[tips] Re: Deities "R" Us - tangental

[Drnanjo]

In a message dated 7/17/2006 10:48:28 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So you wind up reading the Song of Solomon as an allegory. Puh-leez. It's a love story.  It's EROTIC! So what does that tell us about how sex is depicted in the bible? From how I read that book, inside of marriage, go NUTS Why not outside marriage too, or at least before it, or if you are two people of the same sex, etc.? Why is sex confined only to marriage? Clearly, by the way, this has been one of the most unsuccessful aspects of the enforcement of such taboos. These appear to be interpersonal matters that society has an interest in enforcing for reasons of maintaining control and order. Yet premarital and extramarital sex remain fairly common, for all the restrictions and threatened punishments - here and in the after-life.   3) Related to #2, the subjugation of women, the suppression of their  > sexuality and general blame of women for all manner of evil, doctrine that > they  are > inferior etc seems to be a part of most major religions also. I'd rather not debate this, but it seems to me that to some extent the suppression of women with respect to roles (as an example) is not specific to religious institutions.  We even see this to some extent in the animal kingdom, so what can we say about its origins?   So religion - at least some religions - remain tools of oppression, rather than fixers of it. Whatever the origins of the restrictions on women, many of us will not tolerate them. If religion tows that line, we (or I) reject it too.   Nancy Melucci LBVV --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english