Why Homosexuality Must NOT Be Criminalized

[Arthur Brain]

There are people who claim their orientation changed. Are they all lying?

Yes, you can train yourself to like Beyonce songs.

Probably more deluding themselves, and no, dude, you really can't. May as well tell me I could coach myself to enjoy having the flu. Really is a daft argument...

 

[Town Heretic]

People have claimed that their sexual orientation changed. Are they lying?

Some, probably. Some, probably not, if with a caveat. I suspect there are bisexuals who make a particular choice but who could make another. I'd bet for most people the heterosexual inclination is hard wired and settled, that for some homosexuals the same is true, and that there is a larger group (than the purely homosexual) who are capable of moving between sexual choices.

Criminalizing homosexuality, within the strictures of a civil, secular society, is impractical and problematic from a foundational position of law. It's on par with criminalizing heterosexual activity outside of wedlock, making a purely moral matter, a matter of conscience and context, define the choices of others.

 

[Arthur Brain]

I'm a devoted Christian who happens to realize that God is just and that God is wiser than we are.

It isn't about Old Testament anything. It's about justice.

There are very seriously evil people who live in this world. I want there to be as few people who decide to be one of those as possible, as does God. This is the primary purpose of criminal justice - to prevent crime and thereby prevent the harm it causes.

Except you base your ideas for 'justice' today on OT laws of the time. You yourself go on to concede that it's hardly a simplistic issue and plenty of things deemed criminal in communal times are hardly applied today. I want there to be a system that targets crime in a preventative as much as a punitive manner but I also want it to target the right people, those who kill, rape, torture, molest, are violent etc, not those who's 'crime' is to be in a homosexual relationship. I mean, where would you draw the line? Would you have non married cohabitation between straight people be punishable as well?

There is no such thing as a perfect system but I figure God's ideas about criminal justice are better than mine or yours or anyone else's. But, biblically speaking, it is a complex issue. Not every law in the bible makes sense to enact outside of the nation of Israel because many of them had to do with Israel's religious practices and God's attempt to keep their nation separated from other nations so as to preserve a pure bloodline through which the Messiah would come in fulfillment of scripture. So, you have to actually study and understand what the heck you're talking about. You can't simply crack open the book of Leviticus and start enacting laws. You have to use discernment to seperate moral laws that would apply universally from laws that applied only to Israel.

Just to give an example of what I'm talking about, one way you can tell a religious law from a moral one is that one moral law cannot contradict another. Take circumcision and the Sabbath, for example. Israel was required to circumcise their male children on the eighth day after birth and they were also prohibited from working on the Sabbath. Circumcision was considered a work of the flesh and so what happens if a child's eighth day lands on Saturday? Do you circumcise him or not? Which law do you break? In this case, you would circumcise because circumcision came before the Sabbath laws but such regulations about which laws take precedence of other laws do not exist for issues of morality. You can never be faced with the dilemma of deciding to burglarize someone's home to keep from burning it down or having to choose between raping someone to keep from murdering them.

This kind of thought process and others like it is what is required if you want to have and to maintain a biblical worldview and to hold positions of various issues that you won't be embarrassed by on judgment day.

There isn't a perfect system no, and the chances are there'll never be one that works 100% and trying to enact one that polices society's sexual mores is untenable in itself, certainly in a bustling modern day society. Not only that, it would detract from actual serious crime going on. For the sake of consistency you'd have to have laws that would have any sort of non married sexual activity to be a crime, and how are you going to police that? Other than somehow turning society into a dystopia akin to 1984 it's not going to happen. Nobody apart from religious fanatics want a theocratic state, it runs contrary to liberty and freedom that informs part of your own country's constitution, along with the West in general.

You think you're wiser and more merciful than God. You're wrong. Policies like the ones you advocate produce more harm to more people than you can know.

Psalms 119:Consider my affliction and deliver me,
For I do not forget Your law.
154 Plead my cause and redeem me;
Revive me according to Your word.
155 Salvation is far from the wicked,
For they do not seek Your statutes.
156 Great are Your tender mercies, O Lord;
Revive me according to Your judgments.
157 Many are my persecutors and my enemies,
Yet I do not turn from Your testimonies.
158 I see the treacherous, and am disgusted,
Because they do not keep Your word.
159 Consider how I love Your precepts;
Revive me, O Lord, according to Your lovingkindness.
160 The entirety of Your word is truth,
And every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever.​

Resting in Him,
Clete

No, I'm just not a religious zealot and I value the freedoms we have in the West that other countries less fortunate are deprived of.

 

[Arthur Brain]

right - it's a perversion of your morality that ends with you no longer recognizing right from wrong


same thing happens with sexual perversion

Then by this yardstick Hugh Hefner would be a prime candidate for entertaining homosexuality wouldn't he? I mean, he is kinda the ultimate 'playboy' after all...?

Cept there's nowt to suggest he has and in fact the very opposite.

Know why?

:idea:

Cos he's straight.

 

[ok doser]

It's simply the way it is dude. That you think it's 'nice' or a 'belief' is really beside the point. My breads buttered one way only...

and the fact that you hold that belief strongly is a good indication that you haven't totally given yourself over to depravity

good job!

