"In olden days -- not so very olden either -- this practice was painted as the blackest of all possible sins. Anyone who practiced it was pretty sure of hell. Our grandfathers, including our medical grandfathers, if they did not avoid all reference to it, taught that it was not only a dreadful sin, but that also it had physical and mental consequence which were terrible; these consequences being regarded as the just punishment of God for human wickedness. It was said that the victim of this habit invariably brought disease upon himself and that if he did not speedily check it he would go mad...The only hope of cure held out was said to lie in the exercise of the victim's will assisted by religious exercises of prayer and Bible reading."[Leslie Weatherhead, "The Mastery of Sex through Psychology and Religion,"1931]

I have no problem with the Bible; nor do I condemn the Bible. If there is a problem with beliefs, principles, laws and customs on this planet it is because we exist- yes, we, human beings. If there is a problem, it is because of the false manoeuvring and religious spin doctoring these beliefs and principles which were decreed.,

Bruce Lowe in his letter to Louise ( ), clearly states that the concept of a homosexual nature first appeared in print in Europe in 1869 and in the United States in 1889. Jerry Maneker chips in, in affirmation to Lowe’s statement when he says; the word "homosexual" never appears in any biblical manuscript, as it was a word coined in the late 19th Century and first appeared in an English Bible translation, the Revised Standard Version, in 1946.

Prolonging his argument further Lowe says: no Bible writer knew of homosexuality, so no Bible writer could have said anything about it.  The Bible writer is always talking about the only kind of people he knew anything about, the only kind anyone knew about for another 19 centuries; today we would call them heterosexual.  In statements in the Bible about same-gender sex, the writer is saying that when two of these (heterosexual) people have same-gender sex, they are lustful and sinful.  We believe the Bible and we believe that.  There cannot be anything in the Bible that says anything about (unknown) homosexuality or homosexual people or acts by gay or lesbian persons.  Many writers point this out, but alas, homophobics are not reading.

Bernard Ramm of The American Baptist Seminary of the West asserts that, the issues about homosexuality are very complex and are not understood by most members of the Christian church. Some Christian authorities say that homosexuality is a vile and despicable form of sexual parody condemned in both the Old and New Testaments.

Calvin Theological Seminary Old Testament scholar Marten H. Woudstra says:  there is nothing in the Old Testament that corresponds to homosexuality as we understand it today. SMU New Testament scholar Victor Paul Furnish lengthens this argument by saying that; there is no 'text on homosexual orientation in the Bible.  Robin Scroggs of Union Seminary concludes this contention by saying that:  Biblical judgments against homosexuality are not relevant to today's debate.  They should no longer be used ... not because the Bible is not authoritative, but simply because it does not address the issues involved. ... No single New Testament author considers [homosexuality] important enough to write his own sentence about it.  Evangelical theologan Helmut Thielicke states:  Homosexuality... can be discussed at all only in the framework of that freedom which is given to us by the insight that even the New Testament does not provide us with an evident, normative dictum with regard to this question.  Even the kind of question which we have arrived at ... must for purely historical reasons be alien to the New Testament.

As earlier mentioned, the key issue that sparks the debate on this seemingly intractable subject is how anti-gay disciples misconstrue the interpretation of texts in the Bible. In this case, we are often tempted to ask the following questions:

1)Should the Bible be taken literally given the present day meaning for words?

2)Should we associate the meaning of the words to the time they were written or know the original meaning of the words in Hebrew or Greek?

3)To who were those words addressed? Do we try to understand the historical context in which those words were written?

4)What were the cultural laws and customs of that time?

Overlooking some of these considerations poses a risk of delusion, miscomprehension and misapprehension about a reasonable meaning of the writing. Let us not be mistaken .The Bible,which isfilled with revelation from God to inspire,changes not the original purpose and meanings of the words present in it. The significance of words in the A.Ds and B.Cs till present date might mean different things to different people, especially the authors of the words at that time.

For instance, take the verse: it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God(Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25 and Luke 18:25). Atthat time in Jerusalem, the gate at the city wall was very low and narrow. Due to this deformed nature of the gate, ifa caravan had to pass through that gate, the camels had to be unpacked, led through the gate hunkering down, and then reloaded inside the city wall. That gate was called "the eye of the needle." So, what was Jesus saying?

Jerry Maneker points out that Biblical theory must always trump biblical practice! The biblical faith is the Gospel, the Good News, of God's grace (unmerited favour) to us that we appropriate through our faith in Him. (Romans 5:1-2; Ephesians 2:8-9) Quoting from Peter J. Gomes’s book, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart, Maneker avows that when we read any passage of the Bible we must try to discern what it says, what it means, the subtext, the context, what we bring to the text, and what we take out of the text. Much of the mind-set and many of the words that appear in Scripture don't mean what we think they mean from our perspective. The meanings and circumstances are subject to change.

We can infer from Maneker and Lowe that when reading the Bible, in a bid to understand the words that were written, regardless of their translation from their original languages, there are two basic approaches, the literal or the histo-critical interpretation. The literal reading maintains the text simply for what it says and presents an argument to us by claiming not to be interpreting the text but merely to be reading it as it stands. But the historical-critical approach is completely different. It is imperative in that a text means whatever it meant to the people who wrote it as of that time, less they could procrastinate, anticipate or pre-deduce what meanings are of these times. Therefore in declaring what a biblical text teaches us today, one must first have to understand the text in its original situation and then apply the meaning to the present situation. It is interesting to note that most Christians will use the histo-critical method on some verses they find problematic in their present culture, but they often ignore it in other verses which they then use to justify condemnation of certain groups of people.

In this light, therefore, we are confronted with two versions which avow that the Bible was written by Godly- inspired men and that this very Bible is ‘without error.' Without prejudice, we could say that the authors were gifted, liberal, original and creative, bounded by cultural laws and customs, and above all, God-fearing. This means that God was expressing divine wisdom to a certain humanity and culture. Consequently, this implies that trying to comprehend what God intended to say means trying to figure out what those human authors intended to say, for it was inspired by God.

Given the latter as an apparent premise, without rushing into hasty conclusions, we could wrap up for the mean time by saying that both the literal and the histo-critical approaches cleave to the fact that the Bible is God's word, inspired and inerrant. But these two brothers in arms do differ on what is exactly God's word... the actual words on the page or the intended "meaning" of the words or the original texts in which subsequent language the manuscripts were written and then translated?This is why today people can arrive at different meanings for any text they consider. Now it is popularity and a band wagon effect that decides what the Bible means. This has been true if you look at the various revisions of the Bible over time.