"Pedophilia is not the same as homosexuality. Tell me, when a man rapes a little girl, do you make the claim that heterosxuality is inherently harmful?"
a man rapes a little girl, he is a pedophille and a rapist.
a man rapes a boy, he is a pedophille and a rapist.
in both cases a pedophille and in bot cases a rapist.
in the first case a heterosexual and in second case a homosexual.
What is the role of the established religions in the arising of the new consciousness? Many people are already aware of the difference between spirituality and religion. They realize that having a belief system, a set off thoughts that you regard as the absolute truth, does not make you spiritual no matter what the nature of those beliefs is. In fact, the more that you make your thoughts, your beliefs, into your identity, the more cut off you are to the spiritual dimension within yourself. Many religious people are stuck at that level. //
The new spirituality, the transformation of consciousness, is arising to a large extent outside the structures of the existing institutionalized religions. This large scale opening of spirituality outside of the religious structures is an entirely new development. In the past, this would have been inconceivable, especially in the west, the most mind-dominated of all cultures, where the Christian church had a virtual franchise on spirituality. //
Partly as a result of the spiritual teachings that have arisen outside the established religions, but also due to an influx of the ancient eastern wisdom teachings, a growing number of followers of traditional religions are able to let go of form, dogma, and rigid belief systems and discover the original depth that is hidden within their own spiritual tradition at the same time that they discover the depths within themselves… //
Some religious institutions will be open to the new consciousness. Others will harden their doctrinal positions and become part of all those other manmade structures through which the collective ego will defend itself and fight back. Some churches, sects, cults, or religious movements are basically collective egoist entities as rigidly identified with their mental positions as the followers of any political ideology which is closed to any alternative interpretation of reality. //
But the ego is destined to dissolve, and all its ossified structures, whether they be religious or other institutions, corporations or governments will disintegrate from within, no matter how deeply entrenched they appear to be. The most rigid structures, the most impervious to change will collapse first. This has already happened in the case of Soviet communism. How deeply entrenched, how solid and monolithic it appeared. And yet within a few years it completely collapsed from within. No one foresaw this; all were taken by surprise. There are many more such surprises in store for us.
[Why is this of such interest to me? Because this new awakening, or enlightenment is all that will save the human race. From the seemingly intractable Arab/Israeli conflict to the seemingly insolvable problems such as population explosion and resulting global warming and food/water/energy shortages, it will take a new awakening to resolve these problems.]
Most ancient religions and spiritual traditions share the common insight that our normal state of mind is marred by a fundamental defect. However, out of this insight into the nature of the human condition, we may call it the bad news, arises a second insight, the good news of the possibility of the radical transformation of human consciousness. In Hindu teachings, and sometimes Buddhism also, this transformation is called enlightenment. In the teachings of Jesus it is called salvation. In Buddhism it is called the end of suffering. Liberation and awakening are other terms used to describe this transformation. //
The greatest achievement of humanity is not the achievements of its art, science or technology, but rather the recognition of its own dysfunction, its own madness. In the distant past, this recognition already came to a few individuals. The man called Gautama Siddhartha, who lived 2600 years ago in India, was perhaps the first who saw it with absolute clarity. Later, the title of Buddha was conferred upon him. Buddha means the awakened one. //
At about the same time, another of humanity’s early awakened teachers emerged in China. His name was Lao Tzu. He left the record of his teachings in one of the most profound spiritual books ever written, the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching). //
To recognize ones own insanity is of course the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence. A new dimension of consciousness had begun to arise on the planet, the first tentative flowering. //
Those three individuals then spoke to their contemporaries. They spoke of sin, of suffering, of delusion. They said, “Look how you live, see what you are doing, the suffering you create.” They then pointed to the possibility of awakening from the collective nightmare of normal human existence. They showed the way. //
The world was not yet ready for them, and yet they were a vital and necessary part of human awakening. Inevitably, they were mostly misunderstood by their contemporaries, as well as by subsequent generations. Their teachings, although both simple and powerful, became distorted and misinterpreted. Over the centuries many things were added that had nothing to do with the original teachings, but were the reflections of a fundamental misunderstanding. Some of the teachers were ridiculed, reviled or killed. Others came to be worshipped as gods. Teachings that pointed the way beyond the dysfunction of the human mind, the way out of the collective insanity, were distorted and became themselves part of the insanity. //
And so religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an end to violence and hatred, through realization of the wonders of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as divisions between different religions, and even within the same religion. They became ideologies, or belief systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of self. They could make themselves right and others wrong and thus define their identities through their enemies, the others, the nonbelievers or wrong believers, who not infrequently they saw themselves justified in killing. Man made god in his own image. The eternal, the infinite, the un-nameable was reduced to a mental idol that you must believe in and worship as my god or our god. //
Where is the Line? :
"What about Pedaphilia? Beastiality? Necrophilia? Are those OK, too?"
How many times does this tired argument have to be rfuted? Pedophilia, bestiality, and necrophilia all take place without the consent of at least one involved party. Children, animals, and the dead can't give consent.
"Are they considered reprehensible until Practitioners band together, lobby congress for legislation, boycott TV stations that don't air supportive sit-coms, and have Man-Boy, Man-Dog, & Man-Corpse Love Marches?"
No - because they involve lack of consent.
"Morality draws a line in the sand for the protection of society. Just because homosexuals have Gay Pride parades, have successfully lobbied for gay-friendly legislation, and have infused Hollywood with their ideals, Doesn't legitimize the practice in the least."
If you don't think homosexuality is "legitiamte," don't enter into an intimate relationship with someone of the same sex. I've been told by various people that m marriage isn't legitimate, even though it's legal, because both my husband and I were divorced from previous spouses, and because our wedding did not take place in a church with clergy officiating. I call BS on other people's criteria for the legitimacy of my relationship.
"Homosexuality doesn't hurt anybody, you say? Tell that to the molested Catholic altar boys. They might beg to differ."
Pedophilia is not the same as homosexuality. Tell me, when a man rapes a little girl, do you make the claim that heterosxuality is inherently harmful?
What about Pedaphilia? Beastiality? Necrophilia? Are those OK, too?
Are they considered reprehensible until Practitioners band together, lobby congress for legislation, boycott TV stations that don't air supportive sit-coms, and have Man-Boy, Man-Dog, & Man-Corpse Love Marches?
Morality draws a line in the sand for the protection of society. Just because homosexuals have Gay Pride parades, have successfully lobbied for gay-friendly legislation, and have infused Hollywood with their ideals, Doesn't legitimize the practice in the least.
Homosexuality doesn't hurt anybody, you say? Tell that to the molested Catholic altar boys. They might beg to differ.
Take the lesson from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Does GOD forgive former gays after they have repented and changed their views upon same sex marriage and relationships? YES! and GOD doesn't just stop there..He infuses HIS HOLY SPIRIT within us..to be our Comforter and protector when the old urges try to resurface.
DOes GOD bless, support and embrace those who continue to have 'same sex" marriages, sodomy and and gay relationships? NO...but HE's still standing there with open arms to forgive and embrace those that run from it and seek HIS Divine intervention.
Jesus (a.s)said my father is greater than me.
Also said my God is a Jealous God.
Also said I do every thing with the Will of God.
He also said I do not come to change but to confirm the Law.
My question TO THE CHRISTIAN WORLD IS DOES JESUS (A.S.) EVER ONCE SAID, I CAME TO GIVE MY SACRIFICE FOR YOUR SINS?
Instead JESUS (A.S) SAID, """"who break one Law will not enter the kingdom of Heavean""".
DID OR HAVE CHRISTIANS EVER FOLLOWED WHAT JESUS(A.S) SAID???????
HE ALSO PROSTRATED AND PRAYED, my question is TO WHOM ???
My another question is DOES CHRISTIANS "EVER" prayed and prostrated like Jesus (a.s) to his God (Father)?
THE WORST WAY OF CALLING NAME TO THE ALMIGHTY CREATOR:
When Christians say that Jesus (A.S) was the only BEGOTTEN son and not MADE like Adam (A.S) or like all other creatures or creations? (Like when and what God wihes, it happens)
What are you insinuating??? That God Almighty Him self came down to perform the lowest form of animal act like dog, donkey or monkey, i.e., sexual reproduction?
And on top of it Jesus (A.S) was His begotten son not legitimate!!!!!!!!!!
THAT IS THE WORST KIND OF ABUSE AND NAMING ANY BODY COULD HAVE DIRECTED TOWARDS THE GOD ALMIGHTY!!
Well down you so called CHRISTIAN believers??
You are getting your rewards in this world and will definitely get infinitely here after!!!!!!
YOUR BEST OF BEST ARE PREIST, BISHOP, CARDINAL AND POP AND NUNS RIGHT!
You say Nuns don't marry there whole life b/cause they are married to the Father. Alright!
My Question is Your Priest up to Pop, are they also married to the Father?????
Extremely Natural concept, behavior or shall I say believe????
I think its sad when people of all faiths are intolerant with those who either lack faith or have a different view point of religion. To argue with gay people why being gay is wrong is a waste of time,all sinners try to excuse the wrongs they do.The scriptures are replete with the abomination of homosexuls, exp SODOM and GOMORHA, the scriptures are full of Christ like ideals and also the condemnation of spousal abuse, child abuse obedience to both Gods law and mans law, once we pass to the world of spirits those who didnt believe will know things they didnt learn here, many will remain as they were on earth,others will hear and see and desire to accept the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We as followers of Christ bear testimony of him, we follow him, we honor him and accept him as the Son of God and we acknowledge his atonement, that he died for each of our sins, and that thru believing in him we maybe saved from sin and destruction. I would like to bear my testimony that Jesus is the Christ the he lives and loves us, that he created this heaven and earth under the direction of the Father. I bear witness that Jesus Christ, God the Father and the Holy Ghost are 3 seperate personages and that they are 1 in purpose and that is to bring the gospel to mankind and to once again help them to know of Christ as he has asked us to. May we so read and study his word and thru prayer and scripture study learn of him who is meek and gave his life for each of us. I bear this witness and know its true, in the name of Jesus Christ AMEN
Iam a memeber of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, so all of you who thought Mormons didnt believe in Christ, now you know!!
2Timothy 3:16-17: 16 All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work.
According to the Bible, governments are free to pass whatever laws they see fit.
True Christians are careful to maintain neutrality by avoiding political debates. (John 17:16) Even when the laws of the land are in conflict with a Bible-trained conscience, a true Christian does not engage in protests or any form of political campaigns in order to change such laws.
As a Christian, I recognize that our Creator sets the standard. Our Creator established rules governing marriage long before governments began regulating the institution.
(Genesis 2:24) “A man will leave his father and his mother and he must stick to his wife and they must become one flesh.” The Hebrew word “wife,” according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words, “connotes one who is a female human being.” Jesus confirmed that those yoked together in marriage should be “male and female.”—Matthew 19:4.
According to the Bible, God intended marriage to be a permanent and an intimate bond between a man and a woman. Men and women are designed to complement each other so they may be capable of satisfying each other’s emotional, spiritual, and sexual needs and desires.
The well-known Biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah reveals God’s feelings about homosexuality. God declared: “The cry of complaint about Sodom and Gomorrah, yes, it is loud, and their sin, yes, it is very heavy.” (Genesis 18:20) The extent of their sinful depravity at that time was apparent when two guests visited the righteous man Lot. “The men of Sodom . . . surrounded the house, from boy to old man, all the people in one mob. And they kept calling out to Lot and saying to him: ‘Where are the men who came in to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have intercourse with them.’” (Genesis 19:4, 5) The Bible says: “The men of Sodom were bad and were gross sinners against Jehovah.”—Genesis 13:13.
The men became “violently inflamed in their lust toward one another, males with males.” (Romans 1:27) They had “gone out after flesh for unnatural use.” (Jude 7) Some may object to using the word “unnatural” to describe homosexual behavior. However, is not God the final arbiter when it comes to nature? He commanded his ancient people: “You must not lie down with a male the same as you lie down with a woman. It is a detestable thing.”— Leviticus 18:22.
The Bible is clear: God does not approve of or condone homosexual practices. He also disapproves of people who “consent with those practicing them.” (Romans 1:32) And “marriage” cannot give homosexuality a cloak of respectability. God’s direction that “marriage be honorable among all” precludes homosexual unions, which he considers detestable.—Hebrews 13:4.
Imperfect human standards change. Jehovah’s righteous standards are perfect and unchangeable.
Moody:
No one is trying to get you to have anal sex. In fact, I think it's probably best for everyone if you continue to be satisfied with yourself.
The reason for the prohibiton against close biological ADULT relatives marrying is that it shrinks the gene pool, concentrates recessive genes, and makes genetic birth defects more likely to occur. It has nothing to do with sexual morality or ethics. That said, if your brother turns you on that much, and he's ok with it and of legal age, boff away.
If you're talking about adults having sex with their underage children, you should realize that ANY adult having sex with ANY underage child is already a crime - it's called statutory rape. No one has the right to rape.
Exactly what habit am I in - at least in your febrile imagination?
I have to wonder when was the last time you had sex with anyone other than Rosy - maybe you're just jealous that gay men and lesbians are getting more than you are.
Moody :
**Let’s analyze Gay Union (physical relation).
It consist of two parts
1- Emotional part that is LOVE which alone without physical part doesn’t fall in the category of Gay relation.**
Actually, it does. Men who feel romantic love for other men are gay. Women who feel roamntic love for other women are lesbian.
**2- Physical part ONLY that defines if the relation is Gay or not. OR you can say that if two men are sexually involved ONLY THEN IT IS GAY REALTION.**
Not so. A gay man can have sex with a woman and he is still gay. A lesbian can have sex with a man and still be a lesbian. Gay men and lesbians can be celibate - they're still homosexual. Both of these situations often happen with gay men and lesbians who are closeted.
A straight man can have sex with another man and not be gay. A straight woman can have sex with another woman and not be a lesbian. Sometimes this happens because people are curious and just want to see what it's like. Sometimes it's a power thing, such as among incarcerated individuals.
**So basically this relation is based on SEXUAL NATURE only!**
No, it's much more complex than simply who you have sex with. It's about which sex you're physically and affectionally attracted to, regardless of whether you act on that attraction or not.
**Now lets analyze its MAIN ASPECT that is physical sexual relation.
1- From male satisfaction and sensation point, the best you get is from women.**
Only if you're heterosexual.
**Question : Is it normal and hygienic or SICK behavior to get it willingly by hitting a s.h.i.t hole??**
Newsflash - there are straight people who enjoy anal sex. Orientation is more than just a question of orifices and appendages.
**2- And from the point view of person who is allowing the unnatural intercourse through his s.h.i.t hole. Question : Is in love he force the other to hit his s.h.i.t.? Is it normal or extremely unhygienic insane behavior??**
As long it's consensual, there's nothing wrong with any combination of orifices and appendages.
There are those who would say that male-female fellatio and cunnilingus are "unhygienic" - shall we condemn those as well? You're going to have quite a battle on your hands there.
**Now the last question does love really demand such unhygienic and UNNATURAL behavior??**
Love doesn't demand sex of any kind. People who love each other generally desire to have sex with each other. Sex is often a form of expression of love. And sometimes it's just plain fun.
**Are we so lost that don’t know countless other ways of showing our love and compassion like caring, helping and protecting each other rights etc?**
You could say the same about straight people. There are lots of ways to show love, including those you listed AND through mutual sexual pleasure.
**Rights doesn’t mean s.h.i.t bashing or adopting insane activities.**
So are you planning to deny rights to straight people who have sex in positions you find unacceptable?
**Insanity is a DESEASE and not the normal course or nature of life.**
And homophobia is a form of insanity. Congratulations, you've realized you have a problem. That's the first step to healiong yourself.
**BAD HABITS ARE NOT NATURE, YOU ARE ONLY SO AROGANT NOT WILLING TO LIVE THEM!!!!!!!!!**
Biting your nails is a bad habit. Wanting to be able to marry the person you love isn't. Please learn the difference.
My faith is grounded in Jesus Christ and the Word of God. I believe what God's Word says regarding homosexuality; it is sinful. This does not mean that I personally condemn homosexuality above any other sin, because the Bible says that all sin is equal.
Because I believe God's Word, I understand that we were made for His use. God clearly states in the Bible that man was intended for woman, and woman was intended for man. But because of sin, man has strayed from God's righteous Word and has been turned over to a repobate mind, thus accepting sin.
According to the scripture, homosexuality is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. Thus, when put into a spiritual context, I say that it is sinful and that Christians should repent of their sins.
I feel it is important that I reiterate, all sin is equal in the eyes of the Lord. Therefore, homosexuality is no worse a sin than lying, stealing, killing, etc.
My political views on same-sex unions are different from my spiritual views, because I understand the separation of church and state, as stipulated in the U.S. Constitution. Politically, I believe same-sex couples should be granted the same rights and privileges as married couples; however, I believe that marriage should be defined as the union of one man and one woman. It is a pre-political foundation of civilization.
Let me add one last thing. I feel many Christians are quick to judge and condemn homosexuals, and they do a disservice to our faith. Our purpose should always be to show Christ's love and to seek salvation for the unbeliever and restoration for the backslider.
I think you misunderstood Bobby, Lepidopteryx. He just came out and stated before all of us the primary conflict of his life. He's gay and can't accept himself for all the reasons he stated. He is imploring you and me to do as he attempts but will never achieve.
The tiny, little problem is that you and I live with such a profound integrity he will never know. The inabiliity to accept reality via derivative religious dogma facsinates me no end.
Bobby:
**Please please give up your desires for same sex partners and learn to live within the norms of society. You will find that you will be much much happier and much more productive in life. You will have a lot more peace in your life.**
Can you give up your attraction to opposite sex partners? I'm not asking if you can abstain from sex - anyone can do that. I'm asking if you can stop finding women attractive. If you can't, then what makes you think that those who are attracted to the same sex can just stop being attracted?
And how exactly will pretending to be attracted to the opposite sex, perhaps even marrying someone they cannot love in order to, in your words, "live within the norms of society," make their lives happier?
I just want to know why gays and lesbians refuse to accept that God does not accept homosexuality as a lifestyle. As a matter of fact its one of the things that He hates among other things. So I just want you to stop trying to make the rest of us accept something that is un-natural. We will not accept the behavior. We accept you as human beings period. I don't want to see this behavior portrayed on television or the movies and I don't want it espoused in our schools to the children as an acceptable lifestyle. It isnt acceptable period. Please please give up your desires for same sex partners and learn to live within the norms of society. You will find that you will be much much happier and much more productive in life. You will have a lot more peace in your life.
I ask, does the Washington Post really reach out for TRUE Faith, and one thought on Wade, I believe death of of a word is the death of a smile, is the death of belief that we mean something. I write no more. Short edit that on life's meaning and the taking away from what someone wants to mean in life, such as getting out in a world we all hope will get better.
I ask, does the Washington Post really reach out for TRUE Faith, and one thought on Wade, I believe death of of a word is the death of a smile, is the death of belief that we mean something. I write no more. Short edit that on life's meaning and the taking away from what someone wants to mean in life, such as getting out in a world we all hope will get better.
I ask, does the Washington Post really reach out for TRUE Faith, and one thought on Wade, I believe death of of a wrod is the death of a smile, is the death of belief that we mean something. I write no more. Short edit that on life's meaning and the taking away from what someone wants to mean in life, such as getting out in a world we all hope will get better.
1. Separation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see Other Groups fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways.
1. Separation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see Other Groups fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
1. Separation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see Other Groups fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
1. Separation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see Other Groups fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
1. Seaparation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see the NAACP or Other Groups fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
1. Seaparation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see the NAACP or Other Groups fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
1. Seaparation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see the NAACP or Neo Nazi's fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
1. Seaparation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see the NAACP or Neo Nazi's fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
It fascinates me no end that the most intolerant and disrespectful persons toward G-d's creation are the most devout Fundamentalist Christians. It's so contradictory and hypocritical.
Religion isn't a club. If anyone is using it as such *THAT* ought to be a clue right there.
It's incompetently derivative hermeneutics and erroneously imposed bigotry upon the texts. If you like you can read "The Sins of Scripture" by John Shelby Spond c2005 or "The Good Book" by Peter J. Gomes c1996 to find out all about it.
It's stems from a rationalization derived from the Cain/Able fratricide as a justification for "dark-skinned" people being descended from Cain and so deserving of abusive enslavement to atone for Cain's crime. It is pure tripe and staggering stupidity that not 150 years-ago was solidly considered competent biblical certainty.
The irony is that the very same certainty about gay persons is just as specious and incompetently construed today.
You are the one who brought it up and you are the one spouting errneous information. Read the book I gave you to read and educate yourself. You speak only in abusive uninformed bigotry.
Stop doing that. Do you understand?
You are making incorrect statements and refusing to listen when facts are presented to you.
Stop doing that, too.
Or continue to do so and get the responses your are getting.
Useing religion as a bat to hit others with is disrespectful to your God and reason. My best friend is gay...he is the most balanced person I know. Now for those who think being gay is an imbalance that will not make sense...but to those who see it as merely another way humanity was created...it makes perfect sense. In fact my gay friend says that Bisexuality is the most balanced. he wouldn't know...
What if all us hetros are the abnormal? How bout if 80% of all those who profess hetrosexuality are really in the closet gays?
I see only one way to ensure not being intolerant and bigoted...respect all people, not for who they love, but what they do to help others and make this a better world for all of us.
Useing a religion to preach intolerance is stupid, not all people care what another religion says, unless it effects them. I am not of a religiion that sees homosexuality as wrong. We respect all of the diversity created. It is not for us to say what is good and what isn't. We honor the Creator, She knows what She is doing. Mama does not play favorites.
Useing religion as a bat to hit others with is disrespectful to your God and reason. My best friend is gay...he is the most balanced person I know. Now for those who think being gay is an imbalance that will not make sense...but to those who see it as merely another way humanity was created...it makes perfect sense. In fact my gay friend says that Bisexuality is the most balanced. he wouldn't know...
What if all us hetros are the abnormal? How bout if 80% of all those who profess hetrosexuality are really in the closet gays?
I see only one way to ensure not being intolerant and bigoted...respect all people, not for who they love, but what they do to help others and make this a better world for all of us.
Useing a religion to preach intolerance is stupid, not all people care what another religion says, unless it effects them. I am not of a religiion that sees homosexuality as wrong. We respect all of the diversity created. It is not for us to say what is good and what isn't. We honor the Creator, She knows what She is doing. Mama does not play favorites.
Useing religion as a bat to hit others with is disrespectful to your God and reason. My best friend is gay...he is the most balanced person I know. Now for those who think being gay is an imbalance that will not make sense...but to those who see it as merely another way humanity was created...it makes perfect sense. In fact my gay friend says that Bisexuality is the most balanced. he wouldn't know...
What if all us hetros are the abnormal? How bout if 80% of all those who profess hetrosexuality are really in the closet gays?
I see only one way to ensure not being intolerant and bigoted...respect all people, not for who they love, but what they do to help others and make this a better world for all of us.
Useing a religion to preach intolerance is stupid, not all people care what another religion says, unless it effects them. I am not of a religiion that sees homosexuality as wrong. We respect all of the diversity created. It is not for us to say what is good and what isn't. We honor the Creator, She knows what She is doing. Mama does not play favorites.
Useing religion as a bat to hit others with is disrespectful to your God and reason. My best friend is gay...he is the most balanced person I know. Now for those who think being gay is an imbalance that will not make sense...but to those who see it as merely another way humanity was created...it makes perfect sense. In fact my gay friend says that Bisexuality is the most balanced. he wouldn't know...
What if all us hetros are the abnormal? How bout if 80% of all those who profess hetrosexuality are really in the closet gays?
I see only one way to ensure not being intolerant and bigoted...respect all people, not for who they love, but what they do to help others and make this a better world for all of us.
Useing a religion to preach intolerance is stupid, not all people care what another religion says, unless it effects them. I am not of a religiion that sees homosexuality as wrong. We respect all of the diversity created. It is not for us to say what is good and what isn't. We honor the Creator, She knows what She is doing. Mama does not play favorites.
Useing religion as a bat to hit others with is disrespectful to your God and reason. My best friend is gay...he is the most balanced person I know. Now for those who think being gay is an imbalance that will not make sense...but to those who see it as merely another way humanity was created...it makes perfect sense. In fact my gay friend says that Bisexuality is the most balanced. he wouldn't know...
What if all us hetros are the abnormal? How bout if 80% of all those who profess hetrosexuality are really in the closet gays?
I see only one way to ensure not being intolerant and bigoted...respect all people, not for who they love, but what they do to help others and make this a better world for all of us.
Useing a religion to preach intolerance is stupid, not all people care what another religion says, unless it effects them. I am not of a religiion that sees homosexuality as wrong. We respect all of the diversity created. It is not for us to say what is good and what isn't. We honor the Creator, She knows what She is doing. Mama does not play favorites.
Useing religion as a bat to hit others with is disrespectful to your God and reason. My best friend is gay...he is the most balanced person I know. Now for those who think being gay is an imbalance that will not make sense...but to those who see it as merely another way humanity was created...it makes perfect sense. In fact my gay friend says that Bisexuality is the most balanced. he wouldn't know...
What if all us hetros are the abnormal? How bout if 80% of all those who profess hetrosexuality are really in the closet gays?
I see only one way to ensure not being intolerant and bigoted...respect all people, not for who they love, but what they do to help others and make this a better world for all of us.
Useing a religion to preach intolerance is stupid, not all people care what another religion says, unless it effects them. I am not of a religiion that sees homosexuality as wrong. We respect all of the diversity created. It is not for us to say what is good and what isn't. We honor the Creator, She knows what She is doing. Mama does not play favorites.
Karma,
I have read the Bible but never saw any verses that "condemns black and dark skinned people throughout", as you asserted. Could you point out where in the Bible contains such a message?
IF you like to keep refering yourself to animals then by all means, if you do your research and studies most so called homosexual behavior by animals is out of pecking order and dominance. What reason does a female dog hump a male because she is horny? No she proveing her dominance over the male. Maybe when we can determine we did not come from animals we will quit acting like them and walk upright again in the truth.
You're parroting a 250+ year-old argument that is no longer operant. At least be original. John Wesley gave a "Sermon #38: A Caution Against Bigorty" in which he used the polemic: same-sex atrractions were "lusts against nature".
This is untrue. It was untrue then. It is now. 450 Animal species have been well documented for 200 years that express homosexual, bisexual and bimodal sexualities.
Read all about them in "Biological Exuberance: Animial Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" by Bruce Bagemihl, PhD, c1999.
It is ironic in the extreme that Wesley's sermon is resurrected in suppor of anti-gay rhetoric when it was a CAUTION AGAINST BIGOTRY. Grow up, please. Read a little too, and come with your own ideas will ya?
ANON: "The fact to the Point stands is it lust or Love. Because as we know, especially men we know sex without love,"
Straight people have sex without love as well. In my single days, I had a few hookups that were strictly lust.
"If two men live together without lust then it is not sex you seek but companionship same with a women."
If two people live together without sexual desire for one another, they are roommates, not lovers. If two gay men live together without desire for one another, it doesn't mean that they really want women. It simply means that they don't desire each other. Being gay doesn't mean that a man wants to sleep with every man he meets any more than being a straight woman means that I want to knock boots with every man I meet.
I had a straight male roommate years ago - he and I were not attracted to each other. We shared rent and utilities, not a bed. The fact that he did not desire me didn't mean that he didn't desire any other woman. The fact that I had no sexual interest in him did not mean that I was not attracted to men. We just didn't have any erotic chemistry - we were friends. He had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend.
You still avoid the point of lust and love. Also if it was not in our ability to do all those things you say are actually un natural,Those do not conflict with the realm of creation, because I am sure if animals or other creatures where givin the choice they would use fire to warm themselves etc. The fact to the Point stands is it lust or Love. Because as we know, especially men we know sex without love, If two men live together without lust then it is not sex you seek but companionship same with a women. We forget we are responsible for ourselves and when we do something wrong we try to find a way to justify ourselves, and convince people it is ok.
Anon:
The 'unnatural" argument really isn't valid. After all, we human beings do lots of things that are "unnatural". Things like:
Cooking food
Distilling alcohol
Rolling dried leaves in paper, igniting them, and sticking them in our mouths
Making fire
Making paper
Wearing clothing
Tanning leather and fur
Creating art
Driving
Written language
Drilling for and processing petroleum
Mining and processing minerals
I could go on for days, but I think you get the point. No other species does any of these things in the wild, and all are learned or invented behaviors - none are instinctive.
For gay men and lesbians, it IS instinctive to be attacted to a member of their own sex.
And please, enough with the sterotypes - not all lesbians are butch and not all gay men are effeminate. And even if they were, a gay man would not be attracted to a woman, no matter how "masculine" she might seem, nor would a lesbain be attracted to a man, no matter how "feminine" he might seem.
If that were the case, you could just as easily argue that a straight woman could be attracted to another woman if she were butch enough, or that a straight man could be attracted to another man if he were highly effiminate.
We are intelligble, and anyway you look at it, it is un natural show me another creature that has procreated through time as same sex. Instead how about if a gay man is to feminine then why not seek a women whose is to masculine. Plus you have to ask yourself is it lust or love when you distinguish the two then you will know the truth. Sounds like a silly Idea but has it ever been tried. We need to right our wrongs before we can walk justly in the future.
THC,
None of the gay men or lesbians I know consider themselves to have settled for less by having fallen in love with a person of their own gender, any more than I do by having fallen in love with a person of the opposite gender. They found their soulmate, as did I.
And while everyone chooses the individual(s) with whom they have sex, no one chooses what (or whom) they find attractive. I could choose to have sex with a woman, but it would be a hollow act, because I would not actually be attracted to her.
Its very sad, that a man can only find a man who can touch his e- spots. and same for a woman who cannot find a man. but has to settle for less. NO ONE IS BORN THAT WAY IT IS A POOR CHOICE THEY MAKE.
Its very sad, that a man can only find a man who can touch his e- spots. and same for a woman who cannot find a man. but has to settle for less. NO ONE IS BORN THAT WAY IT IS A POOR CHOICE THEY MAKE.
Its very sad, that a man can only find a man who can touch his e- spots. and same for a woman who cannot find a man. but has to settle for less. NO ONE IS BORN THAT WAY IT IS A POOR CHOICE THEY MAKE.
Brent Humber:
My sexual orientation IS hard wired. Is yours mutable?
Why does it have to be hard wired into the brain for you to be willing to allow same-sex couples to marry?
There are plenty of factors that are not hard-wired that can affect the quality of a marriage that are not cause for a legal or church prohibition:
Religious preference - often couples with differing faiths find that it's a hard issue to resolve. But they are allowed to legally marry, and many churches will marry non-adherents.
Income disparity - if one person has a significantly higher income than the other, it sometimes causes friction. But there is no bank account audit required to legally marry, nor do any churches that I know of require that both members of a couple have similar incomes before agreeing to perform a wedding.
Parenting philosophies - my ex and I had VERY different ideas about how my daughter should be brought up. His refusal to honor my wishes was one of the things that led to our breakup. No court and no church requires that a couple have an agreed-upon parenting plan before being allowed to marry.
Anatomy? Pheh. If the couple is happy with their collection of parts, more power to them.
Gay unions, Gay clergy, sorry I can't make that leap. If one day it is proven beyond a shadow of doubt these people are hard wired in the brain to act that way...well on that day I'll need to reevaluate.
So many posts, I only read a few. Similar debate happening in Australia, I'm afraid. Efforts to legalise same sex marriages in some areas were vetoed by the Federal Government, when it was able.
For the record, male, hetero, married, two boys. Absolutely believe in complete equality of same sex couples on all levels, social and legal. I have no problems at all if either or both of my sons turn out to be gay, except for one thing.
They will have to endure the ignorance, intolerance and prejudice from homophobes, some of whom have expressed their opinions here.
The most astonishing quote, of many, that a skimmed through was from AH. He/she stated that, as a Christian, he is required to love everyone, even homosexuals (oh the sacrifice you make, sir/madam, how big of you). But, as a Christian, he/she is not required to tolerate them. Right. I see. As you beat the crap out of some gay bloke, or order them out of your house, or torment them for their lifestyle, or ban them from your church, that is all OK as long as you are all the time yelling at the top of your voice "But don't forget. I love you". Interesting argument.
In any case, I wonder how long mankind has to do something before it is considered natural? If Christians believe literally in the Bible, then they will consider this.
The Old Testement dates back many thousands of years, and yet the writers of that ancient text saw fit to include a reference to homosexuality in it - by way of condemnation, depending on how one interprets it.
Now, if we accept that the Old Testement was written from 4000 BCE as is sometimes claimed (not that I accept this claim) then it stands to reason that mankind has been practising homosexuality for at least 6000 years. Of course, we know nothing about pre-history, but one would imagine that civilised man didn't simply wake up one day and think "I wonder what that's like. I think I'll give it a go".
And then there is the race argument. The Bible condemns black and dark skinned people throughout, indeed far more than it villifies homosexuality. Now that commonsense has prevailed on that issue, and Christians have repudiated the previous belief that black were to be the servants of whites as interpreted by the Bible, one hopes that eventually Christians will see the absurdity or their opposition towards homosexuality.
So many posts, I only read a few. Similar debate happening in Australia, I'm afraid. Efforts to legalise same sex marriages in some areas were vetoed by the Federal Government, when it was able.
For the record, male, hetero, married, two boys. Absolutely believe in complete equality of same sex couples on all levels, social and legal. I have no problems at all if either or both of my sons turn out to be gay, except for one thing.
They will have to endure the ignorance, intolerance and prejudice from homophobes, some of whom have expressed their opinions here.
The most astonishing quote, of many, that a skimmed through was from AH. He/she stated that, as a Christian, he is required to love everyone, even homosexuals (oh the sacrifice you make, sir/madam, how big of you). But, as a Christian, he/she is not required to tolerate them. Right. I see. As you beat the crap out of some gay bloke, or order them out of your house, or torment them for their lifestyle, or ban them from your church, that is all OK as long as you are all the time yelling at the top of your voice "But don't forget. I love you". Interesting argument.
In any case, I wonder how long mankind has to do something before it is considered natural? If Christians believe literally in the Bible, then they will consider this.
The Old Testement dates back many thousands of years, and yet the writers of that ancient text saw fit to include a reference to homosexuality in it - by way of condemnation, depending on how one interprets it.
Now, if we accept that the Old Testement was written from 4000 BCE as is sometimes claimed (not that I accept this claim) then it stands to reason that mankind has been practising homosexuality for at least 6000 years. Of course, we know nothing about pre-history, but one would imagine that civilised man didn't simply wake up one day and think "I wonder what that's like. I think I'll give it a go".
And then there is the race argument. The Bible condemns black and dark skinned people throughout, indeed far more than it villifies homosexuality. Now that commonsense has prevailed on that issue, and Christians have repudiated the previous belief that black were to be the servants of whites as interpreted by the Bible, one hopes that eventually Christians will see the absurdity or their opposition towards homosexuality.
AH: **If homosexuality was a correct way of life, we would not be here today.**
One could say the same thing about celibacy. Do you contend that everyone who has the ability to generate progeny has the obligation to do so? What about those who are sterile by choice? Do you oppose their right to marry as well?
**So why should we encourage or "tolerate" this behavior? All it will lead to is the destruction of the human race.**
FYI, gay men and lesbians DO reproduce. Gay men have been sperm donors and lesbians have gotten pregnant using the same reproductive technologies employed by infertile heterosexual couples. Not to mention the gay men and lesbians who enter into heterosexual marriages and have children trying to "go straight."
**I don't care what science or studies that you throw into this, no matter that male or female animals hang out with the same sex, that has no relation to them being homosexual.**
We're not talking about just hanging out- we're talking about sexual behavior.
