Homosexuality, which for generations was classified as a mental disease and treated as such, has of late gone mainstream,  become socially acceptable and reclassified as an “alternative lifestyle.  “Coming out” has become an important social event on par with being elected to the nation’s presidency or headlining the halftime show at the Super Bowl.  The hype generated when a Very Important Person (actor, athlete, musician, etc.) makes “the announcement” would cause one to believe that being queer is a new phenomenon.  But as this series will show, sexual deviance is as old as history.

According to the first recorded words of written history, the Creator of the universe looked at what He had created during five plus days of work called it  “good” (Gen. 1:25).  Satisfied with what He had created so far,  He went back to work and, on the sixth day, created man.  “Then God saw everything that He had made and INDEED IT WAS VERY GOOD” (1:31).  To understand the Godly value found in those two words, let us put His assessment of what He had done in its proper perspective.  When the One Who created everything calls something “good,” IT’S GOOD.  And when He calls it “very good,” IT IS GOOD TO THE GOD-LEVEL MAXIMUM.  BEING PERFECT, GOD CREATED THE WHOLE OF CREATION PERFECTLY. King David spoke to this truth in Psalms 104:24: “O Lord, how many are Your works (creations).  With wisdom You created them all.”  Having ultimate wisdom, God created wisely.   Everything He created perfectly would have remained perfect unto this time if man had not sinned.  The multitudinous imperfections that characterize the world today are the direct result of mankind’s sins.  If in doubt, read Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 carefully and prayerfully.  You will note that man determines the quality of every aspect of his life.  Note also that “IF” is the operative word that determines whether God blesses man or curses man.

One of the things God created “very good” was mankind.  And like the rest of His creation, He intended His most prized creation to remain exactly as He created him–perfect.  God perfectly created mankind in two ways: 1) “And GOD CREATED MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE, 2) MALE AND FEMALE HE CREATED THEM” (Gen. 1:27) and told them to “… be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth” (vs 28).  Only sex between males and females can multiply the human race according to God’s perfect plan.  Only Satan could have created same-sex intimacy.  And it did not take long for him to do so.

In Genesis 10:19 we find the first mention of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Then in 13:10,13 we find those two cities described as “WICKED.”  There were many other cities on earth at that time, each of which had its share of sinners.  However, the Lord did not see fit to mention even one of them.  This could only mean that the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah went far beyond any other city’s “cry.”  In 18:20 God said that the “cry” (prime characteristic) of those two cities was “GREAT because their sin was VERY GREVIOUS.”  God knows the mind of man.  Later He would see that, “… the WICKEDNESS of man was GREAT in the earth, and every intent of His heart (mind) was ONLY EVIL CONTINUALLY (Gen. 6:5).  God knows evil and how to deal with it.  The people He was talking about in this instance all drown in the Noahic Flood.  Only Noah and his family survived.  Having killed the earth’s entire population for their sins, the Lord swore that He would never again kill the entire human race.  He would be much more selective when pouring out His wrath on sinners.

Abraham and his nephew Lot had left Ur of the Chaldees and traveled to what would become known as the Promised Land.  Lot had chosen to settle in an area near the Jordan River and to live in one of the cities of that region– Sodom.  In Genesis 19:5-11 we find that the men of Sodom have surrounded Lot’s house and are demanding that he send out the two men (angels) who had spent the night in his home.  The Sodomites announced that they wanted to “know” Lot’s visitors.  In Genesis 4:1 we are told that Adam “knew” Eve and she conceived.  Obviously the words “knew” and “know” in these contexts refer to sex acts.  That the men surrounding Lot’s house were homosexuals is proven by the fact that when Lot offered them his two virgin daughters the Sodomites rejected them.  They preferred to have sex with men, including Lot.  They told him that if he did not send out the two men they would rape him.

The Lord’s attitude toward the homosexual Sodomites is revealed in Genesis 19:24,25 where it is written that, “the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire ….  And He overthrew those cities and all the plain and all the inhabitants of the cities and on everything that grew in the ground.”  Nothing and no one survived.  The area remains bare and desolate to this day.  The Scriptures describe the area before God poured out His wrath on it as beautiful and fertile.  Bear in mind that Lot, who could have lived anywhere he wanted to live, chose to live there because “the plain was well watered … even as the garden of Eden before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.  However, “The men of Sodom were WICKED and SINNERS before the Lord EXCEEDINGLY” (Gen. 13:10-13).

God’s attitude toward homosexuality is also made clear in Leviticus 20:13-16 where He equated a man having sex with another man to having sex with an animal.  The same held true for women.  Both were to be burned to death.  Included in the sin category was any man who had sex with his wife and her mother.  All fell under the heading of “WICKEDNESS.”  In Leviticus 18:22 God states: “You (a man) shall not lie with a man as with a woman, it is an ABOMINATION.”  L.J.