Sodmony, Conservatism, and Religion

[TheLastMohican]

I've deleted where appropriate, for my own views.

I'm socialy conservative and while I support all of these things, I don't think there is a need to create laws regarding them.

I think Satya meant legal prohibition. Otherwise the word means practically nothing.

 

[Barnabas]

I think Satya meant legal prohibition. Otherwise the word means practically nothing.

I disagree culture can be far more powerfull then any law created by congress, teach your children strong values and give them good examples and they will follow suit.

Seriously though how on Earth would you enforce a prohibition of premarital sex, I can't think of any conservatives who would agree with that kind of law.

 

[TheLastMohican]

I disagree culture can be far more powerfull then any law created by congress, teach your children strong values and give them good examples and they will follow suit.

So are you referring to parental prohibition when you say you support it?

Seriously though how on Earth would you enforce a prohibition of premarital sex, I can't think of any conservatives who would agree with that kind of law.

A lot of conservatives agree with laws against sodomy and drug use, even though they cannot be consistently enforced. Feasibility doesn't matter so much to everyone.

 

[Satya]

Seriously though how on Earth would you enforce a prohibition of premarital sex, I can't think of any conservatives who would agree with that kind of law.

With a Shotgun and a wedding.


Seriously though, there are even laws in the Bible regarding sex before marriage. If a man were to take a woman's virginity, then he was expected to marry the girl or compensate the father.

 

[Barnabas]

So are you referring to parental prohibition when you say you support it?.

Please excuse my ignorance, what do you mean by parental prohibition?

A lot of conservatives agree with laws against sodomy and drug use, even though they cannot be consistently enforced. Feasibility doesn't matter so much to everyone.

hmm.... well maybe I don't think I as a social conservative could support laws that couldn't be enforced.

and just to check when you say sodomy, do you mean something close to rape or something else?

 

[Barnabas]

With a Shotgun and a wedding.


Seriously though, there are even laws in the Bible regarding sex before marriage. If a man were to take a woman's virginity, then he was expected to marry the girl or compensate the father.

Different society, different culture, different challenges and different rules.

Still I like the idea of compensation or marriage, by choice of the daughter(though I have a feeling the father would have decided in Jewish culture).

 

[Satya]

Different society, different culture, different challenges and different rules.

Still I like the idea of compensation or marriage, by choice of the daughter(though I have a feeling the father would have decided in Jewish culture).

I'm not entirely sure women are keen on being treated like property, but that is just my impression.

 

[Barnabas]

I'm not entirely sure women are keen on being treated like property, but that is just my impression.

it was sarcastic

 

[TheLastMohican]

Please excuse my ignorance, what do you mean by parental prohibition?

Prohibition voiced and/or enforced by the parents, as opposed to prohibition enforced by the government.

and just to check when you say sodomy, do you mean something close to rape or something else?

Sodomy is anal or oral sex.

 

[magister343]

With a Shotgun and a wedding.


Seriously though, there are even laws in the Bible regarding sex before marriage. If a man were to take a woman's virginity, then he was expected to marry the girl or compensate the father.

Actually, he was to be executed unless he could convince the girl to marry him. If she agreed, he would never be allowed to divorce her as he would have had they waited until after marriage.

edit: Now that I think of it, I might be thinking specifically of the case when the girl did not consent to the sex in the first place. That does not necessarily mean rape as we think of it though, as a girl was not considered capable of consenting to either sex or marraige unless her father was present to hear it and chose not to overrule her decision.



Technically such laws only applied to the Jews. Sexually immorality was also banned under the Seven Noahide Laws, but what exactly constitutes sexual immorality and what is to be done about were not specified.

Sodomy is anal or oral sex.

Are you sure? The term Sodomy has been taken to mean anal sex since the middle ages, and extended to include oral sex during the 19th century, but biblical ought to mean something quite different.

49Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.

 

[TheLastMohican]

 

[aeon]

Abstinence only education. No education of contraceptives. And a position of no sex before marriage.

Thanks for that, Satya. I misunderstood what you meant in the first post. I read it as concerning the consumption of alcohol. :embarassed:

Anyway, my answer doesn't change much at all.


cheers,
Ian

 

[magister343]

(I don't know why you think that it would be "quite different" anyway, given the origin of the word in the city of Sodom, but that would be a topic for another thread.)

Did you read the part of my post where I quoted the bible verse that defined the sin of Sodom? If you had you'd see that the biblical definition of Sodomy ought to refer to pride and avarice.

