Yes, we have taken on quite a project discussing this with each other and everyone else who's interested.

I think the most important point that I haven't quite made yet is that, while I agree with you that God has made correct loving action accessible to all sorts of people, including many who are very low in conventional intelligence, I think that the simplicity God has relied on is summarized entirely in the statement "love your neighbour as yourself." (I don't believe this out of thin air; you and I have been told by Jesus himself that, apart from loving God, this is the whole content of the law and the prophets.)

I would give more credibility to your attempt to adduce additional factors like biological teleology (divine purposes behind biologically evolved forms) if it didn't seem to me that the Lord had explicitly ruled out the importance of such things with the word "all." (not just the word, of course, but the thought behind it.)

What I was going to say in my big essay on this topic, which has now been distributed among the answers to your posts, is that I think there are two political parties in contemporary orthodox christianity on this topic (orthodox christianity being that branch of Christianity that sees all scripture as divinely inspired and does not dismiss part of it as pure historical artifact). One you represent, the "God's Plan Party." And the other I espouse, the "Love Party." The former sees the latter as attaching itself to a dangerously malleable and much abused concept (love) that will probably be used to license every sexual excess, while the latter sees the former as worshipping nature idols as part of their Christianity and otherwise attaching themselves to various non-Christian concepts derived from Victorian social conformity.

Now to your specific points:

Homosexuality does not allow for reproduction, whereas heterosexuality does.

Now, to members of the Love Party, this is clearly a problematic statement, since, first of all, reproduction is naturally encouraged ("go forth and multiply") but has no particular status as a religious idol, and, second of all, much of heterosexuality does NOT allow for reproduction. This has already been mentioned: infertile couples, post-menopausal couples, etc. In fact, I think to most Love Party members it would simply seem stubborn that you seem to repeat this argument when it has already been disposed of. However, as one of those academic types, I do understand that God's Plan Party (GPP) members differ from us in thinking in Types (or Platonic Ideas) to a much greater extent than we do. Our concepts are, ironically, much more naturalistic, and are based on the idea that most named items include some variability. What you are really saying is that prototype heterosexuality allows for reproduction whereas prototype homosexuality does not; in the face of this argument, the existence of non-reproductive heterosexual relationships become irrelevant. Likewise most GPP members would hold that there was a prototype Man designed to be half of human sexuality with a prototype Woman as the other half, and that God explicitly supports this typology with statements like "But from the beginning of creation, God MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE. 7 “FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, 8 AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH; so they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." Men and women who deviate from the archetypes, for example people born as sexual intermediates with both male and female genitalia, or homosexuals, or transsexuals, or people who are physically unable to take part in sexual union, are again, simply irrelevant to the overwhelming force of the divine single Ideas of Man, Woman and Reproductive Marriage.

To members of the Love Party (LP), it seems a bizarre bit of leftover ancient philosophy that anything could still be conceived of as a set of Platonic Ideas; in fact, the whole notion is suggestive of shamanism. In shamanism, for example, people will adopt the Bear Spirit, the type of all bears, as their patron spirit, or will call the typological Eagle their protector, etc. The GPP essentially creates, within their Christianity, shamanistic totems called Man and Woman who are a certain thing and act in a certain way regardless of what any real people might do. The LP, however, holds that God has not created totems, but only what is here present with us as real. Insofar as there is naturally fixed gender and sexuality variation, including hermaphrodites, transsexuals and homosexuals, God's injunctions to find connubial love do not explicitly exclude them even though the "one flesh" statement from Genesis (also quoted later by Jesus and Paul) only speaks to the numerically prevalent situation, typical heterosexuality involving typical men and typical women. The difference between typical people and Types or archetypes of people may seem a little subtle; however, regarding some people as typical doesn't judge the others to be lower or more imperfect in the order of creation, while regarding all people as avatars of two Types who may or may not make the spiritual grade by fulfilling their Typicality definitely casts the less typical people as inferiors in creation (or at least, as deformed beings needing to be healed into superior status.)

Unprotected anal sex is unhealthy by comparison to unprotected vaginal sex. I don't know how many of you are old enough to have seen the emergence of this thought as a new idea, but I certainly am. It dates to 1983-84. It is a myth propagated by a few rather frantic people early in the AIDS outbreak and I actually account it as being racist in origin (though certainly not in its innocent use by Rainboy here). When this idea was devised we already knew that the great majority of AIDS cases in Africa and Haiti were spread by ordinary heterosexual intercourse among otherwise healthy people, and only in North America and Europe was there an epidemic that appeared to mainly involve anal sex. Really what happened was that HIV caught up with the "life in the fast lane" gay crowd and spread through it like lightning. In later years, heterosexual AIDS has become prevalent in most of the western world just as it always was in Africa and Haiti. But the original premise was more or less based on the idea that "what is happening among all those colored people in those distant lands is not important, so we just won't think about that when we are talking about how AIDS is spread."

Even though this idea once found its way into a Time magazine essay, if I remember right, it is completely without merit. Heterosexual sex is exquisitely vulnerable to sexually transmitted disease.

The only sexual act involving the anus that has a risk of causing damage is fisting.

All males have a highly erotically sensitive organ, the prostate gland, which can only be directly stimulated through anal sex. I know this is a family board so I won't describe the results in detail, but they are impressive, and anyone trying to discern God's intentions for human sex by studying body design would be forced to conclude that anal sex is mandated for males. Of course in the LP we don't make such arguments, so I am not actually suggesting this; it's probably just a natural coincidence that this very pleasurable stimulation is only available this one way.

Whereas heterosexual intercourse allows for face-to-face intimacy, homosexual intercourse does not.

