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Loving homosexuals as Jesus would
How would Jesus love a homosexual? Joe Fairclough, a British man jailed after he refused help from a homosexual librarian, and Chad Thompson, author of Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would, give two different answers.
Manchester Evening News said that when a homosexual librarian offered to assist Fairclough, he asked for another employee. “He asked why,” Fairclough said. “I pointed towards a ring on his finger and said I didn’t approve of two men being married. He then told me I was barred.”
When Fairclough went to the police station to complain, they jailed him for violating public order and released him eight hours later. In the past year, Fairclough has posted anti-homosexual comments on the library notice board and has protested outside the library against homosexual adoption. Fairclough, described as a “devout Christian,” defended himself: “I am against homosexuality but I don’t wish anyone any harm.”
Thompson responds to the incident, saying “It is not my job as a Christian to criticize those who are in the wrong unless God is specifically leading me to do it. Many people are so wounded that they cannot receive criticism without taking it personally. … My default position should be encouragement and love and grace.”
Thompson said when Christians discriminate against homosexuals, “It just adds to their shame, the preexisting litany of voices in their head telling them they’re not good enough.” Christians should not refuse help from a homosexual employee, and they should not refuse to hire, rent to, or serve homosexuals, Thompson said. He gave the example of a North Carolina ski resort that fired an employee because she was lesbian: “I don’t believe Jesus would have done that.”
“The Christian church needs a change of heart on this issue,” Thompson said. “Our emphasis needs to be not on what they aren’t, but on what they are. And they are deeply, madly loved by their Creator.”
back to top324 Comments to “Loving homosexuals as Jesus would”
Several times in the gospels, Jesus severely warned unrepentant sinners of a similar fate as that of “Sodom and Gomorrah”–ancient communities that God judged harshly for their sins (which included homosexuality) and their failure to repent.
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Mr. Fairclough needs to re-evaluate his understanding of how Christ confronted the sinner. The best examples are in the book of John. The Lord never condoned either the woman at the well or the woman caught in adultery, but he was kind and tender to both individuals. The Bible declares that we are to teach the truth in Love. Ephesians 4:15. 2 Timothy 2:24 and 25 clearly commands us that we are to confront with gentleness. Mr. Fairclough was clearly disobedient to the Scriptures. He was unkind to the Librarian who was kind to Mr. Fairclough. I suspect Mr. Fairclough’s brand of the Christianity is more like the Pharisees of old.
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To #2: You know what they say, “What’s old is new again”.
Since Jesus spoke about gays zero times in the Bible, I suspect, if he came back today and was asked about gays, he would say, “who”? And then he would say, “Oh them, amazing how much good has come from such a small group of people.” “Some of my father’s best work”. Since Jesus spent so much time admonishing sinners and clearly had nothing to say about gays, I suspect he would tell the Christians, “Be more like them”.
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RDean – Jesus referenced aversion to “porneia” (sexual immorality – that would include, but not be limited to, homosexual conduct).
Jesus didn’t itemize all of the components of “porneia” (the Book is only so long and human depravity in the aera of sex knows no bounds in its inventiveness).
Jesus didn’t say anything about not not engaging in the full range of standard deviations with two midgets and a pellican while swinging on a trapeze. Does that mean it’s fair game?
Jesus hung out with sinners; he advised them to repent (turn away from) their sins and to redirect themselves to living Godly lives. Jesus would do the same withthis particular subset of sinners.
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Actually, Jesus defined the nature of marriage in Matthew 19 (basing it upon a creation ordinance), and said it was to be between one man and one woman. Since He condemned the sin of sexual relations outside of marriage elsewhere, and since He affirmed that the moral law of the OT (which condemned homosexuality) was not to be abrogated, it would be a very difficult argument to presume that He would approve of homosexuality and call it a “good” thing.
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Was Jesus Gay?
Probably
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I don’t see how you can compare a man and a woman to two men. If Jesus had something to say about the gays, he would have said it. What is natural for a man and a woman is definitely NOT natural between two gays. The Bible says God is not a God of confusion. You guys are trying to read stuff into what Jesus said. If Jesus had anything to say about the gays, he would have been equally clear with what he said about casting the first stone and helping fellow man. Remember, the Bible was written by bronze age man. If you are going to follow it, follow all of it and not pick and choose because there are some people you don’t like and I suspect you don’t even know.
You: I have gay friends.
Me: No, you don’t. You only try to convince yourself that you do.
You: I just don’t approve of their lifestyle.
Me: Then you are not friends.
How come it’s so hard for the religious to be honest? Children don’t hate gays at all, they have to be taught. You know, all children are born atheists, since they have no religious beliefs.
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RDean, by your argument, since Jesus said nothing about pedophilia or bestiality, those would be permissible as well. KRM’s comments about “porneia”, which has a broad semantic range, would include all of these, including sexual sins such as fornication and, yes, homosexuality.
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Matt 19:4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]?
We now know that sex evolved millions of years prior to human appearance on the scene, so Jesus’ literal belief in Genesis here constitutes truly flawed reasoning. Just one more reason not to really care *what* Jesus thought about this issue, or marriage/divorce for that matter!
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BTW, the rest is instructive:
“The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”
11Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage[c]because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
I interpret this to mean that, for some, being gay is like a kingdom of heaven.
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The words below are from Jesus Christ. Jesus doesn’t speak of men with men, or women with women, Jesus speaks of a man and a woman from the creation and marriage between a man and a woman –
6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.
7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife;
8 And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.
9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder Mark 10:6-9
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Victoria shows us that Jesus was really against heterosexual divorce. I’m guessing he thought it was ok for same-sex couples.
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#8: pedophilia or bestiality,
Your the one making the comparisons. Says more about you than about the gays or Jesus.
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Let me point out that Jesus talked about what is NATURAL. A gay man marrying a straight woman is not natural. Ask Mrs. Haggard.
Two gay men together is natural.
A straight man with another man is not natural.
Jesus was against divorce. He was so clear it was a command. If he had any opinion on gays, he would have been equally clear. What is clear, is the Christian rant against gays did not come from Christ.
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What does REPROBATE mean? The Dictionary defines REPROBATE as 1. somebody immoral: a disreputable or immoral person – 2. religion somebody damned: somebody whose soul is believed to be damned –
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Romans 1
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Ah – Victoria also reminds us that, if you are a heterosexual idol worshipper, you’ll be forced to have gay sex, even though it’s not your thing. What an “inconvenience.”
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Refusing help from a gay person is quite insane and paranoid.
The military is a prime example. Throughout US history, there have been all kinds people who wanted to serve their country militarily, including gays, but were barred.
Black soldiers technically couldn’t, even if free, during the civil war until the military wised up and made black battalions but there were blacks that fought all along in white regiments too. Then they were segregated in\to supply units in WW2 until the Tuskegee Airmen came along
Women couldn’t fight or help much until the WAVES, WACS of WW2 and then they tossed out after it only to come back, fight their way into Military Academies and now serve on front lines and fly fighter planes.
Japanese were rounded up in WW2 but eventually the government wised up and formed Japanese battalions.
The list is quite endless. The military today should have learned from their past mistakes and at least, if they don’t have the guts to integrate, have gay battalions today ready and willing to fight for their country.
They could be called the Gay Battalions or Flotillas and fly pink colors for all I care.
I can see how the Battle of the Bulge movie could have been different though.
Patton: “I need the Gay Brigade to protect my left flank by attacking the Hun right here (pointing to a map), all day and all night if necessary while I take the rest of the 3rd Army on an end run to the right to attack the enemy’s left. Can you protect my left flank Col. Rod?”
Gay Col. Rod – “You can count on my Gay Brigade
General. I’ve seen your left flank and believe me, it is worth saving!”
Seriously, people can be bigoted idiots sometimes but the one thing you cannot fix in this world is stupidity.
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#15 btw, isn’t this the same guy who says women can’t go to church without a veil? I’m sure Victoria wears one, no? (1 Cor. 11:2-6)
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#17: Gay Battalions
Sorry, had to laugh a little. I don’t believe there are that many gays. They only make up 3% or so of the population. They always have been few and always will be few. It’s not like it’s a choice. Who would CHOOSE to be gay? It’s laughable.
The reason Christians and the religious go one about gays is because of a lack of reason. It’s like the stuff they say about evolution. Or better yet, people living with dinosaurs. If people lived with Rex and Raptors, those dinosaurs would be everywhere in the Bible, believe it. How could Bronze age people cope with 100 ton dinosaurs? The answer, they couldn’t. It’s laughable. Not to be taken seriously. Fodder for jokes and finger pointing.
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To RDean.
I think that we can agree that the bible makes a pretty stong case against homosexuality. Victoria quoted a verse in Romans that shows that you first point is null.
Secondly, I think your stereotype about how the christian majority foregoes lack of reason concerning gays is not because we think that people choose to be gay, it is usually viewed as either something people are fooled into thinking, like how people are fooled into shooting up schools, or to engage in drug abuse, due to societal mindsets and influences
OR
They believe that it is a curse. Possibly along the same lines as having a predisposition to alcoholism or addiction. The anti-Christian band wagon likes to suggest the reason Christians believe the way they do is from lack of reason, when there is just as much “Faith” (the word anti-christian movements have given a new definition to, using it to show stupidity) in what those who define themselves as agnostic anti-creationist scientists believe about evolution, the beginning of life, the estimated existence of earth etc, the list goes on and on.
So before you sling around the over used argument that Christians believe for lack of reason, tell me exactly how the world began, without a shadow of a doubt, based on your own reasoning and proven methods of calculation. And then we will talk about who has been “infected” by faith.
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Jesus would forgive a homosexual for his sin, though, as with the adulterer, He would in clear terms say “Go and sin no more.” Jesus believed that at bottom through the grave of God men and women are free to make moral choices.
The problem with the advocates of gay and other forms of loose sex is that they have no understanding of immoral or loose behavior. They buy into the shallow notion that behavior is determined by compulsive and irresistible naturalistic forces. One must be an alcoholic, adulterer, thief, et al simply because this is somehow a determined necessity; i.e. men and women are simply born that way. Serious Christians view such views as absurd.
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So before you sling around the over used argument that Christians believe for lack of reason, tell me exactly how the world began, without a shadow of a doubt, based on your own reasoning and proven methods of calculation.
I work in solar system formation; the world probably began as the coalescence of planetesimals in a circumstellar disk around the young Sun. We observe these disks around newly formed stars now; no reason to think the Sun was any different. Geochemical evidence in our solar system overwhelming supports this picture as well.
But, for the life of me, I can’t see how this has anything to do with the fact that Christians believe in Jesus because they want to feel immortal, not because there is good historical evidence for it. Why they also believe a strict and homophobic interpretation of Paul’s comments on idol worshippers (but a lax interpretation of Paul on women’s hats) is beyond me, but I’m quite sure “reason” has nothing to do with it. Probably just they’re general, hysterical, and ubiquitous fear of sex outside of heterosexual marriage and its possible (but not inevitable) consequences.
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oops – “they’re” should be “their” in the last sentence
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#1 I never want to hear anyone say to me again, “Don’t Gay the Thread.”
#2 I think the best answer is a separate homeland. apartheid. I think I spelled it correctly.)
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# 13. That’s called an ad aburdem argument — taking a bad argument and carrying it to its illogical conclusion. I mean no disrespect and certainly no direct comparison, only to show you how bad of an argument you are actually making.
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Chad Thompson sounds like a good Christian to me.
Joe Fairclough sounds like a person with an ax to grind.
Leaving aside the debate over whether Christianity approves or disapproves of homosexuality, let’s focus on the real issue:
People should treat others decently in public. Period.
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Spinoza and RDean,
Epilon pointed out that the evolutionist’s view of the beginnings of everthing are also based on faith, just as a Christian’s views are.
Why is this so hard for evolutionists to get? Oh, I know the answer but it is soooo hard for evolutionists to admit that they too have faith.
I have yet to see an evolutionist answer Epilon’s challenge. Your answer was a non=answer To answer is to concede defeat.
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I agree with everything Solon wrote.
And I would defy any of the pro-homosexual posters to list any citation to the New Testament where Jesus Christ endorsed sin. He simply did not do that, nor did he say that there are no consequences to sin.
I have to admit that one of the things that troubles me is how easily everyone seems to accept that someone was arrested for simply holding an opinion — whether you agree with his opinion or not. There is no difference between banning a person’s free speech and banning a book, as was alluded to in the post after the posted article. As much as I personally do not approve of Nazis parading through Skokie, Illinois, or elsewhere, I agree with the Supreme Court’s opinion that they had a right to do so. Controlling people’s thoughts and feelings — do you really want to live in a country that does that?
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No pun intended but….
Amen.
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Bob Buckles,
Epilon’s challenge (“…tell me exactly how the world began, without a shadow of a doubt”) is bogus – science doesn’t believe in the kind of certainty that religion professes. That’s why “faith” is not necessary in the same sense as Christians use it. If by “faith” you just mean “believing something to be true,” then of course everything anybody thinks might be true requires “faith.” But Christians require a “faith” that is inspite of empirical evidence (Blessed is he who believes and has not seen — or sensed in any empirical way whatsoever). Science rejects propositions that have no empirical basis as outside its purview and it rejects ideas that are refuted by empirical observations as categorically FALSE. Intelligent Design is an example of the former, YE Creationism is an example of the latter.
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And I would defy any of the pro-homosexual posters to list any citation to the New Testament where Jesus Christ endorsed sin. He simply did not do that, nor did he say that there are no consequences to sin.
And I would defy any of the anti-gay posters to list a citation where Jesus says directly that gay sex is a sin. There is no such passage. Not that I care whether there is or not!
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People should treat others decently in public. Period.
Does that include Coalition forces encountering terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, Anlir?
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Spinoza
(That’s why “faith” is not necessary in the same sense as Christians use it. If by “faith” you just mean “believing something to be true,” then of course everything anybody thinks might be true requires “faith.”)
-Your point obsoletes itself. You believe you have refuted parts of the bible through scientific practice, yet you don’t believe in your evidence enough to say you are above christians in believing whole heartedly in what you say. “Science doesn’t believe in the kind of certainty that religion professes.” You are saying we are wrong because of your evidence, but it is evidence that you don’t totally believe in. To me, this sounds like you base opinions on thinks you THINK are right, through processes you can test to be SOMEWHAT accurate. This means you have some sort of FAITH in what you do, or belief (in this case that the bible has been refuted) or you would not have made that statement.
I can only speak for myself here, but this is what I see the argument between christians and those who are anti-christian beliefs coming down to.
I base my FAITH in the love experienced from a higher power, the unfolding of his plan in my life, a plan that was never bought from a pastor at some emotional rally, or won through dedication and commitment, but through Grace. It is an evidence that is felt within, not something I could ever explain in words. Evidence I see laid out before me, plain as any math problem or english paper.
Whereas I feel the scientific community likes to have hard facts, which are rare to find these days. If it cant be put onto hard paper, or explained in logical terms without detrimental variables then the hypothesis was faulty. They believe only what they see in a sense. But in this, like I was stating above, requires a certain amount of FAITH. FAITH in the fact that matter can never be created or destroyed, But yet that it was still Created somewhere.
I never could figure that one out.
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Sorry, above post should say “Things” not “Thinks” in line 10.
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#30 Spinoza
“science doesn’t believe in the kind of certainty that religion professes. ”
You tell me I am wrong for believing by telling me your beliefs.
“Science rejects propositions that have no empirical basis as outside its purview…”
How can you judge God? Can you measure him? detect Him? posit Him? God, by definition, is outside the purview of science because it is outside the senses. Therefore instead of rejecting God, would it not be better to just say that He is outside the purview of science?
For me, the reason evolution is so important to homosexuality is because there is no judgement of right or wrong if there is no world outside that which science rules. Science has no morality. (Eugenics, abortion, sodomy, sex determination, in-breeding, Frankenstein)
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I agree with Solon #21 and several others who point out that Jesus would treat homosexuality just like adultery or any number of other sexual sins. He would be kind without condoning sin.
The salient point that is so often missed is that Jesus’ atonement covers all sin. It does not matter how bad your sin is. He’ll accept you just as you are.
I don’t understand why popular Christianity feels compelled to attack unbelievers for their sin. The answer is not sinning less. The answer is Jesus’ blood!
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned… John 3:17
So, an unbeliever is condemned regardless of his sin. A believer is accepted regardless of his sin. It is not about us. It is all about Christ and what he has done. This is a Christ-centric way of thinking. Thompson is on the right track. Joe Fairclough is a self-righteous Pharisee.
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Epilon/Buckles
How can you judge God? Can you measure him? detect Him? posit Him? God, by definition, is outside the purview of science because it is outside the senses. Therefore instead of rejecting God, would it not be better to just say that He is outside the purview of science?
That’s all I said – I actually believe in God,because I quite like him/her. But science does not provide any support for this belief. I also refuse to believe things about this God that are contradicted by nature. For example, radioisotope data show the Earth to be 4.5 billion years old. I , therefore, do not believe a literal account of Genesis as implying the Earth to be 6,000 years old.
I base my FAITH in the love experienced from a higher power, the unfolding of his plan in my life, a plan that was never bought from a pastor at some emotional rally, or won through dedication and commitment, but through Grace. It is an evidence that is felt within, not something I could ever explain in words. Evidence I see laid out before me, plain as any math problem or english paper.
Yes I have this experience too! What I found, though, is that this experience has nothing to do with fundamentalist Christian belief. I don’t have to believe in a literal Adam or literally resurrected Christ to have this experience. Since both of these are at odds with empirical evidence, I believe 100% that these are false.
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I can understand your argument about Adam, even though there have been studies to suggest that Radioactive Isotope dating is not accurate. Although I am curious as to what you consider yourself, since you don’t believe in a resurrected Christ, I assume you aren’t christian. Agnostic?
I am in no way condemning you or anything of the sort, I am just wondering your rational for saying Christ did not have a literal resurrection?
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#14 RDEAN:
Everything that a persons is attracked to naturally is not always OK in God’s eyes. Remember we are sinners. Sometimes the things we really want are sinful. I(a man) was born with a desire to have sex with just about every good looking woman I see. To my benefit I was taught that kind of behavior is not good. If I were born with a desire to steal it still would not be OK to steal. A man born with sexual desires for other men does not remove the sin from homosexual behavior.
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Without a literal resurrection there is no Christianity! (1 Cor 15:17)
Without a literal Adam and a literal Fall to bring about literal death there is no need for a literal Savior to overcome death and give us eternal life! (1 Cor 15:22)
I am not saying that people who are confused about these points cannot be Christian. All that is required is faith in Jesus Christ. However, without these points your Christianity will not make sense.
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#39: Remember we are sinners.
Go ahead and call yourself a sinner if you want. At least it gives you a reason for discriminating against people because of text written by Bronze Age men. I wonder if some were still wearing untreated animal skins?
Me, I want to think of myself as a good person. That means I want to appreciate people for the content of their character and their good heart, not because of they way they were born, whether it’s blue eyes, brown skin or because they are gay.
In the meantime, I see the good the very few numbers of gays have done for this country and I see the deep division brought on by the evangelicals including the attacks on science and the constitution. Their constant attacks on the few gays, relatively speaking, that exist underscore their viciousness and meanness. I totally understand why the Christians call themselves sinners. I just don’t understand why they revel in it?
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I’ve read Chad Thompson’s Loving Homosexual as Jesus Would. It’s an incredibly convicting book for someone who previously hadn’t thought through the issue much. Thompson’s right in this issue, and we need to accept that we have not loved folks as Jesus would have us. If we knew a person was living in sin with a girl/boyfriend, I think we would likely treat said person better than if we knew said person was gay. This should shame us, not because we’re being lenient of sin, but because prior to our conversion, WE were just as bad, sinful, and unrepentant!
Fairclough is correct in his initial reaction, per se, but has forgotten the price paid for his own sinfulness. His self-righteousness is pretty disgusting, as is his hypocrisy. Apparently, he has no problem being a religious jerk to people who need to see Christians practicing love and forgiveness.
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Me, I want to think of myself as a good person.
Well, then you have a false view of yourself. The point is that we are all dirty rotten scoundrels like the following verses explain. Realizing this makes God’s Grace all that much more Amazing. It should also cause us to sympathize with others and not be so quick to condemn. If my own sin is ever before me, I won’t be so interested in yours.
The problem is that we Christians have a tendency to fool ourselves into thinking we’re pretty good. We may clean up a few outward peccadillos but our old hearts are no less wicked than before. That is why God requires we obtain a new heart, one which is not our own. It is taking on the mind of Christ. Christ humbled himself and became a servant of sinners. That is the mind of Christ.
Joe Fairclough was not a servant of sinners, he was their judge and jury. He elevated himself by condemning others.
“There is none righteous, no not one.” (Rom 3:10)
“No one is good, except God along” (Mark 10:18)
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it.” (Jer 17:9)
“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” (Isaiah 64:6)
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Amen, Xion!
