CRIME

Except for murder and theft, I'm amazed at the absence of what we would call crime in the Bible. In the United States we are virtually immersed in a culture of crime. This is so because we are a nation of laws, which by their very existence create crime. Every time you pass a law you create a crime. In some places it was once a crime to spit on the sidewalk.

For the sake of simplicity, I sometimes think we should just stick with the ten commandments and forget about the other laws.

The designation of any act as a crime should be based upon a victim of some kind. Prostitution, for example, is a crime (in the U.S.), but there is no victim. It should, therefore, not be a crime. The same is true of gambling and using drugs.

For the most part, people should be left alone to do whatever they wish, no matter how harmful it may be to themselves. There should be only one stipulation: you absolutely cannot touch anyone else with your behavior. (This is why it's illegal, in most situations, to smoke indoors. In an enclosed space how can you keep your smoke from touching someone else?)

If, for example, a man were to go to a prostitute and contract a disease and then pass it on to someone else, he should be punished for that. It should be regarded as a form of sexual battery (or negligence if he did not know he had contracted the malady). The entire business of prostitution should not be banned from lawful practice just because something like this might happen. Action should only be taken if someone is victimized.

The same kind of argument could be posed in defense of drug use. If someone wants to use them they should be allowed. If they do something under the influence of the drug, they should be punished for whatever victimizing they commit, without consideration for the influence of the drug. Simply charge them with whatever crime they committed and punish them accordingly. The fact that a drug may or may not have influenced them should be viewed as totally irrelevant.

I'm fully aware that there are other laws in the Bible than the ten commandments, laws forbidding sexual contact with animals and same-sex coitus (between men), laws about what to do if a pregnant woman loses her unborn child because a couple of dudes happen to have a scuffle in her presence and accidentally injure her.

Bestiality is undoubtedly the source of sexually transmitted diseases, so the ban against such behavior is obviously justified. Because idiots in the past engaged in such incomprehensible strangeness we have to be extra careful about immersing ourselves in indiscriminate sex today, which is something that a lot of people (if they were truly honest about it) would dearly love to do. It's called love with the proper stranger.

When you consider the ramifications of it, for so many people all over the planet, for nearly the entire history of humankind, bestiality, because of the venereal diseases ultimately traceable to it, is probably the worst crime ever committed against the human race.

I don't quite understand the prohibition against same-gender sex. But I do get the impression that it applies only to sex between men.

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

( Leviticus 18:22 )

Lesbianism is very briefly alluded to in Romans, chapter one, but Paul's reference to it is nothing like Yahweh's severe response to male homosexuality. The reason that male-to-male sex is forbidden is most likely connected with the fact that it is primarily anal, which poses another - obvious - risk for spreading disease. Pardon me if I'm insulting your intelligence by mentioning it, but fecal matter is something that's supposed to be expelled from the body. God (or Nature if you prefer) did not intend for it to ever re-enter, which is what it could easily do (through the penile orifice) if an unprotected penis were inserted into a rectum. Yeah, I agree. It's an abomination.

But please note! I am not speaking against homosexuality from any kind of moral stance. It has nothing to do with morality, or any ideas about right and wrong. Its practice has the very real potential for causing and spreading disease. That is the reason it's punishable by death (in the Bible).