Certain Christians just love citing Leviticus 20:13 from the Bible to justify their homophobia:
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
Oddly enough, other verses from Leviticus, which condemn much more widespread activities than homosexuality, are far less frequently cited. And other parts of the Bible besides Leviticus apparently cannot be used as a clearcut proscription against homosexuality. Personally, I don’t care at all what a person’s sexual orientation is as long as they only have sex with the proper consent from their partner. As someone who does not confer any special status to the Bible as opposed to any other book, unsupported proclamations from the Bible are hardly going to sway me.
Anyway, whenever I see Leviticus 20:13 being cited as a justification for a person’s homophobia, I always wonder why they have to be so mean-spirited so as to not interpret the verse in a much more tolerant manner. If you’re a homosexual man, you don’t lie with a man as you would lie with a woman, because you wouldn’t be lying with a woman in the first place. If you really need to cling to the verse, I’d rather you interpret it as condemning heterosexual men having sex with men rather than saying anything about homosexual men. You wouldn’t even be cherry-picking the Bible or sacrificing a literal interpretation, something you would most likely be already doing if you’re a Christian.
Given how I think about Leviticus 20:13, it is somewhat ironic to learn how many men in Afghanistan have sex with other men but will vehemently deny being homosexual, supposedly because the sex is just for sexual gratification rather than love. If my sort of interpretation ever becomes widespread, then what they’re doing would be abominable, while those who identify themselves as homosexuals would be considered sin-free. They’re mostly Muslims, not Christians, and so they follow the Koran, but I am very dubious that it would make any sort of clear distinction between a man loving a man and a man having sex with a man: I’m not sure the Koran even mentions anything about homosexual feelings as opposed to homosexual acts.
Of course, I would not care either way about their sex life or romantic feelings, although I think very poorly of their homophobia. It just makes them look like hypocrites (them looking like bigots goes without saying).