Every Letter Condemned
Evangelical Hatred, Queer Scripture, and the Death of Divine Command
Each June, rainbow flags unfurl, drag queens dance, and queer joy spills into the streets in celebration of lives lived honestly. Without fail, Evangelical Christians clutch their pearls and Bibles and march out like moral Paul Blarts, ready to rebuke every color of the rainbow with “biblical truth.”
But what they offer isn’t truth—it’s selective outrage, cobbled together from mistranslated verses, purposely deceptive sermons, and centuries of patriarchal power preservation. Their scriptural argumenta against the LGBTQ+ community don’t reveal divine authority; they reveal the deep insecurity of a theology that can’t survive diversity.
Let’s go letter by letter, claim by claim, and expose just how flimsy their “Yahweh said it” narrative really is.
L - LESBIAN
Evangelical rhetoric treats lesbianism as a symptom of society’s sexual decay—unnatural, rebellious, and godless. They often quote Romans 1:26, where Paul says “Even their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature,” as if it’s the smoking gun of female same-sex condemnation.
But let’s take a second here. “Natural?” According to whom? Paul isn’t issuing an eternal moral law—he’s engaging in diatribe, a Greco-Roman rhetorical technique, aimed at critiquing the idolatry of gentiles. He’s describing excess, not ethics. He’s talking about temple orgies, not two women who love each other and share a lease.
Now contrast that with the actual love story of Ruth and Naomi.
When Ruth’s husband dies, and she has every reason to return home, she doesn’t. Instead, she makes a covenant with Naomi:
”Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people. Your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lorde do thus to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” (Ruth 1:16-17)
These are wedding vows in every meaningful sense. Ruth follows Naomi into poverty, shares her home, her grief, and her joy. When Ruth gives birth to a child, it is Naomi the townspeople celebrate:
”A son has been born to Naomi.” (Ruth 4:17)
In a book named for Ruth, it’s Naomi who receives the legacy. That’s not “just friendship.” That’s chosen family, covenantal loyalty, and divine favor. The Bible blesses them. The Evangelical framework (and Ruth’s eventual transactional marriage to Boaz) erases them.
G - GAY
Gay men are the centerpiece of Evangelical panic. Leviticus 18:22 is brandished like a holy club:
“You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination.”
Never mind that the Hebrew word to’evah (“abomination”) is used for eating shellfish (Leviticus 11:9-12), wearing polyester blends (Deuteronomy 22:5-11), and touching dead things (Leviticus 11:24-31 and Leviticus 21:1-2). Never mind that Leviticus also forbids tattoos (Leviticus 19:28), which somehow survive every sermon series on “holiness.” In Evangelical theology, only this verse survives the cross.
And yet, the Bible also contains the story of David and Jonathan.
Jonathan, son of King Saul, meets David—and their souls are “knit together.” Jonathan strips off his royal robe and armor and gives them to David. In the ancient world, that’s not just affection—it’s intimacy, vulnerability, and political surrender (1 Samuel 18:1-4).
Three times they make covenants. In one scene, they kiss and weep (1 Samuel 20:41). And when Jonathan dies, David publicly laments:
”Your love to me was more wonderful than the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26)
David’s heterosexual exploits are many—yet it’s Jonathan’s love he exalts.
Now look at Yahweh’s judgment:
”David did what was right in the eyes of the Lord… except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.” (1 Kings 15:5)
David is rebuked for adultery and murder, but nothing is said about his relationship with Jonathan. Not a word. If David’s same-sex love was sinful, surely the prophets would have mentioned it. They didn’t. Because it wasn’t.
B - BISEXUAL
Bisexuality is moral chaos. It’s “confused,” “hypersexual,” and “biblically indefensible.” They argue that if you’re attracted to more than one gender, you’re either greedy, indecisive, or faking it for attention. The Bible, they say, presents a clear binary of attraction—man and woman, Adam and Eve, penis and property rights.
And then there’s Paul.
Oh, sweet, tormented Paul.
The man who wrote half the New Testament while having what appears to be a full-blown spiritual crisis about his own body.
In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul admits he’s suffering from something deeply personal—a “thorn in the flesh”—something humiliating and persistent:
”Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’”
Evangelicals often chalk this up to illness or persecution, but that’s laughable. Paul never shied away from bragging about enduring hardship. But this? This is different. This is a deep, personal bodily affliction he finds shameful—something he can’t even name.
