I’d like to think it is born of naivity rather than outright bigotry and stupidity. As a straight Athiest I don’t have much of a dog in this fight. But it bothers me when homosexuality is referred to as a “lifestyle.” Sexual orientation is not chosen. It is how we are born. Oh, shit, do I really need to dig up cites? Somebody help me out here. Anyway, if you believe in creationism, then this is how God made these people. Respect their personal drive. It isn’t a “choice.” It is who they are. BTW, welcome just!
Hey, give God some slack. I mean, he just got through creating the freakin UNIVERSE: he probably had to catch his breath for a few millenia before getting around to cursing homosexuals like he promised.
The great thing about Judiasm is that you just KNOW there have been some really fantastic arguments about this very question by a bunch of guys ten times smarter than I’ll ever be.
Now I don’t have any problem talking openly about this issue, but if some don’t wanna read this next somewhat OT bit about anal sex and pregnancy, then skip it. Or, if you want to discover on your own: be careful spoilers for reality!
Technically, it is occasionally possible for anal sex to get a woman pregnant if she has a certain internal defect in certain tissue walls. It’s rare, but not impossible. So I guess it’s not exactly a waste: it’s just giving the little guys a REAL challenge.
That sounds extremely unlikely. Myth alarms are blaring like mad here. Source?
Thanks to all you guys here, specially to Polycarp and Amazing.
I thought I was liberal and open-minded; now I realize that I am not so liberated yet from my many years of Catholic university education, among celibate priests who might pass for being very learned and possessed of keen intelllect, but still circumscribed by their predominantly procreation bias of human sexuality.
That bit about sex being for the pleasure of man and wife, that really is enlightening to me. What I had been taught is that you have got to have procreation always in your intention, at least it should not be explicitly excluded in every sex act; and the act has got to be natural, penile- vaginal at least at the consummation stage.
Thanks to all you more informed and more profound thinkers.
Susma Rio Sep
It IS extremely unlikely. But it’s called a recto-vaginal fistula.
Human sexuality, the variety and the possibility seem to be enormous. Man is the most sex-obsessed entity in the known universe. Correct me if I am not so informed here.
All my life I have been of the Catholic sexual morality school and practice. Now I get to know about Jewish sex policies, in particular about anal sex being accepted between man and woman in marriage. and its outright advocacy of sex for pleasure – period – principle.
Now, I am going to read up on Muslims and sex, Buddhists and sex, Hindus and sex, and learn more about the ideologies of sex in various humans.
But I guess all of us would agree that in sex, first do no harm, second be clean, and third be aesthetic, in that order.
Susma Rio Sep
-polycarp, forgive me if I am wrong, but is this not the same as taking the (I see you live in the USA) constitution and saying well I beleive in this so I’m ok with such and such law, but this one well I dont really agree with so I am decided to ignore it. If this is an error of interpretion on my part I am sorry. It just seems as you take what you will of the bible that you can beleive in and disregarding the other parts. God bless. Please tell me as to what you beleive about this. *For if true, I am not sure how confidant you can argue anything that is in the bible as one would not be confidant as to your stance on issues in the way of a lack of confidance in the whole bible.
-pimpUPS, have you asked Him for forgivance that you just stated that you are living in sin?
-pimpUPS, have you asked Him for forgivance as you just stated that you are living in sin?
I’m sure that Polycarp can speak for himself, but I should note that he didn’t simply say that he picks what he likes: he also spoke about a particular method applied to understanding the text: which is very different than simply picking what one likes willy-nilly.
And as I understand it, another extremely important vehicle to many many Christians for understanding God is prayer. While fundamentalists seem to demand that the text and the text alone reveal every answer (that’s what the movement is all about), other Christians believe that only Christ can be the final source for inspiration and insight, and not even the Bible (of which ones interpretations could always be flawed) overrule ones calling or direction from God. Obviously, this has its own problems insofar as different believers feeling that they have each recieved different answers to key questions, but again, the method is still not “what do I want to believe is true?” but “what can I learn about what God wants by speaking with God through prayer?”
