You are clearly a thoughtful and gentle person. Thank you for taking the time to look at my thoughts and to respond so kindly.

We are approaching this from different perspectives. I’ll try to explain myself.

I don’t believe that the Torah is open to any/all interpretations. To be so creative with how to understand a verse is to go onto a slippery slope from which there is no return. When one looks at the oral Torah’s interpretation of homosexuality, it is impossible to learn it in that way. (Please correct me if you have classic sources.) I don’t know where you are in your beliefs. The Talmud is part of Torah to me. To understand the Torah without the aid of the oral tradition is to allow Judaism to blend together with Christianity and Islam. I’ve written about this as well.

My starting point is that a loving and all knowing G-d said, “No.” Now that He has, let’s understand how homosexuality works. Your understanding is that a loving and all knowing G-d said, “Let us make men who desire men.” From there, you seek to understand what the Torah is saying.

As for what solutions there are for people who want to confront this immensely difficult challenge, there is help. It is not as black and white as you suggest. It doesn’t mean a life of lying and faking. It means a life of challenge and growth. When two virgins marry and they discover sexual dysfunction, should we assume that their life is miserable? I don’t mean to suggest that homosexuality is as “simple” as a sexual dysfunction. I only mean to suggest that we all have challenges; every marriage has challenges. Having challenges doesn’t make life unbearable.

The parts of your comment about the politics – what is called marriage, hospital, insurance, etc. – I’ll be as brutally honest as I can. I don’t have a clear take on this. I’d like to see marriage be defined strictly as a male/female relationship. My reasoning is not religious, as I try to make my politics based on logic that is common to all. It seems to me that the strength of the country is fortified by family units. I’m aware that there is adoption open to gay couples, but I think it is important to have standards. Families are the organic units consisting of mother/father and sometimes children. This is why we have tax benefits for children. It’s good for the state to have economy and military. As for the hospital decisions, I have no problems with what you propose. People could name anyone they want to make decisions for them, to visit them, etc. I think it is pretty standard and that there have cases thrown on us that were exceptions, but for political gain, we’ve come to believe that this is the norm. I am open to changes in policy where there is currently something unfair.

If a man is not attracted to women, and he marries a wman anyway, he is condeming his wife to a loveless life. She wants her husband to desire her, not merely to force himself to be with her a few times in order to produce children and then leave her as an agunah the rest of her married life. At first she may be shy and may imagine she would like this, but soon she needs tis special connection and finds it agonizing to do without it. So if he marries, he makes his wife miserable.

Whether or not he marries, if he abstains from the sex that attracts him, HE is miserable. He is forced to be a monk, and Jews don’t believe in being monks. He is forced to spend his entire life without ever expressing or feeling physical love for a special partner. I don’t think anyone deserves this cruel fate.

The Torah says for a man not to lie with mankind as with womankind. If we read this strictly, we can see that it is physiologically impossible to lie with mankind AS with womankind. Let us treat this law as we do the law of the stubborn and rebellious son and say that there IS NO SUCH THING as lying “with mankind AS with womankind”. Let us however say that any man who has ANY attraction for women must marry a woman and be faithful to her and “her food, her raiment and her marital rights he shall not diminish” for any reason. He must be with her at least five times each month.

And a man whose attraction to a woman is like his attraction to a bicycle must either abstain or wait until he has found one permanent partner. Not only CAN he marry, he MUST “marry”–i.e., establish a permanent relationship– rather than sleep around.

There is more to it than that. Such a couple should have hospital visitation rights, insurance rights, funeral rights, all the other rights that would otherwise go to a man’s parents, siblings, or grown children, all of which have been ignoring him for years or may have died, while his partner has faithfully tended him in sickness and worked and played together with him in health. This is the person who should be allowed at his bedside in the ICU as he takes his last breath. This is the person who should be permitted to see that his desire for burial rather than cremation is carried out. This is the person who should be listed on his health insurance. This is the person who cares for him, and whom he cares for, more than anyone else in the world. I have known such couples, and the cruelty of the existing system is heartbreaking.

Can you imagine not being allowed to do these things for your wife, Gd forbid it should ever be needed, if, after 120 years, something should happen? And if a man should feel towards another man as you do toward your wife, and after 120 years something happens, it is just as cruel to him as it would be to you.

