Overall I'm in favour of CBVs, but I do recognise there are problems with them. Overriding dispatch has always felt ugly, super() calls are boring and spaghetti code can easily ensue. I spent so long reading the source code for CBVs that I built a website to make it easier to read. I agree that there are some times where the generic class based implementation is clunky and difficult to work with, especially for complex views. There is unquestionably a steeper learning curve.
That said, I still thing they're better. A large proportion of the views I write share functionality, and this is simple to implement (with due thought) in a CBV architecture. I would like to address one or two of your points with my own experience:
Regarding maintenance, I was recently working on an old and large project started back in 1.0 days. There were many different simple implementations of a standard form handling view pattern, some with clear issues in them. If all of these delegated their flow control to a de-facto standard the code would have been much easier to deal with. There's one way to do it.
Personally, I love the 405 handling. POST and GET shouldn't respond the same. This simply makes my Django site a better HTTP citizen.
Above all, testing. I can now easily and quickly test individual bits of a view. That is, I can unit test them. For sites where there is now much complex underlying architecture (basically just a bunch of models) and most logic lives in the views, this is a godsend.
I strongly strongly disagree, and think that CBV's are the best thing that ever happened to Django. They admittedly have a steeper learning curve, and may require a read-through of some source code to get the hang of it, but that doesn't necessarily mean its a bad thing. Not a day goes buy that my team and I don't thank the Django god's for the gift of Class-based Views. We are building a big, complex site, and views tend to share a lot of common functionality and CBV's are a perfect fit.
Class based anythings can work well but are fragile. Django admin works like magic if you have plain django models and don't want to do anything fancy. Once you do have something less than vanilla, admin becomes near useless. The admin code is highly dependent on everything having the right base class and metaclass. You can't just go adding fields onto classes after they are instantiated. I ended up using a plain form linked from an admin list that dynamically creates the form class like so:
Speaking of magic, anyone know how to trick the Django ORM into allowing queries on denomralized models? I have an Article model with 20+ fields and an DenormArticle model with 6. I would like to use the denorm version to do joins with all the same tables that Article does but without a join on Article. Currently I just use raw SQL and some carefully crafted lies.
You have some good points here, let's just not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
In the complex example of a custom form with various logic, it would perhaps be better off with a simple function, or rather inherit from View / TemplateView to have the benefit of self.request, optional method splitting while implementing the main flow manually. This would be the best of both worlds. I don't think the generic CBV's offer much help here, because the flow isn't that generic at all.
One of the things I love about the CBV's, is their declarative style. It's readable, much better then the long list of parameters, and less error-prone. Even in the second example (which is indeed the turning point for just inheriting from View / TemplateView or using FBV's), it's still stating what happens when. In the first example, you need to parse (imo crammed together) code to figure out what the subtle differences are.
Consider it a programming style, just like functional programming in Python. That's not "one" way either, it's a specific toolset for certain DRY-problems and I actually never use that style because I have to reanalyze it every time I see it.
Once you know the basics of CBV's (or have a good editor to jump to symbols and overwritten methods (hi PyCharm)) basic things can be implemented really fast. Most of my CBV's only implement get_context_data() or get_object() or get_success_url(). When you look at large views, they are often just collecting a lot of data for the template. That's all get_context_data() code in a long tangled messy batch that could benefit better splitting.
I also have edit views which lots of initial data, a form + formset and extra save actions. That code is perfectly readable with a FBV. If I would replace with with a CBV, it would probably be a custom base class with a simple 4-step flow (init, post, get, render). So far I don't have any urge to "upgrade" that.
Something different is Ajax form processing; it has become ridiculously easy now with a standard protocol in place. Simply override render_to_response() in a mixin. Something like django.contrib.comments currently requires a re-implementation of the whole view to add Ajax functionality on top of it. Everything happens in one function. That's just sad.
Shoving everything in generic CBV's, especially when it has a custom workflow doesn't make sense to me at all. Better be conscious about what you write, which was the whole point of the article in the first place. :) That could be a good set of functions or classes. Calling CBV's it a mistake is a bit far stretched IMO.
I completely agree with Alex Gaynor here. CBVs make building big applications a lot easier. But they don't help if you just want to do something quickly and in a generic fashion.
We use CBV in our last projects and one of the was a major upgrade to an existing application. We refactored used CBV and the result code was smaller, compact and has more cohesion than the previous one.
CBV shines when you develop backoffice application, with business rules and restrictions. You can develop and add common functionality really, really fast.
In my oppinion CBV lacks from a better documentation, it's quite hard to figure all the methods and attributes you have available and with is the order in which the metods are called.
Sometimes there are not the best solution, but for the kind of application we develop, mainly business web applications CBV had been a great addition.
I think the distinction Alex points out between CBVs and *generic* CBVs is very important. I can definitely see use cases for CBVs (if you want to provide extensibility) but the generic CBVs are almost offensively unpythonic to my nose.
I hardly ever use the generic views, class based or not, because 9 times out of 10 after I've implemented something using them, someone (possibly me) will want an extra feature that is hard to add to the generic implementation.
However, I really like extending the basic View class for form handling in order to separate the logic for POST and GET. I think it produces more readable code.
Honestly, it seems to me the problem isn't Class Based Views, which IMO are a really nice paradigm, but rather the *generic* views, and their class based instantiation. They have ridiculous MROs and inheritance heirarchies, you have to memorize dozens of attributes/methods to use them, and they don't save enough code. However, using simple, customized base classes to implement views under the Class Based Views paradigm is a good pattern.
@Julien: it seems to me that the admin is already written using CBVs — but using classes that were designed for them (ModelAdmin and ChangeList), extracted and distilled from real needs, through a process of about 3 major refactorings. So they don't suffer from many of the disadvantages I've highlighted, like a deep hierarchy of classes — it's pretty flat, and relatively easy to understand. The flow control is fixed, and no-one is expecting to be able to change it, unlike with generic views.
It's also interesting that the large amount of functionality needed to support the admin is integrated by composition of a number of flat classes rather than inheritance. ModelAdmin inherits from BaseModelAdmin only because it needs a metaclass. It then integrates classes like ChangeList (which itself inherits only object) by instantiating it, not inheriting from it. It has hooks like actions which are simple functions, and other functionality like ListFilter via relatively flat classes.
So, I regard the admin as a very successful application of CBVs, but custom-made, specific base classes.
I don't think it would be a good idea to rework using the CBVs in django.views, unless it would actually provide some feature/hook that people need. I imagine it will be better and easier to add that hook directly. That's as far as my thoughts for the admin go at the moment. I'm not ruling out other possibilities though!
