An impressive address by a young gay Christian in USA. Entitled: "The Gay Debate – The Bible and Homosexuality"

It's all in easy-to-follow 'lay' language. Too big to post whole thing here.

For link to You Tube copy, and also a transcript, go to:

>>> http://matthewvines.tumblr.com/post/19110639328/the-gay-debate-the-bible-and-homosexuality

Fantastic.

The video is great. Can't believe how articulate and wise he is. He's even younger than me. 😛

Hi forestgrey

Thanks for posting this. 🙂

I thought Matthew was an amazing public speaker who presented a very well thought out argument. He was impressive and especially for someone so young. I wonder how his audience responded afterwards?

I would have liked him to look into the cultural context for the Leviticus reference to men being prohibited to sleep with men. It would have also been good to look at the original language for an interpretation of the word 'abomination'. In a couple of interpretations, I've heard that the word 'abomination' was not what was originally intended. Today we tend to associate 'abomination' with abhorrence, like it refers to something so awful that we would want to emotionally and physically recoil from it. And that carries quite a strong and negative emotional connotation. However the original language conveyed something much less severe, indicating that the male same sex behaviours referred to in this passage, shouldn't occur at the time. And why were they not to occur during this period? If we look at the historical and social context for when this was written, the country needed to build it's army in order to win wars and survive (common in primitive times and in many societies since). So there was a social decree that the population be increased. And the best way to ensure this was through producing more children, especially male ones who would fight as soldiers and protect the future survival of their culture. And so sex that led to child bearing was encouraged, while any sexual activities, such as that which might occur between two men, was considered a waste of male seed and unhelpful to the task of building the population.

I think this is a very plausible interpretation but whether others agree with this or not isn't so much my point. I think it's a useful illustration of how those who make claims about the bible need to look more deeply into scripture than superficially reading it or simply taking someone else's interpretation as truth. In our modern Western world, we are very far removed from knowing about ancient Middle Eastern cultural practices, and there is a need to learn about these when trying to understand scripture and to look diligently into social and historical contexts and examine original language for intended meanings.

That aside, I thought Matthew squeezed an awful lot into his presentation and it was very well put together. I wonder what he's been doing since?

Blessings,

Ann Maree