but even if the Levitical Laws really ARE the direct word of God... how do you deal with the controversy over whether or not homosexual is a valid interpretation of arsenokroites?
I don't see any evidence that arsenokoites is not sufficient.
1 Cor 6:9.
Lets see... heres a big one...
If a women is raped in a city and didn't cry out, should she be stoned to death?
First of all, I didn't ignore it. It was never brought up. How am I supposed to respond to something that is never brought up?
I'm assuming that you're talking about Deut 22:24. It isn't talking about rape. It's talking about adultery.
I notice that you conveniently forgot to quote VV 25-27, which tell us that if the girl is raped "you shall do nothing to the girl; there is no sin in the girl".
But we certainly wouldn't want the truth to get in the way of your strawman now, would we?
Because its used a bunch of times in the OT... but only once to refer to homosexuals?
But the fact that it is used to refer to homosexuals at all shows that it is used to refer to homosexuals.
But it is a strawman. A strawman is an argument based on a false premise so that it can easily be refuted.
In this case, your argument was based on a false premise so that you could falsely claim that I was ignoring a premise in the Old Testament that does not exist.
It says the way to determine if a woman has been raped or not is whether she screams or not. If she doesn't scream out, then she consents. No third alternative.
Try reading the whole passage. The woman in your example isn't being raped, but is committing adultery.
The second woman in vv25-27 is the one being raped and notice that she is not punished, as you claim, but is declared innocent.
But you've already begun disembling about why the literal reading of the Bible doesn't mean what it says
Not at all. I'm going by the literal reading of the text.
In the example of the first woman, the literal reading of the text says nothing about rape, but tells us that she is guilty of committing adultery.
In the example of the second woman, the literal reading of the text tells us that the woman is raped, but is not stoned to death, as you falsely claimed, but declared innocent of any wrongdoing.
so I look forward to your continuing justification on why THIS bit of the OT should not be applied as written, but the homosexual bit should be.
Under the Old Covenant, both adulterery and homosexuality are sins and both are punishable by stoning.
Under the New Covenant, both adultery and homosexuality are still sins, but we're told that God no longer demands that sinners be punished this way.
If you were sincerely looking for an answer to learn more about what Christianity teaches, I'd explain to you that the book of Hebrews goes into these differences in great detail.