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GodisLove73
Guest
Good point about Solomon, but I was just using him an example. The OT also says if a man rapes a woman, they have to marry. Most marriages were also arranged.
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bzkoss236
Guest
Even if that were true, it doesn’t change the fact that it is against Natural Law and how God designed human sexuality. And it doesn’t change the fact that the Church has the truth and God doesn’t change and morality doesn’t change. If it was condemned in the OT, it is always condemned (if it is moral law, I’m not talking about the Law of Moses).Romans 1:26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 do not condemn Homosexual acts between two loving individuals. The original translation of 1 Corinthians does not say Homosexuals. The word didn’t even exist. He used the word “effeminate” translated into meaning soft, and without resolve. Romans doesn’t condemn those men and women for Homosexuality, it condemns the for having sex not for love, but for lust.
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GodisLove73
Guest
By the way, my Church says that Homosexuality is an inherent characteristic and that nothing is wrong with it. It’s the acts they condemn, based on an ignorant view of scripture.
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GodisLove73
Guest
But what is the difference between commiting Homosexual acts and eating pork or shrimp. Both are punishable by death. Why aren’t you stoning people? Because it’s the New Covenant we follow. You are cherry picking one part and saying it’s true. Then ignoring the rest.
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GodisLove73
Guest
And, for the last time, it isn’t against Natural Law. Science has already proved that. And the Church agrees with science on everything, including evolution and the Big Bang, except this. Why? Because of prejudiced people within the Church.
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bzkoss236
Guest
Homosexuality is disordered, but not inherently sinful. Homosexual acts are sinful.By the way, my Church says that Homosexuality is an inherent characteristic and that nothing is wrong with it. It’s the acts they condemn, based on an ignorant view of scripture.
Stoning was a just punishment for the time, but not today. Now in the new covenant the punishment is worse, spiritual death.
Eating unclean meat wasn’t immoral, but not eating it was part of the old covenant law. It was clearly fulfilled in Christ on the New Covenant.
The new testament also mentions about men who gave up a desire for women and gave themselves over to lust for other men, and that it is an act worthy of death (I forget the exact verse and can’t look it up because I need to get to bed). Lust is any disordered sexuality, not just sex without love.
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bzkoss236
Guest
Just because it happens in nature doesn’t mean it isn’t against natural law. Humans are bound by different rules than animals. Humans are held to a higher standard.And, for the last time, it isn’t against Natural Law. Science has already proved that. And the Church agrees with science on everything, including evolution and the Big Bang, except this. Why? Because of prejudiced people within the Church.
I can tell there is nothing I can do to persuade you to give up your sin and follow the whole truth of Christ that is found only within the true Holy Catholic Church. I will pray for you.
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GodisLove73
Guest
I didn’t mean animals. Science has proved that is perfectly natural for certain humans to engage in same-sex relationship. Including sexual ones.
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AmbroseSJ
Guest
No one here can judge you. You are or should be trying to come to know and love God through His Church.I love all of you, but I simply can’t agree with your interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures. The biblical “arguments” against Homosexuality are only found in the Old Testament, specifically Leviticus and Deutoronomy. Tell me, do any of you abstain from the eating of shrimp or pork? Or do you condemn those who commit adultery or work on the Sabbath to death by stoning? No, of course not. And yes, I know what the Church says in regards to Homosexuality, but you have to admit that the Church has been wrong before. Blessed Pope John Paul II actually had to submit public apologies for the Church’s past sins (i.e. anti-Semitism, the persecution of Galileo, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, &c.). Does this mean that the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is a sinner? No. The Church is holy, but the people in it are imperfect sinners, including the Pope (which he admits). Corrupt and sinful HUMANS within the Church have let their biases and prejudices influence their reading of Scripture. And about Sodom and Gomorrah. Where in the Bible does it claim that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for Homosexuality? There is no place where the Sacred Scripture claims this. The prophet Ezekiel said (to the affect) that “your sister Sodom” was destroyed for sexual sins such as adultery and incest, not Homosexual acts. Secondly, that isn’t even the worst thing the prophet Ezekiel said Sodom was destroyed for. He said the worst thing they did was "they did not give a hand to the poor and needy.