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Do you think Jesus might say something like, “your sins are forgiven,go and sin no more”.
No anger, no judgement, just a simple command, “stop that, it is a sin against nature and God who created it.”
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Come on, anyone can do Bible quotes, but it’s not thinking. Here:
James 5:14-15 Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, it shall be forgiven him.
Never go to a doctor.
Deuteronomy 23:3 No child of an incestuous union may be admitted into the community of the Lord, nor any descendent of his even to the tenth generation.
10 generations, hmmm.
Deuteronomy 23:2 No one whose testicles have been crushed or whose penis has been cut off may be admitted into the community of the Lord.
Owww.
Leviticus 21:16-23 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Tell Aaron that in all future generations, his descendants who have physical defects will not qualify to offer food to their God. No one who has a defect may come near to me, whether he is blind or lame, stunted or deformed, or has a broken foot or hand, or has a humped back or is a dwarf, or has a defective eye, or has oozing sores or scabs on his skin, or has damaged testicles. Even though he is a descendant of Aaron, his physical defects disqualify him from presenting offerings to the LORD by fire. Since he has a blemish, he may not offer food to his God. However, he may eat from the food offered to God, including the holy offerings and the most holy offerings. Yet because of his physical defect, he must never go behind the inner curtain or come near the altar, for this would desecrate my holy places. I am the LORD who makes them holy.”
How touching. Talk about caring.
Timothy 2:11-15 Women should listen and learn quietly and submissively. I do not let women teach men or have authority over them. Let them listen quietly. For God made Adam first, and afterward he made Eve. And it was the woman, not Adam, who was deceived by Satan, and sin was the result. But women will be saved through childbearing and by continuing to live in faith, love, holiness, and modesty.
Written by a man. Figures.
The fun thing about trading Bible quotes, the good ones equal the bad ones.
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I was merely pointing out that God disagrees with your self-assessment and your hermeneutics.
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Solon – 21 ____________The passage “Go and sin no more.” is paramount to turning from a past life of sin, and embracing life EVERLASTING with our LORD and Savior –
I’m glad to see you posting again, we have missed you -
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Although I have neither the time nor interest to immerse myself in in Biblical studies as deeply as many here do, the more I look at studies about His time, the less likely it seems to me (and I started very close to zero) that Jesus was born of a virgin, was the Son of God, or rose from the Dead. (For that matter, I doubt that he was born with a Capital Name; however, being a polite person some of the time, I conform to the Custom of this Time.)
People at wmb say over and over without absolute values I have no basis for morality and therefore I am likely (as an atheist) to see no reason not to do any bad thing that it pleases me to do.
One such bad thing, right from the start, is that I prefer the word “unethical” rather than “immoral” to describe bad things that people do.
In my inferior and insecure morality or ethics I consider activities such as murder, torture, theft, abuse of children, and destruction of the human race–which as I often say is quite likely by 2099 though the year 2012 as many cult figures argue is most likely is certainly in the realm of possibility–in any case, I consider such activities as immoral/unethical.
I don’t consider two adult homosexuals loving each other and otherwise avoiding the kinds of bad behaviors I just provided as examples of really bad behavior.
Then it seems the argument against homosexuality come down to two arguments (which are too many because the irrationally spelled words “to/two/too’ are a trinity):
It’s bad because our absolute moral rules say it’s bad. I don’t believe there are absolute moral laws, as I’ve said (leaving me to depending on common sense for my morality which is good enough for qwerty, and what’s good enough for qwerty is sort of good enough for me though not as good as it is for qwerty)
It’s bad because of various mundane (non-religious) arguments such as “homosexuals are crazy” (an argument I consider crazy, as I’ve argued before) or because gay marriage will destroy our society, which I consider very low on the long list of activities and practices which are quite likely to destroy out society. For example, Britney Spears’ family values is much higher on the “hit parade” of activities which will destroy our society. For that matter, George Bush’s good judgment and practical prowess on military and economic matters are a whole lot more likely to destroy our society that homosexual love.
For that matter, it is quite likely that global cooling will destroy our society, though it’s doubtful that human activity has much to do with it happening (as is often pointed out on worldmagblog).
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece
So, chill about homosexuality. Those of you who are tempted to engage in homosexual behavior, make up your mind and take a stand:
Either you are an evangelical Christian or you are a homosexual pervert.
You can’t be two kinds of pervert at the same time. Two kinds of perversion can’t occupy one person at the same time, known as the Third Law of Secular Nonsense, as is shown in the Book of Radical Agnosticism, which is true because it is 2000 years old and I am still writing it, burying it very close to where Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard dug up THEIR ancient books, making it look really old, inventing the ancient language of Tibtoudi to write it in, and then setting up teams of scholars, all named “James King,” to translate it into the authoritative James King version of the book of Radical Agnosticism.
By the way, the First Law of Secular Nonsense is that two types of nonsense can’t occupy one mind at the same time, so make up your mind. Your brand of nonsense (which is increasingly boring) or my brand of nonsense, which is fresher, though your mileage may vary, which is the Fourth Law of Secular Nonsense.
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Thompson said when Christians discriminate against homosexuals, “It just adds to their shame, the preexisting litany of voices in their head telling them they’re not good enough.” Christians should not refuse help from a homosexual employee, and they should not refuse to hire, rent to, or serve homosexuals, Thompson said. He gave the example of a North Carolina ski resort that fired an employee because she was lesbian: “I don’t believe Jesus would have done that.”
Great. So now Christians HAVE to vote for Larry Craig?
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No, they don’t.
But you can if you really want to.
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RN: How do you actually determine what is unethical?
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RN,
I think you transposed two letters in your invented ancient language!
But what happens when “common sense” isn’t common anymore? For example, if I’m being disturbed by noise outside at night, common sense might say to investigate the source (using due care). Once I decide the source is no real threat to me, am I free to remove the source? If it’s a raccoon (or a bunny eating my garden), am I free to shoot it? What if it’s a small child?
You and I both know that hurting another is wrong. But why is it common sense? Doesn’t it make sense to remove career rivals for personal advancement?
You and I are both happily married, but for those that aren’t it might make sense to hurt someone interfering in a relationship. As a matter of fact, we see it all the time. A “crime of passion”, they call it.
Not sure that makes a difference, though.
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Oh, for crying out loud–the above is mine. I started the post, transferred the laundry to the line, and came back. TJ must’ve swooped in during the interim.
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#49: Either you are an evangelical Christian or you are a homosexual pervert.
You can’t be two kinds of pervert at the same time.
Tell that to Ted Haggard.
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I have to leave in three minutes to go with my wife to the farmer’s market, so I won’t be able to type a very good reply. It will be a not very good short reply instead of a not very good long reply.
The not very good short reply is that is why I said common sense ethics is not as good for me as it is for qwerty.
I don’t think there is anything that inherently prevents humans from being evil.
I consider myself a moderately good person, though not an outstandingly good person. Although I didn’t get along very well with my parents, and didn’t like them very much, their values were fairly decent, and I was influenced by their words to become a fairly decent person, and some forces in my environment encourage me to act so, and some don’t and if I don’t leave write now I will be in trouble.
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People should treat others decently in public. Period.
*****Agreed. And, I would add, in private too.
I didn’t read the rest of the thread (yet?), but stopped at Anlir’s comment since it stated the proper response in a nutshell.
And, as most of you know, I do think homosexuality is a sin. But, in spite of what some gay activists claim is impossible, I also have friends and acquaintances who are gay.
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And, Spinoza, your comments about Jesus really are disgusting, and don’t lend themselves to any sort of reasonable debate. (And, I’m just as disgusted by the whole other crowd, who claims He was married and had children.) :-p
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I consider myself a moderately good person…
It is usually not a good idea to be a judge of your own case. What matters ultimately is God’s judgment; we shall all in varying degrees be found wanting.
Erik Erikson, the brilliant psychiatrist, remarked that most people are both better and worse than they imagine. This sounds about right.
One thing for sure from ample evidence is that we are all fallen human beings, notwithstanding the pieties of modern humanism.
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I agree with Llama. I have never really understood what the problem is with gay people in the military. At least, I don’t understand the logic if we’re also going to continue to let women in.
But, I don’t come from a military family, so maybe I’m not getting something about it.
And, I also don’t understand the need to broadcast one’s sexuality. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” would seem to work unless you somehow *need* to flaunt your private matters.
I suppose I wear a wedding ring, but I rarely even kiss my husband in public. One’s sexuality is supposed to be private and in one’s bedroom. So, why do so many homosexuals seem to want to flaunt it in front of the world?
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Oh, for crying out loud–the above is mine. I started the post, transferred the laundry to the line, and came back. TJ must’ve swooped in during the interim.
******Cameron,
A long time ago, my husband and I realized that our marriage would only survive by having separate computers!
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The fun thing about trading Bible quotes, the good ones equal the bad ones.
******Which is why people unarmed with having read and studied the WHOLE thing, should not engage in the Biblical quotation war. You, sir, are unarmed.
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#57: I also have friends and acquaintances who are gay.
But you think they are sinful? You clain to be “friends”? Sorry, acquaintances maybe, but not friends. Sinners are people who steal, murder, or pretend to be friends with someone all the while judging them as sinners behind their back. To me, that false witness. False witness is lying. Lying is a sin. Who is the sinner here?
#60: And, I also don’t understand the need to broadcast one’s sexuality.
Neither do I. But how much is broadcasting and how much is prying. I think if you ask those kicked out, the great majority weren’t broadcasting. That’s the assumption of the uninformed.
Now, ask the question, how many only said they were gay to get out of going to Iraq? Didn’t think of that huh? How many are hiding behind the gays and using them to cut and run?
Wake up people. Dozens of Arabic translaters kicked out for being gay? What are the odds that there was even a dozen gay Arabic translater IN the Army? We’ve been played. Christians predjudice has been used against us.
Once more they cut off their nose to spite their face.
In the meantime, we send sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters while kicking out doctors, nurses, engineers, translaters and over 800 in critical positions, 10,000 over all. Nuts.
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#62: should not engage in the Biblical quotation war.
Why not? A lot of Bible quotations are hysterical and bizarre. They were written by Bronze Age men. What can you expect?
Wisdom 3:13 Yes, blessed is she who, childless and undefiled, knew not transgression of the marriage bed; she shall bear fruit at the visitation of souls. So also the eunuch whose hand wrought no misdeed, who held no wicked thoughts against the LORD- For he shall be given fidelity’s choice reward and a more gratifying heritage in the LORD’S temple.
Gee, doesn’t sound too much like an endorsement of marriage.
Matthew 5:28 But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust in his eye has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So if your eye – even if it is your good eye – causes you to lust, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your hand – even if it is your stronger hand – causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
Hey, watch that wondering hand while you are laying in bed trying to sleep. Careful how much and how hard you scratch.
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Um…Wisdom what? That’s not in my Bible.
As for Matthew…ever heard of hyperbole? Do you understand how that was used in the culture of the time? Do you know how this verse has historically been interpreted? (By the vast number of people…obviously there have been a few like you who don’t “get it.”) Do you see any conservative, Bible-believing Christians missing body parts due to this verse?
Do you understand that when you freely quote without understanding the context, the history, the culture, the language, and the historical scholarly interpretation that most Christians just think you’re…well…less than well-educated? (The nicest way to put it.)
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And, RDEAN, you are on a list with a lot of Christians who take their Bible pretty seriously. So, quoting willy-nilly as you do doesn’t make any logical sense either. If you were truly searching, then we are more than willing to help you understand the verses you quote.
But, if you’re quoting because you think you’re somehow “revealing” something to us that we didn’t know, then you are truly barking up the wrong tree. Most of us have probably read that Matthew verse a hundred times or more, and heard it preached on at church as well, not to mention various Bible studies. So, you’re great “revelation” falls flat, and “reveals” nothing to anybody.
About the only other two reasons I could see for doing it beyond this false “shock value” that you think you’re getting, is 1) to sway the undecided or the very baby Christian, or 2) to get applause from your own “choir” (i.e. those who already believe the way you do.) Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense. For the vast majority of posters here, it just makes you look silly.
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Whoops! YOUR great “revelation”
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The concern I have with the religious is the way they want to spread the occult and mysticism into the lives of those that simply aren’t interested. They believe they have a mission to spread the fantasic to those that aren’t credulous. They are somehow convinced that forcing “supernatural” onto the rest of the country is somehow “saving” the country.
They are dangerous. It can’t be any more clear.
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#65: Do you understand how that was used in the culture of the time?
The entire Bible is from the culture of the time. Why try to force America to follow it in this time?
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RDEAN The entire Bible is from the culture of the time. Why try to force America to follow it in this time?
The Bible speaks eternal truth, though admittedly through the words of fallen and to some extent time bound men. Also, Christians from the time of Augustine have accepted that biblical truth does not supersede rational truth. When it comes to the issue of homosexuality, both the Bible and reason regard it as a disorder of the law of nature and nature’s God, protestations of the militant homosexual political movement notwithstanding.
Just now if any group is trying to force its views it would be the tiresome secularist liberals who suffer the illusion that they are superior to Christians and other religious views.
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A lot of Bible quotations are hysterical and bizarre. They were written by Bronze Age men. What can you expect?
Good point, but you are ignoring the big picture. Of course, I think you already know this. Those verses were specifically written that way so that skeptics and cynics will miss the message. (1 Cor 3:19; Matt 11:25). It takes humility to realize that the foolishness of God is wiser than men. Man builds a refrigerator and calls it Fantastic! God creates a solar system and calls it good.
Note: I provide verses, not to get in a quotation war but to provide biblical authority for what I am saying. You aren’t quibbling with me but God’s word.
The fact remains that the Bible is the world’s foremost piece of literature. No other book comes close. Make fun of it just makes you look stupid. Go to an English professor and mock the Illiad or Shakespeare and you will simply look like an idiot.
If you had a belief system that was written down I could be snarky and mocking too. I could poke fun at your belief that pond scum spontaneously generates cab drivers, but what is the point?
There are reasonable answers for all of your questions. When you decide to be reasonable let us know.
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TRS,
We have separate computers, but one wireless home network–we swap between them all the time.
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All my friends are sinners who engage in sinful behavior. Indeed I am a sinner too. It is the fool that tries to pretend he is not a sinner. No one but Jesus has kept the 6th Commandment perfectly. It is dangerous to pretend that man is not sinful and it is damnable to pretend that sin is OK. I would like to rephrase the question, “How did Jesus love the money changers in the temple.” Some might say what is wrong with money changers, they are not primary spreader of AIDS, the do not undermine the support of the nuclear family, …
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RDean, you need to do some homework or no one will take you seriously. I wouldn’t argue with a Marxist if I haven’t read Marx’s Communist Manifesto.
“Its foolish to Listen to someone who won’t listen to you.” So when what we say goes over your head, why bother?
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There is a certain style of writing and arguing on worldmagblog I find especially tiresome and condescending.
I call it the magisterial style.
From some definitions and examples I found on line, I bolded the examples that most seem to apply to my point:
Of, relating to, or characteristic of a master or teacher; authoritative: a magisterial account of the history of the English language.
Sedately dignified in appearance or manner
Dogmatic; overbearing.
Of or relating to a magistrate or a magistrate’s official functions.
offensively self-assured or given to exercising usually unwarranted power; “an autocratic person”; “autocratic behavior”; “a bossy way of ordering others around”; “a rather aggressive and dominating character”; “managed the employees in an aloof magisterial way”; “a swaggering peremptory manner”
autocratic, bossy, high-and-mighty, peremptory, dominating
domineering – tending to domineer
used of a person’s appearance or behavior; befitting an eminent person; distinguished, imposing, grand
dignified – having or expressing dignity; especially formality or stateliness in bearing or appearance
I’ve seen such discourse from a variety of people, but the two screen names I most associate with this type of discourse are Joel Mark and Solon.
They seldom if ever speak for themselves personally, but always speak as if they are channeling the voice of God.
Any concession or attempt to speak with modesty or restraint by a person presenting a point of view that differs from them is taken as a sign of weakness, and they immediately zero in with a slam as if they are pounding a ping pong ball for a killer point. Kim has spoken of being driven away from early churches by a rigid fundamentalism. As I was not raised in a Christian fundamentalist family, I’m not as responsive to it, but the pompous, dogmatic, magisterial, condescending tone such as the following does raise the hair on the back of my neck:
It is usually not a good idea to be a judge of your own case. What matters ultimately is God’s judgment; we shall all in varying degrees be found wanting.
Erik Erikson, the brilliant psychiatrist, remarked that most people are both better and worse than they imagine. This sounds about right.
One thing for sure from ample evidence is that we are all fallen human beings, notwithstanding the pieties of modern humanism.
This could have been presented in a conversational and questioning tone that I would have considered making a reasonable point. However, I don’t take it that way, and the last time around with Solon he was presenting an argument that I found absurd, nasty: and dangerous: that homosexual people are mentally ill. This really has nothing to do with his religious beliefs; similar to his arguments that “Darwinism” (a label that has little to do with arguments against the “theory of evolution” but is used to add an extra little fillip of insult and condescension) to make his argument sound better.
It is interesting that the other person who presented a similar argument was Dr. Dave, but Dr. Dave and I were able to reach a point of reasonable and respectful conversation, though we still differ to a great degree.
Joel Mark and I differ to an extreme degree, but I don’t detect the rigid attempt to domineer that comes across in almost every message from Solon.
Of the various people I have interacted with at worldmagblog, Solon is the one that I find least conducive to conversation and communication.
Trying to talk to him is like trying to talk to a video game where the opponent’s voice is rather like the voice of computer in the movie 2001: A Space Oddysey.
Frankly, I think Solon has been using this tone of argument for so long that he cannot present a point of view in a straightforward manner.
Solon, if you can every address me in a normal tone of voice, and try using a conversational style of discourse, I will be glad to try and have a conversation. For the nonce, try talking to qwerty or Luke or one of the other tolerant, patient atheists.
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Message #73 is the type of message I consider the disingenuous evangelical argument about homosexuality. Safe sexual conduct is a large problem in our society. Lots of heterosexual and homosexual people engage in careless sex. Lots of homosexual and heterosexual people engage in careful, promiscuous sex and minimize the risk of spreading disease and creating unwanted pregnancies.
Safe sex (through use of condoms) is better than unsafe, unprotected sex. One can advocate sex limited to married heterosexual partners for a variety of reasons.
However, even if some homosexuals practice in one form or another fidelity or safe sex, it doesn’t matter, because it’s against God’s will anyway. So message #73 and a variety of similar messages are not serious argumentation; they are just religious moralizing with frosting.
In a way, I prefer Victoria’s bold Bible quotes; she spends less effort in trying to dress up her messages as anything other than fanatical Bible-thumping street-corner preaching.
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#76 Random, I agree with you that the utilitarian approach to this issue comes up short. If sin had weight, it would be possible to show that some homosexuals do better on the scales of morality than some Christians. For example, Paul and Moses were involved in murder. Peter hacked off a guy’s ear. etc.
For this reason, I have always argued that what makes homosexuality sin is “because God says so”. Marriage is holy “because God says so”. Of course, marriage and sexual also teach us something about God, since he made us this way for a reason. It is a picture of the intimate personal relationship he desires with mankind.
But one cannot take such an argument to the statehouse. I hate when Christians feel compelled to preach a gospel of works to unbelievers. The gospel is about Christ’s work, not our own. I am also grieved when the false prophets say that hurricanes etc. are God’s judgment for homosexuality. Homosexuality between two people is a lesser sin than false prophecy, which misrepresents God to thousands.
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RN …Solon he was presenting an argument that I found absurd, nasty: and dangerous: that homosexual people are mentally ill.
I’ve never remarked that homosexual people are mentally ill. I regard homosexual behavior as disordered and sinful, though decidedly not a mental illness.
Some homosexual people seek therapy for their disordered behavior and have had some success. Should you be seriously interested in this subject, you might visit the home page of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, a respected professional organization.
One, also, finds your moral lectures on the tone of World Blog comments rather jejune and tiresome.
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Thank you for your reply.
Perhaps we are a couple of people who deserve each other.
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“Bible thumper” ……………… I would rather thump the Bible on my way to Heaven, than …….. thump sin day after day, on purpose, ignoring God, ignoring His Word, and then ending up in an Eternity without Christ – everyone knows the rest of the story, but maybe they will have to see and experience it for themselves one day -
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Thank you for your comment Victoria. I believe you mean well, so I try not to think ill of you. I appreciate that you are concerned that homosexuals (as well as Jews, of course) are persecuted in Iran.
Although homosexuals are not “persecuted” in the United States in the same way they are in locations such as Iran, I don’t agree with the attitudes demonstrated by many of the evangelical Christians here at wmb, and I don’t think they are especially helpful to solving many of the problems we face.
The intensity of the way you express you beliefs about religion don’t persuade me.
