I went through the "clobber verses" in the Old Testament in the last part. Onward to the New Testament! The most common argument fundamentalists offer why the parts of old about homosexuality should apply while nothing inconvenient for them should not is that the same prohibitions are repeated in the new. Let's see if they actually are, shall we? (Spoiler: They are not.)

Jesus affirms the marriage as only between a man and a woman?

"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." (Matthew 19:4-6, NIV)

This is about divorce. D-I-V-O-R-C-E. It even has a heading "divorce" in NIV, which strongly indicates that the translators also thought that's the only thing it speaks of. Original manuscripts didn't have section headings.

As we see in the previous verse, Pharisees are trying to test him. To catch him contradicting the scriptures. It is so specific a question that I'd assume that Jesus had been teaching that divorce is bad earlier.

So Jesus answers their question by quoting the scripture they acknowledge as authoritative and turns it to support his own view. Kind of what I'm doing with this book.

Of course marriage was between a man and a woman among Jews back then. It was all about continuing the paternal family line. That's why they even went so far as to have levirate marriages - if a husband dies without children, his brother is required to marry his wife and the first son they have is considered the son of the deceased.

To say the least, Jesus's suggestion that men could choose to live like eunuchs (i.e. not have children) for the sake of the kingdom of heaven was scandalous for the great majority of Jews.

Natural and unnatural sexual relations

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. (Romans 1:25-27)

Seriously, is it not obvious that this starts with people turning to idolatry and then they become corrupted by their base desires? The same theme continues in verses 28-32, but those are always conveniently left out when clobbering gays and lesbians with the Romans. Many LGBT+ people are devout Christians while still embracing their loving, committed same-sex relationships, but apparently fundamentalists don't care. Like the Pharisees, they need someone to look down on to make their own self-image more holy.

Let's take a look at what these verses actually talk about in their proper context. Again, it was not written for 20th or 21st century Christians.

First of all, we need to remember that Paul was a Hellenistic Jew. He was heavily influenced by a Greek philosophy known as Stoicism which considered all excess very bad. On the Jewish side, he grew up with the belief that male seed should only be spent on procreation. Moreover, he most likely did not believe that anyone could be naturally homosexual - everybody is heterosexual and those who engage in same-sex acts are simply greedy in their passions, no longer satisfied with only the opposite sex.

Overall, the descriptions of being inflamed with lust sound like some kind of sex orgies, possibly in the context of the worship of pagan gods. Even though fundamentalists probably don't believe it, gays and lesbians really don't want to have sex with everyone of their own gender.

The other problem in interpreting Romans 1:25-27 with our modern worldview is in the "natural" and "unnatural". In their proper context, these verses should make all Christian women angry at Paul's misogyny - it was the prevailing worldview back then, but still. As far as I'm concerned, they belong to the trash bin of history.

Let's take a look at the more accurate translation of KJV: "For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature."

The "natural use" and "that which is against nature" are direct references to Greek philosophy of the time. If you have ever read about the natural law of Thomas Aquinas, you may recognize very similar phrases in his sexual ethics. In short, the natural use of a woman (when it comes to sex) is to receive the man's semen in order to get pregnant. Women exchanging the natural use into that which is against nature can refer to any non-procreative sex, not just lesbian sex.

Malakoi and arsenokoitai

I'm not even surprised anymore when fundamentalists claim with absolute certainty that these two words refer to all homosexuals and that research backs their claim. Any honest researcher will say that nobody knows for certain what arsenokoitai means. But let's start with malakoi, since its meaning is well-known.

Malakoi (singular: malakos) literally means "soft", although KJV translates it as "effeminate". Any translation (including NIV) that includes "men who have sex with men" or "men who practice homosexuality" in Paul's vice lists and claims that the "two Greek words refer to the passive and active participants in homosexual acts" is showing translator bias.

I know that gays are often stereotyped as effeminate. That's all it is, though. A stereotype. More importantly, being effeminate - like a woman - meant a very different thing in ancient Rome and Greece. Women were seen as morally weak, lazy, vain, too fond of luxury, easily consumed by their passions. The worst thing a man could be was to be like a woman. There were even some beliefs that if you allowed a son to learn to play a musical instrument, he'd end up like a woman.

