What are the different christian attitudes to homosexuality?

There are some so-called Christians who will judge (against Christ's teachings) all homosexuals as deviant perverts who should be damned to hell. Yet the 'condemnation' of homosexuality in The Bible is confined to just a few lines of scripture written by Paul - but Jesus himself had absolutely nothing to say about homosexuals.

The belief that homosexuality is wrong is a misinterpretation of a few verses written by Paul in one of his letters. Sadly, some hard line fundamentalist Christians seem to forget the Christian truth that all are created in the image of God and that we are to love each other just as Christ loved us -warts and all - and whatever our background, creed, colour, race or sexual orientation. Instead, they seem to single out homosexuals and treat them in the same way as they would treat murderers, rapists or predatory paedophiles, forgetting that the vast majority of homosexuals live in monogamous. committed, loving relationships.

The verses in question are uttered by Paul who was speaking to a particular church at a particular time. He does have a go at what the bible refers to as 'homosexuals' but in the same verses he also indicts gluttons, greedy people and slanderers (surely we all fit into one of these categories?). More to the point, however, is that the Word used for homosexual in this context (in the original Greek of Paul) is categorically not what we understand by the Word 'homosexual' today.

In the passages in question, Paul is not referring to homosexuals in a committed relationship (as we would understand today) but is actually referring to those men who have sex with pagan male temple prostitutes - a practice that was rife in the pagan worship of multicultural and multifaith Corinth. He wrote his letter to the Christian church there warning them of becoming involved in such pagan practices and did not indict homosexuals themselves as we would understand them, for all time. Indeed the Greek Word that Paul uses for 'homosexual' is categorically reserved for pagan homosexual prostitutes rather than just homosexuals- which is a totally different Word in the original Greek. In English, of course, there is no distinction between the two (just as there is one English Word for 'love' as opposed to several in Greek) and so those fundamentalists who have adopted an English version of scripture as their 'god' rather than what a God of love has actually revealed, primarily through their own ignorance of actual Biblical truth, have totally missed the point.

Sadly, as with many things, there are those who would use scripture out of context and twist and warp the true meaning so as to be able to back up their own bigoted viewpoint. A simple tip in all this is to ask what Jesus would have said or did. As someone who spoke out against hypocrisy, and who loved people for who there were from the hated Samaritan or the tax collector right through to the common prostitute, I know categorically what he would have to say about it.