We’re all familiar with the fact that the Old Testament clearly condemns homosexual activity. In the book of Leviticus we read the following command from God:

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. (Leviticus 18:22)

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them. (Leviticus 20:13)

For most Christians, this is enough to see that homosexual activity is clearly a sin that is condemned by scripture. However there are some more liberal-leaning Christians who mostly try argue one of two propositions:

  1. Leviticus isn’t actually condemning all homosexual activity, but rather is just condemning pedophilia.
  2. It is true that the laws of the Old Covenant forbade homosexual activity,  however Christ fulfilled the law perfectly to the point where we are no longer bound by the moral code given to the Ancient Israelites.

To address both of these points, all one has to do is turn to the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament that the New Testament writers used. In the Greek, we read:

καὶ μετὰ ἄρσενος οὐ κοιμηθήσῃ κοίτην γυναικός βδέλυγμα γάρ ἐστιν. (Leviticus 18:22)

καὶ ὃς ἂν κοιμηθῇ μετὰ ἄρσενος κοίτην γυναικός βδέλυγμα ἐποίησαν ἀμφότεροι θανατούσθωσαν ἔνοχοί εἰσιν. (Leviticus 20:13)

The two words we need to pay attention to are ἄρσενος, which is the genitive singular form of the word “male”, and κοίτην, which is the plural form of the word for a place for lying/sexual activity. There is no indication from the Greek that this simply referred to sexual activity between older men and younger boys, but rather up until the past few centuries it was universally seen by Christians and Jews alike to refer to homosexual activity of all kinds.

This becomes further evident from the epistles of St. Paul. Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul warns:

Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

In the Greek we read:

ἢ οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἄδικοι θεοῦ βασιλείαν οὐ κληρονομήσουσιν; μὴ πλανᾶσθε: οὔτε πόρνοι οὔτε εἰδωλολάτραι οὔτε μοιχοὶ οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται οὔτε κλέπται οὔτε πλεονέκται, οὐ μέθυσοι, οὐ λοίδοροι, οὐχ ἅρπαγες βασιλείαν θεοῦ κληρονομήσουσιν. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

The word St. Paul used that gets translated to “men who have sex with men” is the word ἀρσενοκοῖται, which is a combination of the very same Greek words used in Leviticus: ἀρσεν (male) and κοίτη (a place for lying/sexual activity). If you’re still not convinced at this point, St. Paul makes even more clear that homosexual activity is a grave sin in his letter to the Romans:

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. (Romans 1:26-28)

There is no possible translation of this passage that delivers any other message than that sexual activity between two men is a shameful error that is worthy of punishment, i.e. a sin.

All of what has been shown above should be enough to show that not only does the Old Testament teach that homosexual activity is forbidden (which, as I explain here, is enough to morally bind Christians), but the New Testament teaches this as well. However if you still need further evidence that condemning homosexual activity is a genuine Christian belief, then it should be noted that this belief was also the consistent teaching of the early Church Fathers. Writing in the 3rd Century A.D., St. Cyprian of Carthage writes:

“Oh, if placed on that lofty watchtower, you could gaze into the secret places—if you could open the closed doors of sleeping chambers and recall their dark recesses to the perception of sight—you would behold things done by immodest persons which no chaste eye could look upon; you would see what even to see is a crime; you would see what people embruted with the madness of vice deny that they have done, and yet hasten to do—men with frenzied lusts rushing upon men, doing things which afford no gratification even to those who do them” (Letters 1:8, [A.D. 253]).

Here, St. Cyprian describes “men lusting after men” as a mad vice, and clearly condemns such activity. Similarly the Church historian Eusebius, writing in the 4th Century A.D., teaches:

“[H]aving forbidden all unlawful marriage, and all unseemly practice, and the union of women with women and men with men, he [God] adds: ‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for in all these things the nations were defiled, which I will drive out before you. And the land was polluted, and I have recompensed [their] iniquity upon it, and the land is grieved with them that dwell upon it’ [Lev. 18:24–25]” (Proof of the Gospel 4:10 [A.D. 319]).

From this we see that Eusebius describes the unions between men and men or women and women as being forbidden by God, clearly reflecting the early Church’s attitude towards this matter.