@bold. Not at all.

"I believe that if a minister does not want to marry two people of the same sex it should really be left up to him and should NOT be seen as a violation of human rights, but a respect for the religious rights of the minister."

Why even mention this if it is not an issue?

Again, "Christians" lose nothing, they don't have to perform same-sex marriages. The only thing that changes is that the government recognizes these unions as legitimate and it forces insurance companies and various other corporate entities to provide the same benefits. That's it, equality for an often marginalized group of people. Again, I'm sure this would be Christ's intent. I'm sure he wouldn't be concerned with "traditional" marriage (again, that's been dead for a long time anyway) but instead the well being and happiness of others.

I work at two jobs, Chick-Fil-A being one of them. One of my coworkers from the other job (Chili's) just told me that some of her friends are going to be starting a protest in two days at our Chick-Fil-A (located in Charlotte). Unfortunately I wont be there to see it (I told one of my shift-manager friends to be sure to take pictures! And to offer them lemonade since it'll be hot out there...). I'm sure our other managaers wont be pleased, but hey... it'll be interesting to see how their protest goes. Hopefully everything turns out for the best.

As for the Jim Henson issue, I found it funny since CFA never uses big name pop culture icons in their toy lines. Our toys are actually pretty terrible on a constant basis *laughs*. There's a reason why most of the kids trade them in for an ice cream cone.

But yeah, the fallout is quite interesting to say the least. Honestly, I wish Dan Cathy never said a word on the matter, and instead let the awesome food and great service do the talking. Oh well.

A few things, considering how rape is often looked at in the bible, I find it's standards for sexual morality a bit lacking.  Unless the new testament also changed much of that.

If strangled animals and blood were still a problem why didn't' Christ sat it at the time?

Does the new testament say anywhere not to eat people? Obviously it would be wrong to murder them first. The old dietary laws had it covered by having what meat you can eat cover. But what happens when those laws are all tossed and Christ even is saying to "eat" and "drink" him?

I would ask what marriage laws changed from the old to the new testament, but I doubt they all did. Same with the laws on divorce and abortion, but all of that would just be to make the point that "Christians" today who are so vocal on some of those issues aren't actually pushing for what was actually written. They can denounce homosexuality while not pushing for other law from the bible they would rather not. It's about demonizing another community instead of bringing up their own.

That's why to me those "Christians" are making an immoral lifestyle choice by following "Christianity" While I believe there are free to do that.  I won't just sit idle by when they try to claim some moral high ground as they immorally persecute those who don't follow them. I won't just let them make their beliefs the laws of the land and I will not feel bad because some says those who are persecuting and being hateful are suffering the consequences of their actions.

Rape is never condoned in the bible in any way... And there's a passage in the bible where a man ejaculates beside a woman after having sex with her, and just that displeased God. (I don't have the passage on hand)

God is pretty strict about sexual immorality. Here are the old testament laws on sexual immorality and what God considers a perversion:

http://gnosticteachings.org/scriptures/jewish/23-sexual-laws-of-moses.html

The one we know doesn't apply anymore is the one about being ceremonially unclean, as none of the ceremonial rules apply anymore in the NT.

And this is besides what God commanded that Man leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, in both Genesis and from the mouth of Christ. Rape outside of marriage is clearly out of the picture. Rape within marriage? Use your common sense.

Jesus addressed issues as they came to him, and this never was an issue until the early church.

To eat Christ is a divine act. Men are not to eat men, but Jesus is God. To eat him so to speak is to consume what is called the bread of life. In other words Jesus wants to be in you and in every fiber of you, and of all who share the bread and the wine. it is also a symbol of his divine sacrifice.

Since Christ is God and man, this is not an act of cannibalism. Especially when Jesus had his disciples eat bread and wine calling them his body and his blood, rather than giving them his actual flesh.

Regarding cannibalism of common men outside of the ceremony initiated by Christ, yes biblically speaking I understand it to be against the will of God. For instance, cannibalism is mentioned as a cause for disobedience, along with famine, pestilence and desolation.

There are no marriage laws really other than not to commit adultery. The others are about sexual relations not so much marriage. As such the institution of marriage never changed in the bible from Moses to the New. The only thing is that Jesus re-confirmed Genesis as superceding Moses on the topic of divorce, but Jesus never called divorce a sin per se, he mostly likened it to adultery, though that's a simplified explanation of what he actually said, which addresses a more specific type of divorce.

Can you give an example?

And it would be your prerogative. And you have the right to think so. Are you right or wrong, am I right or wrong? That's why we're talking. I can assure you that my views have radically changed in the past two years thanks to debates like these.

@bold. How are they persecuting? Can you be more precise? For example, there are many ways for a believer to put his christianity into practice. In this thread I've already mentioned 3 different ways but I'll outline them again and you judge which is persecution:

1) Grassroots Christianity: To believe in the doctrine and live it in your life and around those you love. To teach by example. (The one I suggested)

2) Political Christianity: To believe in the doctrine and cast a political voice according to it, so for instance opposing same-sex marriage agendas and pushing for one-man-one-woman marriage in the land. (The Chick-Fil-A way to go)

3) Hostile Christianity: Telling people of the LGBT community that they are sinners and that they are going to hell (which is the wrong thing to do) and is very incorrect to say and is far from being accurately worded.