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#78: I’ve never remarked that homosexual people are mentally ill. I regard homosexual behavior as disordered
dis·or·der [ diss áwrdər ]
noun (plural dis·or·ders)
Definition:
1. illness: a medical condition involving a disturbance to the usual functioning of the mind or body
4. criminal law unruly behavior: a public disturbance or breach of peace
Is English your second language?
#78: Some homosexual people seek therapy for their disordered behavior and have had some success.
I haven’t read a lot about it, but everything I have read says ZERO success. You can get a gay male to sleep with a woman, but if he is attracted to men, he will ALWAYS be attracted to men. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. Actually, to not know that might indicate a mental “disorder”.
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#78
Thank you, again, for your comment. I don’t have your previous comments about homosexuality and the definition in the APA manual availale at hand and I don’t want to rehash an old argument just for the sake of stirring up the embers. I will say that I don’t feel any urge to back down from what I said before in regard to the issues (issues briefly summarized below.)
http://www.utmb.edu/utmbmagazine/annals/default.asp
I will say:
1) I think human sexuality is a very complex and difficult issue that has caused humans many problems and difficulties throughout our history and continuing throughout the present day. I don’t think we know nearly as much as we think we do and jump to all sorts of questionable conclusions based on our own experiences, observations, emotions and beliefs (religious, political, etc.)
2) I think humans generalize in this area in very questionable ways. In terms of my own experiences: I have married (and faithful) to one woman for almost 42 years. I have no doubt that I am a heterosexual man. We have a daughter who lives in a relationship with another woman. We are on good terms with them and my daughter’s partner’s 3-year-old child who was sired by a fellow alumni by artificial insemination and who remains involved with his daughter’s life. I consider them a fine family and their child seems to be developing well. I don’t take anything for granted; many things can go wrong at any time in any family.
In my 63 years of life, I have known many homosexual people. For example, both my wife and I have had a homosexual man (different individuals) as a boss in our jobs. At the same job where my wife worked, she also worked with two gay men who were secretaries. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least ten homosexuals (and bi-sexual people in addition) who at one time or another were co-workers (both sexes. I’ve also known quite a few others in various social contexts.
I would describe them in general as varied people. Some functioned well in their lives; some did not. Some seemed to have stable relationships; some did not. For example, my daughter and her partner had two females friends who had an eight-year relationship that ended in a difficult and ugly breakup, like an ugly divorce among heterosexuals.
I say this because on a couple of occasions at wmb people have said that perhaps my daughter and her partner were the only homosexuals I’ve ever had contact with, remarks that irritated me considerably.
3) Based on my experience, which I don’t claim as definitive or profound or scientific, I think the phenomena of homosexuality is a lot more complicated and varied than people want to credit.
I will summarize the “PC” (”politically correct”) position as people are born with an innate sexual orientation and can never change, and are never “seduced” or “indoctrinated” into a sexual orientation. I don’t think that is completely true. I have known people who were (as far as I could see) “experimenting” with their sexual identity and switching partners (between genders).
I will summarize what I call the “RC” (”Righteously Correct”) position as people are quite flexible and can be indoctrinated and seduced into quite a variety of sexual activities, and can be brought into the “correct” sexual values and behavior through activities such as prayer and counseling and therapy.
I won’t say these observations are conclusions are NEVER correct, but I suspect pretty strongly they are RARELY correct, and a lot of harm and suffering is caused by trying to pressure, impose them on people or by people trying to force themselves to live up to such expectations.
I think most people have a definite sexual orientation that will not be easily changed.
4) As I’ve said many times, and will no doubt say many more times, I don’t think the Bible is inerrant and I don’t think it represents the truth of the universe, and I don’t think it provides much useful information and guidance on human sexuality, particularly in regard to homosexuality.
5) Going back to what Cameron (and I presume TJ is on board here also) said about values, I consider this a difficult issue. I am a bit in disagreement with qwerty that moral (or ethical as I prefer to say) problems can be solved so easily by “common sense”; I just think Christians have the infallible answers either. I don’t think there are absolute or infallible answers, and I think humans have always struggled with the issues and will always do so as long as we survive, (which I honestly believe will not be that long).
6) For example, I think it is a valid point and a position that I would share, that adults should not have sexual relations with children, either by force or by seduction, and I don’t think adults should force or compel sex on other adults (rape). It is not a trivial issue to raise that a child molester (or rapist) could say, “That is my nature; if you say it’s OK for homosexuals, why is it not OK for me?”
I agree it is not OK for the child abuser or the rapist, I think a sensible case can be made for allowing homosexuality but not the other behaviors, but the case can not be “proven” by “absolute values.”
As far as horses, it’s not only wrong; it’s dangerous as well. So don’t do it.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002382718_horse15m.html
I don’t expect you to agree with a word I’ve said in the least.
For that matter, if you want to call me “jejune” again, go ahead. It’s one of those words I consider euphonious (like “numinous”) even though I don’t care much for the meaning.
1. without interest or significance; dull; insipid: a jejune novel.
2. juvenile; immature; childish: jejune behavior.
3. lacking knowledge or experience; uninformed: jejune attempts to design a house.
4. deficient or lacking in nutritive value: a jejune diet.
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#83: Off the top of my head, I can think of at least ten homosexuals
I can’t. You must live in a city. I think I might know two at work, but it’s just a guess. This is one of the dumbest things the religious spend time on. It gets ‘em going and I love to push the buttons. I guess the only stereotypes worse than the ones they say about the gays are the ones that they perpetrate about their own selves without meaning too. They get so mad when you make fun of their understanding of science and then when they talk about science, it’s a hoot. They get upset that their hate speech is called hate speech. They are against abortion and against helping poor children. How can you be both? They can.
They don’t even see their dependence on science. They say things like many doctors don’t believe in evolution. Just the fact that they believe everything Bush says is amazing. It’s like the guy that buys a lemon and then goes back month after month to purchase a new lemon because the salesman is so sincere until he runs out of money and then says it’s God’s will. I’ve slapped my knee so many times it’s blue.
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Rdean,
I’ll probably regret this…
They are against abortion and against helping poor children.
Um, no. We are against abortion. We are not against helping poor children, but some of us are against relying on the state from cradle to grave. Many of us are against bills that are poorly written and have scopes that are far too broad.
Both sides do it. If the Repubs came up with a bill to provide better body armor for soldiers, but stuck a lot of pork in it that Dems objected to, plenty of people would say, “You’re against protecting the troops!”
Nope. In both cases, I’m against fiscally unsound spending. I would reject both bills.
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#85: some of us are against relying on the state from cradle to grave
Not sure how cradle to grave translates into helping children. A little while after passing puberty, they are no longer considered children. But while they ARE children, why not help the ones that are already born? Seems like common sense to me. Seems the conservatives always have justification.
Of course, if the soldiers had been sent to Iraq fully prepared, they would already have had the armor. I suspect eventually, all of the blunders will come out into the open about this war.
Since conservatives controlled both houses, the presidency AND the courts until the 2006 elections, when you try to blame everything on the democrats, I just can’t figure out what planet you people live one? Are you rational?
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I knew I would regret it. You completely missed my point(s). I attempted to explain why many conservatives did not support the bill. I attempted to use an analogy.
My fault. I’ll know better next time.
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Sorry, all I know are the facts.
Help the children.
Help the troops.
Anything else seems dishonest.
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Random
Whether you are persuaded to know Jesus Christ or not is your decision, and one that you have been making ALL your life –
Believers don’t check with atheists or anyone else when telling others about our Savior, ……. just to see if we as Christian’s have ‘gotten it just right’ expressing the teachings of the Bible – We as Born Again Believers are led by the Spirit of God to do His bidding, so it stands to reason that those who continue in UNBELIEF are not persuaded, not because they haven’t been told the truth, but because they are ’stiff necked’ unwilling to bow before the Savior of the world – It is their loss, no one else’s -
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Rdean,
So give every extra penny you have to helping the children (and/or the troops). Otherwise, you’re not doing all you can and you’re being dishonest by spending money on a new shirt for yourself.
Right?
/sarcasm off
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#90: So give every extra penny you have
Why, do you?
Why are conservatives always so extreme? It’s either “give nothing” or “give every penny”.
It’s like “your evil” or “your “good”. Everything is “right” or complety “wrong”.
It’s like their “reason” gene is turned off.
Total control is a delusion and an illusion. Living in a world of black and white must be frightening.
/no sarcasm
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Rdean,
You’re the one that said “anything else seems dishonest”. You took me so literally that my analogy passed you by–I simply returned the favor.
And no, since I have no problem with personal wealth, I don’t give every penny away. I tithe, I donate some, I save some, I splurge some. Plenty of balance.
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#81 – It basically comes down to the fact that you don’t want to be persuaded, right? (Based on various comments of yours from various threads.)
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#35: For me, the reason evolution is so important to homosexuality is because there is no judgement of right or wrong if there is no world outside that which science rules. Science has no morality. (Eugenics, abortion, sodomy, sex determination, in-breeding, Frankenstein)
That’s right, the science of evolution doesn’t talk about morality. That’s because it’s a science, not a philosophy! The art of sketching portraits in charcoal doesn’t talk about right ot wrong morals either.
Evolution is just a framework for understanding how life developed. It has nothing to say one way or the other on the issues you mentioned, and neither do geology, bass fishing or Italian cooking.
Of course, there’s nothing about understanding evolution that prevents a person from having a strong moral sense either. They are just different fields of study.
But you are right that there is absolutely no reason to see homosexuality as “wrong” outside of a religious context.
I would like to understand why the Christians are so obsessed with who other people love and sleep with? When did it become your business?
I think the anti-gay hysteria shown in this thread is a diversion. You argue that it is sinful; yet according to the Bible, divorce is sinful and so is remarriage after divorce, yet Christians do this all the time.
Christians say that allowing gay marriage is somehow a “threat” to “traditional marriage” (though they never quite get around to explaining just how one threatens the other.)
Christians certainly do talk about and against divorce, but I don’t see the utter revulsion that I see when the topic of homosexuality comes up.
I think you all get so exercised over homosexuality precisely because it is fairly rare. It allows you to be all righteous and moral without hitting too close to home, for most. When the subject is divorce, a lot more of you either have been divorced yourselves or have people close to you who have, and suddenly the language becomes a lot more measured.
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Arg, I forgot to finish a thought in the above:
Christians say that allowing gay marriage is somehow a “threat” to “traditional marriage” (though they never quite get around to explaining just how one threatens the other.) Divorce is a far more real threat to traditional marriage, but nobody’s making divorce a big national issue like they are ay marriage. Why not?
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VS at #93, responding to Random Name: #81 – It basically comes down to the fact that you don’t want to be persuaded, right?
Not to speak for RN, but I think the point is (and RN was specifically speaking to Victoria here) that if a person doesn’t already believe the Bible is the final and true moral authority, trying to “prove” something by quoting Scripture is futile.
It’s much the same issue we on my side of the divide run into when we repeatedly show example of the ample and interlinking evidence for evolution only to have the Creationist wave it off, insist there is no evidence and that “belief” in evolution is nothing more than “faith.”
In a lot of ways these dialogs are hampered because people come from entirely different points of view. If you want me to agree that homosexuality is wrong, you’re going to have to show me examples of how it causes harm. Pointing to passages in Leviticus or Romans is not going to persuade me.
On the other hand, for me to convince a Creationist that Creation is wrong, I’d have to point to something in the Bible that says so, and of course, there’s nothing there for me to point to. Pointing to all the evidence that scientists have amassed does no good.
Probably helpful to keep those differing perspectives in mind when posting.
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yet according to the Bible, divorce is sinful and so is remarriage after divorce, yet Christians do this all the time.
******But, those who do, don’t go around claiming it is “good” and wonderful, and that people SHOULD be allowed to do it.
At least the church and those who divorce without cause still call it SIN. They don’t pretend it is something else and crow about it anywhere and anytime they can.
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#97: and that people SHOULD be allowed to do it.
When they do it over and over again, they don’t have to say “people SHOULD be allowed to do it”.
Christian thought processes are a mystery to me.
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SteveG covers most of the bases I would cover, pretty well.
Judeo-Christian theology has never appealed to me. Not only do I consider the “Garden of Eden” story absurd; I consider it repelling.
Most people who are drawn to worldmagblog consider how A & E were banished from Eden a wonderful and inspiring story.
No, it is not a story I “want to believe.”
I do have a sense of right and wrong, and good and evil. Christians don’t believe that a person can have a valid understanding of such concepts unless they turn to the “objective” morals of the Bible.
I described myself as a “decent” though imperfect person. Solon too me to task for being so arrogant to put a stamp of approval on myself (even though I thought I was being modest and self-effacing). It’s a serious issue; if I thought that Solon was “poking” me in this regard with a modicum of good humor I would probably respond in kind; I don’t detect anything except pompous self-righteousness.
TJ and Cameron are probably not much different in their values and beliefs than most people here, and probably not much less critical of my ideas than others, but they do respond and criticize me with a dose of humor and tolerance, so I am inclined to respond in kind to them, and for that matter to VS.
I describe as “meta-values” those values that allow people who differ in substantial ways to tolerate each other. I said something to this effect to Solon once; when I read his response, I imagined I could hear him sputtering in disgust and horror through the speakers on my computer.
I repeat; I am a secular person. I believe we live in a world that operates on natural laws that we are gradually discovering. I don’t believe that God turns them on and off to amuse himself with occasional miracles, now or a couple of thousand years ago.
Science does not tell us why to live or how to live. Religion represented the best guesses that humans could come up with. In some cases, religious believers guessed pretty well. The Golden Rule is not just a good idea…oops, is a good idea, one of the best we ever came up with.
Obsessing about homosexuality is not one of religion’s better ideas, and it’s about time for religious believers to get over it. Dealing with sexual energy is a difficult problem, the psychological equivalent of nuclear energy.
Nuclear energy is clearly dangerous and using it to generate power is a very dangerous undertaking. Nuclear engineers do not turn to the Bible for guidelines on how to use atomic energy. The Bible is not a whole lot more relevant to how to deal with sexual energy.
If you find a lump of radioactive material sitting outside your doorstep, don’t tell it to pray a lot and Jesus will help it get over its problem.
If you have a homosexual child (as I did), start by remembering you love it, at the very least.
Don’t forget to cuddle your little lump of radioactive material while you are at it.
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#38 I can understand your argument about Adam, even though there have been studies to suggest that Radioactive Isotope dating is not accurate.
Actually, radioisotope dating and human evolution back past a literal Adam is on very strong footing. YECs tell big fat lies about it, but don’t believe them.
Although I am curious as to what you consider yourself, since you don’t believe in a resurrected Christ, I assume you aren’t christian. Agnostic?
I can’t find a label that I like very well, but I guess agnostic is not terrible. I am a former fundamentalist turned pentecostal turned Catholic turned Episcopaliam turned academic now turning into I don’t know what!
Freely sliding on a “slippery slope” of honesty.
I am in no way condemning you or anything of the sort, I am just wondering your rational for saying Christ did not have a literal resurrection?
One of the main reasons comes out of my own studies of the Bible, mostly from catholic scholarly sources. It is shockingly clear that Jesus’ divinity increases as one goes from the early NT works (e.g., Mark) to the later ones (e.g., Johanine stuff). From this, it immediately follows that the most probable interpretation for the “origin” of Jesus’ divinity is that it was develoeped by the early Church and not Jesus himself. My pentecostal church experience underscored how easy it is for such things to occur!
There’s a lot more to my Christo-skepticism, but I consider the above to have been an opening-of-eyes moment.
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#99: Not only do I consider the “Garden of Eden” story absurd
Most of the stories made up in the Bible are absurd. To a primitive Bronze Age people, they are totally believable, but to modern people armed with the scientific knowledge currently available, there is no excuse.
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rdean – You make the assertion that homosexuality is “natural” and, apparently, innate. There is no evidence for either of these assertions.
It does exist. I will agree that it is not chosen. But how it comes to exist is not known (it may well have components of genetics, prenatal development and upbringing).
You also say that you want to think of yourself as a “good person”. Everyone wants to do this, but we must come to an understanding that we are not “good”. Some of us are less bad than others, but all are flawed and in need of a savior (i.e. the Savior).
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#102: You make the assertion that homosexuality is “natural” and, apparently, innate. There is no evidence for either of these assertions.
Actually, there is much more evidence than for the existence of the occult.
http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/49488
http://www.skeptictank.org/gaygene.htm
FROM “Born that Way”: Identical twins have identical genes. If homosexuality were a biological condition produced inescapably by the genes (e.g. eye color), then if one identical twin was homosexual, in 100% of the cases his brother would be too.
There are problems with the above assumption. Studies have shown that when one identical twin is autistic, a genetically based defect, the other is autistic only 30% of the time. This is very close to gayness in identical twins. What we have found, is there are genetic switches that are turned on and off allowing some genes to become dominant. These switches may be turned on or off according to hormones, stress, who knows? The exact mechanism is still a mystery. However, just the fact that within a family, if one child is gay, statistically, it’s more likely that another member of the family will be gay and the odd of a second gay child raise much higher between identical twins. This info simply can’t be denied.
As far as homosexuality being natural, you might want to check out:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6066606.stm
I know that you won’t check out these sites. You might learn something and that would be a no-no. But I’ll just put them there anyway. Sorry.
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“But how it comes to exist is not known (it may well have components of genetics, prenatal development and upbringing).”
A clue – it’s quite common in our nearest cousins, where sexuality serves not just for reproduction, but for social cohesion. 75% of sex in bonobo chimps is non-reproductive and nearly all bisexual.
See end of article:
Homosexual Activity Among Animals Stirs Debate
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When they do it over and over again, they don’t have to say “people SHOULD be allowed to do it”.
******Find me Christians who tell you that divorce is good. You will find those who make an excuse for THEIR divorce, but there aren’t any large groups of Christians that I know of telling people it is a GOOD and desirable thing generally.
Most preachers still preach that it is wrong.
Most Christians will admit that God hates divorce.
Many divorced Christians consider it a sin and have asked God for forgiveness.
Now, compare this with homosexuality, which is celebrated.
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Oh come on, TRS, that’s just raw hypocrisy.
“MY sin can be excused, even though I feel really bad about it and I’m sorry, kinda, but YOUR sin is abominable and inexcusable and your kind should be forced back into the closets where you belong.”
Give me a break.
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SteveG,
Notice the difference between the two? One is sorry for the sin, the other is not. Repentance (which is more than apologizing–it requires a reversal of behavior) is key to Christianity.
I’m a sinner, same as you. Were it not for the work of Jesus Christ upon the cross, and His mercy to me, an undeserving sinner, I would be lost to sin.
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Cameron… how do you “repent” from having divorced and remarried? You can’t undo it (at least not without causing more harm). So it’s easy to say you repent of it, and yet change nothing.
It’s also very easy to point your finger at people who do something you don’t do yourself and pronounce them worse sinners than you.
When Christians start making a push to strengthen the laws to prevent divorce and talk about it with the kind of passion you use about homosexuals, then I might take argument like your seriously.
Until that happens (and we both know it won’t), it will continue to be hypocrisy.
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rdean – I have seen the mentioned site before. I stand by my prior comments (which, by the way, did discuss a combination of genetics, prenatal development and upbringing as likely causative).
I ask you this, is everything natural (i.e. everything that happens in the mechanistic natureal world) right? If you think so, then you’re well down the path to the sort of philosophy posited by de Sade.
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#109: I ask you this, is everything natural (i.e. everything that happens in the mechanistic natureal world) right? If you think so, then you’re well down the path to the sort of philosophy posited by de Sade.
And I ask you this. Is everything in the Bible exactly as it should be? Wear two diffent types of material? A woman must marry her rapist? Shellfish is an abomination? Noah’s Ark? Samson? Jonah and the whale? Planting two types of crop? Kill children for cursing their parents?
Why do you guys ask such nonsensical stuff? Don’t you have the power of thought? You can’t think beyond being told what to think? You have no logic? If you gey your morals out of a book, do you really have any morals?
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gey should be get
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Don’t gey your argument. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
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And I ask you this. Is everything in the Bible exactly as it should be? Wear two diffent types of material? A woman must marry her rapist? Shellfish is an abomination? Noah’s Ark? Samson? Jonah and the whale? Planting two types of crop? Kill children for cursing their parents?
*******Everything in the Bible either describes what is, or tells us what ought to be. The fact that something is in the Bible doesn’t mean it is approved of. Many things happened in history that God didn’t approve of, but which He permitted due to sin.
Each and every instance you have ripped off of an atheist web site hoping to “shock” us with can be easily explained. I’ve seen that list before, so I know you found it someplace or at least you’ve read it and are pulling from memory, because you obviously don’t know that there are reasonable answers for each question. You are simply out to “prove” your point, and fail to realize that you don’t have the evidence you think you do.
