Gay activists plan to change strategy in gay marriage fight

[In A Perfect World]

Love is only right when it is acceptable in God's eyes. Not mans.

I've heard a lot of things, but I've never heard anyone redefine love as you did.

I guess man creates god in his image and uses god to affirm his own stances. That way there is no reasoning involved, just "God says so and I agree".

 

[invisible trousers]

^^ good point

well, that was interesting.

 

[MJ421]

Just to let you know.....if you cannot prove or disprove a certain thing then you cannot condemn or dissmiss a certain thing and there fore scientifically must label the non-proven or non-disproven thing as being plausible.

Plausable, yes. Proven, no. Fact, no. Admissable in a court of law as evidence, no. Your belief is your right, but the law only deals with facts, not unsupported hypotheses.

that being said. NO ONE HAS DISPROVEN THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE BIBLE. people have had there theories and "explenations"....but no proof. And the proof that we have provided over the years gets twisted and some how explained away and forgotten....but never disproven.

No one is argueing the Bible isn't authentic, just that it wasn't inspired by God. True, we haven't disproven it, but then again, the burden of evidence doesn't rest on us.

Perhaps if you had any proof that couldn't be explained away, you might have something.

 

[outlaw]

The King James references the same Greek word as the NIV there:
Arsenokoites

Arsenokoités and Malakos: Meanings and Consequences

by Dale B. Martin 1996 Westminster John Knox Press

The New Testament provides little ammunition to those wishing to condemn modern homosexuality. Compared to the much more certain condemnations of anger, wealth (sometimes anything but poverty), adultery, or disobedience of wives and children, the few passages that might be taken as condemning homosexuality are meager. It is not surprising, therefore, that the interpretation of two mere words has commanded a disproportionate amount of attention. Both words, arsenokoités and malakos, occur in a vice list in 1 Cor. 6:9, and arsenokoités recurs in 1 Tim. 1:10. Although the translation of these two words has varied through the years, in the twentieth century they have often been taken to refer to people who engage in homosexual, or at least male homosexual, sex, and the conclusion sometimes then follows that the New Testament or Paul, condemns homosexual "activity."

Arsenokoités

From the earliest English translations of the Bible, arsenokoités has suffered confusing treatment. Wyclif (in 1380) translated it as "thei that don leccherie with men" and until the twentieth century similar translations prevailed, primarily "abusars of them selves with the mankynde" (Tyndale 1534; see also Coverdale 1535, Cranmer 1539, Geneva Bible 1557, KJV 1611, ASV 1901; the Douai-Rheims version of 1582 was a bit clearer: "the liers vvith mankinde").

Between the end of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century, therefore, the translation of arsenokoités shifted from being the reference to an action that any man might well perform, regardless of orientation or disorientation, to refer to a "perversion," either an action or a propensity taken to be self-evidently abnormal and diseased. The shift in translation, that is, reflected the invention of the category of "homosexuality" as an abnormal orientation, an invention that occurred in the nineteenth century but gained popular currency only gradually in the twentieth. Furthermore, whereas earlier translations had all taken the term (correctly) to refer to men, the newer translations broadened the reference to include people of either sex who could be diagnosed as suffering from the new modem neurosis of homosexuality. Thorough historical or philological evidence was never adduced to support this shift in translation. The interpretations were prompted not by criteria of historical criticism but by shifts in modem sexual ideology.

As the debate over homosexuality and the Bible has become more explicit, various attempts have been made to defend the interpretation of arsenokoités as a reference to male-male or homosexual sex in general. A common error made in such attempts is to point to its two parts, arsLn and koitLs, and say that "obviously" the word refers to men who have sex with men. Scholars sometimes support this reading by pointing out that the two words occur together, though not joined, in Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible and in Philo in a context in which he condemns male homosexual sex. Either Paul, it is suggested, or someone before him simply combined the two words together to form a new term for men who have sex with men.

This approach is linguistically invalid. It is highly precarious to try to ascertain the meaning of a word by taking it apart, getting the meanings of its component parts, and then assuming, with no supporting evidence, that the meaning of the longer word is a simple combination of its component parts. To "understand" does not mean to "stand under." In fact, nothing about the basic meanings of either "stand" or "under" has any direct bearing on the meaning of "understand." This phenomenon of language is sometimes even more obvious with terms that designate social roles, since the nature of the roles themselves often changes over time and becomes separated from any original reference. None of us, for example, takes the word "chairman" to have any necessary reference to a chair, even if it originally did. Thus, all definitions of arsenokoités that derive its meaning from its components are naive and indefensible. Furthermore, the claim that arsenokoités came from a combination of these two words and therefore means "men who have sex with men" makes the additional error of defining a word by its (assumed) etymology. The etymology of a word is its history, not its meaning.