The sons of our father Abraham are known for compassion. Open your heart. These men are not attacking you. You are not being merciful to the merciless. They are the victims here. Have some compassion.

My position is that people with SSA should struggle with their desires. Therapy can help. Heterosexual relationships can help. The language of “cure” is something that I expect to post on next week. I don’t think that it’s a helpful term. I can accept within my spiritual/moral framework a person saying, “This is so difficult for me. I’m not able/willing to fight this fight. I’ll probably give in to it upon occasion.” Or, “I just don’t have the energy for this fight.” I see it as a failing, but that language frames it in a way that the person with the SSA also sees it that way.

Where I part company with this friend of mine is when he and his partner create their own system of spirituality/morality to call wrong “right.” I don’t ask you to accept my system, but that is a glimpse of where I’m coming from. Thank you for striving to understand it.

The lack of “o” in G-d is not an ironclad rule in my world. It’s a whisper of not taking His name in vain. When G-d becomes just another word, then we can forgot to consider Who we are talking about. Leaving out the “o” doesn’t even come close to making me automatically be more G-d aware, but when I’ve had a coffee and I’m thinking, it helps. Actually, I started a Q/A section on the blog, and I just checked. I wrote something about this there – the third question.

I hope that I’ll continue to post and that you’ll continue to read. I’d much rather have you as my typical reader than people who agree with everything that I write. G-d bless and thank you again and again.

I also appreciate the fact that you can clearly see we do not see eye to eye on many topics and I am happy to leave it at that. The only point of clarification I’d like to make is that in most, if not all, of the places that I used the word “interpretation”, my point would have been better served by using the word “translation”. Nonetheless, I believe you understood the point I was making, and just as I don’t accept/agree with all of your ideology, you do no have to accept/agree with mine.

You have made some good points and some that I disagree with, but rather than belabor the point I’ll leave it at that.

I do have one question on a separate level. I’ve wondered, from the moment I first saw your post title in my Tag Surfer, why is their not an “o” in your “G-d”? I do find that curious.

First, on questions of tone and poor communication, I fully accept my share of the blame. The “hissy” comment wasn’t nice. I wrote it with a feeling of negativity. I accept the reproach and ask forgiveness. You are also correct that it wasn’t “name calling,” but yes I took exception for comments of “dumbest thing” and “ludicrous.” Also, I did give the two impressions of regular ol’ unfettered desires and polygamy. Again, my bad.

With no offense taken I write that “luring” is not my intention. I have been in a position of counseling several times with people struggling with their sexual identity, and I’ve seen the pain that you write about. I am not cold towards it. In fact, it’s nearly midnight and I wouldn’t take the time to respond if I had not sensitivities towards this topic. If I have hatred in this discussion, it has two heads. One is towards the scumbags who hang their “G-d hates fags” signs. The other is towards the gay community that teaches that this is “an alternative lifestyle.”

Obviously, this is where we disagree, but I do not desire any thing even remotely resembling Taliban legislation. I’d prefer more mature discussion about where our mutual ground is. Why then, do I write things like I do? Because the discussion in America, despite the accusations from the left of America being filled with hateful Christians, is completely dominated by a media that accepts that it is fine and normal to openly live as homosexuals. I don’t want to stop you, but I don’t want you to force me to teach my children that this as normal.

Like many people, I questioned my sexuality. I feel blessed that I didn’t act on homosexual questions, but when I learned that some people felt and acted like that, I had to wonder. I want my children to ask these questions in a context of support that “normal” is heterosexual. It is not because I am afraid. It is not because I hate. It is because struggles can be resolved more than one way. Our complexities can be worked out in multiple and complex ways. If instead of having a domineering mother, you would have had an accepting mother and a gentle yet strong father, perhaps your feelings would have found another way to work through. I’m not going to try to attempt to simplify human psychology to this response. I hope that you at least hear my voice and tone.

As for interpretations of the Bible, again they don’t interest me. To me, it is holy and not a Shakespearean play open to as many interpretations as we can imagine. My studies of the text are in Hebrew and linked together with an oral interpretation that is very clear. Homosexual thoughts may be part of nature or nurture or both. Acting upon them in a sexual manner is destructive. The programming that you fight is probably wise to fight, but there are many ways to fight wrong programming.

