Yup, that’s about right.

69 thoughts on “Yup, that’s about right.”

1. “I grow old, I grow old.” So roll your trousers already.
   Given the anniversary and all – do you think that Brown was decided wrongly? I find the issues very much the same.

2. “Many have deeply-held beliefs, which we would all do well to respect.”
   Setting aside this particular issue for the moment (that of gay rights/marriage), the second clause above doesn’t inherently follow from the first. I’m sure we can all think of many examples where that thought doesn’t hold, and we don’t even have to violate Godwin’s Law.
   I just wanted to note that, since the implication above appears possibly otherwise to me.

3. Well, if by “respect”, one means “acknowledge and not mock or dismiss lightly”, then I’d say that the statement is valid. However insane a person’s deeply-held belief, you gain nothing by ridiculing it and lose nothing by acknowledging its importance to its holder.

4. von,
   Yeah, you are probably right about the likelihood of it happening. I do not think that it is certain to happen, but I wouldn’t bet against it.

5. I grow old, I grow old.” So roll your trousers already.
   I tried to work in a line ’bout mermaids singing each to each, but gave up.
   Setting aside this particular issue for the moment (that of gay rights/marriage), the second clause above doesn’t inherently follow from the first.
   I agree Gary (and KenB) — there’s a clause missing. Being corrected.

6. Well, it took more than a clause to correct. Hope it makes more sense now.

7. von, still curious about Brown.
   And off-topic for Moe perhaps, a hilarious editing of a Kerry comment.

8. “deeply-held religious beliefs that root themselves in the highest and kindest aspirations of humanity”
   could argue against this all day long

9. Given the anniversary and all – do you think that Brown was decided wrongly?
   Absolutely not. (So we’re clear, it was the correctly decided.)
   I find the issues very much the same.
   They’re not if you seek to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment according to what it meant at the time it was passed. But I can understand why a modern reading of the 14th Amd. is otherwise.
   could argue against this all day long
   Well, it’ll be a better argument that Gary Farber and KenB pointing out that I’m making no sense, and me agreeing with them.

10. Gary Farber and KenB pointing out that I’m making no sense
    Actually, I was trying, however incompetently, to defend your original statement against Gary’s onslaught. But there’s no harm in your adding the clarification (except that now one of the resident Grammar Gods may see fit to hurl a lightning bolt your way).

11. ObPedantry…
    I thought your original phrasing was fine, von. I think Gary was incorrect in asserting that the sentence
    “Many have deeply-held beliefs, which we would all do well to respect.”
    was an implication, rather than the ascribing of a predicate to the (implicitly constrained) set of beliefs in question. That is, I read von’s sentence as approximately this:
    “Many have deeply-held beliefs, and the [relevant] deeply-held beliefs possess a quality that makes them worthy of our respect [such as compassion, spirituality &c].”
    rather than
    “Many have deeply-held beliefs, so this [the fact that these beliefs are deeply-held] means that we should respect them.”
    I think it depends on how you read the combination of the phrase “deeply-held beliefs” and the anaphor “which”. [Specifically, does the anaphor refer to the quality “deeply-held”, which thereby becomes defining, or does it refer to the collection of beliefs which are deeply held and, implicitly, relevant to the point at hand?] Of course, since you agreed to the correction, I doubtless divined your intentions incorrectly 🙂
    PS: Having written the phrase a few dozen times now, I can confidently say that “deeply-held” no longer looks like it belongs in English. Urgh.

12. “However insane a person’s deeply-held belief, you gain nothing by ridiculing it and lose nothing by acknowledging its importance to its holder.”
    On the other hand, there’s nothing sufficient, in my view, to gain by acknowledging the importance of Charles Manson’s and John Wayne Gacy’s “deeply held beliefs” and nothing significant to lose by ridiculing them.
    Von, I wasn’t saying you weren’t making sense; I was just quibbling with poor phrasing in one sentence; it did, to be sure, make unclear, to a degree, your intended thought there.
    Your rephrasing is much better, and while not bullet-proof, I see no reason to quibble further.
    Anarch’s “Many have deeply-held beliefs, and the [relevant] deeply-held beliefs possess a quality that makes them worthy of our respect [such as compassion, spirituality &c],” seems fairly bullet-proof.
    Sorry if this is overly fine-tuned for some; I can’t help myself this late in life; that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. It’s a deeply held belief, possessing a quality worthy of respect, you know.
    😉

13. It’s a deeply held belief […]

    Gary, I have to vote for “deeply-held belief” – otherwise you might seem to consider “held” an adjective modifying “belief”, which I think is wrong.

14. For want of a hyphen, the shoe was lost. All right, fair enough.

15. I have a story that explains my take on homosexuality as one of the nation’s few “reincarnation republicans”.
    I think you are right that in the short term (10-30 years) there will be more legislative friendliness in the blue states. However, in my crystal ball, a hundred to two hundred years from now a whole new view of humanity will emerge. As a matter of fact sex and relationships themselves will morph.
    Billions of people will be scientifically establishing relationships – relationships that are the most healthy to their progressive evolution. That goes on automatically to some extent already. Frequency relationship pairs people all the time, but there will be even a greater precision in the matchmaking process.
    Homophobes will be obsolete because everyone (including ewveryone here) has lived as both male and female and this will be common knowledge. , but I think there will be a greater realization in those that are born as reverse polarities at any given time that the goal of a healthy relationship is to strengthen your polarity.
    I know all these words seem like mumbo-jumbo – but not to someone who understands waveforms, signals and e=mc2, for then we see that humanity is just a sum of energy waveforms in perpetual motion, regenerating. Yes reproduction is simply regenerating. Conservation of energy demands that energy regenerates and therefore it demands that all species reproduce.
    All these little topics would be a lecture in and of themselves, but that’s not for today.
    Needless to say, in the distant future homosexuality and lesbianism is actually quite rare. This is not because of repression or any religious or moralistic views, but because mankind’s entire sexual repertoire will mature to a new level. In scientific parlance, the polarity and experience bias in each human will be far more clearly defined. Their desires and attractions become far more precise and physical attractions and desires will be replaced with mental ones. (I can hear it now – “Yeah right!”)
    Hopefully, no one will take offense at my views and because this happens more often than I would like, I apologize ahead of time for whatever prejudice/homophobia/discrimination is read into these lines.
    I know the future. I know the past and the present is just a reflection of one in the other.
    SDAI-Tech1
    “Trust me.” – Max Headroom

16. Yes, but when we will finally get our rocket jet-packs?

17. got to vote for “deeply held beliefs”
    “deeply” being an adverb requires no hyphen when modifying annything
    Now that’s Chicago; which of course is a bit old-fashioned, but the only arguement I can find for using a hyphen with an “ly” adverb (in particular) is for clarity.
    I can’t see how anyone would confuse “deeply held beliefs” in this context for anything else.
    No hyphen (although I’m meremly a Grammar Demigod, so take that or leave it).