I have, more or less, avoided CBVs since they were introduced. For simple cases, where they do save lines, I've used them and I suppose I still would. But for anything that requires any complexity, I avoid CBVs by default. Yeah, a bunch of if statements are dreary, but they're brutally straightforward and, at the end of the day, I want to get the job done. This is the reason that I increasingly use Flask, too.
I would much rather work on your CBV version. Using attributes on self is standard practice in classes, not an ugly hack. You can declare it on the class if it bothers you. Use the __call__ method to set it?
There are cases where CBVs make certain things harder, but they are usually better. I find CBVs extremely helpful for non-form views. The class encapsulates all the helper functions so you can stay organized.
CBVs are better for automated testing. CBVs are easy to test, because each method does something small. Function-based ones are not.
I would also argue that the standard django function-based view is an ugly hack because it breaks the most basic code smell test. It's spaghetti code. And you gave a simple example. Real life examples are a lot worse.
Fantastic post! Thank you for writing it. Your previous post on this topic already was my reference to express the mixed feelings I had about CBVs. Now this post becomes the definite reference.
The one place where I was still entertaining the idea of using CBVs was in the Django the admin, as this is arguably the one application that nearly everyone needs to customize and extend at some stage. So far the main extension pattern that's in place is to have more and more function hooks. These work well for some use cases but it only goes so far, especially for customizing flow control.
So, I was wondering if you had some thoughts on the best approach moving forward with the admin. If CBVs should be avoided at all cost, then are there still patterns in the Python language that we could explore? Or is writing your own views still most likely going to be the better approach?
Excellent post, Luke! I remember reading one of your earlier posts on "dry ravioli" and like that post, this one resonated with my own thoughts on CBVs. I think that you've nailed two of the "grossest" parts -- the loss of "flow control" and the confusion that necessarily arises from multiple inheritance. Anecdotally, we've been doing a big refactor here at work and I was the only one in favor of using function-based views. As the implementation work has progressed the amount of overrides/issues we've had has definitely outweighed any benefits we might have seen from code reuse. The code, in the end, wasn't any shorter and much less easy to reason about to boot.
I think its worth pointing out that one of django's most heavily used components utilizes class-based views -- the admin. The admin views use a class to encapsulate helper methods and to provide many niceties like registering extensions to support dynamic urls, form handling, etc. I wrote a post on CBVs using an "admin" style approach, and it is still the approach I favor today -- maybe you'll find it interesting.
Sorry, Luke. I meant no harm. But commenting on your post was just so complex and I felt that addressing all of the points argued by you in simple phrases wouldn't be very grounded.
There is a reason by blog post limits the size of comments, and it's because I don't think comments are an effective place for essays. For that reason, I've hidden your posts by default.
TOPICS and CONCERNS. So, it's not historical to say that they are all connected and share exactly the same message, because, literary, they do not.
Take Jesus' before Pilate for instance. There are different accounts of this event on the Bible. Let's talk about the one that is accounted for in the synoptic gospels (MAT 27, MAR 15 and LUK 23). In this accout Jesus' encounter with Pilate is very brief and he doesn't say much (MAR 15:5). However John's account (JOHN 18:28-40) is completely different. Here Jesus is shown to share this very rich dialogue with Pilate.
What this has to do with the topic of homosexuality? I'm just using this to show that the gospels are not always in accordance to one another. And they can't be taken as historical. If they can, then you have to choose one over the other.
The reason biblical scholars point out to explain these differences between the gospels is because each author has his own concept of Jesus, or his own "christology", which is the term used in biblical studies.
So I have to beg you the differ when you say that "Jesus very clearly believed the authority of the OT". He does in some gospels, and Jesus even goes on to intensify the Law, as you pointed out in Matthew 5. The Book of Matthew is considered the most "Jewish" gospel as even the gentiles should observe the Torah and keep the Kosher, "for not the smallest letter and not the least stroke of a pen disappear from the Law" (MAT 5:18). Paul, however, felt that you should obbey the Law only if you were a jewish follower of Jesus, and the gentiles were not bound by that (GAL 2:14-18), which is very different from what we read in Luke 6, where observing the Torah is rendered as being not really that important, regardless if you're a jew or a gentile.
I could go on and on and point out many more examples of how Jesus is portrayed differently in the New Testament. There was no consensus regarding Jesus and his message in the earlier chritsian movements (the time most of the cannonical gospels were written). The authors may be even seen as arguing with one another, compare Mark's christology to John's. For Mark, Jesus was the Son of God, or Son of Man, but he was not devine. He was completely human and for John, Jesus is God and preceeded his carnal existence.
So these different views on the gospels about Jesus and his over all message was very confusing on early christianity and it was in the year of 325 that the roman emperor Constantine, who was sick and tired of this lack of consensus and different christologies among these early christians, arranged what came to be known as the First Council of Nicaea, where religious authorities at the time decided what was orthodoxal and what was not, and for the first time, they settled on a consensus.
So, you interpret Jesus' silence on the issue (funny how you said the New Testement cannot accept interpretation and makes an interpretation yourself) as condemnation of previous stablished judaic law, but that is so only to those Torah observant authors. Remember, not all of them are, such as Luke. My take on Jesus' silence is that homosexuality is not that much a concern for him. Think about it, the Son of God himself comes to Earth and preaches to the people. If homosexuality was a tremendous problem to "the moral fabric" of society, wouldn't Jesus have something to say about this? Deuteronomy tells us that if a child is stubborn and rebellious then he is to be stoned to death (DEU 21:18-21). Jesus is silent about this. Should we infer that he was ok with it? I think not.
There are no positive role models for a homosexual relantionship in the Bible because homosexuality, as we discussed, did not exist back then as it exists now. But I pointed out the story of David and Jonathan and Ruth and Naomi. Those were not homosexual couples, but they shared an intimate and romantic homosexual relationship. And to me, that's close to homosexual couples we have today, even though they clearly were not sexual couples. Don't know if you agree with me on that one, but to me, that's at least closer to homosexual couples today than a whole town demanding to gang rape two strangers. Again, I'm not saying David, Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi were homosexuals. I can't stress this enough.
Now we must take extra-genesis sources about the Genesis account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Deuteronomy 29, Isaiah 1, 3, and 13,Jeremiah 49 and 50, Lamentations 4, Amos 4.11, and Zephaniah 2.9. Deuteronomy 32, Jeremiah 23.14 and Lamentations 4 reference the sinfulness of Sodom but do not specify any particular sin. There are some passages that specify the sins: adultery and lying (Jeremiah 23:14), impenitence (Matthew 11:23, careless living (Luke 17:28), fornication(Jude 1:7 KJV), and an overall "filthy" lifestyle (2 Peter 2:7), which word ("aselgeiais") elsewhere is rendered in the KJV as lasciviousness (Mark 7:22; 2 Corinthians 12:21; Ephesians 4:19; 1 Peter 4:3; Jude 1:4, or wantonness: (Romans 13:13; 2 Peter 2:18) and, of course Ezekiel 16.49–50, as you have quoted yourself. In all these references though, it is pretty clear to me that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is used to focus on the power of God and not the sin or sinners.
New Tastament:
First of all, I'd like to state that what I am about to do is analysing the Bible literary and historically. In no way I intend to make a theological analysis.
With that in mind, we must be clear on how the gospels came to be how they are today. First of all, their authors were not aware that someone would later compile their letters and use it in a book. The gospels were not written for you or me or anyone else today. If you read them, it's pretty clear to whom they were written for, and a lot of the times that is even explicit in their titles (Corithians, Galatians, Timothy, etc). And not only they were written BY different people FOR different people, they were also written at a different TIME and different REGIONS. And each one of the books in the New Testament dealt with different
And there's a whole paragraph that I'd like to comment:
"This still doesn't prove that it was homosexuality per se, rather than rape, that was the abomination. However, if we add in (1) the fact that the word for abomination here is the same as that used in Leviticus 18:22, while rape is not described by this word in the OT, (2) the most likely interpretation of Jude 1:7 (namely that the Sodomites were pursuing 'unnatural desire' by their homosexual practice), and (3) the fact that the city became synonymous with the practice, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that homosexual practice is being condemned in the judgement on Sodom and Gomorrah."
(1): The word used for abomination in Ezekiel does not appear in Leviticus exclusively to refer to sexual morality. It is also used to refer to a bunch of other things. You can see more here http://concordances.org/hebrew/8441.htm.
(2): It comes to me as a shock to think that if you have a whole town demanding to gang rape two people you'd consider sexual immorality and unnatural desire just the fact that they're persuing to have homosexual sex. Gang rape is a natural desire? Is it sexually moral? You're implying that if the messengers were women, then it would not be an unnatural desire nor it would be sexually moral.
(3): The use of the word 'sodomite' to refer to those who practice anal sex (this applies to heterosexual and homosexual intercourse) gained this conotation after 1250 (see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sodomy?s=t). When you see "sodomite" in some translations, the original word for it is actually qadhesh, which has no relation to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. See http://topicalbible.org/s/sodomite.htm.
You said the the Genesis account on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is the only account we have of homosexuality. But I don't think it is fair to say that what happened in Lot's house is considered homosexuality, as I have discussed. If you do consider it to be a case of homosexuality, then we can't help but to admit that the Gibeah episode in Judges HAVE to be considered as heterosexuality too. The same thing happened, but with people raping a woman instead.
And I hate to be the one pointing it out to you, but the Bible not always celebrates heterosexual relationship and I quote Paul:
"Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." 1 COR 7:8-9
We have the asnwer to that right in the Bible, Judges 19-20. The similarities to Genesis 18-19 are abundant. A man and his concubine from Ephraim was traveling from Bethlehem and stopped in Gibeah, a Benjaminite city, for the night. There was a man from Ephraim living there and so he took them as their guests.
Just like in Sodom, SOME (not all) men demanded to have sex with the man. Again, just like the story in Genesis, the host offered his virgin daughter instead and the guest's concubine and the townsmen raped the man's concubine and she died.
Now this naturally enraged all of the Israelites and they demanded the tribe of Benjamin to give the men from Gibeah in, so they could face retaliation from their behaviour. However, Benjamin did not give them in and so they fought. All the other tribes, with the exception of Benjamin, went before God and God not only commanded the destruction of the whole tribe of Benjamin, but he also instructed them how to do it.
There are many differences to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but we cannot ignore the parallels to GEN 18-19, as they seem to be very intentional. Some passages even use word to word to account the event.
God did not destroy Benjamin himself, as he's done with Sodom and Gomorrah, and you could say that's because the gang rape taking place was a heterosexual one, which would not be an abomination. But that's only interpretation. You can also take into account that this episode happened long after the time of Abraham and long after Moses. You can also take into account that, unlike in Sodom, not all men from Gibeah did this atrocity, only some. And you can't ignore the fact that unlike Sodom and Gomorrah, the Benjamin tribe was part of Israel and the people chosen from God (they had received God's commendaments and Law, unlike Sodom) . But even so, God wanted them all to be punished because of a "heterosexual act", if you allow me to put this way.
Back to Sodom and Gomorrah. So what the Bible actually says is that prior to this, God already planned to destroy the cities. So it's a matter of personal interpretation when you say that "the most prominent and important feature in the story of their destruction is their sexual behaviour". That's not in the Bible. We didn't know how was their sexual behaviour.
solely on sexual intercourse. Actually, as it is in most heterosexual relationships, affection is the most predominant part of the relationship. The "fags" mentioned on the signs as being hated by God are men and women who love people of their same gender, just like David loved Jonathan and Ruth loved Naomi. So, yes, "God hates fags" is just like "God hates shrimp" in a sense that both of them are wrong claims about God's view.
Now, I am going to address some specific claims from your post.
Sodom and Gomorrah:
Firstly, we must consider that God had already planned to destroy Sodom before the event in Lot's house (GEN 18:17) and that is not clear whether the men God sent to inspect Sodom were humans or angels. The word used here in the original hebrew is "malak" which is the word for "messenger".
So God had already planned the destruction of Sodom, but he needed to be sure. He even promised Abraham that if there were at least 10 rightous people there, he would spare the whole town from being destroyed.
So when the visitor arrive in Sodom and ALL of the men in the town demand to "have sex with them". I know you have this one comming, the word used here is "yada", which simply means "to know". And we all know what "to know" in biblical sense stands for. But not always. As a matter of fact, this word appears more than 900 times in the Hebrew Bible and yet it has sexual connotation on about 1% of the times (http://concordances.org/hebrew/3045.htm). But this is not the discussion. We are cosidering, in this case, that the men from Sodom wanted to gang rape God's messengers.
