GeoTheo

Q:How could homosexuality be both still immoral and no longer requiring the death penalty?
A:Societal and cultural evolution.

Individual rights and freedom are at an all time high in western civilization in this day and age.
Would it be accurate to assume that this was always the case with mankind?
A lot of skeptics are very fond contrasting OT law to cultural norms of today. Obviously it looks brutal in many cases. I have yet to see skeptics compare and contrast the ancient jewish legal system with that of the surrounding cultures.
I think it would be more accurate to judge the Old Testament in that Light. Humankind was genrally more brutal altogether back then. Devine law served it's purpose and had it's place.
It could not make anyone a righteous person however. Can we agree on this? Can fear of the death penalty really make one a moral person?
The answer is no.
Jesus said basically that same thing over and over. Love is superior to the Law.
In the story of the Good Samaritan people do not realize that the Rabbi and the Levite were actually obeying jewish law by avoiding the dying man. If he were to die they would be ceremonially defiled. That illustrates it's inadequacy to make people good.
It is not inconsistent with Christianity to no longer adhere to the OT law, indeed it would be grieviously wrong to do otherwise. Jesus said that.
He said you do not put New Wine into Old bottles.

dk

The prevalence of AIDs in gay communities changed the treatment of gays by the greater society, at least to make multi-drug antiviral treatment available (a very good thing). But on the downside, gay culture empowered by the pandemic now promotes and protects promiscuous risky sex as a liberty and privacy right under law. The political process has hamstrung health services, and puts the whole society at risk.

dk

Surely you have some sources to back up the allegation. When an issue becomes political, it is subjected to a political process. Gays leaders brought their grievances into the political forum, not Christians. I’m not going to let you skirt the moral issues. Gay Culture and Gay Leaders have used Civil Rights to enshrine promiscuous sex as a personal liberty. In doing so they have made themselves disproportionate victims of the AIDs pandemic and a deadly threat to the greater society, a virtual breeding ground for MDR microbes. Since multi-drug antiretroviral therapies have become readily available gay culture reopened the bath houses, sex shops and other venues that promote promiscuous sex. That’s the moral issue you don’t want to address.

Autonemesis

Well, straight culture should get used to carrying that burden because "Lord knows" (pardon the expression) gay culture carries a huge amount of burden for straight culture. Gay culture subsidizes a lot of straight culture mainstays like education and child welfare. Gay culture pays income taxes at a higher rate overall than straight culture does, because of the favorable treatment straight culture gets from the tax code. Yet when gay culture tries to get some services back from the straight culture-dominated government, in incrementally closer proportion to their contribution, what happens? Straight culture gets their knickers in a twist, crying that gay culture is burdening the system, implying that the system - meaning straight culture - is more important than gay culture, especially when gay culture gets uppity and thinks its entitled to something for its money. And straight culture wonders why gay culture is more than a little miffed?

dk

I'm not arguing that gay culture burdens the system, but that gay culture burdens gays, and threatens the greater society in the short term. Up until the 1950s people lived in fear of contagious diseases. In the long run I suspect the study of retroviruses like AIDs will pay huge dividends to the greater society, perhaps even a cure for cancer. In the short term should medical science loose the race against MDR microbes then contagious disease could wipe out a few billion people in a few score of years. The real question is can science and technology free people from the regulations and disciplines of classical morality, or does technology merely white wash a more profound threat. As I examine the blooded 20th Century and the demise of the family unit it appears technology and science are a rationalization for broken promises, decadence and illegitimate suffering.

MrDarwin

Protecting an individual's right to choose who to have sex with is something that is not limited to gay activists. If anything, the "sexual revolution" began with heterosexuals. Sorry to break the news to you, but this is a trend that our society is not likely to be reversing in the near future.

And I've got more news for you, promiscuous risky sex is a characteristic of men, not just gay men. (Who do you think keeps all those prostitutes in business?) It's simply more prevalent among gay men because their prospective partners are also gay men. And even while fighting for gay rights, gay activists have been trying very hard to educate our community about the dangers of "promiscuous risky sex". Unfortunately, there are lots of kids who are out on their own for the first time, and aren't always inclined to listen to their elders (sound familiar?).

Now, just what do you propose? That the government regulate who we associate with, and how? Because I'm still not clear on what significance you think HIV and AIDS have with regard to how gay people are treated under the law.