18. I do not believe that those who oppose gay marriage are necessarily homophobic; nor are they evil; nor are they bigots.
    Of course not, and I say this as another firm supporter of gay marriage. (Aged 37.) Most people who oppose gay marriage, I’m fairly well convinced, do so fundamentally because they’re not used to do the idea. They may dress this up a bit in religion or in sociology, depending on their beliefs, but basically they have an image of marriage that doesn’t include two men or two women. But, give it ten years – and a lot of gay marriages – and most of these people will have come round, because their image of marriage will have changed with the times.
    Many base their opinion on deeply-held religious beliefs that root themselves in the highest and kindest aspirations of humanity, and which we would all do well to respect.
    Say rather, they base their opinion on a mistaken interpretation of a text. Their deeply-held religious beliefs that are rooted in “the highest and kindest aspirations of humanity” are indeed something that we should all respect, whether or not we share that religion: but we do not condemn Samaritans because “the Bible says so”, nor stone adulterers to death “because the Bible says so”. Nor do we consider that the belief that adulterers should be stoned to death is respectworthy. There are exactly seven verses which reference homosexuality in the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelations: why modern Christians build so much bigotry off these seven references is a genuine mystery.

19. “deeply” being an adverb requires no hyphen when modifying annything
    “Deeply-held,” however, is being used as an adjective. Thus, the hyphen.

20. no, no, no, no, no
    “deeply felt” is also ultimately being used as an adjective, as well, but “his deeply-felt conviction that you don’t use a hyphen to connect an adverb and the adjective it modifies” is actually incorrect (although only grammatically)

21. Ah, but “held” isn’t an adjective, it’s a participle. Go with the hyphen, same as you would with “well-dressed” or “ill-gotten”.

22. Gary,
    The rocket jet-packs only pan out in a few parallel time-streams during the 60’s and 70’s – with helipads built upon the roofs of homes and apartment complexes and the FAA licensing everyone from junior to mom for shopping trips and visiting mother in Florida. Then as the population increases and air accidents increase – they go with the mag-levs crisscrossing the nation like superhighways at 400mph.
    It all hinged on Korea. In one timestream MacArthur is kept on. Communist Korea folds under a limited atomic shell attack, Russia doesn’t yet have the the variety of atomic shells and is left wondering what exactly happened. Truman runs for re-election and wins. Vietnam doesn’t happen as Russia holds back in the east and China without the bomb, stays out of Vietnam. Eisenhower never gets elected and the recession of ’58 is turned to a ’58 boom. That’s when the helipads and rocketpacks appear. Instead, in our timestream the 50’s and 60’s see helicopter and rocket manufacturers working and profiting solely from military ventures. Sikorsky, General Dynamics and others would then have large civilian and residential divisions and products.
    We were gypped. And it’s all our Truman’s fault.
    In our somewhat retarded time stream we’ll probably just go straight to teleportation.
    BRRRZZZZZAAAPPPP!
    😉

23. “In one timestream MacArthur is kept on. Communist Korea folds under a limited atomic shell attack, Russia doesn’t yet have the the variety of atomic shells and is left wondering what exactly happened.”
    I’m slightly confused by this. In our timeline, MacArthur had completely defeated North Korea when, pushing up to the border of China on the Yalu river, China attacked in massive numbers, contrary to MacArthur’s assurances that they would not. It was that which led to our desperate fallback (for the second time), MacArthur’s successful maneuver by landing at Inchon, and then, eventually, MacArthur’s relief by Truman for insubordination. The only way we could have subsequently defeated Korea was by using nukes against the Chinese.
    Things get foggier then, but it seems most likely that we would have had to nuke significant parts of China, killing a few hundred million Chinese, even assuming arguendo that somehow the Soviet Union had no nuclear weapons and otherwise declined to get involved beyond supplies and stiff diplomatic notes, and the like.
    But you don’t mention China at all, which is what confuses me. Did we indeed, in that timeline, massively nuke China, or what?
    I’d also be curious to know more about the US political side. Presuming killing hundreds of millions of Chinese was seen as a great, popular, success, which Adlai Stevenson somehow got elected on the coat-tails of, despite all the other reasons for the pendulum to have swung to the Republicans in 1952, or at least by 1956.
    Further, if Ike hadn’t become the Republican leader, you’d have to really diverge to not have Robert Taft and the arch-conservatives retain the leadership of the party, in which case Barry Goldwater wouldn’t have led any revolution, but merely been another average follower of an extremely conservative party.
    And whatever does happen to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and communism in general, anyway?

24. Jesurgislac:
    The old taunt about The Seven Verses is stale sophistry. Homosexuality in the Bible is usually simply subsumed into sexual immorality more broadly, and condemned via its inclusion in that larger category. For example St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians: “But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you.” Or Christ himself in Mark 7: “And he said, ‘What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man.'”
    Homosexuality was usually not singled out because there was no need to do so: when you are condemning the whole of the sexual mores of the pagans, it is hardly necessary to linger on the specifics.
    Homosexuality deserves specific mention today because homosexuality has asserted its own identity, in a rather unique way. In the ancient world it was a very different phenomenon, usually appearing in the context of male gangs, as in the case of Sparta.

