What Sodom Means for Catholics Today 

Ryan Di Corpo

Today’s reflection is from Ryan Di Corpo, a journalist and editor whose writing has appeared in The Washington Post, America, the National Catholic Reporter, U.S. Catholic magazine and elsewhere. He is the former managing editor of Outreach, a Jesuit-backed ministry for LGBTQ Catholics. 

Today’s liturgical readings for the Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time can be found here. 

LGBTQ Catholics are likely exhausted by today’s first liturgical reading, from Genesis 18, which sets the scene for one of the most discussed, debated, analyzed and quoted episodes in the Old Testament—the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. (Yes, this story again.) Today’s reading finds God on a kind of fact-finding mission with an elderly Abraham to determine if the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah deserve punishment. At Abraham’s urging, the Lord promises him that he will spare the cities if he finds even ten innocent people. 

In the following chapter, Abraham’s nephew Lot, an immigrant (or gēr) to the cities, greets two angels, whom he feeds unleavened bread in his home. Soon, Lot finds his dwelling surrounded by all the town’s men, who demand his guests to be brought outside so that the men may know them (yādha‘), which is often interpreted in a sexual sense. Instead, Lot offers the men his two virgin daughters, but the crowd rejects this suggestion and steps “forward to break down the door” (Gen. 19:9). The angelic guests inside then blind the men to stop their advance, while Lot absconds with his family to the town of Zoar before God devastates Sodom and Gomorrah. 

The source of multiple interpretations, the scriptural narrative’s most enduring reading has accused residents of those doomed cities of homosexuality, which, the oft-repeated explanation goes, so enraged God that he scorched the earth with fire and sulfur. This popular understanding (of dubious historical veracity) gave rise to the term “sodomy” and its derogatory derivative “sodomite,” now bandied about on social media by nameless scolds with dictionaries. The story is the subject of a mid-19th century painting, all fire and brimstone, by the English artist John Martin, who had a knack for hellish imagery. And it inspired an amusing shirt worn by the gay Catholic historian Alan Bray in 1979: “Sodom Today Gomorrah The World.”

“The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah” by John Martin (19th century)

Jokes aside, the biblical tale of God’s wrath reducing these ancient cities to smoldering ruins has long been cited as proof that same-sex relations deserve unreserved condemnation and ultimately incur divine retribution, that homosexuality cries out to heaven for vengeance. How did we get here? And what does this story mean for all Catholics today?  

In his recent book Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity, the English historian Diarmaid MacCulloch states that, beginning in the second century B.C., “unequal same-sex relationships” in the Greco-Roman world (e.g., between a patrician and a slave) were increasingly condemned in Jewish writings. And intellectual leaders (Philo of Alexandria, Josephus) around the time of Christ pinpointed homosexual acts as the sin of Sodom. 

The Anglican ethicist Derrick Sherwin Bailey, in his landmark 1955 study Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition, notes that biblical passages allegedly concerning inadmissible sexual acts—including Leviticus 18:22 and Romans 1:26—make no reference to Sodom whatsoever. And many scholars interpret the biblical story not as a cautionary tale about same-sex behavior, but as a warning against inhospitality. 

“God punished Sodom for an inexcusable breach of hospitality conventionally to be offered to travellers in the ancient world,” writes MacCulloch. And the Old Testament scholar Richard J. Clifford, S.J., a former president of the Catholic Biblical Association, agrees and further elaborates on this perspective. In a 2024 essay for Outreach, Clifford easily dismisses the notion that the sin of Sodom was homosexuality and points to an overlooked perspective. “In Lot’s eyes, the men of Sodom were not intent on homosexual rape specifically, but rather on humiliating Lot, whom they despised as an immigrant, and his two guests,” writes Clifford. Clifford makes specific reference to the men’s threatening remarks toward Lot:

“Get out of the way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” (Gen 19:9) 

If the sin of Sodom is inhospitality to strangers, particularly to foreign peoples, then our nation is indeed overrun by sodomites, but they are not LGBTQ people. Rather, they are the voices who condemn and dehumanize migrants as an existential threat to the country, the civil authorities that seek to root out immigrants from their communities and dispossess them, the government functionaries who shackle, mock, terrorize, abuse and discard their neighbors under the guise of national security. They are the wealthy who choose to trample the poor and enrich themselves, who plug their ears to the cry of the destitute. “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” (Ezek. 16:49). 

In short, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah does not encourage us to act with prejudice or uncharity toward our LGBTQ siblings, who have long faced rejection by church leaders. The story reminds us that demonstrating hospitality to strangers, to “the Other,” is a Christian obligation, not an option. It is a public sign of faith. 

—Ryan Di Corpo, July 27, 2025