You say "two angels are sent for this purpose, and, as the story goes, it is solely on the basis of their sexual conduct that they conclude that the city is indeed worthy of complete destruction" and I tell you that this is an interpreation of your own. God had already planned the destruction and he would only spare it if there were at least ten rightous men living among them. But the Bible tells us that ALL the men demanded to have nonconsensual sex with the messengers. It may be my own interpretation, but, the whole town gang raping two outsiders doesn't seem very righteous to me. Regardless with it is a homosexual or a heterosexual conduct. If God's messengers were women and all the town demanded to have sex with them, do you think Sodom and Gomorrah would be spared?
Now, in no way I mean to imply they were a couple and were having sex with each other. But this is a clearly example that God is not against two men loving one other 'more than the love of women'... Ironically, this is one of the most romantic relationships we have in the Bible and is a same-sex relationship. But it's not the only one. We also have Ruth and Naomi. It's a very beautiful and powerful story and also oddly romantic. To those who are not familiar with the story, I will summarize:
Naomi is married to man and they are forced to move from Elimelech to Moab by a famine on their land, but shortly after they arrive, Naomi's husband dies. Naomi has two sons, and one of them marry Ruth and the other marry Orpah, but both men die before they have children. Now Noami, Ruth, and Orpah are alone with no husband and no sons. So Naomi decides to go back to her parents and tells Ruth and Orpah to do the same and Orpah does so. Ruth doesn't, however, and she "clings" to Naomi. Note that the hebrew word used for "clinging" is "dabaq", the word that appears in Genesis 2:24 (For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be UNITED to his wife, and they will become one flesh) and 34:3 (He was deeply ATTRACTED to Dinah). Ruth goes on to say to Naomi:
“Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die — there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” (Ruth 1:16-17)
After they return to Elimelech, Ruth marries again and has a son, who the Bible refers to as Naomi's son (Ruth 4:17).
Ruth is one of the most relevant women on the Hebrew Bible. She is, along Esther, the only woman to have a book in her name and she is also the great grandmother of David.
The last part of Ruth's vow to Naomi that I cited (Ruth 1:16-17) sounds awfully familiar, that's probably because that's where they took "until death do us part" we use in wedding vows to this day. Again, I'm not talking about a sexual relationship. I don't believe that's the case. That's just to illustrate that the two most romantic stories in the Bible are the product of same-sex relationships.
Why am I talking about non-sexual relationships between people of the same sex? Well, as I discussed earlier, a homosexuality relationship today is not based
Jesus' time. People didn't fall in love and then married. Take Isaac and Rebecca's marriage or Jacob and Leah's for instance. People didn't marry for feelings as the way it happens today.
So taking into account that straight relationships today are not the same as straight relationships as it was then, why must we consider that the homosexual relationships then should be equal to the ones there are now? If you say that what god condemns is the intercourse between members of the same sex, I hate to be the one to point out to you, but homosexuality is not exclusively about the sex. I mentioned above three forms of homosexuality, the one expressed through behavior, the one expressed through attraction, and the one expressed through affection. A homosexual relationship today tends to have these three specific concepts. We know for sure that the Bible explicitly talks about the behavior. However, the Bible also talks about same-sex affection, as a seperate thing and we all overlook it. The Bible tells us two beautiful stories about same-sex affection and God doesn't disapprove them, actually, he celebrates them.
Here's the story of David and Jonathan:
"Now it came about when he had finished speaking to Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself. Saul took him that day and did not let him return to his father's house. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, including his sword and his bow and his belt. So David went out wherever Saul sent him, and prospered; and Saul set him over the men of war.
"...David rose from beside the stone heap and prostrated himself with his face to the ground. He bowed three times, and they kissed each other, and wept with each other; David wept the more. Then Jonathan said to David, 'Go in peace, since both of us have sworn in the name of the LORD, saying, "The LORD shall be between me and you, and between my descendants and your descendants, for ever."' He got up and left and Jonathan went into the city.
"Saul and Jonathan, beloved and pleasant in their life, And in their death they were not parted; They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions... "How have the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan is slain on your high places. "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; You have been very pleasant to me. Your love to me was more wonderful Than the love of women. "How have the mighty fallen, And the weapons of war perished!"
change, regardless of scriptures. And that's exactly what you are going againts on your second objection. The Bible is pretty clear on those and there are not explicit indications of otherwise (you won't find anywhere in the Bible and explicit statement saying that women may have authority over men, that slavery is wrong and should by all means be avoided, and that marriage is exclusively between one man and only one woman), unless you interpret a specific passage and contextualize it. In other for you to fit that to your current views, you'll need a personal interpretation, which you condemn in the case of homosexuality. That's exactly what people try to do when they say homosexuality is not a sin. In other words, you end up cherry picking biblical passages. "So this passage we must take it literally and this other we may do some interpretation and contextualization". Should we read the whole Bible literally or is it up to interpretation? Which one is it?
And in my objection to your second objection I point out to you that you're wrong when you say we can't assume what sort of homosexual relationship the Bible had in mind. Not only we can assume, but we can CONCLUDE about it, even it being very complicated to talk about what was "homosexuality" in the ancient culture as it is a concept that didn't exist prior to the 19th century. Homosexual and heterosexual identities didn't emerge before it. So to say "homosexuality" or "homosexual" in acient civilizations is rather vague and we need to consider a few things:
Is homosexuality a homosexual behavior? Is it a homosexual attraction? Is it a homosexual affection? Or a combination of all of these? From what I read from your post, and I believe we share the same opinion on what is considered homosexuality in the Bible - homosexual behavior only, that is, solely sexual intercourse.
To understand homosexual relationships in the Bible we need to drift off from homosexuality a bit and understand what was relationship in the ancient isrealite community.
From the Bible alone, we can infer that, just like the majority of the ancient civilizations, men would marry for offspring. As a matter of fact, the women's only role in society was children barring and household duties. They had no authority whatsoever. Women married in their teens and men could have multiple wives. This was the norm for not only the ancient israelites, but most of the civilizations at the time. So we tend to view relationships in the Bible with the notions of relationships we have today and that's where we fail. You see, the wives were completely subdued by their husbands, men were not imposed fidelity but an adulterous married women would have to face death penalty. This idea of a an equal and romantic relationship came much, much later. Even after
In no way I have the pretension to shake your faith on the Bible and your religion. I wouldn't do that even if I thought that was possible. This may seem pretty obvious, but there are some ignorant people that actually believe they can do that. I'm not of them, just so we're clear on that one. :)
Having that said, although the theme of your post is "homosexuality as a sin", I can't help to point out a bigger dilemma which is noted on your objections. The first one being the different biblical approaches.
