What the Law and the Bible say about Homosexuality.

[ok doser]

..."Executing" people for being gay ....

what's being proposed is the execution of people who engage in acts of homosexual sex

same as people who engage in acts of rape

same as people who engage in acts of child molestation

 

[Idolater]

This isn't quite true, although in the current political trend, it is. We 'used' to make those who came to the U.S. take classes in English, for example.

What on earth does that have to do with the right to religious liberty being infringed Lon.

Whatever we care about, is enacted upon in law.

That's what being a democratic republic is all about, yes.

The reason we stopped making it a crime to put adulterers in jail, was because we somehow stopped seeing it as a crime against a spouse. It still is a crime against a spouse. Shoot, if we allowed a bit of jail time, maybe a few spouses would stop killing those who break their vows. It would be 'good' in such a case and with such a noble reason. If it would actually do that, might be another story, but the sentiment is good and is there. If I can get a ticket when nobody is harmed, certainly we can rethink some of our more serious laws and rethink if they might be wise to enforce and not ignore (many have never been removed from the books). Jacob's interest is what could/should be a cross over from God's laws to common law. I think he makes a good point here. There are common reasons for making laws that help and support people.

The right to religious liberty is imo merely a certain form of the one inalienable right that we all possess as human beings. It's the right to life, the right to speak and write freely, the right to believe and practice however we want to religiously, and the right to self defense /bear arms. There are other formulations of it, but I see it as just one right.

Laws are made in any variety of ways, and in the US they are made by legislators who are elected in free and fair elections, and these laws are all amenable to legal challenge, and our highest court decides ultimately whether the laws are in accord with our constitution, which is the highest law in the land.

We are able to amend our constitution. But the interaction between laws and rights is what we're discussing here. We divide along basically religious lines, with our different opinions about LGBTQI+ conjugal behaviors, as to their morality, and as to their legality. There are some of us who take them to all be gravely immoral, but that we oughtn't make laws forbidding them, though it feels as if we are in the minority, and much more so on TOL.

Largely it seems there are two prominent and noisy camps, they are the ones who take these behaviors to be fundamentally amoral (because it's really just about love, or some other canard), and so naturally they oppose outlawing them, and then there are those who take them to be very seriously sinful and wrong and reprehensible, and that they ought to be outlawed civilly as well.

This latter group bases their political opinion on their religious belief. This contravenes our constitution.

I suppose there are also those who do not take LGBTQI+ conjugal behavior as immoral for whatever reason, but who insist they should be civilly outlawed anyway, based on measured deleterious effects upon the health of those who do such things, but I think they are an even tinier minority than those of us who take these behaviors to be gravely immoral, but who think that laws against them are not well founded laws /they are Unconstitutional.

And incidentally perhaps, laws forbidding adultery make spouses into slaves in a way. We would be under such laws barred from making our own choice in the matter, as slaves are barred by their masters from being free people. Part of the evolution of laws in the US over the centuries is about dismantling vestiges of slavery that existed when our nation was founded, even while it was multiple distinct colonies.

While laws forbidding adultery and LGBTQI+ conjugal relations were not categorized then as parallel to laws permitting human slavery and trafficking, it appears to have been a case of being overwhelmed by the institution of southern slavery that blinded them from all the other laws that resembled laws permitting slavery. Repealing /nullifying those laws are part of the dismantling of the institution of slavery. Many of our changing laws have been about repealing slavery completely.

When Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death," he expressed what I'm talking about. The freedom from being enslaved, from being murdered, from being raped, they are all different facets of the one right we all possess inalienably. The right to religious liberty is one of those facets too, and yes, that does mean the right to commit adultery, and to practice LGBTQI+ conjugal relations; but see my Mencken quote below before responding here.

It is a precarious balance. Our laws do (whether or not they 'should') reflect what is a common value, else they'd never be changed. The 'never change' is, I think the question on the table. Jesus Christ said the laws of God were all based on love of man and love of God. If we could base common law more on love than expediency, there would be a lot of crossover (why I think Jacob's thread here isn't just theological discussion).

