Six passages carry most of the weight when Christians argue about same-sex relationships, and believers who take the Bible seriously still read them in opposite directions. What does the Bible actually say, and where exactly do the two readings part ways? This guide works from the chapter on this question in the Jude 3 Project curriculum Courageous Conversations, which sets out the two main Christian positions, gives the strongest affirming case a real hearing, and then states its own conclusion: the non-affirming view is the reading most in line with Scripture. The guide’s central practice asks you to state the other side’s argument so accurately that someone who holds it would recognize it.
You can work through it alone in one sitting, or with a group across one or two meetings. If you lead a group, say plainly at the start that the topic may be painful, and that someone in the room may be same-sex attracted. The chapter itself gives leaders that instruction. Nobody should be asked to disclose anything about their own life.
Begin where Scripture begins with people
Before any contested text, read the frame the chapter puts around the whole conversation. Jesus names the second great commandment: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:39). He also names the mark that identifies his followers: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35).
The frame sets the standard for judging every answer. The chapter opens by admitting that Christians have often treated LGBTQ+ people with little empathy or love, and that friends who were same-sex attracted had met silence or harsh words from the pulpit. Any reading of the six texts that leaves that failure unaddressed has answered only half the question.
Observation prompt. In two or three words, describe how conversations about sexuality and Christianity make you feel. Notice which way your words lean. That lean will shape how you hear the arguments below.
Two positions, defined fairly
The curriculum uses the terms affirming and non-affirming because they describe the actual disagreement without political labels. Affirming Christians hold that committed, monogamous same-sex relationships are not sinful. Non-affirming Christians hold that marriage, by God’s design, is between a man and a woman.
The chapter then separates two kinds of affirming argument, and this separation matters more than it first appears. According to the curriculum, many affirming Christians set aside biblical authority on this point. They treat the Old Testament prohibitions as belonging to an expired covenant and the New Testament passages as Paul’s personal ethic, not Jesus’ teaching. A smaller group, represented by Matthew Vines in God and the Gay Christian, affirms both same-sex relationships and the authority of Scripture. Vines is not arguing that Paul went rogue. He is arguing that faithful readers have misunderstood what Paul and Leviticus were condemning.
These arguments need different responses. Answering Vines by defending Paul’s inspiration misses him entirely, because he does not dispute it. Much of the heat in this debate comes from treating every affirming Christian as if they held the same view.
The affirming case at its strongest
The curriculum presents two pillars of Vines’s argument.
The first concerns fruit. Vines points to the harm he believes the non-affirming view has caused: depression, shame, alienation from God and the church, and suicide. He grounds his reasoning in Jesus’ teaching that a good tree brings forth good fruit and a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit (Matthew 7:17). If a teaching consistently produces destruction, he reasons, the church should ask whether its interpretation needs to be reconsidered.
The second concerns history. Drawing on ancient writers such as Plato, Zeno and Musonius Rufus, Vines argues that the ancient world did not think of same-sex desire as a stable orientation belonging to a minority. It thought of it as ordinary desire pursued to excess. If that is the backdrop, he concludes, biblical condemnations target lustful excess and promiscuity, not committed, monogamous partnerships. He reads Sodom in Genesis 19 that way. He reads Romans 1:26-27, with its setting of idolatry, as Paul condemning same-sex lust detached from love.
This case takes pain seriously, takes history seriously, and refuses to treat Scripture as a weapon. A fair reader should feel that weight before moving on.
Where the non-affirming reading answers, and where it hesitates
The curriculum responds text by text, and it is candid about its own confidence at each step.
Genesis 19
Here the chapter concedes ground. Affirming readers point out that when God reveals the coming judgment to Abraham in Genesis 18:16-33, the sin is not spelled out, so it is unfair to assume same-sex intercourse caused Sodom’s destruction. The curriculum calls these points valid. It still suggests the narrative teaches something about God’s view of sexuality, but it holds that reading loosely and moves quickly to clearer passages. That restraint is worth copying. A conclusion this weighty should not rest on the most disputed text.
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13
Leviticus 18:22 reads: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” The curriculum makes two observations against the excess reading. First, in the curriculum’s own words: “These two passages do not make a distinction between same-sex intercourse in excess or in a committed relationship. They only speak to the act itself.” Second, even granting that such behavior was common among surrounding nations, these laws were given precisely to set Israel apart from the norms around it. The cultural backdrop explains what Israel was told not to imitate. It does not narrow the command.
The chapter then takes up the covenant objection, and it calls the affirming argument a thoughtful and reasonable one. Its answer is that Leviticus contains both ritual laws and moral commands, and that commands the New Testament carries forward are moral. Christians hold several approaches to how Old Testament law applies today, and this guide does not settle that broader question. The curriculum’s narrower point is that this particular prohibition reappears in the New Testament.
Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 1:9-10
In all three, same-sex sexual behavior appears alongside other moral concerns such as idolatry, adultery, theft, greed and lying. For the curriculum, that company is the evidence of continuity. Against the claim that these passages are merely Paul’s ethic, it argues that the early church received Paul’s letters as Scripture, and that Peter himself counted Paul’s writings among the Scriptures (2 Peter 3:15-16).
