Arguments

One week and yet so much interesting stuff has happened! The first thing I want to cover is something that I've been spending a lot of time on: my beliefs and arguments that support the family, and marriage. In light of our church having members of the Stake Presidency come to us, having bishops read to us, and having the Family: A Proclamation to the World sent, I've been thinking on how I should give of my time and means and the best way I could think of so far was to make arguments against homosexuality on my blog.

Warning: I am not bashing gays. This is not my intent, my intent is to right a few wrongs and bring forth arguments that support the sacred institution of marriage. I am not here to insult homosexuals.

Now in order to find out how the liberals were arguing for gay people I went looking at an online Facebook group that supports homosexual marriage/lifestyle, though I did not join it or participate in any of the arguments. In doing this I found the arguments that I was looking for and in the meantime I prepared my own arguments to be used against these sort of people. Bytheway, feel free to play devil's advocate [Ryan, :( ] if you want to, although I do not recommend it. Okay so here's a list that I made up of all the major arguments for homosexuality:

• The Bible does not mention homosexuality/The Bible encourages it.

• Homosexual marriage is a right that people are denying.

Okay first let's talk about the Bible.

Many conservatives use the response that homosexuality is a sin because of what Leviticus 20:13 said: If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their shall be upon them.

Not a bad start, their hearts are in the right place, however most liberals don't believe in the Bible. Not only that, but these poor conservatives get "schooled" by the liberals that do read the Bible. The following excerpt was taken from a liberal who responded to a conservative that mentioned Leviticus 20: 13:


In Leviticus 11:10-12 stating that eating shrimp is an abomination.


Any person who curseth his mother or father, must be killed. (Leviticus 20:9)


-Psychics, wizards, and so on are to be stoned to death. (Leviticus 20:27)


-People with flat noses, or is blind or lame, can’t go to an altar of God (Leviticus 21:17-18)


-If a priest's daughter is a whore, she is to be burnt at the stake. (Leviticus 21:9)


-Don't cut your hair nor shave. (Leviticus 19:27)


-If a man has sex with a woman on her period, they are both to be "cut off from their people" (Leviticus 20:18)


Yet, Christianity believes that the laws written in Leviticus were negated by Jesus in the Bible. So, why is it that Christians still believe in Leviticus 20:13 that states,


“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them”.


Wouldn’t this law also be negated by Jesus? In fact, no were in the Bible does Jesus ever talk about homosexuality. He says love thy neighbor, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and so on. So, why does Christianity still uphold Leviticus 20:13 and ignore the other laws in Leviticus?

All right, obviously this guy has a point: There are many things written in the law of Moses that sort of seem extreme, and obviously Christianity doesn't practice these things, except for a toned down version of Leviticus 20:13.

1. My first response is that everything this guy, or any person, quotes/quoted about a scripture that was part of the law of Moses was basically fulfilled with Christ, so it bears no credence. That's why we don't follow the things that those scriptures say. Most liberals don't get that at all though, which leads to their criticisms of the Bible, unfortunately.

Another reason why I chose to quote this guy was because he was the first liberal to understand the concept of Christ fulfilling the law of Moses. He called it "negated" by Christ which leads to his next argument: Wouldn't Leviticus 20:13 be "negated" as well?

Well technically speaking yes. Now before anybody reacts to this I'm not agreeing with this guy. We do not believe in killing homosexuals, we should not justify any violence towards homosexuals. However we still don't believe that homosexuality is right though. Another point that this guy said was that Christ doesn't mention homosexuality. This is wrong, if you don't believe me then I encourage you to check out this site:
http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/public-issues/same-gender-attraction

In the link Elder Oaks quotes Genesis 2:24 which reads: Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

So basically Christ defined marriage, the very definition that that guy was arguing against. As to that guy's other point: He held the same point as other liberals that have said that the Bible/Jesus does not even mention homosexuality.
2. My response to that is that I would ask those stinking liberals to read the following:

• Deut. 23:17, Isa. 3:9, Rom. 1:27, 1 Cor. 6:9, 1 Tim 1:10, Jude 1:17, Gen. 13:13, Gen. 18:20, Ezek. 16:50, 2 Tim 3:3, 2 Pet 2:10. All of these scriptures mention homosexuality, and basically condemn it, and most of them mention Sodom and Gomorrah. Now to back these scriptures up I would encourage all to read Genesis 19: 4-5: 4. But before they laid down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:
  

5. And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.

Bytheway, 'Know' is a euphemism for sex so use your imagination as to what these men were trying to do. The scriptures listed above condemn the "evils" of Sodom and Gomorrah, Genesis 19:4-5 shows what the evil in Sodom and Gomorrah was: homosexuality.

