The passages used to condemn same-sex relationships are few. They are also, on close reading, doing something very different from what they have been recruited to do. Each one has a specific context, a specific target, and a specific meaning — none of which is a loving, consensual relationship between two adults.
What follows is a plain-language examination of each passage. For those who want to see the underlying textual evidence, a Prove It toggle is available beneath each section.
Leviticus — Not About Sex
The two Leviticus passages most often cited against same-sex relationships exist within a legal and social framework that modern Christians rarely stop to fully examine — embedded among other rules of law that Christian theology has long since set aside, including prohibitions on mixing fabrics, eating shellfish, and trimming beards.
Leviticus 19:19 (ESV) — "You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material." Cattle breeders and retail clothing sellers take note.
Leviticus 19:27 (ESV) — "You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard." Happens for almost all modern haircuts.
Leviticus 19:28 (ESV) — "You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves: I am the Lord." The Christian tattoo artists would like a word.
Also:
Exodus 23:19 (ESV) — "You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk." Appears three times in the Torah — Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21 so it was considered a serious problem.
Deuteronomy 25:11-12 (ESV) — "When men fight with one another and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, then you shall cut off her hand. Your eye shall have no pity." A woman defending her husband in a street fight loses her hand.
Could "lie with a man as with a woman" refer to homosexual intercourse? Taken as a snapshot by itself, very likely. But these verses do not exist within a vacuum and there are other observations worth making. For starters, why aren't there similar condemnations for women? If these verses are making a universal moral statement against homosexuality, the silence on female same-sex relationships is unexplained and awkward. The text isn't shy about addressing women elsewhere in the same chapters.
Leviticus 20:10 (ESV) — "If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." The woman is condemned equally.
Leviticus 21:9 (ESV) — "And the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by whoring, profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire." Not stoned — burned.
Leviticus 15:19-20 (ESV) — "When a woman has a discharge, and the discharge in her body is blood, she shall be in her menstrual impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening. And everything on which she lies during her menstrual impurity shall be unclean." Normal female biology treated as ritual pollution. Everything she touches, sits on, or lies on becomes unclean. The framework of the text treats women's nature as inherently problematic.
Now consider a pattern in the vocabulary itself. When the author of Leviticus wants to name sexual intercourse plainly, he has tools for it — and he uses them right here in this context. There is the explicit noun shikbah (H7903), which appears in the surrounding verses for adultery (18:20) and bestiality (18:23, 20:15). And there is a fuller, unmistakable construction the book reaches for when it wants to remove all doubt: shakab (H7901, the verb "to lie") + shikbat (H7902, a cognate noun for the act) + zera (H2233, seed) — literally "to lie a lying-of-seed" — which appears in Leviticus 15:18, 19:20, and Numbers 5:13.
The male-with-male prohibitions in 18:22 and 20:13 use none of this. They reach instead for the plain, general verb shakab, "to lie with" — even though the more explicit noun sat in the adjacent verses and the unambiguous construction was elsewhere in the same book. The author had the full toolkit for specifying sexual intercourse and, in precisely these two verses, declined to use any of it.
It is the position of this site that this choice is deliberate, not accidental. Where Leviticus means intercourse beyond dispute, it says so.
Where it addresses man-with-man, it broadens the language — and that shift is a signal for a different meaning.
These two prohibitions operate at a different and broader register than the sexual proscriptions around them: they point not at a specific physical act, but at how one man treats another.
So why does that broader "to lie with" matter? The chapter frames its prohibitions against the practices of Egypt — "You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived" (Lev 18:3) — and Israel had just emerged from generations of slavery there. In that world, women were property. To treat a fellow Israelite man as though he occupied the social and legal position of a woman was to push him back down into chattel, undoing the freedom God had just given him. To the author of Leviticus, that was a particularly sickening violation — and the death penalty fits the context: re-enslaving a fellow Israelite male was a capital matter under the same legal framework.
This is not about loving relationships, and even if it was it wouldn't apply to Christians today. It is about a profane violation of social hierarchy in a specific ancient culture.
Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13 — Both use shakab (H7901) — the general word for lying down. The more explicit term shikbah (H7903) appears in Leviticus 18:20 (adultery) and 18:23, 20:15 (bestiality) — but not in the male-with-male verses, even though the author clearly had it available.
Leviticus 19:20 — When the author of Leviticus wanted to describe sexual intercourse beyond any doubt, it took a three-word punch: shakab (H7901, verb "to lie") + shikbat (H7902, cognate noun specifying the act) + zera (H2233, seed/semen). Together they form a construction meaning "lie a lying-of-seed" — Hebrew's way of describing penetrative intercourse unambiguously. This combination appears in Leviticus 15:18, 19:20, and Numbers 5:13 wherever the text needs to be completely unambiguous about sexual intercourse. This combination is not used in 18:22 or 20:13, suggesting a different, less specific meaning.
Genesis 28:13 — Shakab can carry territorial and property connotations. God promises Jacob "the land whereon thou liest" (shokhev, participle of shakab), "to thee will I give it." Jacob's act of lying upon the land marks his inheritance. The shakab/mishkav root family operates in a possession-and-territory register throughout Hebrew scripture — supporting the reading that 18:22 and 20:13 prohibit reducing a man to chattel-position, not condemning love or attraction.
The linguistic argument about register shift is the position of this site. Credentialed scholars have reached affirming conclusions through different routes — if you find my presentation unconvincing, consider the work of Renato Lings, whose philological analysis is collected in Love Lost in Translation: Homosexuality and the Bible (2013), or the Leviticus scholarship of Jacob Milgrom.
Exodus 21:16 & Deuteronomy 24:7 — Kidnapping a fellow Israelite to enslave them carried the death penalty under the same legal framework, consistent with the penalty in Leviticus 20:13. Deuteronomy 24:7 specifies the victim as "one of his brothers, the people of Israel."
I've spent a lot of effort looking at this portion of Leviticus, doing my best at honoring the intricacies and heritage of the text while also affirming justice for gay and lesbian readers. I've been trying to provide a more honest and humane perspective than what many have been force-fed. To me, these are seemingly difficult and primitive rules that were once useful in difficult and primitive times.
Today I am thankful for the lovely and wonderful Reform Jewish rabbis I've met through my family and friends. It has not escaped my attention how they manage to weave these otherwise difficult portions of scripture into a tapestry that supports care and justice while honoring tradition and heritage. I'm thankful they neither dismiss the scripture they inherited nor treat people with the crude abrasiveness many of these texts seem to echo on the surface level. Similarly, I'm thankful for most Christian leaders who, at least in practice, do not treat women as property or embrace much of the apparent crudeness of these texts.
So I find it particularly upsetting that so many "Christians" seem to gleefully embrace the absolute worst, out-of-context, interpretations of these verses their minds can construct. It is clear the larger Judeo-Christian culture has moved on from that kind of legalistic understanding of these texts. Plucking two otherwise random verses out of here and thinking they've got the whole truth on a silver platter and an iron-clad commission to brand their dogma on the lives of others is just not the way the Torah or even most of the Old and New Testament works.
Admittedly, even in the best light, there are many surface level concepts among these texts that are upsetting — women as property and rules that seem to just make no sense yet carry mind-bogglingly severe punishments. Now it would be wrong for me to presume to tell Jewish teachers what to believe about their own Torah or how they should celebrate the heritage of their texts, but in my observation they do not treat scripture here like a grab-bag that can be so conveniently cherry-picked from. Christians should be more careful about using one-off verses and snippets, especially out of here. Especially when they are doing it to bully people while ignoring the rest as too inconvenient for themselves.
— Scott M. Nemeth; May 9th, 2026
The Vice Lists — Violations, Not Orientation
Two New Testament letters contain lists of violations regarded as incompatible with the faith. These lists are primarily made up of transgressions involving violence, property crimes, lack of consent, and related forms of idolatry (likely cultic sex practices). Even the terms for "sexually immoral" and "adultery" are technically forms of exploitation, consent, and property violations (see Pillar 2 for more information). Two Greek words embedded into these lists — often translated as effeminate and homosexual — have been used to condemn same-sex orientations and relationships. But these words and the lists they live in tell a different story.
