>Ah ... now you are talking a different story. Most mainstream Christians have maintained since the beginning, that God has extablished laws and commandments that must govern sexual behavior. I know this is an extremely volitile subject,

Because Christianity (and other religions) made it so. It's a touchy subject because free dispute thereof goes against the limitations they imposed.

>and has become more so in the last several decades. There are several social (Christians call them moral) issues that Christians maintain strong views on that have increasingly gone against the grain of modern society.

Now since modern society exists only for a century or two, and Christianity beats them there by at least 10:1, it's the modern society which has turned against the grain of Christianity (and others). Other than this switch of direction, I agree.

>Christians have maintained the same belief system since the Apostle Paul derided homosexuality in the first chapter of his letter to the Romans in the 1st century A.D.

Now I begin to wonder why would he do that. The explanation by god may have gone in any direction - that all love is god given, no matter the kind, to all love is bad love unless sanctioned by, so I'd rather attempt simple economy and politics.

In those days, there was power in numbers. Breeding was what made a people strong; Romans could only keep so much army there, and if there was more of the people of Israel, the stronger would they be. So everyone had the duty to make more of themselves - i.e. cannon fodder production existed way before cannons were invented - and the homosexuals were reneging on that duty. I figure any further reasoning was only to hide this basic equation.

>They see the western way of life, with its sexual depravity and ungodly (i.e. secular) mindset as an unwanted and highly negative invasion of their culture.

I don't think it's the "depravity" (a term which is still unclear to me) that they're against, it's the secularism, rule of civil law, freedom from the rule of priests, personal freedoms (choice of partners, freedom of not-arranged marriage, freedom from duty to protect family honor at all times etc etc), and freedom to enjoy without remorse (even simple things like personal choice of garments) that they are seeing as disruptive when imported into their culture.

I see it as mostly a power struggle - the clerics are in power there, and they see their people exposed to influence of a culture that may weaken their power, or even take it away. Of course they'll apply every dirty propagandistic trick from the book to arouse their masses against the freedoms they may gain - exactly the same way the West reacted against Communism, nothing new there.

>Well, guess what. This is the same message that Christian leaders have been trumpeting for decades.

And probably for the same reason :).

>For years, Christian leaders have been saying to America, "If you keep up this kind of behavior, God will punish." (I remember one leader, 20 or so years ago, stating that if God didn't punish America, he would owe an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah. I chuckled at the time. In hind sight, it is kind of sobering.)

IOW, "if you don't think our ideas are better, then we'll threaten you".

>So Falwell's conclusion, as muddy as it may have been, was gounded somewhat in fact.

And the fact is that there are like-minded people in the other camp who did what he was thinking.

>I know that this view is rather simplistic, and that there are many other reasons why Muslims hate the west (including Israel),

Yes, there are also centuries of humiliation and plundering of their countries.

>at least we can see how Falwell, latching onto this one facet of the issue, would come to the conclusions that he did.

Which doesn't make him a saint, nor his hate speech justified. It's just an explanation of his twisted logic.