**It is like saying that little Johnny has invited his ten best friends over for his birthday party. They are all boys. Does that make him gay? NO.**
It does if he's sexually attracted to them.
**We have already found that if homosexuality was right, we would not be here, but since we are here, that makes homosexuality the wrong lifestyle.**
Your ability to make a perfect circle without the use of a compass is truly astounding.
**the institution of the family, the traditional family is the correct way of life, shown and proven through thousands of years of life on Earth.**
Actually, if you look at other cultures, the nuclear family (mom, dad, 2.5 kinds, and a cocker spaniel) is one of many widely varying family structures. All have their advantages and their disadvantages, There is no single "correct way of life." One size does not fit all.
**Now if you bring religion into it, the Christian bible clearly defies and denounces homosexuality.**
I'm neither Christian nor Jewish, therefore the rules set forth in the Bible don't apply to me.
**Many try to refute this argument by saying that homosexuals are born the way that they are. No they choose it.**
If homosexuality is a chosen lifestyle, then heterosexuality must be as well. I'm going to assume you are a straight male (feel free to correct me if I am mistaken). When did you choose to be attracted to girls? Note that I did not ask when you chose to have sex - I asked whrn did you decide what gender you would be attracted to.
**When you question whether homosexuality should be tolerated or not, if you are a Christian, you are not questioning the issue itself, you are questioning YOUR FAITH, and in what you believe.**
My religion accepts homosexuality as one of many points on the sexual spectrum. My church performs same-sex weddings, and we have several married gay and lesbian couples in our congregation.
Y'all have no idea how idiotic it is to read anti-gay comments based on religion. Religion has NOTHING to do with it, it's all a matter of biology. Do you think for a single nano-second that if any omnipotent being had anything against gay people they'd still exist? What kind of omnipotent being do you worship anyway? You think WAY too much of your selves and attach your beliefs to a being you create to validate what you want to believe. Ranting against love, you wonder why the world is in the state it is. Isn't it time you gave up your battle against rational reason, fairness, and human justice? Crawl out from under your rocks and celebrate the evolved brain your creator gave you!
Oh, and Ah, YOU proved in your post the fact that G-d did create gay persons and animals as well as straight, and the fact that we all have been here for many millions of years and are still here now. G-d does see that it was and is good.
Why exactly do you rebel against what G-d has wrought? It's the glaring illogic that fascinates me so.
No one "chooses" their sexual identity. That is the flaw in your argument. The whole of your thesis is dependent upon it. It is a false premise. Therefore, your entire thesis is false.
Now, what will you do? Admit your error? Or, require fidelity to untruths as the standard for your beliefs? I hold to the truth. Straight persons are born straight. Gay persons are born gay. You are requiring the invalidation of G-d-created human beings as sacrificial offereings before G-d usurping the Grace of Christ.
You are also ignorant of Calvin J. Roetzel's scholarship on the Apostle Paul/Saul of Tarsus. Read his books to correct your many deficiencies.
This makes no sense at all. Don't you see this?
As Bitner said, it makes no difference to heterosexual couples for homosexual couples to marry -- in fact, it strengthens both kinds of couples. That is now a fact in Massachusetts. What are you really affraid of? I really want to know.
Before quoting Holzinger's 1991 "paper" which is neither scientifically nor academically competent, you should read the exchange between David and myself posted here.
You also employed the discredited 2,200 year old Greko-Latin Complementarian argument. Your anti-gay stance is not supported.
You are left with religious bias that is tautological and fallacious. "Animal" urges? You mean like the exact same animal urges you have? Come on, get serious. This is ridiculous.
Christianity has to mean something more important than gay-bashing. It has to.
I am heterosexual. I am married. We have 5 children. My marriage will not be effected in the least by allowing two people of the same sex marry. Not in the least. Let them marry, in a church willing to perform the ceremony, or in the courthouse. They are not harming us by being in a monogamous, committed relationship.
Why Homosexuality is not an accepted way of life in the Christian religion (and should not be):
- If homosexuality was a correct way of life, we would not be here today. It is as simple as saying that the parts do not fit. It is common sense, males and males or females and females can not reproduce, and therefore that lifestyle would have led the human race into extinction, if it would have been tolerated.
- So why should we encourage or "tolerate" this behavior? All it will lead to is the destruction of the human race.
- The foundation of humanity has continued through the 5000=years (scientifically) on the basis of heterosexuality. It can not be denied that no matter what God or what way this Earth was created, heterosexuality, has sustained and continued life on earth for ALL SPECIES.
-this leads to my second point,
-I don't care what science or studies that you throw into this, no matter that male or female animals hang out with the same sex, that has no relation to them being homosexual. It is like saying that little Johnny has invited his ten best friends over for his birthday party. They are all boys. Does that make him gay? NO.
-and another of my questions is, why on Earth are you comparing humans to animals. The defining factor that makes the human race superior to all races, is the fact that we humans know the difference from wrong and right. Animals do not. You can not compare humans, (that is moral and decent humans) to animals, because animals are stupid. Humans are not animals, we are humans which is why we have been the strongest and smartest form of life on the planet.
Homosexuals are acting like animals in the sense that they only listen to their body’s sexual impulses, totally ignoring what is right from wrong. We have already found that if homosexuality was right, we would not be here, but since we are here, that makes homosexuality the wrong lifestyle.
-the institution of the family, the traditional family is the correct way of life, shown and proven through thousands of years of life on Earth.
Now if you bring religion into it, the Christian bible clearly defies and denounces homosexuality. Throughout the bible, many references are made to sexual immorality and homosexual prostitutes, as being wrong and that these people will not inherit the kingdom of God, Heaven. Read 1st corinthians: 6, and Tell me that what I just said is not true.
Many people refute this fact, saying that aren't Christians supposed to love all people and accept all people?
The answer is yes. As a Christian, it is our duty to love all, including homosexuals. But, that does not mean that as Christians we should tolerate their lifestyle. As Christians, we are supposed to help these people. As we know, from clear and precise scripture, homosexuals will not go to heaven, so it is our job to help them to pursue a healthy lifestyle: heterosexuality. That is where the love and forgiveness of Christ comes into play, he loves all people, even if they sin and turn from his way, but he does not forgive those who do not try to be forgiven, those who do not try to change. That is the Christian mission in the lifestyle of homosexuality, to help homosexuals to change.
-For example: as a Christian, I can have a gay friend, a friend I dearly cherish, but as a Christian, it is my duty to extend the love and forgiveness of God, and try to help my gay friend to change. You can love a gay or lesbian as a human, a person, but you cannot accept their lifestyle.
Many try to refute this argument by saying that homosexuals are born the way that they are. No they choose it. If you, as a Christian, accept homosexuality, and believe that homosexuals are born that way, then you are being a hypocrite. Why would your loving God, who according to your religion, loves everyone and everything, who, as you believe created the universe and everything in it, say that homosexuality is wrong and denounce it, and then create homosexuals? Are you saying that God, your God, who created everything, did not know what he created? So he didn't know that he created homosexuals, yet says that their lifestyle is sinful? You are confusing your own faith. Homosexuals are not born gay, if you are a Christian, you can not believe that they are, because why would God make homosexuals and say that their way of life is wrong? He wouldn't because he loves all of his creation. He just gives his creation free will, and that is why homosexuals choose to be gay.
-And if you want to bring science into it, there is no clear scientific evidence that declares the cause of homosexuality in humans or animals.
These are all reasons why gay unions or homosexuality in general is not okay. This is not a political issue; it is a moral issue, and issue of right or wrong. When you question whether homosexuality should be tolerated or not, if you are a Christian, you are not questioning the issue itself, you are questioning YOUR FAITH, and in what you believe. They question you need to ask yourselves is what is right? And very clearly, for a Christian: the bible declares homosexuality wrong, as a member of another faith: I'm sure there is some piece of data in your books denying homosexuality, and for atheists or people who don't follow a common or specific religion: common sense shows the truth and living proof of life.
Ahhhh ... *blush* ... you are most welcome and truly the pleasure is all mine because what we did here is truly great. I am honored.
Hey David,
Do me a favor and try to talk to W. Irby. Get her to understand a little better, will you try? My apologies transfer to her too.
I have a reading assignemnt for you and ME!!! That'll come as a shocker won't it? A book "I" haven't read? Ha-ha. I just found out about a new Joan Roughgarden book that came out last year.
"Evolution and Christian Faith: What Jesus and Darwin have in Common--Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist" c2006
With a title like that how can we not be intrigued!? I'm gonna find it. Mabe we could compare insights? I would love that.
Here's couple of good articles about her work too that I think would help you understand your questions better.
Your gonna make a grown man cry! I totally agree with you, I wish the same as far as our conversation goes. I wish it could be this way for all people no matter their differences. I've been on this post for quite some time. I really have no idea why, but I can say I have learned a lot...from you, from atheists, mormons, etc. I think this is why I keep coming back. Because of the knowledge I have obtained from different points of view.
When I first starting reading posts on here, I was so offended. I couldn't believe atheists considered Christians illogical, unreasonable, believers in fairy tales, etc. It was offensive at the time. Now I understand why they think these things. I know I could never change their minds or their views about faith or anything, but what I have learned to do is to help them understand that no matter our differences, we need to keep a respectful and honest tone. Unfortunately that's not the case with everyone on here. And of course when they attacked, I attacked back. I learned to change my tactics a little. Don't attack back. I think forums like this tend to divide people. We all think we're right, when all of us are really wrong. I see a lot of veterans to this post that are finally realizing the same thing as I am. Why use this forum to divide ourselves when we could unite ourselves in our differences? I think you and I SW have shown how it should be. How can it get any better than two people who differ on major life issues that can come together with respect and love. Isn't that what God is all about?
So of course I will continue to post my opinions on the several topics on this forum, but what I continue to learn is HOW to post them. I've learned to accept peoples differences as the norm in society and realize that no matter what these differences will always be a part of society and no one can change that. I guess I'll keep praying that we can all accept one another as people regardless of accepting one anothers beliefs.
Have a great day SW. It's been quite a pleasure chatting with you. You know it's funny. As much dialogue as I've put in with certain people here, I haven't come away with as much of a learning experience as the short dialogue that I've had with you. Thanks for that.
Oh, David, I'm sorry I told you you were gay because you were forcefully expressing your views. I didn't mean it. I was so frustrated and angry with you and took it out on you. I regret saying it. It doesn't matter who we are. All that matters is that we love and respect each other. Thanks for forgiving me -- both ways, huh?!
The very best thing you have said in all of your posts I have read so far is:
"I have a lot to learn."
ME TOO!!! I always tell my friends and family that the day I stop learning is the day I die. I believe this with all my soul. Keep learning and I promise to do the same. You taught me a lot. I really appreciate that you sent your love to my family as well as me. Sometimes I get so sad because many Christian people seem to have forgotten that every gay person has a mother and father and family. Now I know a Chrsitian I might not agree with who does know it and cares too. That's a great thing.
This is truly remarkable. You made me cry. That was beautiful; what you wrote I mean.
If only we could export this conversation our to the greater country. You are absolutely right. I am stimiulus-respondent to the words "homosexual" and "sin". I do only perceive it as an attack upon my being. Just as I asked you to step back and take a more reasoned approach to my views I was just as resistant to stepping back and taking a more reasoned approach to yours. I felt yours was not reasonable and only mine was. I was doing precisely what I accused you of doing. I wanted you to stop what you were thinking when I wouldn't stop what I was thinking in return. Pretty hypocritical of ME. I see it now.
We really could be frineds. You have come along way and so have I. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will try harder to listen with as much love and care as you ask.
I think your right about us coming to an empasse. I think what we are trying to establish here is the legalistic view in God's eyes as homosexuality being a sin or not. I see it one way, and you see it the other. You know what's great about that is that no matter our differences we can still have a respectful and quite loving conversation. I appreciate that.
I do want to clarify, that even though we have established our beliefs and the differences they have, I do want to let you know that I in no way judge you or consider you less of a human than any other. We are equals in God's eyes. We all have our shortcomings and will face judgement one time or another. Of course I leave that up to God to decide who's righteous and who's not. I think I have come a long way in giving the love and respect to all people who were made in God's image and I thank you for the kind words about that.
I guess to conclude this I should say I'm glad I came back to talk to you. At first I thought you just hated all people who went against your beliefs. I see different now. I guess we got off on the wrong foot. But I'm glad I made a new friend. If I could give you any word of advice it would be this. Please do not consider any Christian that comes to you and says homosexuality is a sin to be a bigot. It is obviously evident that the Bible establishes a strong case against homosexuality even though I know you see it differently. I would hope that you could give them the benefit of disagreeing with you (as I have) but still find the love that Christ intended for us to give one another. I in turn will also learn to be more patient and sensitive to the subject of homosexuality upon those I encounter on this subject. I have a lot to learn. Thank you so much for your time SW. I wish you the best and will keep you in my prayers. Much love to you and your family.
I think your right about us coming to an empasse. I think what we are trying to establish here is the legalistic view in God's eyes as homosexuality being a sin or not. I see it one way, and you see it the other. You know what's great about that is that no matter our differences we can still have a respectful and quite loving conversation. I appreciate that.
I do want to clarify, that even though we have established our beliefs and the differences they have, I do want to let you know that I in no way judge you or consider you less of a human than any other. We are equals in God's eyes. We all have our shortcomings and will face judgement one time or another. Of course I leave that up to God to decide who's righteous and who's not. I think I have come a long way in giving the love and respect to all people who were made in God's image and I thank you for the kind words about that.
I guess to conclude this I should say I'm glad I came back to talk to you. At first I thought you just hated all people who went against your beliefs. I see different now. I guess we got off on the wrong foot. But I'm glad I made a new friend. If I could give you any word of advice it would be this. Please do not consider any Christian that comes to you and says homosexuality is a sin to be a bigot. It is obviously evident that the Bible establishes a strong case against homosexuality even though I know you see it differently. I would hope that you could give them the benefit of disagreeing with you (as I have) but still find the love that Christ intended for us to give one another. I in turn will also learn to be more patient and sensitive to the subject of homosexuality upon those I encounter on this subject. I have a lot to learn. Thank you so much for your time SW. I wish you the best and will keep you in my prayers. Much love to you and your family.
I lived in the South Bay for five years. You might of have seen me holding hands with my boyfriend! HA!
Let's get some of my views staight between us. I do not believe that both Leviticus verses are gay-affirming. Far from it. But what was meant 2,500 years ago to that Jewish society post-Babylonian Exile is lost to us as Christians today. You cannot honestly say with certainity it applies to gay persons today. Yet, you say, yes. I say, no. We are at an empasse.
The three Pauline verses -- one is fraudulently Pauline, and the other two are Pauline political statemnts, not moral ethical statements. Gay persons are not being talked about here. Read Roetzel. Paul's thorn is never overtly specified, only obliquely referenced. This alone attests to Paul's shame in even discussing it. The very shame I lived through in my teen years and twenties. I know this kind of shame, David. Paul's words of self-immolation before G-d are hauntingly resonant for me.
The Sodom and Gomorrah story is about rape both attemtped homosexual & heterosexual rape -- not about gay persons.
You have come a long way, David. I acknowledge you for the progress you have made. I am proud of you. It is very good.
Here's what I ask of you. In Christ, let go of condemning gay persons. In your eyes, its a sin. Fine. But, that doesn't get you off the hook in the matter of giving up forever in Christ judging that sin and those who sin in your eyes by being gay. In Christ you are to love the sinner the very same as the righteous. It makes no difference that gay persons are sinners by your view as your have attested. In Christ you are called to forgive the sinner and love him or her as righteous regardless of whether or not they continue to sin in your eyes. That is between they and their G-d, NOT you and them. Your treatment of other sinners in your eyes is between you and your G-d. And Jesus is attributed to have said love even the sinner the same as the righteous for no one but G-d can tell the difference. So, in Christ G-d looks with sorrow and pity upon your attempt to usurp G-d's purview arrogantly. You are not to do this.
So, let's suppose the Great Commandment didn't exist, in Christ-like love forgiveness still does, no matter what. Be a great Christian and show this generosity of heart. Gay persons are born the way G-d made them. Can you claim to hate what G-d has wrought? I'm not talking about whether you accept that gay persons are born gay -- I'm talking about gay persons who were born human, regardless of your judgments about their sexual identity. Humans with the life G-d gave them. Who are you to cut off what G-d has wrought? This is haughty, David. Just as those long-ago Jewish people didn't eat unclean foods because they didn't understand the effects of bacterial infesction so it was an abomination, being outwardly different in appearance would confuse which were Jews and which were Gentiles they didn't understand that all humans are G-d's children so it was an abomination, men raping men as spoils of war and emmasculating insult they didn't understand that some men were different in their love so it was abomination -- it is not so today.
That's the point. We understand far more today than they did then. You understand far more now than your did several years ago as you attest.
Don't confuse my words as the arrogance of modernity. I am speaking of thoughtful introsepction, reflection and study. And changing ones view when overwhelming evidence warrants and Christ-like charity demands.
I do appreciate your apology. And of course apology accepted. I tried initially to maintain a respectful dialogue with you and I hope that we could do so furthermore. If for any reason my comments in the past or what I may post in the future offend you, then I am truly sorry. I know sexuality is a sensitive subject and therefore should be treated that way. There are two things I would like to share with you. First, a little bit about me.
Before I studied the Bible or accepted Christ, I hated homosexuals. I thought they were disgusting, unnatural, and beneath me. Of course that is far from a Christian attitude but like I said I wasn't a Christian at the time. I live about 30 miles from san francisco, so you know that I am exposed to a large amount of homosexual persons. Of course before my Christian life, I chose to call homosexuals all the disrespectful, hate mongering names. I enjoyed going to s.f. on occasion and saw many gay couples and of course first thing that pops up in my mind is the "f" word. I'm ashamed of how I acted in the past. In fact I was beneath them. I know this now. Now that I know the Lord, I look at gays as equivolent to any other human being. I want you to know this because you assumed before that I hated gays. I did at one point in my life. But it is because I am now a Christian that I love them all. It is Christ that brought me to realize how to love all people. Because now I know that we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God. But here is where we differ.
You claim that the Bible accepts homosexuality as I do not claim that. I do see homosexuality as a sin just like any other sin. If you live as a gay person and I live continually lying to people, then we are both sinners and both deserving of God's judgement. But I cannot justify myself in saying that it is o.k to lie. Either can it be justified to say it is o.k to have homosexual relations. They are both sins and to God no sin is greater than another because if you break one law you are a lawbreaker. So here's the great part. Jesus died for our sins. All we need is faith to recieve His grace. Eph 2:8-9. With faith we recieve the Holy Spirit that indwells in us. And through the Spirit we regenerate. Titus 3:5. Meaning we turn from sin. The Holy Spirit convicts us of these sins. John 16:9,14. So if I lie, I know realize that I am lying and can find no way to justify that lie. I know I sinned.
My point is that homosexuality cannot be justified as not being a sinful act. I have read your other posts and they are quite assumptuous on the passages of homosexuality in the Bible. You claimed that Paul was gay. You claim that homosexuality as an abomination to God is not true. But it's right there in the Bible. I have to believe what God says not man no matter how unpopular it may be in current society to believe these things. You mention how homosexuality is in the animal world as well. I wouldn't disagree with that. I've seen certain studies on that. So it is "natural" to be homosexual because animals do it as well? But it is "natural" to be a sinner as well. There are certain species of animals that eat each other as well. So if we accept homosexuality based on the animal kingdom, then shouldn't we allow cannibalism in the human kingdom? I would hope not. I hope I made some valid points. And I do hope that you can forgive me if these are offensive in any way. You have a great evening SW. Take care.
Now you are reaching. I think you know this. Most of what you posted deserves no response from me for two reasons. One, Lepidopteryx did a much better job than I would have. [Thanks for getting my back, L.] Two, it would waste my valuable time to repeat anything L. says.
I am not worried about you being attracted to your neighbor's "wife" but your neighbor -- the husband. Of course it is immoral to have a sex with a married man behind his wife's back -- the fact that it would be with another MAN is another issue entirely for the husband that HE ought to discuss with her, but the fact of two consenting single adults having sex the bible is at best ambiguous on this. Read The Song of Songs for yourself -- it's about beautiful, erotic love and intimacy between two unmarried consenting adults. L. said it beautifully and the bible which you hold so dearly affirms his statement.
I am strongly in favor of gay guys and gals marrying to promote monogamous healthy stable relationships. This is G-dly and holy.
Chronic promiscuity is jsut one of many criitcisms thrown disingenuously in gays' faces. It's hypocritical in the extreme. Letting them marry solves this, does it not?
H., repression of your true self will only cause harmful damage to you. Think about our conversation seriously. Please.
You should go back and reread my responses regarding the genetic/endocrinological issues.
You are an incompetent doctor if you truly think so narrowly. Dr. Roughgarden has a great deal to say about quacks such as you. Read "Evolution's Rainbow" to find out why. I am medically trained as well.
I have been harsh to you -- too harsh now that I have read your other posts on other threads. Will you forgive me being abusive towards you? I hope so. I am sorry for it. May we start anew? Treat me with the repsect I deserve and have earned in deep scholarly study and we may have a basis for a productive exchange.
I want to make sure I get this right. You said:
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David :
So if you are born gay does that mean you have a genetic problem? Or is it a disease? I'm just wondering because naturally when you look at a woman and man, they fit together. Doesn't creation seem to indicate that man and woman were naturally supposed to be together. Not man and man, or woman and woman? That seems unnatural. I'm wondering from your perspective SW if you think being "born gay" is a genetic malfuntion?
Thanks
July 4, 2007 9:57 PM
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This is a fair question.
It's the perspective that is skewed. I am not attacking you or berating you. I am asking you to see this issue outside yourself and your perspective and do what it is attributed to Jesus: That if someone asks you to walk a mile, walk it and another also -- do not presume to judge another's life until you have walked a full day in their sandals.
I want you to google Dr. Jeffrey Jensen's 1997 Sunstone paper, "We See What We Believe: The Heterosexualization of Gay Men and Lesbians in the LDS Church." You do not have to be Mormon to get the point of this paper. It is an important paper for you to undertand how deeply you are heterosexist and how slavishly derivative your question is.
With the book, "Born Gay," I have two more for you. "Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" by Dr. Bruce Bagemihl, c1999 & "Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People" by Dr. Joan Roughgarden, c2004.
Read them if you are truly interested in an honest answer to your question.
Here's the short version. No. Sexual identities are as varied as the rainbow. There is nothing pathological at all. There is nothing wrong or negative at all. Go back several posts to my argument with Debbie J. I gave her several excerpts from Bagemihl's book.
Only Homo religicus expresses severe negativity towards homosexuality or bisexuality. That's a joke but not the negativity. In nature no species, except one, expresses negativity towards alternate expressions of sexual attraction. That's why naturalists and field biologists were so confused about what they were actually seeing for 200 years.
The most compelling proof is this. If it is injurious to the species then why is it not only prevalent but resistant to exclusion? Anthropologists have documented "feminized" male/male remains that go back 10,000 years ago. Gay persons have been around as long as humans BUT more importantly it shows up in many other species.
It is not a genetic disorder or any kind of "disorder". The American Psychiatric & American Psychological Assocations' position statments have removed homoseuxality as a "disorder" since 1973. This is not a disorder.
It's just people who are little different from you. That's all.
BTW, Holsinger's 1991 "paper" is a piece of trash that any competent community college GE course instructor would have graded "F" and thrown out for a severely biased perspective destroying objectivity, narrowly selective citations, speciously predetermined conclusions and incompetent research. The pseudo-complementarian argument is false and not supported in competent biologic research.
You are ignorant. It is conclusively proven. Read "Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation" by Dr.'s Glenn Wilson & Qazi Rahman. c2005. All the scientific support and criticism is presented. Everyone is born with the sexual identity they have. The "nurture" arguments supporting "choice" are roundly refuted by hard, cconcrete evidence and irrefutable logic.
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Oh my goodness.
Your not born gay. You can say it all you want but until its clinically proven, sorry. Just isn't true. You may want to be for whatever insane reason but dont use the excuse "im born this way".
My ass.
Show me the proof.
There is not a *homosexual* gene in people.
There is however an instinct that tells people they have to reproduce.
Which means obviously you have to be with the opposite sex.
I know some of you people will say they could get sperm donated, adoption, blah blah blah. But that should be only used if the man or woman is for some reason unable to reproduce.
Not for gay's to have.
I mean children with homosexual parents are 10 times likely to grow up with problems.
Its wrong. Plain and simple.
--------------------------------
You are wrong, plain and simple. Gay people are born gay, also, plain and simple. Your derivative anti-gay stance is fallaciously "choice" depentent. There is no choice in persons' sexual identity except the choice to tell the truth or lie.
Homesower: **So in your opinion gay sex is okay as long as you are not heterosexual?**
Any sex is okay as long as it's between consenting adults.
**So someone who is bi can enjoy neither, or does he get to pick and choose?**
You misuderstand bisexuality. Most bisexuals, while being attracted to both sexes, are more strongly attracted to one or the other. Just as heterosexuality does not mean wanting to bed every person of the opposite sex you meet, bisexuality does not mean wanting to bed everyone you meet.
**I am not really familiar with heterosexuals having homosexual sex, but I would certainly agree that it would be sin.**
It happens occasionally, usually out of curiosity. And homosexuals having heterosexual sex happens a lot more often, usually as a result of being closeted.
**How about sex in general? If I desire my neighbor's wife should I be able to enjoy her sexually?**
That depends on your neighbor and his wife's views on extra-marital sex. If they agree that it's ok for either of them to have other partners, then it's fine. But if they have promised each other monogamy, then it's wrong.
**Is it only monogamous sex that is not a sin?**
Only non-consensual sex is a sin.
**I'll share a little secret with you. The homosexual community is not monogamous. Randy as rabbits.**
That's going to come as big surprise to the numerous gay married couples I know.
**I'll admit I can't speak for all, and my insight is especially weak with regards to lesbians, but fidelity is not a virtue that most of them would recognize.**
Your insight is indeed weak. In fact, it's worse than weak - it's blind.
So if you are born gay does that mean you have a genetic problem? Or is it a disease? I'm just wondering because naturally when you look at a woman and man, they fit together. Doesn't creation seem to indicate that man and woman were naturally supposed to be together. Not man and man, or woman and woman? That seems unnatural. I'm wondering from your perspective SW if you think being "born gay" is a genetic malfuntion?
I accidentally posted without adding my name. My apologies.
I agree that sexual identity is only a part of who you are.
As for not being gay "fully" that can be taken a number of ways. I choose not to be because I cannot be so and be obedient to Christ. "Be excellent in what is good, be innocent of evil". I have already delved too deep in what is evil, should I delve further? It would profit me nothing.
So in your opinion gay sex is okay as long as you are not heterosexual? So someone who is bi can enjoy neither, or does he get to pick and choose? I am not really familiar with heterosexuals having homosexual sex, but I would certainly agree that it would be sin.
How about sex in general? If I desire my neighbor's wife should I be able to enjoy her sexually? Is it only monogamous sex that is not a sin? I'll share a little secret with you. The homosexual community is not monogamous. Randy as rabbits. I'll admit I can't speak for all, and my insight is especially weak with regards to lesbians, but fidelity is not a virtue that most of them would recognize.
You can rationalize any sin away. We usually start with our favorites. In the end its still sin.
I agree that sexual identity is only a part of who you are.
As for not being gay "fully" that can be taken a number of ways. I choose not to be because I cannot be so and be obedient to Christ. "Be excellent in what is good, be innocent of evil". I have already delved too deep in what is evil, should I delve further? It would profit me nothing.
So in your opinion gay sex is okay as long as you are not heterosexual? So someone who is bi can enjoy neither, or does he get to pick and choose? I am not really familiar with heterosexuals having homosexual sex, but I would certainly agree that it would be sin.
How about sex in general? If I desire my neighbor's wife should I be able to enjoy her sexually? Is it only monogamous sex that is not a sin? I'll share a little secret with you. The homosexual community is not monogamous. Randy as rabbits. I'll admit I can't speak for all, and my insight is especially weak with regards to lesbians, but fidelity is not a virtue that most of them would recognize.
You can rationalize any sin away. We usually start with our favorites. In the end its still sin.
Oh my goodness.
Your not born gay. You can say it all you want but until its clinically proven, sorry. Just isn't true. You may want to be for whatever insane reason but dont use the excuse "im born this way".
My ass.
Show me the proof.
There is not a *homosexual* gene in people.
There is however an instinct that tells people they have to reproduce.
Which means obviously you have to be with the opposite sex.
I know some of you people will say they could get sperm donated, adoption, blah blah blah. But that should be only used if the man or woman is for some reason unable to reproduce.
Not for gay's to have.
I mean children with homosexual parents are 10 times likely to grow up with problems.
Yes, Homesower, but you can't be gay -- fully -- and be Christian by your own admission so your statement is false. Are you married to a wife with children as your chosen moniker implies? Or single, doomed to lonliness forever?
These are the options under your theology.
The former is a lie and passionless by your own admission. The latter is inhuman and proven scientifically to be emotionally, psychologically and physically abusive and injurious.
Your view is by your own admission skewed. It breaks my heart. I feel so very sad for you.
being born gay + biblical infallible authority = sin
is the faulty reasoning. You accept that you are gay yet you also condemn yourself of being sinful becasue of your being.
I am saying that being gay is not sinful by definition. How you reconcile your being is your business but don't make your business my business for me. I do not rationalize sin away. I look deeply at what sin is. The literal meaning of the Greek word for sin is to miss the mark -- nothing else. If you are being other than your authentic being then you miss the mark -- this is the essential nature of inauthenticity.
The argument is that gay persons are only their sexual identity. This is a lie. You are so much more than that. You are a universe of possiblity that is good and worthy and the matter of your sexual identity is a tiny PART of you, not the whole of you. This is the fraud of the churches prepetrated against gay persons. Who you are attracted too is not the whole of you. It is a small -- though not insignicant -- part of who you are.
Here's the problem as I see it. You and a great many others -- you are not alone -- erroneous conflate the word abomination with the notion of sin. This a big problem. They are not interchangeable words. When it is attributed to Jesus that we are thrown to be sinful it is not congruent that we are thrown to be abonimable.
This is the problem as I see it. To be abominable is something else entirely. The Leviticus verses are referring to heterosexual men who abuse other men, it is not talking about gay persons who are being themselves authentically as they were born. You are expressing a self-referential conclusion -- that you universally externalize -- which is derivative from patriarchal sexism, heterosexism and homophobia.
How do I know this? Because it is exactly what I did and moved beyond. I have been there -- I know of where I speak from direct experience.
As long as the lie that people -- whose being is unalterable -- are convenced that their being is sinful and therefore alterable, there is no room for authenticity or even some level of becoming soemwhat authentic about their essential inauthenticity.
All of THAT is sin -- not being gay and honest about it.
A Wesleyan does know who Jesus was. I don't understand your statement. Did you read my post about Wesleyan grace, the quadrilateral and salvation? Go back and find it.
I do have a sharp pen. This in no way means I love you any less or not at all. It means I love you so much and have such high regard for you that I will treat you as a fully capable adult who can take the heat -- rest assured that I can too.
We can no longer appeal to a Christianity of yesterday that is nonsensical in its embedment in ancient obsolete language and theological forms. We must appeal to a Christianity of today in this age. It's very hard work. It is easy to contort ones mind into pretzels to maintain an anachronistic theology. It is difficult to forge an understanding for our time consistent with reality as we know it now and the truths lying underneath -- even beyond -- the words from 2,000-3,000 years ago.
The first approach is inauthentic. The second is an attempt at forging some level of authenticity about the inauthentic approach. Personal integrity comes into play in concrete terms -- will I or won't I? Am I wed to the pursuit of the truth?
The process of becoming authentic about our religious inauthenticity naturally evolves new authentic religious experiences -- that's what reformation is.
It's a work in progress never to be completed, always engaging til the end of time beyond my -- and your -- tiny span of years. That's the kind of game I like playing. Arguing about persons' essential sexual being and its "sinfulness" is a PUNY zero-sum-game. It's a waste of valuable energy. Notice how much energy is wasted here ...
There's another basic problem drivng the energy quotient on this issue. Can you guess what it is? Look deeply inside yourself ...
I did not mean to impugn your belief in Christ, rather to provide an understanding of my viewpoint, as a good many posters are not Christian. Though frankly, having not read all of your posts I was not entirely sure of your place. I have known many Wesleyans who haven't a clue who Jesus is, having been raised a Methodist myself. Certainly your interpretation of the Gospel is not your traditional Wesleyan understanding.
You have a sharp pen, but I am sure there is love behind your words. Let me respond to one comment you made "You seem to be saying that being Christian is prima facia conclusive that gay persons are invalidated, irredeemable and irreconcilable."
I cannot claim the view you make for me. I am proof that its not true. I am redeemed, I am reconciled and I am gay. But I am those things because I am forgiven, and I can't be forgiven for something that isn't a sin. Christ paid the price to redeem me, not to leave me a sinner. He offers me eternal life, but in turn I give him myself, my desires and my obedience. I cannot say "Yes" to Christ in all but one area of my life, or rather I can for a while, but He will surely claim it in the end, and if I refuse to give it up then I will have chose it over Him and I will no longer share his name.
I could choose to rationalize away this sin. I would frankly enjoy the sin. Its always been one of my favorites. Actually I have, but I was miserable. God has a claim on my life and I cannot escape it. When I grieve the Holy Spirit eventually it grieves me.
PASTOR POLLARD - I have no doubt you would love to amend those Ten Commandments, like that renegade judge in Alabama who, I believe, added Four more, since, lamentably, they don't say anything about homosexuality. By the way, while you're busy not hating gay people, you might want to add a good number of those animals you mention to your list of things you supposedly feel sorry for, since a good number of them, God's creatures one and all, are also homosexual. What a mockery people like you make of religion.
Spoken like a true Dominist and Christian Reconstructionist. Thanks for proving Singularization right. He is right on the money without you but the synchronicity of your posts is deliciously satiric.
Thanks for the laugh, Gar. There's a little problem with your rant. If SW is right, and I think he is, I check his citations, then you are gay and way, way in the closet. Come out little Gar, don't want to end up like Miss Ted Stephens do you?
Pastor Gary Pollard :
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
I make this statement for every anti-gay bible-quoter. Don't bother quoting Pauline scripture if you have not read any of Calvin J. Roetzel's corpus. He is without doubt one of America's premier biblical scholars on the Apostle Paul/Saul of Tarsus.
Do yourself a favor and do an Amazon search for his books. Read one. Read them all as I am now doing.
For those of you who do -- you truly have no idea what you are doing when you erroneously misquote Romans 1:26, I Timothy 1:9-10 and I Corinathians 6:9-10 in support of your anti-gay agenda. These verses have NOTHING to do with gay persons. They are political statements of an entirely different intent. You do not understand what they actually mean and you really have no idea how hilarious the irony is.
Read a Roetzel book and find out for yourself. Save yourself the embarrassment of gratuitously exposing your ingnorance. Save your reader of that too.
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
The only problem with homosexuality is that religion still exists and thrives. Take away the religion and all the reasons for the hatred and uncomfortablness go away. People become reduced to pure equals. Christopher Hitchens, author of "God is not Great" has it pegged quite squarely. Religion simply poisons EVERTHING.You-tube him for some interesting dialogue and a fresh perpective. He was on recently with Jon Meacham as well.
It's VERY interesing that you think I don't ineterpret the bible or conduct theological discourse "from a Christian prespective." I told eog I am a Wesleyan Methodist Chrsitian and have been all my life with deeply passionate theological and philosophical roots. You missed that I guess ...
That is fascinating. What makes you say this? Did you read the Essay posted by Anonymous on the fracturing of the churches by literalist Christians over this issue? You should read it. You seem to be oddly unaware of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Ruth, I & II Judges, I & II Samuel, I & II Kings, I & II Chronicles. Surely you have read these? Perhaps not because you are also unaware of the special love shared by David & Jonathan, and Ruth & Naomi.
