Blogs Jan 29, 2012 at 7:00 am

Comments

1
That looks out of context, and not surprisingly, lots-o-Christians take the parts you lopped off and apply them to everything:
God let them follow their own evil desires. They did shameful things with each other, and what has happened to them is punishment for their foolish deeds.

God let them, and they were punished. There is no God, and there are only results, some positive and some negative.

I see my work here is done, and my coffee is ready.
2
Jeez, Goldy, thanks for stopping when the Bible finally started getting good!
3
Not natural and shameful by whose definition? What is natural for you might not be what's natural for me, or for anyone else in the room. No one gets to say "THIS! This right here is natual, eveything else is fucked!" And certainly not some book that was written 2000 or more years agoby men with their own individual sets of biases.
4
I must be doing it wrong. I was going to church regularly when I was dating my ex girlfriends, but I haven't gone at all since before I met Mr. Griffin. Hmm.
5
No catballou. Let me show you how your "i'm a special little snowflake" liberalism is making it hard for you sound like you have anything intelligent to say.

I say it is natural for you to walk on two legs and consume energy through your digestive system. Any other strategies for ambulation or digestion are fucked. If you point out that it could be natural for you to get around in a wheel chair or live off of a n I.V. drip you would sound like an idiot. You see I got to say what was natural and you can's say shit.

You shouldn't ever make the argument against nature.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you need to try again.
6
This sounds like the beginning of a Savage Love letter. The next line would read "everything was going great, but then some of the women who liked other women wanted to try it with one of the men (just to see what it was like!) And then all the other women said they weren't real lesbians and lo, all hell broke out..."
7
This was right before Saint Orem descended from the heavens and set things right? I remember story from bible study... I think.
8
Sounds like the Romans also had an onslaught of Cavalia ads rotting their brains.
9
Oops. On second reading, that joke sounds a lot more homophobic than I intended. Apologies to all.
10
@ 5, maybe your post is a parody of social conservatism. This being the internet and all, it's impossible to tell for certain, so I'm going to take it at face value.

if the ability to make a wheelchair and use it isn't "natural," what is it?

It's in our nature to examine problems, use tools to build machines, then use those machines to overcome them.

The IV drip example works the same way. We used our abilities to develop a nutrition source that can be introduced directly to the bloodstream and a mechanism for delivering it.

I don't think it's catballou who looks like an idiot here.
11
I wonder what Emperor Hadrian would say about that. His lover Antinous fell into the Nile, some say sacrificed himself. It was believed that Pharoh Hadrian was responsible for the drought and the only cure was a human sacrifice. It is said Antinous saved Hadrian because the Nile immediately flooded. Hadrian made him a god and built temples to worship him. He even built him a city. Some religions didn't like his worshipers.
12
@5: How very quaint and Victorian. When a modern scientist looks at the natural world, they do not see a fixed order with a firmament dividing everything. They see animals learning to subsist in new ways by becoming partners with the plants they previously digested. Homosexuality is rampant in "nature". Your genes are a random shuffling of your parents with some mistakes thrown in. The only thing that is natural is constant experimentation in order to survive.
13
@5: It must be really hard going through life all brain-damaged like that. You have my sympathy.
14
Shoot. I wanna watch but now I'm going to turn into salt...
15
@5 Here is a hint, when people talk about things being natural or not they are usually talking only about those things which involve activities or mental processes a bit more complex than the need for food or our ability to walk. Pointing out that people need to eat is not exactly a clever retort nor does it count as 'having something intelligent to say'.
16
@5: Beating plant material into pulp and drying it into thin sheets so you can use it to record your disdain for the "unnatural" activities of others is, by your measure, also not natural.
17
OK you idiots I'll point out for you that I'm making the devils argument here that allows people to equate gay sex with dog fucking.

Saying that "Anything I want to do is natural" or "Anything I can do is natural" lets people take your argument to an ugly extreme and in my eyes you get hung with your own argument: that everything possible is natural.

Existentially that may be true but it is not politically practical to say.
18
oops
Close italics after can.
19
@17: Nice back-peddling.
20
I wonder if they forgot which hole shits babies too, as Dan would say.
21
@ 17, when you get this many disparate commenters shitcanning your argument, it's proof positive that you were either a) completely wrong, or b) completely failed to write out the point you were trying to make.

One critic might be an idiot, but not this many.

