DKV,
This will be a long one, and I hope the moderators will forgive me. My aim apart from answering your question is to challenge any Christians who may read this.
It seems that homosexuality is a problem for you. I have read another post by you on the subject.
Why do you have such a problem with it?
From a Christian perspective it seems to be wrong and many, many Christians have seen it that way.
I am not so clear on this subject.
If you look at the amount of times it is mentioned in the Bible, you can see it roughly gets the same amount of attention as slanderers, and nowhere near as much as adultery.
Large sections of the church have elevated homosexual sin to dizzying heights, and have almost warred with the gay community - one of the biggest reasons for the radicalization of gays (counter-productive to the church's aim).
Especially with American Fundamentalist Christianity, 'gone are God's demands that humanity be wise stewards of God's creation. Gone are the biblical injunctions to bring justice into the world, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to tend to the sick, to assist the widow, to protect the orphan, and to shelter the homeless'.
Instead we have 'persecute the gays, vote in a stupid president whom God has told to war with Iraq (forget what Jesus said about loving your enemies - even if Iraq ever was the enemy), attack (and even kill) abortionists, teach half-baked ideas on six day creation instead of science, and on and on....
So DKV - the problem with elevating homosexuality to the level of a major issue is that the things that should get done, don't get done.
One of my best friends is gay, and despite the fact that I believe God created an ideal of Man for Woman, it is not my place to judge, persecute, or be holier than thou with him. In fact, I love him and my life would be considerably the poorer without him.
It is simply not as simple as people think:
Leviticus states that Homosexual activity was an abomination.
Such an act was considered as an "abomination" for several reasons. The Hebrew prescientific understanding was that male semen contained the whole of nascent life. With no knowledge of eggs and ovulation, it was assumed that the woman provided only the incubating space. Hence the spilling of semen for any procreative purpose -- in coitus interruptus (Gen 38:1-11), male homosexual acts or male masturbation -- was considered tantamount to abortion or murder. (Female homosexual acts and masturbation were consequently not so seriously regarded.) One can appreciate how a tribe struggling to populate a country in which its people were outnumbered would value procreation highly, but such values are rendered questionable in a world facing total annihilation through overpopulation.
In the new testament the Apostle Paul writes:
"For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their woman exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error."
No doubt Paul was unaware of the distinction between sexual orientation, over which one has apparently very little choice, and sexual behavior, over which one does. He seemed to assume that those whom he condemns are heterosexual, and are acting contrary to nature, "leaving," "giving up," or "exchanging" their regular sexual orientation for that which is foreign to them. Paul knew nothing of the modern psychological understanding of homosexuals as person whose orientation is fixed early in life, persons for whom having heterosexual relations would be contrary to nature, "leaving," "giving up" or "exchanging" their natural sexual orientation for one that was unnatural to them.
In other words, Paul really thought that those whose behavior he condemned were "straight," and that they were behaving in ways that were unnatural to them. Paul believed that everyone was "straight." He had no concept of homosexual orientation. The idea was not available in his world. there are people who are genuinely homosexual by nature (whether genetically or as a result of upbringing no one really knows, and it is irrelevant). For such a person it would be acting contrary to nature to have sexual relations with a person of the opposite sex.
Likewise the relationships Paul describes are heavy with lust; they are not relationships of consenting adults who are committed to each other as faithfully and with as much integrity as any heterosexual couple. That was something Paul simply could not envision. Some people assume today that venereal disease and AIDS are divine punishment for homosexual behavior; we know it as a risk involved in promiscuity of every stripe, homosexual and heterosexual. In fact, the vast majority of people with AIDS around the world are heterosexuals. We can scarcely label AIDS a divine punishment, since non-promiscuous lesbians are at almost no risk.
And Paul believes that homosexuality is contrary to nature, whereas we have learned that it is manifested by a wide variety of species, especially (but not solely) under the pressure of overpopulation. It would appear then to be a quite natural mechanism for preserving species. We cannot, of course, decide human ethical conduct solely on the basis of animal behavior or the human sciences, but Paul here is arguing from nature, as he himself says, and new knowledge of what is "natural" is therefore relevant to the case. - from Bridges Home - Homosexuality and the Bible.
Sorry for the essay, but this subject is a minefield and I have only scraped the surface, but have shown that is is not easy to come to a conclusion, so anything we do believe, we should believe humbly and not use it as a stick to beat others with.
Having said all of that I do believe there are shades of grey - the writer Michael Robotham wrote 'Thanks to my writing I have slept with thousands of women (which is some boast) and quite a number of men (which is not something I talk about in the pub).'
This would seem to be of an entirely different moral order than two old queens who have spent their lives together in a kind of monogamy that would put most married couples to shame.
But it's not really my place to worry about it, there are many more important things.
DKV - Why are you so concerned?
Regards,
Blacknad.