The Enlightenment period is granted by historians to have given birth to the notion of rights. This notion arose through conflict with power, power and rights being offset by one another. Power is government, police, military, basically anyone who can force, coerce, compel, etc. people to do and not do things. The right to religious liberty /of the pursuit of happiness, stands against power. We want to believe in the right to religious liberty, but sometimes we have to hold our nose when making laws, in order to hold the right of religious liberty as sacred.

(It irks me whenever I hear an elected official talk about how their branch or bureau of government has a /the "right" to do such-and-such. Government is power, government power must be limited, government does not possess rights. I worry about people who think government has rights. It makes it sound like government is in any way victims of free people---the opposite is the only actual possibility; and it's a possibility that has been and still is all too frequently realized.)

But it was really the Church who should be credited with discovering human rights imo, and my evidence there is because of a brief mention of rights in a letter written by Bishop Polycarp in the early 2nd century, the era immediately following the Apostolic era. Polycarp all the way back then counselled Christians to respect the rights of everybody. He was, afaik, the first person to ever recognize that people possess inalienable rights, that did then, have since, and always will, stand up to and against power.

It already did once, under the war of the states. We just changed the word murder for 'war' or 'justified, but it was still one American killing another American. War crimes during were prosecuted. Had the other side one, it'd have gone another way. It very much can happen again, especially if we continue partisan interest that divide us more than unite us. The Second Civil War sends a shiver down my spine.

Your argument then is against all war. Just because, due to how it turned out, the Civil War had "one American killing another American," the South had formally seceded from the US, and they were another nation. If the South had prevailed, then it wouldn't have been "one American killing another American." The outcome of the conflict determines that it was "one American killing another American," but if the outcome had been different, it wouldn't be the story.

The Civil War was a war for the Constitution. The South seceded because it no longer recognized the Constitution. And President Lincoln waged the war because he believed that secession was illegal under the Constitution. Although he did suspend 'habeas corpus,' so . . . . :idunno:

Not true. NC? L.A. Riots? Yes they were wrong, but many murders went unprosecuted. Perhaps they were murderers, perhaps they were not, but suspended their scruples. Either way, such allowed murders to happen and provided the means for them to go w/o the law.

I'm leery of this. Are you saying that police were aware of who the murderers were, and deliberately chose to not prosecute them? My suspicion is that murderers in such chaos were able to avoid detection, which is obviously a different thing from "many murders went unprosecuted" deliberately.

I've been alive long enough to see men jailed for abuse of family, and men who would have gone to jail for adultery go free. I never envisioned this happening either....but it did. I can't take great comfort on your lone assurance here.

Try to take assurance then in the fact that Martin Luther was condemned to the death penalty for being excommunicated by the Catholic Church. Only a friend of his stood between his murder, for exercising his inalienable right to religious liberty, and him surviving to preside over one major limb of the Protestant Reformation. The laws permitting power to murder people for practicing their religious liberty, including the laws that permitted John Calvin to authorize the murder of Michael Servetus, for practicing his own religious liberty, in denying the Trinity, were all illegal under our constitution, and all violated the inalienable right to religious liberty.

Voiding /repealing /nullifying such laws are a score for the good guys, for rights against power. And vanquishing laws against LGBTQI+ conjugal behaviors and against adultery are in the same category as eliminating laws that permitted the murders of Martin Luther and of Michael Servetus.

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." Mencken

I find it good to keep in mind the above.

Somehow, some way, people are killing one another in Muslim countries where Christians are put to death legally, by run-of-the-mill, regular ol' everyday muslims, wherever they are in charge. I cannot fathom that, yet it is happening. I can't have my head in the sand. One in every third act of terrorism in America is from a Muslim, many 'homegrown' Muslims at that. It means we vet our own cut throats. To me? Insane. We are in a sense, already vetting, thus condoning murder/murderers without a care in the world. It horrifies me. The relationship then, is that these are all things I never thought I was going to see happen, yet they are indeed happening (only connection at this point).

