A perspective on why man must not sleep with man and why God hates that

The Bible does not go into detail on why God disapproves of it, it just says he does. One could speculate but that would be all it was, speculation.

 

I am not so sure the Bible is actually saying this.

If it does, then it's far and few between, and it was based on the laws Moses gave to his people, probably because it was useful for the time. But times are different, our consciousness has developed past a certain point. We have condoms, and have learned to lead responsible lives. Just like how the dream sequences have closed up. We no longer really need it because we moved past a certain point.

And when Corinthians mentions homosexual offenders, then that can be pointing to the what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah. I think that the way that it is used is the essential part in this. Doing it as a way to control is probably what a homosexual offender is. Being a homosexual and acting on it, responsibly and lovingly, would probably be accepted. Just as long as it isn't contrived. Each situation is unique.

To be fair, it never really says homosexual acts.

Unless I am missing something, please point it out.

That's not to say that in the future, maybe that all factors that can cause homosexuality may be eliminated.

But in your defense, you never said you hate homosexuals. So I dunno why Hoatzin keeps bringing that up. You can most definitely dislike the acts and still like the person. I hate smokes, yet I still like the smoker. My sister smokes. I hate that she smokes but I still love her.

The only thing that I can think of why God would disapprove of it is to protect the family unit. There really is no future in homosexuality in terms of family and passing on your genes unless you donate your sperm or adopt a child. But ideally there would be no real need for adoption because there wouldn't be all the orphans we have now due to wars and famine and disease. And much of that can be eliminated if we lived a life most conducive to body, mind, and spirit. But at this point in time, there are many orphans that need a loving home to go to.

 

When homosexual acts are mentioned in the Bible they are lumped in with rape and orgies. So I think the main thing the Bible is getting across is not being obsessed with sexual desire not necessarily against all homosexual acts. I think comparing all homosexual acts even those in a long term loving relationship with murder is a huge stretch.

 

Ya, that's pretty much the same way that I see it as well, and I think that is what the Bible is expressing.

If two men, or two women for some reason, fall in love, without obsession, or being contrived, or without being controlling, and have sex (maybe can say, making love), then I don't see how God would look down on this.

What does the Bible say about marriage and the marriage bed? Does it mean to literally get married in a church with a priest? What is NOT before God?

 

I was not lumping homosexual acts with murder per say, I just tried to come up with something that most people abhor to try and show that no matter what a person does or might have done, while you may hate the act, you can still love the person.

It is interesting that the Bible never shows homosexual acts in a positive light only in the negative light that you have mentioned.

 

Actually I can think of a lot of reasons why God may not approve of homosexual acts and the one you mention being one of the least of those reasons but like I said; it would only be speculation to guess at why God disapproves.

But I will say that; who would know better than God whether something is good for you or not.

 

Would it be wrong to speculate? I just want us to into why God would disapprove of it. I want us to go into the real meat of it and perhaps discover why God would disapprove. We might have to be a little descriptive here, but maybe we should start going into it because I rarely ever see this discussed openly. We are all mature here, so it shouldn't bother anyone. But if it does we don't have to go into it if we don't feel it is necessary.

We may not get to the answer but we can discuss it.

As an example:
Edit: Removed ridiculous and ignorant example.

No one but God would know what's best for us. I agree with you there.

Have there been any instances where the Bible doesn't mesh homosexuality together with what Monkey Boy mentions?

 

It's been speculated (by people who were inexplicably listened to) that it's simply because all non-procreative sex is an act of lust. That the church and congregation have tended not to give a flying fuck if heterosexuals have oral or anal sex isn't particularly explained by this. I could understand the logic behind disapproving of sex purely for pleasure, but if you consider sex as an expression of love to be acceptable then God doesn't have a leg to stand on.

 

God has some issues.

I do agree that, regardless of how people may try to excuse it, The Bible probably is anti-homosexuality - and not just homosexual acts. You know this. A certain type of person doesn't have to see a homosexual act to be offended by homosexuality. They can see two guys holding hands and be disgusted by it. They can know that two guys live together and be disgusted by it. People are not nice, and that's why the Bible is how it is.

I didn't ask if you personally enjoyed homosexual acts. I don't personally enjoy pasta, but if someone asked me if I morally objected to it or would put my faith in someone who did, I'd say no.

If people had faith in God, real faith, they wouldn't try to guess his motives. They do. Rather than just hate what God hates, they make up ridiculous stories about how homosexual acts cause psychological and physical harm to people. And why? Because God's word is not enough? Because they want to persuade people who don't believe in God?

 

I'm not sure why you are bringing me into this.

I try not to speculate on the matter.

Although because of the fact that, as the Bible says, God is teaching us to benefit ourselves, I do assume that God saying not to do something means that it is not good for us and probably in some way harmful for us but why or how I don't normally speculate on.

