Do you support gay marriages?

[afleitch]

No. I vehemently oppose any legal recognition of same-sex unions whatsoever, along with societal acceptance of homosexuality. I also support re-criminalizing sodomy; and would support the enactment of a law banning homosexual propaganda in schools, similar to Britain's old Section 28 law.

Why, by banning sodomy do you want to regulate what straight couples get up to in the bedroom. Are you going to publish a list of approved sexual acts?

[afleitch]

No. I vehemently oppose any legal recognition of same-sex unions whatsoever, along with societal acceptance of homosexuality. I also support re-criminalizing sodomy; and would support the enactment of a law banning homosexual propaganda in schools, similar to Britain's old Section 28 law.

Why, by banning sodomy do you want to regulate what straight couples get up to in the bedroom. Are you going to publish a list of approved sexual acts?

Well, he is a fundamentalist. The only approved sexual act is spousal, unprotected vaginal coitus between two fertile persons.

With sex like that you'd think we were machines not people...

[afleitch]

No. I vehemently oppose any legal recognition of same-sex unions whatsoever, along with societal acceptance of homosexuality. I also support re-criminalizing sodomy; and would support the enactment of a law banning homosexual propaganda in schools, similar to Britain's old Section 28 law.

What should the punishment be?  Also, would being gay be a crime or just gay sex? 

Yes.  I'm curious what your nuanced views on this issue are.  Let it all out.

No. I vehemently oppose any legal recognition of same-sex unions whatsoever, along with societal acceptance of homosexuality. I also support re-criminalizing sodomy; and would support the enactment of a law banning homosexual propaganda in schools, similar to Britain's old Section 28 law.

Why, by banning sodomy do you want to regulate what straight couples get up to in the bedroom. Are you going to publish a list of approved sexual acts?

I support a law banning anal and oral sex for both homosexuals and heterosexuals, just like many past U.S. sodomy laws did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States#State_and_territorial_laws_prior_to_Lawrence_v._Texas

The punishment would be a fine, jail sentence, or both.

While I would certainly try to enforce the law, I wouldn't go and install cameras in every bedroom or anything like that. The main purpose of the law would simply be to send a message to society that certain sexual activity is not OK.

What about oral sex and cunnilingus? Gays and straights can do that. Would that also be banned. What about hand jobs? Fingering?  What's your stance on rimming?

[afleitch]

As for slavery in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, you're dealing with a society that had no coinage or money in the form we have it today.  As a result, labor contracts tended to be lengthy, the equivalent of what today we'd consider slavery or peonage.

They were not 'labour contracts'.

Leviticus states that slaves may be purchased, treated as property, their offspring treated as property and passed to your children as a 'permanent inheritance'

That is slavery.

On the matter of Hebrew slaves, the male slave may go free after seven, but his wife and children (if gained during that time) cannot go free. That is a forced choice. And no loving man would choose it, therefore he becomes his masters property forever and is branded.

That is slavery.

A female slave that does not 'please' the man that bought her can be bought back again.

That is sex slavery.

And that's before we get to Jesus.

Don't bullsh-t with the 'it's not really slavery' argument It is.

[afleitch]

I'm having one in 25 days, so.

Congratulations

[afleitch]

Basically, the Bible is for the Church to interpret, not a gaggle of random posters on an internet forum. Debate closed.

Uh, the Bible is for God's children, not a group of robed elitists in a dark room.

And with your logic we might as well shut down the whole forum.

Of course the Bible is for God's children... and being children, they lack the ability to interpret the Bible correctly by themselves.

So presumably I am just God's infant and the elites are his adult children. Even as a Catholic, that hierarchical metaphor is disturbing.

Well I'm not really a fan of the whole 'God's children' concept; I'm not the son of God, Jesus was the one and only son of God. My basic point is that individuals who are not priests and have no formal training or education in scripture have no right or competence in interpreting the Bible, in the same way as a person who has no medical training has no right or competence to make pronouncements upon medical issues.

I would question whether priests have enough life experience to interpret the breadth of human existence and therefore make pronouncement's on it.