In all these texts slavery is most certainly not critisized. It is only obliquely critisized when the stage was occupied by G-d's Chosen people under enslavement by Pharoah, NOT when Jews were the slaveholders -- this is affirmed by G-d's Law not abolished. Paul wrote extensively that slavery was the law of the land under Cesaer but that all men's hearts were free in Christ. Paul did not critsize the practice of slavery nor advocate for abolition of slavery.
A strict literalist has a big problem here. Biblically, the faithful South was proof-texting the Law as justification FOR the maintenance of slaveholding, NOT for Abolitionism. The churches were split assunder during the conflict. In my home state of Arkansas it wasn't until 2004 that the rift in the Arkansas Methodist Conference between the Northern Abolitionist Conference and the Southern Slaveholding-affirming Conference was healed and the Conference reunited. That's 139 years of emnity after the war's close.
Why do you look to the bible for it to prove for you -- via an impossible absolutist external standard of ethic -- what is right and wrong? Christ is attributed to have said that all of us in the Holy Spirit know within us what is right and wrong and that the Great Commandment fulfills the SPIRIT of the law. Love G-d with all your heart, mind and strength. Love your neighbor as you love G-d. The Commandments are fulfilled by doing this. I am quoting from Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. Mark's and Luke's Gospels are a bit different in their sayings.
You seem to be saying that being Christian is prima facia conclusive that gay persons are invalidated, irredeemable and irreconcilable. That that is an exclusively "Chrsitian" way of thinking. Any other way of thinking is invalid and "not" Christian?
This is the conclusion I am questioning directly and I am doing it in Christian love by the Great Commandment exactly as the Northern Christian Abolistionists did which you extoll in your post.
I am saying that this divide between us is very similar and that history seems to be eerily repeating itself. I am saying that bible-quoting to affirm anti-gay bias is no different than the past bible-quoting to support slaveholding. In fact enslavement to heterosexism and homophbia is really no different -- and NO, I am not saying they are the same, I am saying they have similar characteristics and are effectively similar. I am also saying that welcoming Christians who take the Great Commamdment every bit as seriously as the past Abolitionists are making the case for full loving acceptance and the end of discriminatoy hostilites towards gay persons.
Blacks were scapegoated by white society for decades as the root cause of many problems in the country. Just as gays are being scapegoated the very same way right now.
The bible is not literally factually true -- though SOME of it might have actually happened -- and we have known this for more than 400 years. It is however metaphorically "really" true. You seem not to have read my post to Steve where I cautioned him to not invalidate the bible because it is not literally true. That is just as wrong as bibliolatry. The bible is very important if one can unlock its message for us today beyond the limitations of its various translations, changes and meanings trapped withing 3,000 year-old far earlier understanding.
I am saying that it is staggeringly arrogant to think one can pick it up, do a cursory reading and believe one can undertand it on its terms within these realities without intense scholarly research, thought, discourse and reasoned theological study.
Anyone can erroneous misconstrue it to support their biases. And political proof-texting for the advancement of advantageously stereotyping prejudice is deeply human, provane and has nothing to do with G-d but a great deal to do with domination, alienation and invalidation of the targeted scapegoat. Profound reasoning where the bible is concerned is reached by first admitting I know nothing, next admitting that I will read into it my biases -- this is human -- then to read deeply beyond my biases and limitations to unlock what it has to say that I might learn from knowing full well it was never written for ME but written thousands of years ago for communities that I have no connection to nor understanding of experientially yet has survived millennia in greatly altered form but with meaning under the words that the words could never capture for all time -- not even for its time -- but beyond time in metaphor, allegory and poetry.
The best I can explain this is not even in my own words but the words of a great American poetic prose literaturist, Norman Maclean, in "A River Runs Through It and Other Stories."
"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs."
The bible is like this. Exactly like this. I don't misuse the bible to undergird my prejudices of others. I take responsibility for my prejudices - we ALL have them, no one doesn't -- and read the bible to unlock G-d's love for me to live out in making a garden of my tiny patch of ground by the power of the Great Commandment for the delight of others that they might undertake the tending of their own gardens.
Thereby the world might become the Kingdom of G-d on Earth as it is in heaven.
Anti-gay prejudice works against this. Let it go. G-d WILL love you for it. I promise. Gay persons are deserving of loving committed relationships covenanted under G-d, before their peers just like everyone -- David and Jonathan included if you take the time to read. Gay men and women make wonderful clergy, bring a valuable spirit to the table of faith and have done so for many thousands of years -- some ages in the closet and some not -- if you take the time to read Jewish, Catholic and Anglican history. It's true, read it for yourself.
Oh by the way, you are the one who proved conclusively that the bible is not inerrant, absolute or literal. There's no getting around the fact that your post proved what I am saying. So, don't take my word for it. Take yours. That is if you have the intergity in Christ to do so ...
Thanks to the poster who writes the truth about the Sodom and Gommorah story - that story that anti-gay bigots cling to like drowning men to a raft. As anyone who actually bothers to read it will recognize, it's simply an instance of enraged men threatening to rape other men in order to put them in the position, quite literally, of women - the ultimate degradation in ancient Middle-Eastern society (not to mention other societies of both the past and present). In fact, unless you believe that many of today's most hardened and violent convicts suddenly become gay upon incarceration , it's the same thing that routinely occurs in our nation's prisons.
Thanks to the poster who writes the truth about the Sodom and Gommorah story - that story that anti-gay bigots cling to like drowning men to a raft. As anyone who actually bothers to read it will recognize, it's simply an instance of enraged men threatening to rape other men in order to put them in the position, quite literally, of women - the ultimate degradation in ancient Middle-Eastern society (not to mention other societies of both the past and present). In fact, unless you believe that many of today's most hardened and violent convicts suddenly become gay upon incarceration , it's the same thing that routinely occurs in our nation's prisons.
Thanks to the poster who writes the truth about the Sodom and Gommorah story - that story that anti-gay bigots cling to like drowning men to a raft. As anyone who actually bothers to read it will recognize, it's simply an instance of enraged men threatening to rape other men in order to put them in the position, quite literally, of women - the ultimate degradation in ancient Middle-Eastern society (not to mention other societies of both the past and present). In fact, unless you believe that many of today's most hardened and violent convicts suddenly become gay upon incarceration , it's the same thing that routinely occurs in our nation's prisons.
Thanks to the poster who writes the truth about the Sodom and Gommorah story - that story that anti-gay bigots cling to like drowning men to a raft. As anyone who actually bothers to read it will recognize, it's simply an instance of enraged men threatening to rape other men in order to put them in the position, quite literally, of women - the ultimate degradation in ancient Middle-Eastern society (not to mention other societies of both the past and present). In fact, unless you believe that many of today's most hardened and violent convicts suddenly become gay upon incarceration , it's the same thing that routinely occurs in our nation's prisons.
Gay ppl. are human.
all americans are human.
all life is sacred.
individual rights are sacred.
the church must attend to their business of churching.. not judging. dividing, sensoring..
church is for personal spiritual growth. not destruction, execution, pain and hurt..
If you don't pay gay ppl.'s bills you don't get to tell them how to live.. yet we tax them like the next one. they pay for our 16 children's education....
LIVE AND LET LIVE. look at the beam in yer eye before ye calls for the grain of sand on your brother's....
Bottom line to all the nonsense on Christian beliefs homosexuals are wrong or not...God is nonjudgmental and has unconditional love for ALL his children. Judgements and conditional love is a human factor and does not belong to God. He gave us free will. Use your brains and think what that actually means. He gave us free will and then if we don't do exactly what he wants, we go to hell? He would torture his children? He would allow such a place as hell and the devil? Would you allow your children to be tortured for eternity? Do you parent based on fear and not love? Poor God, he sure gets a bad rap. So many religions have turned him into a monster. You can have your monster God. Mine is loving, kind, forgiving and I feel loved, cared for and know I will go to Heaven. Having that knowledge gives me motivation to help others to understand the same thing. To live a great, good and loving life. I don't know who the hell you people are that judge others so darn much...God? Nope, guess not since he doesn't.
Bottom line to all the nonsense on Christian beliefs homosexuals are wrong or not...God is nonjudgmental and has unconditional love for ALL his children. Judgements and conditional love is a human factor and does not belong to God. He gave us free will. Use your brains and think what that actually means. He gave us free will and then if we don't do exactly what he wants, we go to hell? He would torture his children? He would allow such a place as hell and the devil? Would you allow your children to be tortured for eternity? Do you parent based on fear and not love? Poor God, he sure gets a bad rap. So many religions have turned him into a monster. You can have your monster God. Mine is loving, kind, forgiving and I feel loved, cared for and know I will go to Heaven. Having that knowledge gives me motivation to help others to understand the same thing. To live a great, good and loving life. I don't know who the hell you people are that judge others so darn much...God? Nope, guess not since he doesn't.
Bottom line to all the nonsense on Christian beliefs homosexuals are wrong or not...God is nonjudgmental and has unconditional love for ALL his children. Judgements and conditional love is a human factor and does not belong to God. He gave us free will. Use your brains and think what that actually means. He gave us free will and then if we don't do exactly what he wants, we go to hell? He would torture his children? He would allow such a place as hell and the devil? Would you allow your children to be tortured for eternity? Do you parent based on fear and not love? Poor God, he sure gets a bad rap. So many religions have turned him into a monster. You can have your monster God. Mine is loving, kind, forgiving and I feel loved, cared for and know I will go to Heaven. Having that knowledge gives me motivation to help others to understand the same thing. To live a great, good and loving life. I don't know who the hell you people are that judge others so darn much...God? Nope, guess not since he doesn't.
Bottom line to all the nonsense on Christian beliefs homosexuals are wrong or not...God is nonjudgmental and has unconditional love for ALL his children. Judgements and conditional love is a human factor and does not belong to God. He gave us free will. Use your brains and think what that actually means. He gave us free will and then if we don't do exactly what he wants, we go to hell? He would torture his children? He would allow such a place as hell and the devil? Would you allow your children to be tortured for eternity? Do you parent based on fear and not love? Poor God, he sure gets a bad rap. So many religions have turned him into a monster. You can have your monster God. Mine is loving, kind, forgiving and I feel loved, cared for and know I will go to Heaven. Having that knowledge gives me motivation to help others to understand the same thing. To live a great, good and loving life. I don't know who the hell you people are that judge others so darn much...God? Nope, guess not since he doesn't.
Since you are not a literalist, what authority do you give the Bible in forming your opinions (on any topic)? To what degree do you accept the words and actions of Jesus as having an overriding claim on your life and your thoughts? How about the epistles, are they valid? The prophets? Genesis?
Can you better explain this comment?
"If G-d did indeed "have a better plan" then why did G-d write that slaveholding and forced servitude by G-d's Chosen People of non-Jews was acceptable and correct behavior -- in fact sanctioned by G-d?"
God does have a better plan, better for us than the way we are currently living, better for the Israelis than they way they were living. Otherwise why bother living God's way. Just live how you want. However I assume your main point of contention had to do with the God's law to the Israelis. You seem to believe that it is not historically valid, that it is too flawed to have God's fingerprints on it.
Let me answer this in two ways. First, if we can't accept it as God's Word, why believe in Jesus as your Savior? Jesus said that the scripture pointed to Him. If you can't accept the scripture why accept Jesus? And if you accept Jesus why not accept his words? Perhaps you are of the opinion that we really don't know Jesus' words. In that case, can you trust Him as your savior? Find a savior you can quote with assurance.
Second, God revealed Himself in time. He chose one man, Abraham, as a starting point. I don't know why. He had His reasons. In accepting Abraham as that man, he took him in the context of the time and culture in which Abraham lived. He change Abraham over time, but He focused on one area, Abraham's relationship to God. As God continued to work on the descendants of Abraham that was the foundation. He dealt first with their relationship to Him, and only later with their relationship with each other. Get the first right, and the second will follow. He still operates this way.
Abraham lived in a slaveholding society, but that wasn't God worked on first. He did give the Israelis a strong distaste for slavery by letting them serve the Egyptians. Following that He gave them his law, and in this he allowed a period of indenture for up to 6 years for Israelis. But why did he allow the Israelis to own foreigners? He was teaching them that they could not enslave their brother, but he expanded that lesson over time. In the new testament we learn that all who are of Christ are our brothers, and that there is now no Greek or Jew, slave or free. Maybe that lesson took a while to sink in, but God's timeframe is distinctly different from ours, and His word does not return void but accomplishes its purpose.
How does this relate to Gay Unions and Clergy? Others brought up the issue of slavery and suggested that the church was evolving on the gay issue just as it had on slavery. But with slavery you can point to an echo throughout scriptures in which freedom is good, and slavery is bad. Moses told Pharoah "Let my people go". He instituted the Jubilee year to eliminate the slavery of debt. He bought his people back from the nations, and finally he paid the price of our sins so that we might be free. Where is the similar echo for homosexual relationships? You can't hear it because it isn't there.
SW: I apologize for not getting back to you but I only occasionally blog. You are obviously quite prolific, and with a sharp mind will probably get the best of me, but I will plod on.
My comments may not make sense to someone operating outside of a Christian worldview, so let me provide some background through which to interpret my arguments.
God created the world perfect and holy, but he gave certain elements in his creation free will. Man rebelled and is fallen. In this fallen state the world and man are corrupted. Each person is born with a desire to be in union with God, but we are incapable of doing this ourselves. Our corrupted natures are bent toward evil. This can be manifested in different ways. Lust is certainly one of the more common, and sexual lust one of the more powerful. Homosexuality is simply a variation of that corruption. Its "natural" only in the sense that nature itself is corrupted.
If I am born with a predilection for lusting after someone of the same sex that does not make it right. Lust is still a sin, as is the homosexual act itself. Its not any more damning than lust of the homosexual variety, but a heterosexual act can be right, whereas a homosexual act can never be right.
Calling it right does not make it right. Allowing a homosexual to feel good about a sin does not make it any less a sin. The difference is that a homosexual who recognizes it as a sin has the chance to repent. The homosexual who does not know this loses this chance.
If a church endorses gay unions, they have now become a facilitator in sin. God himself will hold their leaders accountable
W.IRBY: **W.Irby :
Gay/lesbain/bi.. they are all just wrong. I mean if everyone turned gay we would have no one left. You can't continue "the cycle of life".**
People don't "turn gay." Every BGLT person I know (and there are many in my circle of family and friends) has told me bascially the same thing. When my gay and lesbian freinds hit puberty, they simply were not attracted to the opposite sex. It wasn't a matter of choosing.
My bisexual friends found themselves attracted to varying degrees to both sexes. And my transgender friend knew, from the time that they were old enough to understand the difference between boys and girls, that they had the wrong body.
**If people were meant to be gay then perhaps it would be possible to have kids and stuff. But it's not. You can look at that in a religious way or not.**
Gay people can and do have children, some as a result of marrying and attempting to live as if they were straight, and some as a result of the same reproductive technology that straight infertile couples use to help them procreate. Besides, making babies is not the only reason people marry. When my husband and I met, I had a teenage daughter from a previous relationship and was in the early stages of menopause. He was sterile as a result of radiation treatment for cancer years before. We could not make a baby together if the fate of the free world depended on it. Furthermore, he has no desire to be a parent, and I have no desire for any more children, so we have no plans to adopt. Nobody at the clerk of court's office asked if we could make a baby. They didn't even ask if we were in love. All they asked for was picture ID and exact cash. Should we not have been allowed to marry?
**One because I do believe in God and the Bible. And two because it would end life. Literally.**
There is no reason to assume that the entire population of the planet would ever be gay, any more than there is to assume that the entire population of the planet would share any other single trait. And even if the entire population WERE gay, babies could still be made via sperm donation, so there would be no need to fear the end of human life on the planet.
Homesower, you should really think carefully about what you write before you write it. Especially if your intent is to support biblically-derivative anti-gay bias.
If you take the bible to be the literal speech of G-d, then your statement is self-negating, mutaully and exclusively contradictory:
"While it is true that the Bible was written in the context of a slave-holding society, its also true that Bible points toward a Messiah that would "release the captives". So slavery may have been a reality, but God had a better plan."
If G-d did indeed "have a better plan" then why did G-d write that slaveholding and forced servitude by G-d's Chosen People of non-Jews was acceptable and correct behavior -- in fact sanctioned by G-d?
You make no sense at all. Isn't G-d consistent and all-knowing for all time?
You just made the case that all credible biblical scholars accept for the bible NOT being the literal or absolute Word of G-d. You just proved why the bible is a human work in progress and how the evolving thinking regarding G-d and humnaity's relationship with G-d is an ON-GOIING, nevere-ending process and subject to reforamtion and correction of older thinking and texts.
You just proved that the inequality of the Law towards gay persons should and must be revised when new thinking makes plain the error of the older thinking.
Thank you so much for doing what you did in your post.
You proved why YOU should accept and validate all gay persons in Christian love just exactly they way they were born, unconditionally.
And Homesower, it is interesting how much negativity towards gay persons makes THAT seem pervasively normative and acceptable in our time. As captivity under bondage to slave masters for the 19th-century person was perceived as the norm then, Christian people who resonated with the Exodus story of the Jewish plight under bondage to Pharoah emboldened Christian Abolisionists then and began a process of violent change. It seems that Christian fairness and liberation from horrifying inauthenticity regarding personal sexual identity is the this age's call to reformation now.
The Law in the old testament is not antagonistic to slaveownership and bondage in general. In fact it is affirmative of it in every instance. Christians 150 years ago saw the error in the Law in this regard and took action to deactivate the Law and empower a standard of fairness beyond the Law in accordance with Jesus' ministry. The Slaveowner bible-quoted in the same strident tones as we hear now regarding anti-gay rhetoric and hermeneutics that the bible was on THEIR side in support of the maintenance of slaveholding.
Notice how you and many others bible-quote that the Law is on YOUR side in the matter of the maintenance of your anti-gay agenda. Notice also how conscientious Christians and many others today see the error in the Law in this regard and are taking action to deactivate the Law and empower a standard of fairness beyond the Law in accordance with Jesus' ministry.
Do we have to fight another war to make this transition? Or can we learn from the past and empower bloodless, civil reformation in Christ-like fairness?
Because gay persons aren't going away and neither is the unfariness, dishonesty, hostility and harm done to them which demands redress and reconciliation.
[Sorry for getting your moniker wrong in the last post, please forgive it.]
Homeowner, are you actually saying that to be who you are born to be is a sin of pride?
I challenge you to be who your have not been born to be and tell me how virtuous that is. You are actually suggesting that to live a lie is preferable to living the truth, not to mention being truthful about it in the first place. How interesting the lengths to which you will go to require inauthenticity as the standard for being one with G-d for everyone else -- especially gay persons for whom you have no compassion.
That is illogical and irrational. When you can make a reasoned argument perhaps a reasonable person will listen. But if you actually expect stupidity to be virtuous you will convince only the imebecilic which is what has been pervasively demonstrated on this thread.
I learn more and more about how great are the dimensions of faulty thinking and incompetent concluding driving the anti-gay religious agenda. It's very instructive.
These posts are greatly edifying. I have been deeply deluded that reason and logic would make a difference with the true believer. It doesn't. Important to know.
The evolution of anti-gay argumentation is what facinates me. As soon as facts are presented a ready made rebuttal shifts to a new ground of anti-gay justification to keep the anti-gay stance in place. If you have to work so hard at maintaining it that ought to be a clue to its inauthenticity and futility. Very interesting.
There were some interesting comments made early in this thread that seemed to indicate that the Civil War was somehow a struggle of an enlightened, progressing North against a Christian South (and trying to put the whole gay debate as a continuation of that struggle). Such a view ignores the history of the political crisis that led to the Civil War. It was Christians in the North that fueled the abolitionits fire. I won't claim all Christians were abolitionists, but its certainly not true that abolitionists were a nineteenth century equivalent of a liberal agnostic. These were people willing to risk jail because of their Christian beliefs.
While it is true that the Bible was written in the context of a slave-holding society, its also true that Bible points toward a Messiah that would "release the captives". So slavery may have been a reality, but God had a better plan.
Its understandable how a 19th-century man would see slavery as a given, and as part of the natural order. It was all around them, and not just in the U.S. A big problem with our slavery was that we made it a race issue. If your slave looks just like you, its harder for you to rationalize your owning him. When he looks different, you don't run the risk of becoming like him. This made it harder for the slaveowner to come to a realization that what applied to the owner should apply to the slave.
It doesn't matter whether you are born gay or a product of your environment or corrupted along the way. You are what you are, but that doesn't make it right.
I have a strong tendency to self-centeredness, conceit, pride and gluttony. I am quite certain I was born this way, but it would be foolishness to say that this makes these vices right, or to demand that God change the rules so that I can continue as I am. If He did heaven would gain a lot more entrants, but it wouldn't look much like heaven anymore.
People who are gay are not any more damned to hell than those who are straight. They are all equally damned to hell if they don't accept God's forgiveness for their sin. He is perfectly willing to forgive all the times I had sex with a man (yes, me) since He already paid the price for that sin. But, he never paid the price for my lifestyle, or my problem, or my issue. He paid the price for my sin. If I don't have the humility to recognize God's sovereignty over that sin, and His right to define what is a sin and what isn't then I will be the one outside looking in (with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes with that condition).
The current insistence on a gay person's "right" to be gay is simply the sin of pride. Mind you, they have good company with lots of other sinners who want the world to condone their sin, but it still leaves them in the same position to God. "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble".
I forgot to thank you for publicly acknowledgiing your political hostility and authoritarian threat against my personhood and the personhood of all GBLT people in these United States of America where ALL Americans are guaranteed under the auspices of the Declaration of the Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America to Life, Liberty and the Pursuir of Happiness, and Civil Liberties specified but not limited to the Bill of Rights and Amendments to the Constitution.
In America you most certainly may not do this.
Move to Iran or Iraq if you wish to impose your theolcratic will on an undeserving minority by religious/political fiat.
You are entitled to your beliefs any way you wish but you are not entitled to abusively impose your theocratic authoritarianism on other free, tax-paying, productive AMERICANS.
You are unfamiliar with the scientific studies and operating outside of your scope of understanding, Elect of G-d. It is not the truth. It is derivative anti-gay hermeneutics. Did you read Anonymous' Essay below? How about Rabbi Waskow's that "A Fish in the Sea" posted?
I said nothing about genetics although it is being better understood though far from conclusive -- their is no single "gay" gene, but a great many genes that in the presence of hormonal infusing express a variety of sexual identities. This is the same kind of process that converts the female fetus into a male. All life starts out female. In the presence of the rightly timed hormones and the receptive genes and chromosnes the fetus switches from female mode to male mode. In the presence of the rightly timed hormones and the receptive genes and chromosones the fetus continues its development into a female. This is why males have nipples and inactive nascent mammory grands when they serve no actual evolutionary purpose. In vitro endocrinological fetal development is the most illuminating of scientific studies. The ring/first finger ratio anaylsis, head hair whorl analysis, twins analysis, fraternal birth order analysis, and brain architecture analysis are all compelling evidence. But the sexual lie detector analysis is most compelling. There is no single one factor that predominates but all inquiries paint a picture that is concensus conculsive. Dr. Roughgarden and Dr. Bagemihl make compelling cases for the obsolescence and retirement of mechanistic Darwinian sexual selection theory. Your citation speaks to a unfamiliarity with the now 30-year long post-Darwinian scientific research being done today.
Sexual identity is fixed in males prenatally. Straight men are born staight. Gay men are born gay. G-d makes gay men gay at birth.
Your hermeneutics will crumble or change.
It's your choice. If you speak only the truth will you speak these truths as well?
That's the acid test. The science is settled. Everyone is born with the sexuality they have. Now, how are you going to treat gay men who are born gay? Or women for whom their sexuality is much more plastic than men's? The biblical referents are not as iron clad as you would have them be. They are completely dependent upon anti-gay, heterosexist and patriarchally sexist biases. Once one lets go of these biases and looks more closely at the originating languages of the biblical passages, their fuller contextualization with which you and I are well familiar and comprehensively critiqued by Anonymous in his/her Essay below it is most definitely not conclusive.
You wish it to be so becasue it is much more convenient to the maintenace of your anti-gay stance.
But the relationship of David and Jonathan, and Ruth and Naomi make your view far more problematic. Read I Samuel latter half of the book and II Samuel chapter 1 and you have to reconcile their deep love for one another. The same is true for the Book of Ruth. How does that fit into your clear interpretation? It doesn't. It refutes it.
Rabbi Waskow makes a very compelling case for the Book of the Song of Songs. It celebrates love and sexual delight outside of marraiage between mutually consenting adults. The primacy of marriage is not enforced at all and the Rabbi makes a strong case for gay persons being included as well. That definitely does comport with your adamancy.
This is a much bigger dialog than lines drawn in the sand allows for. As Anon pleads let's turn down the volume 95%. Unless you are willing to speak all the truth then you make a mockery of the truth. I will turn down my volume if you give me room to be myself honestly. If you don't then we cannot have a conversation that serves a useful purpose anymore.
Let's have an honest discussion about your moniker. "Elect of G-d" presupposes an authority that is nonsensical. In Christ we are all equal no one better nor worse. You imply an authoritian appeal that does not exist and you do it hautily. Show some humility before G-d. I do not speak for G-d. I do not know the mind of G-d. It is an impossiblity with which I am completely comfortable. I rest in G-d's glorious grace. You do not speak for G-d. You do not know the mind of G-d either. You show a marked insecurity, self-asteem issues and megalomaniacal need for self-agrandisment by the use of your moniker.
That is not G-dly. It is presumptuous. Your words would go down much better if you were less strident.
"Strangely Warmed" is a refernce to John Wesley's moment of epiphany. It speaks to Wesleyan balance of a "both/and" kind of theology. It recalls the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. It posits the opportunity of Wesleyan grace for all.
I chose it intentionally not to brow-beat but to celebrate his intellectual and theological ideals.
The issue to me is not whether someone chooses to be "gay" or not. The issue is whether someone who practices certain behaviors (homosexuality in this case) can rightfully call themselves a Christian, a true follower of Christ. On that count, I think the Scriptures give a resounding no. I've examined carefully the various ways some have tried to get around the clear teaching of Scripture, and I remain unconvinced.
As to the "medical, biological, and endocrenological scientific inquiry", I'm no expert, but I think you might be overstating your case just a little. To my knowledge, up to this point there has not been one definitive study showing a genetic link to homosexuality. Be that as it may, in my eyes it's really a moot point. While science is helpful in many areas, it cannot tell us whether or not certain behaviors are moral. We need the truth of God's word for that.
Yes, we can agree to disagree. I hold no ill will toward you or anyone else who I disagree with. However, if by "hampering your life" and "leave me be" you mean I must cease speaking the truth, that I cannot and will not do. As you have pointed out, this is America, and many thanks to God I am free (for now) to continue speaking His truth (and to participate in the political process of this country), but even if I were not or someday may not be, I will still speak His truth since His authority is greater than that of man.
You are right. No one is done a service if the truth is not the currency of discourse. Here's the truth. Gay persons do not choose their sexual identity. Gay persons are born exactly the same as straight persons with the sexual identity they awaken to. No one changes their sexuality -- it is unalterable. For men it is bimodally fixed well before birth -- the majority expression is heterosexual the minority expression it homosexual and the superminority expression is biseual. For women most are sexuaully plastic in that periods of either are exclusive or bisexuality predominates, a signifigant portion is exclusively bimodal all their lives but the point is that while male sexuality is fixed, female is far more fluid.
One's sexual identity is morally neutral. G-d loves all creation regardless of sexual identity. A rainbow of expression is natural and normal. A literal reading of the bible is wrong on this issue. Your certainty is not supported by medical, biological and endocrenological scientific inquiry. Mine is.
You and I cannot agree on this. That is the truth. For me you are wrong. For you I am wrong. There is no bridging this gap so we will have to forge a way to agree to disagree and you don't hamper my life and love I won't hamper yours.
If you cannot agree to leave me be do we have to go to war over this? I will leave you be in your anti-gay bias. But this is America. You must leave me be in my gay-embracing bias.
I love your thinking and your call. There's a serious problem though as evidenced here. Your appeal must fall upon listening informed by receptive intelligence and caring compassion. As you can read here often times the ones most in need of your message are the ones most obdurately impervious to it. You -- and I most definitely -- are casting pearls before swine in our efforts at a reasoned discourse on this highly charged subject.
I do not believe they are capable of change nor do they want to. They want their rejection of gay persons and maintenance of anti-gay bias. It's comforting and soothing to them and no ammount of reasoned evidnece will sway them one iota.
The churchs will split over this issue. History is a very good instructor in this. Just read these responses. One side has dug in its heels against full acceptance. The other cannot in good conscience reject the growing evidence of the moral neutrality of gay persons and their full acceptance in the human family of love, worship and fellowship.
Thank you all for this exchnage. I provoked you on purpose. I wanted to find our if a bridge between us was even possible. I have my answer. It isn't. There is no compromise possible for either side on this issue. Both are assured of their moral territory.
Enjoy your anti-gay churches. I'll enjoy my gay-embracing churches. Hopefully, you won't bomb or murder gay persons or the churches that embrace them. Though if Iraq is any tutor that is probably exactly what you will resort to in righteous piety. Just remember, Thou Shalt Not Kill is a Commandment even if you justify it by killing "immoral" [by your hermeneutics] gay persons. Hopefully we can coexist in mutual aggreement to cordially disagree.
Rather doubt it though but I prayer for it anyway.
Love is being compassionate enough to tell people the truth. No one is done a service when we fail to tell them the truth and pretend they are something they are not. Christ's church hears His word and keeps it. Those who practice homosexuality, or any other sin for that matter, have no part in Christ and His Kingdom.
Love is being compassionate enough to tell people the truth. No one is done a service when we fail to tell people the truth and pretend they are something they are not. Christ's church hears His word and keeps it. Those who practice homosexuality, or any other sin for that matter, have no part in Christ and His Kingdom.
Elect of God, you proved my thesis that the churches will split assunder into those churches that take Jesus' ministry of Love seriously and those that don't. It's fascinating to me that the traditional Christian church cleaves to Pharisean legalism eschewing the Commandment of Love rejecting our gay brothers and sisters and the progressive Christian church cleaves to Jesus' commandment of Love eschewing Pharisean legalism about sexual morays embracing our gay brothers and sisters in Christian love.
We are expereincing a very similar split right now as happened 2,000 years-ago. Something to think about. While then the Christian movement was the minority and the Jewish the majority, now Christianity is the majority while the Jewish is the vast minority.
The same thing is happeing now. It's very exciting, scary, troubling and exalting.
The most intersting thing about your post is that you accept -- though you don't like it all -- that issue of gay persons' acceptance is well on the way to becoming universal in the US. Thanks for confirming that. Most enlightening.
My faith in Christ leads me to believe His word is true...homosexuality is an abomination and no one practicing homosexuality will inherit the Kingdom of God. Therefore, practicing homosexuals are unbelievers and should not be considered as leaders in the church. Further, the church should not condone their abominable behavior in any way. If the world wants to approve them and their behavior, that is to be expected, but not the church.
10 "A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject;"
Self-satisfied sactimony is so very secure isn't? Doesn't change an iota that the world evolves and time marches on. Just remember Titus was never written by the Apostle Paul.
I am proud to be declared by you a "heretick". I'll wear it as a badge of honor. How very judgmental of you -- such sweet exemplifier of Chirst's love and acceptance.
What a ridiculous thing to say: plagiarize it improperly!!!
Ha!
That's not what I meant at all. I meant I will not plagiarize it, use it improperly or for improper purposes. I will do none of these, I promise.
Just a Fish in the Sea,
I did not give you enough credit for your submission. Rabbi Waskow is amazing. I was honored by my church to play the role of the Rabbi for our summer vacation bible school series to kindly appreciative accolades so Judaism is much on my mind these days. I have always loved the Song of Songs and felt it and appreciated it just the why Rabbi Waskow talks. I love that it is much more elevated in the Jewish consciousness then in the Christian. Christianity could learn a great deal from this. Awesome paper. Thank you.
Anonymous, I have my suspicions as to who your identity might be but I will respect your desire for anonymity. That was beautiful. Well organized and researched. May I copy it. I realize that it is posted openly on this thread but without proper identification I would feel as though I am plagiarizing it improperly.
With your kind premmission I will attribute this post to Anonymous with the webpage URL, the posting and thread information for proper citation.
This sounds very Wesleyan in its tone and appeal. Could you at least confirm or correct that assupmption, please.
Thank you for sharing this.
-------------------------------
Just Another Fish in the Sea,
Your contribution was great too. I love having both a Christian and Jewish perspective. Your submission has its provenance cited and I will faithfully attribute it. Thank you too.
4. No one is born homosexual. All persons are born heterosexual.
5. G-d said all homsexuals choose to be homosexual because they are willfully rebellious to G-d's will. G-d does not make homosexuals homosexual because G-d does not make anything sinful.
6. All homosexuals are unrepentent sinners.
7. All homosexuals if they "act" upon their homosexual unnatural desires are the same as anyone who has murderous or heterosexual rapist feelings, or feelings of anger or rage. It is a sin to act on performing murder or rape or anger or fury. Homosexuals who "act" on their desires are just the same as rapists, murderers, angry or enraged persons. No difference.
8. Jesus will convert homosexual desires into heterosexual normal desires.
9. I a gay person who refuses to repent to G-d and become heterosexual will not be saved or enter heaven.
10. Homosexuals are undeserving of full acceptance in our churches, covenants of marriage or ordination under any circumstances. They is no room for compromise or change because G-d said this.
You tell me where I got your words wrong. Oh Wise One. These are your Ten Commandments of Thou Shalt Never Be Gay.
Exactly SW I know what i meant.
I am glad you know exactly what I meant as well.
I am through with this room. You have completely proved to me that you are ignorant. Really.
Take everything I say out of context. I could do that with plenty of things that you have said.
But I didnt.
I am not going to try and tell you what you said! Because you know better than I what you said. Just as I know better than you what i say and mean.
When ya'll decide to quit putting words in others mouths let me know.
You keep proving that you think you know everything, including me. Well you dont. Trust me. You dont.
Your arrogant presumption is that "EVERYBODY" thinks that the universal horror of rape and murder is just like "acting" on the desire of the heart if it is for a person of the same sex.
You did make this equation. Stop playing around. Take responsibility for your words and stop BSing about it. Get real. You know exactly what you meant and what your said.
Your arrogant presumption is that "EVERYBODY" thinks that the universal horror of rape and murder is just like "acting" on the desire of the heart if it is for a person of the same sex.
You did make this equation. Stop palying around. Take responsibility for your words and stop BSing about it. Get real. You know exactly what you meant and what your said.
Sexual issues are tearing our churches apart today as never before. The issue of homosexuality threatens to fracture whole denominations, as the issue of slavery did a hundred and fifty years ago. We naturally turn to the Bible for guidance, and find ourselves mired in interpretative quicksand. Is the Bible able to speak to our confusion on this issue?
The debate over homosexuality is a remarkable opportunity, because it raises in an especially acute way how we interpret the Bible, not in this case only, but in numerous others as well. The real issue here, then, is not simply homosexuality, but how Scripture informs our lives today.
Some passages that have been advanced as pertinent to the issue of homosexuality are, in fact, irrelevant. One is the attempted gang rape in Sodom (Gen. 19:1-29). That was a case of ostensibly heterosexual males intent on humiliating strangers by treating them "like women," thus demasculinizing them. (This is also the case in a similar account in Judges 19-21.) Their brutal behavior has nothing to do with the problem of whether genuine love expressed between consenting adults of the same sex is legitimate or not. Likewise Deut. 23:17-18 must be pruned from the list, since it most likely refers to a heterosexual prostitute involved in Canaanite fertility rites that have infiltrated Jewish worship; the King James Version inaccurately labeled him a "sodomite."
