If you didn't know, former President Jimmy Carter is a self-described "born again Christian."
He's a lifelong Baptist and a Sunday school teacher.
So when a reporter asked him in 2015 about Jesus and same-sex marriage, his answer caused
kind of a stir.
I never have run across any really serious conflicts between my political obligations
and my religious faith.
[Reporter]: How about gay marriage?
That's no problem with me.
You know—I think everybody should have a right to get married, regardless of their sex.
The only thing I would draw a line on, I wouldn't be in favor of the government being able to
force a local church congregation to perform gay marriages if they didn't want to.
Would Jesus approve gay marriage?
I believe he would.
I believe Jesus would.
I don't have any verse in Scripture.
[Reporter]: No no no, but I just—intuitively, yeah.
I believe that Jesus would approve gay marriage.
But I'm not—that's just my own personal belief.
These three-year-old comments started going viral again last week.
And that prompted the late Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, to say this on his Facebook
page:
“The Bible is very clear.
God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality.”
You know, we’ve all heard this so many times that it just sounds like it must be true.
But does the Bible actually say that?
The passage Franklin is talking about is in Genesis 19.
You can read it for yourself.
In the story, Lot is living in the city of Sodom with his wife and daughters, when two
angels, disguised as foreign travelers, come to warn Lot that God has decided to destroy
the city.
There’s no reference here to homosexuality or gay people; we’re just told that Sodom
is a wicked city.
Lot welcomes the travelers into his home for the night.
But then an angry mob of "the men of the city…both young and old, all the people
from every quarter" surrounds the house.
The mob demands that Lot send the travelers out, quote, "that we may know them."
Which most scholars agree is a euphemistic threat of gang rape.
That one line—that threat of rape—is the single reason people claim God destroyed Sodom
for “homosexuality.”
Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that there was gay sex going on in Sodom, or that
there were gay couples or even gay people in Sodom—it’s just this one threat of
gang rape by an angry mob.
So first of all, rape is rape!
We can all agree that what’s happening in this passage is sinful and despicable.
That has nothing to do with being gay.
But does the fact that men threatened to rape other men mean that Sodom was entirely populated
by gay men?
Of course not.
This was a threat of violence, not a request for fun sexy times.
Imagine if the story said that two black men arrived at a rural white Southern town in
1950 and a mob threatened to rape them.
You wouldn’t think, “Oh, all these Southern white guys must have been gay.”
No, you’d understand that threat for what it was: pure, vile hatred and racism.
That’s how this story would have read to the audience of the time—a threat of humiliating
violence against these foreigners, letting them know their kind isn’t wanted here.
Then when Lot tries to intervene, they tell him, “We’ll treat you worse than them”
and call him a “foreigner” as well.
And we see the exact same thing play out later in another city, in Gibeah in Judges 19.
A foreign traveler arrives in Gibeah, a good man takes him in, and an angry mob threatens
to rape him, then rapes and murders his concubine instead.
This isn’t about sexual desire.
It’s about hate.
These threats of gang rape don’t mean that the people of Sodom or the people of Gibeah
were all attracted to men.
These were lynch mobs.
And in that context, it makes sense why we’re told that God was angry enough to wipe Sodom
out—not just because of this one incident, but because this represented how the city had
been for a long time.
And I think there’s a reason the Bible gives us these stories about threats against travelers.
Ancient travelers had to depend on the generosity of others; they couldn’t just book a room
at the Hilton.
And the Bible frequently uses caring for those in need—like widows, orphans, and travelers—as
shorthand for indicating that someone is righteous (and generous to those in need) or unrighteous
(and selfish).
Here we have stories of cities that aren’t just “not generous” to foreign travelers—they’re
outright hostile to them, to the point of threats and even physical harm.
It’s selfishness to the worst possible extreme.
According to the prophet Ezekiel, that selfishness is what characterized Sodom:
“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed
and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”
And any good Christian theologian should know this.
Even televangelist Pat Robertson, who isn’t pro-gay at all, was quick to bring this up
during a pledge drive:
We have been so blessed in this country, and we need to show our gratitude by taking care
of the poor and the needy.
You know, this was the sin of Sodom.
It was pride and careless ease and they didn't plead the cause of those who were hurting
and needy.
That was the sin of Sodom.
The Lord, when He pointed it out, He wasn't talking about sexual immorality; it was pride
and careless ease and they didn't plead the cause of the poor.
He’s actually right about this!
Unfortunately, later readers of the text seem to have misunderstood the passage and invented
sexual terms like “sodomite” and “sodomy,” forever clouding the public’s understanding
of the so-called “sin of Sodom.”
Oh, and by the way, in case you're wondering, the Bible never tells us why God destroyed
Gomorrah, other than that it was wicked and Sodom’s sister city.
I have more to say about this, but I’ll save it for another video.
In the meantime, though, with all due respect to Franklin Graham, the Bible simply does
not say that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality.
What it does say, though, is that God cares about how we treat those in need,
and frankly, I think that’s something we all could use a little more of right now.
Don't you?