Of course we all have to choose what is “right for us,” but I can tell that you are bright enough to recognize a very slippery slope. Where does “right for us” begin and end? Harmful to others? We rapidly enter a realm of secular humanism. If there is a G-d and He has a will, then “right for us” has fewer arenas of interpretation.

I thank you for correcting me where I was weak in my communication. My style has a lightness/humor to it that can cross a border towards sarcastic and insensitive. I don’t want to be there (usually). I didn’t delete your comment(s) because I’m a big fan of honest discussion between respectful people on different sides of an issue.

I don’t mean to mock with my “heart of hearts” line. I truly believe that in your soul, it is painfully obvious that homosexuality is not morally correct as far as acting out the feelings. This is the point that I want to stress. My inner self has desires for women from all walks of life with a great range of ages, races, heights, and marital status. My life’s goal is to become an increasingly more spiritual and mature man. Through this work, which is daily and difficult, I become more whole. I don’t believe that this work is only for those of us with feelings of heterosexuality. The feelings are not the determining factor. Morality (aka G-d) is first. The feelings can be trained, for you and for me.

The bottom line is that your post felt to me, like you were luring gay people to your post with suggestions of support (“G-d made me this way too”), only to attack our beliefs, and I felt, wrongly, like I needed to comment. (I kinda thought that was the point of blogging… and the ability to NOT approve comments if you desire.) Clearly, I’d have done everyone better justice by chalking it up to a post I didn’t agree with and leaving it be.

As for your response to my comments. I’ve already gone through this process of determining what I believe. I lived my life being told that I was not OK for being who I was. I lived through my teens and 20s trying to ignore what I was, or pretend that I was not this person. It got me nothing but misery, depression and suicidal thoughts. I have analyzed the Bible (I’m Christian, not Jewish). I’ve studied, and prayed on it. And, I’ve researched the works of men wiser than I, to arrive at a conclusion. And that conclusion is that in every instance that people claim that the Bible is denouncing homosexuality, the words that were used in the original text had several other potential alternative meanings. The term “homosexual” wasn’t even conceived of then. There are also several instances where the stories may well have been referring favorably to same sex relations.

There are a number of sexual acts that the Bible does denounce, adultery and promiscuity being among them. Rape is another, and in every case when people choose to interpret the Bible to be anti-gay (Sodom and Gomorrah for example) the stories could just as well have been and indeed would make more sense if they were, discussions of rape and abuse, and not of same gender sexuality.

Lastly, and most recently, I recently read a book titled “What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality” written by a heterosexual, happily married, man with a Doctorate in Divinity, which addressed all of these points and many more.

Finally, you clearly think I’m wrong, and that’s OK. I think you’re wrong and that’s OK too. What I know is, we live in a “Christian Society” that preaches love and acceptance, at the same time that it shows hate and judmentalism. And I have first hand experience of what it’s like to live in an environment that tells you that what you’re experiencing is wrong. I had to decide for myself just as each and every other person does. The doubts I expressed, aren’t because I know in my “heart of hearts” that something is wrong, but because I have been programmed, by a mother who was entirely too domineering, to believe what she believes without any justification or explanation as to why and until I took the time to work it out for myself I acted on that programming. All these years later I am still fighting the programming, but not the truth.

As an exception, I’ll post your comments with your name calling. In the future, if you dare to actually respond to what I write and not what you think I write, you’ll have to respond without the name calling.

Point by point.

1. You wrote:
As a Christian Gay Man who was raised to believe that what I feel is wrong it’s taken me quite a while to come to terms with what I am experiencing, and I’m still inclined to accept anti-gay rhetoric until I think it through.

What you’re feeling is what you are feeling. What you act upon is where the right/wrong stuff kicks in. Feelings can be right or wrong, while desires fall into an entirely different category. They depend upon whether or not you feed them. The first desire is usually not wrong. If you feed a desire to have sex with a man by staring at and dreaming of naked men, then your thoughts/desires can also be sinful. But, for the sake of the argument, morality is more on what you do than what you feel.

Point 2.

