Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wuarchive!psuvax1!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: jclark@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (John Clark) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: I AM DISGUSTED! Message-ID: Date: 22 May 91 04:19:43 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of California, San Diego Lines: 49 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article math1h3@jetson.uh.edu writes: +law. Certainly God's law against murder and theft must be enforced by the +government. The question before us, however, has to do with things like +abortion, divorce, adultery, and homosexuality. First of all, we ought not Do you think that the 'only' governments which proscribe these acts are 'Christian'? I point you to most of the 'godless' communist contries. Except for the abortion issue in the USSR, prostitution is illegal, divorce is not 'free and easy' and adultery are just as condemned, and homosexuality is illegal. It has been my thought that the tactics of communism and goals, if I can use that word to mean what the USSR has been promoting for 70 years, is exactly what many fundamentalist Christians, except for the 'godlessness', have been advocating. Rather than lead the unbelievers to their God via their own life examples, there seems to me to be a desire to prohibit 'sinful' practices inspite of any 'rational' reason beyond Biblical injunctives. If you say that the Biblical 'laws' are 'natural' and various other activities are 'un-natural' we will have a disagreement. What is deemed 'natural' is very closely tied to what one considers proper. The belief that the Bible to deliniate what is proper implies what is 'natural'. There are a number of counter examples of major governments which had a long existence and allowed the citizens various activities which you as Christians proscribe. +think that by enforcing laws against such sins we are making people into +better people. Those opposed to such laws are usually quick to point this +out. But I do not think that this is sufficient reason to abandon laws +regarding sexual morality. Even though the law does not make people any What abandonment? Prostitution has only been generally prohibited in the U.S. for some 70-80 years. If it were not for women activists wanting to change the condition of women, which many 'God Fearing' men were wont to ignore, this 'immoral' activity would continued with government's 'approval'. Of course one can argue whether the laws prohibiting prostitution have actually done the job they were intended to do. A prostitutes life is at the present even lower on the social totem pole than before since in addtion to the low social status the person is a criminal. It would seem that the moral law that was enacted to remove the prostitute did not do that but excaberated the situation by turning the person in to a criminal. This is my point on the so called moral laws made state law. -- John Clark jclark@ucsd.edu