Reply #4: A lot of the Biblical books of Genesis and Leviticus establish the

[No Elephants]

laws that were supposed to govern the Jews.

They are not all religious laws, either. Even things like dog bite are covered. The first time, the dog's primary human doesn't get into too much trouble, but after that, he or she does. The idea is that the first bite gave the human reason to know that the dog is a biter. And terms like "reason to know" and "reasonable" abound in our law to this day, including in the Fourth Amendment. And yes, those who studied and interpreted Jewish laws intensely were often asked, even during Biblical times, to represent a fellow Jew accused of violating the Biblical laws.

FYI, if you understand what the Bible says about dog bites, you can predict the outcome of Judge Judy's dog bite cases, as well as a lot of her other cases, that's how closely and permanently Biblical law and secular law is interwined. And, it is said that much of Biblical law was preceded by the Code of Hammurabi, out of ancient Iraq. If true, we lived by their laws for millenia, then, in one of life's many ironies, we supervised writing of their constitution. American exceptionalism. (Great excuse for not learning the metric system!)

I don't know which really came first, the lawyers or the full development of Old Testament law, in all its eventual extremes. For that matter, even if one believes that every word in the Bible was divinely inspired, it was never written down by God, but by all too human priests and scribes. (As my friend point it out to me, the only words actually written by God were the ten commandments. Homosexuality did not make it to the Big Ten or to anything that Jesus spoke.)

The bible and homosexuality is a complex subject in my mind, starting with the full meaning of original Hebrew word and how the Bible was pretty much locked way from the hoi polloi by the clergy of one religion or another until the King James translation and the invention of the printing press came together.

Also worth mentioning: the extremes to which the actual pronouncements were taken. I don't know the original motive behind the simple Biblical order not to seethe (or cook) a goat in its mother's milk. However, that eventually led to, among other things, observant Jews having to have four sets of pots, dishes and flatware. And why there are workarounds for so many things that originated in the Old Testament, like using credit cards at Bloomingdales on the Sabbath for a $2.50 purchase because handling cash is forbidden--though not by the Bible itself. But no leeway whatever for homosexuals. You have to declare them dead, then mourn them formally, then ignore them for the rest of your life or theirs. And, of course, things that are emphasized heavily in the Bible, like love and not judging, just get thrown aside. A convicted murder on Death Row is entitled to marry, but not a homosexual? Why? After all, murder made it to the Big Ten. Homosexuality did not.

I think that homosexuality was an easy thing for an otherwise sinful heterosexual to abstain from--easier than say, lying or coveting his neighbor's wife or cheating on his own wife. So, it gets treated as if it's the most heinous sin of all. But, that's all of this very complex (to me) issue I can deal with right now.