The biblical approach being used by you is a theological one. And you're right. It's useless to discuss in that sense and, as a matter of fact, it shouldn't. You're religion beliefs are based on your INTERPRETATION of the Bible, the CHURCH you are a part of, and your own PERSONAL VIEWS, among other elements. One thing's for sure, it's not based on what a random stranger might say to you over the internet. However, by enticing an amicable discussion, we have the opportunity to learn from one another and even strenghen our ideas and beliefs. That's why, for that matter, we won't (at least not by my part) get into a theological discussion. The approach of my arguments will be historically and literary (and I'll try my best to focus solely on them).
The second of your objections states that the fact that we don't quite know exactly what is the homosexuality that's referred to both in the Hebrew Bible and on the New Testement, we should give it the benefit of the doubt and consider that the Law (in this particular matter) applies to us to these days, or else we'd have a loop hole through which we could cheat not only the Law that also applies to non-jews, but also other christian commandements as well.
And so I present you my objections to your objections.
First of all, when you talk about how people may "'amputate' the Bible's ability to tell us how we must live in order to sit comfortably with such interpretations" it would lead me to draw the conclusion that you live your life exactly in accordance to the scriptures. I may be wrong, but I find it very hard to believe that you agree with slavery (COL 3:22, 1 PET 2:18, EPH 6:25), polygamy (GEN 4:19, EX 21:10, 1 KG 11:2-3) and male dominance over women (COR 14:34-35, EX 21:7-8, LEV 19:20). I know that these notions may be cliché when it comes to biblical contextualization, but it doesn't make them less pertinent. Both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament not only condone them, but promote them. To think otherwise, you would have to "amputate" the Bible in order for it to conform to your own moral views, which I believed they differ from the ones that existed by the time those texts were written. And by no way I mean to say that the Bible is immoral. What I am trying to point out is that moral views
Best Sermon and prayer I ever heard in my life. I heard it yesterday the very first time and I could not sleep, yester night; I kept going through it over in my mind, over and over and over and over till morning.
Overall I'm in favour of CBVs, but I do recognise there are problems with them. Overriding dispatch has always felt ugly,
super()calls are boring and spaghetti code can easily ensue. I spent so long reading the source code for CBVs that I built a website to make it easier to read. I agree that there are some times where the generic class based implementation is clunky and difficult to work with, especially for complex views. There is unquestionably a steeper learning curve.That said, I still thing they're better. A large proportion of the views I write share functionality, and this is simple to implement (with due thought) in a CBV architecture. I would like to address one or two of your points with my own experience:
Regarding maintenance, I was recently working on an old and large project started back in 1.0 days. There were many different simple implementations of a standard form handling view pattern, some with clear issues in them. If all of these delegated their flow control to a de-facto standard the code would have been much easier to deal with. There's one way to do it.
Personally, I love the 405 handling.
POSTandGETshouldn't respond the same. This simply makes my Django site a better HTTP citizen.Above all, testing. I can now easily and quickly test individual bits of a view. That is, I can unit test them. For sites where there is now much complex underlying architecture (basically just a bunch of models) and most logic lives in the views, this is a godsend.
Class based anythings can work well but are fragile. Django admin works like magic if you have plain django models and don't want to do anything fancy. Once you do have something less than vanilla, admin becomes near useless. The admin code is highly dependent on everything having the right base class and metaclass. You can't just go adding fields onto classes after they are instantiated. I ended up using a plain form linked from an admin list that dynamically creates the form class like so:
form_dict['__metaclass__'] = django.forms.forms.DeclarativeFieldsMetaclass
SettingForm = type('SettingForm', (django.forms.Form,), form_dict)
Fight magic with magic, I always say ;)
Speaking of magic, anyone know how to trick the Django ORM into allowing queries on denomralized models? I have an Article model with 20+ fields and an DenormArticle model with 6. I would like to use the denorm version to do joins with all the same tables that Article does but without a join on Article. Currently I just use raw SQL and some carefully crafted lies.
:-)
You have some good points here, let's just not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
In the complex example of a custom form with various logic, it would perhaps be better off with a simple function, or rather inherit from
View/TemplateViewto have the benefit ofself.request, optional method splitting while implementing the main flow manually. This would be the best of both worlds. I don't think the generic CBV's offer much help here, because the flow isn't that generic at all.One of the things I love about the CBV's, is their declarative style. It's readable, much better then the long list of parameters, and less error-prone. Even in the second example (which is indeed the turning point for just inheriting from
View/TemplateViewor using FBV's), it's still stating what happens when. In the first example, you need to parse (imo crammed together) code to figure out what the subtle differences are.Consider it a programming style, just like functional programming in Python. That's not "one" way either, it's a specific toolset for certain DRY-problems and I actually never use that style because I have to reanalyze it every time I see it.
Once you know the basics of CBV's (or have a good editor to jump to symbols and overwritten methods (hi PyCharm)) basic things can be implemented really fast. Most of my CBV's only implement
get_context_data()orget_object()orget_success_url(). When you look at large views, they are often just collecting a lot of data for the template. That's allget_context_data()code in a long tangled messy batch that could benefit better splitting.I also have edit views which lots of initial data, a form + formset and extra save actions. That code is perfectly readable with a FBV. If I would replace with with a CBV, it would probably be a custom base class with a simple 4-step flow (init, post, get, render). So far I don't have any urge to "upgrade" that.
Something different is Ajax form processing; it has become ridiculously easy now with a standard protocol in place. Simply override
render_to_response()in a mixin. Something likedjango.contrib.commentscurrently requires a re-implementation of the whole view to add Ajax functionality on top of it. Everything happens in one function. That's just sad.Shoving everything in generic CBV's, especially when it has a custom workflow doesn't make sense to me at all. Better be conscious about what you write, which was the whole point of the article in the first place. :) That could be a good set of functions or classes. Calling CBV's it a mistake is a bit far stretched IMO.
CBV shines when you develop backoffice application, with business rules and restrictions. You can develop and add common functionality really, really fast.
In my oppinion CBV lacks from a better documentation, it's quite hard to figure all the methods and attributes you have available and with is the order in which the metods are called.
Sometimes there are not the best solution, but for the kind of application we develop, mainly business web applications CBV had been a great addition.
May be the solution is use a tool to generate code:
https://github.com/modocache/django-generate-scaffold
However, I really like extending the basic View class for form handling in order to separate the logic for POST and GET. I think it produces more readable code.
@Julien: it seems to me that the admin is already written using CBVs — but using classes that were designed for them (
ModelAdminandChangeList), extracted and distilled from real needs, through a process of about 3 major refactorings. So they don't suffer from many of the disadvantages I've highlighted, like a deep hierarchy of classes — it's pretty flat, and relatively easy to understand. The flow control is fixed, and no-one is expecting to be able to change it, unlike with generic views.It's also interesting that the large amount of functionality needed to support the admin is integrated by composition of a number of flat classes rather than inheritance.
