christian homosexuality part of this is a continuation of an earlier post mls panix com michael siemon writes for those christians who do think that some parts of leviticus can be law for christians while others are not even to be thought about it is incumbent on you in every case handled on its own merits to determine why you pick one and ignore another i frankly think the whole effort misguided reread paul no doubt i am free to do anything but christians have a criterion to use for making our judgments on this the great commandment of love for god and neighbor if you cannot go through leviticus and decide each command there on that basis then your own arbitrary selection from it is simply idiosyncracy in this context it is remarkably offensive to say i notice that the verse forbidding bestiality immediately follows the verse prohibiting what appears to be homosexual intercourse i am sorry you found this offensive it was not my intent to offend i was leading up to another point which i discuss in more detail below well la ti da so what this is almost as slimey an argument as the one that homosexuality rape i know of no one who argues seriously though one can always find jokers in defense of bestiality it is absolutely irrelevant and incomparable to the issues gay christians do raise which concern sexual activity within committed consensual human adult realtionships so that your bringing it up is no more relevant than the laws of kashrut if you cannot address the actual issues you are being bloody dishonest in trailing this red herring in front of the world if you want to address bestiality that is your business not mine and attempting to torpedo a serious issue by using what is in our culture a ridiculous joke shows that you have no interest in hearing us as human beings you want to dismiss us and use the sleaziest means you can think of to do so i can see you have a revulsion for bestiality that far exceeds my distaste for homosexuality certainly if i spoke about homosexuality the way you speak of bestiality nobody would have any trouble labelling me a homophobe let me ask this gently why are you so judgemental of other people s sexual preferences what happened to no doubt i am free to do anything i think you have a serious double standard here when you describe a comparison between homosexuality and bestiality as slimey and sleazy you are making an implicit judgement that bestiality is perverted sinful disgusting unnatural in short all the things that society once thought about homosexuality not all people share your view you claim not to know any sincere zoophiles but this does not mean that they do not exist they even have their own newsgroup alt sex bestiality are you going to accuse them all of being mere jokers i notice you deleted the main point of my comment the fact that the only biblical condemnations of bestiality occur in connection with the levitical prohibitions against homosexuality while there are some new testament passages that can arguably be taken as condemning homosexuality there are none that condemn bestiality one of your main points seems to be that christian homosexuality is acceptable due to the lack of any clear new testament statements against it if this is a valid argument then should not christian zoophilia be made that much more acceptable by the fact that the new testament makes no reference clear or unclear to the subject at all i am quite serious here if i am going to accept homosexuality as biblically acceptable on the basis of your arguments then i am going to be fair and apply the same standards to everyone else s declared sexual preferences as well if the arguments you make for homosexuality can be applied to other sexual preferences as well i m going to apply them and see what comes up i m not trying to torpedo a serious issue by using what you label a ridiculous joke i posted a question about how we should interpret biblical guidelines for christian sexuality and i don t think such a question is irrelevant in a group called soc religion christian the bible discusses homosexuality and bestiality together in the same context and therefore i feel i have a good precedent for doing the same jesus and paul both expound very explictly and in considerable length the central linch pin of christian moral thought we are required to love one another and all else depends on that gay and lesbian christ ians challenge you to address the issue on those terms and all we get in return are cheap debate tricks attempting to side track the issues i don t know whether it makes any difference but for the record this is not a side issue for me i believe loving one another includes not encouraging people to defile themselves therefore it is of high importance to determine whether god regards certain sexual acts as defiling i can read in the new testament that god has joined together heterosexual couples and that the marriage bed is undefiled i can read in the old testament that homosexual intercourse and bestiality defile a person whether or not that person is under the law if gay christians can validly put aside the old testament standards of defilement then i want to know so that i can fairly apply it to all the sexual practices that defiled a person in the old days i don t think it s right to take just bits and pieces of the law and try and apply them to christians today e g bestiality still defiles you but homosexuality doesn t that was pretty much what you said earlier right you used different examples but i think you said essentially the same thing about it being wrong to apply only certain parts of the law to christians christians no doubt very sincere ones keep showing up here and in every corner of usenet and the world and all they ever do is spout these same old verses which they obviously have never thought about maybe never even read in total ignorance of the issues raised slandering us with the vilest charges of child abuse or whatever their perfervid minds can manage to conjure up tossing out red herrings with they suppose great emotional force to cause readers to dismiss our witness without even taking the trouble to find out what it is it was not my intent to stir up such an emotional reaction i personally don t get all that upset discussing alternatives to the monogamous heterosexual orientation i m afraid i naively assumed that others would have a similar attitude please note that i have never intended to equate homosexuality with child abuse i have merely noted that for all the lack of clear nt condemnation of homosexuality there is an even greater lack of nt condemnation or even mention of bestiality a practice which a number of people e g on alt sex bestiality consider to be their true sexual orientation such behavior should shame anyone who claims to have seen truth in christ why for god s precious