In fact, I’ve explained many of those things before, as have others on this site. Should you *really* care to know, I would be happy to explain. However, I don’t think you’re asking for true knowledge, but rather because you thought you had some “shocking evidence.” So, you wouldn’t be too happy to find out that wasn’t the case, and that you look rather silly.
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MY sin can be excused, even though I feel really bad about it and I’m sorry,
******The homosexual’s sin can also be “excused” if repented of. God knows the heart. So, if someone is truly repentant, and truly sorry, then God will forgive them.
God is not fooled, however, so if someone is a hypocrite, God knows and the sin is not forgiven.
Divorce is forgivable. Homosexuality is forgivable. Both require repentance.
Once divorced and remarried, you cannot “reverse” it, but God knows the heart and knows if you repent of what led to it. You can also avoid doing similarly in the present relationship.
A homosexual would go and “sin no more” by having no more sexual relations with a person of the same sex.
BTW, I have never been divorced, and will have been married for 22 years next month.
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#113: Everything in the Bible either describes what is, or tells us what ought to be.
Next you’ll be telling us we are made out of dirt and the Garden of Eden was a real place.
Remember, the Bible was written by Bronze Age men. Don’t give them more credit than they deserve. They didn’t even know what germs are. They believed women were property. We are better than that.
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TRS –
The Book of Wisdom most certainly IS in the Bible. Part of the Apocrypha, or Deuterocanonical books, although we Catholics consider them canonical.
Go to http://quod.lib.umich.edu/k/kjv/browse.html and click on the link for “Wisdom of Solomon” for the KJV text.
Or, go to http://www.drbo.org/ and click onthe link for “Wisdom”, for the text from the Douay-Rheims version.
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I ask you this, is everything natural (i.e. everything that happens in the mechanistic natureal world) right?
If you think the answer to this is “NO,” then stop using the “homosexuality is unnatural” argument as a moral one. This is utterly inconsistent.
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oops – forgot reference – the bold in 117 is from KRM in 109
BTW, interesting to me that a corollary of #109 is that everything de Sade did was “natural.” Not a view most conservatives would agree with.
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KRM,
Spinoza is hoping you’ll let him equivocate. But he probably knows the difference between “natural” as a descriptor for things as they happen in the natural world and “natural” as an ideal or intended state of affairs (to which unnatural is an aberration).
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Serious,
I know the difference, but I believe the second definition is specious. It just means – “what I think is ideal,” and there’s no way to agree on that. Either appeal to nature as an objective decider, or shut up about claiming a moral imperative on the basis of “natural” defined simply as what you already think is right. That’s just circular reasoning.
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Cameron… how do you “repent” from having divorced and remarried? You can’t undo it (at least not without causing more harm). So it’s easy to say you repent of it, and yet change nothing.
————————-
When Christians start making a push to strengthen the laws to prevent divorce and talk about it with the kind of passion you use about homosexuals, then I might take argument like your seriously.
Repentance would involve asking forgiveness from all involved and then not making the same mistake. No sin can be undone, as you say. But we can work toward not repeating that sin.
I am completely for voluntary covenants that strengthen marriage. As a bride who asked to have “obey” in her vows, you’re preaching to the choir. No-fault divorce is one of the top destroyers of society. Now, whether the state and church should both be in the wedding (not marriage) business is a different story.
Where have I spoken passionately about homosexuals? Please watch your sweeping generalizations and casual pronouns.
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Man, I never had this problem on the old blog. The above is mine. Preview, please!
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Apropros here is a quote from the new World thread on how Christians are perceived:
“Most disturbing is that the perception garnering greatest agreement among respondents is that Christianity means hostility to homosexuals. More than any other image, this best defines what Christianity is to young non-Christian Americans (80 percent of young Christians, meanwhile, confirm that it is an accurate perception of Christianity).”
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Spin,
Specious is too harsh. I’d agree that the “unnatural” term is opaque. But you probably know what it means, and have some opacity of your own to own up to. In it’s second sense, natural is not a referral to how people already want things to be, but rather a description of how things should be in their mended or unbroken state (i.e., as described in a created order). Christians would say that this description derives from an external source. You may not like that description, believe its source exists outside the mind of a believer, or agree to the authority of a God-given model, but it’s not circular on its own and within its own set of suppositions. Probably what you’re really arguing against is any notion of an external, objective, knowable source of morality, which is fine. Just don’t jump to conclusions, and especially not the conclusion that you’re right {:~)
Regards, SG
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Serious,
So what you’re saying is that the “natural” argument boils down to saying that the “Bible says its bad.” Then there is still no justification for using it as if it were a separate and independent argument! It’s not. Be honest. Just say the “Bible says it’s bad.” Many will disagree with you about whether or not the Bible actually says that. Others will simply not care what the Bible says about it. I kind of fall in both camps.
But there is no reasonable extra-scriptural and/or secular case against homosexuality. Don’t make one up if you expect to have any credibility at all.
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p.s. not sure, serious, how much you use the “natural” argument yourself, so please take my comments as directed generally to the conservative whine, “Homosexuality is unnatural,” usually followed by some anatomical description of how Tab A fits into Slot B. That is just dumb.
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When I hear the “natural vs. unnatural” argument, I know what’s meant and don’t get bent out of shape, but can see how it would be a point of disconnection. The problem comes when Christians expect an conception that helps integrate their world (one where design illustrates proper patterns of function) to find traction in an uncreated world. I can see the appeal of that conception. I can also see why it fails to appeal, since as an argument from nature it only makes sense when nature is understood within the religious conception (and even then only a certain religious conception with a certain kind of God in charge of a certain kind of creation). Sometimes it’s clear that people don’t just view the world differently, but live and speak in different worlds.
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127 Tru ‘dat, but IMHO (okay just IMO), appeals to nature are only justifiable if they are backed up with science, not evangelical theology. The latter typically ignores nature altogether in order to maintain its fundamentalist religious belief, so I find it completely ridiculous to be suddenly and capriciously lectured from evangelicals on what is or isn’t “natural.”
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Tru ‘dat, but IMHO (okay just IMO), appeals to nature are only justifiable if they are backed up with science, not evangelical theology.
Actually, appeals to nature and nature’s God, in the Jeffersonian sense, involve more an appeal to self evident reason than to empirical science, which, however brilliant, is limited to only to the physical world that can be measured.
It is quite reasonable that men and women come together ideally in a lifelong marriage to have and to properly nurture children. This assumes a created cosmos with moral law for human bings.
It strikes one as surreal that in a moral world that it is justified for men and women come together in homo-erotic relationship. I understand that, as Paul remarked in Romans, that some give in to the “shameful lust” of unnatural desires (in the best sense of nature), just as we do to fornication, adultery, lying, and thieving.
Those who are smitten with the arguments of the “gay’ movement really ought to visit the National Association for Therapy and Research of Homosexuality, NARTH, for an enlightening view on the pain and often devastation involved in homosexual behavior.
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NARTH is an evangelical homophobic farce. Its beliefs totally contradict statements by all other mental health associations.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_prof.htm
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Actually, NARTH is a a professional organization of well educated psychiatrists and psychologists who specialize in research and therapy concerning homosexuals. Any fair person who visits its website and reads some of the scholarly articles would be convinced of this. NARTH has no relation to any evangelical or other Christian groups, though there are some very effective Christian groups who have, also, effectively provided therapy for homosexuals.
Of course, the gay militants have intimidated some mental health associations into making politically correct statements about homosexual behavior; however, one should pay scant attention to this.
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It is my theory that no one ever changes there opinions on any serious issue on wmb.
My disagreement with Solon on this remains the same. Neither of us have budged an inch on this.
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NARTH is headed by the hack Nicolosi who once claimed that no gay couple could stay together monogamously for more than 5 years. I figure this defines a convenient unit of time – I know many gay couples that have been together for well over 6 “Nicolosis” (i.e., 30 years), even though Nic himself said they wouldn’t get through more than one.
Like I said, NARTH’s beliefs contradict that of every other professional mental health association. The claim that these have all been falsely hoodwinked by “gay militants” is ludicrous. NARTH is just plain evil and ridiculous. I have looked at their web site. It’s embarassingly stupid. I’ve heard Nicolosi in lecture – he’s a used car salesman for outdated homophobic psycho-babble. Research? That’s a LAUGH! There is only pseudo-science associated with NARTH’s practices.
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SPINOZA – 133
You write about men who have been in homosexual ‘long term relationships’. I have known two different sets of men, both in ‘long term relationships’ – and both of their homosexual partners died of AIDS – they were in SO CALLED long term relationships, but they were having ‘OTHER RELATIONSHIPS’ too, that’s how they contracted AIDS –
There are countless, so called long term relationships where one partner turns out to have AIDS -
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SPINOZA – 1130
Regarding NARTH and other organizations which help homosexuals – I have yet to meet ONE homosexual who WANTS to live a life apart from homosexuality – However, there are many who have gone to organizations such as NARTH and others, who truly want to get out of the homosexual life and HAVE CHANGED – God can do anything, whether you believe this or not –
The so called clever question which is: “Do you really think I would want to be born this way” is nothing more than a cover-up. Asking a question which the homosexual KNOWS will either ONE, start an argument, or TWO, make the questioned heterosexual, try to side step, either way the game goes on –
I was asked this question last year, by someone my husband and I know very well. I had made up my mind I wasn’t going to side-step this issue any longer SO, I answered ….. “I care a great deal about you, my husband and I both love you, but we do not believe for one minute that you were born homosexual.”
The guy sat there in the living room ’stunned’ he hadn’t expected a direct answer from me. He went on to say things about kids, marriage, etc., and I answered with love, but firmly, that “he had made up his mind years earlier, and it was obvious this was the lifestyle he was going to live” – I can say with all honesty, that we do care for him, but his homosexuality, and desire to MAKE US accept his partner, had become very deceitful on many occasion’s and it was time for it to stop, and IT DID – He no longer pulls the tricks he once did, but he also knows we love and care for him –
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“no one ever changes there opinions on any serious issue on wmb.”
Consider revising that to “seldom does anyone….” Because I did. Names were changed to protect the guilty {:~)
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#135: but we do not believe for one minute that you were born homosexual.”
Did you introduce him to any chicks?
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The Book of Wisdom most certainly IS in the Bible. Part of the Apocrypha, or Deuterocanonical books, although we Catholics consider them canonical.
******I’m not Catholic and I don’t consider it canonical.
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Victoria at #134: You write about men who have been in homosexual ‘long term relationships’. I have known two different sets of men, both in ‘long term relationships’ – and both of their homosexual partners died of AIDS – they were in SO CALLED long term relationships, but they were having ‘OTHER RELATIONSHIPS’ too, that’s how they contracted AIDS –
Of course, heterosexuals NEVER have sex with partners other than their spouses. It’s only the gays that do that, right?
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TJ at #121: I am completely for voluntary covenants that strengthen marriage. As a bride who asked to have “obey” in her vows, you’re preaching to the choir. No-fault divorce is one of the top destroyers of society. Now, whether the state and church should both be in the wedding (not marriage) business is a different story.
But don’t you see the difference? Conservative Christians want to forbid gays from marrying, but nobody wants to forbid hetersexuals from divorcing.
I have yet to hear a rational explanation of how allowing gay marriage would affect heterosexual marriage at all. I don’t think it would. Meanwhile, divorce clearly does and the most you ever hear anyone advocating there is, as you say, “voluntary covenants.”
I believe this is because most conservative Christians are not gay and so they can get as morally indignant about homosexuality as they want and it’s not going to come back on them. But they might at some point want to get divorced, so they tread far more lightly on that issue even though it affects far more people in a much more real way.
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TRS at #114: God is not fooled, however, so if someone is a hypocrite, God knows and the sin is not forgiven.
Really? I thought the point of having faith in Christ is that all sins are forgven, and we are excused our stumbles.
If you have to go through your whole life being mindful of every sin, and fully repenting of each one and being sure that your repentance is real (and what if you really *aren’t* all that sorry about something you know you should repent of) … sounds like a pretty nervous life.
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141
You obviously have no idea of what it means to be a Christian.
I don’t go through life “nervous,” but I do ask for forgiveness for what I have done wrong…knowingly or unknowingly.
If I don’t feel repentant, then I pray about that too. It is part of learning to submit and learn and grow as a Christian. I need to learn to *forgive* my enemies, and love those who persecute me (or drive me crazy as a few bloggers here do!)
Believing in Christ is not a “get out of jail free” card, nor an “I can do anything I want” card. Even Satan and his demons believe.
I must want to submit my life to Him. I won’t be perfect at it, but I must want it in my heart. If I don’t, then I am not really a follower except in name only.
Christ Himself said that many on Judgment Day would say that they knew Him, and He will say, “I never knew you. Depart from me.” Matt. 7:23
Being a Christian means following the Master, not just saying you are and that you believe. It is not about works, but if one has no works after salvation, then it is a good indicator that one is likely not saved.
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It’s only the gays that do that, right?
*****No. But it is the norm in most gay relationships, and it is not in most heterosexual relationships (yet…sigh).
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143 – and you have polled the gay community? But if gays are more promiscuous, maybe evangelical opposition to same-sex marriage has just a little to do with this no?
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Victoria said,
“…The guy sat there in the living room ’stunned’ he hadn’t expected a direct answer from me…”
I think he was probably more stunned that you would opine so strongly out of so much ignorance. Simply stunning, indeed!
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From an article in Christian Century:
In a different national survey by the Barna Group, based in Ventura, California, founder George Barna said September 24 that 91 percent of young non-Christians and 80 percent of young churchgoers say that “antihomosexual” describes Christianity. Barna opined that 16-to-29-year-olds “exhibit a greater degree of criticism toward Christianity than did previous generations.”
One of the most frequent criticisms is that homosexuality has been made “a bigger sin” than anything else, Barna said. The findings were based on surveys of a sample of 867 young people. From that total, researchers reported responses from 440 non-Christians and 305 active churchgoers.
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TRS at #143: No. But it is the norm in most gay relationships, and it is not in most heterosexual relationships (yet…sigh).
And you know this how, exactly?
You criticize gays for being promiscuous and at the same time you fight tooth and nail to prevent them from having legal access to the one social institution most likely to promote fidelity. You insist the only thing they can that will meet your approval (as if they need your approval) is to stop being who they are.
Sorry, that prejudice will not fly with me.
TRS at #142: You obviously have no idea of what it means to be a Christian.
Take that up with the ministers who I counted as my shepherds for the 25 years or so I was in the church.
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Victoria at #135: I was asked this question last year, by someone my husband and I know very well. I had made up my mind I wasn’t going to side-step this issue any longer SO, I answered ….. “I care a great deal about you, my husband and I both love you, but we do not believe for one minute that you were born homosexual.”
So how old were you when you chose to be heterosexual?
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140 “But don’t you see the difference? Conservative Christians want to forbid gays from marrying, but nobody wants to forbid hetersexuals from divorcing.”
I do. Except in the case of unfaithfulness.
As for the case of the woman caught in adultery (which for some reason is always brought up), Jesus did the only thing which satisfied both Roman and Judaic law. They were not allowed to stone her (under Roman rule), yet she was supposed to receive the death penalty (along with the man… who should have been caught with her…). Jesus satisfied both laws and made a profound point about her accusers’ hypocrisy.
There are different rules regarding how one treats someone who claims to be Christian and sins than someone who does not. Christ ate with sinners, but in order to bring them to salvation. We are told “not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner-not even to eat with such a person.” (1 Corinthians 5:11)We should follow that standard to the best of our ability… which is hard.
As an anecdote, the only open homosexual I know (living in a small community as I do) recently changed his mind and decided he was bisexual. If all homosexuals are born that way… how could he change his mind? (I know, anecdotal evidence isn’t “scientific”. The problem is, what else is there?)
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#149: I can’t really say much to your religious beliefs except that both understand and disagree with them, but that’s no surprise.
But as to your last paragraph: Who knows? You’re talking about one person, just like Victoria earlier was making general observations about gays in committed relationships based on her experience of knowing two (2) couples.
I don’t think we know why some people are gay, but the one thing I am sure of is that it is not a choice. That is why I asked Victoria when she “chose” to be heterosexual.
Nobody ever makes a decision to have a particular sexuality. For most of us, it’s pretty easy .. we’re heterosexual and that’s that, and since no one’s going around declaring heterosexuality a sin and an abomination, there’s no pressure about it.
But I have never known a gay person who ever “chose” to be gay. Maybe it is genetic (and there is some evidence of that, see # 103), or it may have something to do with very early experiences, or maybe some combination of factors.
I have seen many gay people struggle with trying to identify what they are when they are feeling things that no one around them seems to feel, and which the “moral” voices in their communities are condemning as evil. Perhaps your acquaintance has always been bisexual but has only recently figured out how to express it? I don’t know.
But when Christians talk of wanting to “cure” homosexuals because of the “misery” they suffer, I have to laugh in a rueful way … the misery they suffer would be much, much less if not for the persecution of those intent on condemning or curing them.
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STEVEG
I gave you two examples of homosexuals who had ‘long term partners’ who died of AIDS. I certainly don’t find it needful to list every homosexual person I have ever known on this thread.
I know one homosexual man who had three children, of which he took his son and his wife kept their daughter for a short time. He then took the daughter as well, and both kids are now homosexual……..INTERESTING! The other child was older and never moved in with dad after the divorce, he’s straight, married with children.
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#151: and both kids are now homosexual
Wow, they must have “caught it”. It’s a wonder you didn’t “turn” hanging around so many.
You are such a hoot. I couldn’t make the stuff up. I would call you a master of innuendo, but everyone would laugh, no they would gaffaw.
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I gave you two examples of homosexuals who had ‘long term partners’ who died of AIDS. I certainly don’t find it needful to list every homosexual person I have ever known on this thread.
Yes I can see why you wouldn’t want to cite any of the large number of examples that don’t prove your excuse for a point.
“I know one homosexual man who had three children..”, (This is starting to sound like, “One time, at band camp …”)
BTW, I know one “heterosexual married man” that preached against same-sex marriage, all the while having sexual escapades with a same-sex escort in Denver … oh wait, you probably heard that one.
I wonder how heterosexual marital fidelity would fare if heterosexual marriage was illegal and frowned upon? I suspect it would have a lower fidelity rate than do today’s gay couples.
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The other child was older and never moved in with dad after the divorce, he’s straight, married with children.
Are you sure of that? Maybe he’s gay, but feeling like he’s sick and desperately trying to pass as straight … like his dad.
You tell me which is worse: Knowing you’re gay and living it openly, or knowing you’re gay but getting married and having children (innocents who will now suffer) because all your Christian friends are telling you that you can “choose” to be gay or not.
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Charles Colson and Prison Fellowship have a ministry called Angel Tree, which encourages churches to buy Christmas presents for the children of people who are in prison, which Angel Tree then distribute to the kids. But Prison Fellowship recently informed one church that they don’t want their money. Why? Because the church is “gay friendly”. I guess it’s better for some kids not to get Christmas presents than it is to have them wondering if their Christmas present came from someone who’s soft on family values!
http://tinyurl.com/2co6fm
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Yes, NT, that reminds me of when the DOD discharged five or six highly skilled translators who knew Arabic because they were gay. That was *after* 9/11. I guess gayness is more a threat to America than Islamic radical terrorism.
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155 “Because the church is “gay friendly”. I guess it’s better for some kids not to get Christmas presents than it is to have them wondering if their Christmas present came from someone who’s soft on family values!”
Yes, it is. I know that sounds horrible, but any “church” that would twist the words of the Bible to that extent should be shunned by believers. See the verse I posted. Even if you personally don’t believe the Bible, Prison Fellowship operates under Its guidelines or at least tries too. A Christian should not associate with someone who claims to be a Christian, yet condones that kind of behavior. That’s called hypocrisy… another thing that’s ranted about quite often on this site.
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so how do you explain that to kids who get no presents?
“We sorry, but the people who wanted to give you presents were not hardline enough against gays to meet our approval Thanks for understanding.”
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Plus, they’re doing it for the kids, Uncommon!
I’m sure the kids that don’t get presents because not enough money came in will be thrilled to hear “I know you’re sad because you’re not getting any presents, but look on the bright side–you’re not getting presents from a homosexual! You should get on your knees and thank Jesus you didn’t get presents from a homosexual!”
No one on WoW opposes homosexuality any more than I do, as I’ve made clear. But if you’re buying Christmas presents for kids, you should take the money of anyone who wants to help, no questions asked. You’re not endorsing anything.
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#156: DOD discharged five or six highly skilled translators who knew Arabic
—-It’s even worse. 63 (at last count) doesn’t seem like many, but one translator can work a large area.
—-There’s a shortage of Arabic speakers when it comes to intercepting messages between terrorist organizations. Check out the following article.
By Jeremy Jacobs June 26, 2007 House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) urged the State Department yesterday to hire homosexual military translators discharged under the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
The lawmakers called the policy “absurd and highly biased” and said it “cripples our national security.”
