It's a popular practice for people to quote the Bible on why homosexuality is morally incorrect. They cite numerous passages on the topic, including "Do not practice homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman. It is a detestable sin.", from Leviticus. I think that people that read these sorts of things, and interpret them as condemning homosexuality, are ignoring the historical context. In the Roman Empire, having gay sex was quite common, but it didn't involve any sort of relationship; it was a way for older, esteemed men to assert their dominance against others. As a rule, the bottoms were slaves, prostitutes, and entertainers, which, particularly in the case of slaves, was essentially rape. That's not mentioning that most of said slaves, prostitutes, and entertainers were 12 to 20 years old. Thus, whenever the Bible talks about same sex relations, it does it in the context of male pedophiles having sex with slaves, not in the context of two consenting adults in a loving relationship. In all other cases, the Bible speaks of love and positive relationships in positive terms, terms which should logically apply to loving same-sex relationships. People nowadays here 'a man should not lay with another man', and assume that it applies to modern relationships, when in reality the same passage has the connotation of 'a man should not rape his 12 year old male slave'. Of course, everyone agrees that we shouldn't have slaves and that pedophiles are despicable; people simply overstate the importance of the 'male' part. The reason that it specified 'male' was simply because the rape of underaged females wasn't quite as prominent.
Or! All of these religious threads belong in the religious section. Fairy tales have no barring on gay and lesbian rights (which is what subforum these threads seem to take over)
I'm pagan, personally, but quite a few people do think this sort of thing is relevant to gay rights, and this seems like the appropriate subforum. You have to address people on their terms if you want them to change their minds. Even if I don't believe in the Bible, quite a few people do, and they mistakenly use it as a basis for false beliefs- about LGBT people. Nothing constructive comes from dismissing the beliefs of others.
Bible Smible. People search the bible constantly for justifications of their hatred and abuse. Some self hating gay rabbi stuck this in there no more the word of any "God" than is "great moogly googly!"
You're a pagan? That's interesting, if you dint mind, and because pagan encompasses so so very much, i want to ask, what sort of pagan? Is purely out of curiosity, for fun i researched many paganistic cultures, celts, picts, norse, shamanism and druidism. - - - Updated - - - Great moogly googly that's hilarious.
Essentially, I believe that, in the Big Bang, there was a third state of existence, beyond matter and energy; magic, if you will. It was naturally attracted to matter, so, when earth was forming, in coalesced there. Large quantities of magic in condensed spaces naturally generated more magic. When the first bacteria were being formed, they were largely defined by their consumption; when a bacteria ate some of a chemical, it absorbed the magic already present in the material. When a bacteria died, it's collected magic, a primitive soul, reincarnated in another bacteria, which itself consumed more matter, and thus more magic. Fast forward a multitude of years, plants have large enough 'souls' that they start producing magic themselves. This leads to a chain reaction, until, with humanity, you have souls with ridiculous amounts of magic. When a human believes in something, they essentially donate some of their excess mana to that thing; when humans started worshiping gods, their collective donations created those gods.
Not with the Israelites for the most part. Plus if it meant "no pedophilia" then it would've said as much. In fact I challenge you to find the verse where it says you can't marry a 6 year old.
"The minimum age for marriage under Jewish law is 13 for boys, 12 for girls; however, the kiddushin can take place before that, and often did in medieval times. The Talmud recommends that a man marry at age 18, or somewhere between 16 and 24."
