Original post by AMuslimGuySalaam Rohan. Much respect for your advocacy of civil dialogue. It is a precondition of all advancement of knowledge in society.But in that spirit, I will try to show you how your interpretation of the story of Lut is mistaken, and that by promoting your view in an undifferentiated manner you are hurting a significant minority of mankind and making Islam seem cruel when it really is not.The sin of the people of Lut was "coming unto (grown) males (rijaal) in lust in place of women", or in another place it says "coming unto males (dhukran) and leaving aside the partners created for you". But for the ancient world, the meaning of "male" was more nuanced than our modern strictly anatomical definition.In ancient times, they recognised that certain persons of male sex were nonetheless physically unaroused by women, and unable to obtain erections with women or perform sexually with women, and for this reason, were not "male" in gender. Instead, they were defined as eunuchs, not males. Such persons are referred to in sura 24:31 even, as "not possessors of the skill of males", i.e. not experiencing arousal and sexual prowess with female partners.Consequently, they are not intended by the story of Lut. That story is about persons who sexually assault men who are "male" in the ancient sense, which they do in order to humiliate and disenfranchise them, or simply out of a lack of respect for them as men. It is about military and prison rape of men. It certainly has nothing to do with the sexual activities of gay men, who are innately insensitive to the attractions of women, and are therefore natural eunuchs, or khisyan in Arabic, and therefore are not "male" by the ancient definition of the term. And of course, sexual use of "males" obviously has nothing to do with sexual activities of women with other women.Gay men and women have been known to exist throughout human history, and their sex lives were never a problem, until certain people, who happened to be straight men, started misapplying religious scriptures to gay men, which were always before understood to apply only to abuse of non-gay men.And by now, so many innocent gay men and women, created that way by Allah (swt) the Knowing and Powerful, have been brutally mistreated and even killed on account of this ignorant or even malicious misinterpretation. Ultimately, the source of this misinterpretation is not any prophet, but the Greek philosopher Plato, who (in his dialogues on the Republic and on Laws) taught men to twist scriptures toward what he considered a morally superior direction. Religious leaders, even without knowing it anymore, are simply doing Plato's bidding, and inflicting injustice on some of Allah's favoured and blessed people.