25. Homosexuality deserves specific mention today because homosexuality has asserted its own identity, in a rather unique way. In the ancient world it was a very different phenomenon, usually appearing in the context of male gangs, as in the case of Sparta.
    Interestingly enough, those who argue for lifting the church’s condemnation of homosexuality make much the same point — in the ancient world there was no concept of a homosexual orientation or a committed, monogamous homosexual relationship, so homosexual acts were seen as purely lustful. Thus, properly interpreted (the argument goes), these verses really have nothing to say about modern homosexual relationships.
    Jes:
    (Aged 37.)
    Hey, so’m I! I’d been looking forward to this age for a while, so that when someone asks me how old I am (which doesn’t happen particularly often), I could answer, in my best Palinesque accent, “I’m 37. I’m not old.”

26. I’m 45; please fetch me my walker, children.

27. Actually the atomic shelling of the Chinese communists in North Korea gives the Chinese leadership pause. They realize, like the Japanese did earlier, that there is no hope for their cause and they retreat from the irradiated areas where surviving troops are dying by the busloads. World war II does not begin and instead Korea has a muted victory celebration. I say muted because the fallout from the border shelling creates wholesale evacuation of many Koreans to Japan, Hawaii, Nome, Alaska and, yes, California. In that timestream they don’t rename Westminster, California Little Saigon but the region becomes, for all intents and purposes, Little Seoul two decades earlier than the Vietnam refugee influx in our timestream. It’s little similarities like this that make one realize there are certain repetitive patterns being played out that can’t be avoided.
    Stalin dies in a much more weakened position and Khruschev assumes the mantle, just as in our timestream. However, this Khruschev’s anti-Stalin speech goes much, much further, almost Gorbachev-esque in a vision of a new socialist union based not on conquest but cooperation with the west. The Russian-US cold war somewhat ends in the period of 1955-57. Truman and MacArthur are both celebrated.
    Stevenson doesn’t run because Truman runs. Truman had only run once before, since he had finished Roosevelt’s term. Stevenson never goes anywhere (too cerebral) and Ike, somewhat reluctantly, runs against Truman in ’52 and loses. MacArthur and Truman were war heroes and the Democratic party was now viewed as more militaristic, forcing the GOP to take on an entirely different hue – they reform as the voice of civil rights while invoking Lincoln. At the same time, the party demographics become more diverse and more urban. They are much weaker as well. Nixon, fresh from his anti-American investigation becomes minority whip and only runs for President in 1960 against Stevenson – not Kennedy. Nixon wins – again, because Stevenson was too cerebral/nerdy. Ironically, Nixon is praised for his appearance on television against Stevenson – who appears too collegiate. 😉
    Nixon has an ideal term. No Bay of Pigs (actually Castro never assumes power and Cuba remains a resort/gambling destination for the wealthy), a cooler cold war (now primarily with China) and an economic boom allows for ever more investment in goods such as futuristic radial heat-finned toasters and undersea housing complexes built in the Bahamas and Hawaii – after it receives its statehood.
    Oswald never goes to Russia and no one gets assassinated in ’63. Nixon get’s re-elected in a landslide in ’64 thanks in large part to peace, prosperity and techno-materialism unprecedented in history. There is no watergate,impeachment or resignation and he oversees the era of rocket-packs, personal helicopters and turbine cars. He retires to San Juan Capistrano loved more than Reagan was in our timestream. He lives longer and survives into the twenty-first century only to find his face plastered on the New Quarter joining Truman’s which had been placed on the Half Dollar in the seventies. Turbines become a major automotive power source and almost all cars are turbine powered by 1970.
    The civil rights movement, driven by the GOP, never goes quite as far and only certain basic equal rights are implemented at the state level – especially in large urban states like New York and California – leaving the South still racist for decades longer. This polarizes the nation into pockets of African-American regions in friendly states. Women never do the Lib thing either and the man is still the breadwinner in a world where the 1950’s nuclear family still remains a truism into the 21st century.
    The moon is colonized in a limited manner by a joint US-Soviet exploration and is turned into a National Geographic Special aired in 1992.
    The big threat in 2004 is…..ethnic divisiveness and many small scale wars in third world countries that are left behind as progress moves forward. Terrorism is still the primary tool of the IRA and various fanatics of different flavors including an amazingly high number of ‘technophobes’ who engage in sabotaging rockets, etc. The turbine cars and mag-levs reduce dramatically the call for fuel and the Soviet Union had already been a big exporter of oil since the mid-1960s and Pan-Arabic visions are nearly non-existent.
    Any other questions before this thread gets completely diverted?
    😉

28. Paul Cella wrote: The old taunt about The Seven Verses is stale sophistry.
    Really? I wasn’t aware it was an “old taunt”: the post on livejournal I linked to was the first analysis I’d seen of the Biblical verses that directly mention homosexuality. It’s not a subject I’ve ever taken much interest in: while religionists are entitled to make whatever rules they like for members of their own religion (and if their co-religionists don’t agree, to have a schism) they certainly shouldn’t be allowed to attempt to enforce those rules on others. Christians should no more be allowed to prevent same-sex marriage than Jews should be allowed to prevent the sale of pork. (The difference is, of course, that Jews don’t try to stop non-Jews eating pork…)
    Homosexuality was usually not singled out because there was no need to do so: when you are condemning the whole of the sexual mores of the pagans, it is hardly necessary to linger on the specifics.
    Well, I can see how a gay-hating Christian would have to take that attitude, in order to avoid confronting the fact that Jesus said nothing at all about homosexuality. I asked a gay-hating Christian once (after reading her a poem celebrating the love of John the Beloved Disciple for Jesus) which would change, if it could be proved (as obviously it can’t) that Jesus had a sexual relationship with John: her opinion of Jesus, or her opinion of homosexuality? She thought about it for a minute and told me seriously that her opinion of Jesus would change.
    Homosexuality deserves specific mention today because homosexuality has asserted its own identity, in a rather unique way. In the ancient world it was a very different phenomenon, usually appearing in the context of male gangs, as in the case of Sparta.
    Oh, come off it. In the ancient world (by which I take it you mean Greece/Rome)homosexuality and heterosexuality didn’t exist – it was considered (by all contemporary references) as normal for a man to have sex with a boy as with a woman. The cultural mores that made it unacceptable for an adult male citizen in Greece or in Rome to get f***ed are more complex than that, of course, as anyone with a decent classical education would know, but still – “male gangs”, indeed. Read The Symposium.
    Heterosexuality and homosexuality were invented as separate defining groups in the 19th century. By defining certain kinds of sexuality as “abnormal”, early sexologists had to name the area of sexuality they wished to consider “normal”.