Just admit you fucked up, and all will be good. Keep being defiant, though, and you'll seal your reputation right here.
23
What is the point of arguing what is natural when we live in an artificial, manmade world to begin with?
24
Matt @21, No, I've learned from experience that it is indeed possible for nearly every commenter in a thread to be an idiot. I'm not saying that's true of this thread, just that it's possible.
25
It's always fun to read portions of the Bible written by the most sexually constipated of its authors: Saul of Tarsus, hyper-convert (who was it who first said there's no more fanatic believer than a convert?), mouthing off about what makes him uncomfortable and misrepresenting the message Jesus attempted to give society of the time. Modern super-Christians always seem to forget that the unloving, critical, nose-wrinkling attitudes of their sects are based on Paul's writings, not Jesus's words. That makes it easy for them to hide their bigotry behind New Testament references.
26
Pics or it didn't happen...
27
I'm not trying to be defiant. I'm trying to say that once Catballou or other people make the argument that "this is natural for me and you can't say otherwise" they are making the twin sibling of the argument the at the fundies are making.

Fundies are trying to restrict the definition of what is "natural" and @3 is trying to broaden it. All I'm saying is that we (yes, I'm on your side) can't get all hyperbolic an say things like "what is natural for me is OK" because, while I really don't think person x wants to have sex with dead animals catballou is making the argument that it would be OK if person x did.

And I guess I don't think that everything is OK just because it feels that way to person x. I don't believe that you think that either. So I don't think we should use it as an argument for homosexuality. We can make a more rigorous argument.

I'll agree that my wheel chair and I.V. examples didn't make my case. I was trying to make a distinction between natural vs. unnatural whereas people here seem to think there is none.
I don't think Natural things are good or bad (sexual urges, or botulinum for example) or that Unnatural things are good or bad (the internet and it's forums for example) so I was asking: please don't rely on the argument that "it's natural so it is OK."
28
Indoor plumbing, private property, eyeglasses, guitars, a lifelong commitment to monogamy, medicine, fast food, dry cleaning, interest-free checking, submitting your will to an invisible sky daddy based on rules written by and for a bronze-age tribe of desert nomads, libraries, and iPods are all "unnatural" but I don't see Christians lining up to denounce any of these things, except sometimes libraries.

A Colt .45 certainly isn't "natural" but my right to own one, should I choose to do so, is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
29
Is fisting considered natural or unnatural in the Bible?
31
@6, FTW.
32
@28 That's right. We should point out the holes in their arguments instead of making our own arguments that are full of naturalistic fallacies.
33
@30 Well, if if feels right to stone someone in a wheelchair... who the hell am I to tell you that it is wrong.
34
Part of the purpose of these verses is as both titillation and the perils of separation. The first in the sense that, promoted most forcefully by Platonist Jews of the period, the idea of sex for any other reason than procreation was considered wrong (as a counterweight to the Hellenistic worldview of casual hedonism that became popular within the elite of the Roman Empire as they became both rulers of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and quite wealthy as a byproduct of such fortune). The second, as setting up the reader for the second chapter of Romans, in which the reader is told that even though pagans were committing these acts, only God had the right to ultimately judge them (Romans 2:1-11).

Paul also, as some do today, saw homosexuality not as a relationship in and of itself, but as a relatively minor symptom of a greater licentiousness, of a selfishness that did not take into account anything but the desires of the moment and the power to make those desires real regardless of cost. This is emphasized in Romans 1:21-25, and Romans 1:28-32 break this down further…

Just as they have given themselves over to a kind of knowledge that rejects the idea of God, so God has given them over to the kind of mind that all reject. The result is not that they do things which it is not fitting for any man to do. They are replete with all evil, villainy, the lust to get, viciousness. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, the spirit that puts the worst construction on everything. They are whisperers, slanderers, haters of God. They are insolent men, arrogant, braggarts, inventors of evil things, disobedient to their parents, senseless breakers of agreements, without natural affections, pitiless. They are the kind of men that are well aware that those who do such things are deserve death, and yet they do not only do them themselves, but also heartily approve of those that do them. (Westminister)

This was put forth in similar vein even by some of what we consider the most famous Roman documentarians of the period – Virgil, Seneca, and Tacitus, who wrote “I am entering upon a history of a period, rich in disasters, gloomy with wars, rent with seditions, savage in its very hours of peace… All was one delirium of hate and terror; slaves were bribed to betray their masters, freedmen their patrons. He who had no foe was destroyed by his friend.”