The only reliable way to define a word is to analyze its use in as many different contexts as possible. The word "means" according to its function, according to how particular people use the word in different situations. Unfortunately, we have very few uses of arsenokoités and most of those occur in simple lists of sins, mostly in quotations of the biblical lists, thus pro- viding no explanation of the term, no independent usage, and few clues from the context about the term's meaning. But having analyzed these different occurrences of arsenokoités, especially cases where it occurs in vice lists that do not merely quote 1 Cor. 6:9 or 1 Tim. 1:10, I am convinced that we can make some guarded statements.

As others have noted, vice lists are sometimes organized into groups of "sins," with sins put together that have something to do with one another. First are listed, say, vices of sex, then those of violence, then others related to economics or injustice. Analyzing the occurrence of arsenokoités in different vice lists, I noticed that it often occurs not where we would expect to find reference to homosexual intercourse — that is, along with adultery (moicheia) and prostitution or illicit sex (inappropriate contenteia) — but among vices related to economic injustice or exploitation. Though this provides little to go on, I suggest that a careful analysis of the actual context of the use of arsenokoités, free from linguistically specious arguments from etymology or the word's separate parts, indicates that arsenokoités had a more specific meaning in Greco-Roman culture than homosexual penetration in general, a meaning that is now lost to us. It seems to have referred to some kind of economic exploitation by means of sex, perhaps but not necessarily homosexual sex.

One of the earliest appearances of the word (here the verb) occurs in Sibylline Oracle 2.70-77.10 Although the date of this section of the oracle — indeed, of the finished oracle itself — is uncertain, there is no reason to take the text as dependent on Paul or the New Testament. The oracle probably provides an independent use of the word. It occurs in a section listing acts of economic injustice and exploitation; in fact, the editors of the English translation here quoted (J. J. Collins) label the section "On Justice":

(Never accept in your hand a gift which derives from unjust deeds.)
Do not steal seeds. Whoever takes for himself is accursed (to generations of generations, to the scattering of life.
Do not arsenokoitein, do not betray information, do not murder.) Give one who has labored his wage. Do not oppress a poor man. Take heed of your speech. Keep a secret matter in your heart. (Make provision for orphans and widows and those in need.)
Do not be willing to act unjustly, and therefore do not give leave to one who is acting unjustly.

The term occurs in a list of what we might call "economic sins," actions related to economic injustice or exploitation: accepting gifts from unjust sources, extortion, withholding wages, oppressing the poor. "Stealing seeds" probably refers to the hoarding of grain; in the ancient world, the poor often accused the rich of withholding grain from the market as a price-fixing strategy. I would argue that other sins here mentioned that have no necessary economic connotation probably do here. Thus the references to speech and keeping secrets may connote the use of information for unjust gain, like fraud, extortion, or blackmail; and "murder" here may hint at motivations of economic gain, recalling, for example, the murder of Naboth by Jezebel (1 Kings 21). In any case, no other term in the section refers to sex. Indeed, nothing in the context (including what precedes and follows this quotation) suggests that a sexual action in general is being referred to at all. If we take the context as indicating the meaning, we should assume that arsenokoitein here refers to some kind of economic exploitation, probably by sexual means: rape or sex by economic coercion, prostitution, pimping, or something of the sort.

This suggestion is supported by the fact that a list of sexual sins does occur elsewhere in the same oracle, which is where we might expect to find a reference to male-male sex (2.279-82). The author condemns "defiling the flesh by licentiousness," "undoing the girdle of virginity by secret intercourse," abortion, and exposure of infants (the last two often taken to be means of birth control used by people enslaved to sex; such people proved by these deeds that they had sex purely out of lust rather than from the "nobler" motive of procreation). If the prohibition against arsenokoitein was taken to condemn homosexual intercourse in general, one would expect the term to occur here, rather than among the terms condemning unjust exploitation.

A similar case exists in the second-century Acts of John. "John" is condemning the rich men of Ephesus:

You who delight in gold and ivory and jewels, do you see your loved (possessions) when night comes on? And you who give way to soft clothing, and then depart from life, will these things be useful in the place where you are going? And let the murderer know that the punishment he has earned awaits him in double measure after he leaves this (world). So also the poisoner, sorcerer, robber, swindler, and arsenokoités, the thief and all of this band. ...So, men of Ephesus, change your ways; for you know this also, that kings, rulers, tyrants, boasters, and warmongers shall go naked from this world and come to eternal misery and torment (section 36; Hennecke-Schneemelcher).