Those are literally examples of the right to religious liberty not being recognized, affirmed, or protected. The right to not be murdered equals the right to religious liberty (among others), which is just reiteration of my contention that we all possess just the one right, variously formulated /expressed as the right to not be murdered, the right to not be enslaved, the right to not be raped, the right to religious liberty, the right to bear arms, the right to self defense, the right to free speech and to free peaceful assembly, etc.

Not the point. The point rather, that BOTH common and God's law rule and there is a precedent for it in our country's history. It was not a bad thing, therefore we should rethink 'just because it is JudeoChristian does NOT mean it is to be done away with. It is mutually beneficial to all people by historical reckoning. No bad thing that.

Anybody can validly argue that LGBTQI+ conjugal behaviors should be outlawed, so long as the grounds for such arguments are in no way religious or invoke God (basically the same thing). The main way I've seen, are the ones based on confirmed negative health effects of those who practice such things. And wrt common law, recall that English common law evolved from within a period when England was establishing the Church of England, which is specifically proscribed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. It was Unconstitutional to enforce such laws back then, which is only something that we all know now, because of the Supreme Court obeying the Constitution in condemning such laws as Unconstitutional.

 

[Gary K]

For starters, lots of people are simply homosexual and it's not a "choice" or born out of confusion or some such so what do you propose then? That they should return to the closet and live a lie? Some marriages fail whether adultery is part of the equation or not. Sometimes it's worse for the children when a marriage is beyond repair and the parents stay together. Ideal? No, of course not but not all relationships work out for varying reasons. "Executing" people for being gay etc isn't loving or caring, it would just be religious tyranny run amok. One reason for having separation of church and state...

And you ignore all the suffering, pain, and agony that result from from sin and say God requiring death as the punishment is mean. God knows far more about all the implications of sin than we do. He knows, absolutely, what holiness and righteousness are and what the results of them are in a person's life and in human society. He also knows, perfectly, what the consequences of sin are. He has seen it every day for more than 6000 years here on earth, and also in heaven before Lucifer and the angels that followed him were driven out. And we feeble human beings who live only a few decades, and have brains that are damaged as consequences of sin, think we know more than God? I can only shake my head in amazement at that.

To you and I sin is normal. It is all we know. We've never lived where no sin exists and as a result cannot really understand what a society without sin would look like. It's beyond our ken for it is outside the paradigm in which we have lived our entire existence and from everything we read from human history. God gave the rules He did because of His complete knowledge of human nature and the nature of sin, and because He knows what a perfect society really looks like.

Sin is self-destructiveness, pure and simple. Think about what the Bible says is sin, and then try to find one of those sins that is not harmful to humanity as a whole, and to the person practicing that sin. You will not be able to find one. The parallel I see in humanity is addiction. All addictions are self-destructive. Not a single one escapes that truth. And all addictions are, at their root, pure selfishness. As someone who spent many years in active addiction I can recognize that fact in my own life. My addiction had at its roots my own obsession with myself. And from my years in NA I recognize that my life history is mirrored in all other addicts. I've heard too many stories of addiction to doubt this fact. The first NA meeting I ever went to taught me this. I had always thought I was alone in the world. I had no idea anyone else had experienced the things I had, yet when I heard the stories other told it was like hearing my own story told out of the mouths of people whom I had neither seen nor met.

You just need to expand your thinking and expand your horizons for they are too cramped to really understand the implications of sin.

 

[Idolater]

For starters, lots of people are simply homosexual and it's not a "choice" or born out of confusion or some such so what do you propose then? That they should return to the closet and live a lie? Some marriages fail whether adultery is part of the equation or not. Sometimes it's worse for the children when a marriage is beyond repair and the parents stay together. Ideal? No, of course not but not all relationships work out for varying reasons. "Executing" people for being gay etc isn't loving or caring, it would just be religious tyranny run amok. One reason for having separation of church and state...

