In 1483 Martin Luther, exegete and theologian extraordinaire, was born on the 10th of November.

This year in observance, rather than prattle on about his many contributions (and they are MANY!), I thought I’d let him address an issue that currently occupies so many: the issue of homosexuality.

What did Luther think of it? This:

He [Paul] also calls this (homosexuality) a dishonor, or shame; for as the nobility of the body (at least in this respect) consists in chastity and continence, or at least in the proper use of the body, so its shame is in its unnatural misuse. As it adds to the splendor of a golden vessel when it is used for exquisite wine, but it contributes to its inelegance when it is used as a container for dirt and refuse, so also our body (in this respect) is ordained either for an honorable marriage or for an even more honorable chastity. But it is dishonored in the most shameful way when it not only violates marriage and chastity but also soils itself with that disgrace which is even worse.

Luther was, as everyone knows (or should know), quite vociferous at times. In connection with the ongoing war with the “Turks”, he remarks

God visits them with the same plague, too, and smites them with blindness so that it happens to them as St. Paul says in Romans 1 [:28] about the shameful vice of the dumb sins, that God gives them up to a perverse mind because they pervert the word of God. Both the pope and the Turk are so blind and senseless that they commit the dumb sins shamelessly, as an honorable and praiseworthy thing. Since they think lightly of marriage, it serves them right that there are dog-marriages (and would to God they were dog-marriages), indeed, also “Italian marriages” and “Florentine brides” among them; and they think these things good. I hear one horrible thing after another about what an open and glorious Sodom Turkey is, and everybody who has looked around a little in Rome and Italy knows very well how God revenges and punishes the forbidden marriage [homosexuality] so that Sodom and Gommorah, which God overwhelmed in days of old with fire and brimstone [Gen. 19:24], must seem a mere jest and prelude compared with these abominations. On this one account, therefore, I would very much regret the rule of the Turk; indeed, his rule would be intolerable in Germany.

Luther the theologian and exegete (in that order mind you) thought little of the “Florentine brides”. We may, or may not, agree with Luther- but we cannot deny that he had a viewpoint concerning homosexuality that is clear and unequivocal. Nor can we deny that he would find modern Lutherans in particular and Christians in general who adopt the practice (lifestyle, whatever you want to call it), with dismay if not disdain or disgust.