I am in a loving relationship with my husband Shyree. We are both devout Christians and Catholics. He is my soulmate. And we firmly believe that God is in the centre of our marriage, just like in any marriage between two loving individuals. I cannot accept that the God in whose image and likeness we are created would create me a gay man and then expect me to live a lonely, loveless life just because of who I am. Our Catechism clearly states that LGBTQ people should be given, as is our and everyone elses right as children of the Lord God, the utmost Respect, Compassion, Sensitivity and LOVE. Alot of good and devout Catholics support of groups such as Equally Blessed, DignityUSA, or New Ways Ministry. My Church already supports gays and lesbians with love, why not go one step further, and let us be who we are?
God bless all of you! Amen.
I believe the Catholic Church is pretty clear on what it teaches. Let those who can, accept those teachings.
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dronald
Guest
Men committing shameless acts with men doesn’t mean homosexual sex is wrong?Romans 1:26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 do not condemn Homosexual acts between two loving individuals. The original translation of 1 Corinthians does not say Homosexuals. The word didn’t even exist. He used the word “effeminate” translated into meaning soft, and without resolve. Romans doesn’t condemn those men and women for Homosexuality, it condemns the for having sex not for love, but for lust.
Also 1 corin 6:9 according to my study Bible: “{ The two Greek terms translated by this phrase refer to the passive and active partners in consensual homosexual acts }”
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MarcoPolo
Guest
Science is incapable of “proving” the “morality” of anything. Nature actually demonstrates the impotency of two incompatible bodies, whose very design attest to their proper order with the opposite gender. One must recognize the very creation of the two genders and their complementarity. To suggest homosexual behavior is “natural” is to suggest that a person’s soul rejects one’s own body, that the two facets of a person are alien to each other. That is not a natural argument.I didn’t mean animals. Science has proved that is perfectly natural for certain humans to engage in same-sex relationship. Including sexual ones.
As to what is the difference between eating pork and homosexual behavior, it is because the former is a ritual matter and the latter a moral matter. Moral matters transcend ritual environments. See Why We Are Not Bound by Everything in the Old Law by Jim Blackburn. The article addresses your specific concerns regarding homosexual morality and the Old Testament.
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TimothyH
Guest
The Bible does not say that you can marry 700 women. Exactly the opposite is true.The Bible also says you can marry 700 women, as King Solomon did. What’s your point?
Solomon was told by God not to marry many wives but he did anyway and they were his downfall.
-Tim-
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GodisLove73
Guest
By Daniel A. Helminiak
President Barack Obama’s support of same-sex marriage, like blood in the water, has conservative sharks circling for a kill. In a nation that touts separation of religion and government, religious-based arguments command this battle. Lurking beneath anti-gay forays, you inevitably find religion and, above all, the Bible.
We now face religious jingoism, the imposition of personal beliefs on the whole pluralistic society. Worse still, these beliefs are irrational, just a fiction of blind conviction. Nowhere does the Bible actually oppose homosexuality.
In the past 60 years, we have learned more about sex, by far, than in preceding millennia. Is it likely that an ancient people, who thought the male was the basic biological model and the world flat, understood homosexuality as we do today? Could they have even addressed the questions about homosexuality that we grapple with today? Of course not.
Hard evidence supports this commonsensical expectation. Taken on its own terms, read in the original languages, placed back into its historical context, the Bible is ho-hum on homosexuality, unless – as with heterosexuality – injustice and abuse are involved.
That, in fact, was the case among the Sodomites (Genesis 19), whose experience is frequently cited by modern anti-gay critics. The Sodomites wanted to rape the visitors whom Lot, the one just man in the city, welcomed in hospitality for the night.
The Bible itself is lucid on the sin of Sodom: pride, lack of concern for the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:48-49); hatred of strangers and cruelty to guests (Wisdom 19:13); arrogance (Sirach/Ecclesiaticus 16:8); evildoing, injustice, oppression of the widow and orphan (Isaiah 1:17); adultery (in those days, the use of another man’s property), and lying (Jeremiah 23:12).