ModelAdmininherits fromBaseModelAdminonly because it needs a metaclass. It then integrates classes likeChangeList(which itself inherits only object) by instantiating it, not inheriting from it. It has hooks like actions which are simple functions, and other functionality likeListFiltervia relatively flat classes.So, I regard the admin as a very successful application of CBVs, but custom-made, specific base classes.
I don't think it would be a good idea to rework using the CBVs in django.views, unless it would actually provide some feature/hook that people need. I imagine it will be better and easier to add that hook directly. That's as far as my thoughts for the admin go at the moment. I'm not ruling out other possibilities though!
I have, more or less, avoided CBVs since they were introduced. For simple cases, where they do save lines, I've used them and I suppose I still would. But for anything that requires any complexity, I avoid CBVs by default. Yeah, a bunch of if statements are dreary, but they're brutally straightforward and, at the end of the day, I want to get the job done. This is the reason that I increasingly use Flask, too.
There are cases where CBVs make certain things harder, but they are usually better. I find CBVs extremely helpful for non-form views. The class encapsulates all the helper functions so you can stay organized.
CBVs are better for automated testing. CBVs are easy to test, because each method does something small. Function-based ones are not.
I would also argue that the standard django function-based view is an ugly hack because it breaks the most basic code smell test. It's spaghetti code. And you gave a simple example. Real life examples are a lot worse.
The one place where I was still entertaining the idea of using CBVs was in the Django the admin, as this is arguably the one application that nearly everyone needs to customize and extend at some stage. So far the main extension pattern that's in place is to have more and more function hooks. These work well for some use cases but it only goes so far, especially for customizing flow control.
So, I was wondering if you had some thoughts on the best approach moving forward with the admin. If CBVs should be avoided at all cost, then are there still patterns in the Python language that we could explore? Or is writing your own views still most likely going to be the better approach?
Excellent post, Luke! I remember reading one of your earlier posts on "dry ravioli" and like that post, this one resonated with my own thoughts on CBVs. I think that you've nailed two of the "grossest" parts -- the loss of "flow control" and the confusion that necessarily arises from multiple inheritance. Anecdotally, we've been doing a big refactor here at work and I was the only one in favor of using function-based views. As the implementation work has progressed the amount of overrides/issues we've had has definitely outweighed any benefits we might have seen from code reuse. The code, in the end, wasn't any shorter and much less easy to reason about to boot.
I think its worth pointing out that one of django's most heavily used components utilizes class-based views -- the admin. The admin views use a class to encapsulate helper methods and to provide many niceties like registering extensions to support dynamic urls, form handling, etc. I wrote a post on CBVs using an "admin" style approach, and it is still the approach I favor today -- maybe you'll find it interesting.
Peace,
Allen
Hi Allen,
There is a reason by blog post limits the size of comments, and it's because I don't think comments are an effective place for essays. For that reason, I've hidden your posts by default.
Thanks,
Luke
Take Jesus' before Pilate for instance. There are different accounts of this event on the Bible. Let's talk about the one that is accounted for in the synoptic gospels (MAT 27, MAR 15 and LUK 23). In this accout Jesus' encounter with Pilate is very brief and he doesn't say much (MAR 15:5). However John's account (JOHN 18:28-40) is completely different. Here Jesus is shown to share this very rich dialogue with Pilate.
What this has to do with the topic of homosexuality? I'm just using this to show that the gospels are not always in accordance to one another. And they can't be taken as historical. If they can, then you have to choose one over the other.
The reason biblical scholars point out to explain these differences between the gospels is because each author has his own concept of Jesus, or his own "christology", which is the term used in biblical studies.
So I have to beg you the differ when you say that "Jesus very clearly believed the authority of the OT". He does in some gospels, and Jesus even goes on to intensify the Law, as you pointed out in Matthew 5. The Book of Matthew is considered the most "Jewish" gospel as even the gentiles should observe the Torah and keep the Kosher, "for not the smallest letter and not the least stroke of a pen disappear from the Law" (MAT 5:18). Paul, however, felt that you should obbey the Law only if you were a jewish follower of Jesus, and the gentiles were not bound by that (GAL 2:14-18), which is very different from what we read in Luke 6, where observing the Torah is rendered as being not really that important, regardless if you're a jew or a gentile.
I could go on and on and point out many more examples of how Jesus is portrayed differently in the New Testament. There was no consensus regarding Jesus and his message in the earlier chritsian movements (the time most of the cannonical gospels were written). The authors may be even seen as arguing with one another, compare Mark's christology to John's. For Mark, Jesus was the Son of God, or Son of Man, but he was not devine. He was completely human and for John, Jesus is God and preceeded his carnal existence.
So these different views on the gospels about Jesus and his over all message was very confusing on early christianity and it was in the year of 325 that the roman emperor Constantine, who was sick and tired of this lack of consensus and different christologies among these early christians, arranged what came to be known as the First Council of Nicaea, where religious authorities at the time decided what was orthodoxal and what was not, and for the first time, they settled on a consensus.
So, you interpret Jesus' silence on the issue (funny how you said the New Testement cannot accept interpretation and makes an interpretation yourself) as condemnation of previous stablished judaic law, but that is so only to those Torah observant authors. Remember, not all of them are, such as Luke. My take on Jesus' silence is that homosexuality is not that much a concern for him. Think about it, the Son of God himself comes to Earth and preaches to the people. If homosexuality was a tremendous problem to "the moral fabric" of society, wouldn't Jesus have something to say about this? Deuteronomy tells us that if a child is stubborn and rebellious then he is to be stoned to death (DEU 21:18-21). Jesus is silent about this. Should we infer that he was ok with it? I think not.
There are no positive role models for a homosexual relantionship in the Bible because homosexuality, as we discussed, did not exist back then as it exists now. But I pointed out the story of David and Jonathan and Ruth and Naomi. Those were not homosexual couples, but they shared an intimate and romantic homosexual relationship. And to me, that's close to homosexual couples we have today, even though they clearly were not sexual couples. Don't know if you agree with me on that one, but to me, that's at least closer to homosexual couples today than a whole town demanding to gang rape two strangers. Again, I'm not saying David, Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi were homosexuals. I can't stress this enough.
