134/454 08 Dec 89 10:13:44
From:   Mike Arst
To:     All
Subj:   The S & G nonsense
Attr:   
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This s**t-for-brains bashing of homosexuals that we've seen here is also 
happening on another network, where a woman, reading some of the garbage in 
question, responded:

> The term "Sodomite" comes from the biblical story of the cities of Sodom
> and Gomorrah ... Homosexuality is commonly assumed to have been the primary
> sin. ... [The following is a] quote from a sermon given ... by  William 
> Sloane Coffin [several years ago]:

> "...Scholars are far less clear about what happened [in Sodom] than are
> most contemporary evangelists. If, however, we allow the Bible to
> illumine its own cloudy passages, we find that the destruction of Sodom
> and Gomorrah had little if anything to do with homosexuality. In Ezekiel
> we read, 'This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters
> had pride, surfeit of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the
> poor and needy.' In the first chapter of Isaiah, where Judah is rebuked
> through a comparison with Sodom, homosexuality is never mentioned among
> the specific sins, which again include a failure to pursue justice and
> the oppressed.

> "The most likely other sin of Sodom was a failure to show hospitality to
> strangers--a possibility indicated by Jesus' words to his disciples:
> 'Whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you...I tell you it
> shall be more tolerable on that day for Sodom than for that town.' How
> ironic that because of a mistaken understanding of the crime of Sodom
> and Gomorrah, Christians should be repeating the *real* crime every day
> against homosexuals!"

> (Without getting into the whole biblical question here, I just think
> it's important to know that the presumed biblical prohibition against
> homosexuality is not nearly as clear as it's made out to be by both
> Christian and Jewish fundamentalists.)

So thanks for the above to Judy Stein for having posted something *intelligent* 
on the subject - for a change.

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