At Mr Visible’s request, my responses to the questions I posed in the OP:
1. Is there a God?
Absolutely. I recognize that for many people there is inadequate evidence to convince them of His existence, and that much of human nature conduces to the assumption that belief in Him is based on superstitious grounds – but from personal experience and intelligent analysis of the historical evidence, I am firmly convinced that He does exist and loves human beings.
**2. Does such a God have opinions on human moral behavior? **
He sure does. However, don’t jump to conclusions on what His opinions are or how He expresses them.
3. Is such a God identical to the historical God of Judaism and Christianity?
Effectively, yes. However, large portions of the historical understanding are based on credulous acceptance of the historical accounts, which may not be totally accurate or unbiased. (E.g., compare a secular history of the Middle East in the last 1200 years BC with the Scriptural account, and you see the latter presupposing a much larger part in the events of the time. I refer to this as “the Jacob Brown effect” after the famous War of 1812 general – famous, that is, if you were born and raised within 10 miles of his home town, as I was.)
4. Is the Bible as it stands an accurate record of such a God’s views?
Absolutely not. It approximates them and they can be inferred from it, but only by critical reading – because the human authors colored and flavored the contents with their own views. Contemplate the exchanges between, e.g., Jodi and His4Ever in numerous current threads to see that in contemporary terms; for one classic Bible example, look at the legislation in Ezra and Nehemiah on miscegenation of Jewish men with foreign women, and then at the Book of Ruth, where the eponymous character is a positively portrayed foreign woman who is the ancestress of the ultimate Good Jewish Leader, King David. (It’s also intriguing that although Naomi is Ruth’s mother-in-law from her first marriage, the woman who is her mother-in-law from her second is none other than Rahab the Harlot of Jericho, from back in Joshua – check it out in a genealogy of David.)
So no, a Bible passage taken at random will not give an accurate record of what God expects of humanity, but rather of what the particular writer of that passage has focused on.
**5. What does the Bible have to say about homosexuality? **
(a) Prohibitions on gay male sex appear in the Holiness Code in Leviticus, (b) there is the passage in Romans 1, and both © Paul and Jude appear to make passing references to “homosexuals” as beyond the reach of salvation.
**6. Is a “literal” reading of the passages answering question 5 an accurate representation of what God has to say? **
Let’s address those three areas separately.
(a) The prohibition in Leviticus is, presumably, valid as God’s will for Jews and for those who are “God-fearers” – people who, not converting to Judaism, believe in the God of Moses according to Jewish understanding of Him.
However, Paul is explicit on the idea that Christians are free of the Law – that their task is to live moral lives in accordance with Christ’s principles as outlined in His summary of the Law. That includes all the Law, not a pick-and-choose selection. At most, the Jewish Law is to be used for guidance in what a moral life based on Christ’s principles ought to entail.
Second, it’s important to note that the chapter in which the prohbition is housed is targeted to lust. And in the Christian understanding of the term, as opposed to some of the dictionary definitions, lust is not synonymous to sexual desire, but rather the sin of gratifying sexual desire at the cost of others. (To get the usual hijack out of the way, a pedophile is driven by lust, along with a sense of power over a child – he is gratifying his own sexual urge at the expense of the child’s well-being. Two adults may be driven by lust or by a mutual desire within a context of a committed relationship, as anyone who has ever fallen in romantic love is clear that the purpose of sex is supposed to be anyway.)
Finally, it’s important to recognize that the Hebrew word translated “abomination” does not mean that, but rather “offense causing ostracism from the community.”
(b) A careful reading of the passage in Romans 1 makes it quite clear that a transformation of a heterosexual desire to a homosexual one is God’s punishment, in the nature of a shock treatment, on those who reject Him to focus on worldly things. I read in this the sense of ennui, of “kicks that keep gettin’ harder to find,” often found among those with the resources to fulfill their earthly needs and wants but no sense of purpose and spiritual fulfillment, and see in it the “gay chic” ideas of the First Century and of the Jet Set of 20 years ago, when it was “in” to be bisexual. It is clearly not a description of the typical gay person such as andygirl who did not choose to be gay but discovered it about himself or herself.
© There are some strong arguments which I do not want to get into regarding what precisely the words Paul and Jude used actually mean. It’s not beyond the realm of probability that they are in fact mistranslated.
**7. To what extent is the Law of the Bible applicable to people today, Christian or not? **
It ain’t, except to Orthodox and Conservative Jews by virtue of their religious belief. See my second paragraph under the answer to (6a) above.
**8. What is the proper reaction of a Christian towards a gay person? Why is this the proper reaction? **
The proper reaction of a Christian towards any human being, gay or not, is to follow Christ’s commands – to love him or her as you do yourself, to refrain from sitting in judgment over him or her, to endeavor to lead that person to Christ by the example of one’s words and deeds, and to show the respect and compassion towards that person that one would want reciprocated towards oneself. Finally, as God was gracious enough to call me to Him and allow me to make the decision to turn to Him, I need to respect others’ freedom to choose to respond or not respond to His call and my efforts to express that call to them, and to choose what he or she will do as a moral person in the interim.
**9. Presuming the political power to do so, to what extent is a Christian required or permitted to impose his moral standards on those who hold different moral standards? **
My view here probably differs from everybody else whatsoever. I believe that the standards I outlined in (8) – other than the calling to conversion – are absolute moral standards which all decent people ought to follow. So yes, I think that behavior ought to be somehow enforced.
As for laws restraining personal freedom based on selective reading of Biblical statutes, such as laws restricting marriage to one man and one woman, making it legal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation (or any other irrational factor), making consensual sexual conduct illegal, and so on, I think that no good Christian has any place trying to mandate those laws on anyone else, regardless of what his or her own personal moral standards with regard to that behavior might be, on the basis of the strict commands of Jesus Himself on how His followers ought to behave towards others.