This, to my mind, is probably the toughest point we face these days in regard to society fully realizing that homosexuality is a legitimate relationship – that it doesn’t come part and parcel with being merely a selfish desire of the moment, or is part of some greater wrong – in large part, I personally believe, because heterosexuals who often commit these same acts of selfishness described above seek someone to blame that isn’t themselves

My two bits...
35
@29, Can fisting make a married lady get pregnant? If no, then it ain't natural.
36
Hawt!

Re piling on @5...
I don't know what was in the mind but I gotta agree on calling out the "what is natural for you might not be what is natural for me" statement/argument.

There is one single natural world that is true for everyone everything all the time. We know a bit about this natural world and our knowledge is increasing exponentially with time and effort. Is locomotion via two legs more natural than via two wheels? This is an ill-posed question. Is rubbing this body part on that body part more natural than rubbing that body part on this body part? Another ill-posed question.
37
So says the pedophile.
And the goat fucker.
And the polygamist.

Who are Danny and Slog to tell them they are wrong?
38
@36 et al

You see there they are, read @37.

When you say "i'm ok you're ok" @37 comes along and says "here are the moral equivalents of your reasoning"
39
@27 I understand what you're saying. The problem is you are using 'natural' in the euphemistic sense when you mean something closer to 'moral' or 'right and wrong'.

What you are trying to do is use the proper definition of the word natural and apply it to the narrow scope as it is used euphemistically. This is semantics and it is incorrect usage of the word.

It is the same as assuming that 'pro-life' means you are against the death penalty. It's a term that has been forced into a narrower definition of itself.
40
As long as no one is being hurt, what is the problem?
41
People who make an argument that gay sex isn't natural are the same people that believe virgins give birth, people walk on water and stars determine fate. Bullshit!
42
@39 I agree that I'm having a semantic issue here but I'm trying to de couple morality from nature. Others argue that because love is natural that it is ok (let's call them Mozzes). I'm saying that the natural world doesn't have any moral agency and be careful of making that assumption (see naturalistic fallicy) because @37 will come along and say well then we better shut this down right now because if the Mozzes Are correct then there will be goat fucking taught in kindrgarden.
43
There are two arguments happening here.

@3, catballou is rejecting the Biblically stated notion that homosexuality is "unnatural." Catballou is correct, as BLUE states @36, if it exists in the natural (including human) world, it must, therefore, be natural. And even if we limit nature to the non-human, homosexual acts are found in many parts of the animal world for many different purposes.

@5, jnonymous tries to make the argument that "natural" is not equal to moral, and finally succeeds @27. If we limit nature to what exists without humans, a wheelchair is unnatural. That does not make it immoral.

Both of these are important to look at, as the Bible verse presented seems to be saying that homosexuality is "unnatural" and implies that this is wrong. So, really, Paul is getting his logic wrong coming and going, as homosexual acts are NOT unnatural (as they occur in both generally natural humans and specifically natural animals), and at any rate, it doesn't matter, as the definition of something of natural or unnatural does not correlate to a moral definition of right or wrong.
44
@ 24, as one who is too emotional and not pragmatic, it comes as no surprise that you feel that way.
45
@38 No.

You're being dull. I do not make any such argument as you presume. On the contrary, I imply that such arguments are not arguments at all as the basic premise is flawed. Bringing up the idea of natural or unnatural is unhelpful when arguing the merits of human behaviors. There is one single natural world composed of matter along with a few rules for that matter. That is all that is natural. Humans, of course, are restricted in how we interact with other matter. That's all that nature has to say about it. There's nothing written about fucking or not fucking anything. That comes from somewhere else.
46
Women no longer wanted to have sex in a natural way, and they did things with each other that were not natural. And lo, men made videos of these things, put them on the internet, and made lots of money.
47
@ 27, thank you. That's much more clear.

Now, I happen to disagree that the "natural" argument's logical extreme can be found at the bottom of that slippery slope. I'm sure that necrophilic bestiality can be shown to be the result of some kind of mental disturbance, which can't be held to be natural at all.

Now, I do agree that, in and of itself the natural aspects of homosexuality don't make a good case for regarding it as a normal behavior that we should not make taboo. But... it IS a legitimate counter-argument to the "unnatural" claim fundie homophobes like to make. It neutralizes that claim and allows us to shift the discussion to an area where we're on solid footing.
48
Why does homosexuality deserve legal recognition and protection while polygamists, pedophiles and those who have sex with animals are prosecuted?

And if you condemn them how are you any different from xtians who condemn homosexuality?

