@blatham,
Well, this one's a stretch even for you.
Where do you think
"most of us" live?
I'm pretty sure that there is virtually no acceptance among the archeological community that any known historical sites can be thought to represent the actual Sodom & Gomorrah of the Bible and so we only have that text, and particularly the Book of Genesis, to tell us about what was most probably simply symbolic centers of vice that found a place in an important book in order to make a point the authors felt needed to be handed down through generations.
Exactly what that point was is open to interpretation and although it's pretty clear that in general it was "Don't be wicked," what constitutes
wickedness as far as the denizens of those cities go is what has given rise to a lot of hub-bub.
Two completely different groups, for entirely different reasons, assert that the wickedness so severe that it brought down the wrath of God is homosexuality.
Many American Christian Fundamentalists believe that a widespread practice of homosexuality led to the destruction of the cities. The development of the English word sodomy suggests, I'm sure to them, that they aren't the only English speaking people to have adopted this interpretation, and to a large extent they would be right in terms of the relatively recent past. This is the basis for their belief that the practice of homosexuality is a sin.
The second group
wonders if the first (fundamentalist Christians) went to the Bible to find knowledge of what God considered to be sinful or to find justification for their existing hateful attitudes toward homosexuality. However, this doesn't define the motivation of members of the second group because there are plenty of other people (including me) who are not members, but who wonder the same thing.
Members of the second group are probably more often than not advocates of Gay Rights, but there's not much traction to be gained in the advancement of those rights by accepting that God destroyed these cities because they were filled with Gays. No, the second group is essentially anti-Christian (Christophobes?) and wishes to demonstrate the hateful, violent nature of the Old Testament God (The same guy who shows up in the New Testament) and the hateful, violent nature of his followers who accept such an attitude as divine, and use it to support their efforts to deprive other human beings of their rights.
That this is a matter involving religion, history (ancient and modern) and languages guarantees there is no simple answer to any question raised. There are those who seriously study the Bible who claim the wickedness of the Sodomites was basic inhospitality. This sounds like a sin deserving of at most a wrist slap rather than total annihilation, but as someone who well understands nomadic culture you, of course, realize that the tradition of hospitality is sacred among most nomadic people and particularly those who live in very inhospitable lands where the refusal to welcome a stranger and provide him or her with food and shelter can easily be a death sentence. I don't know if it's ever been the case, but I can easily imagine gays and lesbians as well as straight advocates for Gay Rights, who are also Christian, preferring inhospitality to be the wickedness that doomed the cities.
The story of Lot, the three angels and the Sodomites is a strange one which is not surprising for a book filled with strange tales, and while the writing in the King James version doesn't really convey the sense of an incident charged with anger and violence, many interpretations assume it was and for good reason. It's hard to imagine that Lot offered his daughters to a mob for any reason, but if we assume that for the character Lot, protecting God's messengers was more important than even the innocence and safety of his daughters, the action taken is only consistent with the character if he deeply fears the Sodomites and their intentions with the angels, whether it be rape or some other violence.
Since we only know Sodom & Gomorrah from the Biblical tales and reference, we know they were cities where homosexuality may or may not have been prevalent but where something of an innocent mix-up culminates with a mob demanding that three strangers be turned over to them so that they can be raped or harmed in some way. I don't know about the people who comprise your "
most of us" but I don't think one has to be a nomadic rube from the dunes to consider such a place bad.
On top of all of this is the fact that before the incident in Sodom, God's angels tells Abraham that God has it in for the twin cities because of their "grievous sin," and it's Abraham's attempt to save the cities, with the help of his nephew Lot, that leads to the incident. So even if it was a mob of homosexuals demanding that Lot give them the angels so they could gang rape them, all that sin did was foil Abraham's attempt to save them and ensure that God's wrath would fall upon them.