Catholics have valid reasons for their view on LGBTQI+ conjugal behaviors, but they are religious in nature, and making laws against them based on religious grounds is Unconstitutional objectively, but more importantly, violates our inalienable right to not be enslaved by the religiously grounded views of others.

If you feed something, it will grow, and if you don't want that something to grow, stop feeding it, and it will not grow.

That's basically Catholicism on the moral matter of all things 'fornication,' which includes LGBTQI+ conjugal relations, and adultery, but also all conjugal relations between anyone other than licitly wed spouses, and conjugal behaviors between licitly wed spouses that do not support procreation. If you don't feed it, it will not grow. 'Feeding it' is what the Church calls 'lust,' and lust is the antonym of chastity, which the Church supports, teaches, and approves for all; whether afflicted with LGBTQI+ tendencies or not. If someone's 'it' feeds on LGBTQI+ 'feed' instead of heterosexual 'feed,' that's really not the point.

 

[Arthur Brain]

And you ignore all the suffering, pain, and agony that result from from sin and say God requiring death as the punishment is mean. God knows far more about all the implications of sin than we do. He knows, absolutely, what holiness and righteousness are and what the results of them are in a person's life and in human society. He also knows, perfectly, what the consequences of sin are. He has seen it every day for more than 6000 years here on earth, and also in heaven before Lucifer and the angels that followed him were driven out. And we feeble human beings who live only a few decades, and have brains that are damaged as consequences of sin, think we know more than God? I can only shake my head in amazement at that.

To you and I sin is normal. It is all we know. We've never lived where no sin exists and as a result cannot really understand what a society without sin would look like. It's beyond our ken for it is outside the paradigm in which we have lived our entire existence and from everything we read from human history. God gave the rules He did because of His complete knowledge of human nature and the nature of sin, and because He knows what a perfect society really looks like.

Sin is self-destructiveness, pure and simple. Think about what the Bible says is sin, and then try to find one of those sins that is not harmful to humanity as a whole, and to the person practicing that sin. You will not be able to find one. The parallel I see in humanity is addiction. All addictions are self-destructive. Not a single one escapes that truth. And all addictions are, at their root, pure selfishness. As someone who spent many years in active addiction I can recognize that fact in my own life. My addiction had at its roots my own obsession with myself. And from my years in NA I recognize that my life history is mirrored in all other addicts. I've heard too many stories of addiction to doubt this fact. The first NA meeting I ever went to taught me this. I had always thought I was alone in the world. I had no idea anyone else had experienced the things I had, yet when I heard the stories other told it was like hearing my own story told out of the mouths of people whom I had neither seen nor met.

You just need to expand your thinking and expand your horizons for they are too cramped to really understand the implications of sin.

I'm not ignoring anything. I'm saying to you that bringing in barbaric punishments such as stoning or throwing people of cliffs for simply being homosexual or guilty of infidelity is in no way loving or caring. The hardcore Christian zealots who propose such things are little removed from the extremists of Islam who extol the exact same things. Religious extremism of any stripe does not have love or care at its core, the very opposite.

 

[Gary K]

This latter group bases their political opinion on their religious belief. This contravenes our constitution.

This is a fallacy. The men who wrote the Constitution relied on their religious beliefs when they wrote it. I can give you page after page of quotes from men such as Washington, Franklin, Monroe, Madison, John and Samuel Adams, and a bunch of others that said without religious morality this nation would collapse and become tyrrany.


Some of the following links will have some of the same quotes, but there are many quotes that are not repeats in these links. And this is only a small portion of the number of things the founding fathers had to say about the importance of religion and morality in the prosperity and happiness of any nation.

https://www.learnreligions.com/christian-quotes-of-the-founding-fathers-700789

https://irbi2076.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/quotes-on-liberty-and-virtue-by-our-founding-fathers/

http://www.free2pray.info/6-founderquotes.html

http://allianceforreligiousfreedom....tance-of-morality-and-religion-in-government/

http://www.foundingfatherquotes.com/category/morality

Here is a quote from someone who was one of the greatest political minds to ever live.