Now match this with Romans 7, where Paul sounds like he’s having an erotic breakdown:
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… It is no longer I who do it, but sin living in me.”
Sir.
That is not the sound of a man resisting tax fraud.
Who’s gonna tell him?
That is a man fighting off the urge to kiss his traveling companionin the middle of a tent revival.
And don’t forget: Paul traveled with male disciples, remained unmarried, and seemed highly suspect of marriage in general. He literally says in 1 Corinthians 7:
”It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”
Is this a biblical role model?
Let’s be real—Paul didn’t condemn bisexuality. He performed the agony of queerness in a society that offered no language for it. His “thorn” is interpreted by some early church writers and modern theologians as either same-sex desire or an orientation that he felt he had to suppress to fulfill his calling.
If Paul was indeed queer, or bisexual, or just painfully repressed, it makes total sense why his theology is dripping with conflict. He’s trying to reconcile desire with devotion in a world where there was not path to live both.
T - TRANSGENDER
Evangelicals lean hard on Genesis 1:27:
”Male and female He created them.”
They use this as if it were a biological manifesto instead of a poetic origin myth. In their theology, your gender is fixed, binary, and sacred. If you’re trans, you’re rebelling against your “design.”
But the Bible—especially Jewish tradition—is far more sophisticated.
The Talmud identifies six gender categories:
Zachar - male
Nekevah - female
Androgynos - both
Tumtum - indeterminate
Saris - male at birth, develops female traits or is castrated
Aylonit - female at birth, develops male traits
The rabbis didn’t erase gender variance—they debated how to honor it within law and community.
Yahweh co-signs this in Isaiah 56:
”and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.’ For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”
My favorite biblical pun notwithstanding, it certainly seems like Yahweh exalts those in the trans community.
And then there’s Jesus.
In Matthew 19:12, he says:
“There are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.”
That’s biological, surgical, and chosen gender variance. And Jesus affirms it. All of it.
Q - QUEER
“Queer” is their shorthand for chaos. It’s the catch-all slur for anyone who doesn’t conform. Evangelicals quote 1 Corinthians 14:33:
”God is not the author of confusion.”
But what they call “confusion,” Jesus calls blessed.
He dines with outcasts. He touches the “ritually unclean.” He allows a woman to anoint his feet in a room full of scandalized men (when you get a second, look up what the biblical notion of “washing feet” means). He is called a friend of sinners. His closest relationships are with unmarried men. His beloved disciple rests on his chest. His parables elevate outsiders.
This isn’t erasure. It’s liberation.
+ - THE REST OF US
Evangelicals hate the “+” because it means the story isn’t over. They want clear categories, gatekeeping, and finality. But scripture doesn’t end in Eden—it ends in Revelation, where a new name is given, a new identity, and a city of light welcomes the nations.
The “+” is hope. It’s every intersex child, every gender fluid soul, every asexual and agender and unlabeled wanderer finding space not just in the world, but in the story of this bloodthirsty Bronze Age deity that has an obsession with private parts.
LET THE SCRIPTURES SPEAK, AND THEN LET THEM GO
Evangelicals want a Bible that condemn’s queer people.
What they have is a Bible that, given a non-bigoted lens, includes them.
A same-sex vow of loyalty that birthed the Davidic line
A love between men stronger than any of David’s marriages
A tortured queer identity crisis by the religion’s founder
A tradition of non-binary gender categories
And a savior who praises those outside social and gender norms
Here’s the part most won’t say out loud:
Even if the Bible did clearly condemn LGBTQ+ people, it still wouldn’t matter. Because it’s not an authority. It’s a cultural artifact.
It is mythology.
Yes, it shaped history. Yes, it has beauty. But it is also contradictory, politically edited, and scientifically illiterate. It reflects the fears, power struggles, and moral assumptions of ancient people—not divine truth.
It doesn’t understand gender.
It doesn’t understand consent.
It doesn’t even understand cosmology.
So whether you find yourself reflected in its pages or rejected by them, know this:
You are not bound by what Bronze and Iron Age men said about the sky—or about you.
Scripture can be a mirror. It can be a myth. It can even be a battlefield. But it should never be your cage. People don’t need ancient permission to exist. They already do.