Several other texts are ambiguous. It is not clear whether 1 Cor. 6:9 and 1 Tim. 1:10 refer to the "passive" and "active" partners in homosexual relationships, or to homosexual and heterosexual male prostitutes. In short, it is unclear whether the issue is homosexuality alone, or promiscuity and "sex-for-hire."
Unequivocal Condemnations
Putting these texts to the side, we are left with three references, all of which unequivocally condemn homosexual behavior. Lev. 18:22 states the principle: "You [masculine] shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination" (NRSV). The second (Lev. 20:13) adds the penalty: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them."
Such an act was regarded as an "abomination" for several reasons. The Hebrew prescientific understanding was that male semen contained the whole of nascent life. With no knowledge of eggs and ovulation, it was assumed that the woman provided only the incubating space. Hence the spilling of semen for any nonprocreative purpose--in coitus interruptus (Gen. 38:1-11), male homosexual acts, or male masturbation--was considered tantamount to abortion or murder. (Female homosexual acts were consequently not so seriously regarded, and are not mentioned at all in the Old Testament (but see Rom. 1:26). One can appreciate how a tribe struggling to populate a country in which its people were outnumbered would value procreation highly, but such values are rendered questionable in a world facing uncontrolled overpopulation.
In addition, when a man acted like a woman sexually, male dignity was compromised. It was a degradation, not only in regard to himself, but for every other male. The patriarchalism of Hebrew culture shows its hand in the very formulation of the commandment, since no similar stricture was formulated to forbid homosexual acts between females. And the repugnance felt toward homosexuality was not just that it was deemed unnatural but also that it was considered unJewish, representing yet one more incursion of pagan civilization into Jewish life. On top of that is the more universal repugnance heterosexuals tend to feel for acts and orientations foreign to them. (Left-handedness has evoked something of the same response in many cultures.)
Whatever the rationale for their formulation, however, the texts leave no room for maneuvering. Persons committing homosexual acts are to be executed. This is the unambiguous command of Scripture. The meaning is clear: anyone who wishes to base his or her beliefs on the witness of the Old Testament must be completely consistent and demand the death penalty for everyone who performs homosexual acts. (That may seem extreme, but there actually are some Christians urging this very thing today.) It is unlikely that any American court will ever again condemn a homosexual to death, even though Scripture clearly commands it.
Old Testament texts have to be weighed against the New. Consequently, Paul's unambiguous condemnation of homosexual behavior in Rom. 1:26-27 must be the centerpiece of any discussion.
For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
No doubt Paul was unaware of the distinction between sexual orientation, over which one has apparently very little choice, and sexual behavior, over which one does. He seemed to assume that those whom he condemned were heterosexuals who were acting contrary to nature, "leaving," "giving up," or "exchanging" their regular sexual orientation for that which was foreign to them. Paul knew nothing of the modern psychosexual understanding of homosexuals as persons whose orientation is fixed early in life, or perhaps even genetically in some cases. For such persons, having heterosexual relations would be acting contrary to nature, "leaving," "giving up" or "exchanging" their natural sexual orientation for one that was unnatural to them.
In other words, Paul really thought that those whose behavior he condemned were "straight," and that they were behaving in ways that were unnatural to them. Paul believed that everyone was straight. He had no concept of homosexual orientation. The idea was not available in his world. There are people that are genuinely homosexual by nature (whether genetically or as a result of upbringing no one really knows, and it is irrelevant). For such a person it would be acting contrary to nature to have sexual relations with a person of the opposite sex.
Likewise, the relationships Paul describes are heavy with lust; they are not relationships between consenting adults who are committed to each other as faithfully and with as much integrity as any heterosexual couple. That was something Paul simply could not envision. Some people assume today that venereal disease and AIDS are divine punishment for homosexual behavior; we know it as a risk involved in promiscuity of every stripe, homosexual and heterosexual. In fact, the vast majority of people with AIDS the world around are heterosexuals. We can scarcely label AIDS a divine punishment, since nonpromiscuous lesbians are at almost no risk.
And Paul believes that homosexual behavior is contrary to nature, whereas we have learned that it is manifested by a wide variety of species, especially (but not solely) under the pressure of overpopulation. It would appear then to be a quite natural mechanism for preserving species. We cannot, of course, decide human ethical conduct solely on the basis of animal behavior or the human sciences, but Paul here is arguing from nature, as he himself says, and new knowledge of what is "natural" is therefore relevant to the case.
Hebrew Sexual Mores
Nevertheless, the Bible quite clearly takes a negative view of homosexual activity, in those few instances where it is mentioned at all. But this conclusion does not solve the problem of how we are to interpret Scripture today. For there are other sexual attitudes, practices and restrictions which are normative in Scripture but which we no longer accept as normative:
1. Old Testament law strictly forbids sexual intercourse during the seven days of the menstrual period (Lev. 18:19; 15:19-24), and anyone in violation was to be "extirpated" or "cut off from their people" (kareth, Lev. 18:29, a term referring to execution by stoning, burning, strangling, or to flogging or expulsion; Lev. 15:24 omits this penalty). Today many people on occasion have intercourse during menstruation and think nothing of it. Should they be "extirpated"? The Bible says they should.
2. The punishment for adultery was death by stoning for both the man and the woman (Deut. 22:22), but here adultery is defined by the marital status of the woman. In the Old Testament, a man could not commit adultery against his own wife; he could only commit adultery against another man by sexually using the other's wife. And a bride who is found not to be a virgin is to be stoned to death (Deut. 22:13-21), but male virginity at marriage is never even mentioned. It is one of the curiosities of the current debate on sexuality that adultery, which creates far more social havoc, is considered less "sinful" than homosexual activity. Perhaps this is because there are far more adulterers in our churches. Yet no one, to my knowledge, is calling for their stoning, despite the clear command of Scripture. And we ordain adulterers.
3. Nudity, the characteristic of paradise, was regarded in Judaism as reprehensible (2 Sam. 6:20; 10:4; Isa. 20:2-4; 47:3). When one of Noah's sons beheld his father naked, he was cursed (Gen. 9:20-27). To a great extent this nudity taboo probably even inhibited the sexual intimacy of husbands and wives (this is still true of a surprising number of people reared in the Judeo-Christian tradition). We may not be prepared for nude beaches, but are we prepared to regard nudity in the locker room or at the old swimming hole or in the privacy of one's home as an accursed sin? The Bible does.
4. Polygamy (many wives) and concubinage (a woman living with a man to whom she is not married) were regularly practiced in the Old Testament. Neither is ever condemned by the New Testament (with the questionable exceptions of 1 Tim. 3:2, 12 and Titus 1:6). Jesus' teaching about marital union in Mark 10:6-8 is no exception, since he quotes Gen. 2:24 as his authority (the man and the woman will become "one flesh"), and this text was never understood in Israel as excluding polygamy. A man could become "one flesh" with more than one woman, through the act of sexual intercourse. We know from Jewish sources that polygamy continued to be practiced within Judaism for centuries following the New Testament period. So if the Bible allowed polygamy and concubinage, why don't we?
5. A form of polygamy was the levirate marriage. When a married man in Israel died childless, his widow was to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bore him a male heir. Jesus mentions this custom without criticism (Mark 12:18-27 par.). I am not aware of any Christians who still obey this unambiguous commandment of Scripture. Why is this law ignored, and the one against homosexual behavior preserved?
6. The Old Testament nowhere explicitly prohibits sexual relations between unmarried consenting heterosexual adults, as long as the woman's economic value (bride price) is not compromised, that is to say, as long as she is not a virgin. There are poems in the Song of Songs that eulogize a love affair between two unmarried persons, though commentators have often conspired to cover up the fact with heavy layers of allegorical interpretation. In various parts of the Christian world, quite different attitudes have prevailed about sexual intercourse before marriage. In some Christian communities, proof of fertility (that is, pregnancy) was required for marriage. This was especially the case in farming areas where the inability to produce children-workers could mean economic hardship. Today, many single adults, the widowed, and the divorced are reverting to "biblical" practice, while others believe that sexual intercourse belongs only within marriage. Both views are Scriptural. Which is right?
7. The Bible virtually lacks terms for the sexual organs, being content with such euphemisms as "foot" or "thigh" for the genitals, and using other euphemisms to describe coitus, such as "he knew her." Today most of us regard such language as "puritanical" and contrary to a proper regard for the goodness of creation. In short, we don't follow Biblical practice.
8. Semen and menstrual blood rendered all who touched them unclean (Lev. 15:16-24). Intercourse rendered one unclean until sundown; menstruation rendered the woman unclean for seven days. Today most people would regard semen and menstrual fluid as completely natural and only at times "messy," not "unclean."
9. Social regulations regarding adultery, incest, rape and prostitution are, in the Old Testament, determined largely by considerations of the males' property rights over women. Prostitution was considered quite natural and necessary as a safeguard of the virginity of the unmarried and the property rights of husbands (Gen. 38:12-19; Josh. 2:1-7). A man was not guilty of sin for visiting a prostitute, though the prostitute herself was regarded as a sinner. Paul must appeal to reason in attacking prostitution (1 Cor. 6:12-20); he cannot lump it in the category of adultery (vs. 9).
Today we are moving, with great social turbulence and at a high but necessary cost, toward a more equitable, non-patriarchal set of social arrangements in which women are no longer regarded as the chattel of men. We are also trying to move beyond the double standard. Love, fidelity and mutual respect replace property rights. We have, as yet, made very little progress in changing the double standard in regard to prostitution. As we leave behind patriarchal gender relations, what will we do with the patriarchalism in the Bible?
10. Jews were supposed to practice endogamy--that is, marriage within the twelve tribes of Israel. Until recently a similar rule prevailed in the American South, in laws against interracial marriage (miscegenation). We have witnessed, within the lifetime of many of us, the nonviolent struggle to nullify state laws against intermarriage and the gradual change in social attitudes toward interracial relationships. Sexual mores can alter quite radically even in a single lifetime.
11. The law of Moses allowed for divorce (Deut. 24:1-4); Jesus categorically forbids it (Mark 10:1-12; Matt. 19:9 softens his severity). Yet many Christians, in clear violation of a command of Jesus, have been divorced. Why, then, do some of these very people consider themselves eligible for baptism, church membership, communion, and ordination, but not homosexuals? What makes the one so much greater a sin than the other, especially considering the fact that Jesus never even mentioned homosexuality but explicitly condemned divorce? Yet we ordain divorcees. Why not homosexuals?
12. The Old Testament regarded celibacy as abnormal, and 1 Tim. 4:1-3 calls compulsory celibacy a heresy. Yet the Catholic Church has made it mandatory for priests and nuns. Some Christian ethicists demand celibacy of homosexuals, whether they have a vocation for celibacy or not. But this legislates celibacy by category, not by divine calling. Others argue that since God made men and women for each other in order to be fruitful and multiply, homosexuals reject God's intent in creation. But this would mean that childless couples, single persons, priests and nuns would be in violation of God's intention in their creation. Those who argue thus must explain why the apostle Paul never married. And are they prepared to charge Jesus with violating the will of God by remaining single?
Certainly heterosexual marriage is normal, else the race would die out. But it is not normative. God can bless the world through people who are married and through people who are single, and it is false to generalize from the marriage of most people to the marriage of everyone. In 1 Cor. 7:7 Paul goes so far as to call marriage a "charisma," or divine gift, to which not everyone is called. He preferred that people remain as he was--unmarried. In an age of overpopulation, perhaps a gay orientation is especially sound ecologically!
13. In many other ways we have developed different norms from those explicitly laid down by the Bible. For example, "If men get into a fight with one another, and the wife of one intervenes to rescue her husband from the grip of his opponent by reaching out and seizing his genitals, you shall cut off her hand; show no pity" (Deut. 25:11f.). We, on the contrary, might very well applaud her for trying to save her husband's life!
14. The Old and New Testaments both regarded slavery as normal and nowhere categorically condemned it. Part of that heritage was the use of female slaves, concubines and captives as sexual toys, breeding machines, or involuntary wives by their male owners, which 2 Sam. 5:13, Judges 19-21 and Num. 31:18 permitted--and as many American slave owners did some 150 years ago, citing these and numerous other Scripture passages as their justification.
The Problem of Authority
These cases are relevant to our attitude toward the authority of Scripture. They are not cultic prohibitions from the Holiness Code that are clearly superseded in Christianity, such as rules about eating shellfish or wearing clothes made of two different materials. They are rules concerning sexual behavior, and they fall among the moral commandments of Scripture. Clearly we regard certain rules, especially in the Old Testament, as no longer binding. Other things we regard as binding, including legislation in the Old Testament that is not mentioned at all in the New. What is our principle of selection here?
For example, virtually all modern readers would agree with the Bible in rejecting: incest, rape, adultery, and intercourse with animals. But we disagree with the Bible on most other sexual mores. The Bible condemned the following behaviors which we generally allow: intercourse during menstruation, celibacy, exogamy (marriage with non-Jews), naming sexual organs, nudity (under certain conditions), masturbation (some Christians still condemn this), birth control (some Christians still forbid this).
And the Bible regarded semen and menstrual blood as unclean, which most of us do not. Likewise, the Bible permitted behaviors that we today condemn: prostitution, polygamy, levirate marriage, sex with slaves, concubinage, treatment of women as property, and very early marriage (for the girl, age 11-13).
And while the Old Testament accepted divorce, Jesus forbade it. In short, of the sexual mores mentioned here, we only agree with the Bible on four of them, and disagree with it on sixteen!
Surely no one today would recommend reviving the levirate marriage. So why do we appeal to proof texts in Scripture in the case of homosexuality alone, when we feel perfectly free to disagree with Scripture regarding most other sexual practices? Obviously many of our choices in these matters are arbitrary. Mormon polygamy was outlawed in this country, despite the constitutional protection of freedom of religion, because it violated the sensibilities of the dominant Christian culture. Yet no explicit biblical prohibition against polygamy exists.
If we insist on placing ourselves under the old law, as Paul reminds us, we are obligated to keep every commandment of the law (Gal. 5:3). But if Christ is the end of the law (Rom. 10:4), if we have been discharged from the law to serve, not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit (Rom. 7:6), then all of these biblical sexual mores come under the authority of the Spirit. We cannot then take even what Paul himself says as a new Law. Christians reserve the right to pick and choose which sexual mores they will observe, though they seldom admit to doing just that. And this is as true of evangelicals and fundamentalists as it is of liberals and mainliners.
Judge for Yourselves
The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. There is no Biblical sex ethic. Instead, it exhibits a variety of sexual mores, some of which changed over the thousand year span of biblical history. Mores are unreflective customs accepted by a given community. Many of the practices that the Bible prohibits, we allow, and many that it allows, we prohibit. The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period.
The very notion of a "sex ethic" reflects the materialism and splitness of modern life, in which we increasingly define our identity sexually. Sexuality cannot be separated off from the rest of life. No sex act is "ethical" in and of itself, without reference to the rest of a person's life, the patterns of the culture, the special circumstances faced, and the will of God. What we have are simply sexual mores, which change, sometimes with startling rapidity, creating bewildering dilemmas. Just within one lifetime we have witnessed the shift from the ideal of preserving one's virginity until marriage, to couples living together for several years before getting married. The response of many Christians is merely to long for the hypocrisies of an earlier era.
I agree that rules and norms are necessary; that is what sexual mores are. But rules and norms also tend to be impressed into the service of the Domination System, and to serve as a form of crowd control rather than to enhance the fullness of human potential. So we must critique the sexual mores of any given time and clime by the love ethic exemplified by Jesus. Defining such a love ethic is not complicated. It is non-exploitative (hence no sexual exploitation of children, no using of another to their loss), it does not dominate (hence no patriarchal treatment of women as chattel), it is responsible, mutual, caring, and loving. Augustine already dealt with this in his inspired phrase, "Love God, and do as you please."
Our moral task, then, is to apply Jesus' love ethic to whatever sexual mores are prevalent in a given culture. This doesn't mean everything goes. It means that everything is to be critiqued by Jesus' love commandment. We might address younger teens, not with laws and commandments whose violation is a sin, but rather with the sad experiences of so many of our own children who find too much early sexual intimacy overwhelming, and who react by voluntary celibacy and even the refusal to date. We can offer reasons, not empty and unenforceable orders. We can challenge both gays and straights to question their behaviors in the light of love and the requirements of fidelity, honesty, responsibility, and genuine concern for the best interests of the other and of society as a whole.
Christian morality, after all, is not a iron chastity belt for repressing urges, but a way of expressing the integrity of our relationship with God. It is the attempt to discover a manner of living that is consistent with who God created us to be. For those of same-sex orientation, as for heterosexuals, being moral means rejecting sexual mores that violate their own integrity and that of others, and attempting to discover what it would mean to live by the love ethic of Jesus.
Morton Kelsey goes so far as to argue that homosexual orientation has nothing to do with morality, any more than left-handedness. It is simply the way some people's sexuality is configured. Morality enters the picture when that predisposition is enacted. If we saw it as a God-given gift to those for whom it is normal, we could get beyond the acrimony and brutality that have so often characterized the unchristian behavior of Christians toward gays.
Approached from the point of view of love rather than that of law, the issue is at once transformed. Now the question is not "What is permitted?" but rather "What does it mean to love my homosexual neighbor?" Approached from the point of view of faith rather than works, the question ceases to be "What constitutes a breach of divine law in the sexual realm?" and becomes instead "What constitutes integrity before the God revealed in the cosmic lover, Jesus Christ?" Approached from the point of view of the Spirit rather than the letter, the question ceases to be "What does Scripture command?" and becomes "What is the Word that the Spirit speaks to the churches now, in the light of Scripture, tradition, theology, and, yes, psychology, genetics, anthropology, and biology?" We can't continue to build ethics on the basis of bad science.
In a little-remembered statement, Jesus said, "Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?" (Luke 12:57 NRSV). Such sovereign freedom strikes terror in the hearts of many Christians; they would rather be under law and be told what is right. Yet Paul himself echoes Jesus' sentiment when he says, "Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, matters pertaining to this life!" (1 Cor. 6:3 RSV). The last thing Paul would want is for people to respond to his ethical advice as a new law engraved on tablets of stone. He is himself trying to "judge for himself what is right." If now new evidence is in on the phenomenon of homosexuality, are we not obligated--no, free--to re-evaluate the whole issue in the light of all the available data and decide what is right, under God, for ourselves? Is this not the radical freedom for obedience in which the gospel establishes us?
Where the Bible mentions homosexual behavior at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether that Biblical judgment is correct. The Bible sanctioned slavery as well, and nowhere attacked it as unjust. Are we prepared to argue today that slavery is biblically justified? One hundred and fifty years ago, when the debate over slavery was raging, the Bible seemed to be clearly on the slaveholders' side. Abolitionists were hard pressed to justify their opposition to slavery on biblical grounds. Yet today, if you were to ask Christians in the South whether the Bible sanctions slavery, virtually everyone would agree that it does not. How do we account for such a monumental shift?
What happened is that the churches were finally driven to penetrate beyond the legal tenor of Scripture to an even deeper tenor, articulated by Israel out of the experience of the Exodus and the prophets and brought to sublime embodiment in Jesus' identification with harlots, tax collectors, the diseased and maimed and outcast and poor. It is that God sides with the powerless. God liberates the oppressed. God suffers with the suffering and groans toward the reconciliation of all things. In the light of that supernal compassion, whatever our position on gays, the gospel's imperative to love, care for, and be identified with their sufferings is unmistakably clear.
In the same way, women are pressing us to acknowledge the sexism and patriarchalism that pervades Scripture and has alienated so many women from the church. The way out, however, is not to deny the sexism in Scripture, but to develop an interpretive theory that judges even Scripture in the light of the revelation in Jesus. What Jesus gives us is a critique of domination in all its forms, a critique that can be turned on the Bible itself. The Bible thus contains the principles of its own correction. We are freed from bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible. It is restored to its proper place as witness to the Word of God. And that word is a Person, not a book.
With the interpretive grid provided by a critique of domination, we are able to filter out the sexism, patriarchalism, violence, and homophobia that are very much a part of the Bible, thus liberating it to reveal to us in fresh ways the inbreaking, in our time, of God's domination-free order.
An Appeal for Tolerance
What most saddens me in this whole raucous debate in the churches is how sub-Christian most of it has been. It is characteristic of our time that the issues most difficult to assess, and which have generated the greatest degree of animosity, are issues on which the Bible can be interpreted as supporting either side. I am referring to abortion and homosexuality.
We need to take a few steps back and be honest with ourselves. I am deeply convinced of the rightness of what I have said in this essay. But I must acknowledge that it is not an air tight case. You can find weaknesses in it, just as I can in others'. The truth is, we are not given unequivocal guidance in either area, abortion or homosexuality.
Rather than tearing at each others's throats, therefore, we should humbly admit our limitations. How do I know I am correctly interpreting God's word for us today? How do you? Wouldn't it be wiser for Christians to lower the decibels by 95 percent and quietly present our beliefs, knowing full well that we might be wrong?
I know of a couple, both well known Christian authors in their own right, who have both spoken out on the issue of homosexuality. She supports gays, passionately; he opposes their behavior, strenuously. So far as I can tell, this couple still enjoy each other's company, eat at the same table, and, for all I know, sleep in the same bed.
We in the church need to get our priorities straight. We have not reached a consensus about who is right on the issue of homosexuality. But what is clear, utterly clear, is that we are commanded to love one another. Love not just our gay sisters and brothers who are often sitting beside us, unacknowledged, in church, but all of us who are involved in this debate. These are issues about which we should amiably agree to disagree. We don't have to tear whole denominations to shreds in order to air our differences on this point. If that couple I mentioned can continue to embrace across this divide, surely we can do so as well.
How magnanimous of you. You are truly a saint. You'll tolerate your own child if "they want to be gay"!!!
What a horrible thing to say. That is without doubt the most condescending, sanctimonious piece of crap I have ever heard. With that kind of attitude your child would know eons before he did come to you to never do it. Irby, you are sad.
You have know idea what love is. You are not wise by any reasonable standard. I feel so sorry for your children and community but I feel more sorry for your "gay friends". I don't believe you have any. I think this a lie because they wuldn't put up with your fake condescention.
Some have argued that the Bible prohibits male homosexuality for sure, and perhaps lesbian sexuality as well. (Those who might want the government to poke around in private bedrooms might recall that the Rabbis suggested that the Bible also calls for privacy: that what Balaam found "Mah tovu," "So good!" in the tents of the House of Jacob was precisely that they were pitched at angles to each other so that each household preserved its privacy -- especially its sexual privacy.)
Some have argued that "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman" is ambiguous, leaving open to question what the text really means. (Is this
physically possible? Was it only about casual or ritual homosexuality, not committed relationships?)
But I think we need to go beyond these historical or midrashic quibbles, to look more deeply into Torah.
Does Torah look forward to its own transformation? If so, under what circumstances?
There is wise and powerful teaching in the passage of Talmud that cautions against raising goats and sheep in the Land of Israel. Since our forebears Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rivkah, did precisely that, how could the Talmud have the chutzpah to oppose it?
The Rabbis know the world had changed. They knew that the numbers of goats and sheep, and of the human population, would denude and ruin the Land if these animals were bred there.
The world had changed, and so did Jewish holy practice.
Biblical Judaism, out of which sprang the Leviticus prohibition on homosexuality, professed three basic rules for proper sexual ethics:
1. Have as many children as possible. Gen. I: 28: "Be fruitful, multiply, fill up the earth, and subdue it."
2. Men were to be in charge. Genesis 3: 16, where God says to Eve, "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."
3. Sex was delightful and sacred. (Song of Songs, throughout.) Celibacy was almost unheard of, and almost always strongly discouraged.
How did these affect attitudes toward homosexuality?
"Be fruitful and multiply, fill up the earth and subdue it"" worked against homosexuality, since having children was presumably impossible. But what shall we do today, in a generation when the injunction to "fill up th earth" has been accomplished? H
Today the sheer number of humans is putting impossible burdens on our global ecosystem and plunging into extinction thousands of the species that God commands in the story of the Flood we must not allow to die.
Today we need to encourage, not forbid, forms of sexuality that avoid biological multiplication. We might now read the command as teaching us to
be fruitful and expansive emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually rather than biologically.
What were the effects of "He shall rule over you"? If a man had to be in charge in a sexual relationship, there was no way to deal with a relationship of two men. Neither one could be subordinated -- "as with a woman." Such a relationship would blow out all the circuits. Conversely, a relationship between two "subordinate" women would not even turn the power on - and so it was ignored in biblical tradition.
Is this statement in Eden intended by Torah to persist forever? No more than the twin statement (Gen. 3: 17-19) that human beings (or at least men) shall "toil in the sweat of their brow," wringing a livelihood from a hostile earth. Do we think Torah commands us to eschew the machines that make our labor easier?
Like this statement about toil, and like "Be fruitful and multiply," the overlordship of men applied to a history that should be transcended. It was not an edict to be obeyed.
Modernity has transformed the world we live in. The Modernity that eases our work and makes women and men equal and brings the human race to fill up
and subdue the earth seems to be what God intended.
So then we must ask ourselves, as the Rabbis of the Talmud understood that in their new world they must oppose raising sheep and goats as their forebears did, what must we change in our new world?
In a world filled and subdued by the human race, multiplying our numbers may actually contravene God's intention. In a world where men are not required to be dominant nor women to be subordinate, a relationship of two men or two
women need not be either destructive or irrelevant.
So we are evolving past these two rules that underlay the opposition to gay and lesbian relationships and marriages.
The third basic rule -- that sex is delightful and sacred - still stands. The biblical Song of Songs embodies it, and the Song -- far from being outdated - may point beyond the Eden of the past, of a childish human race, past our history of toil and hierarchy, toward an Eden of the Future. "Eden for grown-ups," for a grown-up human race and for newly mature individual human beings.
In the Song, bodies are no longer shameful as they were after the mistake of Eden; the earth is playful, not our enemy; and women and men are equal in desire and in power. And God is never named - no longer Papa/Mama as in Eden, giving orders, but inherent in the very process of life.
Though the drama of the Song is on its face heterosexual, it describes the kind of sensual pleasure beyond the rules that has characterized some aspects of gay and lesbian desire, especially since marriage was forbidden.
So we now have the opportunity to open heterosexual relationships and marriages to the kind of joy the Song embodies, while opening gay and lesbian life to the more planful structure that marriage makes possible.
Love and marriage are present in the Song, suffused with joy and pleasure rather than with rigidity and rules. For millennia, Jews have prided ourselves on the worth of marriage as a carrier of holiness and community. Now we can expand the circles in which marriage - a new kind of marriage - is possible.
From a spiritual as well as a legal standpoint, our courts are opening the way to enhancing, not destroying, marriage. They have opened the gates; but only spiritual communities can enter. Let the tents of Jacob and the shrines of Israel rejoice, "Mah tovu! How wonderful!"
___________________________
* Rabbi Arthur Waskow is director of The Shalom Center ,
author of Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, & the Rest of Life, and
co-author of A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven: The Jewish Life-Spiral
as a Spiritual Path. The Shalom center's Website carries many thoughtful reexaminations of the Bible in the light of God;s will for the world we live in.
"For example, read 1Corinthians6:9-10"
Thanks for bringing it up, because false translation is a significant crime on the part of those people who condemn homosexuality.
I Corinthians was written in Greek, not English. The two greek words that your fraudulent translation reports as "male prostitutes, homosexuals" are arsenkoitai and malkoi - neither means men who have sex with men, i.e., homosexuals.
Greek of Paul's time and place had two commonly used words that meant men who have sex with men - erestes and eranamos. Paul used neither one.
Instead, Paul invented a word, arsenokoitai, whose meaning has changed over the course of time, and he used a word that is essentially a criticism of anything feminime.
So you are reviling my relationship based on a text where Paul did not use the two words that would have actually conveyed the meaning you hunger for. Bully for you.
As for Romans2:26 - The error here is right in front: "That is why - - - " It means that whatever came before (which happens to be a description of specific fertility practices) is too blame for what follows.
If the Romans 1 passage is to be used to condemn homosexuality entirely, on the grounds that it appears to be condemning same-sex sexual acts in a specific situation, than the hundreds of verses condemning specific acts of heterosexual intimacy constitute a much stronger condemnation of all heterosexuals and all heterosexuality.
Keep in mind, of course, that you are leaing on the word of a fallible man, instead of Jesus Christ, who summed up the law without ever condeming homosexuality: The whole of the Law is love God with your entire self and love your neighbor as yourself."
Every person, including you, Aurora, who condemns homosexuality, is in direct and deliberate disobediance, defying and rejecting Jesus Christ, because that condemnation violates both clauses of what Christ said was the whole of the law.
Aurora, you've sinned against me, my partner, our friends, people we worship with, work with, millions of human beings.
Please repent of your sin against us as publicly as you committed it.
The whole idea of what is right and what is wrong has to be grounded in something other than what the individual thinks. Otherwise, anyone can justify whatever they want to do. Even the whole idea of sexuality, in its entirety has to be greater than what I think, or I can even justfy pedaphilia, incest, rape, or literally any behavior I think is "right for me". Ultimately, it comes down to one decision. Is there a God or isn't there. If you don't believe there is a God, then you have to come up with a paradigm for determining acceptable behavior. If you do believe in God, than by the very definition, God gets to say what is right and wrong, and you can't overturn that. As one who has become convinced there is a God, it then logically follows that He is perfect, and has the right to set the rules. Therefore, regardless of what I "think" or "feel", I'm compelled to subordinate my desires to God's will. So, whether I'm born gay, or develop gay desires because of enviornment, or other factors, I must consider my behavior, not in light of how I feel or think, but in light of what God says. By the way, the same logic applies to any behavior. Selfishness is a good example. God says selfishness is wrong. Anyone who has been a father or mother knows that even infants are selfish. That's why, as children grow older, they must be taught to be unselfish. But, what if someone were to say "By trying to make me be unselfish, you are denying how I was made. If I were unselfish, I would not be true to that person I really am. Unselfishness may be ok for you, but it isn't ok for me." How would we argue that selfishness is wrong? If we allow individuals to establish what is right for them, then we can't even intimate that selfishness is bad, because we are imposing a value on them that is illegitimate in their life. One would have to say "Well, that's really ok to be selfish. What right do I have to tell you how to live?" While that is certainly possible, I think we would all agree that ultimately, being selfish in not healthy or profitable. But God says selfishness is wrong, and therefore it is wrong, regardless of what I think or feel. Ultimately, we will be judged based upon what God says is good or bad, not on what we think is good or bad. Thanks for allowing me to give my opinion
Wrong again. I am neither a mormon or a baptist.
And I wont teach my children to hate either. I dont hate and i wont teach them to.
I will teach them God's word. They will make their own choices.
And you know if my child comes up to me and tells me they want to be gay then I will live with it. I will continue to them Gods word. But I will not punish them or condemn them. Because I dont condemn them.
I will pray for my child. But I will not love them any less.
W.Irby :
Like I said. I have sinned. Plenty of times.
As a matter of fact, no i am not a virgin. I am happily married and this is my second pregnancy.
They could learn to love and live their life as God intended. With someone of the opposite sex.
You know you guys really are helping me change my mind. Your helping me see how much I really do dislike it. Congrats. Your helping me get my faith even stronger with God. Im so glad I found him. I am so glad I dont have to lie to HIM!
-----------------------------------
You are either a Mormon or a Baptist. The stink of their propaganda is dripping of this one.
I said that to pretend who you are not is stupid, Irby. My brother and his husband are not stupid nor are they liars nor are they miserable nor are they faking an existence that isn't true for them.
You don't get it. You are asking them to fake and existence that isn't true and then lie about how wonderful it all is. You are the one who ie sick. I weep for your children.
You need help.
My children love their two uncles just the way they are. We don't teach our children hate.
Ok then give me the exact quote from me that says
"gay people are just like murders and rapist"
please bc i dont see it.
no i didnt say that.
you dont know what i said. you dont understand.
i using something EVERYONE thinks is a horrible and bad thing since you think i feel this way about gay people.
And you SW are constantly putting words in my mouth. I give up with you. You are hopeless. You are more stubborn than I am. Thats pretty bad.
"W.Irby :
Once again take my words out of context.
Ya'll are acusing me of comparing them. Im not.
Read my stuff before you overanalyze.
Your taking everything I say way out of context, again, to try and turn things around. Go ahead. I know the truth. I know what I meant. God knows what I meant."
--------------------------
You said that gay people are the same as murderers and rapists if the "act" on their desires. That is not taken out of context. That is what YOU wrote. YOU wrote that.
----------------------------
"I didnt compare gay people to murders. Ya'll I think i look down on gay people and you think its a sin. Well I dont look down on them.
But do you look down on people who do sinful things as bad people? Yes you do.
Thats what I meant."
-----------------------------
G-d doesn't "look down" on gay persons and call them sinful. YOU do this. Against Jesus' ministry to not do this. YOU presume to know the mind of G-d and speak G-d's mind.
----------------------------
"You knew exactly what I meant. But you chose to be IGNORANT again and turn it around.
And you know while im thinking about it ya'll just proved my point.."
---------------------------
Yes, that is correct. WE do know exactly what you meant. Just what yuo wrote. That gay persons are just like murderers and rapists who murder and rape. You seem to be the one who doesn't know what you wrote.
But that's what you wrote. YOU are the one not taking responsibility for your views.
Like I said. I have sinned. Plenty of times.
As a matter of fact, no i am not a virgin. I am happily married and this is my second pregnancy.
They could learn to love and live their life as God intended. With someone of the opposite sex.
You know you guys really are helping me change my mind. Your helping me see how much I really do dislike it. Congrats. Your helping me get my faith even stronger with God. Im so glad I found him. I am so glad I dont have to lie to HIM!
Once again take my words out of context.
Ya'll are acusing me of comparing them. Im not.
Read my stuff before you overanalyze.
Your taking everything I say way out of context, again, to try and turn things around. Go ahead. I know the truth. I know what I meant. God knows what I meant.
I didnt compare gay people to murders. Ya'll I think i look down on gay people and you think its a sin. Well I dont look down on them.
But do you look down on people who do sinful things as bad people? Yes you do.
Thats what I meant.
You knew exactly what I meant. But you chose to be IGNORANT again and turn it around.
And you know while im thinking about it ya'll just proved my point..
Repent of being who they are in their deepest selves? Is that it? Lie about who they are? Pretend to be what aren't or spend their whole lives alone and sexless? These are the options?
You haven't had sex yet have you? You are a virgin aren't you? Becasue only a virgin who has no expereince with life would condemn other people she doesn't understand to the kind of h&ll on earth she advocates by proxy.
My brother and his husband are beautiful just the way they are and they are going to heaven with all of us because they love G-d with all their strength, mind, and body.
You have no idea what "repent" means do you? It means to return to God. That's all it means. It doesn't mean be a faker and fake an existence that is inauthentic to please religious zealots who don't know their a$$es from holes in the ground. Repent doesn't mean, "I'm really, really sorry for who I am and make me who I am not so ignorant fools don't have to be afflicted with my existance as I truly am."
What an idiot you are. You have no idea what you are talking about. Go to school and learn something. Gays are real people with real feelings that are just as valid as yours. Grow up.
That's right, you're wonderful, Irby. You don't hate gays. You think they are the same as rapists and murderers for "what they do". But you don't say that to their face; you say it here.
Oh Wise Women, Irby, you compared gay pserons to rapists and murderers and made that equation the standard of justifcation for anti-gay rhetoric and hermeneutics against them.
Those are your words. You wrote that. You are sick and deluded. You need help too.
A heterosexual committing homosexual acts fraudulently and abusively is a sin. Every reference in the bible is a reference to this and not gay persons. The bible says nothing about gay persons. You read your anti-gay bias into the text fraudulently and then bear false witness against gay persons.
