Diogenes:
Is it really? I can honestly say I’ve never felt the lack of it in my life.
In any case, it’s hardly the only form of self-denial demanded by a biblical lifestyle.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Well, what if a man has a vasectomy or is otherwise sterile? Is he wasting seed then?
I didn’t read all of the posts… but I have an answer for you, Major Kong.
Homosexuality is wrong.
Yes, in Leviticus 18:22, it says, “Do not practice homosexuality; it is a detestable sin”.
So here homosexuality is 2 things: Detestable, and a sin.
Jesus did come to die for us and “free us of these things”, but don’t you think it would still be wrong? Read this…
Romans 1:26-27~ That is why God gave them over to their shameful lusts. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and indulged in sex with one another. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relationships with wmen, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men and, as a result, suffered within themselves the penalty they so richly deserved.
That is in the New Testament, after Jesus died, rose again, and went to heaven.
Think about this one: If God had wanted us to be homos, then He would have not created two sexes.
Susma
Hinduism- Remember that this is the religion that gave the world the Kama Sutra. If you want a full acount of the book’s origin I can quote the story from Joseph Campbell’s The Power Of Myth. OTOMH The short version is that the god Indra became convinced that all worldly things were worthless and began living the life of a monk. His wife was quite upset. The god Brahma went and told him that lived properly his daily life and marriage were a form of meditation and worship. He gave Indra the Kama Sutra as a guide to see and worship the spirtual through sex. Hindu tradition also has a caste of intersexed/transvestite/homosexual prostitutes known as Hijras. The Hijras trace their descent to the hero Arjuna, a supreme archer and warrior, a righteous man, and the son of a god. One of Hinduism’s(that just doesn’t sound right) sacred texts, the Baghavad Gita, is the record of a conversation between Arjuna and Krishna, the supreme manifestation of the Godhead.
Buddhism-
I doubt that there is a clear answer to this. There are simply so many different types of Buddhism.
Perhaps you should read all the posts in the thread, lbaliavanU. While your answers are clear to you, there are other perspectives out there on the subject which you might find interesting.
Gee, I’m such an authority that I don’t have to see if anybody else gave the right answer – I’m going to jump in and tell you what God thinks, because only I have a hotline to the Throne of Grace! :rolleyes:
So I agree – no orthodox Jew can licitly practice gay sex. (We are talking about the Mosaic Law, given to the Jews, in case you didn’t notice.) BTW – neither Moses nor God is an “it” – so “in Leviticus it says…” is a solecism. Unless you have some reason for suggesting that the Bible is supposed to be a lawbook for all of humanity…
Uh, if he “freed” us from rules that still apply, then he didn’t do much of anything.
Nice. Now explain to me what this passage has to do with gay people, who did not, prior to their discovering they were gay, reject God for pleasures of this world, as the context of that passage requires. Pay a little attention to what Paul is saying, and you’ll find that he’s writing to a church in First Century Rome, which was noted for having a group of socialites who, out of ennui and in a quest for new thrills, turned to homosexual practices and other kinky stuff when they got bored with heterosexual sex. In Paul’s view, this was God trying shock treatment on them to get through to their thoroughly worldly point of view and try to reach them and turn them back to Him.
And it has not one thing to do with a 12-year-old boy who discovers that while his buddies like girls, he likes boys, or a girl of the same age whose friends have gone boy-crazy but she thinks that her best friend is pretty and lovable and has no particular interest in boys. They certainly did not reject God for worldly pleasures; rather, God’s people rejected them once they found out that they were “abominable queers.”
And your point is…?
Naah… you’d need the lesbians to fix the cars of the guys who’re handling interior design for them! :smack:
Seriously, that’s an interesting argument. Would you care to explain, in your view, how it happens that some people are “born gay” (which can mean made gay by early-childhood experiences, despite the phrasing) – the point being that they did not choose to be gay. Along the same lines, it’s obvious we should be nudists: If God had wanted us to wear clothes, we would have been born clothed instead of naked.
That last, though said somewhat sarcastically, is a real and sincere question: yes, God intended the human race to reproduce by the union of male and female, no doubt about that. But He caused or allowed some people to be gay through no decision of their own – now explain why.
And, now that you’ve delivered your POV on gay sex, may I inquire what God did tell you to do. Because I have a pretty good idea what He told me to do, and it doesn’t jibe with quoting off the Bible and a couple of Adam-and-Steve one-liners to answer a question of this seriousness.
If G-d did not want people to be homosexuals, no one would be born that way.
Sorry, Nomadic One – I got a little hot about Unavailable-Backwards’s post, and forgot that I owed you an answer to this:
Oh, absolutely. But there’s a nuance I tried to explain above. Let me give you a parallel:
The following is a historical quotation, from a speech in the British House of Commons dating from June 4, 1940:
Now, this is not objective history – it is not an accurate report of the British strategic position as the Battle of France came to its tragic conclusion. Rather, it is a statement of Churchill’s, and Britain’s, indomitable resolve to fight on whatever the cost, to stand for what they believed in against the forces of evil that were overrunning the continent.
