re homosexual issues in christianity in article may athos rutgers edu mserv mozart cc iup edu someone named mark writes mls panix com michael siemon writes homosexual christians have indeed checked out these verses some of them are used against us only through incredibly perverse interpretations others simply do not address the issues i can see that some of the above verses do not clearly address the issues there are exactly zero verses that clearly address the issues however a couple of them seem as though they do not require incredibly perverse interpretations in order to be seen as condemning homosexuality the kind of interpretation i see as incredibly perverse is that applied to the story of sodom as if it were a blanket equation of homosexual behavior and rape since christians citing the bible in such a context should be presumed to have at least read the story it amounts to slander a charge that homosexuality rape to use that against us do not be deceived neither fornicators nor idolators nor adulterers nor effeminate nor homosexuals nor thieves nor the covetous nor drunkards nor revilers nor swindlers shall inherit the kingdom of god and such were some of you i cor the moderator adequately discusses the circularity of your use of porneia in this i think we can all agree with paul that there are some kinds of activity that could be named by fornication or theft or coveting or reviling or drunkenness which would well deserve condemnation we may or may not agree to the bounds of those categories however and the very fact that they are argued over suggests that not only is the matter not at all clear but that paul an excellent rhetorician had no interest in making them clear leaving matters rather to our spirit led decisions with all the uncomfortable living with other readings that has dominated christian discussion of all these areas homosexual behavior is no different i and the other gay christians i know are adamant in condemning rape heterosexual or homosexual and child molestation heterosexual or homosexual and even the possibly harmless but obsessive kinds of sex heterosexual or homosexual that would stand condemned by paul in the very continuation of the chapter you cite may i mildly suggest that what paul does in his letter that you want to use is perhaps a good guide to his meaning i am free to do anything you say yes but not everything is for my good no doubt i am free to do anything but i for one will not let anything make free with me cor which is a restatement that we must have no other god before god a commandment neither i nor any other gay christian wishes to break some people are indeed involved in obsessively driven modes of sexual behavior it is just as wrong though slightly less incendiary so it s a secondary argument from the phobic contingent to equate homosexuality with such behavior as to equate it with the rape of god s messengers i won t deal with the exegesis of leviticus except very tangentially fundamentally you are exhibiting the same circularity here as in your assumption that you know what porneia means there are plenty of laws prohibiting sexual behavior to be found in leviticus most of which christians ignore completely they never even bother to examine them they just assume that they know which ones are moral and which ones are ritual well i have news for you any anthropology course should sensitize you to ritual and clean vs unlcean as categories in an awful lot of societies we have them too but buried pretty deep and i cannot see any ground for distinguishing these bits of leviticus from the ritual law which no christian i know feels applies to us i m dead serious here when people start going on as they do in this matter about how repulsive and unnatural our acts are and what do they know about it huh it is a solid clue to the same sort of arbitrary cultural inculcations as the american prejudice against eating insects on what basis other than assuming your conclusion can you say that the law against male male intercourse in leviticus is not a part of the ritual law 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 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 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 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 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 for god did not send the son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him whoever believes in him is not condemned but whoever does not believe has already been condemned for refusing to believe in the name of god s only son now the judgment is this the light has come into the world but men have preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil for everyone who practices wickedness hates the light and does not come near the light for fear his deeds will be exposed but he who acts in truth comes into the light so that it may be sh own that his deeds are done in god john 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
