You see, as we've discussed , a whole lot of the stories and characters people associate with the Bible were actually cobbled together from centuries of pop culture and garbled readings of the original. Go grab a Bible from your bookshelf or your nearest hotel nightstand, and you won't find ...

Considering the fact that the Christian Bible is the most popular book in human history , it's surprising how little people know about what's actually in it. Or maybe not -- it's a complicated text compiled over thousands of years, and it's as long as the first five Harry Potter novels combined. Even for an expert, there's a lot in there to process ... and a vast ocean of stuff that isn't in there.

5 Sodom And Gomorrah Getting Destroyed For Homosexuality

Wikimedia/Phillip Medhurst

If you ask someone to point out a part of the Bible where God specifically condemns homosexuality, they're likely to refer you to Genesis 19, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the San Franciscos of the ancient world. The popular story is that God destroyed these two cities due to rampant homosexuality (in fact, that's where the word "sodomy" as we know it today comes from) and sent two angels like a heavenly SEAL team to extract Lot, the only non-gay citizen, and his family before the wrath came down.

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This is why, for instance, you'll hear preachers today insist that hurricanes target cities that hold Gay Pride parades.



Compared to the military precision of Lot's extraction, this seems like overkill.

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The only problem is that there is absolutely no reference in the Bible to anyone in Sodom being gay, and even if they were, that's never given as one of the reasons God wanted to wipe the place out. If anything, the biggest sin of the people of Sodom was that they really hated foreigners.