18:21,22 to the Qa-desh cult priests in Deuteronomy 23:17. 

Paul in Romans 1 reminds his listeners, both Jew and Gentile, of the history of both turning from God and into idolatry using specific people and specific events as very real and observable examples of idolatry in the city of Corinth, the idolatry capital of the ancient world, the place where the book of Romans was written. Many times Paul took what he read and saw around him and put it in his writings (Paul was a tentmaker, he wrote 2 Cor. 5:1, watching the athletes training for the Isthmian Games, he wrote 1 Cor, 9:25. "For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship..." Acts 17:23). What he wrote in Romans would be no different with what he observed casually walking the streets of Corinth with what historians said was a city you couldn't swing a cat in without hitting a cult. Paul was very aware of what Livy wrote (Paul uses Livy's metaphor of the 'body' and its 'members' later in Romans 12:4-5) on the scandalous bi-sex bacchanalias of the Dionysus Bacchus cult when he wrote Romans 1.

Now see the flow like White says with the Roman verses because the flow is perfectly kept if you keep them in their idolatry context as I'll show by keeping only to the original Greek and showing just how much Paul drew out of the Jewish text the "Wisdom of Solomon" he put in Romans 1.

Verse 24 starts:

Therefore [Διο], BECAUSE of their willful turning from God, God gave them over to their desire [επιθυμιαις] 1, the word επιθυμιαις is "desire/yearning," (for idolatry), the hearts (of) them (their heart's desire) to uncleanliness [ακαθαρσιαν] 2, uncleanliness unto what? idolatry/idols, they dishonored [ατιμαζεσθαι] 3 their bodies among themselves (for it). 

White makes the mistake of going to the "Wisdom of Solomon" which puts Romans 1 as only a condemnation of idolatry. 4 

He then steps out of Romans and starts talking about "Arsenokoite." Another mistake. 5 

He goes to verse 25.

They exchange-ed [μετηλλαξαν] (Psalm 106:20) the truth for a lie (idols are called "lies" in Isa. 44:20, Jer. 10:14, 13:25). What truth did they exchange for a lie? Paul just told you in the prior verse, the truth of the real God for idols (Romans 2:2 gives the punishment for this action), a continuation of what he's saying, and they rendered service [ελατρευσαν] to the creation (the images and creatures named in verse 23) RATHER THAN the Creator who is blessed forever amen. 

Verse 26. 

For this 'reason,' same Greek word [Δια] starting verse 24, BECAUSE of their willful turning from God, like in verse 25 again, God gave them over to a 'specific' emotion παθη that would degrade them. What emotion? For idolatry, a specific want, "desire," for it. To dishonor [ατιμιας], the same root word for dishonor from verse 24, and (the) female [θηλειαι] (of) them [αυτων] 6 they exchanged [μετηλλαξαν] (verb past tense) the natural [φυσικην] use [χρησιν] 7 to [την] (go) beside [παρα] nature [φυσιν] 8 

This shouldn't even be stated if you follow even the most basic rules of exegesis. Verse 27 IS talking about homosexual acts between males and it isn't painted as being pretty, but these are homosexual acts of idolatry, not acts of orientation, the prior verses spell it out for you with Paul writing in the Jewish style of parallelism (saying the same thing, but in a different way later), To see this as a "stand-alone" verse condemning male homosexuality is a clear and gross display of eisegesis if there ever was one. Rape is a clear-cut case of a male having sex with a female, a man and a woman in a biological union, biology only "God approved" according to anti-gay apologists, yet seeing the context of the relationship (in this case forcible rape and not a consensual act) is everything. 

Verse 27.

Similarly [ὁμοίως] 9 the male [αρρενες] left [αφεντες] (verb past tense), Paul's listeners already knew of these males with no need of naming them, their nature [φυσικην] use (of) the female [θηλειας] (for), what were all the prior verses starting with verse 23 up to now about? Idolatry. They were inflamed [εξεκαυθησαν] (verb past tense) in the desire [ορεξει], them unto one another, male into other male 10 indecency [ασχημοσύνην] manufacturing [κατεργαζομενοι], not from what was innate, and the recompense [αντιμισθιαν] which was a necessity [έδει] of their delusion [πλανης] 11, the necessity of what they do in the delusion their idols are Gods. In themselves [εαυτοίς] accepting [απολαμβάνοντες] (this). 

Verse 28 is a restatement of the prior verses (they did not acknowledge God = God gave them over to a disapproved heart/mind to worship other things, what's in verse 23, that aren't fitting). 

Verses 29-31. 

