Re: same-sex marriage

In a message dated 6/8/2006 7:45:13 PM Eastern Standard Time,
tdavis@messiah.edu writes:
I recommend the following document for some (IMO) very thoughtful analysis
of this issue:

http://www.princetonprinciples.org/

Ted
All of the liberal (homosexuality, abortion, feminism, birth control)
initiatives remove the protection of the Levitical prohibitions lowering the birth
rates and the economic viability of the group that practices them.

High immigration of groups with high birth rates into a nation that abandons
the Levitical prohibitions ensures that in a few generations, the immigrants
displace the indigenous.

“… After the fall of Samaria, with the increasing centralization of the
kingdom of Judah, a new, more focused attitude toward religious law and practice
began to take hold. Jerusalem’s influence – demographic, economic, and
political – was now enormous and it was linked to a new political and territorial
agenda: the unification of all Israel.”12
 
The Israelites who survive the conquest of the northern kingdom (by the
Assyrians, the first people to use population transfer) bring literacy and the
fervent desire to recover the northern kingdom of Israel with them to the poor,
remote southern kingdom of Judah. They devote themselves to the idea that the
damage to Israel is reversible. They centralize administration in Jerusalem and
set out to remove all traces of the foreign peoples who now populate Israel’s
main centers in their place. Their aspirations are reflected in a new
theology.
 
“When Judah suddenly faced the non-Israelite world on its own, it needed a
defining and motivating text. That text was the historical core of the Bible,
composed in Jerusalem in the course of the seventh century B.C.E.”13
 
Judah begins a religious transformation that will remove the foreigners along
with their foreign gods and repopulate the northern kingdom of Israel with
Israelites.
Chief among their new policies is the command to remove the religious cult
centers other than Jerusalem and the prohibition against intermarriage with
non-Israelites.
 
The land which you are entering and will possess is a polluted land, polluted
by the foreign population with their abominable practices, which have made it
unclean from end to end. Therefore do not give your daughters in marriage to
their sons, and do not marry your sons to their daughters, and never seek
their welfare or prosperity. Thus you will be strong and enjoy the good things of
the land, and pass it on to your children as an everlasting possession.27

12. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed,
Archeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts
(Touchstone, New York, 2002) page 247
13. Ibid., page 229
27. Ezra (9:11-13)

Notice Ezra does not allow the returnees to participate in the "abominable
practices" of the indigenous.
And Finkelstein is not a biblicist. He is a prominent Israeli archeologist
and his view is the accepted view among biblical minimalists like Mario Liverani
and Philip Davies.
It is not just defending marriage that is important or even arguing its
merits but look further and ask who is attacking marriage and legitimizing the
"abominable practices" Ezra rails against.
Once you have to argue the merits of marriage between a man and a woman you
have already capitulated. Argue not for marriage, but to understand why the
cultured elite want us to abandon marriage and the rest of the Levitical
prohibitions and adopt these "abominable practices."

When you see "real religion" at work in the world, your posture will be
defined for you and your faith will return. Either that or Christianity is lost.

If you read Finkelstein, you realize the survival of the biblical Jews is a
result of the adoption of the Levitical prohibitions, not their abandonment,
but because the national identity of European American Christians has been
demonized, you cannot see that our numbers are dropping and open borders would
disperse us among foreign peoples, which is a biblical curse (Moses' words).
Don't waste your time justifying and arguing for marriage. Marriage
strengthens human families.
Know who would profane marriage and why and stop them.

rich faussette
Received on Fri Jun 9 07:58:01 2006