Friday, January 21, 2011
Sixth Post: A question.
The one passage which I have found the least argument on though, is from Leviticus 18 verse 22. Here, it clearly states: "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination." The fact that, for as far as I could find, neither Zymaris nor Boswell made an argument about it is quite distressing. Similarly, the Church Fathers clearly state: 'Israel (the People of the Lord who receive these teachings from Moses) was commanded not to live according to the way of life of Egypt and Canaan, nor to walk in their ordinances.' Yes, idolatry is highlighted as the predominate sin, but homosexuality and sodomy are also expressly spoken against. The only arguments that I could fit against this would be that something was translated incompletely; taking from Boswell, or that this doesn't speak about loving homosexual relationships outside of sexuality, where both heterosexual and homosexual relations are scorned; an argument put forward by Zymaris.
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I think this one peice of text is the most commonly used by Christians wanting to argue agaisnt homosexuality, which I would say pretty effectively rules out the the possibility of accepting homosexuality (at least for fundamentalists). Two interesting things about this passage though are (a) which you've mentioned, that it only addresses the sexual act itself, and not the relationship as a whole (I would think that the tradition of Christian love includes love between all people, but should also be inherently not sexual), and (b) that it doesnt address (and as far as I know it is never addressed in the Bible) the sexual act between women. This is probably because women weren't taken seriously enough at the time the book was written (most of the laws in Letiticus, sex laws especially, are pretty explicitly directed at men), but I always thought it was interesting that technically homosexuality between women is "allowed".
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