Throughout the Old and New Testament there are references related to the nature of the sins of the people of the destroyed cities and they include inhospitality, arrogance, thievery, adultery, gluttony, lying and failure to care for the needy. To the extent that any aspect of their sin was sexual in nature, I think it probably had more to do with lustful depravity and rape rather than specifically homosexuality. Public fornication, like rape, whether homosexual or heterosexual, is something quite different that consensual practices behind closed doors, and various translations of the words used by different languages in which the pre-English Bibles were written include practices like bestiality. Even "sodomy," the English word with it's origin in the Biblical story doesn't refer only to gay sex, but covers a number of sexual practices which may be engaged in by heterosexuals and homosexuals alike.
In the end though (no pun intended) Sodom & Gomorrah, more than likely didn't exist and are simply symbolic of the possible wicked excesses of humans rather than cosmopolitan diversity and culture that might bedazzle, bemuse and generate fear and loathing in yokels from the Heartland of America or the deserts of Judea.
So too are there multiple groups who love to associate Hollywood with Sodom & Gomorrah. There are the sensationalist writers and film makers who found the Biblical cities to be an easy, flashy metaphor for a town that probably had as much human wickedness in it as a dozen or more other American cities but was distinguished by a shiny but thin shell of glamour and dreams-come-true that surrounded it.
There are those pesky fundamentalists who quite intentionally want to link Sodom & Gomorrah to Hollywood through the
abomination of homosexuality and there are, as well, the self-styled sophisticates who also want to link the cities as urban centers of culture and diversity under attack by the fearful ignorant who "
... get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment." These pathetic philistines, they would be down-right funny if they weren't so dangerous!
Hollywood is indeed symbolic and perhaps more so than any other city in America. So much so that even people who think of it with fondness don’t really imagine it as a town where people live and work, succeed and fail and suffer and die without ever being involved in the making of a movie.
Trump’s tweet though has far more to do with the relatively new layer of symbolism Hollywood has wrapped itself in than any of the old clichés (including Sodom & Gomorrah). For millions of people living throughout the US and not just on farms in Kansas, ranches in Wyoming and the bayous of Louisiana, Hollywood is a symbol of self-absorbed, sanctimonious, left-wingers who have such a paucity of political comprehension that they don’t really even deserve to be classified by ideology.
It is a symbol of major wealth and minor common sense and the town seems steal the latter from its most famous denizens in direct proportion to the riches it bestows upon them; regardless of where in this country they may have been born and raised. Hollywood is a town of clueless hypocrites who build walls to seclude their private beaches from local riffraff while literally ranting about what a monster Trump is for wanting to build a wall to curtail illegal immigration. Movie Stars who as amateur Eco-Warriors fly in private jets half way around the world to participate as honored guest speakers at a summit of Climate Change gasbags, and afterwards drive in a chauffeured limousine half way round the block to their luxury hotel.
It is symbolic of a class of people so utterly shallow that they hold multiple extravagant ceremonies for the purpose of awarding themselves trophies while homeless people are kept far away from the red carpet by fawning (Democrat) city officials. Ceremonies during which they give “
courageous” speeches sneering at Americans’ love of football, expressing their desire to punch the President of the United States in the face, and utter this, perhaps the most fatuous, self-indulgent comment I may have ever read:
Viola Davis, Accepting the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress wrote:I became an artist—and thank God I did—because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.
And no, in general, most of what I see Hollywood standing for doesn't apply to Ronald Reagan, Patricia Heaton, James Earl Jones, Clint Eastwood, Gary Sinise, Angie Harmon, Vince Vaughn, Gary Oldman, Robert Duval and other conservative/libertarian actors. Even James Wood who was outspoken in his opposition to Obama never told a crowd of hundreds of thousands that he fantasized about blowing up the White House or while accepting an award promised he would punch the president in the face. Can anyone possibly imagine Janine Turner turning in a crazed performance like Ashley Judd's at the Woman's March, or Gloria Estefan offering to give BJs to anyone voting for Trump? Schwarzenegger may have been a Republican but I'm not sure he's much of a conservative (a great artist though!)
To the extent that God rained fire and stone on the cities of Sodom & Gomorrah for the
haughty arrogance of their people, the Korean grocer, the White bus driver, the Latino librarian and all the other lesser bright stars of Hollywood better start packing and make plans to move to Anaheim because no one is going to send their nephew with three angels to try and save you.
