Good for the preacher man! I’m sure it’s causeing a stir. I spent a lot of my life in Alabama…I’d love to see the faces of some folks.
I’m one who disagrees with the 1 man /1 woman restriction some religions put on marriage but that’s me (and a few others I’m sure). Sex is sacred whether one is religious or not. This world needs to be treated with greater love, gentleness and dignity.

The Bible clearly states that it is one man and one woman. I am sorry if you can’t deal, but any other way is sin! Sodom and Gommorah were destroyed because of pre-marital sex and homosexuality.

Amanda,
Sodom and Gommorah were destroyed because of a lack of hospitality not premarital sex or homosexuality. Lot gave is daughters to the men. Why in the hell would you give gay men, women?
think about.
Being Wiccan, i agree with Pagansister, sex is a gift of the Gods to be used with respect, mutual consent, charity and with love. Sex is sacred.

The Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, which is featuring a special edition on “Engaging the Taboo: Gender, the Body, and Sexuality in our Religious Traditions.” For the Journal’s Call for Submissions, check out http://irdialogue.org/submissions/. It may be of interest to those who read this article.

Pagansister! I’ll disagree with you on the first point since the depth of experience in sexual contact is personality-changing and therefore the act itself is prone to abuse; I will heartily agree with your “Here, here!” on love, gentleness, and dignity.
Gwiddion9! Your passion is commendable; I would recommend you read that passage of the bible-Whoever told you that it was merely hospitality for which Sodom and Gommorah were condemned just needs a little more reflection to see the whole point of that story.

The good Rabbi pointed out in a previous article that we all have a tendency to pick and choose verses in the Bible that we like and or support our point of view.
Many of the comments here make his point.Sex is sacred and fun!
Homo mysticus

Your Name,
The persons who told me that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was the lack of hospitality was two Rabbis, that I know.
Respectfully, I will go with the Rabbi’s understanding rather than the Christian interpretation of the event because it is their religious book and they understand their teachings where as Christians tend to define the Tanakh by their beliefs, filtered by their religious views on the subject.

I believe if man would follow what the lord wants from him the world would be a better place to live in . The lord made love and yes he did it for a man and woman anything after that is considered a sin.
And ,Sodom and Gemmorah was destroyed due to their own selfish sexual desires going against the lord wishes just as man lives today. Selfish!!

The lord made man for woman and woman for man, not anything after that. That is why there is so much diseases in this world due to lack of understanding the lords ways. Man is very selfish that is why man makes those choses due to his own sexual desires not the lords way he intended it to be. And , a note Sodom and Gomorah was destroyed due to their own selfish sexual desires and for disrespecting the lord and his commandments.

SEX, done within the bounds of marriage is between the man and wife.
After all He has given us this thing called AGENCY. Just remember there are conditions to agency, such as your spouce getting pregnant.
What I am trying to say is that what goes on in the bedroom between a man and his wife, is their business. I seriously doubt if He is interested in what you are doing within the bounds of marriage in your bedroom. If you are not married, well, that is another story.

Not tp put to fine a point on it but here is what the Prophet says about Sodom and Gommorahs sin:
Eze 16:49 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
HM

I think some of you are mixed up, First of all, man was not made for the woman, but the woman was made for the man. Therefore man shall leave father and mother and cleave to his wife,(meaning woman)
Now concerning Sodom and Gomorah, God done away with them because of what they were doing, men sleeping with men, women with women,
God said that man shall not lay with man as he does with woman,
nor shall a woman lay with another woman.
Look at the USA it is no better than Sodom and Gomorah, need I say more?

