Okay, you know far more than me beyond the actual main text, so I suppose the next question is, is it reasonable that Jews hate homosexuals on the basis of the old testament?
I don't think it is reasonable for anyone to hate homosexuals.
Not even if it's clearly laid out in their scripture? A lot of people think that a lot of what Christianity lays out is unreasonable for anyone, but many Christians will point to the bible and use it to defend themselves.
I realize you weren't addressing me, but for what it's worth, I can understand why someone following the Old Testament would hate homosexuals. It is sensible for a person to consider something an abomination if the God that person worships has specifically named that thing an abomination.
That being said, I personally cannot respect anyone who hates just because a book tells them to. This isn't a debate point; I just feel the need to say it because I felt dirty after typing the first paragraph.
But here's some other food for thought: if the rule in Leviticus is 'kill the gays', then is outlawing gay marriage
really 'sticking to one's principles'? I mean, if this pastor was running around with a machine gun killing all the homosexual people he sees, I could kind of understand the 'at least he's living by his beliefs' angle of defense. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd think he was a lunatic and call for his imprisonment, but I would at least understand the argument you're making, because then he would at least be doing as the Bible tells him to. Sticking them in an electric fence and feeding them until they die of old age actually seems kind of opposite to the intent of Leviticus 20:13.
Same goes with gay marriage. How can you ban gay marriage based on the Bible when what the Bible actually says is that they must be put to death? To fully enforce the Old Testament, we would have to make it law that homosexuality is a crime to be punished by the death penalty. Anything less than that is not enforcing the Old Testament at all. And it's certainly not fair to the gays. So if it's not fair on a humanitarian level and it's not an enforcement of the Bible, what exactly is it? If it's a compromise, it's a compromise in no one's best interest.