This is the point.
You just don't get it.
David, you need psychological help.
Irby, you are defintely not wise by the classic Greek standard of measure: wisdom is the courage to say I know nothing and start from there to learn.
You know it all and thereby cannot learn anything new.
The point of the question was to examine whether you can learn to change your mind.
You have proven you cannot and never will.
OK. We all get it. You are agressively ignorant. I'm so proud of you.
I guessed right about you. You are also too young to know what wisdon is. Wisdom develops with age and openness to truth and love.
Gay persons are not the "acts" they do. Stop exclusively sexualizing them. This is obscene. I would never refer to you with the catch-all demeaning title, "heterosexuals". They and you are who G-d made them and where born to be. I feel sorry for your gay "friends". With a friend like you who needs enemies.
Thanks for defending God's Word. Sheep amongst the wolves, huh? Best thing to do if they continue with the hateful comments and poor assumptions of our character and beliefs is to just leave. Let em be sista! I agree with everything you said. I wish they would realize that what we believe is not hateful but actually the complete opposite. Take care Irby. God bless you.
Ok let me just throw this out there..
Since the bible says ( in more than one place ) that homosexuality is a sin. I look at homosexuality as an act.. i dont look at the people. Bc I dont think the people are bad. I just think the actions are bad.
What about rapist and murders. Im sure all of you at one point or time have seen something on tv, heard something on the news about either of those. And thought to yourself or outloud. How awful, how could someone do such a thing. That is judging. Which by the way yes I have said that. Im not denying it.
But that is you calling the PERSON bad. Saying the PERSON is going to Hell.
As for me saying homosexuality is a sin. I am saying the ACT is a SIN. Not the people doing it.
You people just dont understand, either that or you just want to make me out to be some horrible person who hates gay and is out to get them. well Im not. IF that were so i wouldnt have gay friends. If that were so i would say how much i hate gays and i think they are just horrible people. WELL I DONT. So stop putting words in my mouth.
Hell ya'll are judging me right now. You know that?! Bascially calling me a bad person bc i dont agree with you.
Its a freakin website that posted a question
"What does your faith lead you to believe about gay unions and gay clergy? Could you ever change your mind?"
All I did was answer that question.
Just as all of you did.
I gave my opinion and thats it. I am not a bad person and I am not judging anyone.
If you can't get that.. Im sorry your so ignorant.
Ron,
I never once said a gay person couldnt repent and end up in heaven.
All they have to do is ask for forgiveness and they will get it.
But they shouldnt keep doing it knowing that it is a sin. And yes it is a sin.
Homosexuality is a sin.
I am not judging them. God is. I am just saying what the bible says. You people who say that i am judging them are ignorant.
I like my gay friends. They are wonderful people. That is just one of the things we dont agree on. They know how i feel about it. They dont dislike me for it bc they know why i feel the way i do. As a matter of fact I talked to one today ( named Ryan) bc he was interested in everything i have been talkin about on here. He asked me to show him all the verses in the bible that talked about it and you know what he agrees. He thinks that he should stop what he is doing. He knows he wasn't "born that way" because you aren't. God doesn't make people into homosexuales. He didn't intend for people to end up that way. If he did he wouldnt have made a man and woman in the beginning. He wouldnt' constently say over and over again in the bible one man to one woman. one man to one wife.. and so on.
Oh and SW. i didnt use Leviticus. YOu used it first. I just simply put it up there to show you what you posted and how it worked against your arguement, not for yours.
I don't care what you people think. I know how i feel on the inside. I do not hate gay people. just because they are gay doesn't make them any less. but ACCORDING TO GOD homosexuality is a sin and since they participate in it. The ACTIONS not the PEOPLE are sins.
And yes SW I am a woman. I am 19 year old woman. I have probably seen more in this world and been through more than a 60 year old. I am wise way beyond my years and i know I am.
I am not concieted by any means because over half the stuff I have done and seen I am not proud of but you know what that is between me and God. I repented and asked for my forgiveness.
I am a heterosexual, married woman. If two people love each other and wish to make a commitment to share their lives, I don't care if they are the same sex. It will not hurt my marriage at all. I fail to see how it is anyone's business.
IF you believe that it is a sin, why not let your god decide? Doesn't the bible include the admonition to not judge?
You are precisely right; the problem is your Christian upbringing. To cure yourself, try reading one of the books on the bestseller list like "the God Delusion" or "Letter to a Christian Nation”. You can lead a rational life if you try to think.
You are precisely right; the problem is your Christian upbringing. To cure yourself, try reading one of the books on the bestseller list like "the God Delusion" or "Letter to a Christian Nation”. You can lead a rational life if you try to think.
You are precisely right; the problem is your Christian upbringing. To cure yourself, try reading one of the books on the bestseller list like the God Delusion of Letter to a Christian Nation”. You can lead a rational life if you try to think.
No SW I don't need help. I never said that you are demon possesed. Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said I don't love you or that I don't respect you. I merely stated homosexuality as a sin. The level of sin I commit on a regular basis as well. This will definately be my last post on this subject, but I just wanted you to know that I don't hate homosexuals. I never said that, and stop assuming that!
There is no hope if religious people really believe and will not change their notion that gay people = sin and are forever chronically sinful, irredeemable, irreconcilable, unsalvagable.
This is outrageous. If this is Christian teaching then I want no part of it and will tell any religious zealot to go straight to H&ll.
Gays are not unrepentant sinners. This is the 21st century for chrissakes. Leave them alone. My brother and his partner are good people, fine citizens and worth my, my wife and our kids' love.
Why is Christian faith tied to excluding gays? Is that really the future of Christianity?
G-d did not say this. Men wrote this and you fraudulently concluded it. Fallible men. Pre-analytic men. Pre-sceintific men. Writtten words by men are by definition not eternal. They are time-bound and time-warped to future understanding. Our words today are not eternal for all time. They represent our understanding today -- the same is true as for yesterday. They are works in progress, never to be finished, never to capture the eternal, always attemping to understand the mysteries beyond our current understanding.
--------------------------------
The Bible consistently tells us that homosexual activity is a sin (Genesis 19:1-13; Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9). Romans 1:26-27 teaches specifically that homosexuality is a result of denying and disobeying God.
[This is untrue -- you bear false witness. II Samuel 1:26 of G-d's Word refutes your claim.]
When a person continues in sin and disbelief, the Bible tells us that God “gives them over” to even more wicked and depraved sin in order to show them the futility and hopelessness of life apart from God. 1 Corinthians 6:9 proclaims that homosexual “offenders” will not inherit the kingdom of God.
[This is untrue -- it presumes that gay attraction is demonic possession or Satanic influence. You maintain a 2,500 year old superstition that demon-possession is the "explanation" of gay persons -- you bear false witness to gay persons.]
God does not create a person with homosexual desires.
[This is a lie you maintain in order to keep your false biblical inerrancy claim -- you bear false witness to gay persons.]
The Bible tells us that a person becomes a homosexual because of sin (Romans 1:24-27),
[It does not say this at all. The King James Version does not support your claim -- you bear fasle witness to gay persons.]
and ultimately because of their own choice.
[This is a lie you use to maintain your false biblical inerrancy claim -- you bear false witness to gay persons.]
A person may be born with a greater susceptibility to homosexuality, just as people are born with a tendency to violence and other sins. That does not excuse the person choosing to sin by giving into their sinful desires. If a person is born with a greater susceptibility to anger / rage, does that make it right for then to give into those desires? Of course not! The same is true for homosexuality.
[This is a lie. Gay persons may not with any kind of integrity epsecially in America be equated with states of anger or rage. No ones' sexual identity is chosen. No one makes a conscious "choice" to be any kind of sexual identity. Only gay men who do not accpet themselves and engage in anti-gay rhetoric or hermenuetics make the claim that sexual attraction is changeable, lie about their true sexual identity and attempt to fabricate a false sexual identity. This is called heterosexist bias -- the attempted fraudulent heterosexualization of gay persons inauthentically -- you bear false witness to gay persons.]
However, the Bible does not describe homosexuality as a “greater” sin than any other. All sin is offensive to God. Homosexuality is just one of the many things listed in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 that will keep a person from the kingdom of God. According to the Bible, God’s forgiveness is just as available to a homosexual as it is to an adulterer, idol worshipper, murderer, thief, etc. God also promises the strength for victory over sin, including homosexuality, to all those who will believe in Jesus Christ for their salvation (1 Corinthians 6:11; 2 Corinthians 5:17).
[This is a lie supported no where in the bible. Jesus' salvation will not make a gay person straight -- or the converse, Satan's possession make a straight person gay . This is an outrageous claim that has no basis in reality -- you bear false witness to gay persons.]
David, you need help. Serious mental help. Being gay is not 5th century BCE demonic possession. Demons don't make you have "those attractions". It is how you were born.
If being insane is the litmus test for being a faithful Christian than serious intervention is called for. Thank you for allerting me to the dimension of the problem in our churches.
Whether you like it or not, homosexuality is a sin in God's eyes. I agree with God. I can tell from all the hateful ranting from SW and others that it is not acceptable to agree with God. I could care less what you think. I never said I hated anyone nor did I ever talk in offensive language. But as I can see those who accept sin as a positive thing are prone to hateful and ridiculous accusations. So keep it coming if you want, but I'm gonna leave this conversation since it is a hateful and demeaning conversation on your part. I was willing to have a respecful conversation and try to show why you are deserving of God's grace, but all the hateful rant is quite convincing that I'll just go. Have a blessed day and God bless you in all you do.
You said that ALL G-d's commandments and rules are to be followed equally without regard to hiearchy.
You are the one who said this.
You said no one can follow all of them but you try.
Be consistent. You are being inconsistent and that is my point. Why is the issue of homosexuality so hyperinflated for you? You said that all sins are equal with no one more important than any other.
In fact David agreed and said the same. Yet David then claims that homosexuality is the most eggregious of sins when Ezekiel makes plain that sins of commission are third in the heirarchy and that sins of pride are most eggregious, and sins of ommmission second.
You both seem to be unfamiliar with Ezekiel since he makes this heirarchical distinction and you don't but then do for gays but are wrong in your execution because he says sins of commission are third in importance.
Kevin said to stop using the bible as a sheild for your bigotry. He called it. That is exactly what you do but you do it incompetently and ignorantly. You don't even know what it actually says nor how to deal with it -- unless you are undergirding your anti-gay bigotry and then yu misuse it to do so.
Kevin is right on. It matters a great deal how, when, where, in what languages and cultures the orginal materials were written and then the pathways that they came to us today.
The Torah was rewritten, significantly altered and revised 4 times that we know of. It's first incarnation would bear little to no resemblance to what we read today.
The Hebrew texts were never written for "you" but for societies long past. The orginal referents are lost to us. The Hellenistic tranlation from Hebrew to Greek in the Septugant made uncounted errors and "revisions" that divorced us from their Jewish origins. The new testament texts wre written for JEWS of their time in the 1st century CE. "Christians" did not exist at the time of their writing. The subsequent translation by the Constantinian Board of Canon in the 4th century CE that Kevin rightly specifies intentionally mistranslated the Greek as well to serve a political agenda of its time.
It's all about very human political agendas, control, imperialistism and authoritarianism.
You reveal your ignorance, irrational fear and deep insecurities every time you post.
Read a little will ya? I gave you several resources.
Kev, I would caution you. The bible is most certainly not literal, absolute or inerrant. That doesn't mean it is worthless. It is a great work of high value when put to scholarly, literary use. It is not literally, inerrantly nor absolutely true. Yet it is metaphorically, allegorically, mythologically true and possibly has some valid historicity associated within. It has great value from the perspective of being really true, but the price of admission is to give up forever irrational claims of inerrancy, absolutism or literalism.
You have learning disabilities. I always refer to you as a person. I don't assume you to be male. I think you are a female because you are so literal and legalistic about the bible. That is a very female characteristic. I don't know, though, cause you might be a deeply closeted gay male.
Tell which it is, I'd like to know.
I am a male, btw.
You just said we "are to go by the new testament". Then why do you use Leviticus to justify your anti-gay rant?
Why do you judge gay people if we "are to go by the new testament"? In Christ no one is to judge anyone else for any reason. In Christ we are to treat the sinner exactly the same as the righteous and leave judgment to G-d. Why do you refuse to go by this?
I just figured it out! You're a female. That's why you have so many "gay friends" and why they don't talk to you. Fundamentalist Christian fag-hags are so boring.
II Samuel 1:26 is most certainly not "consistent" with your anti-gay rant. It is radically inconsistent. You are hilarious. I quoted it to you and you ignored it.
Gay people are born gay. For men it is prenatally fixed. We are all born the way we are born. You are wrong and if yuo you appeal to the bible to fix the "choice" notin of sexual identity not only will it not be successful but science will invalidate that view as it has.
It is settled science.
You didn't read Rev. Lowe's paper, "A Letter to Louise".
You have a big problem, David. Straight men do not engage in anti-gay rhetoric or hermeneutics. Straight men do not think sexual attraction is elastic and changeable and neither do gay men who accept themselves -- only closeted gay men who hate themselves do.
You are gay, David. Very gay.
Accept yourself and stop ranting you can change. The more you rant the more you give yourself away.
Kevin,
How ignorant can you get.
It doesnt matter what century, year or decade we are in. And it doesn't matter how many years it took to write the bible. Its called Faith.
I have had a wonderful life ( yes I have had a lot of downfalls, disappointment and heartache) but thats life. Everytime I fall down, I pray and I feel better. So if reading the bible is a waste of my time oh well. At least I tried. Believing in God isn't holding me back from doing anything I want to do. So I won't stop reading the bible.
If you have a problem with reading the bible.. then dont. I could careless if you do or not.
And as for "using the bible as a shield for your own prejudice." I most certainly do not do that. I just use the facts from the bible. It helped me form my opinion that i dont think homosexuality is right. People think that just because today its starting to become more popular that its ok. Well thats fine for them, but just because times are changing doesn't mean I will or my opinion.
Can we stop believing that the bible is literal truth already? It's the 21st century. Honestly people, the bible is a collection of distinctly separate books written by several different writers over many centuries, and synthesized into one book by a bunch of bureaucratic clergy. It's no more a book to live by than a collection of 19th century English literature. You don't believe Ebenezer Scrooge existed, do you, even though he might have a historical context? Did Dorian Gray's soul really age through his portrait? NO! Certainly there are moral themes and messages in each, but they aren't written by a deity. Come back to reality, please. If you want a world worth living in, quit being bigoted and using the bible as a shield for your own prejudice.
I bet that you are a 9 yr old hermaphradite Madagascan on vacation in Madrid, posting from an internet coffee bar, whilst you mum is chasing David Beckham through the airport, all the while over the the PA system throughout the airport echoes your name;
{{Bingadulli}}
because you've gone missing as you decide to wind up a few uptight american religious nutters to kill time.
Once again you are not listening and takin everything I say way out of context.
I did not say I dont sin. Of course i do. There is not one single person on the planet who doesn't sin.
And for the 100th time i do not condemn gay people. I could care less what they do. as long as they dont try to drag me into it.
I just gave my opinion along with everyone else. Sorry you dont like it.
And just so you know we are not suppose to go by anything from the old testiment anymore. The new testiment is what we go by. The old testiment is meant to be a history about everything.
As for the currency part I dont see how the presidents face being on there along with 'In God we trust' is a big deal. They are not implying the presidents are God. I dont worship our presidents or the money.
But that is one that thing we can control. money is what we have to use in this world to survive. God understands that. so once again you have proven nothing to me.
you just keep on and on with stuff that makes no sense or relevance at all.
The Bible consistently tells us that homosexual activity is a sin (Genesis 19:1-13; Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9). Romans 1:26-27 teaches specifically that homosexuality is a result of denying and disobeying God. When a person continues in sin and disbelief, the Bible tells us that God “gives them over” to even more wicked and depraved sin in order to show them the futility and hopelessness of life apart from God. 1 Corinthians 6:9 proclaims that homosexual “offenders” will not inherit the kingdom of God.
God does not create a person with homosexual desires. The Bible tells us that a person becomes a homosexual because of sin (Romans 1:24-27), and ultimately because of their own choice. A person may be born with a greater susceptibility to homosexuality, just as people are born with a tendency to violence and other sins. That does not excuse the person choosing to sin by giving into their sinful desires. If a person is born with a greater susceptibility to anger / rage, does that make it right for then to give into those desires? Of course not! The same is true for homosexuality.
However, the Bible does not describe homosexuality as a “greater” sin than any other. All sin is offensive to God. Homosexuality is just one of the many things listed in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 that will keep a person from the kingdom of God. According to the Bible, God’s forgiveness is just as available to a homosexual as it is to an adulterer, idol worshipper, murderer, thief, etc. God also promises the strength for victory over sin, including homosexuality, to all those who will believe in Jesus Christ for their salvation (1 Corinthians 6:11; 2 Corinthians 5:17). http://www.gotquestions.org/homosexuality-Bible.html
The Bible consistently tells us that homosexual activity is a sin (Genesis 19:1-13; Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9). Romans 1:26-27 teaches specifically that homosexuality is a result of denying and disobeying God. When a person continues in sin and disbelief, the Bible tells us that God “gives them over” to even more wicked and depraved sin in order to show them the futility and hopelessness of life apart from God. 1 Corinthians 6:9 proclaims that homosexual “offenders” will not inherit the kingdom of God.
God does not create a person with homosexual desires. The Bible tells us that a person becomes a homosexual because of sin (Romans 1:24-27), and ultimately because of their own choice. A person may be born with a greater susceptibility to homosexuality, just as people are born with a tendency to violence and other sins. That does not excuse the person choosing to sin by giving into their sinful desires. If a person is born with a greater susceptibility to anger / rage, does that make it right for then to give into those desires? Of course not! The same is true for homosexuality.
However, the Bible does not describe homosexuality as a “greater” sin than any other. All sin is offensive to God. Homosexuality is just one of the many things listed in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 that will keep a person from the kingdom of God. According to the Bible, God’s forgiveness is just as available to a homosexual as it is to an adulterer, idol worshipper, murderer, thief, etc. God also promises the strength for victory over sin, including homosexuality, to all those who will believe in Jesus Christ for their salvation (1 Corinthians 6:11; 2 Corinthians 5:17).
Small error, SW. Your citation of Jermaiah [sic] was incorrect. The three classifications of sin you refere to is found in Ezekiel not Jeremiah. They are in order Pride, Ommission and Commission. Very interseting arguments. I am enjoying this immensely.
Oh here's one for you that you pay no attention to at all, Irby.
You break the 2nd Commandment habitually without any regard to G-d's Law or remorse for your stiff-necked hardhearted rebuke of G-d.
Know how?
Because you carry US Currency with our Presidents' likenesses and "In God We Trust" graven upon it. Which is a willfully sinful affront to not making, nor bowing down to nor worshipping graven idols.
The Jews' money was never struck with any graven images so as to never break this Commandment.
I look forward to your complete adherence to G-d's Holy Word and throwing all your money away and never again carrying any kind of currency becasue you only do what G-d tells you to in the entire bible.
Oh here's one for you that you pay no attention to at all, Irby.
You break the 2nd Commandment habitually without any regard to G-d's Law or remorse for your stiff-necked hardhearted rebuke of G-d.
Know how?
Because you carry US Currency with our Presidents' likenesses and "In God We Trust" graven upon it. Which is a willfully sinful affront to not making, nor bowing down to nor worshipping graven idols.
The Jews' money was never struck with any graven images so as to never break this Commandment.
I look forward to your complete adherence to G-d's Holy Word and throwing all your money away and never again carrying any kind of currency becasue you only do what G-d tells you to in the entire bible.
You just don't get it. You refuse to even read your own posts critically. Gay persons are not abominations. Gay persons are not sinful.
Even if you are right and I am wrong -- in Christ it makes no difference what so ever. G-d's grace makes us one. You are not to be concerned with others' sin at all. Why are you so concerned for others' imperfections --in your opinion -- anyways? Jesus calls you to treat the sinner exactly the same as you treat the righteous. You are to tenderly love and care for the sinner as you do the righteous. You and I can't tell the difference between the two -- only G-d can.
That's what the Parable of the Wheat and Tars is all about. You have missed the point entirely.
Being Chirstian isn't some exclusive club for you to indulge your prejudices and exclude those you deem "unacceptable"! That's not G-dly in any way shape or form. No wonder your gay friends won't listen to you and what an appauling witness you are to them of intolernace, bigorty and exclusivity. You make them run from G-d not becasue they are gay because you are such an awful representative.
I want them to read this to hear another way of being Christian entirely. I didn't ask for your pleasure but theirs. I aksed for their sake.
How pitiful that you treat them so condescendingly and judgmentally.
You and Dave have no clue how abusive, injurious, blatantly mean-spirited and horrible your rhetoric is. Nor how insulting and spiteful.
You know not what you do. Others knew not what they did too and look what happened.
I am genuinely praying for your soul that the scales might fall from your eyes and your ears become unplugged so you could know beauty that is staring you right in front of your face.
You won't read "A Letter to Louise" because the addy says "godmademegay"? That is the height of stupidity and aggressive ignorance -- and arrogance.
Bruce Lowe is a retired Baptist Minister. As aggressively anti-gay as you and he changed.
You're a coward. You're frightened by the truth. You don't want to change. You want to go right on condemning gay persons as abominations before G-d. That's a mighty reckless disregard for the truth.
Here's Rev. Lowe's opening letter to you.
"Dear Reader,
"Shortly after I had gone from the seminary to my first pastorate in 1948, Louise invited my wife, Anna Marie, and me to have Sunday dinner with her family. She has been one of our dearest friends ever since. Recently, during one of the many visits we have had since then she said to me “My brother hates God because God made him gay, and he knows he is going to hell, and I do, too, for that is what the Bible says.” At that time I had only some suppositions - quite negative - about homosexuality and had never thought it needed study. But her words made me want to know as much as I could learn.
"When I began reading I soon realized things about myself I now deplore: I was ignorant of the many facts about homosexuality and what the Bible says about it. Yet, without facts, I had pre-judged it; I was prejudiced. With little thought I had read into the Bible what I presumed it ought to say instead of reading out of it what it did say. My idea of not needing to study the subject was pure anti-intellectualism. I am now grateful to God that He led me to study.
"I read some two score books, most by eminent sociologists, psychologists and theologians. Then I wrote this letter to Louise, reflecting what I have come to believe is the truth about homosexuality, what the Bible says and what God wants us to think and do about it.
"Now I want others to study seriously this matter of such importance to many lives and many churches and denominations. I asked for and received Louise’s permission to share her letter with others. I pray it may be helpful.
"Bruce W. Lowe, January 2002"
Read the rest of it.
You eat bacon, ham, shrimp, pork chops, pork rinds, lobster, mussles, scallops and calamari? You cut your hair and shave your face, don't you or if not at least trim your beard?
All are abiminations. You commit abominations before G-d too. Self-righteous, sanctimonious hypocrite.
SW,
If you give me a link to those articles you want me to read and I will.
I will not go to godmademegay.com
Like David said. God does make sin, people do.
God makes the people, and allows them to make their own choices, hoping those choices will be to follow him and live their life through him.
As for my gay friends reading this. they wont. i have asked. before me and you got into our arguements. they do not like reading what i have to say about it bc they know exactly how i feel. that is one thing that tears us apart.
And no i didnt say you were wrong. I disagreed with you. There is a difference. You actually flat out said I was wrong though.
I do not think I am DEAD RIGHT. I will never know until I make it to heaven whether or not im right. But I will continue to read the bible and I will take things in as i read them. Thats all God asks of me. To live my life by him. Doing what I think is right by him.
Obviously not everyone is gonna live their life just as God would like. It will never happen. There is too much stuff to go by in the Bible. I understand that, God understands that. But we also have to ask for forgiveness and not intentionally do things he calls "abominations". I try my best to live my life how i think God would want me to.
Yes i have screwed up. I had sex before I was married. I have done drugs, i have gotten totally drunk out of my mind. I have lied, cheated, and have stolen stuff before. I have even said God's name in vien. But after all that. I asked for forgiveness.. I really meant it. And I know he forgave me. Because he told me he would.
What you fail to see is that you think i am just so agaisnt gay people and will not rest until every single gay person has turned straight. Well im not. Its not something i have even thought about that much until i got on this website and answered a simple question. Told my opinion about how i felt about it.
And somehow it turned into this huge arguement. As soon as i get done writing this it wont even cross my mind again until the next time i get on. Because i really could care less. They can do what they want. It doesn't affect my life any. But when asked about it, yeah I will give my opinion. Im not ashamed to say that I do think it is wrong. But that doesn't mean I condemn them. It doesn't mean I hate them.
I have a lot of opinions about all sorts of stuff.
Ask me anything. i will give you my opinion just the same.
You say you "have lots of gay friends" and you don't condemn them. OK. Prove it. Have all your gay friends read this exchange between you and me let them have their say about your views and mine.
Let them speak to you honestly about your posts to me. And to me about mine to you as well.
Hmmmm? I await with great anticipation their responses.
Irby, read "A Letter to Louise" by Ret. Rev. Bruce Lowe at www.godmademegay.com and find out exactly how you took I Corinthians 6:9-10 out of context and misused it. He treats it in the body and then has a specific appendix for it.
You did not cite I Cor. You cited I Timothy 1:9-10 incorrectly. I cited I Cor.
Please stop being so angry and start using your head.
Your arrogance, David, is your claim and double-teaming sense of entitelment with Irby that you two know the mindof G-d on the issue of gay persons' being and relationship with G-d.
That is arrogant and I really don't care how long you have participated in this conversation -- that is irrelavant.
You feel you can bear false witness about gay persons with impunity of G-d's imprature and do it "righteously".
That is unbeleivablly arrogant.
Then you respond by using your hurt feelings as some sop to an entitled expectation from me for forbearance with no better justification than you have opinions too. Have either of you ever read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"?
The full measure of contempt I have for that presumption of looter's mentality is well captured in it. I commend it to you.
I was completely caught off guard by it. I am not dissing you or being sarcastic. There is a pearl of great worth in your recent words. I want you to think about it deeply, please.
I, a great many theologians and the scholars I have cited DO read the bible very differently than you and David.
That is a spot-on observation. It is beautiful in its simplicity and accuracy. You really need to think deeply about this. It is possible for us to come togehter if you do.
Read Dr. Thomas S. Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" c1962 first and Dr. Marcus Borg's "The Heart of Christianity" c2004 second to find out why and just exactly how this phenomenon works.
Good job, Irby, you made your first step into a much larger world you had no idea that you had no idea existed. I'm impressed. It made this exchange very rewarding for me. I thank you for allowing me to press you so hard. It was worth the effort for you to make this important discovery.
You are a very confused person. You just can't tell the truth, can you? The primary purpose of your posts is tell me I am wrong in your view and then you attempt to tell me G-d says I'm wrong too and that all gay persons are wrong as well.
What is your problem taking responsibility for your biases? What is your problem being truthful about your anti-gay rhetoric and hermenuetics.
You want me to fake reality for you so that you can continue to justify your anti-gay bias with impunity.
You want to have your cake and eat too.
No one gets to have this -- ever.
You want to maintain that gay persons "are wrong in your opinion" but then claim you have nothing against them and do not hate them. You might not hate them though your first post speaks otherwise -- reread it -- but if you love someone unconditionally, then you would never tell them that who they are that they cannot change is wrong. That is contradictory. There are no contradictions. If you encounter one, check your premises -- you'll find one of them is wrong. Hint -- your attitudes about gay perosns is the incorrect premise.
This is about accepting fully the grace of G-d without exception, evasion or condition. This about G-d's grace being wastefully extravagant and all-consuming to the point of letting go all condemnations, exclusions, invaldiations and loving fully everyone as G-d did you first and you do G-d.
You just don't get it. You just don't get what love is. Gay perosns get it though and that is a great gift to everyone that you would cut yourself of from.
It's sad. So very tragic.
There will become two Christianities. The old-time one that maintains gay persons are sinful and immoral, and the new one that takes Jesus' ministry seriously to condemn no one for any reason and include everyone even gay persons just as they are.
And so, you have ansewered the second part of the question. There is nothing anyone could say or anything anyone could do to change your mind on this issue. You will never accept gay persons as real, life-loving, life-affirming human beings with every bit as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, be honest Christians, G-dly recipients of spiritual grace and heaven-bound. That's your position and you're sticking to it like grim death. OK. I get it.
Be dead right.
There's a little problem with that position. It's antithetical to John's Gospel 14:6, "I am come that you might have LIFE and have it abudnantly."
You can't be dead right in G-d's grace. That is your sinful arrogance before G-d.
But, you can admit you are wrong and have life abundantly. I get to admit I was wrong too and have life abundantly.
Not about being gay but about thinking I can change you. I can't. Only you can do the work -- I can only witness to you in truth and grace. I will grant that Leviticus condemns male/male sex but it says nothing about love -- especially the love beautifully portrayed of David and Jonathan. And the bible says NOTHING about female/female sex or love at all. Oh, wait. I am wrong. It does say something wonderful about love bewteen two women as beautiful as between David and Jonathan. The loved shared between Ruth and Naomi is recounted in the book of Ruth.
You know, you still never honestly faced Jesus' teaching on the Eunuchs ...
Dont bother replying. You will just make up some more crap about how your right and im wrong.. blah blah blah. This will be a never ending thing.
So
I do not condemn gay people. But I think its wrong. Notice I said THINK. I didnt say KNOW. so it is my OPINION that being gay is wrong.
And yes I do get that opinion from what I have read and know about the bible.
So DO NOT tell me I am wrong or i misconstrued what the bible says. Because unless I intentionally change the entire meaning of the bible then I am not wrong in my way of thinkin or reading the bible.
The entire bible has to be interpreted by everyone in their own way. No two people are going to agree on exaclty everything the bible has to say. Its impossible.
So no we are not wrong. I have not called you wrong. You just keep callin me wrong so i continue to give you my opinion along with verses to back it up but yet I am still wrong. so i give up.
Perhaps you just read the bible differently than David and I. And there is nothing wrong with that. But dont you dare call us arrogant or wrong just because we do not agree with you.
We have yet to call you any names. Its a bit immature.
Yes I will admit I have said a few things I shouldnt have, and I am sorry. But we try to talk civilized to you and then you talk down to us like you are better and know exactly how everything in the bible is really meant to be read.
I give up.. you are impossible. You will never change and neither will I.
So our conversation is done.
For the last time i do not CONDEMN gay people. They can do whatever they want. They will not get me invovled with it. I will not participate in it. Because I do know what the bible says and it specifically says HOMOSEXUALITY IS AN ABOMINATION AND THE PEOPLE WHO PARTICIPATE IN IT WILL NOT INHERIT THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
And please tell me how i took 1 corinthians out of context..
"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."
There aren't too many other ways to interpret that... but please tell me how i taking it out of context.
As for david and jonathon, what do you wanna talk about. Ok so they loved each other. That didnt make it homosexual. A lot of people try to turn that around and make it something its not. They had a wonderful friendship.
"I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women."
No where does it say your "lovemaking".
I love my mother.. i love her more than my husband. Does that mean I am gay with my mom.. no it most certainly does not.
You my friend are takin the bible out of context there. You give me full proof they were homosexual. Bc if that one little verse is all you have to prove it with, then sorry you are just fooling yourself.
I admitted I'm a sinner right? Of course I have sinned and I continue to sin. I don't get it? Why do you assume that because I say the Bible calls homosexuality a sin (which it does) that I consider myself better than any of you. Far from it! I am a sinner like anyone else. Yes I take the Bible as a whole. Yes I know from right and wrong according to what the Bible says. What's your point? I agree with you that I do things that God would not want me to do. I really am having a hard time understanding what your point is. Your upset at me like I did something. I'm just stating the fact that the Bible calls homosexuality a sin. Wut da problem is?
Also, it is clear to me that you have no idea what justification is compared to sanctification. You point out all these Jewish laws of the OT and tell me that I need to follow these laws. Not so! I am saved by grace, not works. You might not understand this.
SW,
I just joined this conversation and already I'm "arrogant". Sorry if you feel this way. I'm just telling you what the Bible says. I really don't get all the name calling. I guess I stepped into the lion's den huh? I've never meant to be offensive. I'm simply stating that the Bible says homosexuality is a sin. That's what is says! What's so hard about that??? Should I agree with you SW, or God. I think I'll stick with God. He created everything, so if your mad, yell at Him for making the rules, not me!
And I Timothy, II Timothy and Titus are Pseudo-Pauline. They were never authored by the Apostle Paul/Saul of Tarsus and they are fraufulently maintained as Pauline.
That's a big problem for your case. A BIG ONE.
The bible is not inerrant nor absolute.
It just isn't. As Marcus Borg has said, "It's really true but not factually accurate."
Or as a Jesuit once said, "It is true and SOME of it might have actually happened ..."
A little humility before G-d is not out of line, David & Irby. Your claims are false, presumptuous and so very arrogant. Quite unlike the ministry of Jesus.
You say you take the WHOLE bible as the Word of G-d.
Then you never, cut your hair, shave, trim your beard, have tattooes, piercings, masterbate, eat: shrimp, clams, lobster, muscles, crabmeat of any kind, steak rare, bacon, pork chops, pork roast, bacon, pork rinds or ham?
Right?
You have never nor will ever do any of these, right?
Cause they are all abominations before G-d and it is G-d's Holy Word you are not to partake of any of these ever.
David, you and Irby's view is that gay persons are barred from Chrsitianity and heaven without any speculation otherwise.
I am a Christian. I take the bible every bit as serisously as the two of you. You and Irby have not answered on of my points of evidence.
You avoid the discussion all together citing cover of "G-d's Word" niavely thinking you have no farther to go.
This is wrong. What do say to G-d's Word that David and Jonathan loved each other like their own souls? That Jonathan's love was wonderful, surpassing the love of women. That is quite conclusive, yet you avoid it completely. The bible was used just as you use it now to affirm and defend racism, sexism and slavery exactly like you are using it to defend your right to condemn gay persons -- all in defiance of Jesus' ministry.
You have not read Ret. Bishop John Shelby Spong, Rev. Peter Gomes, Dr. Marcus Borg, James Mullholland, Phillip Gulley, Ret. Rev. Bruce Lowe, Dr. Victor Furnish or Dr. Calvin Roetzel's criticism, historical, literary and hermeneutic treatments of the Pauline corpus yet you act as though I and the greater academic world have not. We have. Paul's thorn is well examined.
There are three classifications of Paul's work. The authentically authored Episltes. The Deutero-Paul epistles and the Pseudo-Paul eispltes. The first was actually written by the Apostle Paul/Saul of Tarsus. The second was written by anonymous discpiples of Paul AFTER his death and not authored by him. To continue to claim them as Paul's is a lie and if you ignore the truth you lie about lying by ommission which is the 2nd worst form of lying specified in Jermaiah. The third were anynomously authored in the late 1st/early 2nd century CE to refute inconvenient authentic Pauline materials such as no physical resurrection but a spiritual resurrection. These are blatant forgeries not authored by Paul. To continue to hold them as Pauline is a lie. Paul's actual letters were never written nor expected by him to become anything more than personal letters of instruction and formaultion at the beginning of the formation of the fledging faith. You make claims for them that are no longer supportable nor rational - but more importantly no longer truthful.
Both you are obviously unfamiliar with this material.
Irby, you misquoted I Timothy 1:9-10. The KJV does not say what you said. The Roman Latin was intentionally mistranslated and has compounded mistranslations into what you misquoted. Doesn't surprise me at all, given your poor education and biblical iliteracy. The orginal Greek word meant morally soft, not "homosexual". This is the strongest evidence of your zeal to bear false witness in a blatantly anti-gay bias with no remorse for it.