The idea that Sodomy meant anal sex came from how the people of Sodom tried to force Lot to give over the angels he had as guests so they might rape them. This was after the fate of the city had been decided though, and other places in the bible condemn them not for homosexuality but a lack of hospitality. Xenophobia and especially the prejudice against the poor economic refugees known as illegal immigrants are much closer to a biblical view of "Sodomy" than sex acts are.

 

[Shai Gar]

Wrong. Read the Torah, the original version.

The city of Sodom was destroyed for it's lack of hospitality.

Classical Jewish texts are seen by many as not stressing the homosexual aspect of the attitude of the inhabitants of Sodom as much as their cruelty and lack of hospitality to the "stranger." [3] The Jewish Encyclopaedia [4] has information on the importance of hospitality to the Jewish people. The people of Sodom were seen as guilty of many other significant sins. Rabbinic writings affirm that the Sodomites also committed economic crimes, blasphemy and bloodshed.[5] One of the worst was to give money or even gold ingots to beggars, after inscribing their names on them, and then subsequently refusing to sell them food. The unfortunate stranger would end up starving and after his death, the people who gave him the money would reclaim it.
A rabbinic tradition, described in the Mishnah, postulates that the sin of Sodom was related to property: Sodomites believed that "what is mine is mine, and what is yours is yours" (Abot), which is interpreted as a lack of compassion. Another rabbinic tradition is that these two wealthy cities treated visitors in a sadistic fashion. One major crime done to strangers was almost identical to that of Procrustes in Greek mythology. This would be the story of the "bed" that guests to Sodom were forced to sleep in: if they were too short they were stretched to fit it, and if they were too tall, they were cut up.
In another incident, Eliezer, Abraham's servant, went to visit Lot in Sodom and got in a dispute with a Sodomite over a beggar, and was hit in the forehead with a stone, making him bleed. The Sodomite demanded Eliezer pay him for the service of bloodletting, and a Sodomite judge sided with the Sodomite. Eliezer then struck the judge in the forehead with a stone and asked the judge to pay the Sodomite.
The Talmud and the book of Jasher also recount two incidents of a young girl (one involved Lot's daughter Paltith) who gave some bread to a poor man who had entered the city. When the townspeople discovered their acts of kindness, they burned Paltith and smeared the other girl's body with honey and hung her from the city wall until she was eaten by bees. (Sanhedrin 109a) It is this gruesome event, and her scream in particular, the Talmud concludes, that are alluded to in the verse that heralds the city’s destruction: "So [6] said, 'Because the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah has become great, and because their sin has been very grave, I will descend and see....'"[Gen 18:20-21]. Though this is an extended view which appends the obvious sexual deviancy within the text itself.

 

[TheLastMohican]

Did you read the part of my post where I quoted the bible verse that defined the sin of Sodom? If you had you'd see that the biblical definition of Sodomy ought to refer to pride and avarice.

This is where the term "Biblical definition" runs into trouble: the Bible is not always internally consistent.

In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

 

[Shai Gar]

The bible verse is invalid. It is supposed to be the talmud, and yet the talmud says it's wrong.

 

[TheLastMohican]

The bible verse is invalid. It is supposed to be the talmud, and yet the talmud says it's wrong.

The Talmud is not part of the Bible.

 

[Shai Gar]

The Talmud is not part of the Bible.

The Talmud is where the Old Testament comes from. The verses of Jude were originally from the Talmud. They got translated, and they changed things when they did so.

Therefore, Jude, is wrong.

@Barny, where did I mention sexual perversion?

 

[Barnabas]

Caught my post before I deleted it, you didn't TLM did when he referenced Jude, when I mentioned you it was about all of the other sins of sodom you pointed out.


still this is getting off topic, back to social conservatism and the effects it's having on society.

 

[TheLastMohican]

The Talmud is where the Old Testament comes from. The verses of Jude were originally from the Talmud. They got translated, and they changed things when they did so.

Therefore, Jude, is wrong.

Jude is in the new Testament. It's an epistle. Are you saying that James was copying (and mistranslating) text from the Talmud? If so, why does that mean that we shouldn't include his mistranslations in our consideration of the "Biblical definition"? It was chosen for inclusion in the canon, so I consider it fair game.

Also, why do you say that the Old Testament came from the Talmud? The Talmud wasn't even written down until after Christ, and the content of theological debates indicates to me that it couldn't have predated the Torah, which included the bases for everything that came afterward.