All your response is good, but it's built on the premise that the Bible says that homosexuality is wrong, which is in itself a very arguable point.
It's worth discussing some context... The use of the word "gay" is only relatively recent. The construction of homosexuality, the idea that two people of the same sex can be in a relationship together, particularly a loving, monogamous, committed one is probably less than 150 years old.
Given that, the Bible didn't say anything about being gay or homosexual.
The bits of the Bible that are often discussed use English words like "abomination". The problem is that the New Testament was originally written in Greek, so these words are not necessarily faithful translations of what was originally written. (I think that one of my friends with an M.Div. told me that what we read now as abomination was better understood as something along the lines of "unclean thing" or something to that effect in the original Greek.) Of course, if you believe that every translation of the Bible is divinely inspired, then the discussion doesn't matter at all. (If that's the case, why don't we just divinely translate the Bible with all the homophobia edited out?)
There are people out there who have given these issues a lot more thought who could fill in some of these concepts more than I can. I'm not sure if your friend goes to church still, but it sounds like he could use a chat with someone of a more liberal denomination that is fluent in these issues to counterweight the hatred his family is spewing. There are also a ton of books out there. (One commonly cited one is What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality that might be worth checking into.
It's worth discussing some context... The use of the word "gay" is only relatively recent. The construction of homosexuality, the idea that two people of the same sex can be in a relationship together, particularly a loving, monogamous, committed one is probably less than 150 years old.
Given that, the Bible didn't say anything about being gay or homosexual.
The bits of the Bible that are often discussed use English words like "abomination". The problem is that the New Testament was originally written in Greek, so these words are not necessarily faithful translations of what was originally written. (I think that one of my friends with an M.Div. told me that what we read now as abomination was better understood as something along the lines of "unclean thing" or something to that effect in the original Greek.) Of course, if you believe that every translation of the Bible is divinely inspired, then the discussion doesn't matter at all. (If that's the case, why don't we just divinely translate the Bible with all the homophobia edited out?)
There are people out there who have given these issues a lot more thought who could fill in some of these concepts more than I can. I'm not sure if your friend goes to church still, but it sounds like he could use a chat with someone of a more liberal denomination that is fluent in these issues to counterweight the hatred his family is spewing. There are also a ton of books out there. (One commonly cited one is What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality that might be worth checking into.
Hope this helps too...
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