Romans 1 also needs to be read as part of a longer argument. Paul’s indictment in chapter 1 leads into chapters 2 and 3, where the reader who has been nodding along is caught as well, and the conclusion is level ground: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Whatever Romans 1 says about sexual behavior, it says it inside an argument that leaves no one standing above anyone else.
Mapping the actual disagreement
Set the two readings side by side and the shape of the debate becomes clearer than slogans allow. They share real ground. Vines and the curriculum both claim the authority of Scripture, and both treat the church’s mistreatment of LGBTQ+ people as serious. Both appeal to the ancient setting, but they differ on how far that setting narrows the command: Vines lets it redefine what the texts target, while the curriculum reads the context as Israel’s call to be different and lets the wording govern.
The division sits at two precise points.
- Scope. Do the prohibitions address a behavior as such, or only a culturally specific form of it marked by excess? Vines argues the second from ancient sources. The curriculum argues the first from texts that name the act without qualification.
- Fruit. Vines reads the suffering of gay Christians as evidence that the teaching is bad. A non-affirming reader has to ask whether the bad fruit grows from the teaching itself, or from the way the church has treated people who live under it.
On that second point, the chapter offers evidence worth weighing. It reports Andrew Marin’s research in Us Versus Us: according to Marin, 86 percent of LGBTQ+ people surveyed were raised in a faith community, 54 percent left after age 18, and most who left did so because they did not feel safe or were kicked out, while only a small minority left over theology. Marin also found that 76 percent were open to returning. If those findings hold, much of the harm Vines describes traces to rejection and silence. That does not dissolve his argument. It relocates the burden: a church that holds the historic ethic owes people a community where that ethic is not delivered as abandonment.
The curriculum names the cost honestly. For a same-sex attracted Christian, it says, “While the Bible says same-sex intercourse is unnatural, their same-sex attraction feels very natural.” Faithfulness may mean celibacy and a reimagined picture of family. Here the affirming side presses its sharpest objection: celibacy is a gift Scripture describes some receiving, and requiring it of everyone with same-sex attraction lays on them a life they never chose. The curriculum does not wave this away. “So the Bible’s teaching is incredibly heavy and confusing for them,” the chapter admits, and its answer is not to lighten the command but to insist that the church carry that weight alongside them through empathy, listening and compassion. Scripture gives that life honor. Jesus himself was single, and through Isaiah God promises to faithful eunuchs “a name better than of sons and of daughters” (Isaiah 56:5). That is why Jude 3 Project treats singleness as a full and honored way of following Christ, not a lesser state. Nothing in this reading treats orientation as a simple choice or promises that it will change.
Practice: restate before you respond
This is the center of the guide. Do it alone on paper, or in pairs within a group.
- Write one paragraph stating Vines’s historical argument as persuasively as you can. Use no words he would reject. If you hold the non-affirming view, this will be hard. Do it anyway.
- Write a second paragraph stating his fruit argument, including the Matthew 7 teaching it rests on.
- Write a third stating the curriculum’s Leviticus response just as fairly. If you lean affirming, this is your hard part.
- Trade paragraphs with a partner who holds the other view, or reread your own after a break. Ask whether someone who holds each position would say, yes, that is what I mean. Revise until the answer is yes.
- Underline the single sentence where the positions actually part ways. Most groups discover it is a claim about scope or about fruit, not about whether Scripture matters.
Then answer in writing: what kind of evidence would move you? For the scope question, that might be ancient texts describing committed same-sex partnerships the biblical writers could have had in view, or a closer reading of how the prohibitions are worded. For the fruit question, it might be the experiences of same-sex attracted Christians who hold the historic ethic within loving communities. Naming the evidence keeps the conversation honest, and it shows you whether you are weighing an argument or defending a side.
For leaders. Keep the exercise on arguments, not on anyone’s personal life. If someone wants to share their story, let them, and do not turn it into a case study. If the discussion surfaces thoughts of self-harm or suicide in anyone present, stop the study, stay with that person, and connect them to help. In the US, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available any time by call or text.
Questions for discussion
- What do you consider the strongest argument for the affirming view, and where do you think it falls short?
- Why does the difference between same-sex attraction, same-sex relationships and same-sex intercourse matter for how we read these passages?
- The curriculum holds its Genesis 19 reading loosely and leans on Leviticus and Paul instead. What does that teach about building conclusions on disputed texts?
- Is the bad fruit Vines describes better explained by the teaching or by the church’s conduct? What would you need to see to change your answer?
- When you restated the other position, which sentence was hardest to write fairly, and why?
Carrying it into the week
“Love that requires agreement as a prerequisite is not biblical love,” Courageous Conversations insists, pointing to a God who loved us before we brought our lives into agreement with him. If someone comes to mind whom you have treated poorly because of their sexuality, decide when you will contact them, and apologize without attaching an argument to the apology.