29. She thought about it for a minute and told me seriously that her opinion of Jesus would change.
    That’s about as sad a statement as I ever want to read.

30. Yet it comes as no surprise. The dirty secret is the fear and loathing of homosexuality is primary, and doctrine is parsed as validation, not justification.
    Another test is this. Find someone completely comfortable with homosexuality who later is born again into Christianity. Does their becoming Christian cause them to start agitating against homosexuals? I would guess that the vast majority would not, instead spending their time worrying about their own sins.

31. Jesurgislac:
    This is very amusing. Despite your truculence, you have done nothing but restate my point. “In the ancient world . . . homosexuality and heterosexuality didn’t exist.” Exactly. To be more precise: “gayness” did not exist; homosexuality in its strict, technical definition did. But the gay identity did not exist.
    Which is precisely why Jesus Christ and the early Christians felt no need to isolate and condemn a social construct which would not be invented for 2000 years.
    As for your “gay-hating Christian” friend: her statement is the only one that could be made in response to so devious a blasphemy, if the responder is interested in making her words comport with the truth. I understand how you can see it differently, but the fact is if Jesus was a sinner (which your blasphemy makes him), then he was not the Christ; indeed, he was probably a madman, since, as a mere man, he claimed to be the Son of God and one with the Father.

32. Which is precisely why Jesus Christ and the early Christians felt no need to isolate and condemn a social construct which would not be invented for 2000 years.
    Mind reading penalty. 15 yards. Actually, considering it’s Jesus’s mind, make that 30 yards.
    You have no evidence on which to base a claim that Jesus Christ would have condemned homosexuality. Given that clearly he must have encountered a few folks in his travels who were attracted to their own sex, it’s highly unlikely he would not have said something about it, should he have considered it unnatural.

33. “Another test is this. Find someone completely comfortable with homosexuality who later is born again into Christianity. Does their becoming Christian cause them to start agitating against homosexuals? I would guess that the vast majority would not, instead spending their time worrying about their own sins.”
    I don’t believe anyone has any numbers, but meanwhile I wouldn’t want to rely on such a test, for a wide variety of reasons, from the possibility that your guess is in error, to the fact that even if it is not, I don’t believe it would logically prove your proposition, to several others.
    I’d therefore suggest it’s not a useful argument, but it’s only my suggestion.
    I do tend to agree with Edward’s implication that attempting to deduce what Jesus “felt” seems to suggest possibly “blasphemous” beliefs, itself — is it possible, then, to know the mind of God? — but as I am not a Christian, I will venture no further opinion, and can well imagine various doctrinal interpretations that will justify such statements.

34. Can referees be penalized? The mindreading is out in force, and as long as we’re speculating about the state of mind of the prophets and apostles, I should point out that though I am a complete non-homophobe and very comfortable with Christianity, I think it’s very likely that both Jesus and Paul would have condemned homosexuality if it ever came up in conversation. Theirs is not a philosophy of liberty, it is a philosophy of service, sacrifice, and self-denial.
    But everyone has done a hundred things that Christ condemned, so to elevate homosexuality to some kind of special sin (and one deserving so much energy and cries of ‘abomination’) among the litany of human frailties is to fall victim to hubris and the dreadful mingling of religious conviction with base, organic reactions like homophobia.
    As soon as there are large well-funded organizations devoted entirely to condemning and dehumanizing adulterers, preventing adulterers from attaining civil marriage, and attempting to outlaw acts of adultery, then I’ll believe that current homophobia is an expression of religious conviction, not just an apotheosis of the normal, heterosexual ‘yuck’ response into a divine calling.

35. Gary,
    ” I don’t believe it would logically prove your proposition”
    My proposition, which it seems I never got around to articulating, is that Christianity does not cause homophobia. While this does not disprove that Christianity justifies or lends validation to homophobia, I believe making that point is nevertheless very important for a number of reasons.
    First, it would take away the easy, mindless answers when people are asked why they hate gays, and potentially lead to some critical self-examination about what does cause homophobia. Second, it might make homophobes aware of the pervasive bias that they’re carrying when they attempt to determine whether there’s doctrinal support for homosexuality. Third, it would help re-establish homosexuality as one sin among the daily billions, and not something to get so freaked out about.

36. hey, I’d bet good money that at least one of the disciples was gay.

37. “… not just an apotheosis of the normal, heterosexual ‘yuck’ response into a divine calling.”
    It’s “normal” only in a very limited historical cultural context, of course.
    “As soon as there are large well-funded organizations devoted entirely to condemning and dehumanizing adulterers, preventing adulterers from attaining civil marriage, and attempting to outlaw acts of adultery, then I’ll believe that current homophobia is an expression of religious conviction….”
    I’d find them more convincing if sex weren’t involved at all, but they were acting similarly in favor of the last clause of Leviticus 19:19:

    19:19 Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woolen come upon thee.

    , and of Deuteronomy 22:11:

    Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woolen and linen together.

    However, my limited understanding is that the Coming of Christ released Christians from many of the laws of Leviticus, which makes me unclear how any of them are validly cited as mandates. I do perfectly well understand that this gets into areas of doctrine and theology I’m unfamiliar with, and that various sects and authorities will deal with these scarcely new points in differing ways.
    Which goes to the point that there are many possible ways to be a Christian, and one is making a choice when one goes one way versus another.
    I do, of course, however, respect the fact that there are all sorts of utterly honorable and respectable reasons for making such choices, and that, having made such a choice, it logically follows that one is following along with the given menu, and that making sure deducations about the motivations behind that is unjustified, and apt to be erroneous.

38. the gay identity did not exist.
    Which is precisely why Jesus Christ and the early Christians felt no need to isolate and condemn a social construct which would not be invented for 2000 years.
    
