Was Jesus Gay or Bi?

Every year to date, June has been Gay Pride Month. This June also marks the seventh anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court case that legalized gay marriage in the U.S. after decades of work by activists. Yet, even as American society by and large has come to accept homosexuality as a natural behavior of humanity, the fundamentalist church and its political allies in the Republican party continue to target the rights and freedoms of the LGBTQ community.

But why should we believe a loving God objects to homosexuality? Not once in the four Gospels does Jesus address homosexuality. Christ appears to be wholly unbothered by so-called sexual sin, even defending the unnamed prostitute in front of the religious leaders of his era.

The Bible verses that do address homosexuality (Leviticus, Genesis, Corinthians, etc.) are flimsy, with less than half a dozen verses across both the Old and New Testament more or less directly mentioning homosexual sex. It is most interesting that Genesis 19:4-5 talks about Lot, who allegedly had angels visit him, and portrays a picture that the crowd of men want to know the angels, but Lot counterpoints that the men know his daughters. Not one scholar raises the question that these men are supposed to be homosexuals. Why would Lot offer women to a homosexual? What is even more interesting is the very next night Lot has sex with his own daughters. The first night, the older daughter after getting drunk, the second night with his younger daughter. As a result of the incestual relationship, both girls become pregnant, and their children are blessed in the bible resulting in the children Moab and Ben-Ammi. Yet 21st century Christians never cite Cain and Abel had to have sex with their mother Eve, as well as Lot with his daughters. So, why has it become the lynchpin issue for so many modern Christians (especially when other issues specifically addressed by Christ are ignored)?
I have increasingly come to believe the answer is seemingly counterintuitive but simple: Jesus was gay or bi. Why, you might wonder, would the church object to Jesus being gay, to the point of spending centuries persecuting homosexuals? Well, the answer to that is both historical and theological.

I should start off by saying I’m certainly not the first to suggest Jesus may have been homosexual or homosocial in his relationships. Paul Oestreicher, an Anglican priest and human rights advocate, has preached that he believes Jesus may have been in a relationship with John the Apostle, the man referred to repeatedly in the Gospel of John as the “Disciple whom Jesus loved.” As Oestreicher points out, the oft-repeated notion that Jesus was in a relationship with Mary Magdalene is a fictional conceit, common in modern pop culture but unsupported by the text. There’s actually more Biblical evidence for Jesus being in love with John than with Mary Magdalene

In his Gospel, Apostle John called himself the “Beloved Disciple”. Was this epithet merely a boast? If John simply felt closer to Jesus than the other twelve Disciples, it’s a strange detail to not only include in his Gospel, but for the church to then, centuries later, enshrine in the Holy Bible. What does it reveal about Jesus, other than his humanity, his very human love?

For the record, John is not the only man Jesus is said to love. When Jesus is called to heal Lazarus in John 11, the sick man’s sisters, Mary and Martha, refer to him as “the man whom you love.”

Furthermore, there is good evidence for Christ’s homosexuality in what the Bible doesn’t say: it never mentions his wife. It would have been nearly unthinkable for a Jewish Rabbi of Christ’s time – even ours – to be unmarried. Marriage is a sacrament in the Jewish faith, so for there to be no mention of Jesus being married is a glaring omission; unless, of course, he wasn’t.

Some will contend that Jesus was a divine man, one who did not succumb to or even experience sexual desire. But that doesn’t align with a Christ who is revealed to get angry, feel sorrow, and openly weep. Whether Jesus ever acted on his sexual desire, we may never know for sure, but to suggest he had no such desire undercuts the humanity that made his canonical sacrifice matter.

It should be noted that the idea that Christ was homosexual is not a 21st (or 20th) century invention. Since the Renaissance, at least, numerous scholars and thinkers have advocated for this idea, including Christopher Marlowe, the English playwright and contemporary of Shakespeare. Historically, those who have advocated for this theory have been persecuted, even killed. Some will do anything to suppress this idea.

None of which proves Jesus was homosexual, of course. And, there is certainly evidence in the Bible that, even if Jesus himself didn’t object to homosexuality, other early Christian leaders did.

There’s no question some Biblical writers found the act detestable. The mention of “shameful lust” in Romans 26 is commonly interpreted as meaning homosexual sex (though there is enough ambiguity in the passage to allow for differing interpretations). More specifically, in 1 Timothy, Paul lumps “those practicing homosexuality” in with other “sinful” acts such as lying and slave trading.

The acceptance of homosexuality in Ancient Roman society (and Greece before it) likely played a role in Paul’s acrimony. Paul was preaching at a time when the Roman Empire was persecuting Jews (which almost all early Christians were) and upstart religious faiths. In that light, Paul’s condemnation of homosexuality (and other “sins”) reads like a besieged man finding hope in the imagined downfall of his “wicked” enemies.

Centuries later, as Christianity solidified into a religious institution and canonized its scripture, Jesus lost much of his human nature. Dozens of alternative Gospels and epistles that portrayed different versions of the Savior were abandoned for a sinless, sexless God. In the official canon, we only get sparks of his humanity, like his burst of anger at the moneychangers in the Temple.

It’s worth noting there is also a history of Christian leaders downplaying the role of women in the early church. Female leaders often had their names masculinized in translations to obscure their gender. An institution that felt the need to change facts – to lie, if I can be blunt – to uphold male dominance would not hesitate to hide the sexual orientation of Jesus to deify him (and maintain gender norms).

You may be asking, so what? Why does it matter if Jesus was gay or bi?
What we lose when we are denied the complete picture of Christ’s humanity is a fuller understanding of our own humanity. If Jesus was gay, it not only undercuts modern persecution of the LGBTQ community, it reinforces the reality that divinity and humanity (including our own) can coexist within one person. That is a message some church leaders do not want to spread.

For more, please see The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies