• HakunaHafada@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 hours ago

    Some of the anti-homosexuality texts in the New Testament also have some missing context that isn’t really applicable to the homosexuality of today.

    What was frowned upon in the age those texts were written was the ‘effeminizing’ effect of being submissive in sexual activity, which males in society of that time (in the Roman empire) were expected to be strong, hard, dominant penetrators (manly qualities), not weak-willed, soft, submissively penetrated (feminine qualities). Abandoning manly expectations in society for feminine sex acts was unforgivable. That expectation of social/sexual roles contributes to the homophobia and toxic masculinity today.

    Another Greek word that has been difficult to translate is arsenokoitai, which has traditionally been translated as ‘homosexual’ (and used as a proof text for the Bible’s anti-homosexual stance), but later uses of the word seem to indicate it was ‘rape or sex by economic coercion, prostitution, or pimping’, which introduces an asymmetry of power of an abuser and the abused, which is far more problematic than homosexual activity.