Hypocrisy is bad policy and bad Karma.....
49
And if homosexual behavior occurs in "nature" so does incest, rape, cannibalism and poo flinging.

"If it feels good, Do It!" , eh?
50
@46

::shrieks with laughter::

But, Roma, first men made women tease their dyed hair and paint their deadly talons!
51
@48: That is such an easily destroyed argument. Consenting adults, consenting adults, consenting adults. Animals do not consent, neither do kids.
52
@3: Paul's. Dude (and dudes pretending to be that dude) basically shit all over the whole New Testament.
53
@37: Hitler said he was helping his country, therefore anyone who claims to be helping his/her country is AS BAD AS HITLER! D:
@48: Exactly what Stowe said. You've been bringing that weaksauce argument in for years now, and it hasn't gotten any less pants-on-head leotarded. Small plays, man, small plays.
@49: Feeding and locomotion are also common in nature. Clearly doing anything natural is horrifically unethical and bad for us. We must do the most unnatural things possible; hang upside down from trees and grow plants on our body hair! That's unnatural, right?
GOD DAMMIT.
54
Sorry, did I say plants? I mean cyanobacteria.
55
51

Polygamy?
When you say
"Consenting adults, consenting adults, consenting adults "
are you thinking of three consenting adults who want to marry the people they love?
You should be.....

Animals do not consent to be slaughtered and eaten,
yet they are.
Nor do they consent to be bred by humans,
in order to be slaughtered and eaten.
What did he call it?; "easily destroyed"?....

And just what is the age of consent?
Do we lock people up for having sex with 14 year olds?
Wasn't grandma 14 when she got married?
Is granddad a pedophile?
Many cultures recognize that females are sexually mature as young as 12.
If you are looking for a bright line defining pedophilia you will not find it.
There is WAY more evidence in biology and nature for allowing 13 year olds to be sexual beings than there is for homosexual behavior.

Is Necrophilia OK?
The dead don't mind,
and they haver no rights even if they do.

so, again-
Why does homosexuality deserve legal recognition and protection while polygamists, pedophiles, necrophiles and those who have sex with animals are prosecuted?
56
Having seen Caligula, I would like to point out that one of those women doing not natural things was Helen Mirren.
57
Oh that Paul. What a killjoy. He was probably one of those guys reeking of creep juice who couldn't get laid in a whore house. Speaking of Santorum, I heard he's broke, I smell an an announcemt and a speaking tour.
58
Anything that actually happens is, by definition, natural. This is from whence we derive the term "supernatural" as a descriptor for things that do not actually happen. Naturalist philosophy and the naturalist worldview - the one that underlies science - use the term fundamentally interchangeably with "material."

In short, unless you are trying to discuss whether or not people have psychic powers, or whether there are ghosts, or if there could actually be a Superman living in some shitty midwestern town right now, the term "natural" is meaningless and useless, and even in those instances the only application is, "No, those supernatural phenomena do not exist in the real, natural world."

In this case, the appropriate use of "natural" would be, "The Bible is a work of fiction which describes the occurrence of many supernatural events, and to therefore argue that something which is quite natural is 'unnatural,' and therefore bad, when what one actually believes is that said something is immoral because it contradicts the mandates of the Bible is nonsensical in the extreme."

Now shut up and get off my lawn.
59
@55: You're advocating for sex with 12-year-olds? You'll have quite a hard time finding support on that in the developed world outside of NAMBLA. Well, except in your Bible, of course.

As to your necrophilia and bestiality arguments, it's not worth anyone's time discussing with you if you still don't have even the most basic understanding of what consent is. Go here: definition of consent, written for kids.

Polygamous marriage has been a topic on SLOG and in Dan's podcast in the past, and given that everyone involved is consenting (and not coerced or brainwashed, like FLDS situations), there isn't a whole lot of sense to those laws. (If there are any legal scholars on SLOG who could elaborate to the contrary, I would be interested to hear it.) If everyone wants it, the only other legal issue (that I can think of, anyway) might be inheritance, which can be rectified with a will. And yes, I realize I rely too heavily on parentheses.

