No, but theoretically “sodomy” is whatever the bad things that Sodom was doing that got it destroyed. City-wide genocide seems like a decent indicator that God isn’t too happy with that sort of behavior.
Historically, this “behavior” was believed to be depraved sexual acts (as evidenced by the word “sodomy”), but modern interpretation seems to be that the town was destroyed due to poor hospitality.
I’m not sure I buy the modern interpretation.
I’ve never heard anyone say anything about positions. The rules I’ve heard are: only if you’re married, and then whatever you like as long as both are happy with it.
Q: Why aren’t Baptists allowed to have sex standing up?
A: Because it might lead to dancing!
I was raised in a fundamentalist Baptist church and attended one well into my 20s, when I was married, and I never heard anyone say anything about certain positions being sinful, wrong, whatever. I never heard anyone say anything about sexual positions at all; from what I could tell, any kind of sex between married couples was fine. Premarital sex, on the other hand, was terrible, bad, sinful, etc. etc. etc.
Yes, and from that article:
Later he adds
It’s a very interesting article. And it cites Cecil Adams.
Historically the official Jewish position has always been that Sodom and Gammorah were destroyed due to poor hospitality. More generally, they were not their brother’s keeper and were without loving kindness. Any of the great sages (Rashi, Maimonides, Hillel etc) will condemn homosexuality as an abomination but will tell you the crime of Sodom was inhospitality.
Historically the church has looked on sex as a necessary evil. Sex is to be used for procreation and that is all.
Why? Because it’s pleasure, and most forms of pleasure were regarded as frivilous and not necessary. Why dance and sing, when you could be reading the Bible or even better, helping others to convert and “See the light.”
Everything that takes away from speading God’s word is simply a waste of time, because we are put here on Earth to celebrate the lord, not to have a good time.
At least that was the viewpoint for hundreds of years.
So if you look at it from that context you can see why missionary sex was deemed the only way. Get in and get out. In other words have sex, to be “fruitful and multiply” but only for as long as it takes to make a baby and no more.
On the other hand both Josephus and Philo seem to support the idea that lust and orgies was their sin. Josephus’ idea that the angels were being lusted after rather explains the scene with Lot offering his daughters instead.
Cite? (You do know there’s a lot of erotica in the Bible itself, right?)
Thanks for that.
Amusing that Uncle Cece is cited. 
The hospitality/sex argument with Sodom and Gomorrah are not exclusive positions. Raping your neighbor’s guests is simultaneously perverted and inhospitable. It may be that God only got angry enough to destroy the two cities because they were so bad in so many ways - maybe he’d have overlooked the sex or the inhospitable nature, but not both at once.
However, Lot’s reaction seems focused specifically on hospitality. He offers up his two daughters, which makes sense if his primary purpose is to show hospitality to foreigners; it doesn’t make as much sense if he’s mostly worried about the issue of illicit sex.
I can’t find my copies of Panatti’s Extraordinary Endings Of Practically Everything And Everybody ( I think that’s the book I’m looking for) but IIRC
Saint Augustine himself regarded passionate sex as dirty and unnecessary. He taught that just as you can train yourself to whistle, wiggle your ears, or fart a note, a man could train himself to become erect and achieve orgasm by will alone. He would passionlessly become hard, passionlessly insert himself and passionlessly ejaculate and then withdraw.
Pannati’s goes on for a few pages about the Roman Catholic Church’s position on sex as a necessary evil.
As for erotica- I know it’s in the OT. But I’ve never heard of any in the NT.
Still can’t find any of my four Panatti books (and these are big books) But another point occurs to me
Jewish law forbids self castration and says G-d only wants your foreskin. One of the apostles (or is it disciples) mentions ‘those who have become eunuchs for the kingdom of G-d’ and says of castration ‘Let he that can receive it, receive it.’
Re Sodom
Though unofficial, there are many Jewish folktales about Sodom and Gamorrah. All of them that I have heard focus on selfishness, inhospitality, and being without loving kindness. Sex simply does not come up.
I have that book. He essentially credits Augustine for shifting the church to a pro-celibacy attitude. Sex itself was neutral, but sexual desire was bad. It seems Augustine had issues (and so did St. Paul, so there was scriptural backup). The difference is that Augustine was a voluminous writer, spending ages speculating on the sex life of Adam & Eve etc. It helps that Jesus was not sexually active in the NT (we don’t know what he was doing in his 20s).
Markxxx writes:
> Historically the church has looked on sex as a necessary evil.
Cite? And in this case a quotation from a single Christian writer is insufficient. Somewhere sometime you can find some Christian writer making just about any random claim that you can come up with. This may prove that Christians have been inconsistent over time, but it doesn’t prove that the church has in general looked on sex as a necessary evil. You need to show that the usual attitude of the church has been that sex is a necessary evil.
DocCathode writes:
> Saint Augustine himself regarded passionate sex as dirty and unnecessary.
Cite?
Um, the only thing I’ve heard might be bad is certain types of role play where your spouse pretends that you are someone else. They use the scripture saying that lusting after someone other than you spouse is the same as adultery (Matthew 5:28) . They claim that such imagination means you are lusting after the other person.
The same scripture and logic is used against masturbation.
You got it. I found the book.
In his City Of G-d, there’s a chapter “Were Adam And Eve troubled by passion before they ate of the tree of knowledge?”
Note that passion is a negative, something that ‘troubles’ you.
From City Of G-d “. . . by deliberate and not uncontrollable lust.” What does he mean by deliberate lust? Just as I said erection and ejaculation obtained through will alone and not by sexual passion.
“Some people can make their ears move, either one at a time or both together.”
He gives a few more examples to prove Passionless Procreation is possible.
“At a time when there was no unruly lust to excite the organs of generation . . . the seminal flow would have reached the womb with as little rupture of the hymen. . .”
Here he is talking of Adam and Eve, saying again that they had Passionless Procreation.
Augustine argued that since they could do it, current Christian should and must aspire to Passionless Procreation
Panati goes on
“Augustine became a pathological opponent of sexual intercourse- in and out of wedlock. . . . He employed these arguments not only to condemn the act of sexual intercourse, but also to label it unnatural.”
Can’t edit to add:
I don’t get the whole hatred for sex, anyways. The same chapter that explains that sex is only for married people also points out that married people should not abstain from sex with each other.
In other words. people who are not fulfilling their spouse’s sexual desires are actually setting both of them up for sin. The whole point of getting married is to control your sexual desire. Why try to control it even more than you have to?
(Obviously, the above is taking a fundamentalist Christian viewpoint. That’s what the OP wants, right?)
Where does it say that the whole point of getting married is to control your sexual desire?
St. Augustine however tended to be something of a prude.