    This is marvelous! Paul is conceding that the Bible makes no definitive statement concerning homosexuality, in our modern understanding of it. Given this statement, I would be interested to see how he defends the idea that committed homosexual relationships are unchristian — it’s no longer as simple as pointing to a verse here or there.

39. Paul Cella: but the fact is if Jesus was a sinner (which your blasphemy makes him), then he was not the Christ; indeed, he was probably a madman, since, as a mere man, he claimed to be the Son of God and one with the Father.
    Interesting. So rather than conclude that since Jesus Christ was involved in a sexual relationship with John, it can’t be a sin, you conclude that Jesus was a madman, not the Christ. This would appear to indicate that for you, it’s more important to condemn homosexuality as a sin, than to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and one with the Father. That’s a rather odd structuring of priorities, isn’t it? Particularly as (as KenB points out) you cannot defend the idea that a committed sexual relationship between two men is unChristian by pointing at any textual reference in the Bible.

40. Since we have so many learned biblical scholars here, I have a few quick questions that I have hoped someone could answer for me.
    If Jesus is God’s son…who is his mother? And if man is made in God’s image – did God have male genitalia? If he does, does this mean he needed a Goddess to give birth to Jesus? Or was he a hermaphrodite? And if he created Jesus all by himself – does that mean he is an onanist?
    😉
    As for Sparta – they threw deformed babies off cliffs and put unmarried males and females past a certain age in a dark room and whoever they first stumbled into was their new spouse. They let old men “tutor” the young boys and whipped them repeatedly to strengthen their body and their discipline. They fed them too little and expected them to steal food, but not get caught. They felt washing would make them weaker and so a Spartan could be smelled before he could be seen. Although homosexuality was pervasive – they did not permit anyone to remain unmarried past a certain age and if you had no children you were worth less than a citizen who had children, especially male children. They fully understood the value of heterosexual reproduction in keeping your family, bloodline and group alive.
    Sparta, like ancient Greece and Rome, does not make a great role model for societal ethics – much less sexual ones.
    😉

41. I think it’s very likely that both Jesus and Paul would have condemned homosexuality if it ever came up in conversation.
    Not too sure about that. Jesus, for instance, didn’t condemn the adulterous woman.

42. Since we have so many learned biblical scholars here, I have a few quick questions that I have hoped someone could answer for me.
    If Jesus is God’s son…who is his mother? And if man is made in God’s image – did god have male genitalia? If he does, does this mean he needed a Goddess to give birth to Jesus? Or was he a hermaphrodite? And if he created Jesus all by himself – does that mean he is an onanist?
    😉
    As for Sparta – they threw deformed babies off cliffs and put unmarried males and females past a certain age in a dark room and whoever they first stumbled into was their new spouse. They let old men “tutor” the young boys and whipped them for strengthening their discipline. The fed them too little and expected them to steal, but not get caught. They felt washing would make them weaker and so a Spartan could be smelled before he could be seen.
    Although homosexuality and lesbianism were pervasive, they did not allow males and females past a certain age remain unmarried. They understood the value of heterosexual reproduction to their families, bloodline and group. Citizens who didn’t have kids were worth less than those who did. Childless men and women were treated worse and were often the object of ridicule. Strange behavior for a society which fostered such outcomes – but then again no one views Sparta as being an enviable or particularly swift witted culture.
    I certainly wouldn’t use Sparta, ancient Greece or Rome as role models for societal ethics – much less sexual ones.
    😉

43. They fully understood the value of heterosexual reproduction in keeping your family, bloodline and group alive.
    And that was indeed the main reason Spart dwindled in power; their insistence on keeping bloodlines ‘pure’ meant that the number of them steadily decreased. By the end of the 5th Century BC they were no longer the force that had faced off the Persians at Plataea, and by the end of the 4th they were all but finished as a military power of any significance.

44. Jesurgislac, an another thread you condemn evangelicals for adhering to “what Jerry Falwell tells them the Bible says.” I’m curious, then, as to why you think they should be terribly concerned with what you tell them it says? Not that I’m here to support Christianity, but IIRC you are neither a practitioner of the religion nor a student of its theology, so, what’s up?
    Sure, from an outcome-based perspective, I prefer your interpretation, but practically speaking, your interpretation isn’t any better than Falwell’s.
    And let me just say that all this hand-waving about Jesus and John is just that. Jesus, one can assume, would not have been involved in a sexual relationship with anyone without being married to them, because it would have been adultery under the Biblical definition. His refusal to condemn the adulterous woman arose from his continued emphasis that people should attend to their own sinfulness and relationship with God rather than spend time judging others, not from any intent to indicate that adultery was no longer sinful.

45. Jesurgislac, an another thread you condemn evangelicals for adhering to “what Jerry Falwell tells them the Bible says.” I’m curious, then, as to why you think they should be terribly concerned with what you tell them it says?
    Indeed, why should they? They should return to source material (or at the very least, a clear and scholarly translation!) and read it for themselves. That’s what I’d do.

46. Indeed, Jesus did not condemn the adulterous woman, but neither did he excuse her sin, or fail to call it sin — “go and sin no more.”
    I certainly wouldn’t use Sparta, ancient Greece or Rome as role models for societal ethics – much less sexual ones.
    No kidding. Neither would I. What Sparta did was emancipate the male gang, by a series of rather brutal methods of reducing the bonds of family. This innovation, however it was carried off (the Spartans preferred attributing it to the great Lawgiver Lycurgus), had transformative effects on the history of civilization. It broke the “cake of custom,” as Walter Bagehot phrased it — a huge developmental step essentially freeing mankind from tribal systems into what we call civilization. This fascinating topic is discussed at length in Lee Harris’s recent book.
    It is not more important for me to condemn homosexuality than to believe in Jesus as Lord; but it is important to affirm the moral order of the universe, of which Christ was the Author, in your counterfactual scenario. Nor did I concede “that the Bible makes no definitive statement concerning homosexuality.” I merely stated, with Jesurgislac, that the ancient world did not know the gay identity as we know it; and that the early Christians, though they did not know gayness, surely knew sexual “impurity” or “uncleanness,” and condemned it fiercely.
    The fact that they did not explicitly condemn the practice of a husband ordering his wife to discard her newborn if it was a girl (frequent enough among the Romans) is not taken to mean that they approved it. No: it (and a thousand other things) is very emphatically condemned by implication when the Christ’s love for the Church is presented as the model for a husband’s love for his wife.

