Were there any gay people mentioned in the Bible?

Answer 1

Here are a couple of quotes.

• 4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, eventhe men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both young and old, all the people from every quarter;
• 5 and they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men that came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know* them.

• ) have sexual relations with

  -- Gen. 19

• 9 Or know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men,

-- 1 Corinthians 6

Also you may want to look at the relationships between David and Jonathan in 1 Samuel 18. Naomi and Ruth in Ruth 1, Daniel and Ashpenaz in Daniel 1, and maybe even the Centurion and his beloved servant in Matthew 8.

The sin of the men of Sodom was their desire for the flesh of Angels, not other men.

Another Answer:

Actually the Reason that Sodom was destroyed was not for their desire of the flesh of angels nor men it states in Ezekiel 16:48-49: "This is the sin of Sodom; she and her suburbs had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not help or encourage the poor and needy. They were arrogant and this was abominable in God's eyes."

Their sins were Pride and Greed, and that they did not help those who truly needed help

Additional Comments:

This latter comment and quote are absolutley correct and shows the problem of taking English translations at face value. This is a piece of bad exegesis by the KJV translators. The Hebrew word yada' means normally simply to know. In the (far fewer) cases it is used as a metaphor for having sex, the context makes this quite clear as in Adam knew his wife and she conceived. The rules of exegesis state that you take the simple meaning unless there are good reasons of context to look for a more complex meaning. Here there is no such reason.

This story in Genesis is an abridged version of the full story which is contained in the Hebrew Book of Jasher. It is quite clear from this latter book how despicable the people in the Cities of the Plain (of which Sodom and Gomorrah were two) were and this was not connected with homosexuality but as stated by their treatment of strangers who instead of giving hospitality to, they instead robbed and killed. They even killed thier own people if they went against the norm and helped strangers. If we are looking for modern day parallels, we should not look to gay people but to the selfish attitude of western culture to other less materially rich people.

The Corinthians quote is trying to translate in this case Greek words into English but a simplistic understanding of the individual words can miss the essence of the message which has to be seen in the context of the culture of the time and place. Corinthian society followed normal Greek/Roman culture and wives were ragarded as another piece of property who looked after the household and produced children, It was quite acceptable in this culture for husbands to have sex with other women. with young boys or with prostitutes of either sex. Paul is here trying to draw the distinction between this cultural norm and how he believes Christians in the church at Corinth should behave. Again the parallel with our modern western secular scoiety goes far wider than simply homosexuality.

To recapitulate Genesis 19 has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality.

Any suppositions about relationships such as David and Jonathan, the Centurion and his servant etc, are just that - pure suppositions with no evidence to support them one way or the other.

The people of Sodom were explicitly mentioned as such, since the men wanted to 'know' (sexually) the visitors to Lot's house whom they presumed were male. This is in Genesis 19.

Yes, David and Jonathan were gay in The Bible.

Answer 2

In Judges chapter 19, the Israelite people of Gibeah wanted to 'know' (homosexually rape) the old man's male visitor. Just as in the story of Sodom, the old man offered the men of the city his virgin daughter and the concubine, if they left the visitor alone. However, in this case, there was no divine intervention to prevent evil and the men of the city took the women and raped them. This story has so many parallels to the story of Sodom that it is unlikely to be true. It seems that the author of Judges was simply reusing ideas from an earlier account. Unlike the Sodom account, there was no divine reprisal for the actions of Israelites, but it provided the literary justification for a civil war between the Benjamite tribe and other Israelite tribes.

Answer 3

No, there was no mention of gay people in the Bible. The concept of sexual orientation was unknown and not understood in ancient times.

There are verses used to condemn homosexuality, and there are stories of attempted same-sex rape, but this is not the same thing as "gay people."