You wrote:

But your arguments against homosexuality are just ludicrous. The bible doesn’t speak against bigamy. Many of the men in the bible times had multiple wives. It was an accepted part of culture and the bible doesn’t speak against it ANYWHERE. What it does speak against is Adultery. Adultery is extramarital sex. To use your example, if you had 86 wives and you had sex every night, one night after the next with a different wife, you would not be committing adultery because every one of them is your wife. On the other hand, no matter how many wives you have, if you were married and you went to a bar and picked up a random strange woman and had sex with her, THAT would be adultery and THAT would be wrong and is something you have to fight yourself against.

You are correct that the Bible speaketh not against bigamy. However, my faith doesn’t interpret the Bible from feeling. We have a tradition that dates back to the revelation at Sinai. It is an aside (as you’ll see soon), but we have been forbidden from having multiple wives for over 1000 years. However, you missed my point.

Frankly, you got into such a hissy from what you saw that you didn’t give it thought to consider the argument. Admittedly, I was less than perfectly precise, however, look again at “Counter Argument #2.” It’s not just about my wife agreeing. Firstly, the desire is not for multiple wives. It is for every consenting woman in the universe, even if she is married. Without the spiritual work, this desire knows very few bounds. Secondly, it’s about a desire for what I call in another post sexual purity. Please look at it: http://ejew.wordpress.com/2008/08/24/human-sexuality-is-purity-a-worthwhile-goal/

Point #3.

You wrote:
By the same token, some believe that there were examples of homosexual relationships in the bible and that anti-gay conservatives choose to misinterpret the verses that discuss this issue.

The Bible is not a toy to be interpreted however you desire. Do what I did. Ask yourself who has the most likely to be accurate interpretation. I’m a Torah observant Jew. I don’t have an obligation to pay attention to an interpretation that flies in the face of what my grandparents and their grandparents lived all the way back to Sinai. For the sake of my gay friends, I wish that I could.

Point #4.
You wrote:
So my argument is, if YOU feel that God made you to desire to be married to multiple wives, and all of your wives are in agreement of this lifestyle you would not be living a spiritually immoral life. You would be living a governmentally illegal life. By the same token, God made me gay. By desiring other men, I’m not living a spiritually immoral life. In most of the country, it is not legal for me to enjoy marriage and other legal rights that go along with marriage, but it’s not immoral.

Part I of this paragraph I already addressed. It’s not about multiple wives. It’s about all of my friends’ wives. It’s about everybody’s wife. I’m not talking about a desire to have multiple wives. I’m talking about a desire to have sex with lots and lots of people. It’s called promiscuity. It’s immoral because it includes married women, and it’s destructive because a spiritual life does not include giving into all of my desires. By the way, I don’t truly desire this on a daily basis. I’m making a point. Without vigilance, these desires do occupy the minds of most men.

Part II of this paragraph is interesting, and you can believe whatever you want, but how can you know G-d’s will? How do you know that acting out on homosexual desires in not immoral. I’ll tell you that G-d revealed His will through the Torah and that it is immoral if you give in to those desires. You’ve told yourself what you want to believe, but it’s still a struggle deep down because you truly know in your heart of hearts that something isn’t right.

Point #5.

You wrote:

Therefore, just like I and people like me have to fight for the legal rights I’m entitled to as a gay man, you and others like you have to fight for the legal rights you’re entitled to as a man with multiple wives.

Did I write something about legal rights? I’m not very involved in government. Politics is fascinating to me, and I think that America is a great country, but what did I say that triggered this?

Lastly, you wrote:

Not all of the laws of man are in agreement with the laws of God and these are a couple of examples of that.

This was the best sentence that you wrote. Correct. The laws of man allow homosexual behavior. The laws of G-d don’t. I’m not here to debate with you. If I can help you in any way to break free of the twisted lies of the gay community, I’d like to. The gay community either ignores or twists G-d’s rules to fit their feelings/desires. I can’t help you with that. My starting point is G-d. I have to make my life conform with His will. I can’t twist His will to work with my life.

But your arguments against homosexuality are just ludicrous. The bible doesn’t speak against bigamy. Many of the men in the bible times had multiple wives. It was an accepted part of culture and the bible doesn’t speak against it ANYWHERE. What it does speak against is Adultery. Adultery is extramarital sex. To use your example, if you had 86 wives and you had sex every night, one night after the next with a different wife, you would not be committing adultery because every one of them is your wife. On the other hand, no matter how many wives you have, if you were married and you went to a bar and picked up a random strange woman and had sex with her, THAT would be adultery and THAT would be wrong and is something you have to fight yourself against.