47. Well, OK, Jes, but I think an honest reading of the source material — if one starts with a few basic assumptions, namely that God created the Universe and human beings, and has laid down certain restrictions on how they should and should not act — would indicate that, as Paul indicates, God intends for sexual behavior to be engaged in only between men and women, and primarily for the purpose of procreation — so, by implication, so does Christ. The Bible says what it says, and there’s nothing wrong with indicating that.
    So, yes, I think that Christians who attach no moral opprobrium to homosexuality, and approve of gay marriage, do so in defiance of Christian tenets rather than in accordance with them. Which is fine by me — frankly, I’d rather see the operation brought down from the inside, if you know what I mean.

48. Hmm. Obviously each to his and her own, of course, but Jesus does point out the relative badness of sinning against the body and sinning against the soul, and if practicing homosexuality (rather, of course, than just being homosexual) is a sin, then it’s minor compared to some.
    I actually think, whether or not it is a sin, it’s important not to condemn it. I can’t second guess God on so many things, that if I think it’s wrong, I think it’s wrong; but condemnation is beyond my remit. It’s just dangerous, and usually hypocritical, and Jesus did sort of go around saying things like judge not, lest you be judged, etc. etc.
    Who is any human to condemn anything? What sort of authority do the vast majority of us have?
    Not condoning, is of course different to condemnation. I think choice of words is very important, here. When people say ‘condemn’ a lot of the time, I think they maybe don’t realise it’s a lot stronger a term than ‘disapprove of’ or ‘disagree with’.

49. Phil:
    has laid down certain restrictions on how they should and should not act
    Specifically?
    frankly, I’d rather see the operation brought down from the inside, if you know what I mean.
    I couldn’t agree more.

50. Phil: Jesus, one can assume, would not have been involved in a sexual relationship with anyone without being married to them, because it would have been adultery under the Biblical definition.
    *raises eyebrow* While I agree it’s improbable to the extreme that a Jewish man in the first century AD could have reached the age of 30 without being married, in fact the gospels never mention that Jesus was married, and if he wasn’t married, he would not be committing adultery unless his partner was married.
    Well, OK, Jes, but I think an honest reading of the source material — if one starts with a few basic assumptions, namely that God created the Universe and human beings, and has laid down certain restrictions on how they should and should not act — would indicate that, as Paul indicates, God intends for sexual behavior to be engaged in only between men and women, and primarily for the purpose of procreation — so, by implication, so does Christ. The Bible says what it says, and there’s nothing wrong with indicating that.
    Well, indeed. And a Christian who held to that principle (sex is primarily for the purpose of procreation) would presumably consider it as wrong that a woman past the menopause, or a man who’s had a vasectomy, should have sex, as a gay couple.
    yes, I think that Christians who attach no moral opprobrium to homosexuality, and approve of gay marriage, do so in defiance of Christian tenets rather than in accordance with them.
    As – according to those tenets – do Christians who attach no moral opprobrium to vasectomies (or to the female equivalent – I regret to say that I can’t think of the word for it, because my brain keeps wanting to say “hysterectomy” but that implies the entire removal of the uterus, and what I mean is the small operation colloquially referred to as “having the tubes tied”). Or indeed to “Golden Ager” weddings. (Or indeed to women over the age of fertility having sex at all.)
    The point is that there is a vast degree of hypocrisy around this. A friend whose mother couldn’t have children and so adopted her three kids was (momentarily!) speechless when her mom said that IHO gay marriage was wrong because “gays can’t have children”. Momentarily. Then it was “Hey, mom, are you really saying that you shouldn’t have been allowed to get married?” – or so she reported the conversation afterwards. (People are frequently more outspoken with their parents in reported conversation than in reality, I’ve noticed.)
    James: I can’t second guess God on so many things, that if I think it’s wrong, I think it’s wrong; but condemnation is beyond my remit. It’s just dangerous, and usually hypocritical, and Jesus did sort of go around saying things like judge not, lest you be judged, etc. etc.
    Well said.

51. “And if he created Jesus all by himself – does that mean he is an onanist?”
    That’s one I can answer. The sin of Onan is commonly misunderstood. It was deemed sinful because in “spilling his seed upon the ground,” he wasted it by not procuring a child from it.
    So a definite “no” to that question.

52. Erase all instances of “adultery” in the paragraph Jes quoted and replace with “fornication,” which is what I meant to say.
    And a Christian who held to that principle (sex is primarily for the purpose of procreation) would presumably consider it as wrong that a woman past the menopause, or a man who’s had a vasectomy, should have sex, as a gay couple.
    Well, no, because the Bible is not condemnative of sex between married female and male partners when it does not, or cannot, result in pregnancy. See the Song of Solomon, for example, which is a testament to gettin’ it on for its own sake; and one presumes that . . . Abraham? Who had the wife who was “barren”? . . . still had sex with her even after knocking up her handmaiden. Many of the laws regarding sexual behavior in Leviticus are clearly intended to relate to sex qua sex, not sex in the service of procreation.
    In fact, there is nowhere that the Bible condemns nonprocreative sex between married partners. I think it’s assumed that married couples will have sex often and eagerly, and don’t have to have a baby every time. In fact, I’m certain that Jewish tradition holds that sex for the purpose of sex is A-OK.
    If there was some general condemnation of all nonprocreative sex in the Bible, I’d accept that you were on-target with the “hypocrisy” charge. But there isn’t, and I think you’re off-target. There is, however, a general condemnation of fornication and sexual immorality, and on that basis, I think the Christians who tend to condemn homosexuals are fairly consistent — they’ll condemn pornography, prostitution, and promiscuity just as eagerly. (Publicly, anyway. Mr. Swaggart, you have a call on Line 2.)