The structural logic of both lists moves across words for sexual misconduct and words for exploitation and abuse, and both words are in the middle of that progression. That placement suggests these words are in part sexual and in part abusive — in other words, forms of sexual abuse. The first word, malakoi, is used by Jesus himself to describe royal clothing — flamboyant, showy display. In the context of a list of sexually abusive sins, it points toward indecent exposure. The second word, arsenokoitai, points to coerced sex, or more bluntly put, rape.
The progression isn't: immoral → gay → thieves.
It's: immoral → indecent exposure → sexual assault → stealing
Note: "immoral" in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10 refers to sexual exploitation — see Pillar 2 for more. So the actual lists, smoothing for institutional manipulation:
1 Cor 6:9-10 — ... adultery → indecent exposure → sexual assault → stealing ...
1 Tim 1:9-10 — ... murders → sexual exploitation → sexual assault → human trafficking ...
These words are embedded among transgressions of violence, property, and consent (adultery still considered a property crime and at a bare minimum lacks the consent of the other spouse), coercion, exploitation, abuse. Not orientation. Not a relationship.
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 — Contains both malakoi and arsenokoitai at the structural hinge between sexual sin and sins of abuse.
1 Timothy 1:9-10 — Contains arsenokoitai but not malakoi. Here it appears directly before andrapodistais (slave traders), placing it structurally in the domain of exploitation rather than consensual sexuality.
Matthew 11:8 & Luke 7:25 — Jesus uses malakoi to describe the clothing of those in royal palaces — flamboyant, ostentatious display, not softness or effeminacy.
The Derivation Argument — The Septuagint Connection
Some scholars argue that arsenokoitai — the word sometimes rendered "homosexuals" (see above) — was coined by Paul directly from the Septuagint's wording of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, where the words for "male" and "bed" sit side by side. If so, the term would appear anchored to a prohibition on male same-sex intercourse, seeming to settle the translation debate in a single stroke.
The Septuagint, often abbreviated by scholars as LXX, is an ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament that would have been used at the time of Jesus and the Apostles.
This site does not concede that the derivation is established — but it has no need to fight it, because even if it holds, it reinforces the chattel interpretation set out above rather than undermining it. If those passages were never about consensual same-sex behavior in the first place, but about ownership, domination, and the coercive treatment of men as property, then a word coined from them inherits that same concern. That is precisely why arsenokoitai keeps the company it does in the New Testament, listed beside enslavers and human-traffickers. The company it keeps confirms the reading rather than contradicting it.
Andrapodistēs (G405) — the word for slave-trader sitting immediately next to arsenokoitai (G733) in 1 Timothy 1:10 — appears to be a compound of anēr (man, G435) and pous (foot, G4228), meaning literally "one who catches men by the foot." Apply the same derivation methodology used for arsenokoitai and — voilà — Leviticus 21:19, a verse which disqualifies a priest with a broken foot from temple service. By the same logic, andrapodistēs would harshly judge someone with a broken foot.
That conclusion is obviously absurd and illustrates why caution is warranted regarding the derivation argument. Finding component elements near each other in the Septuagint is interesting, but does not settle what Paul meant when he used the compound.
The derivation also carries far less weight than it first appears. The Septuagint is not canonical scripture — it is a translation, historically invaluable but a translation nonetheless, and its word choices are interpretive decisions, not authoritative text. The tradition that produced it later moved away from it, and the Christian West, from Jerome to the Reformers, went back to the Hebrew rather than treat the Greek as final. Attributing Paul's meaning to a word fabricated from that translation is building on a questionable foundation — and unnecessary for the argument this site is making.
