Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha

The story of God's divine punishment of Sodom and Gomorrha goes as follows. Three men requested lodging in the home of Abraham. Because of his gracious behavior, God revealed that he would destroy Sodom and Gomorrha because they contained a great deal of extremely sinful people. Well, exactly how these people were sinful is up to debate. Some say that it was because they were homosexual while others believe they were just immoral people, the sinfulness having nothing to do with their sexuality. Abraham asks God to spare the city if he can find fifty, no, fourty-five, no, thirty, no, twent- alright, alright, how about just ten people. God agrees. Two angels then lodge with Lot, Abraham's nephew. A huge crowd of people gather outside, demanding to see the angels. Lot offers him his two daughters, but they refuse, demanding they will do much worse to Lot. The angels reveal their true identity to Lot as the civilians nearly break down his door and tell Lot to gather his family and leave as there are not even ten decent people in the city. They are told not to look back as they leave, but Lot's wife does as the city ignites. She then turns into a pillar of salt.

This passage is known for causing a large amount of controversy over whether "know" has sexual connotations or not, possibly implying homosexuality, especially because it is definitely used in a sexual way when referencing Lot's daughters right afterward in a very similar context. If I had to be completely honest, the evidence in favor of "know" having sexual connotations is too prevalent to be ignored. While I am certainly not a religious person, at the same time, I must point out that the Old Testament has all sorts of messages that even most Christians find outdated, such as a man that rapes a woman must pay her father and then marry the woman, so this sort of message is not out of place. I am honestly more perplexed as to why some can look at the latter with a sense of understanding that such customs, while acceptable then, are simply not in our modern day, yet at the same time cannot accept a group of people based on the message of the very same book. At the very least, if you're going to follow archaic teachings, follow all of them; don't be lazy and only follow half.

I have personally never experienced unfair punishment myself, thankfully. I probably owe this to being lucky enough to have rational parents as well as being born a white male. All of my behaviors come with their consequences, and to my knowledge, none of these consequences are too severe. In fact, if anything, I tend to get away with any bad behavior at school (likely because I very rarely ever behave badly), and yet, there are likely many students in more rural areas that are blamed for transgressions they did not commit simply because they are not white. Will that change? Probably not within my lifetime; I feel that race will always be a factor in our society because the idea of an ingroup is so thoroughly ingrained in our psyche. Then again, I lived a fairly sheltered life until high school (and even now, it's still fairly sheltered), so perhaps that has affected my personal opinion.