Friday, May 20, 2011

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religion: The American nation the nation the follower of the...: "The American nation the nation the follower of the nation of prophet lot Fifty-three percent of Americans support making gay marriage lega..."

The American nation the nation the follower of the nation of prophet lot


The American nation
the nation
the follower of the nation of prophet lot

Fifty-three percent of Americans
support making gay marriage legal,
a Gallup poll showed on Friday,
a marked reversal from just a year ago
when an equal majority opposed
same-sex matrimony.

Same-sex marriage remains a highly contested issue in U.S. politics, but homosexual couples have won the right to legally wed in five states -- Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Iowa -- and the District of Columbia.

The growing support for gay marriage comes after President Barack Obama signed into law legislation in December to repeal the ban on openly gay men and women serving in the military under a 17-year-old law known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

(Reuters)

The Defense of Marriage Act was passed in 1996
only 25% of the American public supported same-sex marriage.
 Since that time, public opinion has gradually moved in the direction of greater support for same-sex marriage.
An August 2010 CNN poll was the first national poll to show majority support for same-sex marriage
In 2011, Gallup
ABC News/Washington Post
and CNN/Opinion Research
polling data showed that a majority of Americans
approve of same-sex marriage.

In one meta-analysis by Jeffrey Lax and Justin Phillips of Columbia University
 a majority of 18-29 year old Americans in 38 states support same sex marriage while in only 6 states do less than 45% of 18-29 year olds support gay marriage.


Gallagher
 the founder and chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage. said.

"The capacity of our nation to sustain a reasonably well-functioning marriage culture is the key problem in our time,"

 She said
 where marriage is weakened children suffer and there are higher rates of social ills like crime and education failure.

She also pointed to Europe
 and what she called
 "the sudden collapse of the willingness to have enough children to replace the current generation."


Maggie Gallagher

how marriage is an almost universal social institution throughout diverse cultures and time.
Why is that?
She said
 there were three reasons for its universality:

1. "The overwhelming majority of us are powerfully attracted to an act that creates human life.

Relationships between men and women create babies."

2. "Society needs babies. …
 Only societies that have learned how to successfully manage the procreative implications of male/female attraction have survived."

3. "Children ought to have a father as well as a mother. … When a baby is born there is bound to be a mother somewhere close by.
 If we want fathers to be there for their children and the mothers of their children, biology alone won't do it.
We need a cultural mechanism to attach fathers to the mother/child bond."

Leviticus 18:22 says:
    Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination.  


Leviticus 20:13 states:
    If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.


Romans 1
    (26)
 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
(27)
 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

(1 Corinthians 6:9-11)
    Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers,
 arsenokoitēs
 (abusers of themselves with mankind  "sodomites"
  or
 "men who practice homosexuality." )
thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers, none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)



Timothy 1:9–10:
    Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it legitimately. This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicators
  arsenokoitēs,
(abusers of themselves with mankind  "sodomites"
  or
 "men who practice homosexuality." )

slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me. (1 Timothy 1:8–10)   

Homosexuality in ancient Greece

"paiderastia"

The most common form of same-sex relationships between males in Greece was
 "paiderastia"
meaning "boy love".
It was a relationship between an older male and an adolescent youth


North America and Northern Europe
 some scholars
 believe that homosexual relationships, especially pederasty, were common only among the aristocracy, and that such relationships were not widely practised by the common people (demos).

Bruce Thornton
 who argues that insults directed at passive homosexuals in the comedies of Aristophanes show the common people's dislike for male homosexuality.
Victoria Wohl
 emphasize that in Athens,
same-sex desire was part of the "sexual ideology of the democracy," shared by the elite and the demos, as exemplified by the tyrant-slayers, Harmodius and Aristogeiton


"Greek love"
refers to various (mostly homoerotic) practices as part of the Hellenic heritage of Western culture
quotation marks are often placed on either or both words
("Greek" love, Greek "love", or "Greek love")
to indicate that usage of the phrase is determined by context.


socratische Liebe ("Socratic love")
 and
 platonische Liebe ("Platonic love")
 in reference to
 male-male attractions.



"Platonic love"
 that is, a male-male sexual attraction made "respectable" within a classical tradition regarded as authoritative



Sodomy
It   is an "anal or other copulation-like act, especially between males or between male persons  
one who practices sodomy is a
sodomite
The word is derived from the "Sodomites,"
 the inhabitants of Sodom, a "wicked town" described in chapters 18 and 19 of the bible's Book of Genesis



Bugger
the term buggery,
a term originally used to describe either anal intercourse by a man with a man or woman
or
 sexual intercourse by either a man or a woman with an animal


"sin of Sodom."
 The Book of Genesis (chapters 18-20) tells how God wishes to destroy the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Two angels (literally "messengers") are invited by Lot, a "righteous" man, to take refuge with his family for the night. The men of Sodom surround Lot's house, demanding that he bring the angels (who have the appearance of men) out, so that they can "know" them. Lot protests that the "men" (or angels) are his guests, and offers them   virgin   instead, but the Sodomites threaten to
"do worse" with Lot than with his guests; whereupon the angels strike the Sodomites blind, "so that they wearied themselves to find the door."
(Genesis 19:4-11, KJV)


the clearest texts on the sin or sins for which Sodom was destroyed are found in Ezekiel in the Old Testament, and Jude in the New.