It looks like Paul is patterning his vice list on Wisdom 14:24-26. Two crucial aspects here that are telling. The extreme of "murder" is out of place in Paul's sin list because the other sins it's listed with are sins without death. But if you go to Wisdom verse 23, it gives you the background of why Paul says murder in this specific vice list; "For whilst they slew their children in sacrifices..." Human sacrifice to idols named in Wisdom is what Paul is going to with saying murder. And what do we find in the same verse of Wisdom? "... frenzied revels of strange ordinances." The frenzied ecstasies of the cultists that worshipped what Paul names in verse 23 of Romans (jump to footnote 3 below). Along with verse 27 of Wisdom, Romans 1 and Wisdom 14 tie together perfectly in mirroring each other with a big idolatry cherry on top of the idolatry sundae that is Romans 1.  

Verse 32 "echoes" Lev. 20:2,5:

 "... whoever should give his semen ever to a chief God (Moloch), to death, let him be put to death and I will destroy him, and all the ones consenting with him, so as for them who prostitute for the ruling Gods (idols)." 

Romans 1 is all about the twisting of sexuality to homosexuality according to White. The only way he can make this about homosexuality is him plucking homosexuality out of its idolatry context and making it into its own thing, breaking the flow of the argument he says we should keep. Follow in the points and contextual arguments because they all lead to idolatry, not to "gay men" or non-existent lesbians in verse 26. White doesn't do basic hermeneutics or keeping to simple context with Romans 1.

Paul was the Apostle to the GENTILES, what was the world of the Gentiles? Idols and the worship of them. For Paul to not address their idolatry in depth, what they existed in, in Romans 1, Paul would not have spoken on the futility of their worship of idols to their worship of the living God now.

He starts playing clips of Brownson at the 49:14 mark. I don't need to refute White refuting Brownson because my arguments aren't Brownson's arguments.

 ________

1. Desire/yearning. Other examples of επιθυμιαις in Scripture are Jesus in Luke 22:15 with 'desiring' to dine with the Apostles before His suffering and Paul saying he 'desires' to see the faces of those in Thessalonica. Picture the reaction of the Thessalonians if Paul wrote he's "lusting" for their faces? 

2. ακαθαρσιαν as cultic uncleanliness. 

3. What form would this cultic 'dishonoring' of the male body take? Castration, self-cutting, and skin branding. Jeramy Townsley in his essay paper on the Cybele/Attis cult showed how their male priests (Galli), first linked to Romans 1 in the 3rd century, would in a; "frenzy, raving with the spirits," self-cut for divination and commit public self-castration, Paul witnessed or knew of with what is the ultimate act of dishonoring the male body. The sacredness of the penis was everything to the ancients. I did a little digging myself and found out Paul, who lived in Damascus and Antioch, would also have known about the "frenzied and deranged" traveling Gala of the Atargatis/Dea Syria cult whose rite involved; "... howling, ecstatic dancing with circular head-tossing, flagellation, and cutting, culminating in self-castration." The idolatrous practice of fanatical dancing, screaming prophecies, and self-cutting goes back to the priests of Baal (1 Kings 18: 26,28,29). 

4. Paul patterned Romans 1 on Wisdom (Man turning from a God who was plain for them to see, they are without excuse, finding substitutes for God in animals, icons of Gods and Goddesses, with both homosexual and heterosexual cult sex practices being an integral part in acts of worship and the result of continuing to exist in this idolatry (back-biting, hating of the real God...). And what is the conclusion of Wisdom  White ... won't ... go ... to? "The very notions of idols was the beginning of immoral sexual activity...the worship of nameless idols is the origin of all evil-its cause as well as its results." (Wis.14:12,27) 

5. This is again White trying to fool you with what he wants you to believe as a given. I give a simple and short refute of the broad prohibition of homosexuality from Leviticus that narrows it down and Paul would have brought over to 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 with 'arsenokoite.' Even though White hates it, the word DOES have multiple meanings going back to the time of Paul's first usage of it. The Oracles, written at the time of Paul, puts the word in the category of injustices after "stealing seeds" and harming others (Book 3, section 220, already covers male on male sex). Philo, a contemporary of Paul, puts the Leviticus passages with sacred prostitution (Spec. VII 40,41) and its feminization of boys with both Philo and Paul being witnesses to the cult processions of Ceres in Corinth. If Philo understood the Leviticus passages in this context, so would Paul. Both were taught in the same Jewish teaching tradition with both using the Greek Septuagint. 

6. He wants you to ignore the significance of 'them' (αυτων) in the verse. The word 'them,' says these women belong with or to these idolatrous men talked about in the previous verses and not separate and independent lesbians. The suggestion is this was referring to their wives and their daughters, the women of the cults who played gender role-reversal in penetrating the males with artificial phalli and who did acts of oral and anal sex going contrary to procreating sex. 

7. Their Women.

8. "Besides" (παρα), or "beyond," Nature (φυσιν). 