Septuagint — Leviticus 18:22 — The Greek reads: kai meta arsenos ou koimethese koiten gynaikos — "and with a male you shall not lie the lying of a woman." The two words arsenos ("of a male," from arsen) and koiten ("bed/lying," from koite) stand close together here, and again in 20:13; Paul's compound arsenokoitai is most plausibly built from them. But a derivation cannot carry more meaning than its source. As this page argues, the Leviticus prohibitions are not straightforwardly about consensual same-sex intimacy — the author had explicit intercourse vocabulary available in Hebrew and pointedly declined to use it. A term coined from those verses inherits their actual concern: ownership, domination, and the coercive treatment of a man as property.
1 Timothy 1:9-10 — arsenokoitai appears here immediately alongside andrapodistais (Strong's G405), the standard Greek word for slave-dealers, kidnappers, and man-stealers — those who forcibly seize human beings and traffic them as property. Lexically the term denotes not the ordinary, socially sanctioned slave trade but the coercive taking of persons: kidnapping the free, or re-enslaving them. That is precisely the concern of the chattel reading, and it makes arsenokoitai's placement here deliberate rather than accidental. If the word meant "men who have sex with men" in a general sense, sandwiching it between human-traffickers is arbitrary. If it names those who sexually dominate or exploit others through coercion and ownership, the neighbor fits it exactly.
Jewish and Christian treatment of the Septuagint — The Septuagint began as a Jewish translation, but by the 2nd century CE Jewish communities had largely moved away from it. Around 130 CE the proselyte Aquila of Sinope, a disciple of Rabbi Akiva, produced a new, rigorously literal Greek translation that supplanted the Septuagint in Greek-speaking synagogues; Symmachus and Theodotion later produced further revisions in the same corrective spirit.
The Septuagint's Greek text was likewise never established as the authoritative Old Testament within the church at large — no ecumenical council ever fixed it as the definitive form of the text. When Jerome produced the Latin Vulgate in the late 4th century, he deliberately went back to the Hebrew — his principle of hebraica veritas, "the Hebrew truth" — precisely because he judged the Septuagint to contain loose or mistaken renderings, and he did so over the objections of contemporaries like Augustine. The Protestant Reformers followed the same instinct, grounding the Old Testament canon in the Hebrew Masoretic text rather than the Greek.
The church read and prized the Septuagint devotionally, but that is a different thing from treating its wording as authoritative. To make the derivation of arsenokoitai from this translation the very keystone to its meaning — and, doing that in order to harshly condemn people who have otherwise done nothing wrong — is to rest a heavy conclusion on an insufficient and circumstantial foundation.
Sodom — The Sin They Don't Mention
The story of Sodom is one of the most misused passages in Scripture. A mob surrounded Lot's house and demanded he hand over his guests so they could "know" them. This was not flirting. It was not desire. It was attempted gang rape of strangers by a hostile crowd asserting dominance — closer to prison violence than to romance.
But we don't need to speculate about what Sodom's sin was. Scripture tells us directly. The prophets name it explicitly — and homosexuality is not on the list. The sins named are arrogance, indifference to the poor and needy, injustice, adultery, and enabling evildoers.
Comparing a mob attempting to gang rape vulnerable travelers to a loving, consensual same-sex relationship isn't just bad theology. It's an abomination unto itself.
Genesis 19 — The mob's demand to "know" (yada) the visitors mirrors the language of assault and domination, not consensual desire. Lot's response — offering his daughters instead — underscores the dynamic of power and violation at work.
Ezekiel 16:49-50 — "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy."
Isaiah 1:10-17 — Connects Sodom to injustice and neglect of the vulnerable.
Jeremiah 23:14 — Names adultery, lying, and enabling evildoers as Sodom's sins.
Romans 1 — Covetousness, Not Attraction
The passage in Romans most often cited against same-sex relationships uses four key Greek words across verses 24-27. When each one is traced through other New Testament texts, they all point to the same place: covetousness, idolatry, and exploitation. None of them point to romantic attraction.
- Epithymia (v. 24) is the same word Paul uses in Romans 7:7 to define the Tenth Commandment — "thou shalt not covet."