Romans 1:26 and I Corinthians 6:9-10 have been grossly taken out of context and misused. Exactly, David, as you claimed should never be done - yet you and Irby do so because it serves your anti-gay bigotry. Show some honesty and integrity and be consistent and hold yourself to the same standards you impose on others.
Christianity if it is to survive this crisis must mean more than being anti-gay. It must or it will die of its own irrelevancy. In fact your zealotry for anti-gay hermenuetics speaks to this very demise -- it is the last gasp before the change moves forward. Carlton Pearson is the best example of this transforming power. Did you watch him on CNN last night? I did.
Gay persons are Christians and G-d loves them just as fiercely and completely just the way they are. There is nothing sinful about being gay BUT there is a great deal that is sinful about lying about who and what gay persons are, pretending to be straight when you are gay because there are no Gay Christians - Ted Haggart and Paul Barnes -- and thinking that the only option is a false exclusive binary that does not exist in nature.
I know facts and evidence mean nothing to either of you but I will try again.
Both you need to read. You are about at the 4th grade level in biblical literacy and 200 years out of date on scientific biological understanding.
Leave gay persons alone and love them as your neighbor as you love G-d. Let them marry and be clergy openly. The healing spirit of G-d can unharden your hearts if you open yourselves to Christ's healing mercy.
Precisely as Jesus calls all of us. Take that as seriously I as I do as a Chirstian who happens to be gay, I dare you.
I agree totally. I feel the same way. No sin is greater than another. If I seemed to insinuate otherwise, that was not my intention. I agree fully with what you just said.
David-- I agree with you almost completely. HOWEVER. I dont think any sin is worse than another ( excpet of course denying God as your lord and savior) but if you keep doing something even though you know it is wrong i do not think you will be forgiven.
A homosexual will not pray every night for forgiveness because he/she does not think it is wrong. And in order to be forgiven you have to ask for it. Thats why you must pray everyday and ask for forgiveness everyday.
Thanks for your response. I guess if I get involved with a discussion with you I should let you know a little about myself.
I am a Christian. I believe in the Bible as the divined inspiration from God and that His words are true. I heed His warnings about sin and try to the best of my abilities to abide by his rules, even though I fall way short of the glory of God. I know I am a sinner and always will be. However, I have faith in Christ that he died for my sins on the cross and rose on the third day so that I may be forgiven of my sins. And most importantly I believe in the Bible as a WHOLE, not to be taken out of context or to take out anything that does not agree with my own sinful heart.
This includes homosexuality. The Bible is very clear on homosexuality as a sin. I myself have struggled with the fact that loving people can be together by love and still be considered sinful. But that is why I'm not God. I consider homosexuality equivolent in the eyes of God as any other sin. A sin that can be forgiven as well. The problem I have is when sin is glorified or celebrated. If all sin is equivolent in God's eyes, then why not celebrate murder or rape?
Your description of Paul having his own sexuality inspiring him to write in a biased form is quite off. I consider Pauls epistles to be divinely inspired as the rest of the Bible. If he wrote what he did about homosexuality because of his own guilt about it, then his testimony is invalid.
Regardless of any one's beliefs, homosexuality is considered a sin in the Bible. It is what it is. If I told you I didn't think it was then I would be going against what God says to please you. I can't do that. The thing is we all sin. So therefore, homosexuals cannot be considered morally corrupt people because we all are. But it is a sin that must be repented just like any other sin. Is this agreeable to you?
I want you to know, because I am a Christian, I do not hate anyone or look down upon homosexuals as less deserving to recieve salvation. No one deserves salvation. It is only by the free gift of grace that we recieve salvation. Jesus died for all of us and paid the penalty for sin that He did not owe. So I am just as un-deserving of salvation as any other man. The difference being that I accepted Christ and accept all that He says, therefore I am saved. I try not to sin, but the Holy Spirit convicts me when I do. I cannot tell myself that it is ok to do it when I know it is wrong. That would be lying to God. Same goes with homosexuality.
I hope what I'm saying is understandable. I mean no offense to anyone, but am inspired to write the truth of the Bible. Have a great day.
It is not a sin to be either heterosexual or homosexual. Sexuality is not sinful at all. It is a gift from G-d for all to enjoy in committed relationships or at least in non-forceful or non-injurious co-consenting adult relationships.
Rape of any kind is sinful. Being gay is not synonomous with rape, pederasty, pedophilia or polygamy as hetersuality is not either. Genesis 19, 20 & 21 is taking about both homosexual & HETEROSEXUAL forced, abusive, brutal, seflish rape. This is the greatest of misuses of the Scritpures in condemning gay persons. I abhor it for its self-serving homophic anti-gay propagandism.
A strong case has been made by many biblical scholars that the Priestly Authors of Leviticus, post-exilic period's -- it is a lie that Moses wrote Leviticus, for it is a physcal impossiblity -- two admonitions agaist "Man lying with mankind" is actually a rebuke of the Babylonian practice of war-spoils rape of vanquished enemies to humliate and abusively subjugate them -- it says nothing at all about committed love between two men or women or a man and a woman.
A strong case is made by biblical scholars that Paul's thorn to bear was his own internalized homophobia related to his own sexuality that he could not accept under his study of the Septgunant version of the Torah. His Damascus experience was a breaking open of self-acceptance beyond the condemnation he lived with under the law.
First of all Steve- God bless your soul!
I was never brainwashed by any church, as a matter of fact most of my life i was never able to go to church bc i lived overseas. When we moved back to the states I came a little bit but never really paid attention. So everything I know and believe about the Bible is stuff I have learned all on my own. I know right from wrong. No one except me taught that to me.
People like you are the reason this world has gone to crap. If everyone lived the right way ( by God) we would have a wonderful world to live in.
We wouldnt have drugs, murder, any crime at all.
Its pretty simple rules to live by.
By its too hard for people to live by, they are too ignorant. So God bless them all.
And seriously Steve.. I am praying you buddy, you need it bad.
When you cut through all of the homophobia we see, which comes from conservative religions, and seeps into our societies, a few things stand out.
Homophobia is an attempt to denigrate, deny, and make untouchables of our gay citizens. It is an attempt to impose religious 'values' on others who do not believe in them. It is an attempt to say that religion should define our society, ignoring what happens when conservative, always backwards looking religions gain control. Look at parts of Islam and 9/11. Look at how the Catholic Church - corrupt popes combined with corrupt kings/emperors gave the world a thousand plus year dark ages, murdered upwards of 50 million Muslims in a holocaust that has poisoned their society/culture today, no wonder so many find it so easy to hate us, and they don't even see it as hate, so blinded are they by their religion and its influence on society
Religion must not be allowed to dominate our culture. It must not be allowed to define who is right and who is wrong. Personally I totally reject the right wing religion of my youth. I accept science, not leftovers from superstition and ignorances such as God created the world in seven days, the earth is flat, disease was Gods punishment for our sins (until science/medicine explained viruses and bacteria, etc) and a whole host of ideas whose implementation has led to uncountable murders and wars, all in the name of God.
So, no matter what religious people - right wing conservatives say (there are a lot of good religious people who support equality for gays) don't you dare to tell other people how to live, who is right and who is wrong on this issue. If you can't stand gays holding hands walking down the streets, how would you like it if people couldn't stand heteros doing the same (kiss heterosexualy in public in India and watch the outcry - you might well be beaten.
By the way, the reason you can't stand gays is because your church brainwashed you from an early age, destroying the mind that God gave you, just so they could have power over you and others. In a basically non-religious setting look back at how Hitler took a cultured nation suffering from economic collapse, mixed it with Christianity's long just under the surface hatreds of Jews, and gave us 50-70 million deaths in WWII and an attempt to wipe out a whole group of people. (in Poland for example they were 99.9 % successful).
So as a str8 married guy with 3 str8 children, I'll continue to fight for equality for our gays, and freedom from religious interference in our lives.
By the way, virtually all of western Europe, with the exception of Ireland and Italy and Greece (gay marriage/civil unions in Ireland / italy are already issues) legally recognize gay relationships. Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Holland have gay marriage. The others all have civil unions - a different non-religious that grants gays almost all the legal rights of their married counterparts (in some nations the term is called registered partnerships). Also Israel, Republic of South Africa, and Canada have gay marriage. Mexico city (equivalent to a state), another mexican state, News Zealand and Buenos Aires also have civil unions. It almost happened in Columbia, and will within a couple years. Polls in Australia say 70% of the people favor gay marriage. One might say that virtually all of the western / European cultural nations recognize, protect and grant legal equality to their gay citizens.
It's also interesting to look at US religions. All but the orthodox Jewish branches of Judaism support gay marriage, as does the Universalist-Unitarians and many of the United Churches of Christ. Middle of the Road Christian denominations such as Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Episcopals are struggling with the issue and some do what are called gay committment ceremonies, marriage except they won't use that word. I've attended one for 2 gay friends. It is only the Catholic Church - our own only semi-reformed version of Islam - they do good things, and they do lots of bad things, the Southern Baptist white churches who were the biggest supporters of slavery and Jim Crow, and some right wing non-denominational Christian groups who are the enemies of progress in or civil laws.
To close all this, if you look through all of mankind's recorded history, you will see that our species greatest and most terrible failing is how we follow blindly, often in the name of God and bibles written by men when the churches were the only publishing houses and used them to terrorize people, and meanwhile promise salvation if one toed the line. Don't these threats /promises simply constitute mental terrorism and a bogus insurance policy? This ability of our species to believe without fact, to follow leaders without thinking, and btw to forget about the ten commandments, has led to mankinds most terrible endeavors of mass murder. Gay people are just another of the victims of blind following of bibles and religious leaders, who unthinkingly follow what they were taught, only looking to find other ways to justify what they say. In a hypothetical example, if 'people' from another star system, happened upon our planet, they'd probably go away quietly, putting us down as little better then animals whose nature is to be murderous carnivores except we steal posessions rather then eat our enemies, and never return. And we dare to call this 'civil'-ization?
Strangly warmed-- NO actually I did not base my entire arguement on lev. YOU DID. you said that was the only place it talked about it. "Only in two places does Leviticus talk about homosexuality negatively" YOU said that!
I just posted it bc it made my point even more valid. But obviously you didnt read that right bc it specifically says in I Corinthians 6:9; 10 that HOMOSEXUALS shall not enter the kingdom of God. Because it is a SIN. Which means it is WRONG.
I dont have to prove anything else. If you dont understand that then perhaps you should go see a minister to explain it to you. Its really not that hard to comprehend.
And your right I will not change my mind. I read the verses and i do know my bible. I know that homosexuality is wrong. I know that people who participate in it ( according to the bible) will not go to heaven. Thats not me saying that .. thats what the bible says.
Think what you want, I could careless. I know im going to heaven. I sin, yes. Everyone does. But I ask for forgiveness like I should and I know God forgives me.
Irby, the other half of the question is can you change your mind?
Obviously, you cannot.
I can though. The anti-gay hermeneutics is going out the door. I use to think exactly as you do and I do so no longer. The scales have fallen from my eyes.
You hang your entire argument on Lev 18:22 & 20:13 -- yet we no longer use Leviticus to justify other prejudices such as racism, sexism and slavery, and this one - homophobia and heterosexism -- is being let go as we speak.
No where is it attributed that Jesus speaks about it at all except in Matthew 19:1-12 which I have already quoted. Search for it. In it Jesus says to not use the Law -- Leviticus -- to condemn persons for whom the Law could not apply; namely, intersexed persons, castrated males and Jewish Eunuch Tenors to name a few but not limited to only those. You can no longer use heterosexist and homophobic hermeneutics to bolster your case because Jesus says specifically for you not to do this.
So does Peter in the Dream of Plenty. You don't know your bible.
Or do you willfully dismiss these inconvenient truths for no better reason than you don't like them because they undermine your case?
That's right, Irby. It is about gay unions and clergy. They both are G-dly, holy, prevenient, justifying and sanctifying.
There is nothing "wrong" about either. It is only wrong in your head. As far as G-d is concerned there is nothing wrong about gay persons at all. They are already clergy -- just lying about it and closeted. They are already in committed relationships -- many that out last by decades hetersexual marriages.
As I have proved. You didn't even read the source I provided you because it would expose and invalidate your anti-gay stance and hermeneutics. You have not read the materials, Irby. Therefore, you have no idea what you are talking about. I have read the materials.
I am a Methodist. A Wesleyan Methodist. Which means I believe in balance and salvation. The balance between both/and; not either/or. Wesleyan salvation follows these 4 steps: prevenient grace, awareness/repentance, justifying grace and sanctifying grace. I follow the Wesleyan Quadralateral: Reason/scholarship, Prayer/introspection, Scritpural Study and life experience -- all in balance to one another.
You are out of balance in your negativity towards gay persons. Let that go and have a real conversation with me.
26 "I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women." II Samuel 1:26 KJV
Before future King David married to produce heirs he was covanented to JONATHAN. Jonathan died in battle to David's utter despair. Take particular note of last line will you?
It is most inconvenient to an anti-gay agenda. I notice no bible-quoters ever quote this one.
One more thing.. since i dont know the bible.. just let me leave you with some other things..
.. its not just in leviticus..
"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor HOMOSEXUAL offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." (I Corinthians 6:9; 10)
In genesis (Genesis 1:27,28) it talks about God creating man in his image.. a male and female. Adam and Eve.. (not adam and steve.) In Matthew (19:5) it talks about marriage.. every man shall have his wife ( it does not say husband!!!)
Homosexuality is an illicit lust forbidden by God. He said to His people Israel, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination" (Leviticus 18:22). "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them" (Leviticus 20:13).
I am not here to argue with anyone. I was stating my opinion bc this is a room that asks the question about it and I answered it. I could care less if you agree or disagree.
Both of you can keep on posting your crap excuse opinions about it being ok, thats fine. I dont care. It wont change my mind one bit.
I am set in my ways as you are set in yours.
And if ya'll are gay yourself then God Bless your soul. I hope he can forgive your abominations.
I pray and ask for forgiveness everyday.
I am praying right now that he will forgive me, because I know I sin, every single day. I say things, I do things, I think things that I know are wrong but I do them anyway. He will forgive me though because I ask for forgivness.
But I will NOT ask for forgivness for something that isn't wrong. And me giving my opinion is not wrong. If it were no one would be in Heaven.
Why don't you two get over yourselves and go lecture other people because I do not care what either of you have to say. :).
First of all-- to Strangly warmed-- It is NOT bearing false witness when I say its wrong bc me saying its wrong is a freakin opinion. Do not try and tell me what i was or was not doing. I was stating it as an opinion. So no i dont have to ask for forgiveness for that.
And to anonymous-- NO me saying that i think its wrong is not me judging the PEOPLE. I am judging the action. And that is NOT wrong. Apparently ya'll didn't read the bible as carefully as you thought.
Back to Strangly warmed--
"I notice you will use this to condemn gay persons but you have no problem with everyone eating crab, shrinp, lobster, clams, muscles, or cutting their hair short -- these are all abominations too you know. I don't read you denouncing these, yet you will use 2 references to denounce gay persons."
- Because were not freakin talkin about all that stuff smart one. This discussion is about "gay union and clergy". Its not about lobster and hair.
You don't even know what it says in the bible. You parrot what others have told you it says without having done the hard work to find out for yourself. I have read the bible cover to cover and some passages 2-3 dozen times or more. I have made it a life-vocation to study the bible.
No where does the bible talk about gay persons specifically. Only in two places does Leviticus talk about homosexuality negatively and yet it speaks 164 times about heterosexuality negatively. Using your brand of logic that would be proof of the far great danger and abomination of straight sex given that 164 is far greater than 2. I notice you will use this to condemn gay persons but you have no problem with everyone eating crab, shrinp, lobster, clams, muscles, or cutting their hair short -- these are all abominations too you know. I don't read you denouncing these, yet you will use 2 references to denounce gay persons.
Go to www.godmademegay.com to learn what the bible actually has to say and the horrible malpractice and misuse that it has been put to in condemning gay persons.
Thank you for stating the obvious. I am not talking about your opinion or mine. I am speaking about facts. You attempted to pass off your opinion as FACT. I did not. I will not. And I called you on it -- don't you do it either, especially where gay persons are concerned.
I am only interested in the truth, not opinion. You only know what you call the truth as opinion. It isn't. They are vastly different things. Don't get them confused. Wake up and use your head -- its that lump 3 feet above your @$$.
Listen carefully. When you say "it's wrong" THAT is JUDGING. That is you pronouncing judgment. You use the bible to do it when Jesus was attributed to have said don't do this. Specifically, you are judging your neighbor when you say you take the bible seriously and then disregard it so flagrantly in order to judge others when you are told specifically to NOT do this.
Listen to your words and then apply just a little bit of reason, logic and critical thinking.
In your post you made the erroneous conclusion that if 5% of the population was accepted for being gay then ALL the population would turn gay and the species would die out. YOU said this. Use your head.
"Gay/lesbain/bi.. they are all just wrong." -- No, they are not. This is a false statement. Which is bearing false witness against all gay persons -- your words. Take responsibility for this.
"I mean if everyone turned gay we would have no one left. You can't continue "the cycle of life"." -- False. As I showed you in my post. Why are gay persons persistent thoughout time -- at least 5,000 years in recorded history? Why does G-d continue to make them? There is a sound Post-Darwinian Evolutionary theory now being investigated that postulates gay persons actually vitalize the species by encouraging same-sex cooperation in the whole species, thus making it more fit adaptively.
"If people were meant to be gay then perhaps it would be possible to have kids and stuff. But it's not. You can look at that in a religious way or not." -- False. Bighorn Sheep are quite successful in spite of their nearly exclusive homosexual behavior.
"I believe its wrong for both reasons. One because I do believe in God and the Bible. And two because it would end life. Literally." -- False. Read my post carefully. I demonstrated to you why.
Your entire post is false. You assert its validity in spite of concrete evidence to the contray because you are not interested in the truth. You are only interested in undergirding your anti-gay bigotry and lying to do it and then lying about lying about it. You use the bible as an ally in this disingenuously. The 9th Commandment says to not bear false witness against your neighbor -- yet in your Machiavellian hypocrisy you cling to doing so even when your error is exposed to you.
YOU are the one who said the bible was important to you. Follow it and apologize for bearing false witness against all gay persons. You started your post with that word: ALL. I am responding to your words -- you take responsibility for them. You wrote them after all.
Nietsche is right - God Is Dead. How else to explain the arrogance of modern "Christians" who secretly (the dirty little secret of modern Christianity) wish His Son had been more like themselves - not so concerned with the poor and a hell of a lot more worried about one's neighbors' sex lives? What a failure Jesus was, really. Didn't even once mention the most important thing in the world - homosexuality.
I just re-read that, let me be more specific.
When I said I do not judge them, I don't. But I do judge their actions and you know what there is nothing wrong with that.
And exactly what do you mean I bear false witness, thats make no sense. Specify, please.
Strangly-warmed
Gee thank you for pointing out the obvious. I know not everyone is gay. I know not everyone will be gay either. However.
Your right it's not in the 10 commandments but it is in the bible, and its not right.
I have friends that are gay, my cousin (whom i have always been close with) is gay. I do not dislike any of them, its their choice. But it's wrong. Im not judging them. I am just going by what it says in the bible.
It is my opinion. Opinions are niether right or wrong. So you stick with yours and i will stick with mine.
The obvious fallacy of your position is so very simple yet so very hidden to you.
Everyone is not gay, nor ever will be. Being gay is not a choice. Only 5% of the male population is gay and it is quite stable through time. The obvious reason that gay persons are more prevalent now is that population explosion has become so massive the shear numbers of gay persons has exploded with the overall population.
5% of 1/2 of 300,000,000 is 7,500,000 in the US alone & 5% of 1/2 of 6,500,000,000,000 is 162,500,000 world wide. Your view is shockingly skewed and strangely hyper-exaggerated. Why is that? What are YOU hiding about yourself?
While men are quite consistently exclusively bimodal -- male "bisexuality" is a myth because men lie about their sexual attraction, less then 0.1% of men are actually bisexual -- women are far more flexible in their sexual attraction and more problematic to quantify yet there no support for the failure of the species. This is crazy talk. Bighorn Sheep are exclusively male and female homosexual except in rut season. It is nonexistent for heterosexual pairbonding in Bighorn Sheep, yet the overwhelming norm is for male/male & female/female pairbonds that do all the juvenile-rearing. The species is highly successful in the Colorado Plateau and elsewhere world wide.
Stop this mess of unreason. You bear false witness against your gay neighbors. Being or not being gay is not one of the 10 Commandments -- BUT bearing false witness against your neighbor for any reason is. You are not to do it. So, stop doing it right now to your gay neighbors. That is if you actually follow G-d's Commandments instead of merely giving lip-service to them ...
Gay/lesbain/bi.. they are all just wrong. I mean if everyone turned gay we would have no one left. You can't continue "the cycle of life". If people were meant to be gay then perhaps it would be possible to have kids and stuff. But it's not. You can look at that in a religious way or not.
I believe its wrong for both reasons. One because I do believe in God and the Bible. And two because it would end life. Literally.
It couldn't be clearer that Christianity today is largely a tool that people use to advance their personal prejudices, in particular, the very modern obsession with homosexuality. Jesus admonished His followers to abandon their families if they would follow Him and said, as well, that in Him there is neither male nor female - sounds a lot more radical than gay couples trying to marry, to say the least. His kind of spiritual challenge seems to be light-years beyond current American "values", let alone those who obsess about what two people in love do together in bed.
Lepidopteryx - It's interesting you note the connection between homophobia and desert culture. The generally most intolerant religions, conservative Judaism, Christianity and Islam all arose within desert societies. Where nature is more bountiful, in India and China, religion, Hinduism, Buddhism and Toaism, makes little or no effort to regulate human sexuality. In Buddhist Thailand, for example, being gay is regarded as little more than an innocuous quirk. In Saudi Arabia it can get your head chopped off.
The problem with this is in the interpretation, which in most cases is man’s interpretation by man’s wisdom, not God’s interpretation by God’s wisdom.
Religion of man is God’s Faith that has been made convenient to fit man’s desires.
Science of man is God’s Wisdom (knowledge, understanding, and comprehension), by man’s wisdom, with knowledge, little understanding and no comprehension.
The Gay issue by God’s Wisdom is immoral, and comes from the chaos of emotional desire, not from the order of God’s Wisdom or Law.
As for anyone going to heaven, God will forgive anyone of any sin except one, condemning God himself. Nevertheless forgiveness hinges on the persons repenting, salvation through Christ, and living a life in Christ from that moment on. That means, in this case, the person must give up, stop practicing, their immoral acts. The physicals acts or expressions of their sexual desires toward the same sex, they must make their Faith in Christ righteous through their Deeds.
The problem with this is in the interpretation, which in most cases is man’s interpretation by man’s wisdom, not God’s interpretation by God’s wisdom.
Religion of man is God’s Faith that has been made convenient to fit man’s desires.
Science of man is God’s Wisdom (knowledge, understanding, and comprehension), by man’s wisdom, with knowledge, little understanding and no comprehension.
The Gay issue by God’s Wisdom is immoral, and comes from the chaos of emotional desire, not from the order of God’s Wisdom or Law.
As for anyone going to heaven, God will forgive anyone of any sin except one, condemning God himself. Nevertheless forgiveness hinges on the persons repenting, salvation through Christ, and living a life in Christ from that moment on. That means, in this case, the person must give up, stop practicing, their immoral acts. The physicals acts or expressions of their sexual desires toward the same sex, they must make their Faith in Christ righteous through their Deeds.
One of my closest friends and the person whom I consider "my" minister (she is an ordained UU minister), even though she no longer serves the church I attend is a lesbian. She and her wife were married by a UU minister over a decade ago. Their relationship is every bit as much a marriage as my relationship with my husband. The only difference is that the law recognizes mine and not theirs. Simply by virtue of having opposite gonads, we can collect the other's Social Security if one of us should die. They cannot. If one of us dies, the other automatically inherits our jointly held property. Not so with my friends. Simply by signing a marriage license, my husband and I became each other's power of attorney. They had to hire a lawyer to accomplish that.
In a constantly warring desert culture where popping out future soldiers was a necessity for survival, I can see where homosexuality would have been a major issue. But those texts were written millenia ago, and were written to address issues that, for the most part don't apply anymore.
My faith leads me to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. Civil unions on the other hand don't really represent marriage in the traditional sense of religion. As far as homosexual clergy, it goes against the teachings of my religion so could I ever change my mind, I doubt it.
In the sense of religion seems as though the two should not intertwine since they contradict one another.
My personal observation, supported by scripture is:
Very few "Christians" are.
Many are swayed by the opinions of the day. Many never truly understand the meaning of chritianity and if Jesus were alive today and preasching, they would reject him, just as was done in the dirst century (John 6).
For proof, look at all the bloodshed done in the name of christianity. Look at the history of christianity.
You can believe what you want, but that doesn't make it truly christian. A label is just that. It doesn't make anything real, it's just a label.
I am the Associate Web Producer for Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. Moyers recently interviewed Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, who spoke about this issue in depth.
Too bad for the anti-gay Christian bigots - the horse is already out of the barn. Gay marriage in Massachusetts is now a permanent reality. None of your hysterical predictions have come true, of course. From now on you will only being discrediting yourselves and your religion.
Much of what is being said by these folks is in grave error. Homosexuality is as natural and normal as Heterosexuality, and to constantly deny the findings of science and psychology of all the major American mental and psychiatric associations regarding this is downright stupid. Homosexuality occurs across the Primate species and all animal, insect, and organism species and does so for various evolutionary reasons: genes promoting Same-Sex Attraction boost fertility in Mothers furthering reproduction, Gays act as shamans and greatly gifted instruments and pass on their "genes" to subsequent generations, Homosexuality acts with natural inferility, etc. in keeping a reproduction check while boostinf fecundity in the Mothers, etc. Get over it, Homosexuality will always be.
Much of what is being said by these folks is in grave error. Homosexuality is as natural and normal as Heterosexuality, and to constantly deny the findings of science and psychology of all the major American mental and psychiatric associations regarding this is downright stupid. Homosexuality occurs across the Primate species and all animal, insect, and organism species and does so for various evolutionary reasons: genes promoting Same-Sex Attraction boost fertility in Mothers furthering reproduction, Gays act as shamans and greatly gifted instruments and pass on their "genes" to subsequent generations, Homosexuality acts with natural inferility, etc. in keeping a reproduction check while boostinf fecundity in the Mothers, etc. Get over it, Homosexuality will always be.
Much of what is being said by these folks is in grave error. Homosexuality is as natural and normal as Heterosexuality, and to constantly deny the findings of science and psychology of all the major American mental and psychiatric associations regarding this is downright stupid. Homosexuality occurs across the Primate species and all animal, insect, and organism species and does so for various evolutionary reasons: genes promoting Same-Sex Attraction boost fertility in Mothers furthering reproduction, Gays act as shamans and greatly gifted instruments and pass on their "genes" to subsequent generations, Homosexuality acts with natural inferility, etc. in keeping a reproduction check while boostinf fecundity in the Mothers, etc. Get over it, Homosexuality will always be.
I don't understand why gay persons are vilified so. If your brother was gay you would never talk this way to him. Or to your sister, uncle, aunt or whomever. Why is being Christian synomoous with hating and judging gay persons as is shown here? I really don't get it. Why?
150 years ago the exact same arguments were used to support slavery. There is far more in the bible that affirms slavery as being the Word of God than the paltry pittance used to support homophobia. We no longer use the bible to affirm slavery but we did have to fight a war over it to change our view. Why is it so mandatory to keep far less in the way of proof-texting to affirm anti-gay hatred?
Is your faith really so flimsy?
It's stupid to not accept gay people. And particularly so for Christians. Given that Jesus supposedly died because he said to love your neighbor as yourself and judge no one - leave all that to God the Father and nurture and care for everyone you know. How come the proof-texters never quote that? That is the Word of God too, you know.
There is no cynicism in my post whatever. I feel and live the words truthfully and honestly. I also brook no compromise upon this basic ground rule of integrity. Your cynicism is quite evident in that you supplied no name and no specific reference to a single apsect of my arguments. Not one. That is profoundly cynical and speaks volumes.
There is no cynicism in my post whatever. I feel and live the words truthfully and honestly. I also brook no compromise upon this basic ground rule of integrity. Your cynicism is quite evident in that you supplied no name and no specific reference to a single apsect of my arguments. Not one. That is profoundly cynical and speaks volumes.
Back to the original question, if I may interject: As an outside observer, It’s pretty simple.
Whatever your faith or your belief. Squabble amongst yourselves.
If you are glued to a particular denomination, church, etc. you have effectively joined a private club. If you as a private club wish to believe that homosexuality is an abomination and wish to exclude them, then by all means, that is, and should be your right to do so. If there are amongst you dissenters, then according to the policies, rules, and dictates of your private club, they do what they can do. If protest/voting is allowed, so be it. Losers are always free to quit this club and either seek out another, or form their own.
Since every town I’ve ever traveled through has many, many churches, exactly because there are differences in opinion, I’m sure that you could find one that closely resembles your image of god, salvation, and the hereafter.
Why beat each other up over this? You DO KNOW that there are different versions of belief, all the way from whether the Methodist ‘sprinkling’ is equivalent to the more fundamentalist ‘dunking’ to the creeds you recite, the speaking in tongues, and other gifts. I could go on forever… These differences, including who is truly worthy of passing in to the promised land, is why, again and again, the Christian faith has splintered into so many denominations. Why can’t you just get along? Why do you INSIST that others believe your EXTREME and MINORITY view? (notice I haven’t actually picked sides)
Even within your own faith, no where does the judeo-christian ‘I Am’ let on that YOU get to pick or even guess the winners! I-Am instead insists that IT gets the only vote that counts, and any presumption you make to fully know the mind of ‘I Am’ is very close to a mortal sin against the holy trinity.
The Baptists think they are right, the Methodists think they are right, Catholics, Mormons, AG, COC, Quakers, Branch Davidians, ALL think they have it right. Why not just join up with a like minded bunch and bigot your own brains out! Why must you HATE the other’s opinion to the point of such froth and fury?
As an outsider to this little pi55ing match, I have to say I see no problem with priests and nuns griping about the pope’s position, that’s their little club! I’ve got no problem when Falwell spewed to his own flock that gays caused the hurricane… that’s his private club. Members are free to come and go as they please.
Now, you want to make that POV the law of the land? That’s when I’ll get up off my leathered and worn arse and fight you.
As a child I was dragged to quilting bees twice a week. I came to dislike quilting bees and nearly everything about them…. I still think they are boring, ignorant, serve no real purpose and may actually be taking much needed jobs from poor Chinese children. (kidding)
Anyway, what would you suggest I do about my dislike and distaste of quilting bees.. it’s driving me mad!!! I personally would like them banned, or at least have the TRO revoked so I can start protesting outside their meeting places again….
Nicely done. I wish I had thought of making a referral to PFLAG. Very awesome.
John, your hermeneutics is unassailable. What can I say, except thanks? A heart-felt thank you. Your assertion is directly supported regarding this discussion by Matthew 19:1-12. It is attributed to Jesus that no one's physical condition is just cause for condemnation under the law for whom it is inapplicable. The citation is inclusive but not limited to all intersexes persons, castrated males and Jewish Tenor pre-pubescent eunuchs. Very good work, John.
People who oppose gay people and their desire to marry, in a society in which marriage is an important institution, are being unChristlike. Jesus never condemns any condition over which people have no control and sexual orientation is such a condition. The disowned gay teenager who longs for his parents' love didn't choose his or her sexuality, obviously . Neither did Mary Cheney, who apparently adores her father, choose to be gay in order to embarrass him while in the White House, obviously.
Will, thank you. That was well reasoned and consistent with competent seminary scholarship. You have stated the issue with accuracy of hermeneutic insight. The real crisis is the tension produced by the need for letting go of obsolete & incorrect notions about gay persons and those who adamantly refuse to do so. That tension is roundly attested to in this thread.
As the eve of the Lambeth Conference approaches have you read 1998's "Catechesis on Homosexuality" that was preemptively dismissed 9 years ago? The seeds of that folly are being reaped now.
It is most instructive because the correctness of its thesis is demonstrated here.
As an Episcopalian, I am part of the growing crisis in the Episcopal Church and our place in the larger Anglican Communion dealing with the issues of civil unions and homosexual clergy. I am also a young person who feels the primitive stages of a call to ordained ministry. I am not gay, but there are two clergy at my parish that are, and are in committed unions blessed by the Church. As I have gotten to know these individuals, I have seen their blessed call to ministry and the holiness in their lives. From this I have faith that God has truly called them to this vocation, and that He didn’t turn them away because He made them in His image in the first place. As Christians, we all believe, no matter the denomination that we belong to, that we are ALL made in the image and likeness of God. We must dismiss our fear and leave our judgment for God and move on to the difficult, but attainable issues of global poverty, equality, and social justice – the issues that Jesus actually preached - not those from isolated verses taken out of context in the Epistles of Paul or Leviticus.
SW is right. It is codified homophbia. It's homophobia read into the texts -- not the other way around. America is not homophobic. Church people are. America is changing its stance on overt or covert bigotry against gay people. The majority of Americans do not think hatred expressed against gay people is right or fair. It is changing. Young people could give a frig about it.
Only you idiots are sooooooooooo obssessed with gay people.
Hey, religious whackos, who can't seem to get a life, gays have been marrying in Massachusetts for three years now with no resultant harm to anyone. The proof is in the pudding. Give it up.
If a man foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me. ~Buddha (c. 563-483 B.C.E.), The Sutra of Forty-two Sections
To refer to pop culture, which I do rarely, it is like the scene in "Little Buddha" where Siddhartha is sitting under the tree and he is met with attack after attack.
And yet he remains calm.
SW, you are mere illusion, you do not exist.
Be Blessed all, I am signing off for good this time. SW, your words will fall upon the ether but not my eyes henceforth.
And I only read the first line of the last one too and did not proceed. Save your time and energy, I am not reading them.
Please get some professional help with yuor anger issues.
To refer to pop culture, which I do rarely, it is like the scene in "Little Buddha" where Siddhartha is sitting under the tree and he is met with attack after attack.
And yet he remains calm.
SW, you are mere illusion, you do not exist.
Be Blessed all, I am signing off for good this time. SW, your words will fall upon the ether but not my eyes henceforth.
And I only read the first line of the last one too and did not proceed. Save your time and energy, I am not reading them.
Please get some professional help with yuor anger issues.
To refer to pop culture, which I do rarely, it is like the scene in "Little Buddha" where Siddhartha is sitting under the tree and he is met with attack after attack.
And yet he remains calm.
SW, you are mere illusion, you do not exist.
Be Blessed all, I am signing off for good this time. SW, your words will fall upon the ether but not my eyes henceforth.
And I only read the first line of the last one too and did not proceed. Save your time and energy, I am not reading them.
Gay Marriage: NO
Gay Unions: NO
Gay Priests/Clergy: NO
NO NO NO AND NO!
It is a sin and it is an Abomination unto God The Creator God. He says a number of times and I will not, Have Not nor will I ever accept or tolerate Homosexuality.
You are not born Gay, you become Gay
We ALL ARE NOT GOd's children. We are his CREATION but we are not his children. The bible clearly says by the words of Jesus that We have the power to become his children only through and by receiving Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. So unless you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you are not his child and I am not your sister or brother in the Lord.
God doesn't hate the person he hates the sin. You can be delivered from your sins by asking Jesus to help you. He is there to make us all holy and the Holy Spirit is there as well to live in the inside of us and to direct our lives.
The bible states that homosexuality is as sleeping with animals (beastiality) and it makes God Vomit. How on earth could you accept and live like something that makes God Vomit. Hmmm..I didn't think so. I don't understand how anyone who calls themselves a Christian could ever or would ever accept homosexuality as being right or correct. So what that "Times have changed" does that make it any more right. God will never change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever more so why is it that we think because the World is changing and people are accepting of things more now that God is supposed to accept that and get over it. Will never happen. And We will see on Judgement day.
