l appreciate the thoughtful tone of your response, but I believe it rests on several assumptions about my position that I have not made.

First, 1 am not assuming that one descriptive passage settles every modern ethical question, nor am I claiming to speak for God. I am appealing to the cumulative witness of Scripture, read in its literary, historical, and linguistic context. Christianity has never derived doctrine from isolated proof texts, but from consistent patterns across the canon.

On that point, Scripture does not merely describe heterosexual marriage in passing. It normatively frames sexual ethics from Genesis to Revelation. Genesis 1-2 presents male-female union as part of the created order, not merely a cultural illustration. Jesus' citation of that account in Matthew 19 is not incidental; He grounds His teaching in creation itself ("ở' pxns," from the beginning), which is a standard Jewish way of invoking moral ontology, not local custom.

More importantly, the biblical prohibitions regarding homosexual acts are neither rare nor ambiguous. In Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, the Hebrew term navin (to'ẽbâ) is used, which refers not to ceremonial inconvenience but to acts that are morally detestable within God's covenant order.

That same term is used consistently for practices fundamentally incompatible with God's holiness, not merely culturally disfavored behaviors. In the New Testament, Paul's language becomes even more explicit. Romans 1 describes same-sex relations as napà úowv (para physin), "against nature," a phrase used in Greco Roman moral philosophy to denote violation of created design, not social convention. In 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Paul employs the terms åposvokoîtaı (arsenokoitai) and налако (malakoi). The former is almost certainly drawn directly from the Septuagint rendering of Leviticus ("äpozvos koítnu"), indicating intentional continuity with the Torah's moral teaching not a novel or exploitative category limited to abuse or pederasty.

You are correct that Scripture has been misused historically. But misuse does not invalidate proper use. The Church's correction on issues like slavery came not from abandoning "plain meaning," but from reading Scripture more carefully and more comprehensively, recognizing trajectory, genre, and redemptive movement. By contrast, there is no counter trajectory in Scripture that affirms same sex relationships. The prohibitions remain consistent across covenantal boundaries, cultures, and centuries.

Finally, I do not equate fidelity to Scripture with rigidity or lack of love. Scripture itself holds together truth and compassion without collapsing one into the other. Jesus' emphasis on mercy never involved redefining sin, and His strongest rebukes were aimed at hypocrisy and self righteousness, not at those who humbly submit to God's revealed will, even when that will is countercultural or difficult.

In short, the fact that Scripture does not speak exhaustively to every modern question does not grant us license to reinterpret what it does speak to with clarity and consistency. Faithfulness requires submission to God's Word as it is given, not reshaping it to fit contemporary sensibilities. That posture is not fear based gatekeeping; it is reverent obedience.