1) For good reading on this topic, check out “Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals,” and “The Blue Parakeet.” The former deals more directly with homosexuality, but both are helpful.

2) After several days’ delay, I finally posted another (and hopefully final) comment on the blog post, “my gay friend speaks for himself…” Peace to all. It’s been fun.

i think your first paragraph, much of which is a rephrasing of what i said, i realize, answers some of the questions posed in your second.

here is what i know. i have heard just about equal amounts of arguing on both sides of the “committed monogamous ancient homosexual couples debate”. anthropologists have said both. most are fairly certain that nero had several long-term male lovers (clearly not what you were referencing regarding your cousin). but there also seemed to have been fairly widespread acceptance of homosexuality in the higher social strata in many cultures of the day. the romans felt that sexuality was much more, well fluid (please pardon the unavoidable pun). it was much more variable. so one’s sexuality being demonstrated in different ways was well accepted and in many schools of thought, respected.

to me, the idea that a culture (just one of them in the OT and NT day) that accepted homosexual activity wouldn’t come up with the concept of committed long-term monogamous relationships seems very tough to believe. as if we were the first to think of it. so the idea that paul, who was roman and highly educated would have never interacted with that possibility seems tough to believe as well.

Even if you were to assert that he didn’t know, if there is any supernatural influence over the writing of scriptures (i definitely say there was), then it would be hard to say that God (who led the writing of them) didn’t know.

finally, the gal 3 verse you were citing simply doesn’t speak to sexaul preference. not because, i don’t want it to. it would make it easier for me if it did. it simply isn’t the context or content of the passage. it is about how we cannot find or meet God though doing enough of the right stuff, working hard enough…trying hard enough. we only find God and reconciliation with him through Jesus, he is the one that sets us free. and that freedom (this is the 3.28 section) is absolutely not bound to who you are or where you are from. no one group has greater access. men, women,jews, greeks, slaves or those that are free. all have the same access. we are all now, if we choose it, a part of God’s family.

it doesn’t nullify all aspects of those distinctions, they are all referenced in other letters in the NT. it simply says that the things that most thought restricted your access to the love of God don’t.

yes, too much has been made of some levitical references that are taken out of context and grabbed while others are left alone. not good scriptural analysis. and yes, the issue of homosexuality has been the focus of a lot of that bad scriptural analysis. but you don’t solve one problem by doing the same thing in a different direction. that is what, i think, using gal 3 in the manner you suggest is doing. i get that you aren’t saying “gal 3 says that homosexuality is a non-issue”. but what you are saying is only one step away and is still, in my view, wrong.

anyway, this has been a fun shift away from other things, but, alas… those other things beckon…

This, I believe, is your main point in the podcast. I decided to listen to it again last night even though I was there for the original. I have one question. Neither the author of Leviticus nor the ancient Israelites could have imagined monogamous same-sex couples. How can you take a prohibition on one practice that more likely resembled temple prostitution and apply it to modern-day gay and lesbian relationships? My cousin and his partner have been together for decades. I know of many other couples that have relationships like theirs. This would have been unfathomable in 500 B.C.E. Would Paul, who years later wrote that there was “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female” in Christ, have condemned committed same-sex couples if he knew of such a possibility?

Have you heard of The Marin Foundation? (www.themarinfoundation.org) If you aren’t already familiar, you may want to check it out. Their mission is “to build a bridge between the religious and GLBT communities through scientific research, and Biblical and social education.”