sake do you people quote irrelevant verses to condemn people you don t know and won t even take the trouble to listen to before you start your condemnations is that loving your neighbor god forbid is that how you obey the repeated commands to not judge or condemn others christ and paul spend orders of magnitude more time in insisting on this than the half dozen obscure words in paul that you are so bloody ready to take as license to do what god tells you not to do why for god s sake quote from john ff omitted for brevity this is an excellent question and i pray that you will not treat it as a mere rhetorical question but will genuinely seek to discover and understand the answer i recommend you begin with a little introspection into why you yourself have much the same attitude towards zoophilia why do you find bestiality so repugnant that you regard it as slanderous to even mention in connection with other alternative sexual orientations why do you not apply all the same verses about love and tolerance to zoophiles the way you apply them to homosexuals is it because you automatically experience a subjective feeling of revulsion at the thought a lot of people have the same experience at the thought of homosexual intercourse is it because you regard the practice as socially unacceptable a lot of people regard homosexuality as socially unacceptable do you feel that it violates the traditional judeo christian standard of sexual morality many people feel that homosexuality does do you feel the bible condemns it many people think the bible says more to condemn homosexuality than it does to condemn bestiality why then do you think comparing bestiality with homosexuality is insulting to homosexuality if you can honestly answer this question you will have come a long way towards understanding why many people feel the same way about homosexuality as you feel about bestiality also please note that i am not in any sense condemning people i am merely pointing out that when i read the bible i see certain sexual practices that the bible appears to condemn e g sex outside of marriage when i say i think adultery and pre marital sex are sinful do you take that as me failing to love my neighbor when you treat bestiality as something disgusting and unmentionable are you disobeying repeated orders not to judge or condemn others when you say other christians are guilty of sinning by condemning you and judging you are you by that accusation making yourself guilty of the same offense or are you and i both simply taking note about practices the bible brands as sinful and leaving the judgement of the people up to god for long ages we many of us have been confused by evil counsel from evil men and told that if we came to the light we would be shamed and rejected some of us despaired and took to courses that probably do show a sinful shunning of god s light blessed are those whose spirits have been crushed by the self righteous they shall be justified however we have seen the truth and the truth is the light of humanity and we now know that it is not we who fear the light but our enemies who fear the light of our witness and will do everything they can to shadow it with the darkness of false witness against us michael l siemon i say you are gods sons of the mls panix com most high all of you nevertheless or you shall die like men and fall mls ulysses att com like any prince psalm i m not sure what you mean by the above two paragraphs if you mean that jesus is the truth and that he accepts sinners and does not reject them then i agree if we were not sinners then we would not need a savior our salvation in christ however does not mean that sin is now irrelevant for us and we can now do whatever we want nor does christ s grace mean that those who refer to sin as sin are being judgemental or intolerant i am speaking in general terms here not specifically about homosexuality if the bible calls something sin then it is not unreasonable for christians to call it sin too as applied to christian homosexuality i think the only definitive authority on christian sexuality is the bible if you make a list of everything the bible says on the subject of homosexual intercourse i think you will find that every verse on the list is negative and condemning at worst and unclear at best the most pro gay statement you could make about the list is that there is some dispute about the new testament verses which many people interpret as condemning homosexual intercourse that is from a gay perspective the most positive thing you can say about the bible s treatment of homosexuality is that some verses fail to clearly condemn it that s it jesus declared all foods clean the council at jerusalem declared that gentiles were not required to keep the ritual law but nobody ever reclassified homosexual intercourse from being an abomination deserving of death to being an accepted christian practice you have verses describing homosexual intercourse as an abomination that defiles both jews under the law and gentiles not under the law and you have some verses which are at best not clear but which some people believe are clear in their condemnation of homosexual behavior and that s the sum total of what the bible says about same sex intercourse i can appreciate from personal experience your desire to have everything simple cut and dried black and white what i want is ok and those who oppose me are wicked however i do not think the bible makes your case as definitively as you would like it to in fact i don t believe it says anything positive about your case at all yes i know the verses about loving one another and not judging one another but that s not really the issue is it you know and admit that there are still things that are sinful for christians to do since you say it is wrong for christians to condemn you therefore the issue is whether the bible says homosexual intercourse is a sin even if you do challenge the clarity of the new testament verses you are still left with the fact that the only thing the bible does say clearly about homosexual intercourse is that it is an abomination that defiles both those who are under the law and those who are not mark actually i don t think the reaction to the comparision with bestiality is based on bestialophobia i think what he regards as slimey is the rhetorical approach of connecting homosexuality and bestiality most people who accept homosexuality take a radical approach to the law they regard all of lev as not binding on christians the argument is that there s no way in the text to separate bestiality homosexuality and wearing mixed fabrics this does not mean that such people have no limits on their conduct nor does it mean that they accept bestiality it simply means that their sexual ethics does not come from the law and particularly not from lev clh