Apos -thank you for your interpretation on what you thought Polycarp meant in this passage, I still wish him to comment on this though.
So…tell me. What sins are you being punished for? When you are in pain or mourning, do you assume that it is because of something that you did wrong?
“The rain falls on the just and the unjust.”
Susma Rio Sept:
What does the Catholic Church teach about sex for people who cannot have children?
For those who believe that every word of the Bible is God’s law, why do you so often appear to place more importance on someone else’s homosexuality than on your own tendency to judge others? Cast the moat out of your own eye? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone? Don’t those verses mean anything to you?
I just don’t understand that about fundamentalism and I’ve never seen a coherent explanation for it at SDMB.
So are married gay men in a country like the Netherlands still considered sinners?
Susma Rio Sep:
Correct.
Part ofit. The Christian Old Testament includes not only what Jews call the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), but also an additional nineteen books that Jews call the Prophets and Writings. On top of that, I think Catholics consider the book(s) of Maccabees to be part of the Old Testament, but Jews do not consider that a divine document.
Orthodox Jews (and Hasidim are a subset thereof) are Jews who consider the authority of the holy scriptures absolute. There are two other major branches of Judaism, Conservative and Reform, which disagree on this core issue.
Sort of. It’s for wasting the seed. That leads to your next question…
Because sex has two purposes in Judaic belief. Obviously, procreation is one of them. But in addition, marital pleasure is a distinct purpose in and of itself. A man is obliged to give his wife sexual pleasure, however they wish to do so. However, something done outside the woman entirely, clearly serves neither purpose…in other words, is completely wasted.
As others have said…if they like it, that’s their prerogative.
Marital sex of any type is morally good. However, procreative sex does exist on an even higher plane…“be fruitful and multiply” is the Torah’s first directive toward mankind.
It is 100% religiously and morally fine, as long as you have, or eventually intend to, fulfill your obligation to have children. To avoid procreation entirely is not proper.
I hope that I have proven to be an adequate substitute.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Since you asked specifically for my feedback, Nomadic One, let me start by thanking Apos for an excellent response to your question in my behalf. In the absence of your additional question, I’d have left it as sufficient.
Here’s my thinking, sir: We have a collection of writings named the Holy Bible which contains the primary sources for what we can know about God – and it was culled from a wide collection of manuscripts over a period of several hundred years by learned and godly men who felt that those particular books more accurately and more thoroughly conveyed what we should know about Him than anything else. A good reference work will give you a wide list of materials that didn’t make the cut. You might also note that various Christian and Jewish groups are selective in what they use from the books that did make the cut.
There is a tendency among conservative evangelical Christians to set Scripture (the Protestant Christian version of the Bible) up as an entity which must be accepted totius porcus with no judgment as to its contents and how they work together. A given Bible quote is considered adequate proof of an assertion that (at least to the quoter) it provides support for. Are human fetuses “persons” in God’s eyes? See Psalm 139 for a passage that would seem to support this thesis.
On the other hand, though, the idea that God verbally inspired the Bible, effectively dictating it to the writers, is a totally human idea, and as susceptible to error as any other human idea. Inspiration can have a wide range of meanings, and this is only one of the possible ones.
That leaves us with a massive document that has spoken to the hearts of many Christians, myself included, over the ages, which deserves some respect from anyone who approaches it with an idea of learning something from it, but which does not require a superstitious reverence for its contents.
When one applies the same scholarly methods to the Bible that one would to Xenophon’s Anabasis, Plato’s dialogues, the Enuma Elish, and other ancient documents, one is left with a collection of material belonging to a wide assortment of genres and with a varying degree of historical accuracy, but with a common theme underlying it – the idea that there is a single God who is interested in conveying to the people He created a moral code founded in loving allegiance to Him and ethical treatment of the other people with whom they come in contact. To this God all manner of things are attributed, some contradictory to each other and some contradictory to the world we know from natural history, but some breathing the purest air of that underlying theme.
