The tale of Sodom prohibits bullying, not homosexuality

* And two messengers (angels) came to Sodom in the evening.  And Lot sat in the gate of Sodom, and he saw and rose to greet them, and they bowed, faces to the ground.

The traditional translation of this is “he bowed, his face to the ground.”  The problem with that translation is that the verb “bowed” is third person plural—THEY bowed.  However, since the “they” in question were “מלאכים” (messengers/angels), translators have felt uncomfortable translating the word accurately, preferring for this plural verb to have as its subject the singular individual Lot.

* And he said, behold, please, my lords, please turn to the house of your servant and stay   and wash your feet and rise and go on your way.  And they said no, [we will stay] on the road (ברחב) at night.

* And he urged them strongly, and they turned to him and came to his house, and he made for them a feast unleavened and baked and they ate.

* Before the men lay down, the men of the city of Sodom surrounded the house, from the young to the old, all the people of the quarter.

* And they called to Lot and said to him, Where are the men who came to you tonight?  Send them out to us so we will know (נדע) them.

* And Lot went to them in the doorway and shut the door behind him.

* And he said, Please, my brothers, don’t do evil (תרע).

* Behold, please, I have two daughters who have not known a man.  I will bring them to you, and you can do to them what is good in your eyes.  But to these men, please do not do anything because they have come under the shelter of my roof.

This is where it gets interesting:  Lot tells the men of the city not to do evil (and he uses the singular masculine future form rather than the plural masculine future in command—תרע—suggesting that he is going to make an agreement with them as with a single party).  He refuses to send his guests the messengers (angels) out to the men of the town, instead offers them his daughters to do to them “what is good כטב in [their] eyes.” 

It says quite a lot about socialization that commentators have chosen to notice only the desire of the men of the city to “know” (נדע) the guests/messengers/angels, yet seem to overlook the fact that the men of the city have stormed the house and bullied and threatened Lot.  The acts of group harassment and intimidation would seem to count for much less than the suggestion of sexual activity.  However, it seems that Lot was amenable to bullying, since he was willing to donate his daughters to the pleasure of the men of the village.  While daughters were useful property, as females they were not considered “people” in the sense that their autonomy was respected.  They were simply reproductive vehicles whose value lay in the advantageousness of the social contracts they could be used for.  So, as reprehensible as it is to us today, in his time and up until the advent of female sufferage, Lot’s offer of his daughters to assuage the harassment  and bullying of the men of the city was seen as proper use of female offspring: to create an advantageous contract.  In this case, the contract of offering his daughters in place of the guests was a contract to ensure his own safety, which was threatened.

It is notable that Lot says his daughters have not known a man—this indicates not simply that they are virgins, but also that they have no experience to distinguish acceptable sexual conduct from unacceptable sexual conduct.  Lot is offering them sacrifices who cannot complain that the treatment they receive is out of the norm because they have no experience of a sexual norm.

Commentators in the NRSV claim that in protecting the messengers (angels), Lot was acting with “oriental hospitality.”  This seems to suggest that somewhere there existed a social norm in which it was acceptable for groups of men to demand that visitors be provided for their sexual entertainment.  However, I have never encountered any report or study that claims that any culture has sexual use of guests/foreigners as part of its social behavior.  It is therefore more likely that the behavior of the men of the village was simply rude and discourteous

* And they said, Stand aside, and they said, one came as a foreigner and he is a judge judging  (שׁפט ישׁפט  or, if we accept that the doubling of the verb in present/future indicates intensification “he is REALLY judging”) now, we will do evil to you from them, and they pressed as a man באישָׁ against Lot strongly, and they came to break the door.

This is the second time “ישׁפט” is used.  The first time is in Gen 16:5, when Sarai says to Avram:  “I was wrong about you:  I gave my maid into your arms and she will see that she conceived and I will be despised in her eyes.  The Lord will judge (ישׁפט) between you and me.”  The use of ישׁפט in the Lot narrative suggests that the men of the city are equating Lot with G-d in passing judgment on them.  And they resent him for it.  There is no indication in the text that the men of the city are unhappy at not having sex with the guests.  Rather, the suggestion is that they are displeased that they have not succeeded at intimidating someone they perceived to be an ignorant foreigner (who, presumably, would accept nighttime bullying and harassment as a social norm).

* And the men stretched out their hands and made Lot enter his house with them and they closed the door.

            The verse is usually translated to indicate that the “men” means the guests.  However the verb used is יביאו

This is the hifil (causative) binyan, indicating that Lot was compelled to enter.

* And the men who were in the doorway of the house were struck with blindness, from the great to the small, and they wearied finding the door.

This is usually translated as “they struck the men who were at the door of the house with blindness…so they wearied themselves to find the door.”  But that doesn’t make sense:  if we understand “the men” of the previous verse to refer to the guests, then they had already pulled Lot into the house and closed the door, leaving the men of the city on the other side.  If, however, we understand that the men of the city succeeded in forcing themselves into the house, then we understand that once inside, they were struck with blindness and could not find the door to leave.  From this, we can infer that they did, in fact, enter the house forcibly and with intent to do harm.  Note there is no indication that they have succeeded in having sex with anyone.

Arguably, the confusion in the text over which men are inside the house and which are outside is deliberate:  both the men who are messengers/angels and the men of the city are identified as “enashim” without any qualifiers of “ha’ir” or “malachim.”  It is conjecturable that this deliberate confusion reflects the chaos of the scene as it is played out.

* And the men said to Lot, Who else is here?  Your daughters and the men they are contracted to and all those of yours in the city you brought to the place.

Because we are destroying this place because their outcry is so great before G-d, and G-d sent us to destroy it.

            The guests tell Lot to get all his people together and flee the city because objections to its residents has become so great that G-d has decided to destroy it.  There is no claim that G-d is objecting to the citizens’ request for sex with men.  More likely, the objections have been to the citizens’ behavior in engaging in harassment and intimidation.  The city is destroyed because its inhabitants are bullies, not because they have sex with men.