The original Preface to my 1997 published article on Biblical Texts Relevant to Homosexual Orientation and Practice

Though I firmly believe that, next to God, sexual love is the world’s most interesting subject, I feel bound to preface this discussion with a couple of remarks. Firstly, my topic may seem narrow and disembodied from human and pastoral reality; but actually I have been led to it in the most personal of ways. Not only are there the many individuals whom I know and love, some of whom have died and some of whom have suffered extreme personal pain because of false doctrine and bad disciplinary practice in churches, but I myself have been involved publicly in distasteful controversy in my own city. I care to know whether the boy who goes home with a man for food and shelter puts himself, biblically speaking, outside the Kingdom, and for whom such relationships are liberating. Hence this article started life as a little paper put into circulation nationally in my own denomination.

Secondly, I am wary of a prurient interest in other people’s sins; to keep me wary I sometimes think of using those precious eight letters in the PC to call this study HOMOPORN. I hope that it will be read in the same spirit.

Thirdly, I hope that, in seeking to show how exactly Scripture calls a spade a spade in at least one passage, I shall not seem to be verging on the obscene; after over 35 years of passionate monogamy, I myself am left cold by details of homosexual conduct, but can still be made to blush by public discussion however clinical of private heterosexual matters.

Fourthly, I have a quantity of supporting linguistic and cultural detail tucked away in footnotes; in order to keep the body of the argument lean I adduce only the bare minimum in my text. The same applies to bibliographical references: the reader should investigate the relevant literature for himself.