“We are writing to urge the Department of State to take a specific step — the hiring of our unfairly dismissed, language-qualified soldiers — so our nation might salvage something positive from the lamentable results of this benighted policy,” Lantos and Ackerman wrote in a strongly worded letter.
The lawmakers also highlighted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s February testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in which she referred to such translators as “critical to fighting the war on terror.”
Lantos and Ackerman, pointing to the 9/11 Commission report to support their case, said “under-investment in critical foreign languages presents an urgent and immediate threat to our national security, a threat that cannot be ignored while we train new foreign-language experts.”
The lawmakers also argued that the dismissal of translators under “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is fiscally irresponsible. Many soldiers who have been dismissed under the policy, they wrote, have gone to work for contractors who “then offer their translation services back to” the government at a heftier price.
—-So there is a silver lining for them but not for the military???? They can go to work for private contractors at many times the salary paid by the military???? In the mean time, how many of our soldiers have been killed? Do you see why that guy says Bush laughs? We are trading the lives of our children for Halliburton contracts? Let’s don’t even talk about the other 11,000 soldiers kicked out. When I was in the service, I knew a gay guy. Everyone I have ever known that was in the service knew at least one gay guy while they were in the service. Every single one survived knowing a gay guy.
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No no, Rdean, you’re thinking about it all wrong. If a homosexual translates an intercepted message and gets information that prevents a terrorist attack and identifies the masterminds, Satan wins.
Or something like that.
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Victoria at #151: I gave you two examples of homosexuals who had ‘long term partners’ who died of AIDS.
I am curious what you think you’re proving when you tell us of homosexuals you know who died of AIDS. My homosexual cousin also died of AIDS. All it means is that AIDS is a nasty disease that no one deserves.
I am sure you think there is some connection between homosexuality and AIDS, but there’s really not. Heterosexuals get AIDS too. Before blood screening improved, people who got blood transfusions sometimes got AIDS. Nurses who accidentally stick themselves with needles can get AIDS.
AIDS is a virus spread by blood to blood contact, and while some sexual behaviors are more likely to spread it than others, we also know how to prevent it now.
None of this has any bearing on gay marriage. Two gays who are not carrying HIV and who are faithful to their partners will not get AIDS, ever.
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When the internet was still in its infancy, I was asked on a bbs how I could be reconcile identifying as a gay man, attend a conservative Christian college, and be a believing Christian at the same time. The answer I gave at that time, after pondering for several minutes was this; “I can’t.” I’m happy to say that after 16 years of struggling with this question, I have a new answer. Stay tuned to find out what that is.
First, I believe the Bible, in its original form, to be inerrant. However, our interpretation can be in error. For example, for several hundred years a word in the Bible (if memory serves, PIM?) was interpreted as “an agricultural instrument.” In the 1950s an archeological team found a weight used for a scale was marked with this word. My theology prof said, and I agree, “you cannot know what the Bible means for a Christian today, until you know what the author meant for the people of their time.” This basis led me on a 16 year search for what God really wanted me to know about my homosexuality. The more I studied the original scripture, the more I didn’t know. Did God accept a commited relationship between two people of the same sex? Anyone who has studied this subject deeply knows that there are very learned theologians on both sides of this subject. So here I am, a believing Christian who had the same battle going on in my mind as what is taking place in this forum today. My conclusion is this: because God did not give me, a believing Christian, a flashing red sign stating whether or not he approved of sex between two people of the same sex in a commited relationship, how can ANYONE, believer or not, know what is truly correct? Is it based on popular opinion? Can it be reasoned? For those of you, on either side of the issue, who have this worked out for yourself, I am happy for you. I really don’t believe that either side will convince the other. As Jesus said, “if you are well, go be well.” (my paraphrase.) But what I am concerned about are the thousands of gay identifying men and women who are stuggling with this question. We as Christians do not help by thumping the Bible. As Chad Thompson pointed out, the person identifying as gay is constantly being told they are inferior and are doing wrong. So here is my answer to the question as to how I reconcile the two sides. (I point out that I no longer consider myself “gay,” even though my orientation is predominantly homosexual.) Because I couldn’t find anywhere in the Bible where God stated such behavior was OK, I have chosen to remain celibate. My relationship with God is more important than my sexuality, and I don’t want to do anything within my life to displease God. However, there are others who have not made the decision I have. There are those that are still working out this issue. When sexuality is such a complicated issue, it is caloused and unloving to thump the Bible, shoot the wounded, and once again, alienate those who Jesus gave his life for. To quote a popular song, “It’s the love of God that calls wounded children back to Calvary.”
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“My conclusion is this: because God did not give me, a believing Christian, a flashing red sign stating whether or not he approved of sex between two people of the same sex in a commited relationship, how can ANYONE, believer or not, know what is truly correct?”
On the contrary, the words He did use were about as big a flashing red sign as you can get. “‘You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.” (Leviticus 18:22) It would thus be “sexual immorality” which was forbidden even among the converted Gentiles (as contrasted with eating pork, which was not). And yes, that quote was from God, part of the Law given to Moses.
I agree with your main positions, but saying that there isn’t a command against practicing homosexual behavior is extremely mistaken. These aren’t words that could be confused without changing the meaning of many, many passages. (The five particular words that Strong’s picks out of the verse for clarification (all of the ones that aren’t pronouns, articles, or minor verbs) are in the Bible 212 (lie), 81(with), 46(man), 780 (woman), and 117 (abomination) times.)
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SteveG (in 162)
Unless I misunderstood, her point wasn’t that they died of AIDS as such, but rather that in order to get AIDS, they weren’t truly in “long term relationships”. (Interestingly enough, as I skimmed through to get the exact quote, her words popped up in bold! Did you miss them somehow?)
My point before about agreeing with Prison Fellowships position was that we are forbidden to even eat with a person who is sexually immoral, yet claims to be a Christian. Being beholden to them in any way (which would be inevitable if you accept money from them) would definitely be wrong.
Think about it this way. If you ran a ministry that gave money to starving kids in Africa, and you found out that one of the people giving you money also actively supported people who went to take the food away from the children, would you still want to associate with them? Wouldn’t that jeopardize the integrity of your mission?
Prison Fellowship is giving the bread of life to children and their parents. Any “church” that denies the teachings of Christ is working against Christ. (”He who does not gather with me scatters.”) We don’t want to be in any way named as a member of the same group as those who promote sinful activity.
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A picture showing a newborn infant with a wrist band marked, “HOMOSEXUAL.” The parents are ‘marking’ this child as a “homosexual” ?
I wonder how the parents KNOW that this infant is a “homosexual” – ? – I’m interested, I bet there are millions of people, who are asking the question, what makes the parent KNOW the child is a “HOMOSEXUAL?”
And we hear the words over and over and over again;
Ad showing ‘homosexual’ newborn causes stir in Italy
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071024175433.inucp5pp&show_article=1
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166 – Isn’t that an ad with a point that you have missed? I.e., they don’t really KNOW this is a gay child. But, how is this relevant to anything?
164 – Uncommon – I take it you don’t ever pick up sticks on Saturday, cause Leviticus says you should be stoned for it. I guess you didn’t get the news that Christians are not under the Mosaic law. Moreover, your use of Concordance statistics suggests that you should change your moniker to “Uncommon Lack of Sense.”
166 again – “And we hear the words over and over and over again;
“do you think I would want to be born this way?””
In case you were too confused to notice, this point argues against your thesis that homosexuality is a choice.
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Uncommon Sense #164: On the contrary, the words He did use were about as big a flashing red sign as you can get. “‘You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.” (Leviticus 18:22) It would thus be “sexual immorality” which was forbidden even among the converted Gentiles (as contrasted with eating pork, which was not). And yes, that quote was from God, part of the Law given to Moses.
Also part of the Law given to Moses:
“Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period.” Lev. 18:19
“When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must not be eaten.” Lev. 19:23
“Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.” Lev. 19:27
There are many more of these, and they all come from the same sequence of laws that you extracted your “flashing red sign.”
I’ve brought these up before and so have others, and the Christians who want to lean on Leviticus for their rejection of homosexuality never engage them. They get brushed off (”oh you got those from an atheist web site” (I didn’t, by the way)), or some other dismissal.
I challenge you, Uncommon Sense, to give me a sensible answer for this. If you are going to draw on Leviticus to oppose homosexuality, why don’t you also make sure you’re not eating forbidden fruit or that you get your hair cut correctly? How do you justify extracting one verse as still authoritative when other laws given in the same sequence are not?
Interesting side note on the sexual sins of Leviticus 19. There’s a long and detailed list of who you’re not allowed to sleep with, mostly relatives by blood or marriage. Does that mean that if two people are contemplating having sex and none of those rules apply to them, it’s ok?
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POST 167
I didn’t miss the point, but you have, its VERY RELEVANT!
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Uncommon, #165: Unless I misunderstood, her point wasn’t that they died of AIDS as such, but rather that in order to get AIDS, they weren’t truly in “long term relationships”. (Interestingly enough, as I skimmed through to get the exact quote, her words popped up in bold! Did you miss them somehow?)
No, I got that. Except that she seems to think “and he died of AIDS!!” is a good, dramatic closer to her little horror story about the evils of gayness.
Her larger point was just too silly to say much about. She knows two (2) gay couples where one of the partners was (apparently) unfaithful, and that is, I guess, some kind of point. Unfaithfulness happens a lot to heterosexuals, and there is nothing special about gay couples that makes it more likely.
Plus, she has no idea if there even was any unfaithfulness. Given that HIV can lie dormant for years before becoming active, how does she know the partner who died didn’t already have the virus from a past relationship or encounter?
And how did other people’s private lives get to be her business anyway?
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Victoria in her two most recent posts:
The photo you’re talking about is an advertisement intended to foster tolerance. Did you actually read the article you linked?
No, the parents are not “marking” the child as homosexual! It’s an advertisement! Good grief, don’t you take ten seconds to think?
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Oh I see STEVEG, the whole thing is an ad for children becoming homosexual because their parents say so? OR It’s an ad for wrist bands? OR, its an ad for tolerance because the infant, UN-KNOWINGLY was designated in the hospital as “HOMOSEXUAL” – ?
Then the child can grow up and say:……. “do you think I would want to be born this way?”
TOLERANCE, is that what you think? Even the homosexual philosopher, Gianni Vattimo said the ad was in “bad taste” and that the slogan was “only partly true.” –
The problem with the homosexual philosopher is, he let the cat out of the bag, “only partly true” – Try thinking that one over STEVEG -
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No, Victoria, the ad is an effort to get adults to stop hating adult homosexuals, because they did not choose to be the way they are. The image of the baby is intended to drive home the point that gays are gay because of circumstances beyond their control.
It isn’t complicated, and your strategic use of boldfaced type doesn’t change it.
I was not familiar with Vattimo before this article, but having done a bit of research it turns out that not only is he gay, he’s also a Catholic, also a postmodern devotee of Nietzsche and also, 71 years old. So it’s not surprising that his views may be a bit muddled.
When did you choose to be heterosexual, Victoria? This is the second time I’ve asked. Do you have an answer?
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STEVEG – 170
We know a lot of people, we have been associated either through University, our professions, clubs, associations, church, etc. We don’t live provincial lives. When people live homosexual lifestyles, making most of what they do public, it isn’t very difficult to know what’s going on, UNLESS of course you wear blinders, plug up your ears, and stay home –
When people die, it’s no secret to everyone they know. AIDS is a tragic disease, …. I wish no one ever contracted. But as we all know, MOST ALLwho get HIV/AIDS in the USA, are ‘homosexuals’ – Some people who were not homosexual got the disease through blood transfusions, and some through ‘drug use’ sharing needles, transmitted the disease.
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167 and 168
Hate to have to ask, but did you read my post?
Both posts said about the same thing, but 168 was more specific, so I’ll concentrate on that one.
“Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period.”
Umm… Yeah. I don’t do that. It’s part of respecting your wife and her wishes.
“When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must not be eaten.”
Well… if I move to Israel (the land) and plant a tree, I won’t eat the fruit for three years. Most laws like this were more for health reasons than as a simple matter of sin.
“Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.”
That was done as a sign of devotion to different false gods. It’s very rare to see someone who just cuts their hair on the sides or clips off the edge of their beard.
The comment about the Sabbath made me laugh out loud. I’ve heard it too many times, even though we are specifically told A: “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” and B: “One man esteems one day above another, another considers every day alike; let each be fully convinced in his own mind.”
167 “I guess you didn’t get the news that Christians are not under the Mosaic law”
I addressed that (copied and pasted from 168’s quote from me “It would thus be “sexual immorality” which was forbidden even among the converted Gentiles (as contrasted with eating pork, which was not)”).
Some laws we are still under. We are commanded “to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood.” (Acts 15:20) Sexual immorality would include homosexuality, adultery, incest, etc. I get that idea from the fact that sexual immorality would be doing things wrong that have to do with sex. If that is incorrect…
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#171: Good grief, don’t you take ten seconds to think?
No, of course not. She gets bored way before ten. Psssst, don’t wake her. She’s so cute lying there like that, sound asleep.
While she IS asleep, talk quietly. In post #151, she said, “I know one homosexual man who had three children, of which he took his son and his wife kept their daughter for a short time. He then took the daughter as well, and both kids are now homosexual……..INTERESTING! The other child was older and never moved in with dad after the divorce, he’s straight, married with children.”
And then I said:
Wow, they must have “caught it”. It’s a wonder you didn’t “turn” hanging around so many.
I feel just awful. Rumor has it that she spent the day refusing to “touch” a door handle because she might catch “black”. She spent three hours in the bathroom waiting for someone to open a door so she didn’t have to touch it and another 45 minutes until the elevator door opened. She nearly starved at work. Someone jerk told her they ate only one chalupa and can now speak Spanish.
What ever you do, don’t tell her men to women spread Cervical Cancer. You think she is having nightmares now? And please, no Chinese food, she might catch “rice”.
I know one thing for sure, I wish I had been born looking like Brad Pitt. Oh well, I guess if I have to settle for looking like someone famous, I’m just lucky it’s a saint, Saint Nick.
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176… Let me get this straight. I have been told more than once (on this site and others) that Christianity was a “disease” that I “caught” from my parents. I was raised that way and told it was true. Why is it considered impossible that the same applies for homosexuality?
If a kid is raised being told that drinking is okay, that it is completely normal, and that he may even be genetically determined to become an alcoholic, he will be more likely to become an alcoholic. The same would apply for homosexuality.
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STEVEG
Oh my, he’s not only a homosexual, but he claims to be a Catholic and he likes Nietzsche,……if that isn’t bad enough to disqualify him, he’s 71 years old – Well that settles it STEVEG,…… Gianni Vattimo shouldn’t be taken serious, especially since his remarks “bad taste” AND “only partly true.” don’t agree with you STEVEG?
Yep Vattimo let the cat out of the bag! LOL
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#177: Why is it considered impossible that the same applies for homosexuality?
So you equate taking a sip of vodka with taking a “sip” of your male “friend”?
You got me there. I’m at a loss for words. Uncle.
I guess the only thing left to say is, “Bottoms up”.
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what “cat” is that, Victoria? Nobody knows precisely why some people are gay, including Vattimo. Suddenly we DO know, because someone who is gay says something you like?
The article does not give us any idea what part of the statement he thinks is true. If it is “only partly true,” then it is partly true, and he does not help your case.
When did you choose to be heterosexual? (Third time asked now … any answer?)
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UC at #175:
“Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period.”
Umm… Yeah. I don’t do that. It’s part of respecting your wife and her wishes.
That’s not the reason stated in the Law. It’s “unclean.” What if your wife doesn’t mind? It’s ok then? Or still wrong?
“Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.”
That was done as a sign of devotion to different false gods.
Many have argued that the proscription on homosexual behavior is for the same reason. To mark the Hebrews as different from the people around them, not because it was in itself immoral.
Thanks for demonstrating my point. You pick and choose the laws you want to say still apply and those that don’t. “Sexual immorality” is a very broad term open to interpretation.
Sexual immorality would include homosexuality, adultery, incest, etc. I get that idea from the fact that sexual immorality would be doing things wrong that have to do with sex
OK, but again, what is “wrong?” As I noted, Leviticus includes a very detailed list of specific sexual sins, that include homosexual behavior, bestiality and a variety of relationships that are off limits. That leaves open the very big question of, what about sexual acts when the two people involved are not covered by those specific laws?
Leviticus, in fact, makes a point of saying that if you have sex with a slave girl who is betrothed to another, it is a less serious offense than if she were free. That suggests that God’s laws on sexual relations back then were varied. And given that men in the Old Testament routinely had multiple wives and concubines with God’s blessing, clearly God does not forbid multiple sex partners.
There are laws against having sexual relations with virgins, which make sense in a culture where an unmarried young woman was her father’s property and her virginity was to be reserved for her husband. But if she were not a virgin … a young widow perhaps … one could have sex with her and commit no sin, yes?
If God had wanted to put into Law the current Christian ideal, he could simply have said, “Do not have sex until you are married and then only with your wife.” But he didn’t. He laid out Laws like, don’t have sex with your father’s wife. The great detail and specificity in the Laws that were given suggest that if the situation isn’t forbidden by one of the laws, it’s allowed.
This is the problem you have in turning to Leviticus to argue any kind of sexual morality. The Laws permit some things that Christians today would forbid, and forbids other things that Christians today permit.
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#177:
Wow. Just, wow.
OK, first, most homosexuals come out of heterosexual homes. They don’t learn homosexuality the same way children learn religion. It is something they feel that is usually at odds with everything they have learned.
Secondly, drinking is neither good nor evil in itself. For people able to control themselves, it’s a relaxing pleasure. Those who do have a predisposition to addiction to alcohol should abstain from it. But that also has zero to do with what you’re taught.
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When will I learn to save this as a document I can cut and paste?
SteveG,
There are three types of law found in the OT: civil, ceremonial, and moral.
The ceremonial laws explained sacrifices, the role of the priest, etc., and was fulfilled in Christ. They no longer apply. We can wear shirts of blended materials and eat shellfish.
Civil laws dealt with the day-to-day living of the Hebrews, and so is not applicable to our culture today.
The moral laws, however, still bind us today. The Ten Commandments are not the only place for this, by the way.
Sexual immorality is not as up for debate as you posit. Bestiality and incest are listed right along with homosexuality in Lev. 18 and 20. Want to argue that those are okay?
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Cameron, I understand that, but that’s a point of theology. Orthodox Jews would argue they all apply today. They are all “The Law.” And Acts documents that the early Christians were not in agreement about which ones should still apply; one view finally won out, but there were other opinions even then.
Jesus is recorded as having said very little about the applicability of the law, and what he did say (love God, love your neighbor) does not seem to include “and obey all the moral laws given to Moses.” The main point of much of his teaching is that obeying the letter of the law without love is empty religious practice, and not what God wants.
Bestiality and incest are different from homosexuality. Bestiality violates an animal, incest leads to defective children. Homosexuality, between consenting adults who are careful, has no real consequence and violates no one.
People also often say, to those of us who think homosexuality is unchosen, that so is pedophilia so what’s the difference? But again, the obvious difference is the violation of an unwilling victim.
I am not, by the way, arguing for promiscuity. I’m arguing that two homosexuals who commit to each other in a lifelong relationship are not hurting anybody or posing any threat to heterosexual marriage.
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REALLY?
Children who have been ‘TORN’ between two parents, one that is heterosexual and the other who has decided they are homosexual, are the ones who lose. They aren’t worth enough to the homosexual parent to make a home that the child feels they can be proud of. Instead the child or children, are expected to ‘ADAPT’ to the new rule of whatever ‘HOME’ and ‘FAMILY’ is supposed to be.
It is a ‘SELFISH’ act, when a parent decides after having children, that it’s somehow ‘their turn’ leaving the family for a homosexual lover. Is their relationship worth more than the children they would SWEAR to LOVE? I don’t believe it, not for a moment. If love is the reason for having children, then LOVE is the most important reason to nurture the child/children to adulthood, without making them the ’sacrifice’ for a sinful lifestyle.
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Um … yeah Victoria, I didn’t say anything at all about people who have children and then leave the marriage for a homosexual lover.
But since you raised it, I’d say that if our society didn’t make gays feel sick and shamed and that they could be a straight if only they tried hard enough, that would happen a lot less often.
If gays could acknowledge that they are gay without social condemnation, they would never feel any need to go into a sham marriage that they are never really going to be able to honor.
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STEVEG
When homosexuals stop BLAMING everyone for their problems they will have made some headway.
No one is responsible for homosexuals and their sin, its there’s alone – The ‘blame game’ is over, most people aren’t paying any attention, or haven’t you noticed?
Yep, I can see it all now…….the straights made the homosexual date, then they made them marry, then they demanded they have sex and then CHILDREN – Who on earth do you think you have fooled?
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Well do the math, Victoria.
