Reply #5: Thanks, well done. [View All]

I'd add the word "sodomy" didn't emerge until the later middle ages, well over a thousand years after the time of Christ, and that before that time, the story of Sodom and Gommorah did not have a sexual connotation amongst Christians. By the time King James had the Bible translated into English, society's views had changed.

And the same Old Testament law codes which condemn "a man lying with another man as he would with a woman" (notice nothing about women wlying with other women) also claim that eating shellfish is an abomination, and that a woman who is raped but does not cry out is to be stoned to death. When most Christians in America are asked why they don't follow these rules, they quite easily say (if they even know enough about the Bible to answer) these rules were meant only for the Hebrews.

One more thing: Jesus told the story of the Samaritan to show that someone you despise may be more your neighbor than someone you venerate and honor. The Samaritans were a group of Hellenizing Jews, meaning they were Jews who had moved away from the Hebrew culture around Jerusalem and were following the Hellenistic culture. Greek culture not only did not frown on what we now call homosexuality (they had no word distinguishing hetero and homo sexuality, either emotionally or physically), they considered it a higher form of love, in some cases. In other words, the term "Samaritan" more than likely had homosexual overtones in Jesus's time, much as the city of San Francisco did a few years ago. Jesus may have specifically been criticisizing homophobia, in other words.