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God's Law & Homosexuality
buddhafoot
Veteran
I don't believe this is real - but I loved it.
-bf
Dr Laura and Leviticus
Laura Schlesinger is a US radio personality, who dispenses advice to people who call in to her radio show. She recently said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination, according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstances. The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura which was posted on the Internet.
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination... End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is, my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath.Exodus 35:2. clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?
7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle- room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16.
Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
Your adoring fan,
Homer Simpson-Caldwell
-bf
0
Comments
But they tend to brush off challenges of this nature by saying that the Old Testament was God's way of attracting attention...Jesus' way is to now keep it....!!
I took the libery of copying it and posting it 'elsewhere'...I'll let you know what response it ellicits - !!
-bf
It is such a pity that these self-styled "evangelists" have failed to take any notice of what both Jesus and Paul have to say about the Law!
But Mr. Simpson-Caldwell forgot a biggie, the sin of Onan. Maybe if you don't cast your seed upon the ground but catch it in a tissue it's OK!
Palzang
This is wonderful...........I'm going to copy it and send it to my mother...........I really want to know a true Christian womans spin on this............She will have a whole lot to say I'm sure.........and when all else fails...........she will say Deborah, that is the old test. it does not count and you know it!!!! So I shall see what her thoughts are......
Since I've been married before - I don't know if the "belly of a whore" is even an option for me anymore - and by the time I figure it out??? I'm not in the mood anymore
-bf
I have been a fan of the band XTC for donkey's. here is a song that may just fit in here...
cheers and lots of love,
X
Dear God
by XTC
from the LP "Skylarking"
Dear God, hope you got the letter and
I pray you can make it better down here
I don't mean a big reduction in the price of beer
But all the people that you made in your image
See them starving on their feet
'Cause they don't get enough to eat from
God
I can't believe in you
Dear God, sorry to disturb you but
I feel that I should be heard loud and clear
We all need a big reduction in amount of tears
And all the people that you made in your image
See them fighting in the street
'Cause they can't make opinions meet about
God
I can't believe in you
Did you make disease
and the diamond blue?
Did you make mankind after we made you?
And the devil too!
Dear God don't know if you've noticed but
Your name is on a lot of quotes in this book
And us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look
And all the people that you made in your image
Still believing this junk is true
Well I know it ain't, and so do you, dear God
I can't believe in
I don't believe in
I won't believe in heaven and hell
No saints, no sinners, no devil as well
No pearly gates, no thorny crown
You're always letting us humans down
The wars you bring, the babes you drown
Those lost at sea and never found
And it's the same the whole world 'round
The hurt I see helps to compound
That Father, Son and Holy Ghost
Is just somebody's unholy hoax
And if you're up there you'd perceive
That my heart's here upon my sleeve
If there's one thing I don't believe in
It's you
Dear God
Interesting. Because Jesus said that not a letter of the law, not an iota was to be removed. He did not come to abandon the law, but to renew.
There is also some talk about the sinfulness of homosexuality in the New Testament as well. St. Paul said something about it I believe.
But then again, I don't follow either of these teachers and I would say that anyone who looks upon the Bible as a source of moral rectitude and goodness is either delusional or ignorant of it't content.
PS: I have nothing against homo- hetero or aseuxuals, just curious
Well, actually plenty of things. Ancient, tribalistic, homophobic, genocidal holy books is not first on my shelf.
I have always preferred human empathy and the social contract. Evolutionary compassion inherrant in humans regardless of religion. I consider 'moral rectitude' to be acts in the nature of compassion and altruism which serve only to benefit mankind, not oppress it.
The Bible is really not as radically revolutionary in the moral sense as many might suggest. I think Confucius was saying things far more eloquently 500 years before Jesus. Jesus really was not offering the world much in the way of new moral material. Even most monkeys seem to share detestment of murderes, rapists, and thieves without looking towards holy books.
Sam Harris once quibbed, "The more we offer credence to these holy books, the more likely we will find it perfectly reasonable to grind up gays, heretics, and apostates in God's loving machinery of justice."
KoB,
Whilst entirely understanding how and why some thinkers reject and insult the scriptures of various faith groups, I find a more moderate response more useful. The problem with dismissing the scriptures, by which I mean sanctified writing of any suchg group and not just the Tanakh and New Testament, is that their effect on social and cultural context is also thrown out. Current cultural confrontations, whether in the North of Ireland or the Balkans or the Middle East, become over-simplified because their long roots are ignored. Post-modernist reductionism fails to address these, preferring to reduce historical memory to a few decades.
My other problem is that we fail, also, to understand the motivation of individuals such as Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa or Father Peter Damian, who found the inspiration for their humanitarian endeavours within a scriptural context. As Blake put it:
Is my vision's greatest enemy.
..........
Socrates taught what Meletus
Loath'd as a nation's bitterest curse,
And Caiaphas was in his own mind
A benefactor to mankind.
Both read the Bible day and night
Bit thou read'st black where I read white.
The Bible was integral to the inspiration of Shakespeare, Donne, Mozart, Dylan Thomas and, even, reductio ad absurdum, Tolkien. The Q'ran inspired Rumi. Where would our languages, English and German in particular, be were it not for the classic translations by Wycliff, Luther and others?
It is not the scriptures that are the problem, it is the interpretations that turn them into means by which a powerful elite marginalises and excludes the 'outsider'. It does not take much study to find exclusive readings even in the suttas if one is so minded. Some human beings can only feel that they are 'right' if others are 'wrong'.