Pedophilia has also been discussed on Dan's podcast, with him having a few experts on to discuss it with him. I trust you'll go to the Savage Love archives straightaway to listen to them. Podcast #272 was the most recent discussion.
60
@55: Polygamy is a lifestyle, not a sexual orientation, and not even a paraphilia. There ARE NO PEOPLE who are attracted ONLY to multiple people, but would not be attracted to any single person. I've explained this to you before.
Animals have the right to be treated humanely. When they are slaughtered, it must be done so quickly and cleanly so as not to cause the animal pain. Forcing an animal to participate in a behavior it does not understand (all animals understand predation) does constitute animal cruelty in a way that the swift stroke of the butcher's blade does not.
While adolescents may be sexually mature, they are not psychologically mature, and therefore cannot give informed consent. That is why it is criminal for an adult to take advantage of a minor.
It is criminal to abuse a corpse because it is the property of its former owner. Your strawman of "the dead don't mind" is idiotic; would it be acceptable for someone to rape you in your sleep, assuming you slept through it and didn't notice?

Alleged, for a person so fond of claiming that we have nothing, you seem to be awfully short on substance yourself.
61
@58 Thank you, balderdash.
62
59

We are pointing out that there is no argument one can make for homosexuality being normal and natural that can not also be made for a host of other deviant behaviors.

We are pointing out that it is convenient but hypocritical for Danny to say that his 'innate' biological 'orientation' is OK and should be legalized while condemning others' orientations.

We are pointing out that it is especially glaringly hypocritical for Danny to assert that he favors marriage 'equality' and that some people are not cut out for monogamy but for him to oppose legalizing polygamy.
63
@62: Who is this "we" you repeatedly refer to?

The difference being of course that two consenting gays wishing to marry harms no one*, which cannot be said of any of your other scenarios.

Please provide a link to Dan ever condemning another's orientation. If you had actually listened to that podcast I referred to, you'd hear no condemnation in his voice regarding pedophiles' attractions.

*If you want to make the debate about the "sanctity of marriage" and how gays "don't take marriage seriously" as so many have, please explain first why the religious right is not working to nullify themed weddings, such as those where the party dresses as Star Trek characters.
64
63

Plural marriage harms but Danny's monogamishit adultery does not?
Really?!
Who is harmed when consenting adults are allowed to marry polygamously?

So Danny approves of Pedophilia?
Can't say we're surprised.....
65
@64: Oh, okay. I get it now. It's not that fail to comprehend the meaning of "consent", you simply don't (or refuse to) comprehend much of anything. Well then, I can't help you.
66
65
And who, exactly, is harmed when consenting adults are allowed to marry polygamously?
67
To make an argument that homosexuality is okay because it is natural is idiotic. In nature, animals kill their newborn young and then eat them. This is NATURAL, so are you going to say because it is natural, it is okay for us to do? I certainly hope not. We are human beings with morals after all. Animals in nature also rape (dolphins have been known to rape, and also kill for reasons other than hunger... google it), so this is also natural, but it is not right. Do you see where I am going with this?

I am not saying homosexuality is wrong, just the "natural" argument is a faulty one. Humans do not agree or condone a lot of things which are natural, so just because something is natural does not mean you should do it. This is the argument which will always be made against natural, and it is a darn logical argument too, one which cannot be denied, so I suggest you guys find a better logic than this one.

How about, homosexuality does not harm anyone, so why is it illegal when it does not hinder another person's personal freedom or harm them? There is no good, logical answer for this one.
68
Alleged, please refer to my explanation of why polyamory is not an orientation. Either that or show me someone who is attracted only to groups of people and has no love for any isolated individuals.
69
@ 67, again, it's an answer to claims that it's "unnatural." Take it up with the bible-thumping bigots, not us.
70
Romans 1.32
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
71
This Paul thing was addressed to the Romans. No one else need heed it. Even modern Italians don't need to worry.

Anyway, Paul had fits. Probably everything he wrote was a consequence of a fit. Could be that's also the case for John, Luke, and those other guys. Then there's Revelations; that whole book is a fit.

@58: supernatural doesn't mean something that hasn't happened; it means that it can't be proven. An example would be the intelligence of any fundamentalist, including the Republican presidential candidates. We may have a supernatural President next year.
72
Paul and Timothy were a couple of self-hating homos.
73
69

So what?

