Mehhhhh -- LiveWire Teen Forums

Quote: from NihilNominis at 11:26 am on June 1, 2011

Aero360,
You used the word "nature" a lot in your post. Would you care to elaborate a little on what you mean by it? Do you mean by "nature" something akin to what sort of creature would result if all its constituent parts were functioning correctly, so that, for example, since a man should be able to speak and walk, even though some men can't, we would still say that it is natural for man to speak or walk, even though some men are deprived of these faculties? Or do you mean by "nature" empirical observations about the way things are, rather than how they ideally would be, so that, for instance, when we observe many men who are born blind, with crippling deformations, we would say that this blindness and deformation is natural, not the result of accident or medical procedure?

I wouldn't necessarily compare my definition of 'natural' to either one of yours, because either way ti makes it seem as if homosexuality is a "bad" thing that would be treated as some sort of 'shortcoming,' which I do not believe. For all purposes, we'll take a case like blindness, because I would never judge someone to be 'lower' than everyone else, so to speak for lack of a better term at the moment, just because he or she is blind. It's natural for people to be able to see, but some people are born blind, which is also perfectly natural in occurrence. It's natural for men and women to be attracted to each other, but it's also natural for some people to be attracted to the same sex, even though not as common. But I use that comparison rather loosely because I do not look at homosexuality as a 'deformity' per se, nor do I perceive blindness as such.

]And let's be clear about something else: Christian morality does not concern itself with the morality of orientations, dispositions, or other sorts of passions. Christian morality concerns itself with concrete acts of the will, as they are commonly called, human acts, and their moral character. Consequently, it is not a fair assessment to say that any Christian claims homosexuality is a sin. They don't. The claim is that the act of having homosexual relations is sinful; as such it is not sufficient simply to claim that "homosexuality" as an orientation did not exist at the time the Bible was written; homosexual relations did, and the Bible condemns them.

Does the bible really condemn relations of the same sex though? We'll take a rather lengthy quote from the OP.

" 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 are verses have to do with the mystery of the Greek words "malakoi" and aresenokoitai. These verses are the last two significant places in the Bible that refer to homosexuality. These two verses show how exasperated Paul was with the Christians fighting among themselves in Ephesus and Corinth. In Corinth, Christians are even suing each other in secular courts. Paul admonishes them by basically telling them, You are breaking God's heart by the way you are treating each other. To remind the churches in Corinth and Ephesus how God wants us to treat each other, Paul recites examples from the Jewish law first. Don't kill each other. Don't sleep with another man's wife. Don't lie, or cheat, or steal. The list goes on to include admonitions against fornication, idolatry, whoremongering, perjury, drunkeness, revelry, extortion. He also includes malakoi and aresenokoitai. Here's where the confusion begins. These two Greek words - malakoi and aresenokoitai - have confused Bible scholars until to this very day.

Greek scholars believe that in first century the Greek word "malakoi" probably meant effeminate call boys. The new Revised Standard Version renders it male prostitutes. Greek scholars don't know exactly what "aresenokoitai" means. Some scholars believe that Paul was coining a name to refer to the customers of the effeminate call boys. The modern terminology would be that they were dirty old men. Others translate it as sodomites and never explain what that means. Then, in 1958, for the first time in history, a person translating that mysterious Greek word into English decided that it meant "homosexuals"; when in fact there is no such word in Greek or in Hebrew. For the first time in history, the word homosexual appeared in the English-language Bible. But a closer look at the Greek word "aresenokoitai" in its original context shows that Paul is condemning the Roman custom of married men (aresenokoitai) hiring hairless young boys (malakois) for sexual pleasure just as they hired smooth skinned young girls for that purpose. Responsible people, both homosexual and heterosexual, would agree with Paul in condemning those who used children for sex. In the same way, responsible people condemn the practice of gang rape or the behavior of the sex-crazed priests and priestesses in Rome. So we see that these verses do not condemn homosexuality at all."

There were some strawmen, too, in the OP. Masturbation and contracepted sex are condemned to this day in the Catholic Church and in most Orthodox Churches; to invoke them as examples of things which have been since found moral is to ignore the actual claims of the other side. The Catholic sexual ethic is internally consistent; the integrity of the marital act is essential to moral sexual relations.
The only way an orientation of itself could be sinful is, inasmuch as certain passions and dispositions incline us to sin, it is sinful of itself to cultivate them. A heterosexual man, for instance, can inflame his lust in thought, and this is sinful. In the same way, for a frigid homosexual to actively kindle his desire would also be sinful. But none of this is such as would condemn anyone for the way he was born, but only for the way in which he himself chooses to act.

Exactly, extreme lust of the flesh is sinful, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Churches have a tendency to condemn both. However there is a common misconception that the Bible condemns homosexuality itself as a simple sexual orientation. My job was to prove that said misconception was false.

-------
When your attitude is right, the facts don't matter. ;-)

303 users online 262349 members 183 active today Advertise Here