What Onan "did" in the sight of the Lord he DID many times, right? It wasn't one time and he was zapped. The passage in Genesis 39 says EVERY time he had sex with Tamar he did the same thing and it says the reason very clearly that he didn't want his firstborn son to "belong" to his dead brother. He wasn't treating her as his wife, wasn't giving her a child as was the agreement he made when he married her and his actions were a rejection of his obligation before God as well as his family. That is simply why I disagree that his "act" of withdrawal was the cause of his death - it doesn't add up and is too simplistic a reason. Let's not forget that it was only in the last several centuries or so that human biology advanced to the point that it became common knowledge that the man's sperm did NOT contain a tiny baby that he "planted" in the woman's womb. That just could be the basis for what theologians as well as physicians thought about the act of conception. At least factor that into the idea of what may have been held by Christians on the subject.
But --- death is not the only possible moral wrong. There are other moral wrongs, short of death, which are still grave. (After all, Onan didn't kill anybody, but "...what he did was evil in the sight of the Lord.") Tell me this: do you think it is morally right for people to attempt to change their so-called "gender" with sex-change "therapies" --- hormones and surgery? Would you explain why?
Absolutely there are moral wrongs that are grave that don't involve death. I just don't agree that a married couple using a barrier method or withdrawal to prevent pregnancy is one of them. As I think back, I also know of a couple who DID use withdrawal and STILL got pregnant. They did marry and have the child. So that isn't even a 100% effective way either. Condoms break, spermicides fail, vasectomies and tubal ligations don't always work either. I am 100% POSITIVE, though, that not having a uterus anymore would qualify as 100% though that's a pretty extreme way to avoid pregnancy and no moral doctor would do so.
As with "gender" reassignment, transsexualism and such, my opinion isn't a factor. I know that in rare cases, some people are born with what is called "Gender Identity Disorder" or gender dysphoria as well as some with real biological existence of BOTH genders within the same body (I don't recall the medical term for that). I am not a medical doctor or psychologist to pass judgment on people effected by this problem. Homosexual acts are grave moral wrongs - and we know that not only from science but from the giver of all moral law - our Creator God.
Maybe or maybe not: it's not something we know from the text. The actual verse says "when he went in to his brother's wife.." Check it out (LINK). It could have been once, or a dozen times or a score of times.
I don't see how the number of time he did it, matters. There were whole strings of apostate royalty (e.g. Johoiaim), and good kings that went bad (e.g. Solomon), and crooked sons (like Eli's sons) who made quite a career of their evil over a period of time, and the promised downfall doesn't come until months or years later, or even doesn't hit them but rather the next generation. It's very rarely in Scripture that a guy sins once, and gets instantly zapped.
"That is simply why I disagree that his "act" of withdrawal was the cause of his death - it doesn't add up and is too simplistic a reason."
Can you adduce any evidence for this? It seems to be a mere assertion of opinion without foundation.
"It was only in the last several centuries or so that human biology advanced to the point that it became common knowledge that the man's sperm did NOT contain a tiny baby that he "planted" in the woman's womb."
If they thought that turning the sex act away from conception was itself offensive to God (Onanism and Sodomy)--- it wouldn't make any difference whether they knew that men produced gametes and not zygotes. The fact that the man was intentionally doing an unnatural sex act, would be enough to make it morally objectionable.
That's how the Prophets of Israel, the Fathers of the Church, and the founders of the Reformation all saw it. (Luther said that anti-conceptive acts were "Sodomitical" --- did you read the link I supplied on that?) They weren't just looking narrowly at the Sanctity of a conceived Life. They also recognized the Sanctity of Sex. They saw the Lord God as not only the Lord of Life, but also the sovereign designer of our sexuality. They saw that it would be impious for anyone to pervert its normal, healthy, natural design, which is always procreative in "form"--- look, that's what the word "genital" means: generative, apt for generation. It means "this is the life-giving act" even if it does not accomplish conception.
Do you think they (Prophets of Israel, Fathers of the Church, Reformers) would be OK with a married couple doing oral and anal penetration and ejaculation as a contraceptive choice?
"I just don't agree that a married couple using a barrier method or withdrawal to prevent pregnancy is one of them."
I know that's your opinion, bu what you haven't shown is that your opinion is rooted in Biblical thought.
Consider this: there is a lot of sex, good and bad, in the Bible. But here is not one act of lawful procreative intercourse that is ever disapproved by God, and not one act nonlawful antiprocreative intercourse that is ever approved by God.
Check the OT and the NT: you NEVER find that. Surely that's not insignificant?
As with "gender" reassignment, I should have made my question more clear. I was not speaking of the unfortunate people who have very rare chromosomal anomalies (XXY, XYY or whatever) or who are born with objective genital malformation. I was writing about people who have a dysphoric emotional reaction against their healthy bodies, thinking their actual sex is "wrong," and who engage a doctor to surgically and hormonally alter themselves, e.g. castration.
There are all kinds of body image dysphorias: sighted people who want their eyes removed, people with normal healthy limbs that they strongly feel should be amputated, people of normal weight who want to starve themselves until they are practically skeletal. They want to alter their healthy normal body to match their confused emotions, rather than healing their confused emotions to match their healthy normal body.
Do you think there is an error here, in terms of medical ethics or a moral reverence for the human body? Or are doctors justified in enabling these self-maiming choices?
"Homosexual acts are grave moral wrongs - and we know that not only from science but from the giver of all moral law - our Creator God."
Agreed. Substitute the phrase "The deconstruction of sex" for the phrase "Homosexual acts" and the statement is still true. God doesn't want us to sabotage our bodies. It directly contradicts the Biblical attitude toward the human body, which is, "I give you thanks, O God, that I am fearfully, wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works!"