But nowhere are same-sex acts named as the sin of Sodom. That intended gang rape only expressed the greater sin, condemned in the Bible from cover to cover: hatred, injustice, cruelty, lack of concern for others. Hence, Jesus says “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 19:19; Mark 12:31); and “By this will they know you are my disciples” (John 13:35).
How inverted these values have become! In the name of Jesus, evangelicals and Catholic bishops make sex the Christian litmus test and are willing to sacrifice the social safety net in return.
The longest biblical passage on male-male sex is Romans 1:26-27: “Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another.”
The Greek term para physin has been translated unnatural; it should read atypical or unusual. In the technical sense, yes, the Stoic philosophers did use para physin to mean unnatural, but this term also had a widespread popular meaning. It is this latter meaning that informs Paul’s writing. It carries no ethical condemnation.
Compare the passage on male-male sex to Romans 11:24. There, Paul applies the term para physin to God. God grafted the Gentiles into the Jewish people, a wild branch into a cultivated vine. Not your standard practice! An unusual thing to do — atypical, nothing more. The anti-gay “unnatural” hullabaloo rests on a mistranslation.
Besides, Paul used two other words to describe male-male sex: dishonorable (1:24, 26) and unseemly (1:27). But for Paul, neither carried ethical weight. In 2 Corinthians 6:8 and 11:21, Paul says that even he was held in dishonor —for preaching Christ. Clearly, these words merely indicate social disrepute, not truly unethical behavior.
In this passage Paul is referring to the ancient Jewish Law: Leviticus 18:22, the “abomination” of a man’s lying with another man. Paul sees male-male sex as an impurity, a taboo, uncleanness — in other words, “abomination.” Introducing this discussion in 1:24, he says so outright: “God gave them up … to impurity.”
But Jesus taught lucidly that Jewish requirements for purity — varied cultural traditions — do not matter before God. What matters is purity of heart.
“It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles,” reads Matthew 15. “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”
Or again, Jesus taught, “Everyone who looks at a women with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Jesus rejected the purity requirements of the Jewish Law.
In calling it unclean, Paul was not condemning male-male sex. He had terms to express condemnation. Before and after his section on sex, he used truly condemnatory terms: godless, evil, wicked or unjust, not to be done. But he never used ethical terms around that issue of sex.
As for marriage, again, the Bible is more liberal than we hear today. The Jewish patriarchs had many wives and concubines. David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, and Daniel and the palace master were probably lovers.
The Bible’s Song of Songs is a paean to romantic love with no mention of children or a married couple. Jesus never mentioned same-sex behaviors, although he did heal the “servant” —pais, a Greek term for male lover — of the Roman Centurion.
Paul discouraged marriage because he believed the world would soon end. Still, he encouraged people with sexual needs to marry, and he never linked sex and procreation.
Were God-given reason to prevail, rather than knee-jerk religion, we would not be having a heated debate over gay marriage. “Liberty and justice for all,” marvel at the diversity of creation, welcome for one another: these, alas, are true biblical values.
President Barack Obama’s support of same-sex marriage, like blood in the water, has conservative sharks circling for a kill. In a nation that touts separation of religion and government, religious-based arguments command this battle. Lurking beneath anti-gay forays, you inevitably find religion and, above all, the Bible.
We now face religious jingoism, the imposition of personal beliefs on the whole pluralistic society. Worse still, these beliefs are irrational, just a fiction of blind conviction. Nowhere does the Bible actually oppose homosexuality.
In the past 60 years, we have learned more about sex, by far, than in preceding millennia. Is it likely that an ancient people, who thought the male was the basic biological model and the world flat, understood homosexuality as we do today? Could they have even addressed the questions about homosexuality that we grapple with today? Of course not.
Hard evidence supports this commonsensical expectation. Taken on its own terms, read in the original languages, placed back into its historical context, the Bible is ho-hum on homosexuality, unless – as with heterosexuality – injustice and abuse are involved.