YOU say homosexuality is sin. YOU refuse to allow homosexuals to marry or otherwise formalize their relationships. YOU tell them they are sick and disordered. And by YOU I mean you personally and much of Christianity in general, including the political power that Christians have in America.
Gay people grow up bombarded by these messages and some of them buy into them and say yes, I am sick, and yes, if I really wanted to be straight, I could. So they marry women and have children and after years or decades of living what they know is a lie, some of them leave those marriages.
And then YOU blame them for breaking up a home.
Some Christians have managed to really embrace the idea of loving people and letting God worry about what is and isn’t sin, but YOU are mired in self-righteousness and condemnation.
When did you choose to be heterosexual, Victoria? Fourth time asked and I know you can’t answer because if you did answer honestly, you’d have to admit that sexual orientation isn’t a choice!
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STEVEG
Loving people has nothing to do with loving their sin, but you don’t understand that.
Loving people has everything to do with stating the facts as to how an adult can BLAME anyone for their actions of; dating, getting married, and then having children…..then announcing, “it isn’t my fault, I was made to feel guilty” – On which tired ‘poor me’ melody are you going to sing that tired phrase again?
I have NEVER ONCE heard of a homosexual who took reponsibility for their life. They blame anyone in sight, if it isn’t their parents, its their peers, or the Church, the state, their employer, the medical community for not finding a cure for AIDS/HIV sooner than later, the President……just about anyone they can think of, and the list G R O W S and G R O W S –
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I have NEVER ONCE heard of a homosexual who took reponsibility for their life. They blame anyone in sight,
Blame for what?
Most homosexuals I’ve ever known have had nothing to blame anyone for. They’ve accepted themselves, found fulfilling relationships (and most of those I’ve known dated various people and then settled into monogamy, just as straights do), and don’t worry about it.
But they’re able to do that because they’re able to ignore the messages from people like you who want them to hate themselves for a condition they had no choice about. Unfortunately, some of them are not that confident and they do buy into it.
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And there you go again with AIDS. AIDS is not a “gay disease,” Victoria. It’s a virus that can infect anyone, if they’re exposed to it in the blood.
It struck gays first and hardest because yes, some sexual practices popular among gays (but hardly unique to them) are effective at spreading it. But it can strike anyone. I’ve known two people who died of AIDS. One was my cousin, who was gay and contracted it sexually. One was a nurse, a married mother of three, who got it through a needle stick injury on the job. I also know one woman who got it through heterosexual sex, but last I heard she was still alive and in reasonably good health, considering.
As Rdean pointed out, straight sex can pass on the virus that causes cervical cancer. Going to campaign against that too?
It is true, I will grant you, that people who are celibate before marriage and faithful within marriage don’t get any sexually transmitted diseases (gay or straight.) And in a perfect world, maybe everybody would live like that. But it’s not a perfect world and people do have sex with more than one person in their lives, and you can rant all you like about how sinful that is, but the end result is that some people are suffering and I don’t see how showering them with condemnation rather than grace is especially Christian.
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#183: Bestiality and incest are listed right along with homosexuality in Lev. 18 and 20. Want to argue that those are okay?
People used to be bled to cure disease. It was thought that opening a vein would let out the demons. People used to think the world was flat and that illness was a punishment from God. I’m glad at least a few people have started thinking for themselves.
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RDEAN – 192
REDEAN, did you know the Bible tells another story long ago? Those who thought the world flat didn’t read the Scriptures, did you know that? If they had, they would have known that the earth wasn’t flat. Can you find that passage of Scripture?
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People used to be bled to cure disease. It was thought that opening a vein would let out the demons. People used to think the world was flat and that illness was a punishment from God. I’m glad at least a few people have started thinking for themselves.
None of that is in Scripture or related to the topic.
Moving on…
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SteveG,
It’s not just a point of theology. The civil and ceremonial laws were abrogated in the NT; the moral law was not. “Loving your neighbor” is certainly explained more fully by the second half of the Ten Commandments.
The topic is not what Jews may think about the OT-stay with the topic, please, rather than building straw men.
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#194: None of that is in Scripture or related to the topic.
Neither is bestiality, incest and being born gay, but there it is. Bu bye.
#193: If they had, they would have known that the earth wasn’t flat. Can you find that passage of Scripture?
Please don’t tell me something dumb like the world is a circle. A cirle is flat, check out a hula hoop. If they thought the earth was a sphere, they would have said, “The Earth is a Sphere”. But that was never said. Sorry.
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STEVEG – 191
AIDS is a disease which is transmitted sexually, blood transfusions and dirty needles.
If homosexuals didn’t have sex with the same sex the disease would STOP (in the homosexual community) because it would no longer be transmitted through sexual practices. If those who had AIDS/HIV would stop giving blood, those who need blood transfusions wouldn’t get ‘TAINTED BLOOD’ – That sounds simple enough, so why get into situations where the spread of AIDS/HIV can develop?
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Victoria … yes, that’s true. And if everybody stopped driving cars there would be no more fatal car accidents.
If people stopped trying to get suntans, there would be much less skin cancer in middle age.
So? I don’t see you spending much time on message boards demanding that driving and sunbathing are sinful on the grounds that they can have fatal consequences.
On the other hand, if gays avoid certain acts (being delicate here) they can do many other sexual things completely safely. If two gays who have not been infected with HIV form an exclusive relationship, they can do anything they want to, including those risky things, and have zero risk because neither of them has the virus to pass on.
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Cameron at #195: It’s not just a point of theology. The civil and ceremonial laws were abrogated in the NT; the moral law was not. “Loving your neighbor” is certainly explained more fully by the second half of the Ten Commandments.
The topic is not what Jews may think about the OT-stay with the topic, please, rather than building straw men.
That is precisely the topic, Cameron. Different people, who have different theological preconceptions, read the Scriptures in different ways.
You believe civil and ceremonial laws were abrogated. This is part of your theological framework. An orthodox Jew does not believe they were abrogated. That is part of his theological framework.
And both of you probably believe will all your heart that your way of understanding it is right and the other’s is wrong.
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#197: If homosexuals didn’t have sex
If Christians would stop having sex, their kids wouldn’t have the highest pregnancy and STD rates in the nation. I wonder who leads in cervical cancer? We know lesbians have the lowest rate of all these. Considering that gays are such a small portion of the population, I wonder which group has the highest number of infected in all STD’s? Hmmmm.
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The reason that a lot of Christian kids have stds is that they’ve not been faithful to the tenets of their religion and have fallen for the loose sex line of the sexual revolution that has involved our culture in serious decadence including fornication, adultery, divorce and homosexuality.
Serious Christianity involves paying attention to the moral laws that are clearly spelled out biblically and through the tradition of orthodox Christian life.
RDean is being disingenuous and corrosiively cynical in attempting to equate Christianity with libertine sexual proclivities.
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Rdean,
A Christian blog with a topic about what Jesus might do–how do Jews fit in again? Now, you could argue that you and I see Scripture differently, but that’s not what you’re doing.
I have no idea what you’re trying to say to me in 196…Those topics are very much in the Bible and connected to homosexuality.
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Christians on this site want to equate law abiding, peace loving Americans whose contributions to this country and society as a whole, are way out of proportion to their small numbers with forced animal sex and the rape of children, murder and any other horrible actions that their nasty little minds could come up with. All based on the writings of Bronze Age men who didn’t know to wash after wiping.
Just because something is in the Bible doesn’t mean it’s true or even rational. To have a thoughtful discourse on an important issue is one thing, to malign American citizens who have done no wrong and for the most part, come from Christian families, is not only wrong, it is evil.
To use the occult and mysticism as a basis for this hateful discrimination is evil, wrong and completely irrational. I hope I have cleared that up.
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RDean, if you persist in referring negatively to the antiquity of the Bible, you might get the ages right. The Old Testament was written mainly in what is known as the Axial Age during the period from 800 to 200 BC during which Jaspers remarked similarly revolutionary thinking appeared in China, India and the Occident. The New Testament was written during the late first and the second century AD.
The Bronze Age is generally regarded to have taken place from 3600 to 1100 BC.
Your assumption that modern scientific thinking people have a cornerstone on the truth is both narrow and naive. There was much wisdom and truth spoken in ancient times not only in the Bible but on other texts including those especially of the ancient Greeks.
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Hey, don’t you believe that science is wrong about the very world around you and those people are right?
Why didn’t they have a space stations if they were so smart? You give them way more credit than they deserve and not enough to modern humans living today.
To bad you weren’t back then to see the mysticism and occult first hand. I suspect you would be mightily disapointed.
To bad that you believe that they had a “cornerstone on the truth”, fantasical stories not to the level of Marvel. There may have been widom and truth spoken then, but there is wisdom and truth, and even real scientific knowledge that is available today and for free.
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RDEAN, I’m far from believing that science is wrong. Science deals with the important truths of the physical world; theology and philosophy go beyond empirical truth into the realms of metaphysical truth, which you lack the wit and imagination to comprehend.
The Axial age which laid down in writing the truths of the Old Testament and the crucial first-century which laid down the truths of the resurrected Christ are actually far more important than the impressive truths of the modern age of science.
Christians and Jews are rather familiar with the dim-witted and ordinary cultural despisers of religion like you.
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Cameron in #202: Rdean,
A Christian blog with a topic about what Jesus might do–how do Jews fit in again? Now, you could argue that you and I see Scripture differently, but that’s not what you’re doing.
I think this part of 202 is a response to what I said in 199.
The point I’m trying to make is that Christians say the Bible is an “objective authority” by which to gauge which moral ideas are right or wrong. I say homosexuality is ok if the people are responsible, but you say, God says no in Leviticus.
But the reality is, what people who point to the Bible as a moral authority really mean is, their personal interpretation of the Bible is the moral authority for them. And that means it’s not more obvious or authoritative than The White Album. (OK, maybe a little more).
How do the Jews fit in? As an example of a legitimate, historical Abrahamic religion that has a very different reading of “the authority” than you do. And I might point to the liberal strands of Christianity as another group that interprets the authority differently, in the other direction.
The truth is, the Bible is the moral authority only for people who choose to believe it is, and even they don’t always agree on what it means. So we’re all really making those judgments of what’s right and wrong by our own conscience and beliefs, even if we want to think we have a direct word from God on it.
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metaphysical truth
Hey, is that an oxymoron like “military intelligence” or “creation science”?
Let’s use all the words.
mystical
supernatural
occult
orphic
mysterious
secret
spirits
lore
the secret learning of the anchients
abstruse
anagogic
arcane
cabalistic
cryptic
enigmatical
hidden
imaginary
impenetrable
inscrutable
mysterial
necromantic
nonrational
otherworldly
paranormal
preternatural
sorcerous
telestic
thaumaturgic
visionary
wizardly
Yea, that sounds exactly like truth.
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SteveG,
You’re right; I apologize–my 202 was to your 199.
Onward and upward…
The truth is, the Bible is the moral authority only for people who choose to believe it is
Why do you get to define truth? What’s your source? Are the police only the authority over those who choose to accept them?
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“Hey, is that an oxymoron?”
No, Rdean. You missed the definition of the word that applies to what Solon said:
Metaphysics: a division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being and that includes ontology, cosmology, and often epistemology.
It’s something you should learn about before engaging in conversations about it.
Take more care,
SG
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Wow, Solon and Serious George, you’re really kicking butt on this thread. I think I’ll just sit back and continue enjoying the fun! Good job, guys!
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Cameron in #209: Why do you get to define truth? What’s your source? Are the police only the authority over those who choose to accept them?
Um … you do know you’re being ironic here, right? That’s exactly my point. I don’t get to “define truth” in morality. Neither do you.
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True, Steveg, but the Bible DOES get to define truth in morality.
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Not true, Outkast. The Bible makes claims about truth in morality that some people choose to believe and adhere to, and some do not.
It is not an authority, it’s just one more set of opinions.
What does point toward truth in morality are the values that most humans have regardless of their religious beliefs. If you need a book to tell you something is right or wrong, you must lack a moral compass of your own.
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#204 – Solon rightly points out that, although the OT pretends to be about events in the Bronze Age, it was actually written a great deal later! How this helps the case for evangelical belief escapes me, however.
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#193 – Victoria is still referring to the “circle” in Job. Apparently she still doesn’t understand that a disk is flat!
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RDEAN, I’m far from believing that science is wrong. Science deals with the important truths of the physical world; theology and philosophy go beyond empirical truth into the realms of metaphysical truth, which you lack the wit and imagination to comprehend.
I don’t know about “wit” but it certainly does take a lot of imagination to believe detailed conjectures that are contradicted by fact.
The Axial age which laid down in writing the truths of the Old Testament and the crucial first-century which laid down the truths of the resurrected Christ are actually far more important than the impressive truths of the modern age of science.
I suppose this would be true if what you wittily imagine is true. It isn’t.
Christians and Jews are rather familiar with the dim-witted and ordinary cultural despisers of religion like you.
See the “Theology of Smugness” post
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We all get our morality from someone or something, SteveG, and they in turn got it from somewhere. The moral code (and laws) in the U.S., for example, came from the religious heritage of our Founding Fathers (the Bible).
The Bible says the heart is “deceitfully wicked,” so a sense of “good” cannot come from within a person.
Spin again.
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Well I am just pleased at punch that it is not the believers in the occult that are smug. They are comfortable telling a woman that she should be happy being subservient to “men” with not a trace of smugness. They are comfortable telling gays they will burn forever for existing, all the while, full if it, you know compassion and not the tiniest bit of it smug.
They laugh at science and talk about the importance of, oh wait, it was worded much better than I could state it, “Metaphysics: a division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being and that includes ontology, cosmology, and often epistemology”.
The fundamental nature of reality, which obviously includes supernatural and mysticism. Sorry, I’m grounded in the real world. You know, growing crops, transportation, medicine, things we take for granted that comes from the hard and maligned work of scientists who are mostly “atheists”. And I say that without smugness. I say it with exasperation.
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We don’t laugh at science, RDean. Science is wonderful. It’s the theory of EVOLUTION that makes us laugh.
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RDEAN, most Christians are are respectful of theoretical and applied scientists. Many scientists are devoted Christians including Francis Collins, head of the International Genome project and Charles Townes the Nobelist discoverer of the laser.
The view that science and religion are irreconcilable is a pious and fundamentalist illusion of the secular crusaders who wish to do away with religion. From the time of the French Revolution these crusaders have fought against devoted religious people, ironically arguing all along that a world without religion would free the people.
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SteveG, since you skipped part of my post, here it is again: Are the police only the authority over those who choose to accept them?
It’s a practical, everyday version of the question about what happens if everybody gets to choose his own morals.
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#220: It’s the theory of EVOLUTION that makes us laugh.
Okay now, be honest. Astronomy makes you laugh because light can’t have been traveling for millions of years.
Here is a bunch of funny words for you: mineralogy and petrology, geochemistry, geomorphology, paleontology, stratigraphy, and sedimentology. Don’t forge plate tectonics.
And while we are at it, there are so many more funny words: Micropaleontology, Paleobotany, Palynology, Invertebrate Paleontology, Vertebrate Paleontology, Paleoanthropology, Taphonomy, Ichnology, Paleoecology.
I have a joke, did you hear the one about, “Cosmic microwave background radiation anisotropies and polarization?” How old is THAT joke?
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Cameron at #222: SteveG, since you skipped part of my post, here it is again: Are the police only the authority over those who choose to accept them?
It’s a practical, everyday version of the question about what happens if everybody gets to choose his own morals.
Not really. Police enforce laws set by governments, which are not the same as morals.
Police are an arm of the government. Governments are either imposed by the strong (dictatorships) or established by the people (democracies.)
No, people do not get to freely disobey the laws their governments establish, but they are completely free to think the laws are stupid, unjust or harsh.
But again, laws are not the same as morals. I don’t think your analogy holds up.
Outkast #218: The Bible says the heart is “deceitfully wicked,” so a sense of “good” cannot come from within a person.
Um … well, you’ve just made a very convincing argument … to people who already believe the Bible is an authority.
When you are able to figure out an argument that isn’t a circle, let me know.
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#224: everybody gets to choose his own morals
The truth is that everybody does get to choose their own morals. You just have to be prepared to pay the consequences. The religious get theirs out of a book. According to them, they wouldn’t have any otherwise.
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Not really. Police enforce laws set by governments, which are not the same as morals.
Laws are simply a codification of morals. Laws against speeding, littering, whatever, are simply there because somebody decided they were wrong.
What’s my government’s ultimate source of authority, especially if I do not live in some form of a democracy/democratic republic? Beyond the people, beyond the leaders themselves?
Why do I have to obey?
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I do not agree that laws are codifications of morals. Speeding is not immoral, and nobody decided it is “wrong.” It is unsafe, however, so most people understand the need for speed limits on roadways.
Laws are intended to govern necessry behavior for societies to function. Sometimes they correspond to moral values, sometimes they are irrelevant to moral issues, and sometimes they even conflict with them, depending on the morality of the government that created them.
Murder is immoral, and also, illegal. Speeding is illegal, even though it is not immoral, for the sake of safety. Many people believe pornography to be immoral, bit (in most of the U.S. anyway) it is legal.
Laws and morals are not the same.
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All laws are necessary for society to function?
There are laws requiring the observance of certain days, but that isn’t necessary behavior for society to function. It’s nice, but not necessary. Never mind the quirky old laws still on the books about it being illegal to hitch your horse sideways near a train track or whatever.
What about the second half of my post?
How would you define morals?
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Yes, there are laws that exist because the governing body wants to impose their moral values onto everyone. In a free society, that’s generally a bad way to go.
There is no “ultimate” source of authority. Power derives from the people or is imposed by the stronger over the weaker.
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So why should I obey? What’s right for you, might not be for me. Why shouldn’t the powerful murder those who pose a threat?
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There are many reasons and influences that impel people to behave decently. There are many reasons and influences that impel people to behave terribly.
Christians can’t seem to conceive that a non-religious person can find a reason not to murder and steal and rape unless Jesus tells them not to.
Mostly, it’s because people are brought up not to. Really, you have about 6-8 years to turn your child into a basically decent person. Doesn’t always work, but it does most of the time.
A variety of ideologies can work. Jesus and God and the Holy Ghost are one well-developed script, but it’s not the only one that’s worked fairly well much of the time. Really.
The anxiety Christians display about this topic makes me wonder what they fear in themselves. Maybe Christianity is the best belief system for many who hold it; who knows what they would be up to if they weren’t looking over their shoulder frequently to see if Satan is gaining on them?
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Good question, Cameron … why should you obey?
Maybe you shouldn’t always.
Why shouldn’t the powerful murder those who pose a threat? Very often, the powerful DO murder those who pose a threat, and your belief in God does not make them any less dead.
There is a common moral compass in humans. As Random Name said in #231, the Christians who are most likely to cite God as the final moral authority seem to be unable to understand that not all of us need a religious authority to tell us rape and murder are wrong.
That moral compass doesn’t come from the Bible. It is part of the human psyche. It tells us to not do harm to other humans, and it is common enough that when people do violate it, usually they themselves admit it’s wrong.
Moral concepts that do come from the Bible and nowhere else are the things most likely to lead to divisive debates in our society, have you noticed? Proclaim that you think it’s wrong to steal and everybody will say yeah? Who doesn’t? That’s in the Bible, but it’s also part of the common moral compass.
But matters such as homosexuality get different reactions. Proclaim that you’re opposed to homosexuality because of Leviticus, and you’ll get nods of approval from other Bible-believers, but outside of that group, you’ll find a lot less consensus. Opposing homosexuality does not seem to be part of many humans’ innate moral sense … it has to be taught.
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The positive side of having stories like Noah’s Ark and a talking serpent and Jonah and the Whale in the Bible is that they cause people to look at the Bible with a critical eye. If you believe everything in the Bible as literal fact, the next question becomes, “Would you like to buy a bridge?”
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Since we all know where Cameron is trying to take us, let’s just go there: “Without God as the final authority on morality, we can never know what moral values are correct.”
How do you know what God’s moral values are? The BBC (Bible-Believing Christian) says, “The Bible is the word of God!” How do you know? “It … it just is!”
That’s the problem with the BBC’s poor grasp of logic. The only people convinced by their claims of Biblical authority are those who already believe it. In reality, the morality of the Bible (to the extent it’s possible to distill a consistent message) is just one more idea among many.
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WMB Logic
1. Moral absolutes are necessary
2. They can’t be figured out logically (i.e., “philosophical ethics” has no merit)
Ergo: Treat the Bible as if it were a divinely dictated manual of morality, even though it isn’t.
The irrational and fundamentally unethical leap in the conclusion is justified by rabid foaming-at-the-mouth insistence of proposition 1.
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#235: Yes .. I am always left speechless by people who think “the Bible is Word of God because it says it is!” is actually a valid argument.
No doubt they take my inability to respond to something so inane as proof that they’ve scored an enormous point.