This idea is completely false - the prevalent form of gay anal intercourse is face-to-face. It's only in the hetero locker room myth and in surrogacy (prison sex, etc.) that doggie-style takes over. Anyways, there is much more to gay sex than anal alone and there is no lack of personal intimacy.

Rainboy, this statement is actually a confession of a kind. If you were a typical GPP member you might be very proud of this confession, but I think you're actually fair and conscientious and this is a little painful. You haven't read any gay literature, fiction or non-fiction, and if you have had any experience with same-sex sex, it has been with either a violent person or a completely naive person.

There is no problem with being ignorant of the sexual techniques of types of relationships you don't partake in, but one is forced to assume that your knowledge of the love that actually drives gay relationships is just as uninformed and speculative as your sexual knowledge. You have probably never had close gay friends, particularly not gay Christian couples. I feel that this vacuum really harms your understanding of the situation we are discussing. You simply have not observed the abundance of love, and the holy spirit has not had a chance to talk with you about it.

One of my premisses is that the holy spirit very seldom gives people new empirical knowledge (the exception is those who have spiritual gifts of prophecy or knowledge, but, based on some experience with the latter, I can tell you that the information that arrives that way is very unusual in character.) If you want to understand the world spiritually, you are obliged to observe, and the holy spirit will help you evaluate. Prayerfully considering that status of gay Christian relationships without actually encountering in such relationships is not entirely a lost cause, but it's an approach that is very low in spiritual nutritional value, so to speak. Yes, God's love actually mandates our meeting each other, rather than our speculating about each other from our separate isolations.

I have to say, though, it is very convenient at this point in our discussion that you have given me the opening to make this point. The reason is that it relates to all your scriptural arguments. I am going to argue that the writers of scripture were much more spiritually undernourished in their evaluation (if any) of gay relationships than you could possibly be.

The reason is the sociological structure of the ancient world. (Here there's a reasonably good reference: Bisexuality in the Ancient World", by Eva Cantarella). Fortunately, we still have the advantage today that many aspects of the social milieu of the ancient Roman empire are still preserved in the islamic world or were until recently (see Arno Schmitt and Jehoeda Sofer (eds.), Sexuality and Eroticism Among Males in Moslem Societies Harrington Park Press 1992).

One of these is the apparent absence of gay relationships, in a society where same-sex sex is by no means uncommon. Let me explain to you what happens in this sort of society. Marriage is regimented, and though female prostitution is available, surrogate male-male sex is also very available. A surprising number of straight guys find young males attractive, especially from the backside, and in reality they sort of blur together with the BL guys who also are somewhat bisexual. Meanwhile, in such societies, everyone needs to produce kids for family and military reasons and as their old age pension, so almost all gay guys get married. Just a few particularly highly female-identified gay guys become specialized as male prostitutes or unpaid catamites, and they, especially when they are young, then become the natural attractors for the butt-seeking straight guys, the teenloving bi BL guys, the teenloving pure BL guys, and the gay guys. They get it from all sides. A gay Moroccan friend who moved to Canada once described this to me in detail: "Morocco is so much better for me because there, you get real men coming after the gay boys, you know? Like real men with wives and all that. But here, in north America, there's this gay community and they are all women, if you know what I mean. And ok, there are some nice guys, but it's not the same. I prefer real men."

Here was a gay guy who had got addicted to what in traditional North America was called "rough trade," same-sex attention from heterosexual "real men" on a diversion.

Now, in a society like this, if you go observing, you don't see any loving gay relationships at all, or if you do they are extremely rare. You see a whole bunch of heterosexual married men (and their as-yet-unmarried brethren) going after some "loose men", some catamites, and a shocking number of these catamites seem to be mere boys. Unbeknownst to you, you also see a lot of perfunctorily married gay men doing the same thing as the straight men, using catamites, while if they are having any actual gay love relationships, these affairs are either well hidden marital transgressions or the sort of affair that one has with a prostitute, that is, a very adulterated and by no means typical love match. Or, as in ancient Greece, people may be able to have a temporary love match with a young teen boy, but he is usually actually a straight boy and is of very dubious status at best as a romantically interested partner (with some exceptions).

Now, what does the holy spirit tell you when you look upon this social milieu? All the male-male sex is outside of loving relationships, most of it is in violation of heterosexual bonds. It looks like any other sexual brigandage, it hardly differs from prostitution or even temple prostitution -- nothing but exploitation, usage and children who have been taken advantage of. Naturally your divinely inspired writer only writes words of condemnation.

But our society isn't like this at all. We have broken the back of male-male exploitation, and miraculously, through God's grace, loving relationships have emerged on top. Gay people have managed to free themselves from the dual link to false marriage and clandestine quasi-prostitute sex and have been able to love and support each other as they have always wanted to. So what does the holy spirit say about this? You won't find the answer in the Bible because the writers of the Bible never saw this at all. Or if they saw a trace of it, it was completely drowned out in the enormous noise of catamite culture, which was much bigger than any gay subculture because of the heavy heterosexual involvement.

I suggest that if you want to know what the holy spirit would instruct about this, you should go encounter loving gay couples yourself and see what the Counsellor counsels. "By their fruits you shall know them"

Yes, love is all the law and the prophets. By their fruits you shall know them. These are the two main pillars of the Love Party. Ignore them and you ignore the one who said them. It's not just the scriptures about male-male sex that are important. These other soft-fuzzy scriptures matter too. They are your guidelines, your simplicities. A child or a mentally handicapped person can understand them well enough to operate them. So why get lost in trivialities like legends about how biological devices are purposed.

That's as far as I can get tonight!