Why Would God Actually be against Homosexuality

Katiee

I wanted to work through the question of why is God would be against homosexuality. I think the response most give is that it cannot result in children, and immediately after blessing Adam and Eve, he tells them “Be fruitful and multiply” I think the fact that this was the first command given implies it is pretty important to God. The argument would go something like this.
1: If God commands something, then we should not do anything against it
2: God commands humans to be fruitful and multiply
3: We should be fruitful and multiply (1,2 MP)
4: Homosexuality goes against procreation
5: Therefore, humans should not be homosexual
First, let me make it clear I don’t agree with this conclusion, and I’m aware this argument has it problems. First, one could object using a counterexample of a heterosexual couple that cannot conceive. Their relationship isn’t homosexual, yet it still does not lead to procreation. Would God be against their relationship also? Perhaps some extremist would accept that God would be, but I don’t, and I doubt most rational people would. A second, very common, response to God’s commands against homosexuality is that the translation of Leviticus altered the actual meanings behind those commands. Some argue the original text calling homosexual sex an abomination (Leviticus 18:22) was actually referring to sex between a man and a boy. I think this makes some sense, because in some ancient civilizations (Greece) homosexual sex was usually an act between an older male and a much younger male. The act was also not usually an act of love but an act just for pleasure. This also follows what I said earlier that if this sex was just for pleasure, not procreation, it shouldn’t be done, according to God. After all, God is for all love, so it would make more sense for him to be opposed to casual sex between and older man and younger boy rather than sex between two consenting, in love, individuals. I’m aware this is not a definitive answer, just me combining other arguments I’ve heard on this topic trying to make some sense of them, because I too, don’t fully grasp God’s reasoning against a two-way, consenting, loving relationship.

bert1

I can't imagine many people on this forum disagreeing with you and defending the idea that God is against homosexuality. In any case, this seems as much a question of scriptural interpretation than philosophy. Even if there are Christians on the forum who do think God forbids homosexuality, it's becoming somewhat offensive to say that out loud. Personally, even if I were a Christian I would still see the Bible as of its time. Go forth and multiply is hardly a socially responsible thing to do these days, and God being a corduroy-wearing 21st century liberal I'm sure he would be hoping someone would update the rules a bit.

frank

↪Katiee

It came from ideas about the order of the universe. Women were supposed to be lower down on the cosmic scale, so the act of penetration was a symbol of domination. If a man experienced penetration, it was seen as a perverse rejection of the divine order, so a kind of blasphemy.

Tom Storm

↪Katiee

The character in the books you refer to may be homophobic. But what reason do you have for believing that an old book which says a thing is correct? A better account of Scripture might be that such stories are reflections of human yearning and prejudice.

“I treasure the Bible. I live in it and work on it all the time. But it is not the word of God. It’s the tribal story of a particular people, and the best thing about that story is that the story keeps growing and evolving.”

— John Shelby Spong

Vera Mont

God’s reasoning against a two-way, consenting, loving relationship. — Katiee

God had nothing to do with writing up the laws of ancient Israel. It's in the interest of militaristic regimes to keep women in the home, making more little soldiers, and men out there in the world, doing business to pay taxes and sending lots of sons (who all have an eye on the inheritance) to the army.
The warring Greeks were a lot smarter.

unenlightened

4: Homosexuality goes against procreation — Katiee

Does it? Does resting on the seventh day go against creation? Does a celibate priesthood go against procreation? Killing goes against procreation, destroying goes against creation.

One might consider that God in His wisdom, knowing that childbirth is risky for the mother, has provided a surplus of effeminate males who will not themselves give birth, but stand ready to take on the responsibility for orphaned children and generally support the community. I don't have chapter and verse for that, but I think He is merciful and wise, so ...

Art48

The belief that a book with a talking serpent represents God's will is the fundamental false belief that engenders lots of questions like the one in the OP. Here's another "gem" from what many misguided people take to be God's Word.

Old Testament.
• “Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death. Exodus 21:17
• For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him. Leviticus 20:9

In the following verses, it is Jesus himself who is speaking.
• For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ Matthew 15:4
• For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ Mark 7:10

The Biblical teaching about what should be done to a child who curses a parent is quite clear. And quite monstrous and evil.

Vera Mont

The Biblical teaching about what should be done to a child who curses a parent is quite clear. And quite monstrous and evil. — Art48

To be fair, they were not talking to or about children, but grown men. The nomadic - or possibly fugitive - tribe had fairly recently ousted another tribe from its settlement and taken up farming. Land-ownership and inheritance were an unaccustomed concept as yet, and family squabbles a long standing tradition. (see OT: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, the prodigal son; Lot's lot, Abraham's peculiar domestic arrangements....) So it was important to law and order to keep the sons in line.

Hanover

I wanted to work through the question of why is God would be against homosexuality. — Katiee

In order to spiritually cleanse those Israelites who came into contact with the dead, they were to sacrifice a red cow that has never been pregnant or milked to God. Numbers 19:1-22.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_heifer#:~:text=The%20red%20heifer%20offering%20instructions,burned%20outside%20of%20the%20camp.

Why?

I don't think any amount of consideration is going to yield a meaningful answer. The point being that just because one can logically decipher the basis for some biblical decrees (like the prohibition against murder), you shouldn't think you can do the same for all.