Here also, arsenokoités occurs in a list of sins related to economics and injustice: delighting in wealth, robbery, swindling, thievery. Note also the list of those who prosper by their power over others: kings, rulers, tyrants, boasters, warmongers. The emphasis throughout the section is on power, money, and unjust exploitation, not sex.

As was the case in the Sybilline Oracle, "John" does denounce sexual sins elsewhere in the text, and the word arsenokoités is absent (section 35). If this author took arsenokoités to refer generally to homosexual sex or penetration, we would expect him to mention it among the other sexual sins, rather than in the section condemning the rich for economic exploitation. Thus, here also arsenokoités probably refers to some kind of economic exploitation, again perhaps by sexual means.

Another second-century Christian document offers corroborative, though a bit less obvious, evidence. Theophilus of Antioch, in his treatise addressed To Autolychus, provides a vice list. First come the two sexual sins of adultery and fornication or prostitution. Next come three economic sinners: thief, plunderer, and defrauder (or robber). Sixth is arsenokoités. The next group includes savagery, abusive behavior, wrath, and jealousy or envy, all of which the ancients would recognize as sins of "passion": that is, uncontrolled emotion. Next come instances of pride: boastfulness and conceit or haughtiness. I take the next term, pléktés ("striker") to denote someone who thinks he can go around hitting people as if they were his slaves. Then occurs the term "avaricious," or "greedy." Finally are two phrases related to the family: disobedience to parents and selling one's children. These last three may all have been taken as belonging to the category of greed, surely in the case of selling one's children and also perhaps in the reference to parents, if the particular action is understood as a refusal to support one's parents in their old age.

arsenokoités is separated from the sexual sins by three terms that refer to economic injustice. Would this be the case if it was understood as a condemnation of simple male homosexual intercourse? Furthermore, as Robert Grant notes, Theophilus takes these terms, with the exceptions of phthoneros and hyperoptLs, from vice lists in the Pauline corpus. Therefore, it is notable that Theophilus places arsenokoités in a different position. Grouping it with economic sins, I suggest, reflects his understanding of the social role to which it referred and his rhetorical goal of grouping the vices by category.

Later in the same work, arsenokoitia occurs in another list: again adultery and inappropriate contenteia come first, then arsenokoitia, followed by greed (pleonexia) and athemitoi eidOlolatreia, referring to idolatry. This list is not very helpful, since the term could here be taken as a sexual vice, grouped with the two preceding terms, or as an economic vice, grouped with the following. One possible explanation is that it is both: it is economic exploitation by some sexual means.

 

[MJ421]

and as far as it not being a religious debate......why is posted on here then?

Because out of the hundreds of forums here, there are only about 5 where you can actually talk about this topic.

Maybe that why.

 

[Scally Cap]

What can two women do to each other but oral and vaginal kissing, as soon as they add "toys" to their relationship, they've proven that their form of sex is invalid. In fact many lesbian couples end up with a child through artificial insemination in order to "feel fulfilled as a woman," and experiance child bearing and giving birth. This seems to fly in the face of logic, since lesbians should hate everything that goes with being "mauled" by a man....

This is really juvenile, particularly coming on the heels of your reference to gay men damaging each other's anuses and, apparently, each other's dental work. You're reducing people--people who happen to fall in love with someone of the same gender--to sexual acts. Specifically, to sexual acts that disgust you. You equate lesbians' lack of sexual and affective attraction to men with a hatred of men. A poster in another thread has made snide references to "catty gay males who hate women." You and your buddy heide are just sure that gays only want to get married for the legal benefits--while another of your cohort is convinced that the failure of every gay couple seeking marriage to just hire lawyers to draw up contracts faintly approximating marriage is evidence that they're not serious about the whole business.

There's not a shred of logic on this thread*, and hardly much more in the anti-marriage equality camp in general. The same tirades keep getting trotted out--gays can't have real sex, they do disgusting things with each other (Keep Sodomy Straight!), they can't conceive, marriage is always about religion, and darn it, US law comes out of the Bible undiluted whether you want to recognize it or not.



*posts by outlaw and crazyfingers excepted, of course. oh, and mine.

 

[outlaw]

*some one needs to read the bible* specifically leviticus chpt 20

Which verse of Leviticus 20 are you referring to?



