[quote=Shy]To your first quote from me I addressed a lot of it afterwards with the whole marriage thing. At least I believe I did.

Can I ask you for a better example? With happiness your smile and laugh is an automatic almost instant reaction, meaning it could happen without you having the time to stop the act from happening. Sexual acts, be they heterosexual or homosexual are not automatic or instant reactions to an emotion or feeling. It is a choice to act on those feelings instead of a bodily reaction.[/quote]

I don't think you did address it with the marriage thing, since marriage actually wasn't even a part of what I was talking about. In your first post I quoted, you were saying that those anti-homosexual Bible verses were only pertaining to the homosexual acts and thus not the people, and my response to that was essentially "bullshit, that's just a roundabout way of saying homosexuals are bad and giving the acts as the thing which can actually be found out and be cause for punishment." Your marriage post explained a Catholic take on it, that it's the marriage thing that's the crux of it for Catholics, but that's not really relevant to what I was saying (which was about those quotes rather than the specific doctrine they spawned in a particular denomination).

Since it was brought up though, I find the marriage thing to be a shallow defense for what is really a different angle on the "gays are bad" idea. Regardless of how it's phrased or approached, the discrimination against homosexuality all says "you can't be who you are because this ancient book said so." I find that entirely unreasonable, whether it's because the book says homosexual acts are bad or because it says homosexual marriage is bad. I could go into a whole rant about the marriage thing and how religious doctrine shouldn't have any bearing on the legal institution of marriage and thus the religious people who fight against gay marriage on the grounds of their religion are doing it wrong and that they should stick with saying their particular church won't perform ceremonies they are against, but I think that little summary should suffice instead of the many paragraphs it could be instead.

I will, however, have another round of analogy/example things to show why I think it's ridiculous. Having a stance of "no, no, gay sex is fine, but it can't be done outside of marriage" and then saying "gay people can't get married" is absurd and in no meaningful way actually condones homosexuality, just gives lip service to the idea while still saying it's bad for another reason. For example, "it's okay if you drink, but you can never buy alcohol or get others to give you any" is still anti-drinking for all intents and purposes. "You can watch pay-per-view channels, but we're never going to get a TV service that actually has pay per-view-channels" does not truly allow the hypothetical person to watch said channels. "Go ahead and pick up that ball, wait oops it's in a box and you're not allowed to touch the box" means no you cannot actually pick up that ball. "Yeah you can do thing A, but actually you can't because reason B" is in practice just a roundabout way of saying "no you can't do thing A." That's what's going on with the Catholic homosexuality and marriage thing.

As for a better example, that would be the kindness example I already gave, and it being better was the reason it was given first. A person with strong self control could be a kind person but never do a kind act, since it's not an automatic response like laughter or smiles, just in the same way that someone could be a mean-spirited jerk in their own mind but never let it show. I also gave another example, one far better than the emotion-based ones, by way of proposing an outlandish scenario in which heterosexual acts were banned and giving my take on what that would mean. A key point of my argument is that making some distinction between being homosexual and doing homosexual things is bullshit, calling one bad is the same as calling other bad because they are so inextricably linked. If you were to say "it's okay to be black, just don't act black," do you see how blatantly racist that would be? That's what's going on with those Bible quotes about homosexuality and trying to make a distinction between being and doing, it's saying "it's okay to be gay, just don't act gay." Also the part about the acts being targeted because that's all that can be enforced. Trying to say these quotes don't constitute the Bible condemning homosexuals as sinners because of a technicality comes off as an empty defense, very similar to "I'm not racist, I have black friends."

[quote]To your second quote, yes I'm sorry if I missed some stuff, weeding it out through skype was a difficult task considering the conversation kept moving. In regards to Zechariah I stated how that one does condone rape, no if's, and's, or's about it. Numbers 31 also has no mention of sex at all. It simply says "But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." I feel that wording there implies a far more long term relationship than just raping and leaving them. same thing with Judges.

Obviously forcefully taking a woman as a wife is wrong. But in some Christian denominations (especially if you go back before the reformation) so was divorce. However if you go into Exodus and Leviticus you will find laws regarding how to divorce your wife. Jesus explains about divorce in Matthew 19:8 "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard." Moses permitted a lot of things that Jesus later explained were not what was originally intended. In taking more wives from these others (those who were virgins so as to avoid adultery) The tribes of Israel were able to survive and grow. Many of the laws you find in the Torah were about the Israelites establishing themselves as a nation different from others and that must be kept in mind. Moses, while a great guy and all, wasn't perfect. He had a nation to take care of and expand and he did his best with the stubborn group he had. Was it right? No. In context can you see why it was that way? I can yes.

But that is a 100% contextual analysis, meaning what I just said is irrelevant to any defense of fundamentalist ideas.[/quote]

The missed stuff is fine. For the other things, I was just making some clarifications that I felt your post lacked, no big deal.