The Bible contains a lot of “hard sayings” – things which call a man or woman to the highest and hardest of roles. These are, it would seem, a part of His expectations of us in that underlying theme.
But it also includes the legal code of the Israelite nation, a bunch of directives which a converted Pharisee sent to churches he had founded, and a lot of other material. Read as a uncriticizable treasury, it surely looks a lot like a lawbook – and people are determined to reduce the ethical demands God places on them to live a righteous life evidenced in love of Him and of one’s fellow man, down to a simple code of “do this, don’t do that” with appropriate loopholes they can find for themselves, while using the rest of it as a means whereby they can sit in judgment over the rest of sinful humanity.
Against this perversion of His message I stand firmly opposed. What He demands of me and you is no less than a total commitment to Him, before and instead of all other concerns, and then the living of a life where one shows love to all of one’s fellow human beings, by compassion and gentle counsel evincing that lovingkindness in every word and deed. We are to refrain from sitting in judgment on our fellow human beings – or rather, to refuse to dare to judge, since with the judgment we render we also will be judged, and no one of us is sufficiently perfect to risk that judgment. Any evaluation we make of our brothers’ and sisters’ behavior should be motivated by compassionate caring, with the idea of helping them along in their lives, and by empathy for what they feel and think, not by a shopping list of sins that we need to convict them of. If they anger or upset us, we are to swallow our bile, draw a deep breath, and still treat them as the brother or sister whom we love.
To me, that is the farthest thing from picking and choosing what seems easy and throwing away the hard parts.
Questions: What did Paul say one must do to be saved? What did Jesus say were the two greatest commandments? How did He say we were to keep the Law? What did He say was necessary to be saved? What did He say He would regard as behavior towards Him, and on what did He say He would judge? What did Micah specify was proper religion? Tricky one: What did Jesus say one should do about the sins of others?
Does this help to clarify where I’m coming from? I’ll welcome further questions on the topic, but let me start with that, and see where it leads you.
I’m sorry, I have to disagree with this. The sin of Onan was simple disobedience. Read the passage in context:
Genesis 38:1-10
- At that time, Judah left his brothers and went down to stay with a man of Adullam named Hirah. 2 There Judah met the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua. He married her and lay with her; 3 she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, who was named Er. 4 She conceived again and gave birth to a son and named him Onan. 5 She gave birth to still another son and named him Shelah. It was at Kezib that she gave birth to him.
6 Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. 7 But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the LORD’s sight; so the LORD put him to death.
8 Then Judah said to Onan, “Lie with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother.” 9 But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother. 10 What he did was wicked in the LORD’s sight; so he put him to death also.*
Onan was ordered to knock up his sister-in-lw. He pulled out instead. He was killed by God for refusing to fulfill his brotherly duty, not for spilling the seed per se.
If it was really that wicked to “waste seed” there would be no men in heaven. 
Thank you for your answer, [true]
[/true]
If I could ask one question though. Do you (one word can’t really encompass the whole question) [believe, trust, accept, follow] the whole bible. Just for a good Sunday readings sake. 
Thank you and God bless.
The Talmud says that it’s both.
Diogenes:
Forgive me for not quoting your whole passage.
You’re correct that from a simple reading of the passage - especially in English translation - denotes that. But that’s not the Orthodox Jewish view of Onan’s sin. Remember, the Talmud is very into parsing the precise meaning of every word. The word translated as “spilled” in verse 9 really means “destroyed” or “wasted”. It is based on this that the sin of Onan is considered, by Orthodox Jews, to have been the wasting of the seed.
Have you seen any there yet? Seriously, though, that’s definitely a no-no in Orthodox Judaism, and those who take their religion seriously just DON’T.
Chaim Mattis Keller
cmkeller,
Thanks for that. I wasn’t aware that Orthodox Judaism had that take on it. I’ve usually seen it interpreted as I stated it, both from Christian and from some Jewish (conservative/reform) readings of the passage. I confess that I haven’t extensively studied Orthodox Judaism (with the exception of Hassidism) so I was uninformed on that point.
So orthodox men really don’t…you know…not ever? That is one tough law.