The Bible and Homosexuality: Expanding Our Image of God; The Outreach Guide

"We hope that these essays will help LGBTQ people, their families, and their friends understand the individual passages from the Bible on homosexuality, be more able to respond when these verses are used against them and, most importantly, feel more at home with the Bible, where God desires to encounter and embrace all of us, including LGBTQ people." —from the foreword This collection of articles challenges the view that Scripture is hostile to LGBTQ people and that what our ancient authors have to say on the topic can be readily understood. The Bible and Homosexuality provides a more nuanced, complicated view of same-sex relations in Scripture and offers LGBTQ Catholics (and their allies) sound methods of interpreting the most sacred text in Christianity. Additionally, texts speak to the margins, as did Jesus in his public ministry, and challenge modern readers to comprehend Scripture in a very different time from when it was written. Michael J. O'Loughlin is the executive director of Outreach, an LGBTQ Catholic ministry, and the author of Hidden Mercy: Catholics, AIDS, and Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear, which is based on the podcast series, "Plague: Untold Stories of AIDS and the Catholic Church." His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and the Advocate. †