@Wonk. Regarding cannibalism. It's not a good thing in the bible.

"Punishment for Disobedience

14“‘But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, 15and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant, 16then I will do this to you: I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and drain away your life. You will plant seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it. 17I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you.

18“‘If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. 19I will break down your stubborn pride and make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze. 20Your strength will be spent in vain, because your soil will not yield its crops, nor will the trees of the land yield their fruit.

21“‘If you remain hostile toward me and refuse to listen to me, I will multiply your afflictions seven times over, as your sins deserve. 22I will send wild animals against you, and they will rob you of your children, destroy your cattle and make you so few in number that your roads will be deserted.

23“‘If in spite of these things you do not accept my correction but continue to be hostile toward me, 24I myself will be hostile toward you and will afflict you for your sins seven times over. 25And I will bring the sword upon you to avenge the breaking of the covenant. When you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be given into enemy hands. 26When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will be able to bake your bread in one oven, and they will dole out the bread by weight. You will eat, but you will not be satisfied.

27“‘If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, 28then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. 29You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. 30I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you. 31I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings. 32I will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled. 33I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. 34Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. 35All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.

36“‘As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. They will run as though fleeing from the sword, and they will fall, even though no one is pursuing them. 37They will stumble over one another as though fleeing from the sword, even though no one is pursuing them. So you will not be able to stand before your enemies. 38You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you. 39Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their fathers’ sins they will waste away.

40“‘But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers—their treachery against me and their hostility toward me, 41which made me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies—then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, 42I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. 43For the land will be deserted by them and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them. They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees.44Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the Lord their God. 45But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the Lord.’”

46These are the decrees, the laws and the regulations that the Lord established on Mount Sinai between himself and the Israelites through Moses."

@Wonk. Rape is also not considered a good thing in the bible by deduction. The commandments on marriage are as follows

25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing^b her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body.

I don't see how rape fits in that picture at all.

The point of the story of Onan was that Onan was messing with family structures. He had to have sex with the wife he inherited from his brother, but if he pulled out at the last moment every time so that he would not conceive a child with her, because he had inherited the wife from his older brother (levirate marriage) and any children that she bore by him would count as his older brother's heirs, and would thus be assigned a larger portion of the inheritence than if the wife died childless. So the message of the story wasn't about "not wasting your seed" or any such thing, but about respect for the dead, and not denying your brother the heir he was supposed to get (fun fact: the wife eventually poses as a prostitute, seduces the father, and gets the heir that way, so a certain degree of sexual immorality was encouraged in that story).

Similarly, I did research into the matter of the Levitical prohibitions against homosexuality in my bible law class in college, and found out that they also had to deal with family matters and trying to keep the Jews culturally distinct from other groups than any particular morals. It also prohibits "giving your seed to Molech," and Yahweh alone knows what that's supposed to mean :P

Wow, thanks for explaining the Onan story. Since Genesis only says that "he knew that the offspring would not be his" I never realized it meant the portion of Judah's inheritance would not be his but increase in favor of his brother (who's dead though... and the money goes straight to his Onan's kids, unless Er had prior offspring, but that wouldn't change anything EDIT: I'm confused about it again. :3). I knew that Tamar dressed as a prostitute and married her father-in-law (Judah), that much I knew.

It definitely shows that God is against greed since the guy gets pretty much "put to death" by God. :)

Remember though, this was all before the law of Moses, since Judah is a son of Jacob, much earlier than Moses.

I'm not sure where Judah got "Lie with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother.", but I can only guess it was a custom they brought back from Ur, or it was a canaanite custom. Who knows :D

But in the end, it doesn't paint a pretty picture that not only did he not "fulfill his duty" to his brother, but he also basically failed to honor God's commandment to be fruitful and multiply as given in Genesis.

Imho there is also a matter of sexual immorality in this matter, whether it be to control the flow of Semen or to have sex without the objective bearing offspring. Whether he did it for greed or not, ultimately God was upset at what he did, and that was have sex and exit before it leaked into her womb. It's my understanding of it.

But this is a supporting argument. The stronger argument against rape was the mention of the structure of marriage as outlined by God in Genesis, and then Ephesians 5. ;)

Deuteronomy 22:28-29

    If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father.  Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.

That is a law of marriage and rape. How moral is it to force a rape victim to marry her rapist? Is there a point where this is invalidated latter?

Deuteronomy 22:23-24

  If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife.

Pretty harsh to the rape victim here. Seems the only difference though for the rapist is who they rape. Rape a single vigin and you owe 50 silver pieces and get a wife. Rape a married woman and be put to death.

Deuteronomy 21:10-14

"When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD, your God, delivers them into your hand, so that you take captives, if you see a comely woman among the captives and become so enamored of her that you wish to have her as wife, you may take her home to your house.  But before she may live there, she must shave her head and pare her nails and lay aside her captive's garb.  After she has mourned her father and mother for a full month, you may have relations with her, and you shall be her husband and she shall be your wife.  However, if later on you lose your liking for her, you shall give her her freedom, if she wishes it; but you shall not sell her or enslave her, since she was married to you under compulsion."

Deuteronomy 21:10-14

When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.  If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.  But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her.  And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter.  If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife.  If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.