The idea that Christianity teaches the homosexuality should be illegal simply because God commanded thus in the Bible needs to be clarified, I see from the postings of Eugene Volokh and Lawrence Solum. They assume that sodomy laws are religiously based, but I don't think that's the case.

First, it is conventional to divide Old Testament law into three parts: 1. Ceremonial law (e.g. sacrifices, unclean foods), 2. Judicial law (the law particular to ancient Israel (e.g. cities of refuge, Jubilee debt forgiveness), and 3. Moral law (law that applies universally). What goes where is controversial and important, because it also conventional that the ceremonial law became obsolete after the Crucifixion and the judicial law became obsolete after Israel was destroyed by the Romans.

Thus, a conservative Christian who's theologically aware won't point to a Leviticus prohibition on homosexuality and say that the death penalty is appropriate nowadays. The Leviticus prohibition makes it clear that God thus commanded for ancient Israel, and is some evidence that such a policy is acceptable to God generally, but other evidence must be brought in to explain why it is not part of the obsolete judicial law (especially the specific penalty). "Natural law" is the link to that other evidence-- natural law is morality which can be known from nature as opposed to morality which is known by divine revelation.

Many Christians nowadays are timid, and won't argue for natural law. They retreat to the simpler argument of "X is bad because the Bible says so." If they do, they are fair game for criticisms such as Volokh's and Solum's based on the idea that if one doe not believe the Bible, the argument collapses into something like personal preference-- or worse, that the Christian is wrong and even using his own preferences, he wouldn't make action X illegal except for a mistaken belief in the Bible. And of course the argument from divine law is often insufficient because it does not include a lemma saying why banning X is part of the Moral Law rather than the Ceremonial or Judicial.

Ah-- but I shouldn't use this as an excuse to not prepare for my game theory class. Sorry, anybody who is reading this. I won't finish, at least not now.

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