You write about the "social contract" and follow the Rousseau tradition of noble savagery in which empathy is inherrent to humanity. Many of us have doubts about this take on humanity, not least William Golding! Buddhist thought certainly suggests that there is effort to be made to embody compassion. In the Tanakh, in the book that we call Deuteronomy, we can find some pretty strict instructions for a king of Israel (Deut. 17:14ff) which would sit very heavily on our present rulers. The social contract, between rulers and ruled, is not anything new, despite Rousseau.
You cite Master Kung and I agree that his Analects are a valuable source of inspiration. My point is that they are not the only such source. Instead of ditching millennia of reflection, we have the opportunity, for the first time in recorded history, to read and study more than just a single 'inspired' text: we have a world of such work.
Fondly,
Nirvana
and, Federica, as for your qouted sources:
"the Old Testament was God's way of attracting attention...Jesus' way is to now keep it....!! "
THAT's Too Funny. Never heard it put that way before.
Fondly,
Nirvana
I admire your ecumenical efforts. Anything is preferrable to fundamentalism.
However, while many interpretations may run religions amok, I don't believe that the Bible really has much to offer us 'morally speaking'. Of course, in reflection, it can be difficult to understand why I criticize religion. All the good that has come of it...language, art, advances in the sciences, among countless other things. I will not refute the cultural input of religion, but perhaps more specifically the social and moral reprocussions of doctrine and scripture.
Of course there are inspiring messages to be found in the Bible and the Koran. But they sit right along side the messages that spout death to non-believers, slavery, and as is being discussed here, intolerance against homosexuality. As the centuries have passed since their elusive origin, we have taken less and less of the Bible books seriously and literally. What pious Christian would support slavery today? None. What pious Jew would stone their own children to death for speaking against God or worshiping another one? None.
Over time, we have come to ignore (for the better I believe) certain aspects of our holy books. If we were to speak with a very Bible learned man from the 11th century, the man would prove to be a total ignoramus (from The End of Faith) We have made progress since then thankfully.
Perhaps I should have been more specific in my mentioning of the Social Contract. Although, I admire Rousaeu's work, I am was not referring so much to his version of the contract, but a much broader and non-specific one. Being the unwritten agreement of, "I don't hurt you, and you don't hurt me. It's a win-win." Not so much specific to the relationship of governors and the governed.
I scratch your back, you scratch mine if you will.
@Simon
i second Nirvana, great post, thank you.
I don't have a problem with parents educating their children or raising them in a religion. Well, actually I do. You see, I don't like the idea of choosing a child's set of beliefs for them. How can any reasonable person call a baptized infant a Catholic any more than a father may call his son a Marxist? You would laugh if I said that a two year old was a staunch Republican.
I don't mind that children are raised with a sense of morality and and convictions. I don't like the unquestioning attitudes that have to go along with that education though. In any other field of intellectual study, we are taught even in elementary school to question ideas and always ask why. However, our religious convictions remain immune to such inquiry. Why?
I will not argue against your point about non-religious indoctrination. I think soviet communism is a perfect example of that as well as Fascism. But despite being the perceieved antithesis to religion, they all share a common thread; dogma. Beliefs without evidence. Beliefs that should not be questioned. This is what I argue against.
And in regards to the topic of this thread, dogma plays a huge role in the repulsive hatred towards homosexuals. There is no good reason to think that homosexuality is evil or bad in any way. If there was a reason for it or a reason for any other mythical story presented by religion, I would be more apt to listen to it. But alas there isnt, and alas I am not apt.
I am trying to break the tabboo of unquestionable religious convictions. I believe that there is more at stake than mere hurt feelings of the religious for such inquiry.
Concerning homosexuality, I think it`s a matter of egoism. I think that opposing homosexuality comes from the desire that others are like oneself (a heterosexual), on a personal level. On a level of society, it comes from the fear that society won`t reproduce any more, we would find rants against the pill as well in the bible if it were invented at the time it was written. I think it is not neccessarily a matter of dogma, but a rather natrual reaction of a group advocating some social order against another, maybe even a natural concern of nature wanting to preserve the species.
I do not know about homosexuallity among animals, but are there homosexual animals or are the ones who seek the same sex "bisexuals", meaing, they just get rid of their urge when they have a chance to, without picking soleley the same gender as themselves?
There are many examples of sexual activity among animals that can be termed 'homosexual'.
While almost all that oppose homosexuality deem it unnatural, or as my religion teacher says, a 'disorder,' almost all of those same people site scripture for support in their dislike. I think this is dangerous. They take one line from the Old Testament and ignore the 612 other rules that went along with it. Maybe 5 from that entire list in Leviticus are worth following in the end.
That's true, but religion of the order in which most children are raised in the West at least, a child is given a set of unverifiable claims about the nature of the world and then told that it is bad to question those things. Lack of faith? God not good enough for you? Who are you to question God's word? This is the kind of indoctrination I dislike. It is intellectually bankrupt. It stunts the mental growth of the individual.
Homosexuality was the issue that turned me away from my waning faith several years ago. I was appalled by the bigotry spouted by people in my faith.
I would say that in my 17 years, I have been genuinely religious for maybe 3 or 4 months. Fortunately, I have for reasons unbeknownst to me, always been of the inquisitive nature when it comes to religion. When I was 4 years old, I asked my priest what came before God and who his parents were. The skepticism never went away.
Actually homosexuality (or bisexuality) is very common in the animal realm. Porpoises and dolphins are quite the buggers!
Palzang
I have to agree with you about religious dogma. How many people have died because of some unbendable dogma? What attracted me to Buddhism (which, again, I don't consider a religion anyway) is that it's logical. It doesn't force its opinions down your throat, citing some divine "revelation". What it teaches is logical and never dogmatic. Lord Buddha himself urged people to question everything and make sure Buddhism was logical and sound before jumping in.
Palzang
Pnutbudder
Well, sorry to make you ill, but love your name! :winkc:
Palzang
Pnutbudder