(edited for typo)

[ September 12, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

dk

dk: I’m not sure what you mean by the near future, but the Sexual Revolution over the last 40 years has ravaged the family unit across Western Civilization.
“The Moynihan Report in the mid 1960s, about 30 percent of all [black] children were born to a single mother. By the end of this period, by the mid 1990s, that was the rate for the nation as a whole. For African Americans the number was up at something like 70 percent. “
----- <a href="http://www.pbs.org/fmc/interviews/fukuyama.htm" target="_blank">Francis Fukuyama Interview </a>
. . What Moynihan did was to notice, particularly for African Americans, that perhaps the causality was the other way around. That it may have been the absence of stable families that was, in fact, the cause of poverty and the failure to transmit certain kinds of habits and social values across generations. And he suggested that perhaps the family itself ought to be addressed as an explicit issue for social policy, and not simply the economic issue of having enough jobs and opportunities.
. . Which of course set off a firestorm at the time, because he was accused of blaming the victim and not appreciating the fact that blacks had simply different kinds of families. Or [people argued] that not everybody had to live up to this ideal of a white, middle-class, two-parent family and the like. And, of course, it immediately got caught up with feminism as well, which had its own scores to settle with the traditional nuclear family and patriarchy and the like.
. . I think that one of the most remarkable intellectual changes that has taken place over this period was, in a sense, the shifting of the center of gravity of the whole social science community from denouncing Moynihan in the early '70s to largely supporting him, I think, by the early 1990s.
----- ibid
I read somewhere that the Caucasian population in Europe and North America from 1960-2000 declined from 30% to 14% of the world’s population (don’t quote me I can’t remember the source). The European birth ratio has fallen below replacement levels, and white non-Hispanic North Americans aren’t far behind. KEN PREWITT (Director, Census Bureau) said “Back in 1950, 88 percent of Americans were classified as non-Hispanic whites. The 2000 Census shows that figure at about 70 percent. And the Census Bureau projects that this so-called Anglo population will make up 53 percent by 2050.” ----- <a href="http://www.pbs.org/fmc/segments/progseg16.htm" target="_blank">Census 2000: The New Immigration, and the changing face of America</a>
If these trends continue I think it could spell the end of Western Civilization. North African Moslems are fast becoming to Europe what Mexico and Central America have been to the US for 40 years, an endless source of cheap unskilled labor to stoke the economy. How North America and Europe will react when the hard demographic facts challenge their world hegemony is anybody’s guess. But I think its fair to say many people are rethinking the practical impacts of cultural relativism, sexual liberty and Malthusian economics upon the modern secular state. Civilizations grow and prosper by solving problems, and if the sexual revolution solved one social problem then it created 10 social ills that range the across a wide spectrum, from MDR microbes to the crisis in Social Security.
dk: - Again, I agree. Gays Culture tends to be promiscuous because men tend to be promiscuous. This is hardly a revelation, but doesn’t address the health risk entailed by promiscuous sex or other social ills like teen pregnancy, abortion, unmarried mothers, absentee fathers, and unstable families. While it may sounds great to proclaim sex as a basic human liberty, the reality devalues women as sex objects, men as dogs and leaves children uncovered. Sexual promiscuity disrupts the social intercourse of society by pitting man against man, women against man, women against their own reproductive cycle, and children against their parents.
dk: - The thread asks how bible thumping Christians should feel about gays. Allow me to denote the specifics of the thread...
<ol type="1">[*] The OT and the NT are pretty specific about the Marriage covenant between a man and a woman. The Bible dogmatically teaches the Marital Act as a gold standard and covenant to consummate the sacred union of a man to a woman for the purpose of procreation. All non-marital sex is illicit (sinful).[*]Modern secular society under the dogma of cultural relativism teaches all sex between consenting partners is good, a common biological drive that greases the wheels of social intercourse with sexual intercourse therefore protected under law as a basic human liberty.[/list=a]
The question of how Christians today should feel about laws covering gays & lesbians rests on a Biblical understanding of Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God being the fulfillment of OT Law. So what does this mean?
-----
Romans 9-10 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; (snip)... and whatever other commandment their may be are summed up in this saying “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the Law.
-----
Christians accept the Mosaic Law as the Commandments of God, therefore the precepts of NT Law, as detailed in Matthew chapter 5 Sermon on the Mount Teaching about the Law verse 17, and Greatest Two Commandments Matthew 23:37-40. The fulfillment of the Law in the NT is love with the understanding that “Love does no evil to neighbor”. The AIDs statistics demonstrates the evil (harm) promiscuous sex does to gay people. Christians are obliged to love gays, even as their enemies. The precepts of OT Law serve to tutor gays in righteousness (truth), and in sickness Christians embrace gays under the Law of Love with medical research, treatment and good will. This fulfills the OT Law with love and truth. As a Christian it is a grave wrong to protect promiscuous gay lifestyles under the Law, and its hateful to withhold from gays medical services, or whatever resources can be brought to bare.

[ September 13, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

GeoTheo

Bottom line:
There is no way to prevent homosexual behavior through legislation. That doesn't mean it is right, but from the Christian perspective all kinds of sexual behavior is considerd immoral.
To be moral requires free choice not coercion.
But homosexuals have no right to have everybody condone their behavior. Thought police are wrong on both sides.

Autonemesis

When you say "greater society" you mean "straight culture," right? If it's useful to employ a term like "gay culture" then "straight culture" is also meaningful. Agreed?

Amen-Moses

How does changing "heterosexual" for "homosexual" in the above make it any less correct a statement?

Amen-Moses