Now we must take extra-genesis sources about the Genesis account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Deuteronomy 29, Isaiah 1, 3, and 13,Jeremiah 49 and 50, Lamentations 4, Amos 4.11, and Zephaniah 2.9. Deuteronomy 32, Jeremiah 23.14 and Lamentations 4 reference the sinfulness of Sodom but do not specify any particular sin. There are some passages that specify the sins: adultery and lying (Jeremiah 23:14), impenitence (Matthew 11:23, careless living (Luke 17:28), fornication(Jude 1:7 KJV), and an overall "filthy" lifestyle (2 Peter 2:7), which word ("aselgeiais") elsewhere is rendered in the KJV as lasciviousness (Mark 7:22; 2 Corinthians 12:21; Ephesians 4:19; 1 Peter 4:3; Jude 1:4, or wantonness: (Romans 13:13; 2 Peter 2:18) and, of course Ezekiel 16.49–50, as you have quoted yourself. In all these references though, it is pretty clear to me that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is used to focus on the power of God and not the sin or sinners.
New Tastament:
First of all, I'd like to state that what I am about to do is analysing the Bible literary and historically. In no way I intend to make a theological analysis.
With that in mind, we must be clear on how the gospels came to be how they are today. First of all, their authors were not aware that someone would later compile their letters and use it in a book. The gospels were not written for you or me or anyone else today. If you read them, it's pretty clear to whom they were written for, and a lot of the times that is even explicit in their titles (Corithians, Galatians, Timothy, etc). And not only they were written BY different people FOR different people, they were also written at a different TIME and different REGIONS. And each one of the books in the New Testament dealt with different
"This still doesn't prove that it was homosexuality per se, rather than rape, that was the abomination. However, if we add in (1) the fact that the word for abomination here is the same as that used in Leviticus 18:22, while rape is not described by this word in the OT, (2) the most likely interpretation of Jude 1:7 (namely that the Sodomites were pursuing 'unnatural desire' by their homosexual practice), and (3) the fact that the city became synonymous with the practice, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that homosexual practice is being condemned in the judgement on Sodom and Gomorrah."
(1): The word used for abomination in Ezekiel does not appear in Leviticus exclusively to refer to sexual morality. It is also used to refer to a bunch of other things. You can see more here http://concordances.org/hebrew/8441.htm.
(2): It comes to me as a shock to think that if you have a whole town demanding to gang rape two people you'd consider sexual immorality and unnatural desire just the fact that they're persuing to have homosexual sex. Gang rape is a natural desire? Is it sexually moral? You're implying that if the messengers were women, then it would not be an unnatural desire nor it would be sexually moral.
(3): The use of the word 'sodomite' to refer to those who practice anal sex (this applies to heterosexual and homosexual intercourse) gained this conotation after 1250 (see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sodomy?s=t). When you see "sodomite" in some translations, the original word for it is actually qadhesh, which has no relation to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. See http://topicalbible.org/s/sodomite.htm.
You said the the Genesis account on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is the only account we have of homosexuality. But I don't think it is fair to say that what happened in Lot's house is considered homosexuality, as I have discussed. If you do consider it to be a case of homosexuality, then we can't help but to admit that the Gibeah episode in Judges HAVE to be considered as heterosexuality too. The same thing happened, but with people raping a woman instead.
And I hate to be the one pointing it out to you, but the Bible not always celebrates heterosexual relationship and I quote Paul:
"Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." 1 COR 7:8-9
We have the asnwer to that right in the Bible, Judges 19-20. The similarities to Genesis 18-19 are abundant. A man and his concubine from Ephraim was traveling from Bethlehem and stopped in Gibeah, a Benjaminite city, for the night. There was a man from Ephraim living there and so he took them as their guests.
Just like in Sodom, SOME (not all) men demanded to have sex with the man. Again, just like the story in Genesis, the host offered his virgin daughter instead and the guest's concubine and the townsmen raped the man's concubine and she died.
Now this naturally enraged all of the Israelites and they demanded the tribe of Benjamin to give the men from Gibeah in, so they could face retaliation from their behaviour. However, Benjamin did not give them in and so they fought. All the other tribes, with the exception of Benjamin, went before God and God not only commanded the destruction of the whole tribe of Benjamin, but he also instructed them how to do it.
There are many differences to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but we cannot ignore the parallels to GEN 18-19, as they seem to be very intentional. Some passages even use word to word to account the event.
God did not destroy Benjamin himself, as he's done with Sodom and Gomorrah, and you could say that's because the gang rape taking place was a heterosexual one, which would not be an abomination. But that's only interpretation. You can also take into account that this episode happened long after the time of Abraham and long after Moses. You can also take into account that, unlike in Sodom, not all men from Gibeah did this atrocity, only some. And you can't ignore the fact that unlike Sodom and Gomorrah, the Benjamin tribe was part of Israel and the people chosen from God (they had received God's commendaments and Law, unlike Sodom) . But even so, God wanted them all to be punished because of a "heterosexual act", if you allow me to put this way.
Back to Sodom and Gomorrah. So what the Bible actually says is that prior to this, God already planned to destroy the cities. So it's a matter of personal interpretation when you say that "the most prominent and important feature in the story of their destruction is their sexual behaviour". That's not in the Bible. We didn't know how was their sexual behaviour.
Now, I am going to address some specific claims from your post.
Sodom and Gomorrah:
Firstly, we must consider that God had already planned to destroy Sodom before the event in Lot's house (GEN 18:17) and that is not clear whether the men God sent to inspect Sodom were humans or angels. The word used here in the original hebrew is "malak" which is the word for "messenger".
So God had already planned the destruction of Sodom, but he needed to be sure. He even promised Abraham that if there were at least 10 rightous people there, he would spare the whole town from being destroyed.
So when the visitor arrive in Sodom and ALL of the men in the town demand to "have sex with them". I know you have this one comming, the word used here is "yada", which simply means "to know". And we all know what "to know" in biblical sense stands for. But not always. As a matter of fact, this word appears more than 900 times in the Hebrew Bible and yet it has sexual connotation on about 1% of the times (http://concordances.org/hebrew/3045.htm). But this is not the discussion. We are cosidering, in this case, that the men from Sodom wanted to gang rape God's messengers.
You say "two angels are sent for this purpose, and, as the story goes, it is solely on the basis of their sexual conduct that they conclude that the city is indeed worthy of complete destruction" and I tell you that this is an interpreation of your own. God had already planned the destruction and he would only spare it if there were at least ten rightous men living among them. But the Bible tells us that ALL the men demanded to have nonconsensual sex with the messengers. It may be my own interpretation, but, the whole town gang raping two outsiders doesn't seem very righteous to me. Regardless with it is a homosexual or a heterosexual conduct. If God's messengers were women and all the town demanded to have sex with them, do you think Sodom and Gomorrah would be spared?