53. Erase all instances of “adultery” in the paragraph Jes quoted and replace with “fornication,” which is what I meant to say.
    Ah, fair enough.
    In fact, I’m certain that Jewish tradition holds that sex for the purpose of sex is A-OK.
    Indeed it does: and sex on Friday evening is even considered a mitzvah. But the Christian tradition you are citing (condemnation of non-procreative sex) has no such tradition of celebrating sex for the sake of sex. Which is probably why it’s easier to find a Reform Jewish rabbi who’s willing to perform a ceremony of committment between two nice Jewish boys (or two nice Jewish girls) than it is to find a Catholic priest who’s willing to admit that two men loving each other sexually is not that big of a sin.
    You’re the one who originally brought up “non-procreative sex” as being unChristian: if you wish to disclaim it, fair enough. I was responding to your use of the concept in your 08:09 AM comment.
    Paul Cella: It is not more important for me to condemn homosexuality than to believe in Jesus as Lord;
    Then why do so? If you believe that Jesus is God, why assume he cannot have been God if he sexually loved John? To do so is to affirm that hating homosexuality is more important in your version of Christianity than believing Jesus is Christ.
    but it is important to affirm the moral order of the universe, of which Christ was the Author, in your counterfactual scenario.
    It’s really rather absurd to equate the moral values of a Middle Eastern tribe with “the moral order of the universe”.

54. “…what I mean is the small operation colloquially referred to as “having the tubes tied”).”
    “Tubal ligation.”

55. “It’s really rather absurd to equate the moral values of a Middle Eastern tribe with “the moral order of the universe’.”
    Not given his postulates (which are axioms to him) that the God of the Bible is God, Jesus was God, and spoke God’s word, the Bible is the word of God, etc.
    What you’re saying is that he shouldn’t believe his axiomatic beliefs. There are good arguments as to why he shouldn’t, perhaps, but I doubt you’ll get very far attempting any.
    However, at the very least, you can either choose to argue with him within his system of axioms, or you can attempt to undermine his belief in his axioms.
    Merely trying to argue from outside the system (“it’s just the moral values of a small ancient Middle Eastern tribe”) is pointless and will get you as nowhere as he’ll get arguing with you from his axioms, which you don’t accept.

56. Gary, I see your point.
    But: I have no problem with people who want to follow the moral standards set by a small Middle Eastern tribe, whether they do so as exactly as possible (for example, Orthodox Jews): with respect for tradition but due regard for a world that’s changed since the days of Moses (for example, Reform Jews): picking and choosing as suits your own moral standards (for example, most Christians): and so on.
    I can even take on board a moral framework that says that the standards of this small Middle Eastern tribe are the only right standards for the whole world: cultural imperialism is a common human failing.
    Where I do have a problem is with people who assert that these moral standards are the moral standards of the universe, which is so absurd as to reduce the whole thing to a joke. Small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri follow Mosaic law or are damned? I’m reminded of a button I saw at a Worldcon long ago: Kill a Klingon for Christ.

57. “Tubal ligation.”
    Thank you, Gary. If there’s a word for the sensation you feel when you get the word you want off the tip of your tongue and into your proper conscious thought, I feel it now, and I owe it to you, and the word for that is gratitude.

58. Speaking of gay marriage, here is an interesting development.
    And, let me repeat, you can post “anonymously” on my blog, despite what the frigging Blogger screen says, and, no, I’ve not configured it that way, it’s one of a jillion glitches in their new system that are driving me crazy. (I do appreciate people signing their messages, however.)

59. “If there’s a word for the sensation you feel when you get the word you want off the tip of your tongue and into your proper conscious thought….”
    Deja whew.

60. Gary, not sure if it’s just my problem, but the permalink for that post doesn’t seem to work properly — I had to go to the main page.

61. Seems to be working for me and – ooh, he’s changed the colours again.
    Colors. Sorry. They’re American colours.

62. The new Blogger interface, and Blogspot, have been acting very erratically since the inception last week, is all I can say.
    I just loaded that single entry with no problem. (In Firebird.)
    I occasionally get a 404 for my own blog, but when I reload, it always works.
    I keep having to sign back in again to post, every fifteen minutes or so.
    (Something I hate to mention, but the “delete comments” function that is supposedly there, isn’t.)
    I have the option set for anyone to post comments, but it insists that only “registered” people can comment, which isn’t true (though it’s completely harmless to take the ten seconds it takes to “register).
    Sometimes line separations won’t show up, more or less randomly.
    And so on and so forth. It’s damned irritating. They really should have known better than to roll it out only 9/10ths functional.
    Oh, and perhaps worst of all, frequently when loading a Blogspot site in Mozilla, it locks up my machine for about ten minutes, producing infinite gibberish. At least that’s one of their listed “Known Issues,” but they didn’t indicate they were fixing it, either.
    So now I have to keep both IE and Mozilla Firebird open, kinda part defeating the purpose.
    Grr.

63. You’re the one who originally brought up “non-procreative sex” as being unChristian: if you wish to disclaim it, fair enough. I was responding to your use of the concept in your 08:09 AM comment.
    I did no such thing. Nor did I use the word “exclusively,” I used the word “primarily.” ( . . . God intends for sexual behavior to be engaged in only between men and women, and primarily for the purpose of procreation . . . ) It’s a fairly rudimentary concept — particularly for someone who apparently understands the mathematical meaning of the word “orthogonal” — that, when one uses an ordinal, that there are other items in the list after the first one.
    If it does prove to be a more difficult concept for you than for others, I can draw pictures; but if it makes you feel better to disagree with something you wanted me to say rather than what I said, so be it. I am not one to deny someone their comforts.
    If you believe that Jesus is God, why assume he cannot have been God if he sexually loved John? To do so is to affirm that hating homosexuality is more important in your version of Christianity than believing Jesus is Christ.
    Once again — and to be clear, I don’t believe this, but I understand why a Christian would — two men having sex with each other would have been, by the understanding of Jews of the first century CE, fornication. Fornication is a sin. If Jesus was God, he was without sin. Ergo, any Jesus who had a sexual relationship with John was not God.
    Really, it’s pretty simple to understand, I can only imagine that you stubbornly refuse to do so on purpose. I understand why, but you’re trying to insist to a Christian that Christian theology is something other than what it is. That way lies madness. It’s like asking, “If you believe Jesus was God, why assume he cannot have been God if he worshipped a graven image?” In fact, if you replace the word “homosexuality” with any other behavior that would conventionally be considered sinful in the question you ask Paul, I imagine that his answer would be exactly the same.