I personally don’t try to excuse the bible for being anti-homosexuality, it is anti-homosexuality but the Bible points out, God doesn’t care what a person has done in the past. As I have pointed out in other posts some of the “founding fathers” of the early Christian “Church” had previously engaged in homosexuality but had stopped the practice of homosexuality.

Yes, I know that there are those who are offended by homosexuality; in fact according to the Bible, God is one of them. I probably should be more offended by it but I’m just not. Although personally, I am somewhat disgusted by homosexual PDA but then I’m not a big fan of heterosexual PDA either.

Also I know that most people are just not nice but that is not why the Bible is the way it is, The Bible is the way it is because that is the way God wants it to be.

For one thing, most people have no clue what faith is and for another, guessing other peoples motives is a time honored tradition for most of mankind. There is nothing really wrong with it unless you take it to seriously.

As for homosexual acts causing psychological and physical harm to people, as was pointed out anal sex can cause physical harm to people even when used in a heterosexual relationship, so that is not such a ridiculous story.

 

I guess because I don't believe that you'd go along with hating something just because a book told you that a god hates it. You're old enough and smart enough to hate homosexuals on your own terms.

Make no mistake: the reason I am "bringing you into this" is that you are the one trying to shirk responsibility for your beliefs by hiding behind a book.

Do you follow everything else in Leviticus, say, so blindly and ungrudgingly? Just curious. There's a lot of stuff in the Bible that is a lot more, shall we say, counter-intuitive than homophobia. Do you feel just as capable of following that?

It's not the point though, is it. If someone tells you that something you did was a sin, but it's okay as long as you never do it again, how is that better, really?

I'd be prepared to bet that, like everyone else who says this, you're actually not at all disgusted by heterosexual PDAs.

I felt more comfortable with the idea that it was just tailored to the public's existing prejudices, tbh.

Guessing other people's motives is fine. Guessing God's motives is, I believe, supposed to be kind of a no-go area for Christians. The ineffable and so on.

Yes it is. It really really is. Are you aware of the kind of studies and books and lectures I'm talking about? They make something out of nothing. They claim that homosexuals suffer from depression because homosexuality makes them depressed. A bit arse about face, wouldn't you say? And the physical harm supposedly caused is very tenuously evidenced, and while you seem to be aware that it affects heterosexuals too, that niggling detail is typically omitted. So yes, it really is "such a ridiculous story". I doubt you've gotten this far without having heard it, so I won't reserved too much judgment concerning your tacit support for it.

 

I don’t hate homosexuals.

I don’t believe I’m hiding behind anything, I’ve actually been pretty up front about what I believe and don’t believe

I’ve explained this in numerous threads and posts but just for you I’ll explain it one more time.

I’m under no obligation to obey the laws of Leviticus. One, those Laws were for those who are Jews, I am not now nor have I ever been a Jew, so those Laws do not apply to me. Second, Christians are under no obligation to obey the laws of Leviticus, because Jesus fulfilled the Law and thus removed for Christians the obligation to obey the law of Leviticus.

Better than what, continuing to do what is wrong?

It’s good thing you didn’t bet you would have lost.

Sorry but God doesn’t change the truth just to make you feel more comfortable.

The problem with guessing God’s motives has more to with then forcing those guesses on others, than just trying to understand why God does things.

You do go on, don’t you?

If you will reread what was actually said, you will plainly see that I said absolutely nothing about the psychological effect of homosexuality, mainly because no one agrees on what is psychologically true. I know I can could google up dozens of studies that would show homosexuality is psychologically damaging and you could do the same and find dozens that would say oh no it’s not. So discussing the whole subject seems silly, so no tacit support there.

As for, the physical harm supposedly caused is very tenuously evidenced.

I just googled it and up pops innumerable articles on the increased risk of HIV infection, in fact one article said the risk was 2700 times greater than vaginal intercourse. The next most numerable articles have to do with an increased risk of anal cancer. After a couple of pages of this I finally found this statement: Anal sex exposes participants to two principal dangers: infections, due to the high number of infectious microorganisms not found elsewhere on the body, and physical damage to the anus and the rectum due to their vulnerability. In page after page I found no article that said; “the physical harm supposedly caused is very tenuously evidenced”. So, as for “such a ridiculous story" I’d say; it seems that your story is the ridiculous one.

 

I'm sorry, and I know you'll think I'm being mule-headed, but you just dished out a whole big bowl of tacit support right there. I'm sure that, like me, you were brought up to believe that, if you have two opposing arguments, the right answer is usually somewhere in the middle. But you hardly need to think at all to understand that that isn't necessarily true, and very often will be completely untrue.

In this case, you've got pretty much all shrinks saying that homosexuality doesn't cause psychological illness (citing, for example, that the correlation between homosexuality and depression/suicide tends to weaken in areas where people aren't beaten up and denied rights for being homosexual), and then you've got a huge number of kooks and obsessive simply asserting that it totally does.

