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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Some of it was also just related to cleanliness/avoiding disease (food requirements, avoiding women on their periods (blood born diseases), etc.) and I can see men lying with men as falling into that category because of the realities of anal.

There's also the whole thing about baby making and you can only continue an ethnoreligion through babies and if everyone's coupled up with the same gender, there are no babies.

Babies are a very big deal to Mormons. They have so many of them.

I think there's definitely a case for that to an extent (see, maybe, the mildew or leprosy laws), but I think that those were still integrated to some extent into the system of worship, given that lepers were supposed to present themselves to the priests, and fit into the same system of ritual uncleanness that is used for everyone else, instead of having their own thing. The highlighting of physical filth as something that's unable to be brought into the presence of God would have spiritual implications, I think. See, for an application, Isaiah 6, where, when brought into the presence of God, Isaiah reacts "Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips…" So uncleanness is taking on, at the very least in that context, some sort of moral character, and I think there's probably a good case to be made that there's something of that sort lurking underneath the whole cleanliness system—not to say that unclean things are morally bad in themselves, but maybe that they're used to help develop a visceral reaction against filth in God's presence, in such a way that it might cause them to be more aware of moral filth—maybe, I'm not some expert on this.

But I do think there's a good point that you're making there, that the seemingly ceremonial laws aren't necessarily purely just for ceremonial purposes, but there's often some prudential reason that could be lurking behind there to an extent. But there are, of course, other examples, like against the mixing of fabrics, that it would seem pretty hard to make a case that they would be of that variety.

Given the new testament (assuming you think you can trust it—I think most of the rest of what I was saying could generally be trusted by an atheist, but this bit can't), reiterates this, it would seem that there some moral component against homosexual sex given Romans 1 and similar. It doesn't read like it's merely about cleanliness in the mind of Paul.

I wouldn't trust the baby line of argument too much, just because 1) gay people make up a relatively low proportion of the population, at least currently, and I see no reason why that would greatly differ then and 2) I don't see too much of an emphasis in the time of Moses on fertility; I can't bring to mind any reiteration of "be fruitful and multiply" or similar, so that probably wasn't the greatest of the concerns in the drafting of the laws.

Or at least, I wouldn't trust that argument too much in the case of Ancient Israel. It's possible that it could apply to modern Mormonism, I suppose, although it seems unlikely to me, who am ignorant of their culture, that that would be the largest factor.