Actually, this is in debate by gay historians. Foucalt was the gay historian who argued that point and he still has his followers, although Stephen O Murray, who feels differently, has plenty of followers too. There were people in the middle ages like Giovani Antonio Bazzi who became known as “Il Sodoma” because of his open homosexuality. Rather than rebuke the title, he loved it and signed it on papers and ordered people to use it.
Well, if Poly self-identified as anything but straight, he’s be so mired and steeped in his own sin that he’d do or say anything to justify his sinning.
Like, duh.
After noting the Pit thread gobear started about the latest SBC pronouncement, and the number of references to homosexuality and Christianity in other GD threads, I thought maybe this thread deserved to be brought back to the active menu, since it’s only two days since the last post to it, and the topic seems to be stirring more than the usual amount of interest.
I still don’t think people quite grasped it as an innate and static orientation. It was still just regarded as behavior, or, at, best, a preference. I don’t think people quite got the idea that someone could be exclusively and involuntarily attracted only his/her own sex, without even the ability to be attracted to the opposite sex.
A nitpick. I didn’t start that thread, Eve did. But the blame for the direction it has gone should fall on my shoulders. All my fault.
Ya know Poly, “bump” has only four keystrokes.
My apologies to gobear and Eve for the misrepresentation, and to andros for verbosity – but since Bumping is generally frowned on around here, I wanted to justify my sense that it was the right thing to do with this thread.
Oh piffle. It needed to be bumped. I just hope Nomadic sees it.
Nomadic One is not the problem – he’s prepared to debate honestly, and examine the facts surrounding propositions he wants to examine. There are a few others who ought to review it, IMHO.
What exactly is bumping? Putting the thread somewhere else?
Bumping is when you post to a thread just to move it back to the top of the thread list.
Well, at least from some of the evidence that I’ve seen they did.
My mind has gone totally blank on the names of these two theories. (Social constructionists (?) and ____) I’ll stop by the library tomarrow if I can and try to find more specific quotes and such for you as I am afraid that I’ve forgotten too much of it to be of any more help in discussing what Murray and others like him believe…
But anyway, AFAIK, the debate is still going. However, the newer books seem to be geared more towards the “some people did see themselves (or others) as having a natural inclination and defined themselves (or others) by it” which makes me suspect that it is the one most scholars now think is better.
Here is the answer to your prayer.
As for your own thread that you started earlier today, I am glad to see that Gaudere just closed it.
Do you get the message?
Here is my thought. While you can pick away at individual verses any way you want, the Totality of the Bible is against homosexuality. There are absolutely no homosexual protagonists in the Bible. Furthermore, every place homosexuality is mentioned in the Bible is in a negative sense.
It is very nearly as accurate to say that the totality of the Bible is against a man and a woman having sex during her period (there are only two fewer references). I don’t think that there is much doubt that Jewish culture disapproved of male homosexuality or that Paul, who was not keen on sexual expression in any event, looked unfavorably on homesexual expression. The problem is whether those expressions reflect the will of God or demonstrate the culture from which the authors of those passages sprang.
First, "homosexuality"is never mentioned in the Bible, so people who say it is, and is condemned, are interpreting and expanding on the words of the Bible to suit their own predilections. Second, Diogenes and others have done exegeses of the language used by Paul, and quite simply, it condemns certain things quite vehemently, and they are things which the typical gay man or woman would probably join you and me as denouncing in strong terms, like pandering and contracting for sex with boy-prostitutes forced into that role.
The supposed “Christian” press typically begins any report on the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson with “Gay ‘bishop’ Gene Robinson, who abandoned his wife and children to take a gay lover…” which is flat-out in factual error on several grounds to start with, and shows no grasp of or willingness to understand what motivates a gay person. There is, by the way, a member here who is in precisely Gene Robinson’s shoes, with three exceptions: he isn’t a bishop or any kind of clergy; he and his ex-wife both realized they were gay; and he has not as yet, AFAIK, found a permanent SO.
Third, I’d ask you to read I Samuel 20, bringing absolutely no modern condeptions about what it “must have” meant or not meant. Add in II Samuel 1:26 as a codicil.
Then tell me what the Biblical definitions of “neighbor” and “one of the least of these my brothers” might be, and who is included or excluded from it.
IIRC I can count the number of times the torah even bothers to mention homosexuality on one hand.
For centuries, Jewish folklore has held that the greatest sins of Sodom and Gommorah was not homosexuality but selfishness and a lack of hospitality to strangers. While the great scholars (Rashi, Maimonides, etc) all held homosexuality was a sin, they also agreed that the two cities were destroyed for not being their brother’s keeper.
Someone I was talking to pointed out that, while male homosexuality is explicitly forbidden in Leviticus, lesbianism is not.
This seems odd, as (for example) both male and female bestiality is explicitly forbidden.
What is the explaination for this?
For those who hold to “prove it in Scripture,” Isaiah and Ezekiel are quite explicit that the sin of Sodom was an exclusive focus on personal extravagance and luxury, ignoring God and their responsibility to their fellow man. Sexual license (not homosexual acts) was a part of this self-centeredness. And Jesus himself echoes this when he compares the lakeside cities who would not welcome his disciples with Sodom and Gomorrah – unfavorably. The only other N.T. mention is in Jude, who says they were destroyed for “sexual immorality.”
It may be totally unfair of me to say so, but the folks with S.U.V.'s and $200,000 homes who go to church every Sunday but insist on adherence to God’s Law (i.e., their selection of Scriptural sound bites) and refuse to welcome gay people because they’re “unrepentant sinners” may under Scripture be the real Sodomites.
That may be true, but salvation and God are both not mentioned in the original language of the Bible. So that’s a weak argument, as some versions do mention homosexuality, while some don’t. Do you then get into the argument of which is the best version, and I think they all are good. So some say male with male, some say homosexual…what’s your defination of male with male?