“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.” Alexis de Toqueville

 

[Gary K]

I'm not ignoring anything. I'm saying to you that bringing in barbaric punishments such as stoning or throwing people of cliffs for simply being homosexual or guilty of infidelity is in no way loving or caring. The hardcore Christian zealots who propose such things are little removed from the extremists of Islam who extol the exact same things. Religious extremism of any stripe does not have love or care at its core, the very opposite.

So allowing behavior that causes so much suffering, pain and misery that is impossible to quantify it is loving. Yeah, right. Your definition of love is seriously impaired. You've just claimed that hurting your fellow man is love.

 

[Arthur Brain]

So allowing behavior that causes so much suffering, pain and misery that is impossible to quantify it is loving. Yeah, right. Your definition of love is seriously impaired. You've just claimed that hurting your fellow man is love.

No, I didn't. If you think it's loving to stone people to death or shove them over a cliff for having homosexual relations or infidelity then that's your prerogative but it isn't one that even most Christians share let alone the 'secular world'. There's people on here who would admit to being willing to participate in both so that does that strike you as "loving"?

 

[ok doser]

This is a fallacy. The men who wrote the Constitution relied on their religious beliefs when they wrote it. I can give you page after page of quotes from men such as Washington, Franklin, Monroe, Madison, John and Samuel Adams, and a bunch of others that said without religious morality this nation would collapse and become tyrrany.


Some of the following links will have some of the same quotes, but there are many quotes that are not repeats in these links. And this is only a small portion of the number of things the founding fathers had to say about the importance of religion and morality in the prosperity and happiness of any nation.

https://www.learnreligions.com/christian-quotes-of-the-founding-fathers-700789

https://irbi2076.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/quotes-on-liberty-and-virtue-by-our-founding-fathers/

http://www.free2pray.info/6-founderquotes.html

http://allianceforreligiousfreedom....tance-of-morality-and-religion-in-government/

http://www.foundingfatherquotes.com/category/morality

Here is a quote from someone who was one of the greatest political minds to ever live.

this needs to be promoted more often in these discussions :thumb:

 

[ok doser]

I'm not ignoring anything. I'm saying to you that bringing in barbaric punishments such as stoning or throwing people of cliffs...

would you be less squeamish if we were proposing that they be executed in other ways?

... for simply being homosexual or guilty of infidelity is in no way loving or caring.

you're wrong there, as wrong as you could possibly be

to your eyes, we may seem unloving and uncaring to the sexual pervert

i know that our position isn't, and i also know from previous experience the folly of trying to explain it to you

so let's set aside consideration of the miserable pervert who faces execution in a just system of law

lets consider society as a whole

executing the wicked before they can spread their wickedness to others, before they can contaminate our communities, before they can warp our children is the ultimate expression of "caring" and "loving"

 

[Gary K]

No, I didn't. If you think it's loving to stone people to death or shove them over a cliff for having homosexual relations or infidelity then that's your prerogative but it isn't one that even most Christians share let alone the 'secular world'. There's people on here who would admit to being willing to participate in both so that does that strike you as "loving"?

Does advocating for behaviors that have caused untold levels of suffering on planet earth sound loving to you? I say, punish the behaviors that harm others that people indulge in and the levels of pain, suffering and agony in this world will be reduced. And you say that is unloving.

It doesn't matter how many people think these behaviors are OK. It only matters how much harm they cause to those around the people who engage in them. And every one of the behaviors I listed have harmed billions of people down through the centuries. The way I see it those who continually and unrepentantly practice behaviors which harm others forfeit their rights to live among those who do not. All law and punishment is based upon that idea. That you think that is "mean" says that you reject justice.