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“RDEAN, most Christians are are respectful of theoretical and applied scientists [IF THEY ARE THEISTS]. Many [?] scientists are devoted Christians including Francis Collins, head of the International Genome project and Charles Townes the Nobelist discoverer of the laser.
(ah, MANY = TWO)
But why leave out Kenneth Miller, author of “Finding Darwin’s God.” He is a devout Catholic. Perhaps because he is also a key opponent of creationism and intelligent design?
The view that science and religion are irreconcilable is a pious and fundamentalist illusion of the secular crusaders who wish to do away with religion. From the time of the French Revolution these crusaders have fought against devoted religious people, ironically arguing all along that a world without religion would free the people.
Solon tactic revisited: Take pejorative religious terms and use them on secular enemise as a kind of “I know you are but what am I?”
Also, ignore all context in a garrulously revised and ideologically shaped history of the world. As if the alignment of political power and religion in the 18th century was a good thing. As if science didn’t bring peace in the enlightenment. As if there’s not one science, but many many many many forms of Christianity that fought/fight each other. As if our own country wasn’t founded in an effort to escape this kind of nonsense!
The historical roots of current religious anti-science in America have a lot more to do with anti-Darwinism in the beginning of the 20th century (see, for example, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial And America’s Continuing Debate over Science And Religion by Edward J. Larson).
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#237: The historical roots of current religious anti-science in America
Religion has ALWAYS been anti-science. Science involves answering questions. To answer questions, you first have to ask them. Religion discourages the curious, for obvious reasons.
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Yeah, what SteveG, Spinoza, and RDEAN said.
How did a thread about sexual preferences and jesus turn into a thread about the conflict between science and religion? By the way, is there any evidence jesus ever got laid? I wonder what his sexual preference was. I noticed the Last Supper was all guys. Interesting.
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Rdean,
I don’t know how many religious people you know, but that certainly isn’t true of me or my family. I realize that there are some groups within some religions that discourage asking questions, and I have been part of such groups and left them because I do ask questions and I have no desire to be part of a group that discourages it. My sister had similar experiences. She loves reading science books, as does her teenage son, and it dismays her that people at her church don’t share her interest, and even seem uneasy if she brings up questions about evolution.
I never had as much interest in science myself, but my husband loved it so much he became a molecular biologist. Our older son (sophomore in high school) hasn’t found a career interest yet, but science is one of the subjects he enjoys most – because, he says, he likes learning new things and solving problems.
This morning I attended a class at church which is an overview of the Bible (it takes months, today was just the second session). The teacher very clearly stated that questions were welcome, including questions about whether the Bible was true. Of course, the fact that he had to say so is a reminder that too often people have not felt safe asking such questions in a church setting.
Liberal Protestant churches generally have no problem with people asking questions, because they don’t believe the Bible is without error, or that there is only one right way to believe. I have only academic knowledge of other world religions, but my impression is that some religions are open to questioning things while others are not. So whatever it is that discourages questions, it’s not religiosity per se.
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#5: Actually, Jesus defined the nature of marriage in Matthew 19 (basing it upon a creation ordinance), and said it was to be between one man and one woman.
Wow, what a genius the preacher man jesus was. He was able to figure out all by his supernatural self that guys and girls should get married.
The problem is animals of both sexes were having sex with each other a few hundred million years before the jesus moron flew down to earth to get executed to save us from his idiot father.
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This and similar threads are akin to that leftover casserole stuck back in the fridge’s nether regions. Over time it takes on a life of its own and hardly resembles what it did originally. Can we blame Alisa? No we could but it would be rather gauche to do so.
Anywho.. some of you are gay. Others know and work with gays. Am I wrong to think that at some point all gays were straight little boys and girls? There must have been an opportune time or “vulnerable moment” when the young boy or girl (onset of adolescence/puberty? Late teen years when dating first starts) when he or she has to make the decision to pursue as wholly normal yearnings or feelings about the opp gender or same gender.
The fact that the churches are for the most part far too softspoken-if not silent- (compared to secular society, media/entertainmt) in defining and proclaiming a doctrine of Christian sexuality is I believe a major reason for the homosexual explosion.
The postwar and early 1950s saw the first breach in the walls with the legitimization of porn (albeit the topless pinups of that era–women like Myrtle and Gladys—seem quite mild by our day’s standards). When we began to embrace as “normal” one type of perhaps mild perversion we through open the floodgates for the Stonewall riot and its celebration/affirmation of a right to homosexuality which led to Lawrence vs Texas a few decades later.
With the toothpaste this far and for so long out of the tube, can we hope to get it back in? True we have always had homosexuality but even in the time of Oscar Wilde etc it was seen not as a right or “a valid alternative” lifestyle.
What we need then is church and youth group ministry that seeks to reclaim and propogate a Biblically consistent ethic of human sexuality. Youth/Jr High pastors, here is your calling!
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Sawgunner,
Your remarks about human sexuality take assumptions and turn them into conclusions.
For one thing, pornography and sexual “perversions” have a long history among humans. What is very strange is the desire to pretend this is “modern.”
It’s a pretty racy book, so you may endanger yourself looking at it, but I found an interesting book at a thrift shop the other day:
History Laid Bare: Love, Sex, and Perversity from the Ancient Etruscans to Warren G. Harding by Richard Zacks. Published by Harpers Collins, so it’s not a penny arcade book.
It pretty racy stuff, and I have neither time nor inclination to start typing in some passages here, but people were doing all the bad things you can think of and some you shouldn’t thousands and hundreds of years ago.
We’re animals with a very strong sex drive and and curiosity and an urge to try everything we can think of.
Then we say to our kids, “Don’t YOU do that!”
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Random,
I doubt many believers would argue with you that humans have been involved in all sorts of sexual practices since the beginning of time. The OT and NT are full of examples and warnings of such behavior. The children of patriarchs were involved in incest, for example. Others slaughtered a townful of men because one citizen had raped their sister. God didn’t condone, much less bless, any of it.
We’re all fallen creatures.
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#240: I never had as much interest in science myself, but my husband loved it so much he became a molecular biologist.
Does he believe in mystical creation and the occult?
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#242: True we have always had homosexuality but even in the time of Oscar Wilde etc it was seen not as a right or “a valid alternative” lifestyle.
Neither was atheism. Either one could get you killed or jailed. However, with the reliance on scientists and considering the majority (depending on the field) don’t believe in the occult, those that believe in mysticism had to make some concessions.
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#239: How did a thread about sexual preferences and jesus turn into a thread about the conflict between science and religion?
Because we know that a variety of sexual preferences is normal in nature. We know this through science. Some creatures increase the community bond through sex. It’s only the religious that have turned a normal part of being human into something dirty.
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“We’re all fallen creatures.”
That’s another myth only a brainwashed person could believe.
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“Because we know that a variety of sexual preferences is normal in nature”
Mariticide is also normal in nature. Sticking out one’s tongue and blowing raspberries has more logical force than this one. It’s just a really stupid argument, and I wish people would stop using it.
“Neither was atheism. Either one could get you killed or jailed”
In the 1880’s? In England? Please read some history before lecturing on history.
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249 – no one argues that all examples from nature illustrate moral behaviour for humans. But the fundy claim that homosexuality is not biological in origin is at the heart of the need to invoke nature’s multitudinous evidence to the contrary. Apparently 100% of our close relatives the bonobo chimps have “chosen” the “immoral” path of bisexuality and sex for non-procreative purposes. Here, it serves to foster relationships and group cohesiveness – kind of like a really good hug.
Homosexuality is clearly “natural,” whether you consider it to be moral or not.
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“no one argues that all examples from nature illustrate moral behaviour for humans.”
Yet you did on this one. So how do you pick and choose? By family resemblances? Macaques but not mantises? The peaceful sex-besotted bonobos or the chimps who regularly beat their females into submission?
Rdean explicitly made the argument (and you seem to be repeating it) that homosexual behavior among animals legitimizes/normalizes homosexual behavior for humans. What’s natural among animals remains garbage for an argument.
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#245 “Does he believe in mystical creation and the occult?”
Rdean,
I guess it depends what you mean by “mystical creation” and “the occult.” He doesn’t believe in young earth 24-day creation. He does believe that God exists, that God brought the universe into existence, and that He continues to be involved in His creation, though for the most part indirectly through the laws of nature that He also created.
When he was young, my husband developed an idea – which he later discovered was widely held among many religious people (though not among evangelical Christians) – that God was behind the process of evolution. His view is that the truth of Genesis 1-2 is that God created all things, not how or when He did it.
As for the “occult,” he believes that spirit beings exist, both angels and demons, but he claims no personal experience with either. We both enjoy fantasy books and movies such as Harry Potter and many other series that portray elements that might be considered “supernatural” – though in the context of those stories they are a natural part of the world the author’s imagination has created. But we caution our sons that there are people who try to actually contact spirit beings in our world, other than God Himself, and that such activities are dangerous.
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#251: homosexual behavior among animals legitimizes/normalizes homosexual behavior for humans
Which it most certainly does. In your twisted little mind, a natural love (natural for them) between two adult males is somehow related a male beating a female into submission. With such a totally irelevant and ridiculous comparison, how do you expect anyone to take you “seriously”?
Next, you are going to tell us you have “gay” friends whose lives are terrible and sad, but some have converted to straightness and have found Jesus and now are happy and saved.
#252: that God was behind the process of evolution.
This is a free country and anyone is free to believe what they want. But let’s teach in school what we “know” for sure and what we can prove. “Just a feeling” doesn’t belong in a science class. I’m sure your husband would agree.
Trying to contact “spirit beings” is not dangerous since no one has ever contacted one.
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Rdean,
Follow the arguments, very slowly, for sense and not what you wanted to hear. I did not relate, equate or compare homosexuality to wife-beating. I’ll break it down simply:
Argument 1 — Bonobos, animals closely related to us, engage in homosexual behavior that may serve a positive social function. Since homosexuality is obviously found in nature, it can’t be argued to be immoral for humans. After all, it’s natural.
Argument 2 (which shows why Argument 1 is a crock) — Chimps are animals similarly close to us that engage in concerted acts of genocide as well as a mating pattern that involves males regularly beating females into submission. Will you similarly contend that since these behaviors are found in nature in a species purportedly close to us, that they can’t be argued to be immoral for humans? After all, it’s natural.
You may not agree with this refutation of your argument [it has holes you didn't find {:~)], but at the very least try to get your rendering of it right so you know what it is you disagreed with.
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Sawgunner The fact that the churches are for the most part far too softspoken-if not silent- (compared to secular society, media/entertainmt) in defining and proclaiming a doctrine of Christian sexuality is I believe a major reason for the homosexual explosion.
It is true that mainstream Protestant churches have taken a soft view of homosexual behavior, though most evangelical churches and the Catholic church are unambiguous about the matter. For example, the Catholic Catechism states the following:
Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
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251 – I don’t recall arguing “morality” on the basis of animal behaviour, unless you mean my evolutionary explanation for the bisexual adaption. I never actually said “hugs” were moral – just that they help with social cohesion.
My POINT: You cannot say with any credibility that homosexuality is immoral because it’s unnatural. This is a typical evangelical argument that has as its corollary – whatever is natural is right. Moreover, its principal assumption – that homosexuality is unnatural – is wrong!
I actually think the burden of proof is on you to show that homosexuality is immoral, independent of arguments that apply alike to gays and straights. I.e., an argument against promiscuity is not a legitimate argument against homosexuality. If you fail this, I conclude there’s nothing wrong with gay behaviour for gays.
Prudishness, btw, does not constitute a moral argument of any force. Nor does quote mining from the Bible.
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#255: I believe a major reason for the homosexual explosion.
Too, too funny. There is no homosexual “explosion”. It’s a small number of society and it has always been a small number of society and it will ALWAYS be a small number of society.
The only difference is that the younger gays are less willing to accept the oppression of the religious. That makes them more visible, not more OF them.
Hopefully, the pendulum is swinging back towards the center away from the dangerous religious right where it has been the last six years. They have been a disaster that will take years for the country to recover from.
#255: Basing itself on Sacred Scripture
Sacred? These people didn’t know soap. They believed in stories like “Noah’s Ark”.
Spirits, the occult, supernatural? This is sacred? For you, ok. But why push this stuff on the rest of us.
You guys say the atheists don’t give your mysticism the respect that it deserves but you keep trying to push it on to the nation. If you keep throwing this stuff out there as “truth” (scuse me, I choked a little), then you have to expect criticism. It goes with the territory.
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The fact that the churches are for the most part far too softspoken-if not silent- (compared to secular society, media/entertainmt) in defining and proclaiming a doctrine of Christian sexuality is I believe a major reason for the homosexual explosion.
Boy is that wrong! The louder churches are on this subject, the more sympathy is given by the general population to gays and lesbians, and the more evangelical respect decreases. Did you not read the how-are-Christian-perceived thread? The fact that 80% of teens now think Christian=anti-gay translates to discrediting of Christianity, not gays and lesbians.
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#254: concerted acts of genocide
OK Scurrilous George, let me see if I can be a tiny bit more enlightening. Genocide and beatings are “violent” acts. They involve blood and pain and death.
Oh wait, are you thinking prison rape? Is that gay sex to you? Oh well, that explains it. Prison rape is not gay sex. It’s violence and it’s about power.
Love between two people of the same sex is love. It was here before the Bible was written. It’s normal in religions that existed before Christianity was made up. There, got it?
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#252: “that God was behind the process of evolution.”
Some people wish this was true to justify the nonsense in Genesis. But claiming a magician had anything to do with natural selection and genetic drift is as senseless as invoking a magician to explain the orbits of planets. This is just another example of the wishful thinking of theists who don’t like the idea their magic man is worthless and not needed for anything.
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#253 “Trying to contact “spirit beings” is not dangerous since no one has ever contacted one.”
Rdean,
I won’t try to argue the point (whether spirit beings exist) since it’s not the point of this thread, I have no first-hand experience of it myself, and belief in spirit beings – apart from belief in God through Jesus Christ – is not going to bring any spiritual benefit to anyone.
However, I will point out that there have been enough accounts I have heard of where someone came to harm (physical or psychological) following attempts to contact spirit beings or acquire special powers associated with the spirit world, that I would consider such attempts dangerous.
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“Loving homosexuals as Jesus would”
Perhaps Jesus did love homosexuals because he was a homosexual himself. I noticed on the last night of his life he spent it with a bunch of guys, if Michelangelo’s painting of the Last Supper can be believed.
Anyway, who cares about Jesus? If there really was a preacher man with this name, he’s dead now and not worth talking about. There have been thousands or millions of people who made valuable contributions to human progress. What did the Jesus myth give us besides an insane religion that makes its believers afraid of science?
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Spinoza, natural law refers to the essential nature and purpose of things, as in Jefferson’s statement in the Declaration, …the law of nature and of nature’s God
Until quite recently in decadent parts of the West, homosexual behavior has been regarded as sinful, disordered, and at best something to be tolerated an indulgence. This was true even for in ancient Greece, perhaps the most indulgent of civilizations. It is natural though hardly right for humans to give into the shameful lusts involved in fornication, adultery, and homosexuality.
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263 – that’s correct as an esoteric definition used by some theologians. It owes a great deal to “natural law” as formulated by Aquinas. But this is not the understanding (or lack of same) of most the fundy simpletons that use the argument. (they don’t really know what they mean, near as I can tell)
This definition makes the argument from “nature” even weaker – it’s an appeal to a platonic notion of “ideal” with no basis in anything other than prejudice – far less compelling than a misguided appeal to nature, herself.
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#261: contact spirit beings or acquire special powers
Special powers? Ok I won’t comment on this anymore.
#263: homosexual behavior has been regarded as sinful, disordered
This came from the Christians. Once I came across a site that showed gays being harassed as Christian influence spread. It included a timeline. As Christians showed up, so did intolerance.
In China for instance, gay sex was considered ok as long as the guy did his “family” duties. In India, same thing. In America, a man could be a chief’s “first wife” and have wives of his own. In some cultures, the “shaman” or “medicine man” was gay much of the time.
Before the Christians, two Roman men could register as a couple.
Christians have perpetrated one of the most fearsome and longest running wars on a very small minority for the last two thousand years. The shear amount of evil has been breathtaking especially considering it’s been their own children they have discriminated against.
There are actually Christians in this country that don’t believe the majority of gays come from the majority Christian population. Isn’t that odd. They discriminated against their own children. One has to wonder at the state of their morals.
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p.s. If I were talking to catholics arguing about papal encyclicals I would respond only to your definition.
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p.p.s. though i referred to your definition of “platonic” I didn’t mean to imply the Plato would’ve approved, obviously! As he once said,
“Homosexuality is regarded as shameful by barbarians and by those who live under despotic governments just as philosophy is regarded as shameful by them, because it is apparently not in the interest of such rulers to have great ideas engendered in their subjects, or powerful friendships or passionate love-all of which homosexuality is particularly apt to produce.”
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er “…definition as platonic … obviously
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Spinoza, according to R. E. ALLEN Prof. of Classics, Northwestern, The “Laws” [Plato's summary work] recommends that homosexuality, like adultery, fornication and the use of prostitutes, not be engaged in; that if it is engaged in, it be kept private or closeted, and that if it is discovered, it be punished by deprivation of civil rights, a severe penalty. In effect, the “Laws” recommends criminalization.
In the speeches of Phaedrus and others in the “Symposium” Plato portrays Athenian attitudes of the fifth century B.C. to pederasty, but those attitudes were not his own, nor those of Socrates.
your assumption that opposition to homosexuality has its genesis with Christianity merely reflects your own corrosively anti-Christian view.
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Rdean,
re: #259: That was the hole you should have poked the first time {:~) Trouble is, it’s only a superficial divot.
Even if you exclude animal behavior that’s clearly harmful or painful to others you’re still left with at least two problems:
1) The logical force of your “natural therefore moral” argument has disintegrated when you require caveats like “unless we think the behavior’s bad for other reasons.”
2) There are animal social systems that don’t involve violent or injurious behavior that you would unlikely argue as a legitimization for human behavior (e.g., multi-male group polygamous family systems). [who knows, though? maybe you would at this point]
In either case it makes for a lousy argument. It’s one you should drop.
—————–
“It’s normal in religions that existed before Christianity was made up. There, got it?”
Yes. You don’t know which end is up. You’re usually the one arguing that the most antiquated belief systems are the most inferior. Which is it going to be?
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your assumption that opposition to homosexuality has its genesis with Christianity merely reflects your own corrosively anti-Christian view.
That was RDean who said that, and I never assumed it. Certainly Leviticus argues against a christian origin.
Who knows if Plato said what is in the “Laws” or the “Symposium”?? Certainly you don’t! Just because you can quote-mine a minority academic view that supports yours!
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Spinoza, you might reflect on the following based on Arthur Kirsch’s book, ,i.Auden and Christianity
Since the scandal surrounding British poet and playwright Oscar Wilde, homosexuality has claimed no literary figure more prominent than the 20th-century Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973). However, after considerable personal experience, Auden delivered a remarkably negative judgment on this kind of sexual activity.
According to a newly published critical study, Auden made decidedly negative comments about homosexuality during a 1947 conversation with Alan Ansen: “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s wrong to be queer, but that’s a long story. Oh, the reasons are comparatively simple. In the first place, all homosexual acts are acts of envy. In the second, the more you’re involved with someone, the more trouble arises, and affection shouldn’t result in that. It shows something’s wrong somewhere.”
Nor did Auden’s perspective on homosexuality grow more favorable in the years that followed. In 1969, just four years before his death, Auden wrote candidly, “Few, if any, homosexuals can honestly boast that their sex-life has been happy.”
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Auden spent his young life during a time when people were imprisoned for loving a member of the same sex. When the government indulged in reparative therapy, which included shock treatment and other forms of torture, up to and including lobotomy. It’s no wonder that his views on being gay are less than, “gay”.
#271: Certainly Leviticus argues against a Christian origin.
Not really. Funny, Coultergeist says Christians are “perfected” Jews. No surprise there.
The Christian religion and the Jewish religion before it was the religion of slaves. All religions promote vigorous reproduction. Why?
The answer is very simple. The more children that are indoctrinated into a religion, the stronger that religion becomes. Safety in numbers. What better way to promote reproduction than say, “no self gratification and no gay sex”? Multiply. Multiply.
For a religion that had been discriminated against, this “command” becomes especially important. Note, when the later religions came, the religions they supplanted became merely “myths”.
Zeus and Jupiter ravished several males in both Greek and Roman religions.
A supernatural being who may or may not have had wings like a dove and a glowing golden circlet floating above his or her head appeared to a very young virgin girl impregnated by a mystical unseen God possibly by a ray of Godpower. The girl fled for her life because a wicked king was given an occult warning that a new king was going to be born and soldiers that presumably lived in that same area with their own families ruthlessly butchered all the babies that lived around the new king without any protest.
The baby king was born in an animal barn where three smart guys were told by supernatural forces to visit the babe and were guided by a mysterious floating light. They took him gifts of spices and other things that smelled good.