Man + Woman= Marriage unto God. God even looks at Marriage as the way people are to look at the Body of Christ. When people see a married couple, they are to know that that is how the Kingdom of God and the Order of God is. So how could we see the Order of God in 2 men or 2 women being together when it is "OUT OF ORDER" it doesn't go together. The man is to enter into the woman and there is no other way.
(appoligies for the redundant post, this version felt better)
Yes, homosexuality is biological.
Can it be changed? That is an awefully unchristian proposition. Because if it is biological, wouldn't it have to be God intended?
Anyhow, the whole gay issue is a distraction used by the media and politicians. As they point at the gay issue there is always a dirty politician getting elected, or the pharmacutical industry suddenly ships all of it's manufacturing out of the US, or healthcare for children vanishes throughout most states, or the US politicains create a war to rape a country of it's natural resources, or 10's of millions of illegal aliens are replacing middle income jobs and on and on and on...
In the spirit of WWJD, Jesus' story is somewhat about his struggle with the Roman political industice. How in God's name can this topic continue? --- now that's a good question!
Can it be changed? That is an awefully unchristian proposition. Because if it is biological, wouldn't it have to be God intended?
Anyhow, the whole gay issue is a distraction used by the media and politicians. As they point at the gay issue there is always a dirty politician getting elected, or the pharmacutical industry suddenly ships all of it's manufacturing out of the US, or healthcare for children vanishes throughout most states, or the US politicains create a war to rape a country of it's natural resources, or 10's of millions of illegal aliens are replacing middle income jobs and on and on and on...
In the spirit of WWJD, Jesus' story is somewhat about his struggle with the Roman political industice. How in God's name can this topic continue? <<<now that's a good question!
Can it be changed? That is an awefully unchristian proposition. Because if it is biological, wouldn't it have to be God intended?
Anyhow, the whole gay issue is a distraction used by the media and politicians. As they point at the gay issue there is always a dirty politician getting elected, or the pharmacutical industry suddenly ships all of it's manufacturing out of the US, or healthcare for children vanishes throughout most states, or 10's of millions of illegal aliens are replacing middle income jobs and on and on and on...
In the spirit of WWJD, Jesus' story is somewhat about his struggle with the Roman political industice. How in God's name can this topic continue? <<<now that's a good question!
Can it be changed? That is an awefully unchristian proposition. Because if it is biological, wouldn't it have to be God intended?
Anyhow, the whole gay issue is a distraction used be the media and politicians. As they point at the gay issue there is always a dirty politician getting elected, or the pharmacutical industry suddenly ships all of it's manufacturing out of the US, or healthcare for children vanishes throughout most states, or 10's of millions of illegal aliens are replacing middle income jobs and on and on and on...
In the spirit of WWJD, Jesus' story is somewhat about his struggle with the Roman political industice. How in God's name can this topic continue? <<<now that's a good question!
Of course it's a biological problem, but can it be changed?
Here we have one of the media/politician's tools to distract people from the important issues such as healthcare and war and outsourcing jobs (for that matter - insourcing illegal latin labor) and on and on...
As a portion of America points at the homosexuals with disgust another dirty politician gets elected or another piece of legislation gets passed to further the divide between the haves and the desperately needy.
It's disgraceful that the Christian right feel the need to influence politics in such a way. Maybe they've forgetten Jesus' struggle with the unjust politics of his time. It is no different, only that the people that claim to follow Jesus are hypocrates, nowadays.
Please come down to earth. You like to throw a lot of weighty words around and seem to believe that the entire "religious" community is against gays.
I appears to me that you are in defense mode because you can't reconcile on your being gay.
The majority of people all over the world could give a rats *** whether you are gay or not. Most countries in Europe have laws that legalize gay marriage, notibly Spain, a primarily Catholic country.
So what is your point? That Americans are homophobic? Please!!! Americans have no sense of true sexuality. On one hand they glorify it by showing off sex in movies, ads, etc., on the other hand it's a taboo subject. Talk about puritanical nonsense.
If you are comfortable with your sexual orientation then that's fine, why try to convince the rest of the world?
Please come down to earth. You like to throw a lot of weighty words around and seem to believe that the entire "religious" community is against gays.
I appears to me that you are in defense mode because you can't reconcile on your being gay.
The majority of people all over the world could give a rats *** whether you are gay or not. Most countries in Europe have laws that legalize gay marriage, notibly Spain, a primarily Catholic country.
So what is your point? That Americans are homophobic? Please!!! Americans have no sense of true sexuality. On one hand they glorify it by showing off sex in movies, ads, etc., on the other hand it's a taboo subject. Talk about puritanical nonsense.
If you are comfortable with your sexual orientation then that's fine, why try to convince the rest of the world?
Please come down to earth. You like to throw a lot of weighty words around and seem to believe that the entire "religious" community is against gays.
I appears to me that you are in defense mode because you can't reconcile on your being gay.
The majority of people all over the world could give a rats *** whether you are gay or not. Most countries in Europe have laws that legalize gay marriage, notibly Spain, a primarily Catholic country.
So what is your point? That Americans are homophobic? Please!!! Americans have no sense of true sexuality. On one hand they glorify it by showing off sex in movies, ads, etc., on the other hand it's a taboo subject. Talk about puritanical nonsense.
If you are comfortable with your sexual orientation then that's fine, why try to convince the rest of the world?
You made me think, Gaby. I guess you have a point eventhough I don't like looking at it. I have acted like a pompous ass here. I understand fully that it is very disconcerting and profoundly upsetting to contemplate this question. I am sorry that my words are upsetting to so many.
The problem has many dimensions. One that comes to mind primarily is that the state of biblical scholarship and hermeneutic discourse in the our churches is painfully misinformed and down right incorrect.
It is of no consequence if a person is straight, bi or gay. It's not a fit subject for discourse in our churches. No where does the bible say that being gay is wrong.
I want all of you to think about this serisouly. Only two direct instances talk about it in terms of being a post-exilic newly reconvenanted Jew 2,500 years ago. Most of the underpinnings for all the other Mosaic admonitions aren't even thought of much less practiced fby contemporary humans. You must consider this seriously.
The idea of persons being more than their biological machinery or being reduced to exclusively procreative is the point. All the anti-gay rhetoric is incorrectly derived. I could go through the whole bible but I wouldn't want to be accused again of being pompous.
Of course clergy should be encouraged and supported in coming out of the closet and having sancitfied unions. This questions is so misleading. All of the churches are filled with closeted gay men. There is no question about there being gay clergy. They are here right now and ever have been. The church has always been a haven from reality for gay men. Let's open a little room here for people to be themselves and be it openly with integrity.
Marriage is not a religious institution. It is a political/legal institution sancified by religious ceremony. It a fine distnction but an important one. There are no marraige ceremonies specied in the bible. Want proof? Look through the entire bible -- while marraige is spoken of in hetersexist and patriarchally sexist terms -- in no instance is the ceremonial accoutrements specified in all of the bible. In fact, in Deuteronomy and Leviticus you will find more said about terms for divorce than is said for terms of marriage.
It's true.
Marriage ceremonies are found in accompamying books of prayer and doctrinal specification which have evolved markedly throughout time. In fact, marraige as we know it today would be unrecognizable 200 years ago.
Of course same-sex unions should and ought to be sancified before G-d. It is happening now. I really believe all the anger is homophic abuse towards gay persons because the change is under way and so many don't like it.
Name-calling is the basest of discourse. It is only used when an inferior mind encounters thinking it cannot match or confesses an inability rise to the occation. Why did you feel compelled to say such a spectacularly stupid thing? I really would like to know. You couldn't find anything more uplifting to impart?
After reading through a hefty portion of this thread I have concluded that you are a POMPOUS ASS. Why anyone would want to discuss anything with you is beyond me.
Debbie J :
And as for feeling shame, it is not my practice to feel ashamed of treating my fellow man with the dignity due him even when it is not returned in kind. I am too old to be shamed by anyone. I left that island a long time ago. The opinions of others will never dictate my self worth.
Be Blessed.
May 29, 2007 4:35 PM
So, Debbie J, basically what you are justifying is that you can say whatever you please with no connection to reality or consequence for the results of your speech because you have the imprimatur of supernatural self-arrogance.
You have not responded to one physical empirical statement of mine. You are clear that gay persons are not deserving of the very same rights and privileges as all Americans simply because of a flawed derivative hermeneutic that allows you to do so with impunity.
I have no desire for or interest in your opinion. Nor my own -- truly. I am not defined by what others think -- I do not care. But I do speak out for fairness and equanimity when it is withdrawn unjustly as any decent human being ought.
That is what this is about. Stop aggrandizing your personal view and begin embracing reality beyond your point of view.
You claim to be a scientist interested in energy and cosmological physics. A person so employed would never allow the kind of drivel you have posted here on this subject into a serious academic paper on the former subject. Show some epistemological consistency.
And as for feeling shame, it is not my practice to feel ashamed of treating my fellow man with the dignity due him even when it is not returned in kind. I am too old to be shamed by anyone. I left that island a long time ago. The opinions of others will never dictate my self worth.
I was so disgusted by the tone between us that I vowed never to return to this post. But I decided that this is what the enemy would want.
If you read my posts carefully you will see that my intention has always been to ask for compassion and respect for gay people. Why I am then subjected to personal attack in return is beyond me.
I am from a very conservative religious background and my Godfather was a minister. Yet I do not believe that gay people are evil. I am at a loss as to why you seem to feel that I do.
It has never been my intention to insult you nor am I looking for company to be hateful in concert with. Read what I have said again without this assumption, and you will see this. Yet twice you have said things to me that are stunningly ugly. I have not returned the venom.
I extended a hand of friendship to you to discuss common interests and was vilified. I still have not read beyond the first line of your last post to me. I was too horrified to continue. And by the way, I have attended the finest schools here and in Europe so I do possess the mental skills required, contrary to what you have asserted.
I am bewildered as to why you should be hurt that I have an opinion that, while it does not mesh with yours, does not in turn deny you your humanity or your right to find happiness as you deem fit. It is between you and your deity at the end if you have or have not lived a proper life. I said so many times.
I do not agree with my sister's choice in husband but that does not mean I do not honor their marriage and the love they have for one another. She never approves of the men I select either, but they are always welcome in her home.
Jim, I told you that I made a mistake in not filling the name space for that post and made sure you knew it was mine.
You truncated my post on the Sacificial, Atonement and Scapegoat theology issue. I explained that these are deeply Judaic ideas that must be understood Judaically to correctly undertand the underlying meaning of the resurrection. You need some schooling.
Just becasue a great many people believe untrue things does not mean that I must. I trust that G-d gave us all minds to work not to allow to atrophy.
Debbie J, I am sorry that you are offended my standing up for myself. You have no idea how hurtful and damaging your rhetoric is -- nor do you care whom you hurt as long as you are in good company in doing so. That is unconscienable. You should be ashamed of yourself.
I know you probably hate John Shelby Spong -- he's prophetic too -- but he wasn't kidding about the fact that "Christianity Must Change or" [it will] "Die".
Jim, your posting sounds so reminscent of a passage in Luke. Do you know it?
15And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.
16And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.
17And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,
18The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
20And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.
21And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.
22And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?
23And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.
24And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country.
25But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land;
26But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow.
27And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.
28And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath,
29And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.
Luke 4:15-29 KJV
Aren't you casting me down for much the same reason? I am NOT Jesus but I am speaking in a prophetic manner not only as he did but as the great and minor prophets did who recieved much the same treatment ...
Oh, and Jim, thank you for admitting that Jesus was a prophet that contradicted past teaching when it was wrong and correctly required revision for which he was labeled apostasy.
He defintely did revise incorrect past teaching:
"You have heard it said 'an eye for an eye' but I say no. Love even your enemies."
That sounds fairly contradictory of past incorrect teaching does it not?
The justification for persectuing gay persons by incorrect past teaching is just as wrong and is being revised as we speak.
So basically, Jim, your argument is that the truth of my evidence from the bible which you have no credible answer to eventhough it is in black and white is superseded by the primacy of the sancitfication of longevity simply because the truth contained within the bible that I raised to your consciousness -- which previously resided in profound unconsciousness -- for no better reason than it is inconvenient to unsupported beliefs you and a great many hold fraudulently?
Check your logic circuits they aren't working very well.
You didn't answer one piece of evidence I presented but evaded my quesitons.
Poor you that you believe untrue things so fervently. Rational persons don't possess this malady.
Thank God that the obsessive and anal people who post here represent only a tiny fraction of human beings or we'd all be hurling atomic bombs at one another by now.
You mock the Fall:
“The "Fallen" explanation of the human condition, like the heavens being a bowl above our heads, the underworld a watery bowl below the earth under our feet, the Ptolemaic cosmological model and epilepsy being daemon possession, is disproved and no longer operant in a Post-Modern contemporary world.”
Your clinging to them so desperately is revealing and pitiful.
Wow, I had no idea such ignorance still exists.
I trust you never fly in an airplane because it would crash into the Genesian bowl, never go caving say in Carlsbad because you would drown, continue to explain the wayward planetary retrograde motion as daemonic influence upon the heavens and never treat a person with physiogenic epilepsy pharmacologically but damn them as possessed. 5/18/07 12:08PM
I believe this is you because it has an ‘SW’ at the bottom of the post. You also know very well much of Christianity believes in the Fall – not just me. Another attempt to intimidate and marginalize?
You deny Christ’s sacrifice and atoning for sin.
“Jesus' death was not Sacrificial, Atonement or Scapegoat theology” – 5/18/07 3:53PM
(I asked for confirmation that my understanding on this was correct and you never responded so I took above at face value.)
You deny the physical resurrection:
Paul's authenticated corpus -- you are aware of the Deutero-Paul and Pseudo-Paul materials that are not authentically Saul of Tarsus/The Apostle Paul's work of course -- has no resuscitated corps accounting and in fact in I Corinthians 15 is quite clear that no ones, especially Jesus' physical body is resuscitated because the physical body is corruptible BUT the spiritual soul is not and therefore IT is resurrected not a physical body.
These are serious theological matters with which you seem to be wholly unfamiliar. If your faith is dependent upon a physical resuscitation then you are in for a big disappointment. It just isn't so. Resurrection means something altogether different than a physical resuscitation of a dead corps.
Again, you know very well much of Christianity believes this – not just me. Another attempt to intimidate and marginalize?
All of these things are been traditionally believed by Christians and still are believed by Churches faithful to Jesus’ teaching.
I can understand pagans and atheists not abiding by these principles, but not those who claim to be Christian. I simply believe the above items as a given. Perhaps others can argue the above points with you – I cannot.
I believe you need to undermine the Church’s teaching on the Fall and the physical resurrection because they undercut your pro-homosex view points.. The Church does allow deeper understanding of doctrines and morals but only if it does not contradict past teaching. Jesus had the authority to reveal new teaching and change laws. We do not. In several places Scripture says we are charged with holding and protecting – not changing teaching. Indeed scripture says the Church is the preserver and authoritative interpreter of scripture truth. Allowing active homosexuality would be a change not allowed to us.
It does not follow that because Jesus was wrongly considered an apostate by some Jewish officials, that people who now ascribed to the points above are not apostates. (Assuming they are baptized and believed the points above at one time.)
Though we are all sinners and people have not always lived up to the standards Jesus would want us to, authoritative Church teaching has always said active homosexuality is always wrong. Your posts consistently want to insinuate people, who admonish active homosexuality, have some kind of psychological problem. I do not understand this. Is the purpose of this to intimidate and silence opposition? Does it not occur to you that they want the Church to remain faithful to Christ’s teaching and do not wish others to be led astray – because it puts their souls in danger?
As Debbie J. says, your posts are too much hateful rhetoric. People will have to discern for themselves whether they wish to remain faithful to Christ’s teaching or enter apostasy.
From the Quran, if I am not mistaken. Those who follow this faith correct me if I am:
"And tell my servants that they should speak in the most kindly manner [unto those who do not share their beliefs]: verily, Satan is always ready to stir up discord between men - for, verily , Satan is humanity's open enemy! (17:53)
"There are six things that the Lord hates,
seven that are an abomination to him:
17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
18 a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that make haste to run to evil,
19 a false witness who breathes out lies,
I have not even finished reading this post from you after I saw the first line. Here we are once more in the realm of the hateful rhetoric and personal attacks I had hoped would come to an end.
I entered this site to offer some compassion and calming to a debate that has become far too contentious to be within a supposed theological context. If you and others wish to take aim at one another using God as a weapon, so be it. I do not intend to join you. I will not dishonor my faith by entering into battle with the faithful, and that includes you SW. I am horrified by what I see happening here.
Who do you think thrives on discord? Not the God I serve.
Jim :
Strangely Warmed’s admission that Strangely Warmed does not believe in the basic beliefs of Christianity – Jesus’ atonement for our sins and His bodily resurrection indicates the extent Christians, who wish to accommodate active homosexuality within Christianity, will have to change their beliefs . Are you prepared to enter apostasy? An apostate church is predicted in Scripture and I believe it already exists in embryonic form.
May 20, 2007 9:19 AM
-----------------------------------------
Interestingly, Jim, you did not address my direct biblical quotations and argumentation.
You draw an incorrect conclusion and then draw further fallacious conclusions from it.
Address the direct hermeneutics I addressed to you and stop pulling a Newt Gingrich.
The claim of apostasy is ever the defense of last resort before utter capitulation to reason.
Really, you need to take a chill pill and relax.
Jesus in Matthew 19:10-12 makes clear it is not apostasy to open new understanding from old tenets. The three classes of eunuchs are intersexed individuals, castrated males and Torah Tenors who were castrated prepubescent males to preserve their beautiful voices to sing the Torah. You know, Jesus' ministry was apostasy to a vast minority of Jews and the Romans. That's why he was politically executed for sedition by the Romans. Or do you not read history or the Gospels? Crucifixion is the compelling factor. Jews never meted out this punishment. Only the Romans did for only 2 capitol offenses: a chronically rebillious slave or sedition against the Roman Empire. Face this fact.
You have indeed hit upon a valid truth quite by accident though. We are witnessing a reformation in the churches to end persecution of gay persons. The Jewish faith is right now granting acceptance of gay persons so is the Episcopal Church and UCC. Churches innumerable are accepting gay persons, ordaining them and marrying them. It is happening. Even Disneyland is in the business now -- gay couples can purchase the Disney Marriage package, so really, how far away is legal recognition?
This question is directed to a faithful view of gay unions and clergy.
Let's be perfectly honest. The church has been for millennia populated by gay men and women. Why do think the Catholic Church is filled with homosexual pederasty? Not 200 years ago it was accepted that male Catholic initiates would bed TWO to a room with only one bed. The Anglican Church of England is filled with gay clergy while profoundly closeted now -- not a 100 years ago they were quite openly known and accepted. Why is rabid anti-gay rhetoric and hermeneutics rampant now?
Because only deeply closeted, profoundly fearful, self-hating GAY men engage in this. Straight men and gay men who accept themselves do not. Women are a much more complicated mixed bag that would consume far too much room here to exposit. The churches are predominately male-dominated patriarchally sexist and heterosexist anyway so the male factor is the compelling characteristic anyway.
Allowing gay persons to be openly gay heals all the hurtfulness present now -- Christ calls us all to this healing action. There is no more important Christian doctrine than to love G-d and love ALL our neighbors as we love G-d: all the Commandments are fulfilled by this.
What more faithful way to look at this issue is there if one is Christ-like about it?
You have serious reasoning disabilities. I would not be interested in discussing physics with you. You have not the prerequisite research background nor the creative ability to leap beyond convnetional thinking. Issacson's biolography makes plain Einstein's distinct advantge in creative thinking beyond conventional "wisdom". And a fierce devotion to personal integrity beyond self-serving opportunism.
Your claims are baseless becasue they are dependent upon assumptions that are fallaceous.
The fact that a biological characteristic which is not as obvious as skin or eye color is invalid in your view because of that very inobviousness is bigoted to spectacular degree.
Your arrogance before creation and G-d is staggering.
Gay persons are completely deserving of full acceptance. Your argumentation to the contrary is affirmation of a dying view. Your tenancity in its maintenance is pitiable.
You have supplied no competent evidence other than incompetent hermeneutics that is dying of its own growing irrelevancy. I supplied a wealth of competent evidence you dismissed for no better reason that it conflicted with your conventionally-derived view.
I am confident your efforts in theoretical physics will come to little consequence because your discourse here shows a shocking lack of originality or curiosity.
Both are essential to ground-breaking work.
Or didn't Brian make this clear to you in your correspondence -- as he did in my brief conversation with him after a lecture.
"Jim - So why are all the Old Testament prohibitions to be disregarded except that single line about a man lying with a man?"
I do not understand basis for this statement. Clearly, adultery, cursing your parents, incest and others are also prohibitions retained in the New Testament.
In other words, Aspasia, you can be gay and see the merits of the Bible, and as a Christian you can understand that God gave us the laws but he also allowed us the free will to choose otherwise, rightly or wrongly.
In the end, He is the sole person to whom we must plead the case of our lives, not man. So we must not seek the will of man to approve our choices on earth, but that of God when called upon at the final life review.
And I would suppose that King James must have had a lively discussion with God in the end (smile).
I may be incorrect in my memory, but believe the King James version of the Bible was commissioned by a King who was an active homosexual from his youth. If he did not see fit to remove the prohibitions against homosexuality in Leviticus and elsewhere and saw no conflict between it and his personal choices, why must modern clergy and practitioners be called upon to denounce and negate these prohibitions.
"By Dr. Laurence M. Vance
As the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603) was coming to a close, we find a draft for an act of Parliament for a new version of the Bible: "An act for the reducing of diversities of bibles now extant in the English tongue to one settled vulgar translated from the original." The Bishop's Bible of 1568, although it may have eclipsed the Great Bible, was still rivaled by the Geneva Bible. Nothing ever became of this draft during the reign of Elizabeth, who died in 1603, and was succeeded by James 1, as the throne passed from the Tudors to the Stuarts. James was at that time James VI of Scotland, and had been for thirty-seven years. He was born during the period between the Geneva and the Bishop's Bible.
One of the first things done by the new king was the calling of the Hampton Court Conference in January of 1604 "for the hearing, and for the determining, things pretended to be amiss in the church." Here were assembled bishops, clergymen, and professors, along with four Puritan divines, to consider the complaints of the Puritans. Although Bible revision was not on the agenda, the Puritan president of Corpus Christi College, John Reynolds, "moved his Majesty, that there might be a new translation of the Bible, because those which were allowed in the reigns of Henry the eighth, and Edward the sixth, were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the Original."
Didn't Jesus say that in Him there was no male or female? Hard to imagine a more repugnant statement to the family values crowd. They obsess about stereotypical gender distinctions . Dobson, in particular, likes to go on about how little boys smell different from little girls and how little boys should see their daddies naked so that they don't become homosexuals. Need I say more?
Jim - So why are all the Old Testament prohibitions to be disregarded except that single line about a man lying with a man? Yes, and then there's Paul, who at one point in his letters goes into a rather embarassing and decidedly unsaintly paroxysm of hatred over sexual decadents about whom he seems to know a bit too much and who resemble the average gay person to the extent that someone who swats flies resembles a serial killer. And why isn't female sexuality ever mentioned? Could it be that they weren't really talking about our modern concept of sexual orientation? After all, in the West until the 19th century, people's conception of the moral person had remained quite crude - you were what you did. This is no longer the case. People now recognize that the celibate person with homosexual desires is just as homosexual as the homosexual who acts on his or her desires. Increasingly, they also recognize that people who feel free to pursue such fundamental pursuits as love are more likely to lead happy and productive lives to the ultimate benefit of the society in which they live.
“What I find most troubling about this whole debate, is the fact that No One but God is without sin. That the log out of one's eye before trying to take a speck out of thy neighbor's. The focus should be internal and no so much external from my opinion.”
Scripture does not allow us to judge one another (make a final determination) . However, it does allow and instruct us to admonish (warn) one another. Are you judging others when you tell them not to judge or are you admonishing them? Is judging the only sin that can be admonished?
Also, what many interpret as human judging is often the preaching of judgments already made by God.
“Not too long ago it was common among many Christians, especially the Southern types who wear it on their sleeves , to speak of marriage between people of different races as "unnatural", "ungodly", "unbiblical", an "abomination" in the eyes of the Lord. "God made the races separate and they shouldn't be mixed." etc...”
Your examples are Christian’s misrepresenting scripture to fits their own theology – sounds similar to the what pro-homosexs do today. If I use Jesus’ standard and look to the way God originally intended , there is only one distinction made – male and female. By the original standard there are none of the restrictions you mention..
Clarification.The the earlier post from today was made by me. I inadvertently forgot to input my name so it defaulted to Anonymous. I re-post my note to another person under name Anonymous.
Some pro-homosexualists assert that Christian elimination of certain Old Testament laws is reason to now allow the acceptance of active homosexuality. This is false teaching.
The elimination of Old Testament cleanliness, ceremonial and dietary laws was directly linked to Christ's death and resurrection. Christ fulfilled the law and broke down the barriers between God and man, Jew and Gentile, which Scripture says these cleanliness and dietary laws represented.
However, the Levitical prohibition against active homosexuality is placed squarely with adultery, child sacrifice, bestiality and cursing your parents. Christ's death and resurrection undid none of these moral prohibitions. Unlike cleanliness and dietary laws, these sins carried the death penalty in the Old Testament to signify grave immorality. Jesus eliminated the death penalty, but the Old Testament death penalty pre-figured eternal damnation - and this still looms
as an outcome.
Others assert allowance of slavery somehow allows for change in belief toward active homosexuality since slavery was eventually disallowed within Christianity. However, slavery, divorce, concubines, diminution of women, etc., are also all consequences of man's fall. They were never part of God's intent for man.
Jesus moves us closer to God's original plan.He makes the moral teachings tighter. He forbids divorce, he rasies the status of women, he calls a lustfull eye equivalent to adultery, he says we are in danger of hell if we curse someone.
Accepting active homosexuality does not move us closer to God's original plan, rather it regresses us beyond the distortions from God's original plan permitted in the Old Testam
Not too long ago it was common among many Christians, especially the Southern types who wear it on their sleeves , to speak of marriage between people of different races as "unnatural", "ungodly", "unbiblical", an "abomination" in the eyes of the Lord. "God made the races separate and they shouldn't be mixed." etc...
Some pro-homosexualists assert that Christian elimination of certain Old Testament laws is reason to now allow the acceptance of active homosexuality. This is false teaching.
The elimination of Old Testament cleanliness, ceremonial and dietary laws was directly linked to Christ's death and resurrection. Christ fulfilled the law and broke down the barriers between God and man, Jew and Gentile, which Scripture says these cleanliness and dietary laws represented.
However, the Levitical prohibition against active homosexuality is placed squarely with adultery, child sacrifice, bestiality and cursing your parents. Christ's death and resurrection undid none of these moral prohibitions. Unlike cleanliness and dietary laws, these sins carried the death penalty in the Old Testament to signify grave immorality. Jesus eliminated the death penalty, but the Old Testament death penalty pre-figured eternal damnation - and this still looms
as an outcome.
Others assert allowance of slavery somehow allows for change in belief toward active homosexuality since slavery was eventually disallowed within Christianity. However, slavery, divorce, concubines, diminution of women, etc., are also all consequences of man's fall. They were never part of God's intent for man.
Jesus moves us closer to God's original plan.He makes the moral teachings tighter. He forbids divorce, he rasies the status of women, he calls a lustfull eye equivalent to adultery, he says we are in danger of hell if we curse someone.
Accepting active homosexuality does not move us closer to God's original plan, rather it regresses us beyond the distortions from God's original plan permitted in the Old Testam
Strangely Warmed’s admission that Strangely Warmed does not believe in the basic beliefs of Christianity – Jesus’ atonement for our sins and His bodily resurrection indicates the extent Christians, who wish to accommodate active homosexuality within Christianity, will have to change their beliefs . Are you prepared to enter apostasy? An apostate church is predicted in Scripture and I believe it already exists in embryonic form.
That is my concern as expressed in an earlier post. Marriage is not working in this country for most people. And that saddens me. Greatly.
We need to address the core institution and refine it. If gay people want to marry they have to reinvent it, because a 50% failure rate and all the rampant infidelity that is inherent in marriages today is not an endorsement. It is like buying a ticket for the Titanic. They say the divorce rate is declining, but someone added that this is because fewer people may be taking the risk.
The saving grace of the American people is their pragmatism. We'll never enjoy the delectable food of France or the acute insights of the Germans, but we will always come to terms with what works for the greater happiness. Massachusetts has allowed gay marriage for several years now with no consequent harm to anyone and, as a result, it's spreading. Theologians can continue to argue, but the majority will always care about whether it works. Whether it works - the quintessential American concept.
The saving grace of the American people is their pragmatism. We'll never enjoy the delectable food of France or the acute insights of the Germans, but we will always come to terms with what works for the greater happiness. Massachusetts has allowed gay marriage for several years now with no consequent harm to anyone and, as a result, it's spreading. Theologians can continue to argue, but the majority will always care about whether it works. Whether it works - the quintessential American concept.
At some point I would like to talk to you about the alternative energy source and relativity theories you are pursuing. A less contentious topic (smile).
And SW, surprise, one of the things I have done that upset my Born Again family is have gay friends. So where you got the notion that I am a homophobe and bigot is beyond me. And no, I won't be asking them if I can watch them have sex (smile).
I don't agree with 90% of what my straight friends do in the romance arena and I am sure the sentiment is returned, but I love them dearly too.
This is a forum dealing with what people's churches and faith tell them about gay marriage and gay clergy, as someone reminded me earlier, and people who are conservative will follow the doctrine and dogma of that faith to the letter. Conservative denominations do not accept this and other behaviors they consider to be at odds with that doctrine. I would refer to it as devotion and dedication to the tenets of their faith more than fear and ignorance.
I have done things my Born Again family cannot understand or accept, but I am not in the business of making them change their beliefs. I am in the business of making the choices that lead to my happiness and becoming one with my God by living as honorable a life as I can.
As for the second half of the question, can someone's mind be changed; faith thrives on dedication and devotion to concepts that cannot be proven objectively. All the arguments and reasoning in the world will not move an unshakeable faith. You can present the Library of Congress to them and they will not feel the need to read a single volume.
You must exercise the same faith in your convictions and understand that those who do not agree will never agree. The issue is are you happy and are you one with your God. If you believe there is an afterlife, when the time comes it is a one to one conversation, not a juried moment. So the fear and ignorance of others will not be considered. Only how you live your life.
It is their right to believe as they choose. Our nation was founded on that right.
It was also founded on the belief that people have rights and protections under the law and the constitution. Their personal religious beliefs affect you only when they infringe on your civil liberties and constitutional rights as a citizen of this nation.
People erroneously compare the gay rights movement to that of the civil rights movement. Again, apples and oranges. Nonetheless, that battle was fought legally, constitutionally, and in civil disobedience in the main, not by arguing theology or trying to get religious institutions involved. They entered voluntarily.
And civilian agents initiated the change--Rosa Parks refused to leave her seat, not the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi refused to leave the first class section of the train in South Africa, not the Hindu priests.
I would venture that many of the people who allowed interracial marriage did not agree with or believe in it, but they recognized the constitutional rights inherent in supporting it.
Arguing issues of faith with the faithful to change their beliefs is often a losing battle.
The Bible was written many many years ago by people who are no longer with us. We will never really know how they interpreted God's word to suit their world view because that world does not exist any longer. Thousands of years have passed. That is what I meant about the tongue in cheek term Cider House Rules.
So clothing of more than one cloth and using stones to kill the guilty, and selling daughters etc. etc. made sense to them in their time. We have to determine what makes sense in ours.
But the essential fact is that a person's religious belief system is part of who they are and it can rarely be changed until that person is willing to be changed. You will fail time and time again if you try to force it.
My free opinion, worth every penny you paid for it.
Martha, you have hit it exactly. The arrogance of presuming to know the mind of G-d by anyone and then that it gives anyone the sanction to judge anyone else is staggering. No one is any better nor more attuned to G-d than anyone else. Gay persons exist. That's a fact. They have always existed and the sacred text, ancient Egyptian, Chinese, Indo-American cultural remains all attest to this.
Why do frightened people react so negatively? Why are they so affraid? It's fear and ignorance, pure and simple. What drives the fear? What exactly is it?
No. But I missed one by not giving a name in the "name" space. If you forget the moderator program fills in "ANONYMOUS". Somebody filled in "ANON" and I wholeheartedly agree with that poster. I'd like to thank that person for their post.
I see your position now. There's a BIG problem with it. It's tautological and fallaceous. There is no physical evidence by definition of a "physical resurrection".
Perhaps what you mean is that you take Matthew, Luke, Acts, and John literally. That ordering is essential. That is the chronological order of each manuscript's creation. When you read them in order they do not agree and in fact contradict one another in their particulars, and become markedly more expansive in the physical manifestation claims. Mark was written well before them and there are no "physical" manifestations of a resuscitated corps just a visionary appearance of ascension in Galilee.
Paul's authenticated corpus -- you are aware of the Deutero-Paul and Pseudo-Paul materials that are not authentically Saul of Tarsus/The Apostle Paul's work of course -- has no resuscitated corps accounting and in fact in I Corinthians 15 is quite clear that no ones, especially Jesus' physical body is resuscitated because the physical body is corruptible BUT the spiritual soul is not and therefore IT is resurrected not a physical body.
These are serious theological matters with which you seem to be wholly unfamiliar. If your faith is dependent upon a physical resuscitation then you are in for a big disappointment. It just isn't so. Resurrection means something altogether different than a physical resuscitation of a dead corps.
It is attributed to Jesus that one dies to ones former self and is reborn anew. Paul says this first and the following Synoptic Gospels and the Logos Gospel expand this idea along with the manifestation expansions. That's resurrection. Not the resuscitations of dead bodies.
New life through the practice of dying to ones former self and awakening to ones true new possibility in G-d.
Gay persons who their lives honestly practice this resurrection every moment of their lives. You and anti-gay church folk could learn so much of value from gay persons in this way -- Rev. Bruce Lowe, Baptist Church, Rtd. says this very thing.
No. But I missed one by not giving a name in the "name" space. If you forget the moderator program fills in "ANONYMOUS". Somebody filled in "ANON" and I wholeheartedly agree with that poster. I'd like to thank that person for their post.
I see your position now. There's a BIG problem with it. It's tautological and fallaceous. There is no physical evidence by definition of a "physical resurrection".
Perhaps what you mean is that you take Matthew, Luke, Acts, and John literally. That ordering is essential. That is the chronological order of each manuscript's creation. When you read them in order they do not agree and in fact contradict one another in their particulars, and become markedly more expansive in the physical manifestation claims. Mark was written well before them and there are no "physical" manifestations of a resuscitated corps just a visionary appearance of ascension in Galilee.
Paul's authenticated corpus -- you are aware of the Deutero-Paul and Pseudo-Paul materials that are not authentically Saul of Tarsus/The Apostle Paul's work of course -- has no resuscitated corps accounting and in fact in I Corinthians 15 is quite clear that no ones, especially Jesus' physical body is resuscitated because the physical body is corruptible BUT the spiritual soul is not and therefore IT is resurrected not a physical body.
These are serious theological matters with which you seem to be wholly unfamiliar. If your faith is dependent upon a physical resuscitation then you are in for a big disappointment. It just isn't so. Resurrection means something altogether different than a physical resuscitation of a dead corps.
It is attributed to Jesus that one dies to ones former self and is reborn anew. Paul says this first and the following Synoptic Gospels and the Logos Gospel expand this idea along with the manifestation expansions. That's resurrection. Not the resuscitations of dead bodies.
