I go with tradition - sodomy between men was a capital offense in this country - Jefferson being the enlightened gentleman that he was, reduced the penalty in VA to, IIRC, castration and banishment from the colony or state.
I am not advocating castration or banishment, nor yet death!
Every scripture in the world considers sodomy - meaning anal “sex” - and any sex acts between members of the same sex - to be sinful, criminal acts.
There is no need or cause to change this to suit modern degraded standards. Lower the bar and lo and behold - it gets lowered some more. And some more. And some more - until you’re digging a deep hole in the ground, which is where we are today.
And I support limiting the government's powers to tell people what to do behind closed doors, if they're not harming anyone. I simply don't see where the government gets the power to do so.
Every scripture in the world considers sodomy - meaning anal “sex” - and any sex acts between members of the same sex - to be sinful, criminal acts.
But we don't criminalize sins, not generally. Our laws are generally aimed at protecting the person or property of another from being victimized.
And, the legal defintion of sodomy in this country has never been limited to male-male anal sex. The Texas law that was struck down in Bowers, for example, criminalized all oral and anal sex, regardless of the parties involved.
What's your opposition to banning government interference with private, consensual sexual activities between adults?
Anal or oral intercourse between human beings, or any sexual relations between a human being and an animal, the act of which may be punishable as a criminal offense.
The word sodomy acquired different meanings over time. Under the Common Law, sodomy consisted of anal intercourse. Traditionally courts and statutes referred to it as a "crime against nature" or as copulation "against the order of nature." In the United States, the term eventually encompassed oral sex as well as anal sex. The crime of sodomy was classified as a felony.
Because homosexual activity involves anal and oral sex, gay men were the primary target of sodomy laws. Culturally and historically, homosexual activity was seen as unnatural or perverse. The term sodomy refers to the homosexual activities of men in the story of the city of Sodom in the Bible. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their residents' immorality became a central part of Western attitudes toward forms of non-procreative sexual activity and same-sex relations.
Beginning with Illinois in 1961, state legislatures reexamined their sodomy statutes. Twenty-seven states repealed these laws, usually as a part of a general revision of the criminal code and with the recognition that heterosexuals engage in oral and anal sex. In addition, state courts in 10 states applied state constitutional provisions to invalidate sodomy laws. As of early 2003, eight states had laws that barred heterosexual and homosexual sodomy. Three other states barred sodomy between homosexuals.
In Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 106 S. Ct. 2841, 92 L. Ed. 2d 140 (1986), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Georgia sodomy statute. Michael Hardwick was arrested and charged with sodomy for engaging in oral sex with a consenting male adult in his home. A police officer was let into Hardwick's home to serve a warrant and saw the sexual act. Although the state prosecutor declined to prosecute the case, Hardwick brought suit in federal court asking that the statute be declared unconstitutional.
On a 5–4 vote, the Court upheld the law. Writing for the majority, Justice Byron r. white rejected the argument that previous decisions such as the Court's rulings on Abortion and contraception had created a right of privacy that extended to homosexual sodomy. Instead, the Court drew a sharp distinction between the previous cases, which involved "family, marriage, or procreation," and homosexual activity.
The Court also rejected the argument that there is a fundamental right to engage in homosexual activity. Prohibitions against sodomy were in the laws of most states since the nation's founding. To the argument that homosexual activity should be protected when it occurs in the privacy of a home, White stated that "otherwise illegal conduct is not always immunized whenever it occurs in the home." Because the claim in the case involved only homosexual sodomy, the Court expressed no opinion about the constitutionality of the statute as applied to acts of heterosexual sodomy.
The Bowers decision was severely criticized. Justice Lewis Powell, who voted with the majority, later stated that he had made a mistake in voting to affirm the law. In July 2003 the Supreme Court reversed itself on the issue of sodomy. In Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. ___, 123 S. Ct. 2472, 156 L. Ed. 2d 508, in a 6–3 decision, the Court invalidated a Texas anti-homosexual sodomy law by invoking the constitutional rights to privacy.
***There is no need or cause to change this to suit modern degraded standards. Lower the bar and lo and behold - it gets lowered some more. And some more. And some more - until you’re digging a deep hole in the ground, which is where we are today.***
The ancient Israelites had a practical experience of male homosexuality - it was anti survival. The practitioners had no families to protect and were more likely to indulge in their own whims which could run to the self destructive (much as the current batch of bug chasers indulge in) rather than put their lives on the line to protect their own biological families.
The Greeks put their homosexuals into the shock troops because they were less likely to hold onto life and were more risky in their behaviours.
Thus came the Biblical proscriptions. Lesbians are far less anti-survival than male homosexuals, albeit more so than heterosexual women. Deuteronomy was pro-life, at least as far as the culture and technology existed in that time. Lesbians could be tolerated since they would contribute to the survival of the culture; male homosexuals were more risky and often anti survival.