In the final discussion of the movie Fish Out of Water, we moved on the three new testament passages used in discussions about the lgbtq community: Romans 1: 26-37, 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10.

I touched upon Romans 1 in my recent post #2 on the Clobber Passages (July 24), so I’ll focus here on Corinthians and Timothy, which both include lists of people who are “wrong-doers.” At issue in these two texts are the Greek words malakoi and arsenokoitai. Both words appear in 1 Corinthians, and arsenokoitai appears in 1 Timothy.

Who are these wrong-doers? Malakoi is a word which means “soft.” The King James Version of the bible translated it as “effeminate.” Early church interpreters suggested this referred to masturbation. As social mores shifted, the interpretation also shifted to apply this term to gay men.

Arsenokoitai is a compound word that means men-who-bed-(men?). It does not appear in other contexts in Greek literature and it’s unclear what kind of specific activity was being referred to in this list of wrong-doings. It’s possible it referred to male temple prostitution or to sex with slaves or young boys which were abuses of unequal power. The King James Version translated this word as “abusers of themselves with mankind.” The Revised version translated malakoi and arsenokoitai together as “homosexual” and the second edition translated them together as “sexual pervert.”

Rev. Lindsey Biddle provides an in-depth and readable study of these words in her paper, “Translations with a Soft Touch (Word Studies on 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 1:9-10).”

Upon reading these and other commentaries, in my mind it is clear that these words do not refer to loving same-gender couples who are seeking to live a life of integrity, commitment, love, and family with each other and their neighbors.

Let’s all have ethics, yes. But let’s not target whole populations of people based on their identity. Let’s not clobber people with the bible. In fact, let’s make that one of our ethical commitments, k?