[Vision2020] Beastiality and Incest

[Melynda Huskey]

rvrcowboy wrote:
> I sincerely hope people here do not take this post the wrong way but 
> there is a question that has been troubling me for some time.  As far 
> as I know, and believe me I am no expert here, many of the same cites 
> in the Bible which speak directly about homosexuality also speak 
> directly about beastiality and incest. 
>  
> I have heard people justify their homosexual acts by stating that 
> these passages of the Bible also ban other things, like eating pork, 
> etc..  Since many here are openly homosexual, or gay if you prefer, I 
> would like very much to know your views on beastiality and incest.  Do 
> you believe these are also a matter of choice that the Bible does not 
> take seriously? 
>  
Dear Dick,

Levitus 18 has one such string of prohibitions, starting with all the 
forbidden degrees of incest, and then moving on to  no sex with a 
menstruating woman, with a kinsman's wife, no infant sacrifices to 
Moloch, no man-with-man sex, no bestiality (and for the first time, we 
see a mention of women as sexually active--women are forbidden to have 
sex with animals, too).  In Leviticus 12:24, we're told why.  "Do not 
defile yourself in any of these ways, for by all these practices the 
nations I am casting out have defiled themselves."  These are ritual 
prohibitions, having to do with the religious practices of the 
surrounding nations, the Baal and Ashtoreth and Moloch worshippers of 
the region.  The Jews are being called to keep themselves entirely 
separate from their neighbors, to practice a specific and well-regulated 
kind of animal sacrifice, to eat in a way unlike the people around them, 
and to completely dissociate themselves from their Gentile neighbors.

None of the gay people I've known practiced or were proponents of incest 
or bestiality, whether they were Christian or not.   For myself, as a 
Christian and as a lesbian, I find both practices repugnant.  Neither 
children nor animals can consent to sex; they ought never to be 
exploited for the satisfaction of more powerful people.  "Then he took a 
little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said 
to them, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me . . ." 
(Mark 9:36-37)

I believe when gay people object to having certain passages of Scripture 
used as weapons against them, it is most often because the people who 
are doing so don't themselves abide by every Levitical or Deteronomical 
injunction.  If you wear blended fibers, or plant mixed crops, or eat 
shellfish, I am less likely to take seriously your demand that I stop 
being gay because the Bible says not to.

Melynda Huskey