A bit more on the topic of the previous post. I certainly believe that it is possible for Christians, standing for a biblical understanding of sexuality, to sin against homosexuals by means of verbal violence. Expressions of malice, pettiness, personal hostility, and so forth are prohibited in Scripture. “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice” (Eph. 4:31). It doesn’t say to put away all such things unless you are talking to a homosexual.
The standard, however, is Scripture, and not the very political hurt feelings of those addressed. When Lot offered up his daughters to be raped, hardly his shining hour, how did the implicit disapproval that could be deduced from his suggestion go over with the Canadian Human Rights Commission assembled outside his house? “And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door” (Gen. 19:9). For obvious reasons, the indignation of homos cannot be made into the standard.
Scripture uses terms of moral disapproval, using formal terms like sodomite and catamite. “And there were also sodomites in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel” (1 Kings 14:24).
The same is true in the New Testament. “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind” (1 Cor. 6:9). The word rendered effeminate is malakoi, or the catamite. This is the one who plays the female role in homosexual relations. The phrase abusers of themselves with mankind refers to the sodomite, the one who plays the male role.
But Scripture, Old and New Testament both, uses less formal terms, terms which register contempt for the practices involved. “Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God” (Dt. 23:18).
And such dogs are excluded from the New Jerusalem as well. “For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie” (Rev. 22:15).
Having said all this, precisely because I don’t take my standards from those who “have pleasure in them that do them” (Rom. 1:32), I want to say a word in defense of those who uphold biblical standards with language that I would not use. By this, I do not mean the “God hates fags” approach taken by that extremist chuch, the name of which I forget, but it is the one that God hates. I am talking about good folks who get into public debates, and they are not very good at it. While I am not approving of what they do or say, in this era of thought and speech crimes, I do not want to accuse someone who is merely tone deaf — a trivial polemical sin — with the evil of hatred and malice. The homo lobby wants to do everything it can to advance hatred inflation, and I don’t want to have anything to do with it. Some anti-homosexual language is biblical, some is consistent with biblical standards, some expresses the standard poorly or ineptly, and some violates the standard.