Parshat Acharei, (Leviticus 18:22-18:30), 4/12/14

22. You shall not lie down with a male, as with a woman: this is an abomination.  

23. And with no animal shall you cohabit, to become defiled by it. And a woman shall not stand in front of an animal to cohabit with it; this is depravity. 

24. You shall not defile yourselves by any of these things, for the nations, whom I am sending away from before you, have defiled themselves with all these things. 

30. And you shall observe My charge, not to commit any of the abominable practices that were done before you, and you shall not become defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.

So we hear that Judaism and homosexuality (or beastiality) do not mix.

I asked my dad once about morality. He said there was no morality—only the law. At first this sounded all wrong, but I’ve grown to accept it.

How confusing this Torah portion would be to a youngster who found him/her self attracted to the same sex or the family dog. 

We can say that the Lord said these things because he wanted the Jews to multiply, and none of these acts lead to that. Or we can say that the Lord made these rules because others did not follow them.

In the same way that there is a proper place to do an offering, so there is a proper mate to “lay down” with. In the “Lord’s” mind, that person is a wife or husband (one’s own, of course).

Today we have new criteria for what constitutes a proper mate. And that, for me, doesn’t go against the Lord’s intent of intentional loving connections. That is, until it conflicts with the “do onto others as you would have them do onto you.”

 A friend (who follows the Bible pretty literally) wrote that homosexuality was a sin. I found this reading of the passage (from http://dignitycanada.org/sin.html) interesting:

Leviticus, in the Hebrew Scriptures, condemns homosexual behaviour, at least for males. Yet, "abomination", the word Leviticus uses to describe homosexuality, is the same word used to describe a menstruating woman.