Anyway, although malakoi can certainly refer to men dressing fancily and looking "effeminate" as we understand it today - since someone paying too much attention to their appearance could also be seen as "soft" -, it also refers to moral weakness. For example, someone too lazy and/or cowardly to go to war. Or a rich man too fond of his luxuries. Or in the context of sexual sins, a ladies' man who sleeps around a lot.

As for the claims that it must refer to the passive partner in (male) homosexual acts, I think that logic goes the wrong way around. There was certainly a belief that someone taking the woman's role in sex would end up being like a woman in personality, but there is no proof that being the passive partner itself was considered being "soft" any more than all the possible moral weaknesses associated with women. Although we do need to also remember that for Paul, same-sex sexual relations were not a natural phenomenon but an expression of excess passion.

Next, we get to the tricky word: arsenokoitai (singular: arsenokoites). This word apparently did not exist before Paul, so he most likely invented it. It is made of the Greek words "arseno" (male) and "koites" (literally bed, but can also mean sexual intercourse). Male + bed = male-bed. That's all we know about it for sure.

Fundamentalists claim that it comes from the Greek translation of Leviticus and means "men who have sex with men". If this is the case, it at most refers to anal sex only (like I explained in the previous chapter). There is also the matter of what exactly does Leviticus prohibit. Who is the "male" object of sex?

However, it is dangerous to assume the meaning of compound words from their parts. The last I checked, "ladykiller" does not mean someone who kills women nor a female assassin. You're saying that doesn't apply to Greek? Well, "enotokoites" (ears-bed) is not about having sex with ears either. It means "with ears large enough to sleep in".

In Martin Luther's German Bible (and the lexicon he used), arsenokoites means someone who molests boys. It has also been understood as referring to (male) masturbation. But the instance that really kills the homosexuality theory comes from John the Faster, the Patriarch of Constantinople, instructing confessor priests how to ask their parishioners about sexual sin. If arsenokoites and words with the same stem refer to homosexuality, one of the sentences would read, "In fact, many men even commit the sin of homosexuality with their wives". (Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca, 88:1893-96). That really doesn't make any sense.

Apocryphal Acts of John lists arsenokoites with poisoner, sorcerer, robber, swindler and the thief and all of his band. Jewish Sibylline Oracle groups it together with betraying information and murdering, between stealing seeds and oppressing a worker or a poor man. Both have separate lists for sexual sins.

So I'd say that nobody really does know for sure what it means, but the odds are heavily stacked against it having anything to do with homosexuality.

Where did the anti-homosexuality bias come from?

The first time the word "homosexual" appeared in the Bible was the Revised Standard Version (RSV) published in 1946. The head of the translation committee, Dr. Luther Weigle,  later agreed that it had been a mistake and was committed to correcting the error. But the revised version, which translated "arsenokoitai" as "sexual perverts", wasn't published until 1971. In the 25 years that had passed, other translations had already started using "homosexuals".

The first translation was a honest mistake. Turning it into a holy weapon to point at gay people was not. Although straight men have always been a little squeamish about the idea of men having sex with men, the Christian Right wanted more or less to erase homosexuality - and the Bible was their justification. Neither is it a coincidence that the first time "boy molester" became a "homosexual" in the German Bible was when the translation was done and financed in the United States.

Someone might argue that the word "sodomite" has existed in the English Bible for far longer. That is correct. But historically a sodomite means someone who participates in non-procreative sex. For some reason conservatives were very quick to repeal the sodomy laws when they realized that the law also affects them.

Some translations have adopted the phrase "men who have sex with men" for malakoi and arsenokoitai with a footnote that it includes both the passive and active participant in homosexual acts. English Standard Version (ESV) even goes so far as to state that it's both partners in consensual homosexual acts. So a man raping a man (or a little boy) is fine, but loving same-sex partners commit a terrible sin.

Definitely sounds like a fairly recent anti-LGBT agenda without even a hint of loyalty to "God's truth" to me. How about we all just follow Jesus's instructions and accept it that some people are born without an interest in following the blueprint of marrying the opposite sex and having children?

Sources

To be added later. I really need to organize my bookmarks better.