Then by this yardstick Hugh Hefner would be a prime candidate for entertaining homosexuality wouldn't he?

of course

and there's no reason to believe he hasn't experimented in that direction

 

[Arthur Brain]

and the fact that you hold that belief strongly is a good indication that you haven't totally given yourself over to depravity

good job!

Nope, just happen to be straight dude. If you're insecure in your own orientation then hey...

of course

and there's no reason to believe he hasn't experimented in that direction

:rotfl:

Oh wait, you're being 'serious'?

:freak:

 

[ok doser]

Nope, just happen to be straight dude.

and the fact that you hold that belief strongly is a good indication that you haven't totally given yourself over to depravity

good job! :thumb:

 

[glassjester]

Does saying things like this help you feel better about yourself?

Feel better? How?
I didn't know I was in need of consolation...

Oh, wait. You were trying to insult me. Ok.

You can do better.

 

[Arthur Brain]

and the fact that you hold that belief strongly is a good indication that you haven't totally given yourself over to depravity

good job! :thumb:

Wow, you sound rather insecure about your own sexuality dude, especially when you're bonkers enough to claim that someone like Hefner could have entertained homosexuality despite the contrary being blatantly obvious. What's next, a leaked soundtrack of Donald Trump claiming how he takes mints before leaning in for a kiss with a man?!

Stop being so...retarded dude.

:freak:

 

[ok doser]

Wow, you sound rather insecure about your own sexuality dude, ...

yes artie, we all recognize that this is the game you've been playing


i'm sorry nobody is interested in playing it with you


you go right ahead and play by yourself :wave2:

 

[Arthur Brain]

yes artie, we all recognize that this is the game you've been playing


i'm sorry nobody is interested in playing it with you


you go right ahead and play by yourself :wave2:

Aw, now don't get your panties all in a bunch there SOD. It's not a game. It just simply happens to be the case that some of us know 100% which way our breads buttered even if you don't. The fact that you're trying to allude to Hugh Hefner being possibly gay is just too funny for words is all, the same with Trump...

:rotfl:

 

[glassjester]

The fact that you're trying to allude to Hugh Hefner being possibly gay is just too funny for words is all, the same with Trump...

It would make for an interesting episode of "Sliders."

But do you mean to say that there is no set of conditions that could have resulted in Hugh Hefner becoming homosexual?

What if he had been born in ancient Greece?
Heck, what if you had been born in ancient Greece?

Scary, isn't it?

 

[Arthur Brain]

It would make for an interesting episode of "Sliders."

But do you mean to say that there is no set of conditions that could have resulted in Hugh Hefner becoming homosexual?

What if he had been born in ancient Greece?
Heck, what if you had been born in ancient Greece?

Scary, isn't it?

I remember watching that show...one of them was where it was only women who grew beards...:shocked:

:chuckle:

Even ancient Greece had its share of women so to say that homosexuality was the 'norm' is a bit of a push.

 

[Angel4Truth]

I remember watching that show...one of them was where it was only women who grew beards...:shocked:

:chuckle:

Even ancient Greece had its share of women so to say that homosexuality was the 'norm' is a bit of a push.

Since when is homosexual, only denoting of men?

Sappho, a poet from the island of Lesbos, wrote many love poems addressed to women and girls. The love in these poems is sometimes requited, and sometimes not. Sappho is thought to have written close to 12,000 lines of poetry on her love for other women. Of these, only about 600 lines have survived. As a result of her fame in antiquity, she and her land have become emblematic of love between women.

In addition to being a poet, Sappho was the head of what was known as a thiasos. Thiasoi were communities of women in which Greek women could receive a limited form of education. Critically, however, girls in these communities also experienced same-sex love, sometimes for their mistresses (Sappho writes of her love for various students of hers) and sometimes for each other. As the polis evolved, however, marriage came to be an integral instrument for the organization of the culture, and women were confined to their houses; the thiasoi were no more. Girls were taught from their infancies that it was their duty and destiny in life to give their love to the men who would one day be their husbands. Female-female love had no place within the constraints of this new social organization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greece

 

[Arthur Brain]

Do you guys think barack obama is homosexual

Nope.

Though I'm sure some would hope that he was so they could sit in self righteous glee even if they're not confident enough in their own sexuality to identify as straight...

 

[Arthur Brain]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greece

What's your actual point here?

 

[Angel4Truth]

What's your actual point here?

go back and read carefully.

 

[glassjester]

Even ancient Greece had its share of women so to say that homosexuality was the 'norm' is a bit of a push.

Homosexual activity was the norm. As was heterosexual activity. But they had no concept of orientation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greece

Were they all "born bisexual" ?

If you were born there, would you alone have stood against it?
Would you even be disgusted by it?

It's a bit arrogant to think so, no?

 

[Arthur Brain]

Homosexual activity was the norm. As was heterosexual activity. But they had no concept of orientation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greece

Were they all "born bisexual" ?

If you were born there, would you alone have stood against it?
Would you even be disgusted by it?

It's a bit arrogant to think so, no?

Considering you've just conceded that heterosexuality was just as much the 'norm' then what exactly would I have been standing against? I'm not disgusted by homosexuals or bisexuals as it is...

 

[Arthur Brain]

go back and read carefully.

Read it closely enough already, so what's your point?