That speech is among the truest words of the 20th Century. It’s polemic; it’s not founded in objective fact; it’s an assertion of something far deeper and far more important.
That is how I see the Bible. There are places where objective reporting goes on. But the Gospels are not among them – they’re written to make the case that Jesus is Lord and that people need to follow Him, to learn what He said, to have their lives changed by Him. They portray Him with four different slants, the focuses that were most important to the four Gospel writers.
The first chapter of Genesis is another piece of remarkable writing – it’s 100% true, not because God created the world in six 24-hour days about 6000 years ago, but because the truth embedded in that story, repeated over and over again, is important – God created everything; He did it all by His Word: when He said, “Let there be,” what He called forth came into existence; He did it in an orderly sequence; and He called it all good. Lastly, He created the Sabbath and hallowed it (and remember that this passage was written by Jews, and stresses the importance of the Sabbath for them). Whether he took 12 billion years to do it or did it all in a single six-day work week is not important – what’s important is the points the story repeatedly stresses. It’s a myth – not because it’s fictional; that’s a modern perversion of the term – but because it is written in myth style, with the idea of conveying certain important messages to people. Modern scholarship says that that story received its final fine-tuning during the Babylonian Exile, and that could be important, because it seems to be written to contradict the Babylonian creation myth – rather than god-as-hero Marduk combatting the monsters of the deep to bring forth the world we know, God the All-Powerful creates the world we know out of nothing, complete with the monsters of the deep who owe their existence to Him the same as we do. The Hebrew for “without form and void” in 1:2 is a pun on the name for the Monster of the Deep, and various other little contradictions of the Babylonian myth occur throughout the rest of that chapter.
I believe in the truth of the Bible – I just don’t believe that it’s some sort of magical textbook that appeared out of nothingness. It’s an account of God at work in the world, written by humans who knew Him and were changed by His love. And it contains their mistakes, their errors of emphasis, their misunderstandings of the world and of what He was up to, and carries the message that He intended it to nonetheless.
Susma,
My aplogies, but on Friday and Saturday was Shavuos, a Jeiwsh holiday whereupon (among other things) we don’t use computers, so I couldn’t answer you.
In any event, others have already covered the topic for you. In short, I never said in the other thread that homosexual activity was permitted.
Zev Steinhardt
and…
**
That’s an interesting interpretation of the text you have there. Would you mind explaining why your interpretation is better than say Polycarp’s? What makes you such a Biblical scholar that ensures the veracity of your interpretation?
C’mon, I did better – I even explained why there were two sexes, as his original quote included! 
Does anyone else get the impression that ElbaliavanU is trolling? I’ve only read two of his (or her; no gender has been indicated) posts so far, so I may not have the whole picture, but both posts seem almost deliberately designed to cause offense–and in neither case have I seen him post a reply to his replies yet, just the original inflammatory post.
Sorry if I shouldn’t have posted that here, but I couldn’t think of where else to mention my concern.
I got that vague impression. However, notice at the lower right of the text area on each post, there’s a little area inscribed “Report This Post to a Moderator”? Clicking on that reveals a hotlink that opens a small text window, and will shoot what you type in there by e-mail to the moderators of the forum in question. That’s the place for suspicions of trolling; for really good reasons (involving threads that degenerate into flame wars following erroneous accusations, etc.) they prefer that no such accusations be made on open board, but rather by e-mail to them.
Um, see that little link at the bottom of our posts that says “Report this post to a moderator?” That’s what you’re supposed to click on if you suspect someone’s a troll.
ConnieS
Accusations of trolling are a serious offense. I suggest you read the sticky.
Again good answer Polycarp. If I may pry a little more and ask if you belong to any one denomination, and if so why?
My apologies for my thoughtlessness; there’s nothing I can really do to make up for it (ignorance of the rules is no excuse), but I might as well make sure to clarify that I didn’t intend to cause any harm.
Blalron:
During sex with his wife? No, he’s not. As I said, pleasuring within a marital relationship is also a good thing in its own right.
However, I will say that according to the Torah, a man would not be allowed to intentionally sterilize himself, as with a vasectomy.
Chaim Mattis Keller
I’m an active member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, in Raleigh, and a sincere and devout Episcopalian.
Why? Because I’m focused on the importance of the Apostolic Succession to the ongoing life of the Church, because my wife and I find the sacramental ministry of the church to be important to our spiritual lives, and because it believes in what I believe in.
Here’s the Baptismal Covenant, which we reaffirm regularly – for me, most recently, this morning at about 11:15. It’s done in dialogue form, and it says what I believe quite adequately:
Ah, ok. Thank you for your input polycarp. I personally am against creeds as i feel they take away from personal and unique talks to God. To many people they are just something that they just ramble off every Sunday and never think about it, whereas personal prayer is much more thoughtful…I hope. God bless.