Naomi is married to man and they are forced to move from Elimelech to Moab by a famine on their land, but shortly after they arrive, Naomi's husband dies. Naomi has two sons, and one of them marry Ruth and the other marry Orpah, but both men die before they have children. Now Noami, Ruth, and Orpah are alone with no husband and no sons. So Naomi decides to go back to her parents and tells Ruth and Orpah to do the same and Orpah does so. Ruth doesn't, however, and she "clings" to Naomi. Note that the hebrew word used for "clinging" is "dabaq", the word that appears in Genesis 2:24 (For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be UNITED to his wife, and they will become one flesh) and 34:3 (He was deeply ATTRACTED to Dinah). Ruth goes on to say to Naomi:
“Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die — there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” (Ruth 1:16-17)
After they return to Elimelech, Ruth marries again and has a son, who the Bible refers to as Naomi's son (Ruth 4:17).
Ruth is one of the most relevant women on the Hebrew Bible. She is, along Esther, the only woman to have a book in her name and she is also the great grandmother of David.
The last part of Ruth's vow to Naomi that I cited (Ruth 1:16-17) sounds awfully familiar, that's probably because that's where they took "until death do us part" we use in wedding vows to this day. Again, I'm not talking about a sexual relationship. I don't believe that's the case. That's just to illustrate that the two most romantic stories in the Bible are the product of same-sex relationships.
Why am I talking about non-sexual relationships between people of the same sex? Well, as I discussed earlier, a homosexuality relationship today is not based
So taking into account that straight relationships today are not the same as straight relationships as it was then, why must we consider that the homosexual relationships then should be equal to the ones there are now? If you say that what god condemns is the intercourse between members of the same sex, I hate to be the one to point out to you, but homosexuality is not exclusively about the sex. I mentioned above three forms of homosexuality, the one expressed through behavior, the one expressed through attraction, and the one expressed through affection. A homosexual relationship today tends to have these three specific concepts. We know for sure that the Bible explicitly talks about the behavior. However, the Bible also talks about same-sex affection, as a seperate thing and we all overlook it. The Bible tells us two beautiful stories about same-sex affection and God doesn't disapprove them, actually, he celebrates them.
Here's the story of David and Jonathan:
"Now it came about when he had finished speaking to Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself. Saul took him that day and did not let him return to his father's house. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, including his sword and his bow and his belt. So David went out wherever Saul sent him, and prospered; and Saul set him over the men of war.
"...David rose from beside the stone heap and prostrated himself with his face to the ground. He bowed three times, and they kissed each other, and wept with each other; David wept the more. Then Jonathan said to David, 'Go in peace, since both of us have sworn in the name of the LORD, saying, "The LORD shall be between me and you, and between my descendants and your descendants, for ever."' He got up and left and Jonathan went into the city.
"Saul and Jonathan, beloved and pleasant in their life, And in their death they were not parted; They were swifter than eagles, They were stronger than lions... "How have the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan is slain on your high places. "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; You have been very pleasant to me. Your love to me was more wonderful Than the love of women. "How have the mighty fallen, And the weapons of war perished!"
And in my objection to your second objection I point out to you that you're wrong when you say we can't assume what sort of homosexual relationship the Bible had in mind. Not only we can assume, but we can CONCLUDE about it, even it being very complicated to talk about what was "homosexuality" in the ancient culture as it is a concept that didn't exist prior to the 19th century. Homosexual and heterosexual identities didn't emerge before it. So to say "homosexuality" or "homosexual" in acient civilizations is rather vague and we need to consider a few things:
Is homosexuality a homosexual behavior? Is it a homosexual attraction? Is it a homosexual affection? Or a combination of all of these? From what I read from your post, and I believe we share the same opinion on what is considered homosexuality in the Bible - homosexual behavior only, that is, solely sexual intercourse.
To understand homosexual relationships in the Bible we need to drift off from homosexuality a bit and understand what was relationship in the ancient isrealite community.
From the Bible alone, we can infer that, just like the majority of the ancient civilizations, men would marry for offspring. As a matter of fact, the women's only role in society was children barring and household duties. They had no authority whatsoever. Women married in their teens and men could have multiple wives. This was the norm for not only the ancient israelites, but most of the civilizations at the time. So we tend to view relationships in the Bible with the notions of relationships we have today and that's where we fail. You see, the wives were completely subdued by their husbands, men were not imposed fidelity but an adulterous married women would have to face death penalty. This idea of a an equal and romantic relationship came much, much later. Even after
Having that said, although the theme of your post is "homosexuality as a sin", I can't help to point out a bigger dilemma which is noted on your objections. The first one being the different biblical approaches.
The biblical approach being used by you is a theological one. And you're right. It's useless to discuss in that sense and, as a matter of fact, it shouldn't. You're religion beliefs are based on your INTERPRETATION of the Bible, the CHURCH you are a part of, and your own PERSONAL VIEWS, among other elements. One thing's for sure, it's not based on what a random stranger might say to you over the internet. However, by enticing an amicable discussion, we have the opportunity to learn from one another and even strenghen our ideas and beliefs. That's why, for that matter, we won't (at least not by my part) get into a theological discussion. The approach of my arguments will be historically and literary (and I'll try my best to focus solely on them).
The second of your objections states that the fact that we don't quite know exactly what is the homosexuality that's referred to both in the Hebrew Bible and on the New Testement, we should give it the benefit of the doubt and consider that the Law (in this particular matter) applies to us to these days, or else we'd have a loop hole through which we could cheat not only the Law that also applies to non-jews, but also other christian commandements as well.
And so I present you my objections to your objections.
First of all, when you talk about how people may "'amputate' the Bible's ability to tell us how we must live in order to sit comfortably with such interpretations" it would lead me to draw the conclusion that you live your life exactly in accordance to the scriptures. I may be wrong, but I find it very hard to believe that you agree with slavery (COL 3:22, 1 PET 2:18, EPH 6:25), polygamy (GEN 4:19, EX 21:10, 1 KG 11:2-3) and male dominance over women (COR 14:34-35, EX 21:7-8, LEV 19:20). I know that these notions may be cliché when it comes to biblical contextualization, but it doesn't make them less pertinent. Both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament not only condone them, but promote them. To think otherwise, you would have to "amputate" the Bible in order for it to conform to your own moral views, which I believed they differ from the ones that existed by the time those texts were written. And by no way I mean to say that the Bible is immoral. What I am trying to point out is that moral views