dk

I agree from a Christian perspective Jesus is the fulfillment of the OT. The OT is one long list of human failures. Israel broke all of God’s Covenants (blood oaths) and all of God’s Laws from the time Cain killed Able to the crucifixion of Christ, one failure worse than the previous. Christ fulfilled the OT Covenants and Law with truth and love because human promises and law are insufficient.

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

MrDarwin

This is all very interesting but it is still avoiding the original question: should gay people be penalized? The specific question was whether Christians think that the penalties prescribed in the OT should be applied today. The consensus of Christians seems to be no, they shouldn't (although I'm still not certain what justification Christians use for disregarding some parts of OT law, while upholding others--an interesting problem, but rather irrelevant to those of us who are not Christian in the first place).

If we all agree that the OT has no relevance with regard to penalties for homosexuality, the more immediate question remains as to how gay people should be treated under the law, whether federal, state, or local. Meanwhile dk has failed to provide any compelling reasons why HIV, AIDS, or the sexual behavior of certain (or for that matter all) gay people has any relevance whatsoever with respect to the treatment of gay people in general under federal, state, or local law, any more than HIV, AIDS, or the sexual behavior of certain (or all) heterosexual men has any relevance whatsoever with respect to the treatment of heterosexual people in general under the law.

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

dk

• First, morality is coercive and serves to regulate human conduct. The outstanding question is whether human conduct is better regulated by a carrot or a stick. I agree however that human law turns people into their neighbor’s keeper, and people are better suited to freedom and liberty.
• Second, the Marital act is the Christian gold standard, but its pretty obvious most people fall short, hence contrition, penance and forgiveness and renewal are the rule . The OT regulated divorce under the law because it is a corruption; Mt 19:8 “He (Jesus) told them, ‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of the hardness of your hearts. But it was not like that from the beginning.”
• Third, Virtue requires personal accent, not morality. Morality at best tutors people in the fundamental precepts necessary to virtue.
• Forth, Freedom and liberty afford to people the exercise of power and initiative according to their own will and ability, but liberty conflicts with freedom. My liberty ends where the freedom of others begins. It is an injustice for anyone to connive from the principle of liberty a right to harm one’s neighbor, even to gratify one’s biological urges. Procreation is a right essential to human dignity, but sex devoid of love, respect and commitment fundamentally abuses liberty leaving ill will in its wake. Truth and love fundamentally do no harm.
• Fifth: Human law is a terror on its own terms, and makes me my brother’s keeper. But in a land (culture or society) where people exercise liberty to harm their neighbor, liberty is forfeit under the law and warranted by justice. Before the law Cain murdered Able, and God asked of Cain, “Where is Able?”, Cain answered, "Am I my brother's keeper?". Under the frailty of human law, “I am my brother’s keeper” woefully inadequate that I may be. It was not always so, nor does it need to be so. Whether homosexuality, prostitution, adultery, fornication, sodomy and divorce put people under the law, depends upon how much carnage people freely inflict upon one another apart from the law. Gay culture seeks protection under the law, hence submit themselves to the law. The law can’t protect people from the harm they freely visit upon themselves under the guise of love and self gratification. Even human law demands justice of good people. All gays have to do in the US is stop harming one another under the auspices of liberty and love. It is because families are ravaged by adultery, infidelity, violence, and divorce that husbands, wives and children are submitted to the terror of law. Gay culture isn’t exempt. People should know better, and do better. But the idea that the law can protect fornicators, sodomites, adulterers and child molesters from the ill will and discord their irresponsible offensive acts entail fundamentally violates every basic precept of human justice, love and truth, and turns government, police and courts into zoo keepers. I don’t want to be zoo keeper or kept in a zoo, but that’s where we are at, as a nation under the rule of law. I don't like it, you don't like it, but that's the way it is.

