In Leviticus Chapter 20, God is concerned about the worship of Molech. Back when this was written, sometime around 1440-1400 BCE, the Yahweh cult was actually in competition with many different gods, one of which was Molech. As we will see, the Old Testament is a record of how the Yahwehists wrested power over the tribe and literally forced the Israelites to follow their god Yahweh, exclusively.

To be fair, Molech isn't exactly a good god to be worshipping. In its most extreme form, worshipping Molech required child sacrifice. Yahweh was a "step up" because he only required animal sacrifice (except for a few instances where there were human sacrifices), and Yahweh's laws were very strict and punishment was usually more than the crime itself.

Molech takes on various forms, a bull (like the Golden Calf), or even an owl (which is a more modern conception). But basically, they're symbols of the same deity.

God then proscribes a few more laws to follow. Yea, He's not very good at transitional material:

1. Kids that curse their parents shall be put to death.
2. Adulterers (and adulteresses) shall be put to death.
3. Men who have sex with their daughter-in-laws - both will be put to death.
4. Men who have sex with men, you too shall die. (Leviticus 20:13)
5. If a man has sex with a woman and her daughter - all of them shall be put to death.
6. Sex with animals - both the human AND the animal must die.
7. If a man sees a female family member's nakedness - he shall be cut off from his people.
8. Worse, if a man sees a female family member's period blood (the Bible calls it 'fountain'), BOTH shall be cut off from the people.
9. Anyone that practices magic should also be put to death.

This sounds familiar, doesn't it? It's because God already covered this in the previous chapters!!!

I skip ahead to Chapter 21, and it's the same. Yahweh repeats His concern about men shaving. And the only new thing is that God also admits that He hates disabled and/or different people, like retarded people, blind, dwarves, people with funny blemishes on their skin, or funny noses, men with damaged testicles, crooked backs, broken hands or feet, and on and on.

Now THAT'S petty!

Leviticus, Chapter 18 is all about sex. And it's not just about regular old hetero-sexual male-female sex - Chapter 18 covers all the OTHER stuff - the taboo stuff. It lumps homosexuality right in there with bestiality and incest.

First on the list is seeing relatives naked. It doesn't say anything about sex, it says you can't "uncover their nekkedness." I support that, it would be kind of awkward to see Uncle Billy's willy or Aunt Gina's 'gina; but is it necessary to even write this down in the Holy Bible? This is common sense stuff that should be applied to all people in casual polite society. But yea, there's crazy, gross and disgusting people out there that God created, and I guess He thought it would be a good idea to remind them not to do what He apparently knew what they'd do anyway.

The reasoning behind not uncovering the nakedness of relatives is that they are all of the same flesh. How's that even a reason? It should've said that sex with relatives has a higher chance of creating retarded offspring, or that sex with relatives is a breach of trust, or even "That's disgusting, man."

Second of all, don't even LOOK at a menstruating woman -that's just disgusting! (18:19) Bestiality (sex with animals) is also covered in Chapter 18.

Out of the blue, there is a reference saying not to pass your offspring to the fires to Molech. Basically, don't sacrifice your kid to Molech (who is a Sumerian god).

And then finally, we get to the rallying cry of the religious right. Leviticus 18:22: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. "

That's one third of their party platform, which can be summed up as follows: "God, guns, and gays."

Take note that the religious right regularly break all those other laws (keeping slaves, killing a non-virgin on her wedding night, looking at menstruating women, etc.), but they sure like to focus on this one! That's just goes to show that following the Bible literally is impossible - we all pick and choose, no matter how fundamentalist we are.

In fact, I'd argue that fundamentalists are the worst because while they do their fair share of cherry-picking, they can't even justify the reasons to favor one verse over another. Liberal and moderate Christians and Jews are at least reasonable enough to recognize there's a problem, but they'll still believe (albeit in a wishy-washy way).