Reply to Did Christian homophobia come from a mistranslation of the Bible?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The ancient world pre Christianity wasn't exactly a welcoming place for homosexuality either. There were variations across the civilized world on how homosexual activity was viewed but there was never a time or place where same sex couples could marry and be treated as fully valid in the eyes of society. Roman society pre Christianity certainly saw homosexuality as deviant behavior and accusations of homosexual activity was a slur. That said, homosexual activity was also commonplace as a sexual activity.

A great deal of it had to do with that people were viewed through the prism of class and culture, not sex, and as long as you performed cultural public facing expectations of your tribe in your public behavior and attitudes, which would be extremely traditional and regulated, what happened in the bedroom was irrelevant. So an emperor could have a wife, as was culturally expected for him, but have his gay lovers too, and it wouldn't be that controversial. But for an emperor to have a male "husband" would have been enormously controversial and widely derided.

You can certainly make the case that Christianity codified attitudes that led to less tolerance for homosexual activity, especially the Christian emphasis on sexual purity and the sanctity of sex between male and female (which, if anything, distinctly benefited Christian women over pagan women). But in practice it changed little. The entire history of the Christian world is littered with homosexual activity. It was rampant enough in the medieval era. If anything, my own casual observation is that it was really the tribal Germanic cultures who adopted the Christian faith that had more to do with homophobia in the later ages than anything in the Bible or the early Church in the Mediterranean world. We can see how there was always more tolerance for homosexual behavior behind closed doors in the Mediterranean Europe than Germanic/Northern Europe, which is an intriguing angle and worth exploring.

The real cultural changes launched by the widespread adoption of the Christian faith was the status of women. And babies. The early Christians were perceived as weirdos for rescuing unwanted abandoned female babies, a commonplace activity of the time. 
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[u] The real cultural changes launched by the widespread adoption of the Christian faith was the status of women. And babies. The early Christians were perceived as weirdos for rescuing unwanted abandoned female babies, a commonplace activity of the time.[/u]

Thank you for writing this. This is absolutely true. Christianity was a radical new way of the order of life for women and the treatment of poor people, unwanted babies, children, slaves. Christianity said their lives were valuable and told Christians to love them and treat them with kindness and love in the name of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ really changed the world. It’s very sad so few understand that. 
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