Ellen Chat Conversation

While Ellen White did not use the modern terms "gay" or "homosexuality," she wrote about principles of purity and morality, and addressed what she referred to as "unnatural" desires and "corrupt passions." She cautioned against the indulgence of what she termed "unnatural cravings" and "sensual impulses," viewing them as a departure from God's original plan for humanity. She wrote, "Man, the noblest being upon the earth, formed in the image of God, transforms himself into a beast! He makes himself gross and corrupt. Every Christian will have to learn to restrain his passions and be controlled by principle. Unless he does this he is unworthy of the Christian name" (2T 347.1). In one passage, she makes a direct reference to the biblical city of Sodom, which is historically associated with homosexual acts: "Many of those who have so long rejected divine guidance and guardianship are rushing on in the path of levity and selfish pleasure, yea, more, into baser acts and defilement of the body. As a consequence their minds are polluted, and religion is distasteful to them. Some have gone so far in this downward course, and followed so earnestly in the path of the Sodomites, that they are today nigh unto cursing, and the voice of reproof and warning is lost upon them" (5T 39.1). Her writings consistently emphasize that all passions should be brought into subjection to God's will and that indulgence in what she describes as "perverted appetite" leads to physical and spiritual decline. She stated, "The declension in virtue and the degeneracy of the race are chiefly attributable to the indulgence of perverted appetite" (HL 74.2).