To take the long view, rather than just focusing on contemporary Christian Fundamentalists, a lot of religions actually encourage the exploration of homosexuality.

The funny thing is that the biblical prohibition of male sexuality (there is no prohibition of female homosexuality) is specifically intended to prohibit popular rituals in the ancient Mediterranean where male homosexuality was involved in the worship of Pagan Gods. Thus, as long as two men sleeping together aren't simultaneously worshiping Ba'al or Bacchus, then they are still keeping to the spirit of the Biblical prohibitions.

My interpretation of these rules (and I stress it is my personal analysis) is that Christianity was s...

To take the long view, rather than just focusing on contemporary Christian Fundamentalists, a lot of religions actually encourage the exploration of homosexuality.

The funny thing is that the biblical prohibition of male sexuality (there is no prohibition of female homosexuality) is specifically intended to prohibit popular rituals in the ancient Mediterranean where male homosexuality was involved in the worship of Pagan Gods. Thus, as long as two men sleeping together aren't simultaneously worshiping Ba'al or Bacchus, then they are still keeping to the spirit of the Biblical prohibitions.

My interpretation of these rules (and I stress it is my personal analysis) is that Christianity was so clear about this because it wants to reserve sex as an act of worship exclusively for the Christian god. After all, in the bible god commands creatures to "go forth and prosper" and thus sexual union is sacralized.

So as I see it, Christianity is not devoid of sex-worship, it simply is exclusive. The threat is that sexual union might be dedicated to another god, but that does not mean that Christianity is anti-sexuality (although many Christians and Atheists would disagree with me.)

On the other hand there are lots of Christian fundamentalists out there working overtime finding loopholes in the scriptural rules through exceeding literalism. (Think Clinton) These people can be very amusing as well, but they are also evidence of the fact that suppression of sexuality (and the full natural diversity of sexuality) is an exercise in futility.