By the same token, some believe that there were examples of homosexual relationships in the bible and that anti-gay conservatives choose to misinterpret the verses that discuss this issue.

So my argument is, if YOU feel that God made you to desire to be married to multiple wives, and all of your wives are in agreement of this lifestyle you would not be living a spiritually immoral life. You would be living a governmentally illegal life. By the same token, God made me gay. By desiring other men, I’m not living a spiritually immoral life. In most of the country, it is not legal for me to enjoy marriage and other legal rights that go along with marriage, but it’s not immoral.

Therefore, just like I and people like me have to fight for the legal rights I’m entitled to as a gay man, you and others like you have to fight for the legal rights you’re entitled to as a man with multiple wives.

Not all of the laws of man are in agreement with the laws of God and these are a couple of examples of that.

I’m going to step outside of this argument for a second to address something that you said that puts on me on my turf.

You write: “If you want to persuade the skeptics then you’ll have to bring something more substantial than common sense intuition otherwise you’d just be preaching to the converted.”

I’m not so sure that my audience is the skeptic. I would divide the readers into three groups. Believers whose faith has been shaken by atheists. To them I say, “Atheists aren’t as brilliant as you think they are.” Group 2: The skeptics who are truly looking. To them I write primarily. Group 3: The skeptics who would respond to a Divine revelation with a joke, a shrug and an explanation that would allow them to continue with their G-dless life unfettered by the truth.

I’ll come back to the “atheists aren’t as brilliant as you think” comment in a second. The point that I want to make – I’ve made as an aside and in other comments but need to write a separate post for – is that atheists are quick to ridicule believers as having created G-d to feel better about themselves. (I agree that many do, by the way.) What few atheists see is that, if G-d exists, He has created a world with free choice and His existence being beyond time/space is not provable as we normally consider the word. It seems to weaken my argument and I hesitate to write it, but it is almost never a purely objective “decision” to believe in G-d. It has a lot of objective information (or at least it did/does for me), but it ultimately involves not a leap of faith but a paradigm shift that at least allows one to truly consider the “what if” of G-d.

I understand what you mean when you say that you have no idea, but please understand that I literally have no doubt as to G-d’s existence. This is not meant as a proof or anything that would remotely affect you. It’s just that I’m not in the business of laying out concrete proof that would hold up in a laboratory. You (not you literally) are not likely to have a relationship with a Judeo/Christian G-d if you want to have sex with dogs, men, or a sister. You’ll create a world view that will allow you to ignore G-d. If you don’t have that ability to ignore G-d, morality quickly becomes meaningless and humanism rules.

Now. Back to your questions/challenges. My argument is not as implausible or incredibly shaky as you claim. The argument has nothing to do with moving from one class to another. I understand the challenge, but it misses the point. The point is from less complex to more complex. More complex indicates higher intelligence. Quite simple. It can be developed and played with (it’s kinda fun for me), but it’s not challenged by your retort – it’s strengthened by it. Does it “prove” anything? No. Does it suggest a freaky level of intelligence way beyond you, me, Einstein, and even Hawkins? Certainly. All that I assume a priori is that pattern, complexity, and purpose strongly suggests guiding intelligence.

You wrote:
I understand. But that isn’t really any sort of rigorous, objective criteria. In the past “common sense facts” about the world have often turned out out be woefully mistaken. If you want to persuade the skeptics then you’ll have to bring something more substantial than common sense intuition otherwise you’d just be preaching to the converted.

Of course, you don’t mean to suggest that science hasn’t produced woeful mistakes? Also, science doesn’t always start from fact. It often starts from observation and hypothesis, which leads to testing and gathering of fact. I, too, begin from observation and hypothesis. I’ve been gathering facts for 20+ years and have yet to disprove my thesis.

A commitment limits me from responding further now. I find you to be a fair and non-retardo type of a person. I’ll gladly continue this and answer any of the points that you made later if we get there. For now. Be well. And a big “thanks” for reading and responding and helping me to continue to sharpen my points.