I've done everything the Bible says, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff! What more could I do?". - Ned Flanders
Homosexuality and Forrest Gump - "Homosexuals are like a box of chocolates. Each one has a different flavor, but at least you know you'll get some chocolate."
I think ChucklesG is saying that "every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great.....when a sperm is wasted....god gets quite irate" ah....Monty Python.
Reverend Timothy Lovejoy: Marge, get a divorce. Marge Simpson: Isn't that against what the Bible teaches? Reverend Timothy Lovejoy: (holds up a Bible) Marge, have you read this whole book? Technically, we aren't even allowed to go to the bathroom.
"We reject [homosexuals], treat them as pariahs, and push them outside our church communities, and thereby we negate the consequences of their baptism and ours. We make them doubt that they are the children of God, and this must be nearly the ultimate blasphemy. We blame them for something that is becoming increasingly clear they can do little about." --Desmond Tutu, Anglican Archbishop of South Africa Some alternative interpretations. (For more detailed analysis, go here: http://hcqsa.virtualave.net/dispell.html or http://hem.passagen.se/nicb/bible.htm ) _________________ Deuteronomy 23:17-18 These verses have been applied to homosexual behaviour because of a mistranslation of the Hebrew. The King James Version reads "w****" and "sodomite". The Hebrew actually uses the same noun in its masculine and feminine forms, the words are best translated "temple (or cult) prostitute". These verses have nothing directly to do with homosexual behaviour. Cult prostitution flourished throughout the ancient world and this fact sheds important light on the other passages in this brochure. Fertility cult worship involved sexual activity in the temple, often with a sacred prostitute who was like a priest or priestess. This sacred sexual activity was believed to encourage the god(s) to bestow fertility on the earth and its creatures. Genesis 19:4-11 The sin of Sodom is clearly explained in Ezekiel 16:49-50. It was not homosexual behaviour, but for its deep and general sinfulness, the men in the story may have intended sexual abuse of the divine visitors (the translation of the verb "know" here is not clear). The issue is not that the objects may have been homosexual but that it was to be abuse. This was in character with the whole of their uncaring, greedy and Godless lives. Leviticus 18:22; 20:13-14 These verses are found in the "Holiness Code" which emphasized to the Israelites that they were to be set apart to God. The context is prohibition of practices found in the nearby fertility cult of Molech. "Abomination" is a translation of the Hebrew word which specifically means idolatrous practices (not necessarily sexual). The condemnation here is a reference to the fertility worship which the Israelites were to shun. The seriousness of this idolatry in Hebrew eyes was compounded by the belief that "to lie with a man as with a woman" violated the dignity of the male sex. Women were property but men were the direct image of God. To treat a man the way a woman was treated was to reduce him to property and, thereby, to violate the image of God. The issue was idolatrous activity which failed to acknowledge God's creation 1Corinthians 6:9 and 1Timothy 1:10 At issue are two words: malakee (found only in 1Corinthians) and arsenokeeteh, which is in both verses. Tradition assumes a homosexual meaning of the words. Actual study reveals that in its use there, malakee means "morally weak" or, perhaps, "immoral persons". (The translation "effeminate" in the King James Version was an archaic one and, in any case, did not imply homosexuality in Greek--as it does not today.) Arsenokeeteh means to refer directly to cult prostitution, again. Such practices were common both in Corinth and Ephesus (where Timothy was). It clearly refers, in this use and later uses in other writings, to prostitutes who engaged in both homosexual and heterosexual cult practice. Neither of these words can possible be translated to mean "homosexual" or any similar distortion of their meaning. Romans 1:26-27 This is the only passage in Scripture which, apparently, talks about homosexual behaviour among women as well as men. The dangerous, traditional interpretation come from failure to relate it to the whole chapter. Paul talks about idolatrous people who put things or concerns before their devotion to God. As an example, he refers to fertility cult worship prevalent in Rome. The homosexual activity to which he refers is idolatrous. He implies that all of the cult worshippers engaged in it. (The interpretation that he is writing about homosexual behaviour in general would force this to say that all idolatrous people become homosexual--an obviously spurious interpretation.) The final sentence referring to their just reward is a reference to the venereal disease which was epidemic among such cults. This specific reference to fertility cult worship cannot be construed to condemn homosexual behaviour in general. "Against Nature" Some argue that God created male and female, as recorded in Genesis, only as a means of procreation. Homosexual behaviour is condemned on the assumption that it does not produce offspring. Since gender difference exists, they say, heterosexual contact is the only way god meant sexuality to be expressed. Procreation was only one of God's purposes in creation of humanity as recorded in Genesis. The other, equally important, was that God did not wish us to be alone. God gave us relationship with one another. It is dangerous to argue from simple biology when talking about ourselves as the image of God. Jesus told us that "God is Spirit" and we are created in the image of God. Human beings differ from animals in our spiritual nature. We are capable of relationship and this is the context of our sexuality. Our "natural" capacity for sexual expression, homosexual or heterosexual, is given meaning by our capacity for loving relationship.
