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h) CONSENTING PHYSICAL RELATIONS OF MULTIPLE MEN AND WOMEN
OLD TESTAMENT: How can you go beyond the indecency of adultery and prostitution? The fertility cults in the Near East at the time of the Israelites shows you how this was possible. There not only clandestine prostitution was tolerated, but beyond that they actively practiced religiously sanctioned and publically implemented cult prostitution, which is a clear case of polyamory. As these practices were an utter abomination to the God of Israel, they are never described in the Bible. Only here and there we have hints about them. They include the names of the major gods worshipped in these Canaanite fertility rites, like Baal (89 times in the OT) and his mother and consort Asherah (37x in the OT), as well as cult prostitution associated with these abominable deities. Here are some references about that: "But thus shall you deal with them (i.e. the Canaanite people): you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire." (Deuteronomy 7:5). The stone pillars symbolized the male reproductive organ, the Asherim were wooden poles adorned with fertility symbols, and the carved images portrayed obscene nude goddesses. "21 You shall not plant any trees as an Asherah beside the altar of the LORD your God that you shall make. 22 And you shall not set up a pillar, which the LORD your God hates." (Deuteronomy 16:21,22) In spite of these clear interdictions, the Israelites did worship the fertility gods of the Canaanites, inciting the judgment of the God upon his people Israel. Here is an example from the time before the Temple in Jerusalem was built: "25 That night the LORD said to him (to Gideon): 'Take your father's bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it' " (Judges 6:25). Later, in the time after the Temple in Jerusalem was built, we read: "6 And he (i.e. king Josiah) brought out the Asherah from the house of the LORD, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people. 7 And he broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes, who were in the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah" (2 Kings 23:6.7). Not only male prostitutes were practicing detestable public polyamory, but also female cult prostitutes. The prophet Hosea prophesied against them: "13 They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains and burn offerings on the hills, … Therefore your daughters play the whore and your brides commit adultery. 14 … the men themselves go aside with prostitutes and sacrifice with (female) cult prostitutes and a people without understanding shall come to ruin" (Hosea 4:13.14). The Israelites did all this in spite of the clear interdiction of the LORD through Moses: "17 None of the daughters of Israel shall be a cult prostitute, and none of the sons of Israel shall be a cult prostitute" (Deuteronomy 23:17). Because of the outright disobedience of his people, the LORD threatened to bring his judgment over them through his prophet Ahijah: "The LORD will strike Israel as a reed is shaken in the water, and root up Israel out of this good land that he gave to their fathers and scatter them beyond the Euphrates, because they have made their Asherim, provoking the LORD to anger" (1 Kings 14:15). And this is exactly what happened later on, when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom Israel, driving them to exile in Assyria, and when still later the Babylonians conquered the southern kingdom of Judah driving them off to exile in Babylon. (Read 2 Kings 17:7-23) This means that the catastrophic demise of Israel as a kingdom was the result of participating in the abominable rites of religious polyamory, worshipping fertility gods and idols in unabashed public prostitution.
NEW TESTAMENT: At the time of Christ these temptations from Old Testament times were no longer present among the Israelites. Instead you had the new powers surrounding them, who were heavily influenced by Hellenistic polytheism and idolatry. These also included fertility gods and goddesses with associated temple prostitution. They are not explicitly mentioned, but lumped together in the expression "sexual immorality". Paul had to deal with it in his first letter to the Corinthians, because the port city of Corinth was a renowned center of cultic, i.e. religious, prostitution. This is why in the same letter he warns of sexual immorality and of idolatry: "Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body" (1 Corinthians 6:18) and "Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry" (1 Corinthians 10:14). -- And at the end of times a huge super power will emerge, which will entice the followers of Christ to succumb to its religious temptations, which are described using sexual immorality: "Another angel, a second, followed, saying 'Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality" (Revelation 14:8). This means that the Bible ends with a vision of a global catastrophic judgment on global religious polyamory in the same way as the nation of Israel catastrophically went under for their Canaanite religious polyamory.
KORAN: Here the Koran has drastically changed the Bible. You find in the book of Allah no trace of the kingdom(s) of Israel ending in a judgment for religious polyamory. Also the visions of John in the book of Revelation were nearly completely omitted in the Koran, specifically the religious polyamory of Babylon the great. -- The Koran itself does not explicitly touch on the subject of polyamory, because the legislation of the Koran was aimed at legalizing all sexual relationships of Muslim men with women. And Muslims dumped any religious practices of the Arabs prior to Islam into the bottomless pit of the "Age of Ignorance" (Asr al-Jahiliyya). Therefore the Koran hardly ever gives us a glimpse of religiously sanctioned polyamorous practices that may have existed in Arabia prior to Islam. In fact the Koran tried its very best to categorically separate between sex and Allah. It attacked the Triunity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, because it envisaged it as involving a sexual relationship between Allah and the virgin Mary producing their common son 'Isa: "(At the time,) when Allah said (to 'Isa in heaven): 'Isa, Son of Mary! Did you tell people: 'Take me and my mother as gods besides Allah'?' He ('Isa) said: 'Praise to you! (How could I have said something like that?) I have no right to say something, for which I have not right (to say it). …' " (Sura 5:116). Also every Muslim prays many times a day: "He (Allah) did not give birth, nor was he given birth to!" (Sura 112:3) Allah's involvement with sex in the Koran is restricted to the purely creational: He creates the sperm of a man in intercourse with a woman (Sura 59:58.59) and in the womb of the woman he creates the sperm to become an embryo, he creates the embryo to become a fetus and so on until he creates the baby at its birth (Sura 23:13-14), as quoted above under case 1 (Monogamy). This is why, according to Hadith, Muslims in the act of intercourse should pronounce the name of Allah so that the Devil would not wrap himself around the male organ of the man producing a satanic child. -- Pre-Islamic times probably did have fertility rites associated with multiple gods. A faint echo of this is found in the so-called Satanic verses: "19 Have you considered al-Lat and al-'Uzza 20 and Manaat, the third (and) other (female deity):" (Sura 53:19.20),' which according to Hadith went on with the words: "Those are the high(-flying) Crane birds, whose intercession is hoped for." Here al-Lat (Mrs. Allah?) may have been understood as having two daughters (from Allah?) named al-'Uzza and Manaat. This would constitute a divine family. Muslims believe that Satan revealed this verse to Muhammad and that Allah later revealed to him that the latter two phrases should be taken out of the Koran. The center of worship of these female deities was in Ta'if, in the mountains about 1500 meter above sea level further inside the Hijaz from Mecca. Possibly there were fertility rites associated with such idols. Some scholars even speculate if the Kaaba itself was not a center of fertility rites, with the black stone encased in precious metals symbolizing the female reproductive organ and the persons walking around the Kaaba with this stone built into its southeast corner originally doing their circumambulation in a naked fashion. Whatever was the case prior to Islam, Muslims have utterly suppressed any of these pre-Islamic rites, because Muhammad distanced himself from all such practices and beliefs, demanding an utter slave-like surrender to an unknowable Allah alone. Therefore today in Islam polyamory is utterly forbidden.