Bible God Requires Death Penalty for Homosexuals
Christian doctrine is that though man wrote the Bible it is equally God's. It is
what God would write if he was sitting at the writing desk. The idea that the
Bible is the word of God is meaningless if understood in any other sense. If God
allowed grammar mistakes or whatever that is fine but the information has to be
accurate for the Bible is not a school essay.
Many are alarmed at how the book commands that gays be condemned as sinners for
gay lovemaking and not only that they are to be stoned to death. The Bible God
describes that as purging the evil from the community - its seen as removing a
cancer. That rescues him from the charge of hatred though we understandably find
that unconvincing.
Capital punishment is seen as an act of just and unavoidable war by a state
against its own citizens who need destruction for being so dangerous and for
killing others. That is the belief of the Church even though it may now say that
there is too much injustice to risk allowing capital punishment for it will be
abused. The principle is still maintained. You can be sure that if the Church
visualised a world where gay men were continually giving killer diseases to each
other it would have gay men put to death. It already dwells on the alleged harm
that homosexuality does.
Does the Bible Require the Death Penalty for Homosexuals?
This is a Christian answer to this question:
The Old Testament Book of Genesis mentions no sin of Sodom and Gomorrah but
homosexuality. Abraham begged God to spare the cities if enough good people
resided there. But there were none and God burned the cities up. Abraham and God
clearly agreed with the cruel and savage destruction of the wicked. Abraham was
not condoning or forgiving the sins.
The Old Testament theocratic law required the death penalty for incest in Israel
(Lev. 18:7-17, 29; 20:11-12). In the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4), the Messiah
came and brought forth His catholic or universal church from its Jewish
swaddling bands, necessitating a change in the law (Heb. 7:12). The apostles and
prophets, whom God used to write the New Testament, set forth the will of Jesus
Christ for His catholic church (Eph. 2:20; 3:5; 4:11).
When a man committed incest in the church of Corinth (I Cor. 5:1), Paul did not
require the death penalty for him. Instead, the apostle required excommunication
from the church and kingdom of God, unless the man repented (I Cor. 5:4-7). Both
terrible divine judgements—execution in the Old Testament theocracy and
excommunication in the New Testament church—preserve the holiness of God’s
church, a reflection of the holiness of God Himself.
Leviticus 20:13 has God saying that “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.” It required the death penalty for homosexuality in
Israel. Some say that this ban was done away by Jesus when he banished the
ceremonial law like when the ban on eating pork was removed. But the same
chapter condemns incest, bestiality, adultery and rape. Those things are
not related to the ritual and sacrifices and worship rites at all.
Incredibly the stupid notion that it means man and boy is doing the rounds.
The Torah gives no rights at all to the child. In fact, children had no rights
even in Jesus' day. Jesus' though he had the time to try and get divorce
made illegal by Jewish lawyers did nothing to safeguard children. For the
likes of gay "Christians" as long as the text does not ban man with man it does
not matter that it decrees that if it means boy and man that the boy should be
stoned too!
Leviticus 20:15,16 wants an animal that is raped by a man or woman put to death along with the rapist. It goes as far as to say, “their blood is upon them”. To imagine that a book would not hurt gays when it has rubbish like that is insane.
Are we to believe that
he doesn't forbid things like incest, and so on, anymore? Nowhere does the Bible teach that the ban on
homosexuality is just based on ceremonial law or tradition. It teaches it is
banned because it is wrong and not even God can make it right. The law gave a
mild punishment for eating pork. But with homosexuality it required that the
sinners be put to death by stoning. Leviticus 18:24 says that the people of God
must not defile themselves by practices such as homosexuality like the nations
around them have defiled themselves. So God regards it as sinful for the
non-Israelites too. Read Leviticus 18:22, 29. Similar to the example of incest,
the New Testament does not require the death penalty for homosexuals. There were
converted homosexuals in the church of Corinth (I Cor. 6:9-11)! The execution of
homosexuals in Israel (the Old Testament church) is equivalent to
excommunication from the New Testament church. Thus it is a contradiction in
terms to speak of gay church members or gay church office bearers or gay
Christians. Any churches, therefore, that receive or tolerate impenitent
homosexuals as members are therefore false churches in rebellion to the will of
Christ.
http://www.catholicintl.com/qa/2004/qa-aug-04.htm#Question%2026
Note: The Same Source says that the Church has the right to use torture to
destroy heresy. Question 41.
My reply is this.
A change in the Law of God is referred to in the New Testament's Hebrews 7:12.
That does not imply that the moral rules of the Old Testament, such as the duty
of the God fearing state to destroy gay people are wrong or changed or obsolete.
When Judaism was only a temporary religion that was meant to evolve into
Christianity (its supposed fulfilment) it doesn’t necessarily imply the law had
to be changed except in the sense that it was made tougher or more explicit. It
is worse to sin when you have experienced the fulfilled faith than the
preparatory one.