To: Homo Mysticus I appreciate your input but please don’t leave out the other sin pointed out in Gen 19:4&5, “But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter: ‘And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.”
In this case, know means “have sex with them.” See Gen 4:1, “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.”
Ezekiel points out some other details, but he does not tell the whole story. The specific sin in Genesis, in reference to Sodom, is homosexuality.

hmmm…how’s sex go with a long term partner, yet not mrried quite yet but pretty serious about it?
as

I live in California, where the prop.8 debate is still raging so I have thought quite a bit about the issues raised here. For the record,I am a straight, married female. I was never promiscuous and do not think it is a good idea to be so. I also do not think teenagers are ready to be sexually active, although I also know that will not stop many of them. In short, some people might even call me a prude…and some have!
I voted against Prop. eight. Here is why. I believe that sex should be between two consenting adults who care about each other and have respect for each other. It should be a part of a total relationship. If two people care enough for each other that they wish to marry, why should I want to stop them? (Remember, this is secular marriage; no religous organization would be forced to recognize such unions unless they wished to do so.) Allowing gay couples to marry promotes caring and monogamy, which is desirable and makes them feel accepted by society, also desirable. The more happy, productive people we have, the better. I have known several sober, respectable gay couples who certainly treated each other better than many of the “straight” couples I’ve known. They were also highly creative, intelligent people who contributed much to our society. I could never think of such people as “immoral.”
I know many people will cite the Bible to prove that homosexuality is an abomination. I have also read the bible (I am Jewish and do attend Torah study pretty regularly) and as many people noted, we sort of pick and choose how we read passages and what we take literally. It is well known that in ancient times, many cultures used homosexual acts in certain rather unsavory religous rites, and even more often, as a way to show dominance. We are not talking about two consenting adults who care about each other engaging in sex, but rather, one (or more) person(s) forcing themselves on those who were weaker. The people of Sodom were wantonly promiscuous and disrespectful of their own and others’ humanity. I honestly think that is the sin.
To be honest, it seems as though we are becoming a society of “Peeping Toms”…way too interested in the very private lives of others and absolutely obsessed with sex. Maybe we ought to concetrate less on “sex” and more on making ourselves better people and the world a better place.

I live in California, where the prop.8 debate is still raging so I have thought quite a bit about the issues raised here. For the record,I am a straight, married female. I was never promiscuous and do not think it is a good idea to be so. I also do not think teenagers are ready to be sexually active, although I also know that will not stop many of them. In short, some people might even call me a prude…and some have!
I voted against Prop. eight. Here is why. I believe that sex should be between two consenting adults who care about each other and have respect for each other. It should be a part of a total relationship. If two people care enough for each other that they wish to marry, why should I want to stop them? (Remember, this is secular marriage; no religous organization would be forced to recognize such unions unless they wished to do so.) Allowing gay couples to marry promotes caring and monogamy, which is desirable and makes them feel accepted by society, also desirable. The more happy, productive people we have, the better. I have known several sober, respectable gay couples who certainly treated each other better than many of the “straight” couples I’ve known. They were also highly creative, intelligent people who contributed much to our society. I could never think of such people as “immoral.”
I know many people will cite the Bible to prove that homosexuality is an abomination. I have also read the bible (I am Jewish and do attend Torah study pretty regularly) and as many people noted, we sort of pick and choose how we read passages and what we take literally. It is well known that in ancient times, many cultures used homosexual acts in certain rather unsavory religous rites, and even more often, as a way to show dominance. We are not talking about two consenting adults who care about each other engaging in sex, but rather, one (or more) person(s) forcing themselves on those who were weaker. The people of Sodom were wantonly promiscuous and disrespectful of their own and others’ humanity. I honestly think that is the sin.
To be honest, it seems as though we are becoming a society of “Peeping Toms”…way too interested in the very private lives of others and absolutely obsessed with sex. Maybe we ought to concetrate less on “sex” and more on making ourselves better people and the world a better place.

With all the quotes from Genesis being tossed about and used against same sex couples, I am moved to remind everyone that Jesus admonished people to be less concerned with old testament rules (Do you follow the dietary and clothing restrictions in Genesis?) and to value kindness, mercy, compassion and love above all things.
For the record, I am straight, and my husband and I have been married for 26 years. We know many same sex couples among our friends; many who have been together as long as we have, and longer, and I certainly consider them married. They have the same concerns for one another, concerns for aging parents, concerns for children’s health and education, and for their communities that my husband and I share. All the couples we know, both gay and straight, are hardworking, normal, human beings, who are just trying to make a good life for themselves, their families and their communities, just like my husband and I. How can a good Christian deny the God given love in the hearts of adults who choose to commit to a lifetime of caring for one another?

