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The below is excerpted from the tail end of Prager’s commentary that I linked to in post # 49 here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2796454/posts?page=49#49

Dennis Prager is a writer, ___theologian___, and daily talk show host on KABC Radio in Los Angeles. He also writes a newsletter, “The Prager Perspective.”
http://www.dennisprager.com/

From post 49:

[snip]

PRAGER: “.......As early as the second century B.C., Jewish writers were noting the vast differences between Jewish sexual and family life and that of their non-Jewish neighbors. In the Syballine Oracles, written by an Egyptian Jew probably between 163 and 45 B.C., the author compared Jews to the other nations: The Jews “are mindful of holy wedlock, and they do not engage in impious intercourse with male children, as do Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Romans, specious Greece and many nations of others, Persians and Galatians and all Asia.” And in our times. sex historian Amo Karlen wrote that according to the sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, “Homosexuality was phenomenally rare among Orthodox Jews.” ........

[snip]

“.....Therefore, the evidence overwhelmingly leads to this conclusion: By and large, it is society, not the individual, that chooses whether homosexuality will be widely practiced. A society’s values, much more than individual tendencies, determine the extent of homosexuality in that society. Thus, we can have great sympathy for the exclusively homosexual individual while strongly opposing social acceptance of homosexuality. In this way we retain both our hearts and our values.

Is Homosexuality an Illness?

Society, in short, can consider homosexuality right or wrong whether or not it is chosen. Society can also consider homosexuality normal or ill whether or not it is chosen.

Though the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, did not think that in and of itself homosexuality meant that a person was sick, according to his standards of psychosexual development, he considered homosexuality to be an arrested development. But until 1973, psychiatry did consider homosexuality an illness. To cite one of countless examples, Dr. Leo Rangell, a psychoanalyst, wrote that he had “never seen a male homosexual who did not also turn out to have a phobia of the vagina.”

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality from its official listing of mental illnesses in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders. Gay activists have used this as a major weapon in their battle for societal acceptance of homosexuality. But, for many reasons, the APA decision has not resolved the question of whether homosexuality is an illness, and the question may well be unresolvable. Given the mixed moral and judgmental record of psychiatry, especially since the 1960s, all one may conclude from the APA’s decision to remove homosexuality from its list of illnesses is that while it may have been right, organized psychiatry has given us little reason to trust its judgment on politically charged issues. For these reasons, the fact that the American Psychiatric Association no longer labels homosexuality an illness should not persuade anyone that it is not. Given the subjective nature of the term “mental illness,” given the power of gay activists, and given the political views of the APA leadership (as opposed to most of its members), the association’s vote means nothing to many observers.

If social pressures forced psychiatrists in the past to label homosexuality an illness, how can we be certain that social pressures in our time have not forced them to label it normal? Are present-day psychiatrists less influenced by societal pressures than were their predecessors? I doubt it. So, putting aside psychiatry’s ambivalence about homosexuality, let us pose the question in this way: “Assuming there is such a thing as normal, is it normal for a man to be incapable of making love to a woman (or vice versa)?”

Presumably, there are only three possible answers:

Most homosexuals can make love to a woman, but they find such an act repulsive or simply prefer making love to men.

Yes, it is normal.

No, it is not normal.

If the first response is offered, then we have to acknowledge that the homosexual has chosen his homosexuality. And we may then ask whether someone who chooses to love the same sex rather than the opposite sex has made this decision from a psychologically healthy basis.

If the second response is offered, each of us is free to assess this answer for him or herself. I, for one, do not believe that a man’s inability to make love to a woman can be labeled normal.

While such a man may be a healthy and fine human being in every other area of life, and quite possibly more kind, industrious, and ethical than many heterosexuals, in this one area he cannot be called normal.

And the reason for considering homosexuality abnormal is not its minority status. Even if the majority of men became incapable of making love to women, it would still not be normal.

Men are designed to make love to women, and vice versa. The eye provides an appropriate analogy: If the majority of the population became blind, blindness would still be abnormal. The eye was designed to see.

That is why I choose the third response that homosexuality is unhealthy. This is said, however, with the understanding that in the psychological arena, “illness” can be a description of one’s values rather than of objective science (which may simply not exist in this area).

Man and Women He Made Them

To a world which divided human sexuality between penetrator and penetrated, Judaism said, “You are wrong sexuality is to be divided between male and female.” To a world which saw women as baby producers unworthy of romantic and sexual attention, Judaism said “You are wrong women must be the sole focus of men’s erotic love.”

To a world which said that sensual feelings and physical beauty were life’s supreme goods, Judaism said, “You are wrong ethics and holiness are the supreme goods.” A thousand years before Roman emperors kept naked boys, Jewish kings were commanded to write and keep a sefer torah, a book of the Torah.

In all my research on this subject, nothing moved me more than the Talmudic law that Jews were forbidden to sell slaves or sheep to non-Jews, lest the non-Jews engage in homosexuality and bestiality. That was the world in which rabbis wrote the Talmud, and in which, earlier, the Bible was written.

Asked what is the single greatest revelation I have derived from all my researches, I always respond, “That there had to have been divine revelation to produce the Torah.” The Torah was simply too different from the rest of the world, too against man’s nature, to have been solely man-made.

The creation of Western civilization has been a terribly difficult and unique thing. It took a constant delaying of gratification, and a re-channeling of natural instincts; and these disciplines have not always been well received. There have been numerous attempts to undo Judeo-Christian civilization, not infrequently by Jews (through radical politics) and Christians (through anti-Semitism).

The bedrock of this civilization, and of Jewish life, has been the centrality and purity of family life. But the family is not a natural unit so much as it is a value that must be cultivated and protected.

The Greeks assaulted the family in the name of beauty and Eros. The Marxists assaulted the family in the name of progress.

And today, gay liberation assaults it in the name of compassion and equality. I understand why gays would do this. Life has been miserable for many of them.

What I have not understood was why Jews or Christians would join the assault. I do now. They do not know what is at stake. At stake is our civilization.

It is very easy to forget what Judaism has wrought and what Christians have created in the West. But those who loathe this civilization never forget.

The radical Stanford University faculty and students who recently chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civ has got to go,” were referring to much more than their university’s syllabus. And no one is chanting that song more forcefully than those who believe and advocate that sexual behavior doesn’t play a role in building or eroding civilization.

The acceptance of homosexuality as the equal of heterosexual marital love signifies the decline of Western civilization as surely as the rejection of homosexuality and other nonmarital sex made the creation of this civilization possible.