The following is a reprint from my blog at BibleAnswer:

Throughout history, homosexuality has been deemed unacceptable by most cultures. One notable exception was the city of Sodom which we will look at later in this discussion.

In America, the psychological and psychiatric professions considered homosexuality as a diagnosable mental illness as late as the middle part of the twentieth century. But with the advent of the 1960s and the loosening of sexual mores there was a push to normalize homosexual behavior. It was an era of feel good morals . . ."if it feels good, do it". Under extreme pressure the American Psychological Association caved in and removed homosexuality from their Diagnostics and Statistics Manual and our culture looked the other way. The situation degraded to the point that we are now pressured to consider homosexuality as a genetic condition such as being caucasion  or black or female.

But the Bible does not support the notion that homosexuality is normal or even moral. We never form a doctrine from a single Biblical text, so in this discussion we will examine two places where the Bible speaks on the subject.

First let us consider Genesis chapter nineteen--the story of the city of Sodom.

Biblical scholars have always held that the city was destroyed by God because of the evil in the city. But what has become only recently controversial is the liberal opinion that the sin of Sodom was inhospitality. A superficial reading of the text disproves that notion.

The narrative says that two angels went into the city and that a man named Lot prevailed upon them to spend the night in his house rather than in the streets as they had indicated was their plan. That does not sound like inhospitable behavior to me.

Then a curious thing happened. A crowd of Sodomites came to Lots door and told him, "Bring them out to us, that we may know them." Again no lack of hospitality here. HOWEVER what we need to understand is what they meant by "know". They were not merely interested in making the acquaintance of these two men. The word know is used here as a euphemism. It could be paraphrased as "Bring them here so that we can have sex with them."

The same word is used in the same sense a little later on in Genesis 19: 8 (the same story) where Lot tells them "I have two daughters who have not known any man." Here he is telling them that he is willing to sacrifice his daughters virginity rather than have them commit this outrageous offense against two angels. Clearly the sin of Sodom was homosexuality and God destroyed the city because of it.

We can then verify this by looking at the words of the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans chapter one. Here, Paul says this:

22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

One other clear text is from Leviticus 18:22 which says "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable."

Clearly, God disapproves of homosexuality. It is immoral. It is a sin and God never declares sinful those things over which man has no control. It is not a sin to be asian or black. It is not a sin to have cancer. It is not a sin to have blue eyes.

Those things which are sinful are things over which we DO have control. We can steal, we can kill, we can be sexually immoral or we can refuse to do those things. It is our behavior which is sinful and homosexuality is a decision to behave in an immoral way.

As proof, I offer the story of a good young man who I met while I was in seminary. He asked me one day if he was going to hell because he was homosexual. I told him that while homosexuality is indeed a sin, so are many other things. It is not a greater or lesser sin than those committed each day by all of us. I went on to explain that if he repented of that sin, it would be forgiven and that there was no reason for him to be forced to go to hell. . .it was his decision to follow God or not to follow him.

That young man did repent and turn to Christ. Later on, he enrolled in seminary with me. He even got married . . . to a fine Christian woman. Homosexuality is a decision. It is not normal behavior . . . it is not genetic. But it is a decision which can be reversed.