How is this story any more fantastic than Zeus appearing to a young, virgin girl in the shape of a shower of gold? Leave out all the “thee’s” and “thou’s” and the stories suddenly become incredibly far fetched.
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273 – well Coultergeist is hardly authoritative!
Anyway, of indirect relevance from Boswell:
If this is an accurate picture of the ancient world the social structure from which Western culture is derived-then where did the negative ideas now common regarding homosexuality come from? The most obvious answer to this question, and the one which has most generally been given in the past, is that Christianity is responsible for the change. There is an historical coincidence that seems to lend some credence to this idea- namely that when Christianity appears on the scene that this tolerance spoken of earlier disappears and that general acceptance of homosexuality becomes much less common.
It should be obvious, however, that Christianity alone is not likely to be responsible for this change. (One notes, for instance, that the places in the world today where gay people suffer the most violent oppression happen to be the very places where Christianity is also least welcome.) First of all, I would like to dispose briefly of the notion that the Bible had something to do with Christian attitudes toward gay people. From an historical vantage point, it is easy to do so, but I realize that for people who live by the Bible more must be said about it than what an historian can observe. An historian can simply note that there is no place in the writings of the Early or High Middle Ages where the Bible seems to be the origin of these prejudices against gay people. Where any reason is given for the new hostility. sources other than the Bible are cited. As a matter of fact, from an historical perspective, the Bible would be the last source one would look at after examining growing hostility toward gay people, but so many people have a feeling that the Bible is somehow involved that its teachings on the subject matter must be addressed in detail.
Most serious biblical scholars now recognize that the story of Sodom was probably not intended as any sort of comment on homosexuality. It certainly was not interpreted as a prohibition of homosexuality by most early Christian writers. In the modern world, the idea that the story refers to the sin of inhospitality rather than to sexual failing was first popularized in 1955 in Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition’ by D.S. Bailey, and since then has increasingly gained the acceptance of scholars. Modern scholars are a little late: almost all medieval scholars felt the story of Sodom was a story about hospitality. This is indeed, not only the most obvious interpretation of it but also the one given to it in most other biblical passages. It is striking, for example, that although Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned in about two dozen different places in the Bible (other than Genesis 19 where the story is first told), in none of these places is homosexuality associated with the Sodomites.
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The only other places that might be adduced from the Old Testament against homosexuality are Deuteronomy 23:17 and Kings 14:24, and-doubtless the best know n places Leviticus 18:20 and 20: 13, where a man’s sleeping the asleep of women” with men is labelled ritual impurity for Jews. None of these was cited by early Christians against homosexual behavior. Early Christians had no desire to impose the levitical law on themselves or anyone else. Most nonJewish Christians were in fact appalled by most of the strictures of the Jewish law and were not about to put themselves under what they considered the bondage of the old law. St. Paul says again and again that we must not fall back on the bondage of the old law, and in fact goes so far as to claim that if we are circumcised (the cornerstone of the old law), Christ will profit us nothing. The early Christians were not to bind themselves to the strictures of the old law. The Council of Jerusalem, held around 50 A.D. and recorded in Acts 15, in fact took up this issue specifically and decided that Christians would not be bound by any of the strictures of the old law except for which they list – none of which is related to homosexuality.
In the New Testament we find no citations of Old Testament strictures. We do, however, find three places-I Corinthians 6:9, I Timothy 1:10 and Romans 1:2627which might be relevant. Again, I’ll be brief in dealing with these. The Greek word malakos in I Cor. 6:9 and I Tim. 1 :10, which Scholars in the 20th century have deemed to refer to some sort of homosexual behavior, was universally used by Christian writers to refer to masturbation until about the 15th or 16th century. Beginning in the 15th century many people were bothered by the idea that masturbators were excluded from the kingdom of heaven. They did not, however, seem to be too upset by the idea of excluding homosexuals from the kingdom of heaven, so malakos was retranslated to refer to homosexuality instead of masturbation. The texts and words remained the same, but translators just changed their ideas about who should be excluded from the kingdom of heaven.
The remaining passage – Romans 1:26-7 – does not suffer by and large from mistranslation, although you can easily be misled by the phrase “against nature.” This phrase was also interpreted differently by the early church. St. John Chrysostom says that St. Paul deprives the people he is discussing of any excuse. observing of their women that “they changed the natural use. No one can claim, Paul points out, that she came to this because she was precluded from lawful intercourse or that because she was unable to satisfy her desire….Only those possessing something can change it. Again he points the same thing out about men but in a different way? saying they ‘left the natural use of women.’ Likewise, he casts aside with these words every excuse, charging that they not only had legitimate enjoyment and abandoned it, going after another but that spurning the natural, they pursued the unnatural.” What Chrysostom is getting at, and he expounds on it at great length, is the idea that St. Paul was not writing about gay people but about heterosexual people, probably married who abandoned the pleasure they were entitled to by virtue of their own natures for one to which they were not entitled. This is reflected in the canons imposing penances for homosexual activity, which through the 16th century were chiefly directed toward married persons. Little is said of single people.
Perhaps the most significant element of the passage is that it introduced into Christian thought the notion that homosexual relations were “against nature.” What Paul, however, seems to have meant was unusual not against natural law, as it is so often interpreted The concept of natural law was not fully developed until almost 1,200 years later. All that Paul probably meant to say was that it was unusual that people should have this sort of sexual desire. This is made clear by the fact that in the same epistle in the 11th chapter, God Himself is in fact described as acting “against nature” in saving the Gentiles. It is therefore inconceivable that this phrase connotes moral turpitude.
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I’m not sure I buy absolutely everything Boswell says, but I do think it is essential to any honest discussion of the topic.
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#274: the places in the world today where gay people suffer the most violent oppression happen to be the very places where Christianity is also least welcome.)
You mean, like the Middle East? Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all different peas from the same pod.
China and India. I’m sure the British bringing their own form of Christianity had nothing to do with the sudden intolerance. Just another happy coincidence?
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Rdean. you’re not even making sense now. At very least you should attempt to answer specific questions that were asked you.
I can’t speak for others, but I’m pretty much done with my part in reinforcing your degradation of discourse here by responding.
Maybe with one less person to write to, you’ll have more time to read.
Take care,
SG
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I’m not sure I buy absolutely everything Boswell says, but I do think it is essential to any honest discussion of the topic.
As I recall Boswell died of AIDS, which is just another illustration of what people have generally recognized throughout history which shows up in Christianity as well. In the OT punishments are harsh, yet it was possible that the whole nation could have died given the basic unsanitary and unhealthy behavior patterns typical to men who have sex with men. A stygian stench clings to Hedonists, as a Greek philosopher said of it: “For if it were not to Dionysus that they held solemn procession and sang the phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamefully, but Hades is the same as Dionysus, in whose honour they go mad and rave.” At any rate, Boswell actually takes a fairly dishonest view of the text and its history. After all, what is to be expected by those who define honesty and morality by their own sexual desires? Note that if his type of distortions and arguments from a supposed silence hold then any sexual disorientation could be said to comport with Christianity whether it be zoophilia, necrophilia, pedophilia, homophilia, etc.
Is it not Hedonism to define morality, the truth and yourself by your own sexual desires?
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As I recall Boswell died of AIDS, which is just another illustration of what people have generally recognized throughout history which shows up in Christianity as well.
Mynym, you and Victoria should do lunch.
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278 – Whatever you think of RDean’s view about a historical link between christianity/homophobia, you must recognize that an association is widely perceived in our culture and most likely caused by current evangelical promoting of the “gay-hatin’ gospel” (see 279). You have only yourselves to blame!
One more time from the recent Barna survey:
“The most common perception is that present-day Christianity is “anti-homosexual.” Overall, 91 percent of young non-Christians and 80 percent of young churchgoers say this phrase describes Christianity. As the research probed this perception, non-Christians and Christians explained that beyond their recognition that Christians oppose homosexuality, they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians. One of the most frequent criticisms of young Christians was that they believe the church has made homosexuality a “bigger sin” than anything else. “
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278 – Whatever else you think of RDean’s view about a historical link between christianity/homophobia, you must recognize that an association is widely perceived in our culture and most likely caused by current evangelical promoting of the “gay-hatin’ gospel” (see 279). You have only yourselves to blame!
One more time from the recent Barna survey:
“The most common perception is that present-day Christianity is “anti-homosexual.” Overall, 91 percent of young non-Christians and 80 percent of young churchgoers say this phrase describes Christianity. As the research probed this perception, non-Christians and Christians explained that beyond their recognition that Christians oppose homosexuality, they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians. One of the most frequent criticisms of young Christians was that they believe the church has made homosexuality a “bigger sin” than anything else. “
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ok – so posts not showing – am apologizing in advance for expected duplicate …
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#279: Hades is the same as Dionysus
I suspect the go mad and rave had a lot more to do with Dionysus, who just happened to be the “God of Wine” similar to the way that Sodom became all about gays.
The reason that gays haven’t had any real impact on cultures, other than what they do today, is because there just aren’t enough of them. They have always been about the same in numbers. They are part of nature.
As far as we know, their impact is mostly in the Arts and sciences. Of Course, Alexander was gay. I read that West Point still teaches some of his strategies today. But of course, HE wouldn’t be allowed into West Point.
What Christians have found particularly effective is to make the most vulnerable members of society the ones in danger. By promoting the idea that gays are all child molesters, they have done a good job ruining gay character. I think it’s working less and less. We can thank Television for that.
Since gays come from Christain families, I’m mystifed why they should be so mistreated? Are there as many being disowned today as there used to be?
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Are there as many being disowned today as there used to be?
Probably more, since fewer are willing to lie about their identity
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I suspect the go mad and rave had a lot more to do with Dionysus, who just happened to be the “God of Wine” similar to the way that Sodom became all about gays.
It’s all about the gay identity only in your own Western mind. It’s really all about sin and different philosophies of life, that philosopher disagreed with the Hedonism symbolized by Dionysus and pointed out an image that would be more accurate.
The reason that gays haven’t had any real impact on cultures, other than what they do today, is because there just aren’t enough of them.
If you’re defining supposed groups of people by their sexual desires then you’re wrong, the evidence shows that sexuality is generally relative to culture.
What Christians have found particularly effective is to make the most vulnerable members of society the ones in danger.
That’s not generally the case and it’s not apparent how one of the wealthiest and best educated classes of individuals is also the most vulnerable. On the other hand, it is generally the case that self defined gays engage in victimization propaganda structured in this way:
(After the Ball: How America will conquer its fear & hatred of Gays in the 90’s
By Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen :183)
As they point out such tactics are fairly effective on the weak minded.
…they have done a good job ruining gay character.
A correlation among sexual disorientations has been and can be observed:
(Annual Review of Anthropology,
Vol. 16, 1987, The Cross-Cultural
Study of Human Sexuality,
By D. L. Davis, R. G. Whitten :69-98)
For example:
(The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) August 26, 2002
Monday Final Edition
NEWS; Pg. A4
HEADLINE: TWO JURIES TO DECIDE IF CHILD MOLESTER, 2 BROTHERS OR ALL 3 KILLED FLA. FATHER
BYLINE: Bill Kaczor)
I think it’s working less and less. We can thank Television for that.
I suppose every image promulgated on TV is true, so true. As Kirk and Madsen suggest the “Everyman” is the best image to combine with victimization propaganda. But with a little study one comes across facts that shatter false images such as the case where emergency phone lines were set up by people believing the propaganda in order to help gay victims, yet the lines were clogged with calls from gays being abused as the result of domestic violence:
(The Gazette (Montreal)
April 4, 1996, Thursday.
News; In Brief; Pg. A3
Pilot project tracking violence against gays)
See also:
(The Gazette (Montreal) October 23, 1996, Wednesday,
Final Edition. News; Pg. F10 Gay domestic violence; Study
documents abuse in homosexual relationships
Byline: Vicki Haddock)
(Newsweek October 4, 1993 , U.S. Edition Special Report; Pg. 26 Patterns of Abuse
Byline: By Michele Ingrassia et al.)
For example:
(The Guardian (London)
October 19, 1998
The Guardian Features Page; Pg. 8
Silent partners
Byline: Mel Steel)
Note the attitude that develops based on victimization propaganda.
Since gays come from Christain families, I’m mystifed why they should be so mistreated?
The same could be said of any sexual disorientation, apparently you’re easily taken in by victimization propaganda in one instance and haven’t been subject to any such imagery in others. A conditioned reaction of: “I feel like a poor little zoophile may get beat up if you say that bestiality is immoral, so let’s play pretend instead.” could be brought forth in time because no matter how unhealthy or repulsive the behavior, “cult”ure can be manipulated to legitimize it. Well, it can be manipulated as long as people are stupid and ignorant.
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Probably more, since fewer are willing to lie about their identity.
Apparently you believe that a person’s identity is defined by their sexual desires.
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284 – in context, it should be obvious that I meant “sexual identity”.
Apparently you are a propagandist with no regard for truth or context.
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#284: Apparently you believe that a person’s identity is defined by their sexual desires.
Why not? Christians do it to gays all the time.
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Why then do gay people identify themselves as “gay people,” RDean?
I NEVER have identified myself as a “heterosexual person”!!
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RDEAn, Auden openly practiced homosexuality without suffering oppression other than from himself. His Christian friends, Reinhold Niebuhr and his wife, among many other Christians were quite understanding and tolerant of his homosexuality
His view that few if any homosexuals view their sex-life as happy was been on a lifetime of personal homosexual experience.
As SG remarks your discourse rarely speaks to the point of your interlocutors in that you tend to ignore others serious remarks and twist their points in some sort of self hallucinating way in deaf dialog.
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In the above “been” in the second para. should have been “based.”
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Apparently you are a propagandist with no regard for truth or context.
If you believe that the Western notion of Gay© defines the truth about a person and defines morality for them based on their own sexual desires then you have a myopic and ignorant perspective. The evidence shows that sexuality is relative to culture.
What Christians have found particularly effective is to make the most vulnerable members of society the ones in danger.
It’s not apparent how one of the wealthiest and best educated classes of individuals is also “the most vulnerable.” On the other hand, it is generally the case that self defined gays engage in victimization propaganda of this structure:
(After the Ball: How America will conquer its fear & hatred of Gays in the 90’s
by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen :183)
They argue that such tactics will be effective on people of limited intellect, that seems to have been born out.
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I think it’s working less and less. We can thank Television for that.
I suppose every image promulgated on TV is true, so true. As Kirk and Madsen suggest the “Everyman” is the best image to combine with victimization propaganda. But with a little study one comes across facts that shatter false images such as the case where emergency phone lines were set up by people believing the propaganda in order to help gay victims, yet the lines were clogged with calls from gays being abused as the result of domestic violence:
(The Gazette (Montreal)
April 4, 1996, Thursday.
News; In Brief; Pg. A3
Pilot project tracking violence against gays)
See also:
(The Gazette (Montreal) October 23, 1996, Wednesday,
Final Edition. News; Pg. F10 Gay domestic violence; Study
documents abuse in homosexual relationships
Byline: Vicki Haddock)
(Newsweek October 4, 1993 , U.S. Edition Special Report; Pg. 26 Patterns of Abuse
Byline: By Michele Ingrassia et al.)
For example:
(The Guardian (London)
October 19, 1998
The Guardian Features Page; Pg. 8
Silent partners
Byline: Mel Steel)
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Sawgunner at #242: Am I wrong to think that at some point all gays were straight little boys and girls? There must have been an opportune time or “vulnerable moment” when the young boy or girl (onset of adolescence/puberty? Late teen years when dating first starts) when he or she has to make the decision to pursue as wholly normal yearnings or feelings about the opp gender or same gender.
Yes you are wrong.
When did you choose to be heterosexual? Victoria ignored this question four or five times. Let’s see if you have the courage to answer it.
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#287: I NEVER have identified myself as a “heterosexual person”!!
They wouldn’t have to if you didn’t do it for them. It’s like a white person in a room of white people saying to the one black, I never refer to myself as “white”, why do you refer to yourself as “black”. The black person says, “Why did you tell me you were ready to order?”
#288: Auden openly practiced homosexuality without suffering oppression other than from himself.
He lived from 1907 to 1978 and he lived open and without suffering oppression???? Gays are oppressed now. Surely you don’t really believe what you said? It must have been a metaphor or something.
#290: one of the wealthiest and best educated
That is one of the myths about the gays. The truth, the average gay man makes less than the average straight man. However, they have a greater disposable income because they aren’t allowed to get married. Also, many gays are kicked out of their Christian families? Many don’t even finish high school. It’s very difficult for a 15 or 16 year old to rebound after being mistreated by compassionate conservatives.
You guys talk about me twisting things. Christians are masters of the morals twist.
No normal man wants to be viewed as, uh, how did you put it, “victims in need of protection”. Instead, they want to be seen as, “strong”. But Christians see them as, how did you put it? “Public menace that warrants resistance and oppression”?
You kick your kids out as young teenagers because they “choose” what isn’t a “choice”? What do you want them to do? Skulk off somewhere, crawl into a hole and die? Christians are scandalous when it comes to their gay children. Just scandalous. No heart. No feelings. It’s no wonder you need a book to tell you what is moral.
It’s people of limited intellect that can be convinced their children are deserving of such mistreatment. Even you know that.
Gays can’t be in the military. An honorable discharge means college education, guaranteed home loan. When you are in the service, you get dental and medical.
A will by a gay can be challenged by a first cousin.
Remember Terry Shaivo? Gays have no hospital rights. Not like husband and wife.
There are more than a thousand other rights that gays are denied.
And why?
Because of Bible stories. The same book that gives us Noah’s Ark and the Garden of Eden. Christians believe they have a right to make gays lives as miserable as possible because of a book with stories like Samson and Jonah and the Whale.
How would gay rights affect straights? It wouldn’t. Most don’t even know any gays now. They say they do, but we I suspect they lie. How could you want so much less for people you consider friend? It’s not possible.
Don’t tell me I’m rude. You guys are wrong. And I don’t mean mistaken. I mean wrong like mean and nasty. You know, heartless wrong.
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#291: Gays and lesbians are more likely to be victims of domestic violence than anti-gay violence
Their husbands beat most battered wives. Their parents beat most battered children. Probably every woman raped was raped by a straight man. Blacks are more likely to be beaten or robbed by other blacks.
I guess you have point somewhere that some gays are violent, but I’m mystified what it is. When you figure it out, let us know. But please, make sense.
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Adding my applause to RDEAN in #293. Eloquent, true words.
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If you believe that the Western notion of Gay© defines the truth about a person and defines morality for them based on their own sexual desires then you have a myopic and ignorant perspective.
Obviously I don’t believe that, but you seem to wish that all gay-supportive people do, so I expect there’s no persuading you.
The evidence shows that sexuality is relative to culture.
It also shows that sexual orientation has a very strong biological component. Fortunately, our culture is starting to let up on cruel suppression of that fact.
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#293 yes amen!
Except I would have concluded differently than you from #287 which has “I AM IN THE CLOSET FOR JESUS” written all over it.
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Joe Fairclough behavior was (and is) unacceptable. He “hated” the sinner instead of the sin. Christ was compassionate (vs. tolerant) of the sinner (as pointed out by #2). The difference between compassion and tolerance is love.
The Christian community is notorious for ranking sin. As if homosexuality is worse than adultery, both are sins and should be turned from (Romans 6:1).
The Christian community must show love (remember the Greatest Commandment). However, as noted above, love is not tolerance of sinful behavior.
A Christian’s freedom must be filtered through the Bible – for freedom without order is chaos.
The homosexual community has obviously been hurt deeply by many in the Christian community and for that I am deeply sorry. The solution is not endorsing or enabling sinful behavior to continue.
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Come on. Everything is a sin to those that believe in the occult. Eating a “Snickers” bar is a sin.
Quick, behind you. Oh, sorry, I thought a saw a ghost. Casper.
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#301: A Christian’s freedom must be filtered through the Bible – for freedom without order is chaos.
That’s a logical fallacy. If we accept that freedom without order is chaos — unproven but a reasonable assumption — it does not follow that the Bible is only, or even the best, source for that order.
All we need for order is a sensible set of civil laws. Give people rules to keep them from harming each other and to punish them when they do, and otherwise, leave them free to believe whatever they wish about religion, sexuality, etc.
The overlay of moral codes from the Bible should be something binding only on those who choose to be bound by it. If you believe homosexuality is morally wrong, don’t engage in it, but don’t try to pass laws to dictate how the two men who share a house down the street from you have to run their lives. That isn’t your business, and unless they are somehow forcing unwilling people to take part in their activities, it’s nobody else’s business either.
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#303 All we need for order is a sensible set of civil laws.
Unproven – Ever studied the Roman Empire? Where should this sensible set of civil laws come from? Each to his own?
So, if I believe pornography is morally wrong, I shouldn’t try to pass laws to stop it?