Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Pro-homosexual Churches Begin Campaign of Misinformation on Biblical Prohibitions Against Sodomy

Billboard ads present interpretations alien to their scriptural authors

From "Pro-homosexual Churches Begin Campaign of Misinformation on Biblical Prohibitions Against Sodomy" by Peter J. Smith, at Lifesite.net

Several homosexual “churches” in the Indianapolis area have begun a month-long advertising campaign of misinformation to distort the clear biblical prohibitions against homosexual behavior of Christian tradition.

The Jesus Metropolitan Community Church of Indianapolis, Faith In America and Metropolitan Community Churches started the campaign this week, placing five different billboards around the Indianapolis area distorting the biblical foundation of Christianity’s clear prohibitions against sodomy.

The “Would Jesus Discriminate?” Campaign, funded nationally by Faith in America, Inc., features such signs as “Jesus Affirmed a Gay Couple”: Matt. 8:5-13; “The Early Church Welcomed a Gay Man”: Acts 8:26-40; “Jesus Said Some are Born Gay”: Matt. 19:10-12; “Ruth Loved Naomi as Adam Loved Eve”, Gen. 2:24, Ruth 1:14; and “David Loved Jonathan More than Women” II Sam 1:26.

The campaign perverts these Bible passages – known for thousands of years in Christian and Jewish tradition to have nothing to do with homosexuality – by reinterpreting them with meanings and connotations that would have been alien to their scriptural authors and Jews and Christians of the time.

Far from making exceptions for “loving gay relationships”, Mosaic Law, believed by Jews and Christians to have been given to Moses by God Himself, severely condemns homosexual acts or sodomy in Leviticus 18 and carried the death penalty. The very name “sodomy” derived its name from the Biblical city, Sodom, which God told Abraham he would destroy for its unnatural crimes. Leviticus 18 is devoted to prohibitions against adultery, incestuous relationships, and in fact, the prohibition against homosexual behavior falls between verses prohibiting bestiality and infant sacrifice.

Leviticus 18:22: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

Leviticus 18:29-30: “For whoever shall do any of these abominations, the persons that do them shall be cut off from among their people. So keep my charge never to practice any of these abominable customs which were practiced before you, and never to defile yourselves by them: I am the LORD your God.”

Both the immediate context of the Levitical passage and approximately 3500 years of Jewish and Christian tradition strongly refute the contortions of “Would Jesus Discriminate?” campaign.

Early Christian teaching vigorously reaffirms Levitical proscriptions against homosexual behavior in New Testament scripture (Rom. 1:21-29, 1 Cor. 6:9, Jude 1:7, 1 Tim 1:10). Contemporary extra-biblical Christian writings, such as the Didache, also confirm the understanding of the early Church that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and destructive.

In an earlier interview with LifeSiteNews.com, orthodox Rabbi Yehuda Levin explained that Jewish celebrations of Hannukah go back to a struggle by Jews to defeat the pagan forces corrupting Jewish society.

“The main celebration of Hanukkah was the defeat of the pagan forces within Judaism, those who were attempting to paganize Judaism by aping the Greek culture, and endorse all kinds of pagan rituals and pagan ideologies including the practice of homosexuality,” said Rabbi Levin.