Sodom and Gomorrah is one of the six or seven clobber verses that is commonly used to condemn homosexuality. We talk about what the verse really represents and how it is not about LGBTQ issues. When read using the correct lenses, it focuses on the injustice and oppression that is currently occurring in today's world. It also pushes us to find ways to help the needy, the poor and the innocent.Episode TranscriptBrian: Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast!Fr. Shay: Where each episode, we take a queer look at the week's lectionary readings. We're the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and the hosts for this podcast. I'm Father Shay Kearns B: And I'm Brian G. Murphy.FS: Hello and welcome back to the Queer Theology podcast. This is Sunday, July 28th and we are going to look at a doozy of a passage today, Genesis 18:20-32. You can find that in the show notes at QueerTheology.com/287, but I'm also going to go ahead and read it for us now. So this is Genesis 18:20-32.Then the Lord said, \"The cries of injustice from Sodom and Gomorrah are countless, and their sin is very serious! I will go down now to examine the cries of injustice that have reached me. Have they really done all this? If not, I want to know.\"The men turned away and walked toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing in front of the Lord. Abraham approached and said, \"Will you really sweep away the innocent with the guilty? What if there are fifty innocent people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not save the place for the sake of the fifty innocent people in it? It's not like you to do this, killing the innocent with the guilty as if there were no difference. It's not like you! Will the judge of all the earth not act justly?\"The Lord said, \"If I find fifty innocent people in the city of Sodom, I will save it because of them.\"Abraham responded, \"Since I've already decided to speak with my Lord, even though I'm just soil and ash, what if there are five fewer innocent people than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city over just five?\"The Lord said, \"If I find forty-five there, I won't destroy it.\"Once again Abraham spoke, \"What if forty are there?\"The Lord said, \"For the sake of forty, I will do nothing.\"He said, \"Don't be angry with me, my Lord, but let me speak. What if thirty are there?\"The Lord said, \"I won't do it if I find thirty there.\"Abraham said, \"Since I've already decided to speak with my Lord, what if twenty are there?\"The Lord said, \"I won't do it, for the sake of twenty.\"Abraham said, \"Don't be angry with me, my Lord, but let me speak just once more. What if there are ten?\"And the Lord said, \"I will not destroy it because of those ten.\"B: I'm so excited!!!FS: Yes! What do you make of this? What do you do with this?B: Yeah! So obviously, this is the start of the story of Sodom & Gomorrah which LGBTQ people are intimately aware with, and honestly, at this point probably, most people are aware of it because it's just become so ingrained in our culture. Sodomy is a word that has come to mean: non-PIV sex right? It derives from this story and I think there are all sorts of takes on why that's maybe not accurate and we will perhaps get into some of that today. But what struck me today, and I think I said this last week, I just love coming back to texts over and over again because each time you see something different. And so, when we picked this text I was, \"Oh! We're gonna talk Sodom & Gomorrah. We are going to talk about homosexuality in the Bible. And we're gonna talk about how you can know it's okay and this doesn't really say what people say that it says.\" All that definitely happening. Today prisons came up, particularly the death penalty, but prisons in general, and so often we need to punish people for their crimes and what about innocent folks who get swept up in this. Here God is saying, let's just assume for the sake of this argument that all of the city of Sodom really is terrible people. God is like, I'm not

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