The vers where it says you should murder any and all homosexuals you meet?

"If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them."(Leviticus 20:13)



Or the verse that says its all right to murder your own child?

"For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother. His blood shall be upon him." (Leviticus 20:9)





Or the verse that says women having their period are unclean?

"If a man lies with a woman during her sickness and uncovers her nakedness, he has discovered her flow, and she has uncovered the flow of her blood. Both of them shall be cut off from her people." (Leviticus 20:18)

 

[In A Perfect World]

Which verse of Leviticus 20 are you referring to?



The vers where it says you should murder any and all homosexuals you meet?

"If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them."(Leviticus 20:13)



Or the verse that says its all right to murder your own child?

"For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother. His blood shall be upon him." (Leviticus 20:9)





Or the verse that says women having their period are unclean?

"If a man lies with a woman during her sickness and uncovers her nakedness, he has discovered her flow, and she has uncovered the flow of her blood. Both of them shall be cut off from her people." (Leviticus 20:18)

Man you must not be Christian! You are supposed to know by now that you pick and choose which laws of the OT you are going to follow and enforce. Comeon man!

 

[outlaw]

*sigh*These are all wonderful points, i hope you feel better.
now....about the bible. I don't see anywhere in the bible where it is our personal christian responsability to ensure these laws be affective to homosexuals.

I don't see anywhere in the bible where it is our personal responsibility to ensure these laws be affective to blacks.

 

[In A Perfect World]

I don't see anywhere in the bible where it is our personal responsibility to ensure these laws be affective to blacks.

But black people are straight! Only the gays have strayed away from god!

 

[crazyfingers]

lol where do you think the golden rule came from??

From a lot of different sources

http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm

The first known enunciation of the Golden Rule is from around 4500 years ago by the Mesopotamian King Ur-Nammu.

Where do you think that it comes from?

 

[In A Perfect World]

From a lot of different sources

http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm

The first known enunciation of the Golden Rule is from around 4500 years ago by the Mesopotamian King Ur-Nammu.

Where do you think that it comes from?

GOD!

 

[crazyfingers]

GOD!

I'll be waiting for you to demonstrate that a god exists.

 

[In A Perfect World]

I'll be waiting for you to demonstrate that a god exists.

I'll be waiting for you to check the icon above my name

 

[outlaw]

Homosexuals (by the way aren't made to be homosexual...

And do you have any legitimate evidence to back up this claim?

 

[Electric Sceptic]

what documents?
but still...what documents?? If you knew these documents then why didn't you state them in your post in regards to my qoute?

[/QUOTE]
Because I didn't want to bother. If you are sufficiently interested, you can do the research yourself. If you're not, me pointing out references won't do any good - you'll just explain them away.

even so..the bible was not the creator of our beliefs. Human moral construct is inconsistant and falibal.

Yes, so you claim. However, you can't evidence this.

If it weren't then we would all be getting along in peace in harmony. Human moral construct fades....changes..swayes and differs.

Not at all. If people would actually FOLLOW human moral constructs, instead of the ones that they claim to get from some god, we would all be far better off.

Who's the human or culture or leader or group of people supposed to construct this anti God anti bible moral structer?

Who said anything about it being anti god or anti bible?

lol..... ok. you appearntly don't understand the differance in religious belief and biblical belief.

You apparently don't know what 'religious' means. A belief in the truth of the bible IS a religious belief.

and if you think "religious" beliefs don't have a play in this country and it's law...you're only fooling yourself....but -good for you! For believing what you do! Because if it didn't play in this country and how we opperate and our laws....then it wouldn't be such an issue politically.

Oh, religious beliefs DO have a play in this country and its law...but they shouldn't. Arguments from religion have no place whatsoever in legal environments.

 

[outlaw]

lol. ok. just don't mistake the act of man in the bible as acts of God in all cases. Look at the consistancy of God and His law. Not at the poor ability to excecute his law from His people.

Which is why eating shrimp is still a sin Leviticus 11:10-12

Slavery is A-OKAY Leviticus 25:44-45

Shaving is immoral Leviticus 19:27

Nobody eats pork chops Leviticus 11:17

And no sin is worse than wearing poly cotton blends Leviticus 19:19



Because God’s laws are constant and unchanging

 

[MJ421]

Well this got dull, fast.

 

[In A Perfect World]

there's 13 people in here just reading. come on, people post

 

[Thirst_For_Knowledge]

there's 13 people in here just reading. come on, people post

You have entirely too much time on your hands.