In Ezekiel 16
 a long comparison is made between Sodom and the Kingdom of Israel.
"Yet you have not merely walked in their ways or done according to their abominations; but, as if that were too little, you acted more corruptly in all your conduct than they."
 (Ezekiel 16.47 New American Standard Bible)
    Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy.
Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me.
(Ezekiel 16.49–50)


The New Testament, like the Old Testament, references Sodom as a place of God's anger against sin, but the Epistle of Jude provides a certain class of sin as causative of its destruction, the meaning of which is disputed.
    And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He [God] has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties. (Jude 1:7, New American Standard Version)

 The Quran
 clearly disapproves of the sexual practices of the "people of Lot,"
("What, of all creatures do ye come unto the males, and leave the wives your Lord created for you?"),



وَلُوطًا إِذْ قَالَ لِقَوْمِهِ أَتَأْتُونَ الْفَاحِشَةَ مَا سَبَقَكُم بِهَا مِنْ أَحَدٍ مِّنَ الْعَالَمِينَ

[7:80]
And [We had sent] Lot when he said to his people, "Do you commit such immorality as no one has preceded you with from among the worlds?
_____________________

وَلُوطًا آتَيْنَاهُ حُكْمًا وَعِلْمًا وَنَجَّيْنَاهُ مِنَ الْقَرْيَةِ الَّتِي كَانَت تَّعْمَلُ الْخَبَائِثَ ۗ إِنَّهُمْ كَانُوا قَوْمَ سَوْءٍ فَاسِقِينَ

[21:74]
And to Lot We gave judgement and knowledge, and We saved him from the city that was committing wicked deeds. Indeed, they were a people of evil, defiantly disobedient.
_____________

وَلُوطًا إِذْ قَالَ لِقَوْمِهِ أَتَأْتُونَ الْفَاحِشَةَ وَأَنتُمْ تُبْصِرُونَ
[27:54]
And [mention] Lot, when he said to his people, "Do you commit immorality while you are seeing?
_____________

قَالُوا
لَئِن لَّمْ تَنتَهِ يَا لُوطُ لَتَكُونَنَّ مِنَ الْمُخْرَجِينَ
[26:167]
They said, "If you do not desist, O Lot, you will surely be of those evicted.
_______________________
فَمَا كَانَ جَوَابَ قَوْمِهِ إِلَّا أَن قَالُوا أَخْرِجُوا آلَ لُوطٍ مِّن قَرْيَتِكُمْ ۖ إِنَّهُمْ أُنَاسٌ يَتَطَهَّرُونَ
[27:56]
But the answer of his people was not except that they said, "Expel the family of Lot from your city. Indeed, they are people who keep themselves pure."
___________________________
فَآمَنَ لَهُ لُوطٌ ۘ
وَقَالَ إِنِّي مُهَاجِرٌ إِلَىٰ رَبِّي ۖ إِنَّهُ هُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الْحَكِيمُ

[29:26]
And Lot believed him. [Abraham] said, "Indeed, I will emigrate to [the service of] my Lord. Indeed, He is the Exalted in Might, the Wise."
___________________________
وَلُوطًا
إِذْ قَالَ لِقَوْمِهِ إِنَّكُمْ لَتَأْتُونَ الْفَاحِشَةَ مَا سَبَقَكُم بِهَا مِنْ أَحَدٍ مِّنَ الْعَالَمِينَ

[29:28]
And [mention] Lot,
when he said to his people, "
Indeed, you commit such immorality as no one has preceded you with from among the worlds.
_____________________________________
كَذَّبَتْ قَوْمُ لُوطٍ بِالنُّذُرِ


[54:33]
The people of Lot denied the warning.

____________________________
إِنَّا أَرْسَلْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ حَاصِبًا إِلَّا آلَ لُوطٍ ۖ نَّجَّيْنَاهُم بِسَحَرٍ
[54:34]
Indeed, We sent upon them a storm of stones, except the family of Lot - We saved them before dawn.

Gallup poll noted those who attended church less frequently were more likely to support same-sex unions,
"The debate is no longer between secular Americans who support same-sex marriage on one side and religious Americans who oppose it on the other."

 According to PRRI's survey
 a majority of Catholics and Protestants support allowing gay and lesbians to marry.


The new Gallup Poll showed
 69 percent of Democrats and
 70 percent of Liberals
 support same-sex marriage,
according to the poll,
contrasted with
28 percent of Republicans and Conservatives.