The Ultimate Irony: Why Homophobes are the True "Sodomites"

Every June, downtown Dallas transforms. If you walk past Main Street Garden Park or down the central streets during Dallas Pride, you are swept up in a sea of joy. As the local headlines aptly put it, the festival literally "paints downtown in color." It is a beautiful testament to resilience, visibility, and community.

But as anyone who has attended Dallas Pride knows, the rainbow-colored celebration isn’t the only thing waiting for you. Just outside the festival gates, the atmosphere shifts.

There, lining the sidewalks, are the protestors. They carry megaphone-amplified vitriol and familiar, fiery signs. And without fail, one biblical narrative is trotted out more than almost any other to justify their presence: Sodom and Gomorrah.

For centuries, this story has been weaponized as a theological bludgeon against the LGBTQIA+ community. It makes a certain brand of simple-minded bible sheep feel entirely justified in their hatred. But when we actually open the Scriptures and look at the text through a historically grounded, progressive Christian lens, a staggering, breathtaking irony emerges.

The very people standing outside Dallas Pride weaponizing this story are the ones actually embodying the sin of Sodom.

The View From the Cathedral of Hope Booth

Cathedral of Hope has long stood as a beacon of radical inclusion and extravagant grace, and our presence at Pride is deliberate. We were at Dallas Pride specifically to counter the message of hate echoing from the sidewalks. While the protestors outside the gates try to build a wall of religious condemnation, we spend our day trying to build a longer table. We welcome people in, offer a safe space, and remind them that they are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Standing in that booth, looking at the contrast between the small but angry crowd outside and the vibrant, loving community inside, the hypocrisy of the anti-LGBTQIA+ movement becomes impossible to ignore.

What Was the Real Sin of Sodom?

For too long, bad theology has reduced a complex narrative about systemic injustice down to a singular fixation on human sexuality. But the Bible itself doesn’t leave the interpretation of Sodom up for debate. The prophets explicitly define what went wrong in that ancient city.

Look no further than the Prophet Ezekiel, who lays it out with devastating clarity:

"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy." > — Ezekiel 16:49

The sin of Sodom wasn't love, identity, or pride. The sin of Sodom was a radical, violent lack of hospitality to the stranger. In the ancient Near East, hospitality wasn’t just a politeness; it was a matter of literal survival. To welcome the traveler, feed the hungry, and protect the vulnerable was the ultimate sacred duty. Sodom collapsed because it became a culture of cruelty, xenophobia, and systemic selfishness—a place where insiders abused outsiders to maintain power.

Leaning into the Irony

When we look at the protestors outside Dallas Pride through Ezekiel’s lens, the irony is nothing short of breathtaking. Those accusing the LGBTQIA+ community of the "sin of sodomy" are the actual sodomites themselves.

Consider the behavior:

• The Protestors Outside: They stand at the gates of the festival, targeting a minority group, and shouting: "You do not belong here. You are not safe with us." They show a total, aggressive lack of hospitality to their neighbors. They are "arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned" with the high rates of homelessness among LGBTQIA+ youth or the deep mental health crises caused by religious trauma. By definition, their hostility is the exact spirit of ancient Sodom.

• The Queer Community Inside: Meanwhile, inside the festival, the atmosphere is defined by mutual care, chosen families, and radical acceptance. When Cathedral of Hope welcomes a weary festival-goer into our booth, offering them spiritual asylum from the hatred outside, that is the biblical definition of hospitality.

  
  

Those who claim to defend the Bible are the ones actively violating its most sacred command to love the stranger.

Reclaiming the Narrative

Jesus modeled a gospel of the open table. He constantly broke religious taboos to pull the marginalized from the fringes and place them at the very center of God's kingdom. When Jesus referenced Sodom in the Gospels (such as in Matthew 10), he didn't do it to talk about sexuality; he did so to warn towns that would reject travelers and refuse them shelter.

To our LGBTQIA+ siblings in Dallas and beyond: The text does not condemn you. The Author of the text loves you. It’s time to flip the script. The next time someone tries to use Sodom and Gomorrah to dampen the beautiful, brilliant color of Pride, we can gently but firmly hand them a mirror. Because the true call of the gospel isn't to stand outside the gates shouting condemnation - it’s to throw the doors wide open.

Perhaps if we start calling them "Sodomites", they'll get curious about what we mean and start reading the Bible in the way in which it was intended to be understood. As a manual for how to live together in community with ALL of God's children.