Let's put this into perspective. The Bible says that there were a total of FIVE major kingdom cities -  Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Bela Zoar - which were to be destroyed that day [Bela Zoar was spared at the last moment by the angels so that Lot could flee there]. This is even confirmed by Moses himself in Deuteronomy 29:23,

"Like the overthrow of

Sodom AND Gomorrah AND Admah AND Zeboim,

which the Lord overthrew in His anger and in His wrath."

Now, it is highly unlikely (if not impossible) that five kingdoms were populated with nothing but homosexuals. In fact, it is absurd. Even in this day and age, where the world has about 6,500,000,000 people, the Religious Right denies that there are even the 10% of homosexuals in the world that has been promoted by the Kinsey Institute on Human Sexuality. San Francisco - arguably the gay mecca of the world - counts less than 50% of its population as homosexual (according to the San Francisco Chronicle), and how then would the church have it believed that five major cities were fantastically populated with nothing but homosexuals?

In fact, the church has utterly ignored a tremendously significant fact made earlier in this biblical story. In Genesis 14, when the kings of the East conquered and captured these same five kingdoms of the plain, the Bible says that they took the men AND THEIR WOMEN, whom Abraham and his servants rescued when he discovered that his nephew Lot had been captured too. So, these were not cities of all gay men.

Furthermore, the church has taught that the entire population of the men of Sodom where gathered at Lot's door to rape the angels. But the biblical text says more than what we've been taught. The text says that, not just men came to Lot's door, but also "both young and old, ALL the people from EVERY QUARTER" [19:6] - "all" refers to the women, too! And additionally, the text could not mean ALL of the males of the city were involved because after the angels blinded the men at the door, they say to Lot,

"Hast thou here any besides?

son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters,

and whatsoever thou hast in the city

bring them out of this place."

- Genesis 19:12

It is obvious then that it was NOT just the males and it was not every single person of the population at Lot's door, but merely a group of lascivious people. Then, two verses later, Lot leaves his house, goes out into the city, finds his sons, his daughters and their husbands, and warns them to flee. But they didn't listen to him simply because they thought he was loony. Hmmm, wonder why they weren't joining in with the crowd if ALL the men were gay and they were ALL supposedly at Lot's door, according to the church.

The angels did not destroy the city because of the actions of the men at Lot's door, though this has strangely been the interpretation of the church (but, curiously - and tellingly, this has not been the interpretation of the Jews). That event at Lot's door was merely the "last straw". Before the event even occurred, the angels, on their way to the five cities, told Abraham in advance that they had come with the express intent of destroying the five cities.

Gay rights activists, and even some "gay churches", have said that the cities were destroyed merely because they violated the Laws pertaining to the treatment of strangers. While the text most certainly says that this was one of their crimes - and indeed it was a VERY serious crime - I do not think it was the only crime that led to their annihilation. Why?

First, we only have one example of this mistreatment, which only occurred in Sodom. What of the other four cities?

Second, because God is EXTREMELY patient with the wicked (read the book of Jonah about his mission in Ninevah for example - and they were VERY bad to strangers), and you'd have to do more than just treat strangers rudely to get Him to obliterate five whole cities off the face of the earth! It is God's will that NONE should perish, according to His Word (and I'll take His Word for it). Those cities must have done something REALLY evil for Him to say, "Because Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me." Abraham begged God to spare the cities if He found JUST TEN righteous people in it - but there wasn't even ten. THAT'S how bad they were.

So, if God didn't say that He destoyed the five cities for homosexuality, then what exactly DID He say that He destroyed them for?

- Ezekiel 16:49-50

"Even as Sodom and Gomorrah,

and the cities about them in like manner,

giving themselves over to fornication,

and going after strange flesh,

are set forth as an example,

suffering the vengeance of eternal fire."

- Jude 1:7

Looks to me like they burned in their lust - and got burnt! We'll examine the Ezekiel verse first, since it explicitly claims to list the very reasons for the destruction of those cities.

