http://www.towardtradition.org/article_Shrimp_Homosexuality.htm
One of the arguements used for same-sex marriage is the fact that the right wing christians do not enforce the other laws in the Bible like praying to idols or eating shellfish. is this a good arguement to use? The article above talks about refuting those arguements that pro same-sex marriages advocates used.
Does the Bible really not mean that same-sex marriage and shellfish are the same
in how abominable they are?
Well I’ll start until someone better equipped pops in. Shouldn’t take long.
I’m not sure it is fair to claim, as you did, that biblical inconsistency is used as an argument for same sex marriage. Bibilical inconsistency is used to counter arguments against same sex marriage that rely on the Bible for their authority. Not the same thing at all.
Jesus pretty much broke all the traditional Jewish laws, and never once said a thing about homosexuality. The fact that he associated with the outcasts of his society and not with the mainstream leaders makes me think that were he alive today, he’d more likely be hanging out with a bunch gays than with a bunch of priests (not that those two groups don’t overlap 
).
The OP might be interesting in checking out What Jesus Meant, by Gary Wills.
The traditional excuse for this is that the OT laws are either “moral” or “ritual,” and Christians are only excluded from the ritual laws, not the moral ones. However, I’ve yet to hear a good explanation as to how these people determine which laws are ritual and which are moral.
That moral/ritual excuse doesn’t hold water, either. Many a preacher who won’t marry two men together, because they’re sinners, have married liars, adulterers, thieves, parent-disrespecters, and even folks who take the Lord’s name in vain.
It may or may not be a good argument
But it sure is a funny argument:
http://www.valleyskeptic.com/dr_laura.html
Heh. And even on what possible grounds they found that distinction. Essentially, and I admit to being mildly sarcastic here, the line between the abrogated O.T. laws and the code brought forward into the New Covenant on this definition seems to be a very pragmatic one: “The ritual laws no longer valid prohibited things that we want to do; the moral laws still effective prohibit things that those sinners want to do.”
I would say otherwise if the application weren’t so highly selective. I have never seen a “Bible-believing Christian” avoid attending church because he’d come into contact with his menstruating wife – but that command is cheek-by-jowl with the Levitical condemnation of “lying with a man the lyings as with a woman.”
Their intent, of course, is to remove the dietary and sacrificial-ceremonial aspects of Jewish Law while retaining the core moral values. And they found this on the symbolic discussion of Jesus as the one perfect sacrifice fulfilling the Law, Jesus’s remark about what comes out of the mouth and not what goes in polluting the man, and Peter’s vision of the sheet full of “clean” and “unclean” food when he visited Cornelius the Centurion.
However, in constructing a scenario in which parts of the Law are carried forward, by finding them validated in some New Testament passage, usually in Paul’s letters, they are flying in the face of not only Jesus’s own teachings but Paul’s explicit theology of the Law as well.
As defined by Jesus, the Law is to love God with all of oneself, and to love one’s fellow man as oneself, to do unto him as you would be done unto. All the rest of it merely constitutes a methodology for doing so. For Paul, we are free from the Law, not to be able to sin, but to live in freedom a life of love in Christ. “For me, all things are lawful, but not all things are edifying” is the key point the “Bible-believing Christians” seem to miss.
God is far more interested in whether your behavior towards your fellow men shows His love to them, than in whether or not seafood or human male organs enter your mouth.
The shellfish argument, specifically, is weak because Jesus specifically challenged Jewish dietary restrictions and this was later confirmed in the apostle Peter’s vision in the book of Acts.
Speaking of prohibited food, Jesus said, “It is not what goes into a man that defiles him, it is what comes out of a man that defiles him.” Later, in the infancy of the church, Peter has a vision in which God encourages him to eat ‘unclean’ animals. So the lifting of Jewish dietary laws was one of the first breaks that the early Christians made with Jewish customs.
Also, the idea that because one commandment is routinely ignored, they all can be, is kind of a weak argument in itself. I go to church even if my wife is menstruating; so why do I bother with the whole not-bearing-false-witness or honoring my parents?
There are better arguments for same-sex blessings in the church.
Speaking of the bibles and gays. Are there any prohibitionsagainst lesbian activities? The cites always seem to be the man lying with a man passage.
At a guess, it would be the same reason an atheist like me bothers with them: there are legitimate, non-theological reasons why people shouldn’t do those things. There aren’t any such reasons why someone should not have gay sex or avoid menstruating women. A lot of Christians are picking and choosing which commandments to follow for wholly arbitrary reasons. If you’re going to ignore the commandment against menstruating women, and not the one against gay sex, it seems to me that you ought to be able to make some sort of a reasonable distinction between the two commandments.
It all follows from “Blessed are the cheese makers.”
It’s the Bible. I’m pretty sure women aren’t allowed to do anything, in there.
There’s nothing in the bible. There’s a rabbinic prohibition, though, prohibiting it as shameful behavior, and a violation of the commandment “Do not follow the ways of Egypt where you once lived, nor of Canaan, where I will be bringing you. Do not follow their customs” (There’s a tradition in Judaism that says that, in Egypt, women could marry each other.)
Well, there’s nothing in the Old Testament.
The New Testament makes the only reference there seems to be in Scripture to lesbianism:
Romans 1:26-28. Note that Paul is talking about Gentiles here, not Jews.
So, for Paul at least, homosexual behavior is morally condemned, and not as a matter of ritual either.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s true, but Peter’s vision was about a lot more than just dietary laws and I would argue that it has very little to do with them, in fact. If you read the entire chapter, you’ll see that Peter’s vision was about allowing him, a Jew, to associate with Cornelius, a Gentile, something that was apparently forbidden at the time. After meeting with Cornelius, Peter is criticized by the other Jewish disciples for allowing Gentiles to accept Jesus, and Peter explains his vision to them, putting it into the correct context.
So while I agree that dietary laws can be discarded by Christians and this is supported by the Bible, Peter’s vision can be similarly applied to other people who would previously have been seen as “unclean” and as far as I’m concerned, this includes Jews, Gentiles, and gays. For as Peter tells Cornelius, “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him (Acts 10:34).”
For what it’s worth, Orthodox couples are forbidden from marital relations during the wife’s period, and Orthodox women do not take communion during that time, either. All the prohibitions in Lev. 18 are considered still binding.
In a secular government why the hell should we be concerned with what a religious book says about jack?
Because SOME people refuse to mind their own business???
Not to split hairs, but I would argue that their ARE “legitimate, non-theological reasons”…at least if you are a iron-age nomadic desert tribesman. In such a scenario, homosexuality is a bad idea, simply because it is non-procreative, and if you don’t (as a tribe) increase your population, those heathen Baal-worshippers over there might take you over! On the other hand, in today’s overpopulated world, non-procreative release of sexual needs is a fantastic idea for the tribe! No children clogging up precious resources! I can see the slogan now! “Support your nation! Go gay!”
On the other hand, I can’t think of an equivalent for associating with a menstruating woman, so, y’know, whatever.
You mean Gays and Atheists