Who, exactly, is harmed when consenting adults are allowed to marry polygamously?
74
@73: Is there a demand for it? You could make the argument that Atlanta, Georgia should make it legal to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole by your logic. I mean, if someone wants to secure their giraffe to a telephone pole or lamp post, who's getting harmed by it?
The reason that Atlanta has not repealed that particular prohibition is because there is no demand for it; nobody's being put-upon, wandering around looking for a proper giraffe-hitching post. (The slight tourism value of the law may also be a factor.) If there was a substantial population of people who were attracted only to multiple people and for whom the current legal definition of marriage was inadequate or inappropriate, there would be a need for group marriage. Since there is not, there is no reason to establish it.
Your little strawman is getting mildewy.
75
We really should be discussing Romans 1:18-27, where Paul draws a direct connection from worshipping animals to these "unnatural, shameful lusts," which of course is separate from the idea of sexual orientation. From this we draw the idea that he did not believe someone growing up Jewish or Christian (not that anybody had grown up Christian at the time) would have ever possibly taken the ideas of the commitment of a male-female union and transfer it to a commitment to the same sex.

Apparently, we're on the polygamy kick. Polygamy is, of course, bibcally sanctioned. I propose that 2 Samuel 5:13, Judges 8:28-31, and Genesis 35:22-26 should be the next bible study passages. I would argue that if we want to truly institute a Biblical society, we would legalize and codify polygamy in the United States. Of course, since marriage laws today concerning reciprocity of inheritance, medical decisions, child custody, etc., all is based on a two-person relationship, it may be be best to return all ownership and decision-making to the male in the relationship. If there are two or more males in our new polygamous relationships, one male must take ownership of everything in the polygamous union.

I can't wait to see the laws and legislature vote on this.
76
This is a poor translation of Romans 1:26.

The literal translation is that women exchanged the "natural use" for "that which is against nature". It says NOTHING about doing so with other women.

In textual and historical context, the women in the passage are committing acts that are against nature WITH MEN.

Paul's euphamisms are vague to us, but his audience knew exactly what he was talking about. In Greek thought, the "natural use" of the woman was baby-making vaginal sex. "That which was against nature" probably refers to heterosexual anal sex, which was used as a form of contraception. It may also refer to the other primitive and unsafe methods of contraception in the ancient world.

It is highly unlikely that Paul was talking about lesbians because to the ancients, sex, natural or unnatural, required a penis, so whatever two women did with each other was not sex.

Furthermore, reading "that which was against nature" as heterosexual anal sex makes sense in the context of the passage. Anal sex is a high risk, unsanitary, and frequently degrading sex act. To Paul this is disordered and vile (think about it) and that women and men are engaging in it shows the depravity of humanity.

Cunnilingus, on the other hand, is encouraged for married couples (Song of Solomon 7:3), so it is unlikely that he would have called such an act a "vile passion", even between two women.

This is the way this verse was interpreted for the first 1900 years of Christianity, reading this as referring to lesbianism is a very recent development.
77
This is a poor translation of Romans 1:26.

The literal translation is that women exchanged the "natural use" for "that which is against nature". It says NOTHING about doing so with other women.

In textual and historical context, the women in the passage are committing acts that are against nature WITH MEN.

Paul's euphemisms are vague to us, but his audience knew exactly what he was talking about. In Greek thought, the "natural use" of the woman was baby-making vaginal sex. "That which was against nature" probably refers to heterosexual anal sex, which was used as a form of contraception. It may also refer to the other primitive and unsafe methods of contraception in the ancient world.

It is highly unlikely that Paul was talking about lesbians because to the ancients, sex, natural or unnatural, required a penis, so whatever two women did with each other was simply not sex.

Furthermore, reading "that which was against nature" as heterosexual anal sex makes sense in the context of the passage. Anal sex is a high risk, unsanitary, and frequently degrading sex act. To Paul this is disordered and vile (think about it) and that women are engaging in it with men and men are engaging in it with each other shows the depravity of humanity.

Cunnilingus, on the other hand, is encouraged for married couples (Song of Solomon 7:3), so it is unlikely that he would have called such an act a "vile passion", even between two women.

This is the way this verse was interpreted for the first 1900 years of Christianity, reading this as referring to lesbianism is a very recent development.
78
Furthermore, in the Jewish tradition, male homosexuality was strongly condemned, while the Old Testament is silent on lesbianism.

Other Jewish sources do disapprove of lesbianism, but it is a relatively minor offense. A woman who engaged in lesbian relations was still considered a virgin under Jewish law. She was still considered to have been faithful to her husband. This is a far cry from the death sentence given to male homosexuals.

Jewish tradition does, however, strongly condemn heterosexual anal sex. In addition to sanitary concerns, such an act was usually associated with pagan worship.

In short, Paul would have had no reason to see lesbianism as being a sign of human depravity and every reason to see anal sex as such.

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