BTW I am a ‘struggling with my sexuality’ pastor in a long term hetero marriage. Through my experience thus far I have gained exceptional compassion and understanding for the very people I once condemned.

While one can complain that Christians cherry pick homosexuality as prohibited but ignore the rest of the prohibitions, that can’t be said of Judaism.

Orthodox, do follow prohibitions against sex during menstration with a whole specificity of how to do so. Other similar prohibitions as followed as well. Also again, for Orthodox the prohibition is not on homosexuality but on sodomy.

Of course NT is irrelevant to Judaism, so those passages don’t apply.

For instance, sex is not a sin in Judaism but a blessing. A double blessing to do on Shabbat. It is to be done within a marriage, but the whole “sin” & “shame” concepts are totally Christian additions. Adam & Eve in Judaism does not include sex or nudity as sinful.

Also, NONE of the punishments described in Tanakh were implemented by the time of the Temple and even before but instead, were seen largely as relative size of error of behavior such as adultry. All this “stoning” as punishment is way outside the way Judaism sees it’s OWN texts! During Temple days 2000 years old the restrictions were so high before capital punishment could be charged that it was almost never done. (Two witnesses has to warn the person beforehand of the punishment possible & they had to acknowledge & in a short time continue the act…plus many more restrictions.)

It stems out of a Christian concept that Judaism was wrong & needed to be replaced by Christianity as being more peaceful. However, that logic only worked by first projecting some false ideas onto Judaism. (The Jewish concept of chosen also does not have the special privilege feeling that Christianity projects onto it.)

The leviticus “man lies with woman as a man” passage is part of that same pagan sex ritual to the gods being disavowed in Judaism. Though Orthodox still have a problem with it, but if you want to give it histrocity to put it in perspective, you didn’t need to go further with the argument against Judaism & weak images of men… just continue the argument that this passage is about an old ancient cultures ritual.

I stopped reading at this point.

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I am very interested in the arguments against the texts & enjoyed other blog pages here. However, I wanted to speak up on this problem.

Judaism gets bashing in life. Homosexuality gets horrible bashing too. Doesn’t work to fix one by misrepresenting the other.

Besides, the bashings come from the same source of intolerance.

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Homosexuality in Judaism – for most of Judaism is a non-issue, for Reform, Conservative (though they’ll be less open about it) & Reconstructionist.

For Orthodox, the prohibition is not that it is an evil nature at all. It is against sodomy & wasting of seed & only those exclusively. The choice of action is between a person & God & is not the congregations or Rabbis business, hence you don’t see much of the getting on the pulpit to bash behavior. It is assumed that someone with this nature was born so for a reason but that there are tests or ??? to life.

I don’t agree with the Orthodox position (& I’m not Orthodox myself.) However, that is all there is to the position. Often there is projection or assumption that it mirrors the Christian persecution complex. (There are ultra-Orthodox groups that are intolerant, but even among ultra-Orthodox… any physical pursuit & harm of homosexuals is not approved by the community leaders & done only by rogue haters, AND it is just small pockets of specific ultra-Orthodox — not all at all.)

For sodomy Orthodox has a bit of confusion & mixed views. For some they interpret it as somewhat acceptable within marriage because it strengthens the marriage relationship (if desired) & that is good. For others it’s still not okay.

The “not a choice” knowledge that is now coming to light tends to complicate the Orthodox view. While they have stuck thus far with the traditional interpretations, there is always room to greater understanding as new info comes to light. Therefore I have seen articles looking at how, “if it’s not a choice” then it is psychologically & emotionally harmful to not understand the difference between waton homosexuality (such as the Greeks did) & what is natural to our children. There is room for some change there & it is slowly (very slowly) getting looked at. It’s a complex issue because traditional interpretation on all topis is taken so seriously (that is what Orthodox is). However you can see that compassion does enter the conversation for Orthodox, not a railing againt & ranting against it. It is a lessor or on same par sin as adultry (lessor because it doesn’t effect family structure.)

All of this length then hids what I said to begin with. For most of Judaism it’s a non-issue even to this extend. Doing a huge sodomy ritual to the gods would be forbidden of course, but not equated to a loving partner relationship.

So you can see the Jewish approach can not be seen as the same as Christian one & the Christian one shouldn’t be projected onto it.

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I’ll have to come back & glean what I can from your arguments.

I’m not homosexual, but I find the intolerance at it scary & intolerable. Hence I like to store useful arguments in my head for when I need them.

Here are a couple sites on Judaism. I don’t have the link handy that I wish I could include about Orthodox Jewish homosexual people trying to work it out for themselves.:
http://www.whatjewsbelieve.org (about standard Christian questions)
http://www.jewfaq.org (good general site)

Hope this is a helpful comment to you.