- Pathos (v. 26) appears in Colossians 3:5 alongside epithymia and pleonexia (greed) — the latter explicitly identified as idolatry.
- Orexis (v. 27) shares its root with the verb used elsewhere for aspiring to office, reaching for money, and longing for a homeland.
- Aschēmosynē (v. 27) — translated "shameless acts" — is the standard Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew word for forbidden family relations in Leviticus 18: incest, in-law violations, household power abuse. It is not even the same word used for the alleged same-gender prohibitions, which use entirely different vocabulary and are debunked in a previous article (see "Leviticus — Not About Sex" above).
But Paul doesn't leave us guessing what he meant — he actually spells it all out. In verse 28 he says God gave them over to do "things not fitting" — and in verses 29-30 he lists exactly what those are: injustice, wickedness, greed, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, gossip, slander, God-hatred, insolence, arrogance, boasting, inventing evil, defying parents, senselessness, faithlessness, heartlessness, mercilessness. Nothing on that list resembles a consensual loving relationship of any kind. The only sexual word some translations include — porneia (fornication) — is a textual variant from later manuscripts, and even when retained refers to prostitution-related exploitation, not romantic relationships (see Pillar 2 for the full porneia word study).
The passage describes people using other people — sex as power, status, and acquisition. Not love. Not attraction. Not anyone's orientation.
Romans 1:24 — Uses epithymia (G1939). Romans 7:7 — Paul defines the same word as covetousness: "I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.'"
Romans 1:26 — Uses pathos (G3806). Colossians 3:5 — Groups pathos with epithymia and pleonexia (greed) — and identifies pleonexia explicitly as idolatry.
Romans 1:27 — Uses orexis (G3715), from oregomai (G3713). The verb root appears in 1 Timothy 3:1 (aspiring to office), 1 Timothy 6:10 (reaching for money), and Hebrews 11:16 (longing for a homeland). Acquisitive vocabulary, not attractional.
Romans 1:27 — Uses aschēmosynē (G808). The Septuagint uses this word throughout Leviticus 18 for forbidden family relations — incest, in-law unions, household sexual abuse. Even the alleged same-gender prohibitions in Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13 use entirely different vocabulary.
Romans 1:28 — Paul says God gave them over to do "things not fitting" (ta mē kathēkonta).
Romans 1:29-30 — Paul's actual list of what those things are. Greed, envy, malice, murder, gossip, arrogance, boasting, defiance, faithlessness, mercilessness. Nothing even close to a consensual same-sex relationship is listed.
Romans 1:29 — Some translations include porneia ("fornication") at the start of the list. This word is absent from the earliest manuscripts. Even when retained, Paul's usage of porneia refers to prostitution (typically involving enslaved women with no legal agency over their own bodies), incest, and ritual sex acts in idol worship — categories of exploitation, coercion, and idolatry. Not consensual relationships.
Four passages. Four problems. None of them about a loving, committed same-sex relationship.
A Personal Note
I have to admit I'm not proud of how long it took me to be affirming of same-sex relationships, and I'm likely not the best resource for this information. I do affirm and share my views about it — but hopefully, gay and lesbian readers will be at a point where they simply don't give a crap what I think. However, I know a little affirmation can go a long way for someone who is struggling. Also, there is hope. If I can change, some of your cranky friends and family can too.
— Scott M. Nemeth; May 9th, 2026
Matthew 19 — The Trap Question
When we refer to something our Lord and Savior has said, it would behoove us to pay careful attention to what he was actually talking about.
I've avoided discussing the presuppositional arguments regarding Matthew 19 that assume Jesus was defining marriage between a man and a woman. Not because I'm afraid of it — but because it seems so obviously out of context I barely felt a need to do so. But with various public debates happening between Senate candidate James Talarico and his 'true christian' critics regarding marriage equality it's become clear I need to step up on this one as well. In short, Jesus is weighing in on a legalistic debate between Pharisees, not prescribing rules of marriage.
