leviticus 18: 22. Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind:

The short version:

Homosexual behaviour is normal.  It was so prevalent that it threatens the breeding patterns and family structure of the Hebrews. The  Hebrews surrounded by   hostile groups  had to breed like crazy.


Background
What does this mean?

First, all the rules in Leviticus at the heart of the matter deal with  questions of identity.  The Hebrew tribes have the task of differentiating themselves from the tribes around them.   This task feell to them before and after the Babylonian captivity.

Captive in Babylon, the elders set about to write down what had hitherto lived in memory and recitation.  The focus on identity took on an overwhelming facit of Hebraic existence.  After all, they lived among a people who had conquered them.  The Bab ylonians possessed wealth and power which the Hebrews did not. This surely must have shamed the Hebrews:  Left them  with the taste of ashes in their mouths.

So the Children of Abraham write down their scriptures. And, every step of the way, they reinforce the us vs them paradigm.  This included their sexual habits.

Now, to the point,  instead of male homosexual behaviour occuring only rarely in the larger non-Hebraic community, it could very well have run rampant.  And so, the Habraic elders in Babylon felt the need to say in loud and clear terms "... They do that.  We don't..."   This has special import if one seeks to grow the tribe to a strength sufficent to accomplish a reconquista.
 
In fact, chapter 8 of Leviticus seems devoted to reguloating sexual behaviour.  It only lacks the admonition to keep a stud book   The rest of the book seems to guard against inbreeding.

Behavioural health people aver that forcing a person to look outside the immediate family builds character strength.  The person has to venture into the unknown. 

Homosexual behaviour gets in the way of breeding.  But, it also disrupts family life.  It interrupts the attachment of one partner for the other.  It does take two minimum to raise kids.  This argument lacks something, though.  That something is that heterosexual mates who go looking for it outside marriage disrupt family life just as much as if they sought homosexual contact.  So Thgere.  

Now Paul.  Poor old Paul.  Bad press.  He's been deconstructed out of  existance.  Here goes.

Paul lacks the  capacity to see that two men or two women can hae a solid bonded relationship.  He also does not realize one thing. The external genitalia are not the priciple sex organs.   The brain is. Few in his day could have seen that. 

Paul may had one thing right.   Rampent promiscuity does little or nothing good for us.  It only encourages us to treat each other as objects instead of peopple.  In engaging in promiscuous behaviour we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to know one person deeply and hence ourselves deeply.

But wait, I hear you say, this applies to heterosexuals as well as homosexuals. Yes it does.

Personality & Politics Conservative vs. Liberal

The election of a president once again pushes it's way into the CNN news stream. Our consciousness and short attention span may be something else.

Last year a Sunday school class exposed me to the idea that personality factors such as risk aversion underlies our affinity for a liberal or conservative stance.

I write this in the hope that such information will undermine the ego  trip that I and a lot of folk get on.  I delude myself that my viewpoint will do the best for the most.  That has less to do with it than the factors in my personality that make me up every day.



I shjall undertake to present documentation to support this.  

ACNA

Here I place for those who seek such things links to things Anglican.

Foley Beach

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_Beach

Anglican Church in North America

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_Church_in_North_America


The Gray Monk
http://www.graymonk.com/

Scola Cantorum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fHVyO2DLA4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiRpXsWlZK4


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http://badvestments.blogspot.com/2010/04/modest-proposal.html

http://www.charlestoncvb.com/beaches/folly-beach/

Racial Intolerance

I hard, in the past few days, a person on WABE assert that racial intolerance had increased. 
Really?  Is that so?  

Or,

do we choose these days to acknowledge it's existence.  

By 

acknowledge it's existence many of us can take the responsibility to denounce it and to denounce and condemn those who practice it;    

I refuse to believe that no matter how frightened those white policemen may have been their only reourse l;ay in gunning down the person. I will not believe that.  
Those police people live in

 bourgeois  false consciousness.  

Christmas Day

One need not believe, i. e. subscribe to, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth in order to understand the power that lies behind the doctrine.

First consider the time of year.  The old is past.  Future time  the unknown, lies before us. It has a virginal.  Our time belongs to us to shape. 

The child represents ourselves in oour new beginnings.  For some, it does imply laying aside old habits which limit growth.  We thus free ourselves to cultivate better habits that foster improved well being. 

All this applies whether on accepts the historical rality of the Birth Of Jesus or not.  

Other points. 

This particular statue by Bernini, bears some resemblance  to the East Asian Quan Yin  which symbolize mercy.

A friend of mine once asked why people from Asia did not have apparitions of Mary. Easy!  Nothing in their culture has predisposed them to see Mary:  Quan Yin yes. 

Christmas Eve

I was 14.  My brother had gone of somewhere with his friends.  Mother and I went to her friends house to eat our way through Christmas Eve.

Some time before 10:30PM I began ti gyrate and bounce as a lot of un medicated ADHD people do.  The neighborhood friend guided me into the bedroom that had the second tv.

I went channel  surfing and came accross Midnight Mass from St. Patrick's in the big apple.

Theatre!  Wow!

Tsk Tsk you say.  Nay Nay say I.  What is it that a Christian does when they go to church.  They retell the reason for thier hope as Paul says.

It's just that some people need more tinsel than others. 

Bah & Hum - Bug

This guy and a few like him hold that the present form of the Roman liturgy is invalid.  Aside from the fact that most reasonable people wouldn't know a valid liturgy if one ran them down in trafic, one might ask what does all that mean anyway.

But, l;et us move on  to the pointe.   They insist that the older Tridentine liturgy from the council of Trent remains The Roman rites only valid litrugy.

At last, we come to the pointe.  Why isn't the Sarum liturgy O. K..  Or, its predecessor in the area near Salisbury, the  St. James liturgy.  And don't forget the Mosarabic.   Why that tired old thing from Trent?

Trent really aimed at imposing Romes way od doing things on everyone else.  They used the excuse of uniformity.  Bah and hum-bug .