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Oh yeah. That the Pauline prescriptions only hold about what we'd call prostitution (or if they're all sex-positive and 'sex work is real work', they go for "no no what was meant is abusive relations where there is power imbalance") and not 'loving committed same-sex relationships'. Arguing over the definition of pais and that condemnation was of paederasty or paedophilia, not homosexuality. Claims that the Centurion and his servant (see pais) were same-sex lovers and Jesus blessed or at least approved of the relationship by healing the servant (seemingly the idea that the man whom the local Jewish community praised as righteous might care about a servant if he wasn't fucking him is too extreme to hold in contemplation; no, the only reason a big-wig would care about a household slave is if the slave was his bed-warmer. That's... not really helping the cause of "gay is okay and Christian too!", guys?)
David and Jonathan as gay lovers. Naomi and Ruth for the distaff side (and never mind that they were mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, what's a little intergenerational technical incest against lesbian love?)
Yes. I've seen the arguments against Romans 1:26-27 as dispositive, for instance, and they seem profoundly weak to me. It is true that for Paul same-sex relationships are not the fundamental vice, but rather a symptom of the fundamental vice of idolatry - but that hardly seems a defense of those relationships, no more than the same observation is a defense of wickedness, covetousness, gossip, foolishness, or cruelty, all of which are in the same passage. It is true that the phrase Paul uses in those verses, para physin (against nature), is used in other contexts in a positive way (e.g. in Romans 11:24), but this in no way turns the negative reference in 1:26-27 into a positive one. Likewise you sometimes run into the argument that Paul was talking about people acting 'against nature' in the sense of against the way they are created, and he didn't know what sexual orientation is - now that we do know what it is, we understand that for a homosexual person to eschew same-sex relationships would be acting against their own nature. Therefore the Pauline argument should actually be in favour!
And so on. There's a lot of very standard but also very weak argumentation along these lines - here are two examples from the Australian debate a few years ago. I do not think these need to be particularly dignified with a response - in particular I think the second piece's conclusion that we need to be "even more Pauline than Paul" is an excuse for revisionist sophistry, where as long as we can contort a 'big idea' into something that can be awkwardly construed as supporting whatever we want to do today, we're free to ignore all the details of that idea.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that, if one approaches the Christian tradition - including both the Bible and the two thousand years of interpretation and practice on top of that - with anything like a neutral gaze, the disapproval of same-sex relationships is clear and unambiguous.
Nonetheless, people who have been raised in and identify with Christianity nonetheless sometimes want to affirm same-sex relationships. Rather than face the understandable psychic pain of needing to either abandon Christianity, or abandon their convictions about sexuality, they instead go for the oh-so-much-easier approach of convincing themselves that Christianity says what they wish it said.
I think this is an instructive example not only for Christians thinking about issues to do with sexuality, but for Christians thinking about any moral issues whatsoever - because on every issue, there is a temptation like this, a temptation to disfigure the gospel and make it into whatever is convenient for one's present interests.
At any rate -
As for Christianity, so too for Islam. I don't think the clarity of Islamic teaching on this point will help it any. Christian teaching is just as clear, and yet...
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