Texas Senate candidate James Talarico has argued publicly and repeatedly that Jesus never addressed homosexuality or same-sex marriage — telling Joe Rogan "We have four gospels with tons of teachings from Jesus, and none of them are about homosexuality," and on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that these are "two issues that aren't mentioned in the Bible. Two issues that Jesus never talked about."
The standard traditionalist counter comes from Denny Burk — professor of Biblical Studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood — writing in World Magazine: "Never mind that Jesus does in fact define the marriage covenant as being between one man and one woman (Matthew 19:4-5)." He goes straight to the creation appeal. One man. One woman. One flesh. Jesus said so. Matter settled.
What Burk's "It's because; that's why" style of dismissal does not address — and what Talarico's side has also failed to press — is what Jesus was actually being asked, who was asking it, why they were asking it, what legal framework governed the exchange, and what happened to that framework at the resurrection. Those are the questions this section addresses.
A Trap Question, Not a Marriage Sermon
Matthew 19 opens with the Pharisees approaching Jesus to test him — the text is explicit about this. Their question is not about homosexuality, not about the nature of marriage, and not even about the Jewish law regarding sexual ethics. It is a question about the legal grounds for dismissing one's wife — specifically, the long-running dispute between the schools of Hillel and Shammai over what constituted sufficient cause under Deuteronomy 24. Hillel read the threshold broadly — almost any grievance would do. Shammai restricted it to sexual immorality. They wanted to know whose side Jesus was on.
The answer is clear. Jesus takes the side of the wife who is being improperly dismissed. Despite being handed a trap by his opponents inside a legal framework he is about to fulfill and supersede Jesus answers that question, and upholds a measure of justice within that same legal framework, not outside it. Extracting a universal Christian sexual ethic from his answer requires ignoring almost everything about the nature of the question and the moment in Judeo-Christian history it is being asked.
The Word They Translate as Divorce
The Greek word at the center of the exchange is apoluō — to dismiss, to send away, to release. It is not the technical word for legal divorce. This is important so let me stress this again: not the word for divorce. What Jesus is specifically addressing is the practice of a man expelling or abandoning his wife from the household — leaving her with no legal standing, unable to remarry, socially and economically destroyed; in reality forced into prostitution just to survive. In the ancient near eastern context this was catastrophic for a woman.
Matthew 1:19 — "Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to apolysai her quietly." This is the same word — G630, apoluō — used just eighteen chapters later in Matthew 19. Joseph is not contemplating a legal divorce proceeding. He is considering quietly sending Mary away, dismissing her from the betrothal arrangement without public scandal. The word describes an act of dismissal, not a legal divorce.
Matthew 14:22-23 — Immediately after feeding the five thousand, Jesus "dismissed" (apoluō, G630) the crowds and went up the mountain to pray. The same word. No legal proceeding. No covenant dissolution. He simply sent them away. The word is a general term for release or dismissal — not a technical legal term — and using it to build a theology of marriage law requires far more than the word itself can carry.
Moses prescribed a formal, legal certificate of divorce — precisely to protect the woman. It was a bare-minimum sliver of justice and protection for her, not a punishment. At least giving her the legal standing to rebuild her life and marry someone else who wasn't a festering jerk. Jesus is not tightening divorce law. He is reminding the Pharisees, who should have known better, that the certificate Moses required exists to protect the vulnerable — not to be argued over as a technicality.
Further, Jesus is not forbidding remarriage after divorce either. He is asserting the need for a proper, legal divorce so the wife has the legal standing to move on — and so that someone who truly wants to love and cherish her also has the legal standing to do so. He points out that the Pharisees are causing people to commit adultery when she remarries, and he is condemning them for the adultery problem.
Matthew 19:3 (ESV) — "And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, 'Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?'" The word tested (peirazō) is the same word used when Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness. This is an adversarial trap, not a sincere theological inquiry.
Deuteronomy 24:1-4 — The passage the Pharisees are debating. Moses permits a certificate of divorce when a man finds "some indecency" in his wife. The Hillel school interpreted "indecency" broadly; the Shammai school narrowly. Jesus's answer addresses neither school's position directly — he goes behind the law to the creation account, which is itself not a definition of marriage but a description of covenant unity.
