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Genesis 18:20-19:26: God nukes Sodom and Gomorrah

The debate: Did God destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because they were a bunch of queers?

The text:

The LORD said, "Abraham, I have heard that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah are doing all kinds of evil things. Now I am going down to see for myself if those people really are that bad. If they aren’t, I want to know about it"….That evening the two angels arrived in Sodom….[Abraham’s nephew, Lot, gave the angels lodging]….Before Lot and his guests could go to bed, every man in Sodom, young and old, came and stood outside his house and started shouting, "Where are your visitors? Send them out, so we can have sex with them!"….[Then Lot] said, "Friends, please don’t do such a terrible thing! I have two daughters who have never been married. I’ll bring them out, and you can do what you want with them"….[The angels stepped-in and defended Lot’s family]….The two angels said to Lot, "The LORD…has sent us here to destroy the city. Take your family and leave." (CEV)

Deep thoughts: The story of God’s destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah is the most famous and easily one of the weakest of the biblical texts used to condemn homosexuality. So how did these abused verses become such a favorite among the queer-haters?

First, it wasn’t because of their careful reading of the story itself. Despite all the hype, this Bible story makes no mention of homosexuality whatsoever. What? I’m serious. Nowhere does the storyteller inform us whether any of the men had ever in their lives even engaged in male-male sex, nor does he moralize on the general subject of homosexuality (e.g., Is it ethical for men to fall in love with each other and form relationships?). Instead, we read a narrative that includes an attempted gang-rape of two male angels by all of the town’s men—young and old.

Newsflash to queer-haters: just as biblical stories about male-female rape are not a judgment on heterosexuality, neither is this story of attempted male-male rape a condemnation of homosexuality. Male-male rapes are acts of violence, not homosexual romance. For example, in the Greco-Roman world it was not uncommon for a soldier to rape an enemy soldier as a final act of humiliation and violence on him. Regardless of what the men of Sodom would have done to the two angels if given the chance, their attempted violence was the final testimony that they were ready to get all blown up by God (per the story teller).

Strangely enough, the story never does say what sins these people supposedly did to piss God off in the first place—remember, "he" heard something was going on down there?! Admittedly, God’s vision problems do concern me (e.g., is God affected by cloud cover?), but luckily the Bible does contain several other passages which do specify the source of God’s initial anger.

Yet, this passage didn’t become a queer-haters’ favorite from anything said about Sodom and Gomorrah in the rest of the Bible. So after you’ve read the S & G story with your relatives, painstakingly take the time to read to them the other Bible passages that refer back to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (e.g., Ezekiel 16:49-50; Jeremiah 23:14; Luke 10:10-12). Why don’t any of these texts mention homosexuality as one of the many sins of these "wicked" cities?! What we do learn is God’s anger came from these people’s blatant inhospitality, pride and heartless treatment of the poor.

Now for the answer to why queer-haters keep abusing this passage. Can you say indoctrination? As such, your conservative Christian relatives and their pastor are merely repeating "Bible lessons" they’ve learned regarding a subject that makes them very uncomfortable (i.e., human sexuality)—it’s not like they’ve actually thoroughly researched the debate over homosexuality and the Bible.

Historically, this indoctrination started slowly around 50 B.C. At that time some Jewish writers contemporized the story in a way that fit their world-view. Now the story of Sodom was the story of Rome—the new Sodom. No longer was the story a morality play against social injustice but a statement of God’s judgment against the evils of the Roman Empire—especially in regards to all eroticism.

Don’t be surprised that interpretations change, for most, if not all, biblical passages have undergone a variety of reinterpretations since they were initially written. Like the case of this story, the Church has often reinterpreted the Bible’s demands for social justice into merely calls for personal morality—a morality that was afraid of all sexuality, causing some theologians in the early Church to glorify celibacy as superior to marriage.

Bottom line: At worst, this passage condemns male-male rape—which isn’t the same as homosexuality, nor is it part of the so-called "homosexual lifestyle." Yet, since all rape is a great evil, maybe the real moral tragedy of the Sodom story is the Bible’s failure to condemn Lot for offering his daughters so freely to the crowd—what a coward and jackass of a father.