64. Another post on the topic; this one has quite sharper words from me, as I feel is appropriate.
    “If it does prove to be a more difficult concept for you than for others, I can draw pictures….”
    Tsk.
    “…two men having sex with each other would have been, by the understanding of Jews of the first century CE, fornication.”
    Are you sure that if they weren’t mutually masturbating, or manually stimulating each other, say, that wouldn’t have been, instead, onanism?
    Do you have any particularly expert sources to cite on first century, C.E., Jewish sexual practices? I’m curious as to the source of your surety. What books on the topic have you read? Do you have academic studies to cite? Or are you basing this upon “common sense” or “it seems to me”?

65. you’re trying to insist to a Christian that Christian theology is something other than what it is.
    Let’s not go overboard. “Christian theology” is hardly monolithic. There are many Christians, and many Christian theologians, who are ready to dispense with the condemnation of homosexuality. Deciding how the biblical scriptures should properly relate to the lives of Christians today is hardly as simple as you imply — our culture is not the culture of the OT or NT Jewish community, and there are many biblical laws that we’ve happily abandoned.

66. In response to my statement, two men having sex with each other would have been, by the understanding of Jews of the first century CE, fornication.”, Gary asks,
    Do you have any particularly expert sources to cite on first century, C.E., Jewish sexual practices?
    I think it’s reasonable to assume that Jews of the 1st century CE would follow, you know, the various dos and don’ts outlined in Leviticus. Call me crazy. I’ll consider the fact that Jewish scripture condemns homosexual sex between men as sinful as an “expert source” on the matter. Unless we’re now going to suggest that neither Jesus nor John were practicing Jews, what with the dedications at the temple and the teaching at the synagogue and the Passover, glaven.
    kenB:“Christian theology” is hardly monolithic. There are many Christians, and many Christian theologians, who are ready to dispense with the condemnation of homosexuality.
    Of course there are, but the question at issue in Jes’s challenge to Paul isn’t what contemporary Christians think about homosexuality, it’s what a Jew of Jesus’s era, and Jesus himself, would have thought about homosexuality. I think it’s reasonable to assume that he would have thought it sinful, just as he probably would have found violating any of the sexual-proscription laws in Leviticus to be sinful.
    Taking that as a starting point, Jes is asking Paul to consider a Jesus who was a sinner — a willful and unrepentant sinner, at that — and ask himself why that would preclude such a Jesus from being God. It’s a self-negating question.
    Deciding how the biblical scriptures should properly relate to the lives of Christians today is hardly as simple as you imply . . .
    But I didn’t. I’m putting forth that there are legitimate reasons for Paul, or for Jes’s quoted female friend, to answer as they do, reasons which are not hypocritical at all but are entirely grounded in their theology. Above, I applauded Christians who abandon the condemnation of homosexuals.

67. “I think it’s reasonable to assume that Jews of the 1st century CE would follow, you know, the various dos and don’ts outlined in Leviticus.”
    I’m not at all an expert (I have close friends who are professors of ancient Jewish history, but I am certainly not one). But I do know that there were a variety of sects in the 1st Century, C.E., as there always have been.
    But, tell me, isn’t it more reasonable to assume that the Pharisees would have interpreted the law on this with a great deal more flexibility than the Sadducees? How would you estimate the Essenes’ sexual practices compared? I’ve not read anything about sexual practices amongst the Zealots, but I don’t know if, being basically militant nationalists, perhaps they were a bit looser; what do you think? I’m not sure if Josephus has much to say on sexuality; perhaps you are better educated on him than I am (it wouldn’t be hard; I left Hebrew school when I got to be 13).
    In any case, you may be entirely right, but I’m not sure it’s wise to “assume” too much.

68. Phil, I better understand where you’re coming from. However, I disagree with this:
    but the question at issue in Jes’s challenge to Paul isn’t what contemporary Christians think about homosexuality, it’s what a Jew of Jesus’s era, and Jesus himself, would have thought about homosexuality.
    I think the point of Jes’s challenge was to see whether his friend, or Paul, in our time, could accept the idea of a Jesus, Son of God, who endorsed homosexuality. IOW, do they condemn homosexuality because they accept the bible as authoritative, or are they simply finding justification in the bible for their prior belief? If Paul truly considers the bible to be authoritative, I’d ask him to point to a biblical tenet with which he does not agree but which he follows nevertheless.
    I’d also point out that Jesus rebelled against much of the social and religious dogma of his time, so the bare fact that homosexuality was conventionally considered to be sinful at that time doesn’t strike me as being dispositive.

69. Gary, let me clarify: I have to assume that a 1st century CE Jew who 1) had sufficient knowledge of the Torah that his followers called him “rabbi” and who was able to debate the Pharisees on their own ground, 2) claimed to be the person — or one of three of the persons, or the only-begotten Son of the person — who actually dictated the bloody thing to Moses/Q/whoever, and 3) stated that he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, would have considered its sexual proscriptions to be law, and probably followed them. I find it difficult to conceive, within the parameters of the question, of a Jesus who would say, “I know I told the Israelites that it’s an abomination in my eyes, but that John is smokin’!”
    And even if you don’t find it difficult to conceive of — is it even settled that Jesus was an Essene, or a member of any sect at all? — surely you can understand why someone of Paul’s disposition and outlook does? It’s nothing to do with hypocrisy, or with some gay-hatred that rises above hatred of any other particular set of sinful behaviors.
    Ken, I get what you’re saying. It just seems to me that Jes is trying to catch Paul in a “Have you stopped beating your wife question?” and then patting himself on the back for his cleverness. If one starts from the assumptions that the Bible says homosexual sex between men is a sin, that Jesus is God, and that Jesus was without sin, then asking Paul what he would think of a Jesus that had sex with John is like asking him what he would think of a square circle.
    Anyway, let’s get a movement going to get civil rights, legal protection and good health care for sex workers in this country. It’ll turn the reactionary Christians’ hair white in ways that will make their reaction to gay rights seem postiively quaint.

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