Before Spring Break, a senior named Andrew Mungons wrote a commendable piece in which he encouraged the LGBT and Christian communities to have more civil discourse. I agree with Mungons that a “proper discussion of beliefs” can and should take place and that wrong ideas “need to be fixed on both sides of the issue.” Unfortunately, Mungons himself holds some of those wrong ideas.

To begin with, he assumes that someone cannot be gay and Christian. As a gay Christian minister with many gay Christian friends and gay Christians who worship with me every Sunday, I can assure Mungons that he is wrong. The gay Christian phenomenon is not limited to congregants at a progressive church like the one I serve. I know several gay Christians who worship weekly at conservative churches as well.

Mungons also is wrong when he claims the Bible “says that homosexuality is morally wrong.” In fact, the word homosexual never appears in the Bible. There is no Greek or Hebrew equivalent for homosexual because the concept itself dates to the 19th century. It was only in the 19th century that people began to realize that there is such a thing as an immutable sexual orientation.

True, sexual orientation does not function in binaries — people are often not purely gay or straight. Nevertheless, every major medical and scientific body in the United States today accepts that certain people have an innate attraction to people of the same sex. In contrast, for the Apostle Paul it was assumed that anyone would have sex with someone of the same gender out of an excess of lust. There was no sense that maybe a man might not be attracted to women and vice versa.

Beyond the concept of a sexual orientation, other factors make the interpretation of New Testament sexual ethics complex. Both Hellenistic and Jewish societies of the time were highly patriarchal. Marriage and sexual matters were often seen in the context of property rights, i.e. women as the rightful property and legal responsibility of their husbands and marriage as largely a financial transaction. Moreover, Jewish culture prized purity and viewed sexual matters in terms of the filth that sex might bring. Bear in mind that being ritually impure had consequences for involvement in the temple worship and other religious observances.

By and large, American Christians do not view sexual relations in terms of property rights or purity concerns. Concepts of gender, sex and sexuality have changed dramatically since the first century. Just as we have rethought Biblical assumptions around slavery and the rights of women, it is also time that Christians rethink views on homosexuality and sexuality more broadly. I welcome the chance to talk openly with Andrew Mungons and others because, like him, I think we all would benefit from more dialogue.