My point being, the fact that there are argument on both sides does not prevent us from being able to discern between them. If you then choose to wave a little white flag in the name of diplomacy and say "meh, there are arguments on both sides so let's say they're probably both half right and never go near the subject again", that is tacit support, because you're giving as much credence to a bad argument as a good one.

And then:

If you're just going to go on the number of articles, then why the hell should I take you seriously? Not that physical risks from anal sex and physical risks from homosexual acts are the same thing. There's some crossover and people with a very obvious agenda tend to use this to lend a veneer of apparently scientific objectivity to their arguments. And if you choose not to be at all discerning, and take the attitude that 1000 articles for vs 1000 articles against = I CAN'T THINK, then again, you are lending tacit support to that. Try to think about this please.

The point being, vaginal and oral sex both cause damage, carry a cancer risk, etc. It's a negligible amount and should not put anyone off doing them. All disease risk can be reduced massively. I doubt you'll find anywhere near as many articles that will tell you that. But it's still true.

How do you get from God's Likes And Dislikes to "the truth"? If a person can change their mind, so can God. If a person can be expected to change their mind when an opinion they have held has been shown to be vicious or retarded, then so can God. If a person continues to believe something and to act on that belief in a way that is unpleasant, inconsiderate, or otherwise unsavoury, then we would and should consider that person to be A Bit Of A Dick. And God should be held to the same account.

Not really. I mean, I'm sure you believe that disliking homosexuality just because some book told you that God doesn't like it is totally reasonable. But I don't believe that you're being honest with yourself if you believe that. I don't believe that you would let God just tell you to dislike something and start disliking it if you didn't have some existing antipathy towards it already.

 

The truth is although I think psychology can be interesting, what I was saying is I think a lot of it is just quackery and if you are pinning your hopes on what they have to say, I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona I like to sell you.

 

Directly from the OBYGYN website:

http://forums.obgyn.net/womens-health/WHF.9808/0474.html

Do you think that the person that replied was being biased and not objective and truthful? Also, it's not even pertaining to man on man anal sex (is there even a difference?). The one asking is a female and it's about woman's health.

It's not just about a cancer risk, so much as the colon is a very sensitive area and is mostly there to release...

Also, what kind of oral sex are we talking about here? Is the risk the same as the risks that you mention for different forms of oral sex... One being more forceful than another. I think you know what I mean.

Fecal incontinence is pretty different than a negligible risk of oral cancer.

 

Like I say, you do go on. I wasn’t basing my opinion on the number articles, I was merely commenting on how difficult it was to find any article about how safe homosexual sex was because of all the articles on how unsafe it was kept getting in the way. That’s not my fault, I didn’t write any of those articles. Maybe you should talk to Google about it. But all your rhetoric aside the question was do homosexual acts cause physical harm? Yes they can. Is the risk of harm greater than that of strictly heterosexual acts? Yes.

 

:smilielol5: A joke right?

 

It’s a free world and you can believe whatever you want. Just remember that just because you believe it, doesn’t make it true.

 

The risks of loss of anal tension have been massively exaggerated by some studies. There's been some issues around this, because some studies have included increased flatus as a sign of incontinence, which I think would jar with most people's understanding of what is meant by the word. It's not something most of us worry about, anyway, any more than I'd imagine most women would let the damage done by childbirth put them off having children.

It's kind of representative of my issue with such studies in general, really. There are so many ways that an apparently unbiased, reasonable study can be tilted towards giving a desired result. We can use definitions of "harm", "damage" and so forth that are very broad or very narrow, and even if we clarify it, someone quoting us doesn't have to care. "Tissue damage" is commonly referred to, because it covers a lot and sounds a lot worse than it is. A scratch on the roof of your mouth from putting too many crisps in there would be "tissue damage", and it's an accurate description. Point being, a lot of the "damage" is, if you look into it, not anything that even a doctor would consider unacceptable. Same with a lot of risks. Doctors can tell you the risks of drinking alcohol and the effects it'll have, but most of them will still drink.

However, this is moot, since as you have rightly pointed out, this is about anal sex. While I'm sure there will be users that will chortle with dismissive contempt at this statement: anal sex is not a homosexual act. It's not even a majority homosexual act - heterosexuals actually have more anal sex, since it has a glamourous and symbolic value to them which it doesn't to us. A lot of homosexuals don't have anal sex at all, or will do it, find they don't really like it and that it's a lot of hassle, and not bother again. So a lot of the commonly presented evidence about the dangers of "homosexual acts" is pretty far from damning to those in the know.

To be honest, there aren't actually that many acts that are "homosexual" - I can only think of one, and it's really so ridiculous that it's hardly worth mentioning. A lot of people just don't seem to know the difference between "homosexual" and "imaginative".

 

See above. If you would think for a few seconds before you refer to anything as a "homosexual act", it would actually be genuinely appreciated. I know that You People associate anal sex with homosexuals and homosexuals with anal sex, but it does make you look a little silly.

Facetious perhaps, but I have no idea why you find it so funny.

I really don't know whether to play along and take the bait on this one.