I also agree with Lucy G that there is way too much attention on the sex and not enough on just being a better person. All the major religions that I have studied teach that one should be a better, kinder, person.

Hello joyafrica77,
In one instance you have the Prophet speaking. He speaks for G-d. In the other you have the inhabitants speaking. They don’t.
What I find the most disturbing is your criticism of the Prophet Ezekiel, “, but he does not tell the whole story”.
I do agree that the inhabitants wanted to know them in the biblical sense. It was common, and still is today, for Middle Eastern men to anally violate another man as a form of humiliation.
You are confusing what G-d says through his Prophet Ezekiel and the narrative attributing the comments to the crowd. It should be read carefully. As my good Rabbi always says.
It is a common misconception among non-Jews as to what the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was. Thank you for your response.
Best regards,
HM

Here’s a metaphor I was thinking about regarding how to view sex in a pious way. The man himself is in the image of God, and so represents God, or lets just say one of God’s sons, but his little man, whom he should have full control of is his minister. The woman represents a congregation, and her garden is the place of meeting. Before marriage there is a curtain that represents the curtain to the most holy place in her meeting place. When the marriage takes place the minister enters his church and the curtain is removed. When this curtain is removed the congregation may be truly preached to by her Lord’s true minister. Now this minister plants seeds of wisdom. Some of these seeds get wasted but some find good soil and what emerges is either a new congregation, or a new son of God. As long as each new Son of God remains faithful to the teachings of his parents as does each congregation, they remain children of the original first two, but once they go astray, they lose that status as being called true children of the Almighty. Now it might be tempting for a minister to preach in the wrong places, where all his seeds of wisdom would certainly be wasted, this might represent hypocrisy on the son of God’s part, or his inability to discern where his words of wisdom would do their best work. On the other hand if the congregation decides to listen to the minsters of other sons, they are certainly not true son’s of God for they are preaching in someone’s congregation not their own. In this case she may receive seeds of a non-son of God, and give birth to false sons of God or false churches of God. This would then be harmful to her Lord’s feelings, to her children, to their children, and to herself.

Born and raised in Africa i totally find homosexuality strange and very alien to the existance of man. I have never met gay couples in my entire life to have a comprehensive judgement on their way of doing things. To some extent i feel these sexual relationships with the same sex orientation are just part of man’s expendience especially in affluent economies like the U.S.A and the united kingdom.

Maybe homosexuality it just nature’s way of counter balancing demographic explosion and over population, just as are the everyday more common cases of infertility in men and women.
Maybe those who are suseptible of such preferences aren’t necessarily happy about it, but they do have to deal with it in some way or another, and the less we try to be comprehensibe about the situation, the more we fail to understand and be able to provide some light on the subject.

In Kabbalah, I learned that the Hebrew words for man “ish” and woman “isha” have the letters of aleph and shin in common, these letters form a word “fire”. So, alone, both man and woman have this element of “fire”. Here are the equations: man + man = fire woman + woman = fire BUT, and this is the “BUT” of THE ETERNAL CREATOR: man + woman = YAH The letters they do not hold in common, the yod [from the man] and the hey [from the woman] also form a word, which is the praise form of the Creator’s Name, “YAH”, commonly found in the word “HalleluYAH” [Praise you YAH]. Coincidence or a profound truth that the essence or image of this Eternal Being requires both male and female?

Thanks for the well written posts, Lucy G. and Laurel S.
What is the problem with 2 consenting adults of the same gender committing to a life of love and respect for each other?? I have gay friends who have done just that. Those who don’t agree with same gender marriages don’t have to participate in them. It’s called “equality” and no religious book should stand in the way of equality for all folks.

And what is all this concern with the sex lives of people we don’t even know, any way? To me, and claiming no authority other than my own opinion, that is the perversion.

I wish the Catholic God would stop peeking in my bedroom. Seems kind of perverted.