[ September 13, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]

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

dk

I simply meant by "greater culture", the union of people under the rule of law. Gays culture is a part of the greater culture, just like the drug culture. The gay and drug cultures are one people under the rule of law, like everyone else in the US. To be a member of gay culture a person must be a man who has sex with other men. Gay culture has evolved its own unique values, colloquialisms, rituals, language, communities and institutions. Straight culture doesn’t intersect with any particular culture. I’m not at all sure if you meant Hayseed, Hick, Wetback, Chink, Pollock, Black Irish, Nigger or Rednecks. I believe a better term would be "anti gay culture", or “anti drug culture”, the term “straight culture” tends to cover many cultures under the genuine article of bigotry.

dk

I did answer the question in the post above, and supported my answer with Biblical references, Just to be clear above I posted,


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.

The commandments of God in the OT are the precepts of NT Law.

GeoTheo

MRDarwin:
I guess I can't force you to actually examine what I have to say as regards to interpreting the OT, but I think if you actually do want to examine the issue you have to be at least a little bit open minded enough to think I at least could have a point.
So far I haven't encountered anybody in the entire internet infidels forum with that perspective. The implicit statement seems to be "Be a reconstructionist, damn it, so I can hate you!!"
So here's you're chance to be the first one to get it:
Is it that hard to figure out that the Church is not Isreal?
I mean Israel is an actual location in physical space and time. Agreed?
Also being Jewish can simultaneously describe a religion and a race of people or it can describe one or the other.
But they are kind of tied into each other.
You can't really say this about being a Christian.
Being a Christian does not automatically assign you a race or a place.
We are of many races of people and of many Nations.
The issue becomes further clouded because not all Christians have this figured out and have gotten Israel and the Church confused throughout history.
Generally people who wanted a monolithic State Church have confused this.
States have civil laws. Israel had them because it was a state. So Christians who thought they were the new version of Israel and thought they should establish the kingdom of Israel on Earth appealed to the Old Testament Law and burned witches and arrested people for not tithing or not keeping the Sabbath.
Part of the cultural mythology of this website is that a bunch of atheists got together and decided to do away with this and created a secular society. The Church was then believed to have gone whimpering off into a corner with it's tale between it's legs. People with this view believe all Christians, If they were really honest, would admit they would like to establish a theocracy again, but they can't because they are no longer calling the shots.
This may be true for some. But groups of Christians decided that Israel and the Church were seperate entities and this preceded the concept of secular society as is enjoyed in the US.
The anabaptists were a group that held this belief. They suffered for it also at the hands of the Reformers, who still held to the idea of State Churches.
This was also a view of the Early Church that was lost. If you disagree that this is what the Early church believed refer me to verses in the New Testament that deal with how Christians are to go about establishing civil laws.
There are none. There are commands on how to carry out the bussiness of the Church and how to get along in the surrounding culture that is seperate from it. There are no commands on how to over take civil governments and "Christianize" them.
That is why Christians interested in creating Theocracies always need to appeal to the Old Testament and reinterpret passages that applied to ancient Israel.

dk

That's not true, promiscuous gay sex could be severely curtailed by unusually and cruel punishments under the law. It occurs to me that there is puritanical vein that runs through modern secularism. It leads many to pronounce, “That which is lawful, must be right, moral and good.” Even in the High Middle Ages prostitution and other vices were tolerated. The cost in human terms of expunging or sanctifying human vice is often to great for jurisprudence to bare. The fact that a certain act may be legal, doesn’t make it any less evil or wrong.

Autonemesis

I almost fell out of my chair laughing at this ridiculous statement. What does copulation have to do with being part of a "culture"? Does a man having sex with a woman make him a member of "straight culture"? What exactly is "straight culture"? For "gay culture" to have any meaning, "straight culture" has to mean something, too. But it doesn't.

That's why you should stop using the term "gay culture". It implies bigotry for the same reason.

excreationist

What about adults having consentual sex with young teens and pre-teens? Do you think that kind of sexual behaviour should be legislated against? What about prostitution? How are those things different to homosexuality?

dk

Gay and straight culture are both colloquialisms that have no meaning at all apart from gaydom (a term I now coin, as the Kingdom Of Gay). In fact every gay man, like every person on the planet, has one biological mother and father. A gay person is not more or less Greek, Irish, Chinese, Black American,,, etc. than their siblings. The “straight culture” is a mythological symbol for a faceless oppressor. I would encourage gay people to hold on to their cultural traditions wherever possible, and reject the neurosis of a faceless bogeyman that plots behind closed doors to persecute, assimilate and convert.

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