It's a metaphorical leaving, sir, regardless of whether a man has ever had sex with a woman, or if a woman has had sex with a man. Otherwise, if we follow your interpretation, only bisexuals are condemned, but homosexuals and hetereosexuals are fine. That seems like a strange interpretation.

Thanks for bringing up the bit about "using" women, because I looked it up in Strong's to see what the actual Greek words used were. I am not a biblical Greek expert, although I have studied it a little, so I encourage you to check my work. "Natural use" (see Strongs number 5540) appears to be a kind of euphemism the King James translators used for the Greek (because obviously, you couldn't write the word "sex!"). The original Greek ( [XRH=SIS]) means "employment, i.e. (specially), sexual intercourse (as an occupation of the body)..."

Thus, the Greek isn't about using women like a sack of potatoes, or abusing them, or any such thing. It's rather about the act with a woman.

We then see that verse 26 states that the women perverted the sexual act among themselves, and verse 27 notes the men, leaving sex with women, instead did it among themselves. That's the problem.

I'm sorry, what do you mean? If you read the verses surrounding it, it quite clearly indicates that the people indicated are doing horrible things. This is just part of a list of behaviors that are wrong in the chapter, if you look it up.

Technically, it's not just in Leviticus. Romans 1:26-27 states, "...for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."

That seems like a clear description of homosexuality to me.

Aack. My first sentence should have been, "No, because neither Washington (nor anybody else in capital), wrote the treaty."

No, because Washington (nor anybody else in the capital), wrote the treaty. Washington wasn't even president at the time; John Adams was.

Remember, this is 1796. They're still using sailing ships. An emissary from the capital, by the last name of Barlow, was sent to negotiate the treaty. According to the Wikipedia article, which I sent you, he did a really crappy job of translating between Arabic and English.

By the time the U.S. Congress saw the treaty, in 1797, it had already been signed twice, first in late 1796 in Tripoli and then in early 1797 in Algiers. It got to the U.S. Congress in mid-1797. The U.S. Senate passed it unanimously, true, but I'm not sure if it would have made much difference if they had not wanted to ratify it. Barlow had already signed the treaty, "as agent plenipotentiary" for the United States, according to the treaty. According to the definition, he had full powers to sign a treaty. And, if they hadn't passed it, but wanted to renegotiate, it might have pushed the final signing off until 1798 or 1799, Atlantic travel being what it was.

And, the Wikipedia article notes:

So no, Washington never said, wrote, or signed it. Barlow's the one who wrote it, and the U.S. Congress (and President John Adams) are the ones who signed it.

No, Washington is often quoted as saying that, but it actually comes from the first Treaty of Tripoli, which goes back to the Barbary Coast pirates. American ships were being attacked by pirates, and thus, the U.S. Marines went to Libya to go take care of it. (That's why the Marine's Hymn goes, "From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli.") What resulted was the first Treaty of Tripoli, which ended the war. It was signed in 1796 by the Tripolians, and in 1797 by the U.S. Congress. In the English version, which was the version signed by the Americans, Article 11 of which stated that the United States of America is not a Christian nation:

Interestingly, this was not in the Arabic version, which was the version the Tripolians would have been looking at. Even more strangely, there was no Article 11 in the Arabic translation at all. So then why was it put in the English version?

Even more interestingly, when the second Treaty of Tripoli was signed several years later in 1815 (the pirate problem persisted), neither translations stated anything about the U.S. being or not being a Christian nation. The closest is Article 15:

For more information, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli.

I think there are two different approaches to looking at the problem of corporations lobbying governments: you can blame the corporations, or you can blame the governments.

Let's look at blaming the corporations. On the one hand, we don't want our legislators being bought with nice trips to Tahiti and such. However, can we truly prohibit companies from speaking their views (assuming they aren't bribing legislators)? As we're a country founded on freedom of speech, it seems strange to say that some entities *cannot* speak. (I will not subscribe to the theory that corporations are people, though.)

Let's look at blaming the governments. Shouldn't we expect our legislators to remain above reproach? And if they don't, shouldn't we vote them out? Finally, let's say we managed to stop all lobbying by corporations. Couldn't our legislators be bought other ways by other people?

While I'm not saying we should have companies buying gifts for legislators as a way to influence votes, I think we should blame our legislators for not resisting. Imagine a legislator caught in a sex scandal. Us blaming the corporations would be like the legislator blaming the prostitute for asking him if he wanted sex. As citizens, we should expect our legislators to exercise some self-control, whether the situation involves prostitutes or trips to Tahiti.

It's not a matter of whether the hacker's skills are formidable, it's a matter of whether Lush's IT team's aren't.