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<DIV><FONT lang=0 color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><FONT color=#000000>Message: 2<BR>Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:02:31
-0600<BR>From: "Jay F Shachter" <</FONT><A title=mailto:jay@m5.chicago.il.us
href="mailto:jay@m5.chicago.il.us">jay@m5.chicago.il.us</A><FONT
color=#000000>></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial>[1] Some knowledge is built into the human condition. It
is<BR>a consequence of being human that you know -- you just know --
that<BR>murder is wrong. ....Judaism teaches that the<BR>prohibition
of pederasty falls within the Seven Noahide Commandments.<BR>In other words, it
is an act forbidden not only to Jews, but also to<BR>all human beings, which
means that there is something intrinsic to our<BR>nature that knows that it is
forbidden. ....</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial>[2] .... There are acts which a Jew must die rather
than<BR>perform, which are nevertheless perfectly permitted to a descendant
of<BR>Noah. My favorite example (because of its shock value) is
sexual<BR>intercourse with your daughter. .....We do not possess any innate
knowledge<BR>that sexual intercourse with our daughters is
forbidden. ....</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial>[3] ..... The fact is that I don't even know<BR>for sure that my
heterosexual impulses are genetically determined, but<BR>I assume that they are,
because of the evolutionary advantage that<BR>they confer ....So let us<BR>now
assume the existence of people with genes inside of them which<BR>make them grow
up into homosexuals. The Torah essentially says that<BR>these people may
not have sexual pleasure, ever, their entire lives....<BR><BR>[4]
... Nearly every<BR>married person reading this article is, I am certain,
forbidden to<BR>have sexual intercourse at this moment (else why are you sitting
in<BR>front of your computer monitor reading
this?),.... </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2
face=Arial>[5] .... Jewish men are<BR>not even allowed to masturbate.
Just keep this in mind, the next time<BR>you are trying to summon sympathy
for a male Jewish homosexual, even<BR>one, perhaps, who is not entirely sinless.
It's like being told by<BR>the Torah that you may not have sexual
intercourse, nor even<BR>masturbate, ever, for the rest of your
life.<BR><BR><BR> Jay F.
("Yaakov")
Shachter<BR> </FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>>>>>></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>[1] It is not necessarily the case that all the seven mitzvos are things
people instinctively know. Eiver min hachai? Even murder -- people
may instinctively know that it's wrong in general, but they find it easy to
rationalize exceptions in which it's fine: if a person is suffering, or
old, or handicapped, or useless; if the person is a Jew and therefore not
"really" a person; if the person is an infidel. Etc. But in the case
of sexual sins I think that you are right and that people do instinctively feel
a revulsion towards certain acts, a revulsion that has to be "educated" out of
them before they will commit these acts. Every society has some kind of
incest taboo, for example. And probably homosexual acts are in this
category of something that people in every society instinctively feel is wrong
-- if not morally wrong, then at any rate unnatural. When Avodah Zarah was
rampant it actively worked to overcome people's natural revulsion at certain
things -- public defecation for example, a specialty of the Ba'al Pe'or.
Greek society actively worked to overcome people's natural revulsion at
homosexuality, for reasons that are as obscure to me as the attraction of the
Ba'al Pe'or.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>[2] It is not true that people feel no instinctive revulsion at
father-daughter incest. On the contrary, what Lot did with his daughters
is considered something shameful and disgusting, and the daughter who named her
child "Moav -- from Father" -- is condemned as particularly brazen. I
believe that the reason this isn't included in the 7 mitzvos has to do with the
technical difficulty of determining for sure who is one's father
or who is one's daughter. People would never be able to marry at
all, or not without taking extraordinary precautions, for fear that they might
inadvertently be marrying their own daughter or father. Jews, who live at
a high level of morality, have a public marriage with eidim and kidushin, and
also live lives that are constricted in certain ways (e.g., hilchos yichud),
such that there is a chezkas kashrus in the case of Jews, an assumption that a
girl can rely on the fact that her social father really is her father, and
a man can assume that he knows all his children, and knows that he hasn't
dropped seed randomly somewhere outside of his marriage that might have
grown up to be his unknown daughter.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>[3] "Evolutionary advantage"? Perhaps you should rather have
said, "survival advantage." Evolution is an unproven hypothesis and even
if it did occur, it was Divinely guided. We have to say that the natural
attraction between men and women is something that was implanted in us by our
Creator so that the human race would continue. (He also created people who
are not destined to marry or have children, for various reasons known to
Him. File under, "why is there suffering in the world?") But if you
/are/ going to talk about evolutionary advantage, you do have to answer
this question: what possible evolutionary or survival advantage could
there be in certain people being genetically homosexual? One would
think that such a trait would long since have died out. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>[4] You are making the very assumption (the false assumption) that
underlies so much of the evil in the Sexual Revolution including the Gay
Movement. That is the assumption that people would rather engage in sexual
activity than in any other activity, indeed, that an asexual life is almost
unbearable. Possibly you are still a young man. It is a proven fact
that some people enjoy the internet so much that they will continue to sit at
their computers even when other enjoyable activities are available. It is
simply untrue that a celibate life is necessarily a life devoid of
pleasure.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>[5] Just because something is forbidden doesn't mean that a person
won't sometimes succumb to his yetzer hara, especially if by doing so, he avoids
committing an even greater sin. Some sins are worse than other sins
vehameivin yavin. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><BR><STRONG>--Toby Katz<BR>=============</STRONG><BR>Romney -- good
values, good family, good
hair<BR><BR><BR>-------------------------------------------------------------------
</FONT></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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