It's believed Paul is going with the stoic "nature" here and that Paul was even a stoic himself (Brownson's argument). If he were doing this, he would be going to a world view of following the rule of nature, living according to nature, and obeying the universal law of nature (Logos) that has no personal and loving God who would sacrifice Himself in death so that we might live, contrary to the very Gospel Paul preached and died for (Stoicism won't be discussed at any length here). The animal kingdom would also be a future statement against Paul because of the stoic belief that there is no normative homosexuality in the natural world of the animal kingdom because it would be against the "natural order." We now know this isn't true with studies showing homosexuality is in almost every species including animals that can change their gender. This is going beside "nature" or even beyond it. Oral sex isn't using the mouth contrary to its use, it's alongside its use or going beyond its use. 

In Romans 11:2 the word pair pops up again by saying God Himself went παρα φυσιν when he grafted the Gentiles on the tree of the Jews. Paul's pal Philo used the word pair as a strong prohibitive. Paul uses παρα φυσιν a 3rd time saying men having their hair long was παρα φυσιν, but he said this was coming from tradition (παραδοσεις) in verse 2 and not from an authority from Christ (1 Thess. 4:2). Paul in verse 16 justifies it to anyone who has a problem with it in telling them; "It's a practice we have always had and we aren't about to change it for you now." Paul wouldn't have seen the long-haired hippie males of the 70s God used in a mighty way as permissible either. Why did Paul have a problem with long hair on men? It might be because he didn't want the believers in Corinth to be mistaken for being pagans in public. The men in the Dionysus/Bacchus cult, written about by Livy, in symbolic devotion had long hair or veils and the women had short hair. In 1 Corinthians 11:3-15, Paul talks about hair and head coverings with what was always understood as traditional norms in the churches. 

I see no conflict when I believe παρα φυσιν can be in all three categories. Good in the case of God's benevolence in grafting the Gentiles. Bad in going against tradition (same with Philo and Josephus, a violation of the stoic nature they followed. Expected as both were Stoic-influenced Jews and not Christians). Neutral in the Romans passage with homosexuality that doesn't go 'beyond' its use for idolatry. Paul did use a few stoic words, but that was to lure a stoic audience to hear the Gospel pushing word buttons they'd get. Paul also used Jewish words and imagery, but that was to lure a Jewish audience to hear the Gospel with his Jewish learning he said was now 'trash' (Phil 3:7-9). Paul admits he would be and say anything that would bring people to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ: 

"... I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews... To those not having the law (Roman stoics) I became like one not having the law... so as to win those not having the law... I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings." 

Am I saying Paul was a fan of gay sex? No, but he was no fan of hetero-sex either ("It is good for a man not to touch a woman." 1 Cor. 7:1). Any relationship that took time away from your relationship with God wasn't good to him ("An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs... But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband." 1 Cor. 7:34). 

9. In Brett Provance's essay; "Romans 1:26-27 in Its Rhetorical Tradition," he writes; "... Jamie Banister’s article ("Ὁμοίως and the Use of Parallelism in Romans 1:26–27") has notably challenged the hermeneutical strategy of reading back v. 27 into v. 26 via the term ὁμοίως (similarly/likewise). Addressing every New Testament passage involving ὁμοίως, and also noting various uses of ὁμοίως in the LXX, Philo, Josephus, and the Apostolic Fathers, she has demonstrated that this reading-back approach is never demanded by the NT texts, and at times would be detrimental to proper interpretation. While in a number of the cases, the antecedent clause dictated the meaning of the subsequent ὁμοίως clause, the reverse was not the case. The result is that, of the twenty-eight eligible [NT] passages for consideration, in twenty-five (89 percent) it would be impossible or illogical to use the ὁμοίως clause to interpret its antecedent clause. Of the three passages remaining for consideration, Banister finds no instance in each case of the ὁμοίως clause determining meaning in the antecedent clauses. Thus it stands that the modern interpretive assumption in finding female homoeroticism in v. 26 is simply not a rhetorical/grammatical approach utilized by the ancient authors."

10. Context, context, context. This isn't a case of a covenant relationship with loving innate sexuality or even any kind of gay relationship. This is a whole other creature happening here of self-castration with a life of homosexual prostitution with heterosexual male acolytes of girl God cults.

He says verse 27 can't be changed by any kind of revisionism, so people like Brownson don't even try, but I could say verses 26-27 weren't written by Paul but, were a later addition. The argument for this goes all the way back to Tertullian. Read Romans 1 without the two verses and you'll see the flow stays consistent. I won't make this argument, because, unlike White, I don't entertain revisionism in my favor.

11. Parallels 2 Thess. 2:11:

"Because of this, God sends them a working delusion (πλάνης) that they should believe a lie (idols)." See Romans verse 25 above. 

Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field." Jer. 10:5.