It is interesting that asking hard questions about gets a hostile response. No soft answers turning away wrath here.
Interestingly, I was asked by AC to describe my religious beliefs on this forum, and I did, even though it makes me uncomfortable. I'm obviously not a fundamentalist, and I have no preconceptions whatever about an afterlife. I'm not clever enough to understand the mind of God.
I just do my best to get through life. I was taught as a Boy Scout that you should leave your campsite cleaner than you found it. That's my understanding of morality.
I believe in the "How would the world be if everyone behaved the way I do?" principal.
Of course I don't always live up to it. Starting the conversation with AC with a (slightly) loaded version of my understanding of those Leviticus verses wasn't helpful to debate. But I tried hard thereafter. Didn't get me anywhere though :(
The way I see it those verses are talking about teenagers who have gone off the rails. It specifies the parents as those who request the stoning, so the implication is that of children who have not reached their majority. People lived shorter and married earlier in those days so I guess we are talking about 12-14 year-olds. From my understanding of ancient mores it is reasonable to imagine early teens getting drunk.
Interesting that it uses the word "sons" rather than children, the implication of which I missed initially. Two possibilities spring to mind:
a. It is inconceivable in that society that daughters could misbehave in such a way.
b. Girls were property rather than citizens upon whom any punishment could be visited at the whim of their parents, whereas boys had rights of judgement from the town elders.
Both of those things are factors. One way of seeing that law is that it probably codified that the parents had to get permission from the town elders. They couldn't just execute their son on a whim. So that way it could be seen as protection for rebellious youth that hadn't existed previously even though now we would see it as impossibly draconian.