Either way, I don't think the gays knew the angels were angels. In fact, the Bible text during the interactions between the angels and the gays, refers to the angels in the Amplified version as "the men (angels)" (Genesis 19 verses 10 and 12). Plus, before that in verse 9 the gay men shout at Lot: But they said, “Get out of the way!” And they said, “This man (Lot) came [as an outsider] to live here temporarily, and now he is acting like a judge. Now we will treat you worse than your visitors!” So they rushed forward and pressed violently against [c]Lot and came close to breaking down the door [of his house]. If what they planned to do to Lot was worse than what they wanted to do to Lot's guests, this to me suggests that their intention wasn't to rape his guests (the angels) -- if what they wanted to do to Lot was even worse.
This is just supposition from me, but when I put all that together it seems to me that the gay men of Sodom thought Lot's guests were men, not angels, and that they wanted Lot to get of the way so they could ask the men to join them in their orgy, not rape them. That tells me that the story about Sodom and Gomorrah isn't just that God gets mad at rape (like I've heard some LGBTQWERTY "Christians" say), or that God was just protecting His angels. God hates even consensual homosexuality more than Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin hates punting.
That said, they must have thought these angels were particularly attractive because they were willing to break down the door to get at them.
The mob of gays sounds like a bunch of vampires or zombies in their mad rush to get at the angels.
I've seen women act like that at a Black Friday sale.
“”If what they planned to do to Lot was worse than what they wanted to do to Lot’s guests, this to me suggests that their intention wasn’t to rape his guests (the angels) — if what they wanted to do to Lot was even worse.””
Why would the men of Sodom think that them having sex with you would be worse than violence on you?
Their perspective could easily be that their homosexual rape isn’t so bad.
We spent about two years in Genesis in our church a while back, and one of the helpful things my pastor said was to always remember that Moses wrote it for a people who already knew everything that had happened. The children of Israel were already familiar with their history.
So sometimes we have to look at Jewish tradition to get an idea of what might have been, uh, between the lines written by Moses?
One of the things I read about Sodom was that the men of the town DID know that Lot’s guests were angels in the guise of men. They not only wanted to degrade them, they wanted to use them to re-create the Nephilim, the offspring of angels and women.
And the people of Sodom were irredeemably cruel and evil. They weren’t just inhospitable. They tortured travelers, stole their money, and chained them to beds in the public square. Anyone who tried to help them or even feed them was tortured and executed.
These people were so driven in their pursuit of lust and evil that they continued trying to break into Lot’s home even after the angels struck them blind. Just imagine that.
But like my pastor said, Moses’ audience already knew darned well what the Sodomites did, so there was reason to go into microscopic detail about it. He only needed to remind them.
“Did the gay rapists know that Lot’s visitors were angels?”
Genesis 19:11 KJV
And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.
All of the men of the city, young and old, joined in this. The angels struck them with blindness. For whatever reason (we aren’t told why) they did not stop and consider what caused the blindness. They kept trying to get their hands on the angels.
Don’t you think they should have had some idea at the point of being blinded that they were dealing with something other than ordinary men?