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The Sin of Sodom and Gomorrah Was . . . What, Exactly?

It seems as though the first passage that anti-gay Christians always point to is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, so let's look there first. If you don't have a Bible and you want to read the passages along with me, you can Google "bible gateway"; the first result to pop up should be a database of different translations. The relevant passage is Genesis 19:1-13, also known as the book of Genesis, chapter 19, verses 1 through 13.

First, a tiny bit of background for those unfamiliar with the Bible. Genesis 19 involves a man named Lot who lives in the city of Sodom. In the preceding passages of Genesis, Sodom is described as the home of people who "were extremely wicked and constantly sinned," and that "the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous" that God is planning on destroying the city. However, God wants to make sure that the cities are truly as sinful as he's heard they are, so he sends two angels to see what all the hubbub is about.

This is where Lot comes in. He sees the two angels approaching Sodom, and, not knowing they are angels, he invites them into his home for dinner and a place to sleep. As they are getting ready for bed, the men of Sodom surround the house and demand that Lot send his guests outside so that they can have sex with them. Lot offers the men his two virgin daughters instead, but the men become angry and try to seize him. The angels save him just in time and tell him to take his family and flee, for they were sent by God to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their sinfulness.

There's a lot to unpack here, but let's start with the part that caught my eye immediately upon first reading: why is Lot offering his two virgin daughters to a pack of angry men who want to rape his guests? A related question baffles me to this day: why do anti-gay Christians focus on the men asking to have sex with Lot's (male) guests, when Lot seems perfectly fine with offering up his daughters, instead? If anything, the supposed homosexual undertones of this passage pale in comparison to the attempted rape and the flagrant disrespect of women.

However, if we put the ugliness of how Lot treats his daughters aside, we are left with a story of a man who is trying (albeit in a very flawed way) to be hospitable to strangers. This is an important point, because ancient cultures held hospitality in very high regard. Hospitality was a must-have, because you never knew when your guest could be an angel or God in disguise. This is not unique to the predecessors of the Ancient Israelites; the Ancient Greeks held a similar view of hospitality. With this in mind, the passage makes a lot more sense. When Lot begs the men to leave the angels alone, he says, "Don't do this wicked thing. . . . don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof." The "wicked thing" that Lot talks about is not homosexuality, but being inhospitable to the strangers whom are his guests. After all, gangraping strangers who are spending the night in your city is not even close to being hospitable.

Something else stands out to me about this passage, and it is because a very similar scenario plays out in the book of Judges. In Judges 19, a Levite and his concubine stop for the night in the city of Gibeah. An old man finds them and invites them into his house, where they eat dinner and get ready to settle down for the night. The men of the city surround the house, demanding that the old man send out the Levite so that they can have sex with him. Once again, the old man offers them his virgin daughter and the Levite's concubine in exchange. This time, the Levite forces his poor concubine outside and the men of Gibeah take turns raping her until dawn, when she collapses on the doorstep and dies. It is a gruesome story, so it's no wonder that anti-gay Christians steer clear of using this passage. Clearly, the men did not care whether they were raping a male or female, and that is because rape is not about sex; it's about power. When somebody rapes somebody else, it is an expression of power. It has nothing to do with their sexual orientation.

You can see this reflected in the words of the old man in Judges 19. When the old man begs the men to leave the Levite alone, he says, "Don't do such an evil thing. For this man is a guest in my house, and such a thing would be shameful." The old man is protesting how the men of Gibeah are planning on being inhospitable to his guest, not the fact that it would be homosexual rape. In a sense, he understands that the men's desire to rape is not about the gender of the victim but of the act of power itself.

So, the question remains: if the sin that God speaks of was not homosexuality, why were Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed? What exactly was their sin?

For this, we must look to the book of Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 16:49, God says, "Sodom's sins were pride, gluttony, and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door." It's all right there: pride, gluttony, laziness, and unwillingness to help the needy. Nowhere does he say that Sodom was destroyed because of homosexuality, and that is because it wasn't. Sodom's true sins are plainly stated in black and white, if only one is willing to look for it.