Divine command theory is an ethical system that bases its justifications on the fact that God decreed it, not on the basis it is logical or is rooted in an underlying guiding principle.

It is so because God said it. It's not philosophy. It's theology that does not need to prove itself. Such is the distinction between faith and reason.

I'd also point out that the logic of the OP fails as well, as it's entirely possible to procreate and still engage from time to time in homosexuality, but that too is forbidden.

Baden

↪Hanover

:up:

There's a line of thought that always looks for sociocultural / environmental reasons for taboos and you can almost always find something to cling to. Whether that something is just a correlate or a cause is the difficult question though. There's absolutely no requirement for rationality as the concept of rationality itself is built around taboos and other social instruments / structures rather than precedes them.

Art48

To be fair, they were not talking to or about children, but grown men. — Vera Mont

Don't you mean "God was not talking to or about children, but grown men."?
If so, can you explain how you know what was in the mind of God?

Vera Mont

Don't you mean "God was not talking to or about children, but grown men."? — Art48

No. I don't think any god ever talked to anybody about anything. Men made up the laws of their kingdoms, according to what they considered needful, useful and expedient.

Vera Mont

There's a line of thought that always looks for sociocultural / environmental reasons for taboos and you can almost always find something to cling to. — Baden

And yet the taboos and commandments come from someplace. In the absence of an irrational deity, they must have sprung from the minds of men. It's conceivable that every ancient law-maker on every continent was irrational, but much harder to imagine that entire societies routinely followed their irrational leaders, especially in costly practices like the sacrifice of cattle and male offspring, without any cultural or environmental motive to do so.

Baden

much harder to imagine that entire societies routinely followed their irrational leaders — Vera Mont

especially in costly practices like the sacrifice of cattle and male offspring, without any cultural or environmental motive to do so. — Vera Mont

What's the environmental motive for flying a plane into a building and blowing yourself up in the process? Certainly seems like a costly practice. There's a sense in which ideology involves the creation of the terms of its own justification.

And yet the taboos and commandments come from someplace. In the absence of an irrational deity, they must have sprung from the minds of men. — Vera Mont

There is little recognizably irrational or rational outside culture. And culture is based on the sacred and the profane. It's the sacred and profane, including totems and taboos that define rationality in context not the other way around. It's not like ancient societies sat around in a committee and said "OK, we have this rational set of values, let's apply them to create a religion!" The rituals and practices of their religious and cultural beliefs--however they came about--instead instantiated a stable mode of propagation of values.

This is not to try to render environmental or other "rational" considerations absolutely impossible or irrelevant but simply to problematise the coherence of them being a priori necessary.

Hanover

It's conceivable that every ancient law-maker on every continent was irrational, but much harder to imagine that entire societies routinely followed their irrational leaders, — Vera Mont

As I noted, it's not an all or nothing proposition. Some might be rational (like prohibitions against murder) and others not (like waving a sagebrush to ward off evil spirits).

We can speculate as to why, but it would be just wild speculation without any historical basis, and the historical basis could be entirely irrational.

Baden

and the historical basis could be entirely irrational. — Hanover

Or superficially rational which is what tends to happen I think.

Vera Mont

What's the environmental motive for flying a plane into a building and blowing yourself up in the process? Certainly seems like a costly practice. — Baden

Cultural was the other half that set of motivations. The plane flying wasn't an all-of-a-sudden new fad; it evolved from a long cultural history of combat - mainly territorial, but also the struggle for identity and solidarity, which are often strong motivators.
In any case, even though that attack was unsuccessful, destroying only one of its three designated targets, it achieved a great deal. It did far, far more damage to America than a far, far costlier military operation could have. (More than its instigators ever envisaged, in fact.) From the POV of the pilots - this wasn't unique in the history of warfare: suicide missions are planned and carried out in every conflict, overt and covert; all soldiers have to put aside their normal impulse to self-preservation for what they believe is a greater purpose.

As I noted, it's not an all or nothing proposition. Some might be rational (like prohibitions against murder) and others not (like waving a sagebrush to ward off evil spirits). — Hanover

From whose POV?

Of course humans are insane, but they don't unquestioningly adopt every idea that's presented to them for no reason: whether a specific idea is rational or not, it fits into a larger complex of meaning. You or I may consider a particular requirement of a religion or proscription of law irrational when considered on its own, lifted out of its historical, religious and cultural heritage, but that doesn't mean it didn't make sense to the people who first enacted and obeyed it.

We cannot know all of the circumstances in which ancient peoples and especially perhistoric peoples, thought and lived, but we can learn quite a lot about their environment, history and lifestyle. We don't just base our understanding of them, or conjectures about those aspects of their lives that we don't know, on idle imaginings or desperate "clinging": there is a process of data and evidence collection, documentation, comparison and reasoning involved in anthropology, and in the history of civilizations since the invention of writing, a great more is known.

Baden

Cultural was the other half that set of motivations — Vera Mont

I ignored it because the idea of culture is precisely what you're trying to explain with something more ''rational''.

Vera Mont

I ignored it because the idea of culture is precisely what you're trying to explain with something more ''rational''. — Baden

I'm not trying to explain culture; I assumed we had an idea of it already.
Okay. Somewhere along the line of great ape evolution, the irrationality gene mutated into existence. I can accept that.

Why Would God Actually be against Homosexuality

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