The second and third of these scriptures are two Levitical passages. Leviticus 18:22, which says, “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.” And Leviticus 20:13, which says, “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” The affirming camp says that these passages are not a valid condemnation of loving homosexual unions, because they were written for a different culture. The argument goes that in the time that these passages were written, homosexuality was seen as removing a man’s masculinity and so it was condemned in Leviticus for ceremonial reasons. This means …show more content…
The argument goes that, in Paul’s time, homosexuality as an exclusive orientation was not something that people considered. Instead, homosexuality was done often as an excess of passion, habitually involving older males with much younger males. As Robin Scroggs puts it, “Thus the context of the treatises and the culture as a whole makes it clear that the pattern that is in the mind of the authors of the slogans is precisely that of pederasty, not of some other sort.” Other arguments claim that this passage refers instead to adulterous homosexual relations or cult prostitutions, just not loving Christian unions. The non-affirming camp, in contrast, claims that Paul knew well what he was talking about. The argument goes that this is definitely a condemnation of all same-sex sexual and romantic relations. They say that if Paul wanted to convey pederasty and the like, he would have used different words. As Caleb Kaltenbach states, “Paul consistently condemned having sex with someone of the same gender, reinforcing what the Hebrew Scriptures …show more content…
They state that the words in question here, malakoi and arsenokoitai, should not be taken to mean ‘practicing homosexuals’. Instead they should mean ‘those without self-control’ and ‘those who have exploitative sex between men’. As Daniel Helminiak puts it, “In first century, Greek-speaking, Jewish Christianity, arsenokoitai would have referred to exploitative, lewd and wanton sex between men. This, and not male-male sex in general, is what the term would imply.” The non-affirming camp, however, claims that these words can be considered as they usually are, to refer to any homosexual sex. The argument goes that arsenokoitai most certainly means homosexuals, seeing as the etymology of this word implies heavily a more traditional meaning. As Robert Gagnon puts it, “These verses (1Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10) make clear that certain behaviors, including certain sexual behaviors (homosexuality), cannot be a part of faithful Christian