Homosexuality

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Homosexuality

fschmidt
Administrator
The subject of homosexuality doesn't interest me.  I consider it irrelevant.  So why am I writing about it?  To illustrate other things.  First, the mistranslation of scripture.  And second, how religions get priorities wrong.

I will start with the Old Testament.  Here is an explanation by a Karaite:

https://beneimiqra.com/2013/02/12/does-the-torah-condemn-homosexuality/

His Hebrew is much better than mine, but even with my limited Hebrew I can see this.  Here is the text:

https://biblehub.com/interlinear/leviticus/18-22.htm

What is translated as "as with" doesn't mean this at all as you can see by clicking on the definition which shows that it means "bed".  So the text says "You shall not lie with a man [in?] the bed of a woman, it is an abomination".  So basically two men with one woman is banned.  There is nothing against homosexuality in the Old Testament.

In the New Testament, Paul condemns homosexuality but Jesus says nothing on the subject.

The Quran condemns homosexuality in 7:80-81 but no punishment is ever specified.  Presumably the punishment for homosexuality is to be left to God.

That completes what scripture says about homosexuality.  So first, why is the Old Testament universally mistranslated?  Because Christians are strongly against homosexuality because of Paul, so this biases their translation even so far as to produce an obvious mistranslation.  And this leads to my first important point:  One can only really understand scripture if one learns some of the original language of that scripture.  This means Hebrew for the Old Testament, Greek for the New Testament, and Arabic for the Quran.  Otherwise you are at the mercy of biased translators and can't really evaluate what scripture says.

And second, I will talk about priorities.  In scripture itself, homosexuality is not a high priority topic.  The Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament never even condemn it.  Only Paul does, but it is still not a major theme.  So why do Christians focus on it?  I think the answer can be found in Matthew 7:1-5 which talks about looking for the faults of others instead of considering your own faults.  It is much easier to blame homosexuals than to take responsibility for one's own faults.  Much the same applies to Islam where many Muslims call for punishment of homosexuality even though there is no real basis for this in Islam.  This is a classic case of skapegoating.  The result of these badly misplaced priorities can be seen in the cultures that focus on homosexuality (either for or against) - they tend to be immoral.

Just because the Old Testament doesn't condemn homosexuality doesn't mean that I support gay rights.  I generally don't.  I am against "gay pride" because I am against all public displays of sexuality.  And I am certainly against gays abusing power to force people to bake them wedding cakes.  On the question of gay marriage, I actually voted for it in California in the 1990s when it lost because public sentiment was against it.  My vote had nothing to do with gay rights and everything to do with limited government.  I didn't like the idea of the government telling people who is allowed to get married.  On the question of whether my religion should recognize gay marriage, my answer is that I just don't care.  But I attend a mosque and Islam cannot accept gay marriage because of what the Quran says about homosexuality.

To conclude, I want to repeat that what I wrote isn't primarily about homosexuality, but rather about mistranslations and bad priorities.  Forget about homosexuality and focus on building a strong moral religious community.
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Re: Homosexuality

Allen
Marriage is not just a matter of the choice of the individuals involved. It also a matter of their legal status. If two perverts want to perform serial masturbatory acts on each other and consider that this makes them "married" then that is their business. The rest of us should not have to go along with this fantasy though. Of course the government has to say who is married or not because it changes how the government is legally required to view them.
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Re: Homosexuality

fschmidt
Administrator
Considering that legal marriage in the West is basically a liability, allow gays to marry is just allowing them to harm themselves (with some benefit to lawyers).
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Re: Homosexuality

Allen
Yeah I was just talking about the moral principle. The whole marriage thing is just a joke at this point.
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Re: Homosexuality

Ibn Ghassan
In reply to this post by fschmidt
(The Quran condemns homosexuality in 7:80-81 but no punishment is ever specified.  Presumably the punishment for homosexuality is to be left to God.)

The tale of Lot R.A. Or how Sodom and Gomorrah got obliterated is used by both Christians as well as Muslims in trying to discourage public/governmental encouragement of homosexuality, Islamic law doesn’t dictate rules about homosexuality in the personal/private sphere but taking cue from how God punished the people of Lot R.A., it does seriously condemn and discourage the same at a governmental/public level.