Matthew 19:8 (ESV) — "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." He is not condemning divorce. He is contextualizing it — the certificate exists because people are fallen, and the certificate protects the vulnerable party. That is the point.
Galatians 3:24-25 (ESV) — "So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian." Paul's explicit statement that the Mosaic law served a temporary custodial function. The legal framework Jesus is debating with the Pharisees in Matthew 19 is the same framework Paul says is superseded.
The Creational Norm Argument
The traditionalist move is to argue that Jesus's appeal to "male and female" in Genesis 1:27 establishes a creational norm that implicitly excludes same-sex relationships by definition. One man, one woman, one flesh — and therefore anything else is outside God's design.
There are several problems with this. Jesus is quoting Genesis in direct response to a Mosaic family law question — he is not delivering a theology of marriage. He is making a point about covenant unity and the seriousness of the bond being dissolved so casually. The creational appeal is rhetorical, not definitional. And even if it were definitional — the covenant he is operating under in Matthew 19 is the one Paul says Christians are no longer subject to.
Matthew 19:4-6 (ESV) — Jesus quotes Genesis 1:27 and 2:24. The context is his argument against casual dismissal of wives — the "one flesh" language is invoked to argue that the bond is serious and not to be dissolved lightly. It is not a taxonomy of acceptable relationships.
Galatians 3:28 (ESV) — "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." If the creational male/female distinction is the foundation of the traditionalist argument, Paul explicitly says that distinction is dissolved in Christ. The very categories the argument depends on are the ones Paul says no longer apply.
Colossians 2:14 (ESV) — "by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross." Note: the word translated "legal demands" is the Greek dogmasin — decrees, ordinances, legal codes. This is not only about personal sin being forgiven. It is the legal code itself — the system of decrees — being canceled. People who want to argue that only our sins were nailed to the cross and not the law itself need to reckon with that word. The framework within which Jesus answers the Pharisees' trap question does not survive the resurrection.
Strip away the credentials and footnotes and the “creational norm” argument is the same tired bumper sticker: “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” And it makes the same mistake — reading a pattern as a prohibition — when the Old Testament itself, from Jacob to David to Solomon, never held to that pattern.
But the deepest problem is this: When anti-gay extremists use Matthew 19 to fabricate condemnation of gay and lesbian couples, many of whom are themselves "one flesh" — having children, households, and deep covenantal commitments — they are doing precisely what Jesus condemned the Pharisees for doing. Hijacking a legal argument for their own personal agenda, dispassionately harming the vulnerable rather than honoring and protecting them.
The Progressive Primitivist — September 26, 2025 — Discussing whether a same-sex couple should remain in their marriage, Mike Hisaw says the "sin would be ongoing," because "fundamentally same sex relationships contradict the purpose that God had in creation." He adds that he doesn't "even think that it's appropriate to call a homosexual marriage a marriage." The unstated but necessary inference is that couples who follow this teaching must end their marriages and separate, including families raising children. This is the creational norm argument weaponized not to protect covenant commitments but to destroy them. Source: The Progressive Primitivist, "Gay Marriage, Fellowship Inconsistencies, & ATTACKING GBN? | The Divorce Dialogue," at ~15:15 and ~19:09.
Matthew 23:23 (ESV) — "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness." The pattern of using legal precision to avoid the harder demands of justice is exactly what he opposes throughout his ministry — and exactly what is happening when Matthew 19 is weaponized against loving families with same-sex partners.
The passages examined here have been weaponized for generations to tell gay and lesbian people that their love is sin, their relationships are abomination, and they have no place at the table. The text does not support that verdict — and the human cost of that verdict has been both cruel and catastrophic.
Purity culture isn't used just to deny intimacy and belonging to Christians with same-sex orientations. Regardless of actual intention, a lot is done to limit the pool of "valid" partners even for those who have opposite-sex orientations. Enter the Equally Yoked doctrine.