Debunking the Clobber Passages

Debunking the Clobber Passages is essential to working through religious trauma damages that these six passages have created. Christian sects that have left the path of love and inclusion, use these clobber passage as a coercive tool to promote like fear and hate, keeping their pews filled and the collection plates full. If the real truth would ever be exposed, the amount of internal abuse, fraud, and the lack of Christ-like behaviour would surely crumble their temples of lies and hate to the ground.

Many 2SLGBTQIA+people, if they have grown up in a very religious home and community where the preaching of anti-2SLGBTQIA+ is strong, these individuals often deal with being emotionally manipulated.

When dealing with mental, emotional and spiritual trauma, it will be different for each person. There is the fear of leaving and being separated from family and people they love, despite the abuse and they may have been told they will go to hell or may face societal ruin.

Often there is a false narrative that absolute religious adherence being the only path to the afterlife. Some people experience a feeling of abandoning everything, if they have been involved in religious trauma from childhood. Others may lose family, friends and a support network and feel abandoned. Others may feel a loss of their faith and religion when they begin to learn how some parts of their faith and religion are not true.

The current day usage of 6 passages from Christian bibles, without the use of historical context, are often interpreted to wield as a sacred sword and have been used to discriminate against 2SLGBTQIA+ people.

A mistranslation of two words in 1946 was made by the revision committee of the National Council of Churches, in the United States, which created the Revised Standard Version (RSV). Until this date, the word “homosexual” never appeared in any translation of a bible. In 1961, this translation was corrected and the word homosexual was removed and the more accurate description of “sexual pervert” replaced it.

Despite this correction, countless Christian sects and bibles have brandished this inaccurate and misleading passage to attack the 2SLGBTQIA+community around the world. This mistranslated version was basically copied and pasted into the New American Standard in 1971 and the New International Version (NIV) in 1978.

Around the same time, in 1971, Kenneth Taylor self-published his paraphrased bible called The Living Way, where the word homosexual was added for the first time in another 5 locations, based on personal beliefs and nonacademic translations. It was this publication that was used by countless US Evangelical sects to continue the hate campaign against the 2SLGBTQIA+ communities in the US. This has since spread throughout the world.

The weaponizing of these passages are to justify bigotry. Bigotry is a choice, being gay is not. If you are Christian, you will know that Jesus never said anything about the homosexuals.

Old Testament

Genesis 19:24-29 Story of Sodom and Gomorrah was about in-hospitality, power, and violence towards those in need, not about consensual same sexual love and orientation.

Leviticus 18:22 “You must not lie with a man as with a woman; that is an abomination.

Leviticus 20:13 “If a man lies with a man as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.”

These two passages are often seen as a gender role issue, where a women’s role was considered inferior to the man’s role. It is about male dominance and the protection io socially inferior men, or slaves, from the exploitation of men with a higher social rank. This was a commentary on the acts of a heterosexual man not a homosexual man.

New Testament

Romans 1:26-28 is about the condemnation of the Greco-Roman practice of male prostitution with young boys. It was about paedophilia and prostitution, lust, idol worship and not loving relationships or homosexuality.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 & 1 Timothy 1:9-10 are related to each other as they are the only two verses that the Greek word arsenokoitai appears. It has been commonly mistranslated as homosexual but actually deals with male prostitutes, boy molesters or abusers. When coupled with the Greek word malakoi, meaning soft, young boy prostitute, or living a pampered life, it can also refer to sexual perverts who abuse young males suggesting this is more about exploitative relationships, and nothing to do with homosexuality, as this applied to predatory sexual behavior of heterosexual men.

The word abomination has been linked to the word homosexual in many versions of Christian Bibles. Homosexuals have never been nor are they, nor will they ever be, an abomination. What is an abomination are the practices within some Christian sects against their own families and congregations, the innocent, the children and women.

For more information visit:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithfulprogress/2021/01/an-inclusive-interpretation-of-biblical-clobber-passages/

https://progressivechristianity.org/resource/what-about-those-clobber-verses-part-1/