So, to wrap up my point about the Bible: it condemns homosexuality. Maybe not super-explicitly, but it does do it, which basically makes any liberal argument with the Bible null and void.

Now the second major point listed was that homosexual marriage is a right that the homo's are being denied access to. The following sites below basically blow that idea out of the water:

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/narth/universal.html

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art29110.asp

I highly encourage you to read these articles. Anyway, the next quote came from yet again another liberal on Facebook:
Things that have happened to gay people that have also happened to black people:

- Killed for no reason? Check.
- Successfully used "But he was gay/black" as a way to get off jailtime for said murder? Check.
- Believed to be "defective"? Check.
- Had their gathering places and 'safe spaces' raided by police? Check.
- Subject to horrible medical experiments here in America? Check.
- Denied employment for being gay/black by law? Check.
- Had their marriage and adoption regulated by law? Check.
- Had the bible used to justify said laws? Check.
- Had their mere state of existence considered by a disease and a crime punishable by jailtime? No, that was just a gay thing. But hey, atleast we didnt have slavery.
This guy has about 10 compelling points, many of them I hadn't even thought about before.

3. My next response to that would be that gay rights would be protected just the same as any other person's rights. This new amendment to the California constitution wouldn't affect any of that, with the exception to their marriage. As to the marriage part, read the links above, they explain that well enough to get the point across.

4. Now here are some original points to my argument. Gay marriage is wrong, most homosexual men do not participate in monogamous relationships, and the ones that do participate in monogamous relationships fall into one of the following categories:

• One, as Bishop Smeltzer said, they're looking for some "fun" and are getting some selfish pleasure out of it. Then once the "pleasure cruise" comes to a halt then that's where the non-monogamous relationships start.
• Two, it's as Elder Oaks said, even if they did manage to successfully keep it with one person, they already have the same benefits as a married couple (and if they don't great), so why call it marriage? The only reason why is because they want to feel good about the bad choices that they made, and they want societal approval of their mistakes.

Either way, I still think that homosexuality is bad, and to reinforce a point made earlier is that most homosexual people do not participate in monogamous relationships so it cheapens an already weakened institution: marriage. Plus I remember Mom talking about how she knew a homosexual guy who basically said that the gay lifestyle encouraged self-gratification/self-indulgence. I also remember someone saying that gay lifestyles were expensive.

It's true that homosexuals can reproduce, however I'm pretty sure that artificial insemination, IVF, surrogate motherhood, and egg donation are not cheap things. So what if a homosexual couple can't afford that huh? What then? Before I wrap up the post on this rather heavy subject, I have two more things to add:

Actually, if you look up the word marriage it does not specify gender in the majority of definitions. Look it up in the OED, which is the definitive English dcitionary. Notice how it very explicitly includes homosexual marriages.
You might want to break that dictionary out once again to look up the word "liberty." Included in the definition is freedom from arbitrary government or control, freedom from external rule, independence, and freedom from control, interference, or restriction.It goes on to say one's power or right of doing something. Right there in the definition it says that it is a right.

This was a quote once again used by a liberal to defend homosexuality. What he says about the definition of liberty is true, I know because I have checked out the definition for liberty myself.

5. However, it's not arbitrary when the people vote for an amendment which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. Now as to his argument about the definition of marriage. Well the first definition of every dictionary I've ever read has stated that marriage is between a man and a woman. I don't know though about the OED (Oxford English Dictionary). The thing about the Oxford English Dictionary is that it is THE authoritative English dictionary.

6. However, Ryan once told me that the dictionary only records linguistic tendencies of a people who speak that language. That had a powerful impact on me and got me thinking: Words change with people's views, and if words change then dictionaries change. So to tie this back to what that guy said, if the definition of marriage is not between a man and a woman (and I seriously doubt that the Oxford English Dictionary does not define marriage between a man and a woman) then by golly we the people can change what that word means, so it doesn't matter what definitions he read, what matters is what definitions society gives to a word and that's what this amendment is supposed to do.

P.S. I got Brittan's email. Here's thing number three: Homosexuality is becoming so rampant within our society that anyone who uses their freedom of speech and speaks out/prints material against homosexuality gets intolerated and attacked by a bunch of screaming hypocritical liberals who are always whining about people suppressing their rights. Here's an example of such atrocities:http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/man_sues_bible_publishers/2008/07/10/111626.html Anyway I love you all and I hope to see you all so soon.
Grant