 

[Arthur Brain]

Does advocating for behaviors that have caused untold levels of suffering on planet earth sound loving to you? I say, punish the behaviors that harm others that people indulge in and the levels of pain, suffering and agony in this world will be reduced. And you say that is unloving.

It doesn't matter how many people think these behaviors are OK. It only matters how much harm they cause to those around the people who engage in them. And every one of the behaviors I listed have harmed billions of people down through the centuries. The way I see it those who continually and unrepentantly practice behaviors which harm others forfeit their rights to live among those who do not. All law and punishment is based upon that idea. That you think that is "mean" says that you reject justice.

For starters I'm not "advocating" for behaviours. I don't condone adultery just because I don't think adulterers should be stoned to death or shoved off cliffs. Homosexuality isn't a behaviour. Some people happen to be gay, end of. Do you think it's loving to prevent people from having relations and force them into a closet or force them into "conversion therapy"? Any idea how much misery and suffering it's caused to those who were the victims of stuff like that? How many suicides because they weren't allowed to live free in society?

 

[Jacob]

For starters I'm not "advocating" for behaviours. I don't condone adultery just because I don't think adulterers should be stoned to death or shoved off cliffs. Homosexuality isn't a behaviour. Some people happen to be gay, end of. Do you think it's loving to prevent people from having relations and force them into a closet or force them into "conversion therapy"? Any idea how much misery and suffering it's caused to those who were the victims of stuff like that? How many suicides because they weren't allowed to live free in society?

How does a sinner get better so that they sin less, saved or not?

 

[ok doser]

For starters I'm not "advocating" for behaviours. I don't condone adultery just because I don't think adulterers should be stoned to death or shoved off cliffs.

do you think adultery should be criminalized?

Homosexuality isn't a behaviour.

the behavior is the only aspect that matters

Some people happen to be gay, end of.

you're wrong, end of

Do you think it's loving to prevent people from having relations and force them into a closet or force them into "conversion therapy"? Any idea how much misery and suffering it's caused to those who were the victims of stuff like that? How many suicides because they weren't allowed to live free in society?

and we come back to your argument that can be used to push for societally acceptable pedophilia :sigh:

 

[ok doser]

Religious extremism of any stripe does not have love or care at its core, the very opposite.

Jesus was a religious extremist

 

[Jacob]

Should adultery be criminalized? What is meant by criminalized? Adultery is against the Law.

 

[ok doser]

And you ignore all the suffering, pain, and agony that result from from sin and say God requiring death as the punishment is mean. God knows far more about all the implications of sin than we do. He knows, absolutely, what holiness and righteousness are and what the results of them are in a person's life and in human society. He also knows, perfectly, what the consequences of sin are. He has seen it every day for more than 6000 years here on earth...

can you imagine His thoughts when He saw the first man having sex with another man?

"After all of My design work to perfect the functioning human body, and this is what they choose to do with it? :doh:

Retards. I made retards. :nono: "

Sin is self-destructiveness, pure and simple. Think about what the Bible says is sin, and then try to find one of those sins that is not harmful to humanity as a whole, and to the person practicing that sin.

self-destructiveness rooted in narcissism and selfishness

 

[ok doser]

Should adultery be criminalized? What is meant by criminalized? Adultery is against the Law.

not in most states

from wiki: As of 2019, adultery remains a criminal offense in 19 states, but prosecutions are rare.


and not in any european country

 

[Gary K]

Should adultery be criminalized? What is meant by criminalized? Adultery is against the Law.

Jacob, to take actions that are against the law is to commit a crime. Do you realize that for more than 100 years adultery was prosecuted as a crime and many states still have those laws on the books?

 

[Jacob]

not in most states

from wiki: As of 2019, adultery remains a criminal offense in 19 states, but prosecutions are rare.


and not in any european country

I could know at least a state maybe? But I am thinking of the nation or country. We do have that law here.