That, in fact, was the case among the Sodomites (Genesis 19), whose experience is frequently cited by modern anti-gay critics. The Sodomites wanted to rape the visitors whom Lot, the one just man in the city, welcomed in hospitality for the night.
The Bible itself is lucid on the sin of Sodom: pride, lack of concern for the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:48-49); hatred of strangers and cruelty to guests (Wisdom 19:13); arrogance (Sirach/Ecclesiaticus 16:8); evildoing, injustice, oppression of the widow and orphan (Isaiah 1:17); adultery (in those days, the use of another man’s property), and lying (Jeremiah 23:12).
But nowhere are same-sex acts named as the sin of Sodom. That intended gang rape only expressed the greater sin, condemned in the Bible from cover to cover: hatred, injustice, cruelty, lack of concern for others. Hence, Jesus says “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 19:19; Mark 12:31); and “By this will they know you are my disciples” (John 13:35).
How inverted these values have become! In the name of Jesus, evangelicals and Catholic bishops make sex the Christian litmus test and are willing to sacrifice the social safety net in return.
The longest biblical passage on male-male sex is Romans 1:26-27: “Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another.”
The Greek term para physin has been translated unnatural; it should read atypical or unusual. In the technical sense, yes, the Stoic philosophers did use para physin to mean unnatural, but this term also had a widespread popular meaning. It is this latter meaning that informs Paul’s writing. It carries no ethical condemnation.
Compare the passage on male-male sex to Romans 11:24. There, Paul applies the term para physin to God. God grafted the Gentiles into the Jewish people, a wild branch into a cultivated vine. Not your standard practice! An unusual thing to do — atypical, nothing more. The anti-gay “unnatural” hullabaloo rests on a mistranslation.
Besides, Paul used two other words to describe male-male sex: dishonorable (1:24, 26) and unseemly (1:27). But for Paul, neither carried ethical weight. In 2 Corinthians 6:8 and 11:21, Paul says that even he was held in dishonor —for preaching Christ. Clearly, these words merely indicate social disrepute, not truly unethical behavior.
In this passage Paul is referring to the ancient Jewish Law: Leviticus 18:22, the “abomination” of a man’s lying with another man. Paul sees male-male sex as an impurity, a taboo, uncleanness — in other words, “abomination.” Introducing this discussion in 1:24, he says so outright: “God gave them up … to impurity.”
But Jesus taught lucidly that Jewish requirements for purity — varied cultural traditions — do not matter before God. What matters is purity of heart.
“It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles,” reads Matthew 15. “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”
Or again, Jesus taught, “Everyone who looks at a women with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Jesus rejected the purity requirements of the Jewish Law.
In calling it unclean, Paul was not condemning male-male sex. He had terms to express condemnation. Before and after his section on sex, he used truly condemnatory terms: godless, evil, wicked or unjust, not to be done. But he never used ethical terms around that issue of sex.
As for marriage, again, the Bible is more liberal than we hear today. The Jewish patriarchs had many wives and concubines. David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, and Daniel and the palace master were probably lovers.
The Bible’s Song of Songs is a paean to romantic love with no mention of children or a married couple. Jesus never mentioned same-sex behaviors, although he did heal the “servant” —pais, a Greek term for male lover — of the Roman Centurion.
Paul discouraged marriage because he believed the world would soon end. Still, he encouraged people with sexual needs to marry, and he never linked sex and procreation.
Were God-given reason to prevail, rather than knee-jerk religion, we would not be having a heated debate over gay marriage. “Liberty and justice for all,” marvel at the diversity of creation, welcome for one another: these, alas, are true biblical values.
M
mikekle
Guest
All this makes me wonder what in the world God is waiting for to destroy one of the corrupt cities in todays world!!?? Anyone know how long he waited before finally destroying Sodom and Gomorrah?Not surprising that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah are not on their banner.
Perhaps someone should construct another email banner with all the verses that preach against sex acts of same sex attracted persons.
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GodisLove73
Guest
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