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dwell together, and one of them die, and have no son, the wife of the dead shall not be married without unto a stranger; her husband's brother shall go in unto her and take her to him to wife--etc. Thus the widow must be taken to wife by a brother-in-law, it is not a matter of choice. We don't recognize anything like this today do we? Verse 18 of Chapter 21 Deuteronomy prescribes death by stoning for a "stubborn and rebel- ious son". Pretty drastic I say and a long way from the enlightened juvenile justice that we attempt today.

My reason for citing these other chapters is only to show that we do not observe them literally anymore be- cause they are out of context in place, culture and time. Thus, I say it is with the one about clothing. But there is more to be said here too. Homosexuality was a well known phenomenon in biblical times as it is today and also as they do today some homosexual per- sons affect feminine ways and clothing the easier to attract other males. Nor was the homosexuality of those days any more limited to men that it is today. Thus the proscription against cross dressing was in ef- fect a proscription against homosexuality. Undoubted- ly there were TV's in those times, but then as until very recently they would have been lost and covered over by the mass of homosexual individuals and actions. It is certainly too much to credit the early Hebrews with the wisdom to make a distinction that had not be- come apparent to modern man until the beginning of this century (and then only to an enlightened few). seems an unintelligent interpretation of the biblical passage to be concerned with the literal words written rather than with the practice being condemned. There is no doubt that homosexuality was recognized, condem- ned and prosecuted in those times. Even the name sodomy comes from the City of Sodom which along with Gomarrah was destroyed because "their sin is very grievous" (the bible does not specifically mention what the sin was but it is always presumed to be homosex- uality).

It

There is another interesting observation to be made also, and that is that the proscription against women dressing in men's clothes comes first and it is there- fore evidently more important. Since in biblical times

62.