We do not see anything here that even remotely resembles the issue of homosexuality. We do see that they committed "abomination", but it should be noted that there are over 100 abominations listed in the Bible - and I've no doubt they committed every single one of them. Two of their sins was haughtiness (arrogance) and pride, which were the very sins that caused Lucifer's downfall. Furthermore, in the statement "thy sister Sodom", God was speaking here to the nation of Israel and its wickedness as being sister to Sodom. And while it is true that there were indeed times when ceremonial male whores of pagan temples ["sodomites"] fornicated with Hebrews who worshipped those idols - yet never in all of Scripture does God implicate or condemn Israel with any charge of nationwide "rampant" homosexuality in any comparison to that which the church charges against Sodom and the other four cities. 

And, in the other verse from the New Testament epistle of Jude, we see the term "going after strange flesh". Oddly, Ex-gay ministries use this phrase as "evidence" against homosexuality, implying by it that all males ought ipso facto to be strange flesh to all males. In other words, the church claims that the "strange flesh" mentioned here MUST be other human males, since in their circular arguments they claim that they were destroyed for homosexuality, and therefore the church does not see "going after strange flesh" - they incredibly see "going after other men" in this verse. That is a horrendous conception of their own personal interpretation, for, this "strange flesh" pointedly refers to the angels, which are not human, whom the Sodomites attempted to rape. They are spiritual beings - the opposite of human flesh.

In the Old Testament, Aaron's sons were destroyed by God for offering "STRANGE FIRE" on God's altar. The context of the word "strange" in both cases refers to something otherworldly, other-ness, alien, foreign, opposite. The "strange fire" that was offered by Aaron's sons was most likely demonically conjured up by sorcery learned in Egypt - for the Egyptian priests were master socerers, with satanic power even to replicate some of the plagues of God in order to mock Moses. The Koine Greek word for "strange" used in Jude's verse is "HETERO  'ΕΤΕΡΟΣ" (other), which is the total opposite of "HOMO  'ΟΜΟUΣ" (same). Though the word "homosexual" is applied to those who are attracted to the same gender, all humans regardless of gender  are of HOMO (same) flesh- not hetero (other) flesh - as indicated by the scientific term for all humankind, homo sapiens. So in other words, the men of Sodom went after DIFFERENT... OTHER... OPPOSITE flesh - not the same flesh. So regardless of any interpretations of this verse, it is still completely impossible to apply it expressly to homosexuals.

I'm sure we all agree that rape and fornication is completely ungodly and clearly forbidden in Scripture. No one's arguing there. None of us dispute that the men of Sodom who wished to do harm to the angels were wicked, for indeed they were. Yet one wonders if the church's same blanket condemnation of homosexuality would be applied against heterosexuality, had the angels appeared as females.

Still, some ministers, because of their presumption that the cities were destroyed for homosexuality, have implied that the "fornication" mentioned in this verse refers to homosexuals. That, of course, is their way of grasping at straws as a last resort to defend their biased position in regard to this verse. Fornication is fornication - straight or gay. The Bible does not make a distinction, here or elsewhere.

Most probably there were homosexuals living in those cities, for there are homosexuals in every land and in every walk of life; and it's almost certain that there were people there who violated the Laws mentioned in Leviticus 18 & 20 - heterosexuals who fornicated with other men. Yet even that is conjecture because the only true evidence we have for anything is from that which the Bible offers. But search high and low and you will find nothing in this story that refers directly or indirectly to homosexuals.

We are not told of the accounts of the angels' visits to the other four cities. Apparently Sodom was the last on the list, and most probably it received the most "coverage" in the Bible because it was were Abraham's nephew Lot was living, by whom, through sex with his own daughters, he fathered two of Israel's greatest national enemies. Those who would say that Sodom was destroyed for homosexuality disregard or  are ignorant of  the fact that there were FOUR other cities that were destroyed with Sodom. Are these ministers of anti-gay doctrine telling us that God destroyed all five cities because of the sins of one city? We are told CLEARLY in the above verses exactly WHY all five cities were destroyed and it had nothing to do with homosexuality in particular.

The point is that these cities were completely wicked in every imaginable sense of the word - and if creation has become corrupt, hasn't the Creator the right to put an end to it?

If you cannot refute these facts, then you cannot use this biblical story against homosexuals.