The Bible time and time again says that the Old Testament is full of moral
example. As for the incest case the Christians did try to execute the guilty man
but by cursing him and urging God to destroy him in the hope that the suffering
this entails might make him turn to God again. And the law to execute does not
require one to execute where it is impossible. The rulers of Corinth would have
destroyed the Church if it went and killed the man. If you can get away with
executing you can do it. That is the New Testament doctrine for not once does it
hint that the execution laws are done away. Perhaps more importantly, the Old
Testament never says that gay people are to be destroyed for any other reason
than that they are evil. In other words, it is just right. The Law of Moses didn’t
make it right to kill these people. It said it only RECOGNISED that it was
right. God told the people that the Law was in their mind and heart and whole
being and how could it be if it didn’t make sense or didn’t claim to be
rational?
However, the Catholic apologist Robert Sungenis argues that handing the man over
to Satan for the destruction of his flesh does mean execution. The Christians
saw secular and pagan states as the emissaries of Satan though God still used
them to punish the wicked (Romans 13). Handing over to Satan may mean handing
him over to the civil authorities and the destruction may be civil punishment,
capital punishment. The fact that Paul sounds so certain the man will be
destroyed indicates that he did mean execution. He wants the man put to death so
that he may repent before he dies.
It is certain however that if a man lives with his stepmother as a lover that
Paul wants him excommunicated or cursed if nothing else can be done to him. Now
what the man was doing was hardly a huge scandal for few men would be doing what
he did. For Paul homosexuality would have been a worse scandal. Paul handed him
over to Satan by God’s authority meaning God approved. That Christianity is so
afraid of being loathed if it does that today that it won’t obey God speaks of
the duplicity of this religion. Paul decreed that for a believer to have sex
with a prostitute was for him being part of Christ’s body to unite Christ with
evil and so must be a very great sin indeed. He would have seen a man having sex
with a man like trying to fuse two toes together and breaking the organisation
of the body of Christ.
The book of Leviticus in relation to sexual sinners who were put to death by
stoning has God saying that they have nobody but themselves to blame for their
deaths (20:27). In other words, it was the right thing to do. It is only if it
is wrong or unnecessary to kill them that the question of who else is to blame
for their deaths comes in. The Bible says it is both right and necessary to slay
homosexuals and to do it with cruelty.
If it does not command us to kill gays today it certainly commands us to say the
gays of yesterday deserved their bloody fate.
The Bible says that if a man takes his brother's wife that is incest and they
will die childless (Leviticus 20:21). The will die childless bit would suggest
that the man has his penis cut off or something by the God police. It is
suggested that this means legal childlessness - their children will not be given
any legal status. But that explanation is a bit stretched. God could have
commanded that the genitals of homosexual people be cut off. He abhorred the sin
so much that nothing less than the death penalty would suffice.
Jesus upheld the death penalty for adultery and by implication for homosexuality
as well. He called for the accusers of the adulteress to cast the first stone to
kill her if they were not implicated in adultery themselves (John 8:7).
The men about to kill the woman must have been a lynch mob. If they had been
legally delegated, the woman would have been stoned and not allowed to go free.
Jesus certainly was inferring that the killings of people caught committing
sodomy and adultery by at least two people could be put to death righteously
regardless of the legal consequences. This was justified for God is the real
lawmaker and the countries are only trying to make laws independent of his rule.
Jesus' logic about the non-relationship between divine and civil law in this
case is correct.
Jesus did not stone her for it was a trap so that he would be punished for
bypassing the judges. He told her she was a sinner and not to sin again and said
that stoning was appropriate and a holy act that sinners had no right to
perform. The implication is that he left it open for her to be stoned legally in
the future.
Some Christians say that the death penalty for adultery and sodomy was only
imposed if there were two or three witnesses of the sins taking place
(Deuteronomy 17:6). They say that no law should then criminalise anybody for
being gay for three witnesses are hard to come by. But those who promote
adultery and sodomy and homosexuality and who practice these sins openly would
be targeted. They say the death penalty does not cover men who sin consensually
in private. If so the law of killing gay men has not been abolished but fallen
out of use.
The letter to the Romans was written from Corinth by the apostle Paul. It clearly says that people who insult parents and commit certain sins deserve to die. It includes gay sex in this. Attempts to distort that are odd for surely a man who is that harsh would hate gay sexual activity?
It is assumed that Paul was writing about pagan homosexuality. But he is
clear he means people who believe in God and what he writes fits the kind of
"Christians" who appeared at the time. He condemns not men with men or women
with women but males with males and females with females. He keeps it simple and
does not go into a discussion about promiscuity or anything like that. He warns
that God can punish this by making the persons fixed in what they do.
We see that even without a mandate to stone today, those who really can
interpret the Bible show how much hate it has. It stones us with words. Jesus
stoned with words. That can be as bad as actual stones.