I'm also atheist.
Regardless of the interpretation of the sins of Sodom, God, according to the bible, destroyed the city. I think that the argument that it was inhospitality are rather weak.
But for us as homosexuals to focus on Sodom as a justification for our sexual orientation and life style as it pertains to the bible is to ignore many other references in the bible that clearly do target homosexuality as a sin.
Frankly, I'm tired of having to justify who I am against a book written thousands of years ago by cavemen.
The problem with Rom 1, Lev, Sodom etc, is not it's message against homosexuality, but that people today use these as weapons against people they can't understand or accept.
However, the same people are willing to accept, on "faith", that a man rose from the dead, was born of a virgin and worked miracles. They haven't seen him, his "father" or his magic for 2000 yrs; but they condemn me to hell because I'm gay.
They use Sodom as justification for their bigotry and hate; but do they look at who this God they serve really is?
God, according to Genesis, destroyed the city of Sodom and it's entire pop except for Lot and his daughters. If God did this over inhospitality then what kind of God to christians serve? What obligation do we have to be hospitable that we deserve destruction when we are not?
If it were homosexuality, then I have to ask why it's so abominable when I was created this way? Was I created to be destroyed by God because of sin I didn't choose?
Romans 9 (in addition to Job and other text) point vividly to the personality of God that destroyed Sodom. Christians maintain that sin is a choice, that we are men of free will, and that salvation is free to all. Romans 9 does not substantiate this.
Rather, we learn that God choses whom he will and will not have mercy on. That he makes some of us to be good and some to be bad. Why? So that he might glorify himself before the good by destroying the bad.
HE, GOD, hardened the heart of pharoh in Genesis and prevented him from allowing the children of Isreal to go free. When pharoh, under God's influence and control, sought to destroy Isreal, God destroyed him in return. Just so the children of Isreal would worship him more.
Wow, what a loving God. Whether homosexuality is sin or not, who wants to serve a bastard like that?
Jesus stated in Mathew, you are mine because my father (God) gave you to me. We are not his because we accepted a free gift; but his because, lucky us, God picked us. Jesus taught in parable so that the people would not understand (he said so, not me). Maybe thats what he meant by hearing but not hearing?
The God of the bible is jealous (his own words), vindictive, destructive, genocidical, inconsistant and manipulative. Yet, the only shred of evidence that we have that he exsist is in the bible; the book that tells us these things about him.
5 to 2 thousand years ago people were superstitious, ignorant and easily fooled by a few. No wonder God, Jesus and the bible evolved and have survived (yes I know Jesus was real, he was also a lunatic and I don't think taking advice from a lunatic makes sense, regardles of whether it sounds good or not).
Why should we continue to blind ourselves and try to convince ourselves, and these Westboro idiots, that the bible really doesn't condemn homosexuality. It does; clearly! But who cares, it's fiction. I'm no more bound by the commands against homosexuality than a wife is bound by ephesians to "submit to her own husband as unto God". How ludicrous.