New life through the practice of dying to ones former self and awakening to ones true new possibility in G-d.
Gay persons who their lives honestly practice this resurrection every moment of their lives. You and anti-gay church folk could learn so much of value from gay persons in this way -- Rev. Bruce Lowe, Baptist Church, Rtd. says this very thing.
Let me see if I get the jest of this debate?
Gays are unable to reproduce. Then why are there so many Gays on this planet. Sounds to me as if they must have come from Heterosexual Couples. So if you want to get rid of people who love someone of the same gender, than it sounds as if you need to do away with couples of the opposite gender. Just tongue and cheek there.
Anyway, it sounds as if heterosexuals are producing more than enough homosexuals in this world, so why would you worry that homosexuals should increase their population by also reproducing after their kind.
What I find most troubling about this whole debate, is the fact that No One but God is without sin. That the log out of one's eye before trying to take a speck out of thy neighbor's. The focus should be internal and no so much external from my opinion.
No. But I missed one by not giving a name in the "name" space. If you forget the moderator program fills in "ANONYMOUS". Somebody filled in "ANON" and I wholeheartedly agree with that poster. I'd like to thank that person for their post.
I see your position now. There's a BIG problem with it. It's tautological and fallaceous. There is no physical evidence by definition of a "physical resurrection".
Perhaps what you mean is that you take Matthew, Luke, Acts, and John literally. That ordering is essential. That is the chronological order of each manuscript's creation. When you read them in order they do not agree and in fact contradict one another in their particulars, and become markedly more expansive in the physical manifestation claims. Mark was written well before them and there are no "physical" manifestations of a resuscitated corps just a visionary appearance of ascension in Galilee.
Paul's authenticated corpus -- you are aware of the Deutero-Paul and Pseudo-Paul materials that are not authentically Saul of Tarsus/The Apostle Paul's work of course -- has no resuscitated corps accounting and in fact in I Corinthians 15 is quite clear that no ones, especially Jesus' physical body is resuscitated because the physical body is corruptible BUT the spiritual soul is not and therefore IT is resurrected not a physical body.
These are serious theological matters with which you seem to be wholly unfamiliar. If your faith is dependent upon a physical resuscitation then you are in for a big disappointment. It just isn't so. Resurrection means something altogether different than a physical resuscitation of a dead corps.
It is attributed to Jesus that one dies to ones former self and is reborn anew. Paul says this first and the following Synoptic Gospels and the Logos Gospel expand this idea along with the manifestation expansions. That's resurrection. Not the resuscitations of dead bodies.
New life through the practice of dying to ones former self and awakening to ones true new possibility in G-d.
Gay persons who their lives honestly practice this resurrection every moment of their lives. You and anti-gay church folk could learn so much of value from gay persons in this way -- Rev. Bruce Lowe, Baptist Church, Rtd. says this very thing.
Not too long ago it was common among many Christians, especially the Southern types who wear it on their sleeves , to speak of marriage between people of different races as "unnatural", "ungodly", "unbiblical", an "abomination" in the eyes of the Lord. "God made the races separate and they shouldn't be mixed." etc...
If I were a Christian and consistent, I would make it illegal to eat shrimp and oysters. No one could wear cloth made of more than one fabric. A woman who's had an affair would be stoned to death as would children who talk back. Women wouldn't be allowed to talk in church and, well, if I were a Christian, unlike most Christians, I would read the Bible often and be able to add hundreds more similar absurdities to this list.
Why Gay unions should not be allowed:
- If homosexuality was a correct way of life, we would not be here today. It is as simple as saying that the parts do not fit. It is common sense, males and males or females and females can not reproduce, therefore that lifestyle would have led the human race into extinction, if it would have been tolerated.
- So why should we encourage or "tolerate" this behavior? All it will lead to is the destruction of the human race.
- the foundation of humanity has continued through the 5000=years (scientifically) on the basis of heterosexuality. It can not be denied that no matter what God or what way this Earth was created, heterosexuality, has sustained and continued life on earth for ALL SPECIES.
-this leads to my second point,
-I don't care what science or studies that you throw into this, no matter that male or female animals hang out with the same sex, that has no relation to them being homosexual. It is like saying that little johnny has invited his ten best friends over for his birthday party. They are all boys. Does that make him gay? NO.
-and another of my questions is, why on Earth are you comparing humans to animals. The defining factor that makes the human race superior to all races, is the fact that we humans know the difference from wrong and right. Animals do not. You can not compare humans, (that is moral and decent humans) to animals, because animals are stupid. humans are not animals, we are humans which is why we have been the strongest and smartest form of life on the planet.
Homosexuals are acting like animals in the sense that they only listen to their bodies sexual impulses, totally ignoring what is right from wrong. We have already found that if homosexuality was right, we would not be here, but since we are here, that makes homosexuality the wrong lifestyle.
-the institution of the family, the traditional family is the correct way of life, shown and proven through thousands of years of life on Earth.
Now if you bring religion into it, the christian bible clearly defies and denounces homosexuality. Throughout the bible, many references are made to sexual immorality and homosexual prostitutes, as being wrong and that these people will not inherit the kingdom of God, Heaven. Read 1st corinthians:6, and Tell me that what I just said is not true.
Many people refute this fact, saying that aren't Christians supposed to love all people and accept all people?
The answer is yes. As a christian, it is our duty to love all, including homosexuals. But, that does not mean that as christians we should tolerate their lifestyle. As christians, we are supposed to help these people. As we know, from clear and precise scripture, homosexuals will not go to heaven, so it is our job to help them to pursue a healthy lifestyle: heterosexuality. That is where the love and forgivness of Christ comes into play, he loves all people, even if they sin and turn from his way, but he does not forgive those who do not try to be forgiven, those who do not try to change. That is the christian mission in the lifestyle of homosexuality, to help homosexuals to change.
-For example: as a christian, I can have a gay friend, a friend I dearly cherish, but as a christian, it is my duty to extend the love and forgiveness of God, and try to help my gay friend to change. You can love a gay or lesbian as a human, a person, but you cannot accept their lifestyle.
Many try to refute this argument by saying that homosexuals are born the way that they are. No they choose it. If you, as a christian, accept homosexuality, and believe that homosexuals are born that way, then you are being a hypocrite. Why would your loving God, who loves everyone and everything, who, as you believe created the universe and everything in it, say that homosexuality is wrong and denounce it, and then create homosexuals? Are you saying that God, your God, who created everything did not know what he created? So he didn't know that he created homosexuals, yet says that their lifestyle is sinful? how Dare you confuse the living word of God. Homosexuals are not born gay, if you are a christian, you can not believe that they are, because why would God make homosexuals and say that their way of life is wrong? He wouldn't because he loves all of his creation. He just gives his creation free will, and that is why homosexuals choose to be gay.
-And if you want to bring science into it, there is no clear scientific evidence that declares the cause of homosexuality in humans or animals.
These are all reasons why gay unions or homosexuality in general is not okay. This is not a political issue, it is a moral issue, and issue of right or wrong. They question you need to ask yourseleves is what is right? And very clearly, for a christian: the bible declares homosexuality wrong, as a member of another faith: I'm sure their is some peice of data in your books denying homosexuality, and for atheists or people who don't follow a common or specific religion: common sense shows the truth and living proof of life.
Why Gay unions should not be allowed:
- If homosexuality was a correct way of life, we would not be here today. It is as simple as saying that the parts do not fit. It is common sense, males and males or females and females can not reproduce, therefore that lifestyle would have led the human race into extinction, if it would have been tolerated.
- So why should we encourage or "tolerate" this behavior? All it will lead to is the destruction of the human race.
- the foundation of humanity has continued through the 5000=years (scientifically) on the basis of heterosexuality. It can not be denied that no matter what God or what way this Earth was created, heterosexuality, has sustained and continued life on earth for ALL SPECIES.
-this leads to my second point,
-I don't care what science or studies that you throw into this, no matter that male or female animals hang out with the same sex, that has no relation to them being homosexual. It is like saying that little johnny has invited his ten best friends over for his birthday party. They are all boys. Does that make him gay? NO.
-and another of my questions is, why on Earth are you comparing humans to animals. The defining factor that makes the human race superior to all races, is the fact that we humans know the difference from wrong and right. Animals do not. You can not compare humans, (that is moral and decent humans) to animals, because animals are stupid. humans are not animals, we are humans which is why we have been the strongest and smartest form of life on the planet.
Homosexuals are acting like animals in the sense that they only listen to their bodies sexual impulses, totally ignoring what is right from wrong. We have already found that if homosexuality was right, we would not be here, but since we are here, that makes homosexuality the wrong lifestyle.
-the institution of the family, the traditional family is the correct way of life, shown and proven through thousands of years of life on Earth.
Now if you bring religion into it, the christian bible clearly defies and denounces homosexuality. Throughout the bible, many references are made to sexual immorality and homosexual prostitutes, as being wrong and that these people will not inherit the kingdom of God, Heaven. Read 1st corinthians:6, and Tell me that what I just said is not true.
Many people refute this fact, saying that aren't Christians supposed to love all people and accept all people?
The answer is yes. As a christian, it is our duty to love all, including homosexuals. But, that does not mean that as christians we should tolerate their lifestyle. As christians, we are supposed to help these people. As we know, from clear and precise scripture, homosexuals will not go to heaven, so it is our job to help them to pursue a healthy lifestyle: heterosexuality. That is where the love and forgivness of Christ comes into play, he loves all people, even if they sin and turn from his way, but he does not forgive those who do not try to be forgiven, those who do not try to change. That is the christian mission in the lifestyle of homosexuality, to help homosexuals to change.
-For example: as a christian, I can have a gay friend, a friend I dearly cherish, but as a christian, it is my duty to extend the love and forgiveness of God, and try to help my gay friend to change. You can love a gay or lesbian as a human, a person, but you cannot accept their lifestyle.
Many try to refute this argument by saying that homosexuals are born the way that they are. No they choose it. If you, as a christian, accept homosexuality, and believe that homosexuals are born that way, then you are being a hypocrite. Why would your loving God, who loves everyone and everything, who, as you believe created the universe and everything in it, say that homosexuality is wrong and denounce it, and then create homosexuals? Are you saying that God, your God, who created everything did not know what he created? So he didn't know that he created homosexuals, yet says that their lifestyle is sinful? how Dare you confuse the living word of God. Homosexuals are not born gay, if you are a christian, you can not believe that they are, because why would God make homosexuals and say that their way of life is wrong? He wouldn't because he loves all of his creation. He just gives his creation free will, and that is why homosexuals choose to be gay.
-And if you want to bring science into it, there is no clear scientific evidence that declares the cause of homosexuality in humans or animals.
These are all reasons why gay unions or homosexuality in general is not okay. This is not a political issue, it is a moral issue, and issue of right or wrong. They question you need to ask yourseleves is what is right? And very clearly, for a christian: the bible declares homosexuality wrong, as a member of another faith: I'm sure their is some peice of data in your books denying homosexuality, and for atheists or people who don't follow a common or specific religion: common sense shows the truth and living proof of life.
"Jesus' death was not Sacrificial, Atonement or Scapegoat theology. All of that was codified to explain G-d's allowance of Jesus' death by the Romans."
It sounds like you are denying that Jesus' death and resurrection saved us from our sins. Am I correct in this? Do you believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus?
Just for clarification, are you and Anon's posts coming from the same person? If so, responding would be less confusing.
I corresponded with Brian Greene when we were both at Columbia regarding nonlinear time and the space-time continuum, and he has a few key points in place. There is a missing link that I am chasing that will unite String, Hawking, Einsten and Tesla. Watch out for the paper.
That said, I don't need a jolt. Did you read where I asked people on the posts to show some respect and compassion to gay people and stop being hateful.
Earlier I said the approval of others and their opinions are irrelevant, what matters is that people are given their constitutional rights and are left alone.
So you don't need me to agree with your lifestyle, you just need me to show you the respect I would any other human being. And I do and did.
Without the unnecessary suggestion that I watch animals and humans handle their business (smile). Pleaze.....
I agree with George Gordon, Lord Byron. If I rememeber it well, he said he was the eye through which the universe beheld itself and knew it is divine. So is man, so we need not reference animal husbandry to discuss our behavior. Please...
Hawking is the only person I want to discuss Big Bangs with thank you...
I forgot to tell ya. I LOVE the "The Song of Songs". It IS the best romantic erotic literature ever written. I agree. But you know what? You can read Solomon's portion TWO ways and make a very minor gender replacement for the wife and it fits for me too. For someone with your interests opening your mind to this subject won't be hard. I am studying Relativity intensely right now and exploring very interesting ideas for its application to energy resources, generation and consumption issues.
I did it on purpose becasue know you know how I feel when I read your remarks about persons like me when it is patently untrue.
Did you get my reference? Greene is good but String Theory has run its course it is a discpline looking for an application destined not likely to find one.
I didn't mean to offend you; just jolt you a little. Thanks for being a good sport and I am sorry for being a bit crude.
Read what I said again. if you read the Song of Songs that is pure unadulterated erotic sex. I was refering to the Love They Neighbor quote of Jesus and Paul. People in this post were getting mighty hateful!
Debbie J, how do you know this? Eros, erotic love; filios, brotherly-comradely love; and agape, spiritually expansive love are all love, are they not?
Why are you so terrified of erotic love? G-d made erotic love for all of us to enjoy.
If it is true that G-d does not want us to have sex -- except to procreate -- then why did G-d make it so incredibly pleasurable and wonderful. And, why do octogenarians well past child-baring ages engage and enjoy it so much? That is definitely not procreative justification.
The reason animal sexuality is quite relevant is that contrary to your uninformed view, humankind is an animal all with all the rest of creation on this little planet of ours in an obscure little corner of an unimportant galaxy in the unfashionable section of the universe. You can't have it both ways. You don't get to eat your cake and have it too. None of us does. You claim and your ilk such as Jim that gay sex is unnatural.
It most certainly is not. It is pervasive throughout the entire natural world. Let's take a look shall we? Do you know why naturalists and biologists have been confused about what they were seeing for 200 years?
Because their heterosexist bias assumed that they were only seeing heterosexual animal sex -- what little they got the opportunity to see. What confused them is that with the exception of a very few instances never has hostility been observed when animals engaged in sex play. Animals do not have sex for only procreation. They have sex for pleasure and lots of reasons. What was being observed was homosexuality, bisexuality and heterosexuality. There is only one species on the planet that is hostile and abusive to gay members -- human being. Religion has the brunt of the blame.
Big horn sheep all throughout the western US -- quite pervasive a species BTW -- do not pair-bond heterosexually. Males hang with males. Females keep the themselves. Males pair-bond, many for life. Females too. Once a year when the females are in rut for a month or two the males and females fraternize for procreative purposes. After the younglings are born and weaned the next year the females bring the young to be given to male pairs or the female keeps her young for rearing. Works beautifully.
The next time you go to Grand Canyon and see two big horned bucks ramming horns hang around -- it's FOREPLAY for sex and affection. There. You can see some gay sex without having to be traumatized by watching two men do it. It is hot though -- heterosexual women love gay sex just as hetero men love to watch lesbian sex.
You hit it exactly. I am pleased I don't have to waste time explaining it to you. You are most correct. The Paschal Sacrificial Lamb and Yom Kipper Atonement Lamb & Scapegoat are Jewish rituals of redemption, cleansing, forgiveness and renewal. Their appropriation into an explanation of the Crucifixion is precisely the point.
Jesus' death was not Sacrificial, Atonement or Scapegoat theology. All of that was codified to explain G-d's allowance of Jesus' death by the Romans.
You do have a mind.
Now deal with this reality in a mature manner and stop proselytizing nonsense.
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind. I believe in the beauty of the Song of Songs. The symbolic energy of two people--male and female--uniting in love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. But love built upon the pain of others--adultery or other uneven alliance as you say-- is not a blessed one. David and Sampson can speak to that.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind. I believe in the beauty of the Song of Songs. The symbolic energy of two people--male and female--uniting in love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. But love built upon the pain of others is not a blessed one. David and Sampson can speak to that.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind. I believe in the beauty of the Song of Songs. The symbolic energy of two people--male and female--uniting in love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. But love built upon the pain of others is not a blessed one. David and Sampson can speak to that.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind. I believe in the beauty of the Song of Songs. The symbolic energy of two people--male and female--uniting in love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. But love built upon the pain of others is not a blessed one. David and Sampson can speak to that.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind. I believe in the beauty of the Song of Songs. The symbolic energy of two people--male and female--uniting in love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. But love built upon the pain of others is not a blessed one. David and Sampson can speak to that.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
Jesus tells us to love one another as He loves us – not as we define love. I would not doubt there are those who are engaged in adultery who assert they love one another. But Jesus said if you love me you will keep my commandments
And can I respectfully request that we not use animal sexuality to reference human sexuality. Apples and oranges. Some animals also eat their young so please....
See Matthew 22:36-40). These religious leaders had made almost an art form of classifying all the various laws and giving them relative degrees of importance, so in asking Jesus this question, their aim was to test Him. His answer stunned them: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
In Romans 13:8-10, Paul says:
Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, "You shall not commit adultery," "You shall not murder," "You shall not steal," "You shall not bear false witness," "You shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
"The "Fallen" explanation of the human condition, like the heavens being a bowl above our heads, the underworld a watery bowl below the earth under our feet, the Ptolemaic cosmological model and epilepsy being daemon possession, is disproved and no longer operant in a Post-Modern contemporary world."
Do you then believe that Christ's passion, death, and resurrection allowed for us salvation?
Every human being is beautiful and precious. Every human being is unique and there has never been another one exactly like him or her nor ever will be.
Can we not in Christ, God, Allah, or All-That-Is not embrace this truth and love one another unconditionally as Jesus, Siddhartha, and Mohammed called us to do?
Every person deserves to be themselves fully, honestly, completely.
All persons heterosexual or homosexual deserve intimate romantic love, fierce devotion to another and the receiving of that same fierce devotion for him or her, universally.
Gay men ought to be encouraged by the churches to marry each other -- it promotes stability and monogamy. The same is true for women. As it has been true for men and women throughout all of human history.
What is everyone so afraid of? I really want to know -- what is it specifically you are afraid of?
If marriage is so heterosexually exclusive that the mere contemplation of expansion of the institution is so unthinkable, then I have a practical solution.
Two gay men who love each other deeply and two gay women who love each other just as fiercely out to find each other so that two pairs of one woman and one man may marry each other.
The "Fallen" explanation of the human condition, like the heavens being a bowl above our heads, the underworld a watery bowl below the earth under our feet, the Ptolemaic cosmological model and epilepsy being daemon possession, is disproved and no longer operant in a Post-Modern contemporary world.
Your clinging to them so desperately is revealing and pitiful.
Wow, I had no idea such ignorance still exists.
I trust you never fly in an airplane because it would crash into the Genesian bowl, never go caving say in Carlsbad because you would drown, continue to explain the wayward planetary retrograde motion as daemonic influence upon the heavens and never treat a person with physiogenic epilepsy pharmacologically but damn them as possessed.
When I say take God out I mean that if we are going to use Him back and forth to attack each other then He has no place here. We can express our opininons without resorting to attack mode.
That said, my faith indicates that it is Toeva, abomination, but so is not loving thy neighbor as they self and I don't see that practiced very much when this topic is raised.
Gay Unions - Disgusting and Immoral per the bible. I'd list the scruptures but they are listed elsewhere.
Gay Clergy - Doesn't compute - Titus 1:5-9
The pro-gay arguments seems to be (1) a loving christ would never reject gays and (2) god accepts all as we are all sinners.
Regarding 1 - Christ routinely rejected sinners. Didn't her tell Peter "Get behind me satan as you think men's thought, not those of god". Also, didn't he condemn the pharisees because of their hypocrisy. He didn't bend the standards to suit his listeners.
Regarding 2 - Check out 1 Tim 2:3,4 - Not all are saved, only those who come to an accurate understanding.
Read Matthew chapter 7 sometime and think about the comments around verse 21 through 23. Seems pretty clear that some representing themselves as christians will be rejected. Fits into the overall discussion about the broad and spacious road leading off into destruction. The narrow road in the discussion has to do with conforming our lives with god's standards.
And finally, 2 Tim 4:3, let's us know why we are even having this discussion:
2 Tim 4:3 (NIV) - For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
By the way, this doesn't just apply to gays, but any group that rejects the bible standards.
Debbie J.
"So again I say, leave God and the Bible out of this. It is the Cider House Rules. The rules were made by those who do not live in the Cider House. Who lives here?"
The title of this Form is "On Faith" and "What does your faith lead you to believe about gay unions and gay clergy? Could you ever change your mind?"
Talking about God in this forum is quite appropriate. Talking about what you belief God intended for marriage also fits very well with this forum
If you think another Forum should be established to discuss this from a purely secular view, I suggest you contact the owners of this website.
Call me cynical because I am, but God did not make any of us. Our parents did. After Adam and Eve, He tooks his hand off the wheel.
So again I say, leave God and the Bible out of this. It is the Cider House Rules. The rules were made by those who do not live in the Cider House. Who lives here?
“And, Jim, Jesus did have many pearls of wisdom. The Book of Thomas, which didn't make the cut (maybe not patriachal enough for the early church fathers), is full of them and they're also stangely reminiscent of Buddhism.”
I responded:
“This is one of the saying of the Gospel of Thomas:
"114) Simon Peter said to them: Let Mary go forth from among us, for women are not worthy of the life. Jesus said: Behold, I shall lead her, that I may make her male, in order that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who makes herself male shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. "
Stranely Warmed
"Dr. Mohler has already said that you and churches need to accept the fact that gay men are born gay and straight men are born straight. Sexual identity is fixed in men well before birth. It is fact.
I agree that there is probably a biologcal component to homosexuality. Please reread my earlier note.
My point is that does not mean God created homosexuals. It is a consequence of Man's Fall - like death is now natural and a consequence of Man's Fall - not something intended for Man's creation.
No need for name calling. I am merely defending the Church.
Dr. Mohler has already said that you and churches need to accept the fact that gay men are born gay and straight men are born straight. Sexual identity is fixed in men well before birth. It is fact.
Bruce Bagemihl has presented 200 years of naturalist and biologist's observations of 450 sepcies which incorporate heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality in his book, "Biological Exuberance" c1999. Read it for yourself.
Dr. Mohler was quoting from Dr.'s Wilson & Rahman's book, "Born Gay: The Pschobiology of Sexual Orientation" c2005.
Your anti-gay rhetoric and hermeneutic discourse is positively indicative of your own closeted interanl conflicts. Straight men do not engage in these, only closeted or self-hating gay men do. Read the book and find out why.
You repeat the pro-homosexs mantra that because it exist in nature, therefore, God created homosexuals.
I think the assertion that God created homosexuals because it exist in nature is false teaching. It is theologically explainable as a consequence of Man's Fall. Death was never part of God's intent for man, but because of Original Sin, death is now natural. Same for all disease and disorders, even if there is a biological component.
Natural from God’s perspective is what He intended – not what is now in our fallen nature.
John,
“Don't you find it a bit strange that homosexuality has existed in all cultures throughout human history.”
No I don’t find it strange. I believe there is a biological component underlying the behavior coupled with environmental factors. I suspect there are other biological components to other bad behaviors’ such as alcoholism, inclinations to violence, proclivity toward adultery, perhaps pedophilia, as well as other behaviors. But like I said in previous posts, it is theologically explainable as a consequence of Man’s Fall.
“it's an unusual "vice" in that unlike the others it shows no proclivity to appear in people who are otherwise bad; people who lie or are envious are also more likely to steal, for example, yet many gay people, who are sexually active, lead exemplary lives”
I suspect the other bad behaviors you mention (like lying, cheating, greed, stealing) are probably found as frequently in those with homosexual orientations as heterosexual orientation. I say this only because I have no evidence either way and am just assuming homosexuals are no different in these areas. However, when it comes to sexual activity, the studies I have seen indicate that active homosexuals are very active indeed – particularly males. Most (male) homosexuals have many, many sexual liaisons. In fact, many in so called committed relationships engage in ‘adulterous’ activity very frequently – yet assert they are in loving, committed relationships. Indeed, some homosexual theoreticians assert engaging in sex with those outside the committed relationship should be considered as normal for ‘marriage’.
“It's also the only "vice" I know of that appears in sheep, among many other mammals and some birds.”
I suggest you check out studies on ‘adulterous’ behavior in animals (birds just to name one)– there is h evidence for this.
Animals also engage in what in humans would be considered as stealing. They also engage in violence. But like I noted before, in Man such sinful behavior is a consequence of Man’s Fall from Grace. Man’s fallen nature is under the influence of inherited sinful inclinations. The fall of the angels may explain some of the corruption in nature generally.
“At any rate, in your attempts to save souls why the intense focus on homosexuality?”
It is not my only intense focus – abortion also is (I do consider abortion a graver moral evil than active homosexuality). Increasingly, I also find myself becoming a ‘green’ Christian and hope to engage more on that in the future, but I am not well versed enough yet. Also, although I engage on the internet on the issue, I have taken internal, rather bold actions and oral statments to defend workers from being taken advantaged-of (I am semi-retired with a pension and therefore have some ‘cover’).
The reason I focus on abortion and homosexuality is that both of these, unlike adultery, stealing, greed, etc, are being foisted on the Church and society as a ‘good’. Unlike ‘swingers’, etc many pro-homosexs want the Church to say active homosexuality is ‘good’
.“Woe unto those who call good evil and evil good.”
“It is better to have a millstone placed around your neck and you thrown in the sea than to lead astray my little ones”. (False teachers in the Church leading the unknowing laity astray).
If there were those in the Church pressing for the Church’s acceptance of heterosexual adultery as a ‘good’, I would be fighting them also – even more so because of shear numbers.
“It's certainly not consitent with historical Christianity. During the High Middle Ages, the only time that Christianity has ever succeeded in thoroughly molding a civilization, it was regarded as a petty vice, on the level of gluttony”
Scripture and authoritative Church teaching has always considered active homosexuality sinful – backsliding, false teachers not withstanding.
“Lending money at interest, however, was considered a grave sin.”
Charging interest, per se, is not considered wrong since Scripture allows the charging of interest to foreigner’s (Dt 23:21). However, there is no such allowance counterpart for homosexual activity. Unlike interest charging, it is always wrong.
My reading of scripture suggest it is usury (lending money at high rates or any interest to a poor person, or to your brother) is what the real issue is. I would never consider charging interest to my brother, sisters for a loan or even a unrelated person who was poor. Jewish society was much more inclusive in what is family.
“In my view, it's a an extremely wayward spirituality that concerns itself with other people's sexual orientation. Perhaps that's why Jesus never refers to it.”
You presume that only the Gospel’s are God’s Word. Christian’s believe ALL of Scripture is God’s Word. Active homosexuality is mentioned elsewhere in the Bible.
Jesus does not specifically speak against slavery or bestiality, or incest either. That does not make them something good?
Bestiality and homosexuality, and incest may not have been significant problems in Israel at the time of Jesus (they learned their lesson from the Sodom story) whereas adultery was. Jesus did not go out to the Gentile nations – he left that to the apostles. In the Gentile world the apostles did encounter homosexuality – and spoke against it. Speaking of His apostles He said: “He who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.”(Lk.10:16).
You presume the Gospels tell all that Jesus said – they do not and the Gospel says that.
All positive reference to marriage by Jesus is done in the context of one man and one woman as revealed in Genesis. It is more plausible to believe Jesus just pre-supposed that in ALL marriage male and female was a prerequisite. The wording of Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 make this quite obvious: "Male and female he made them" and "For this reason a man . . . shall be joined to his woman/wife and the two shall become one flesh." Only a "man" and a "woman" are structurally capable of becoming "one flesh" through a sexual union because, as noted above, the creation stories depict gender differentiation as the only differentiation created by the splitting of an original sexual whole. On the level of erotic intimacy, sexual wholeness requires the restoration of the constituent parts. The fact that Jesus cites Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 back-to-back suggests that Jesus understood the "for this reason" introducing 2:24 as alluding to the gender differentiation established in 1:27. For this reason—namely, because God made them male and female, complementary sexual beings (1:27)—man and woman may be joined in a permanent one-flesh union (2:24). For Jesus, then, the Creator ordained marriage—it is not just a social construct—as a lifelong union of one man and one woman for the purpose of forming an indissoluble sexual whole. Both the Scriptures that Jesus cited with approval and the audience that Jesus addressed—indeed the whole of early Judaism so far as extant evidence indicates—presumed the male-female prerequisite. Jesus clearly agreed.
Silence on a behavior does not prove allowance for the behavior. What Jesus did say carries more weight than our speculative view of what He did not say.
The real question is why does it concern YOU? If you aren't gay why do you care so much about it. Of course it's strange to you if you are straight. It's just as strange and scary to me to think of hetersexual sex. All my youth and church experiences made homosexuality frightening to ME. Think of how much more terrifying it was for me to begin realizing I didn't look ar girls the way of my friends did -- and even worse than that I looked at guys and had the same reactions as my friends for girls, except for guys.
Fear is the common denominator. Can we just be human and compassionate for a moment and see that there is more that we have in common than differentiates us. And that all those differences are miniscule in comparrison to all the binds us in our common spirituality and humanity.
Frankly, G-d made me gay as G-d made you straight. We are the same in that G-d made us who we are.
Dr. Mohler has already admitted that sexual identity for men is innately fixed before birth so that is settled as far as I'm concerned -- for you as well.
Can we in our common bond in Chirst understand the alien for each of us and embrace each other as brothers?
Why is that Christ-like entreaty so difficult?
I don't want to be cured of how G-d made me. I want you to love how G-d makes all of us just the way we are and just the way we aren't. That is Jesus' ministry after all.
As I said in another post. Let's separate church and state as per the constitution and leave the Bible out of this argument.
That said, why do you need societal acceptance? Take that out of the equation too. You don't need anyone to approve of you. You just need them to get out of the way and let you live happily and freely. As they say in the south, what you think of me is none of my business.
Everyone is supposed to have equal rights under the law per the constitution. Fight on those grounds and leave Jesus and Leviticus, and what will the neighbors say out of the argument.
I for one find marriage in its current state deplorable what with the divorce rate being so high so if gay people can find a better alternative, more power to them.
Jim - Don't you find it a bit strange that homosexuality has existed in all cultures throughout human history. Different cultures tend to produce considerable variation in people's inclination to one or another kind of bad behaviour, yet homosexuality remains a constant. Furthermore, it's an unusual "vice" in that unlike the others it shows no proclivity to appear in people who are otherwise bad; people who lie or are envious are also more likely to steal, for example, yet many gay people, who are sexually active, lead exemplary lives. It's also the only "vice" I know of that appears in sheep, among many other mammals and some birds. Scientists are currently looking at the genes of gay rams with an aim to eliminate them since these non-breeding rams are somehow less profitable. At any rate, in your attempts to save souls why the intense focus on homosexuality? It's certainly not consitent with historical Christianity. During the High Middle Ages, the only time that Christianity has ever succeeded in thoroughly molding a civilization, it was regarded as a petty vice, on the level of gluttony, if that. Lending money at interest, however, was considered a grave sin. Now it's a profession engaged in by many Christians. In my view, it's a an extremely wayward spirituality that concerns itself with other people's sexual orientation. Perhaps that's why Jesus never refers to it.
Jim - Don't you find it a bit strange that homosexuality has existed in all cultures throughout human history. Different cultures tend to produce considerable variation in people's inclination to one or another kind of bad behaviour, yet homosexuality remains a constant. Furthermore, it's an unusual "vice" in that unlike the others it shows no proclivity to appear in people who are otherwise bad; people who lie or are envious are also more likely to steal, for example, yet many gay people, who are sexually active, lead exemplary lives. It's also the only "vice" I know of that appears in sheep, among many other mammals and some birds. Scientists are currently looking at the genes of gay rams with an aim to eliminate them since these non-breeding rams are somehow less profitable. At any rate, in your attempts to save souls why the intense focus on homosexuality? It's certainly not consitent with historical Christianity. During the High Middle Ages, the only time that Christianity has ever succeeded in thoroughly molding a civilization, it was regarded as a petty vice, on the level of gluttony, if that. Lending money at interest, however, was considered a grave sin. Now it's a profession engaged in by many Christians. In my view, it's a an extremely wayward spirituality that concerns itself with other people's sexual orientation. Perhaps that's why Jesus never refers to it.
As I said in another post. Let's separate church and state as per the constitution and leave the Bible out of this argument.
That said, why do you need societal acceptance? Take that out of the equation too. You don't need anyone to approve of you. You just need them to get out of the way and let you live happily and freely. As they say in the south, what you think of me is none of my business.
Everyone is supposed to have equal rights under the law per the constitution. Fight on those grounds and leave Jesus and Leviticus, and what will the neighbors say out of the argument.
I for one find marriage in its current state deplorable what with the divorce rate being so high so if gay people can find a better alternative, more power to them.
John,
This is one of the saying of the Gospel of Thomas:
"114) Simon Peter said to them: Let Mary go forth from among us, for women are not worthy of the life. Jesus said: Behold, I shall lead her, that I may make her male, in order that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who makes herself male shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. "
John,
I do not dislike homosexuals as you imply. I know some people with this inclination and we have some common interests on other matters that we enjoy discussing. True love consist in informing people of the Christian spiritual Truth concerning active homosexuality in order to save their souls, not to agree with them on active homosexuality and make them feel good. Jesus told us to love one another AS HE LOVES US – not as we define love
And, Jim, Jesus did have many pearls of wisdom. The Book of Thomas, which didn't make the cut (maybe not patriachal enough for the early church fathers), is full of them and they're also stangely reminiscent of Buddhism. Odd though, given modern Christians' obsession with the subject, not one has to do with same-sex attraction.
Jim - You love reason and faith - not just reason. In other words, it's out the window with reason whenever it fails to suit your fancy - in this case your dislike of people who lack your stellar virtue of being born heterosexual.
Jim - You love reason and faith - not just reason. In other words, it's out the window with reason whenever it fails to suit your fancy - in this case your dislike of people who lack your stellar virtue of being born heterosexual.
John,
Apparently, I undercut some of your most treasured anti-Christian arguments concerning active homosexuality. The core points I made have been preached since the beginning of Christianity basically unchanged. I love reason and faith – not just reason.
But as Jesus said, do not cast pearls before swine, they will just trample on them
Who's asking anyone to 'encourage' homosexual behavior/relationships??? Homosexuals have always been here and will always be here. It's equal rights and acceptance of who they already are!
There will always be enough hetrosexuals to continue the species. It's not like gays are promoting a class to change your 'preference' to be gay. Some straight people can't imagine having sex with their own sex because THEIR STRAIGHT!! They won't be sexually attracted to their own sex. When you're gay, it's JUST AS NATURAL to be attracted to your own sex. It really IS that simple.
So, gays aren't a 'threat' to judeo/christian theology...they just need to be accepted and given equal rights for their own. NOT special rights, equal rights.
Just asking - I will also add that the incidence of sexually transmitted disease among gay men is much lower in Europe than in the US, Europe that godless continent where worrying about what other people do in bed is considered very bad form. Significantly, there are no gay neighborhoods (ghettos) in European cities. A crazy idea - perhaps gays lead healthier lives in societies that accept them.
Just asking - Heterosexual black Africans have the highest incidence of the most deadly sexually transmitted disease, AIDS. Much higher than among gay men anywhere. Perhaps it would be in mankind's interest to discourage people from being black and being born in Africa. And since your so worried about other people's sex lives might not gay men become more monogamous if our society quit dehumanizing them, quit telling them all their lives that they're nothing but their sexuality, perhaps even allowed them to marry?
1. At a time when the fertility rate of the native-born U.S. population is significantly below replacement and our population is aging rapidly with a Social Security burden rising as a consequence, is it wise for public policy to encourage what is a barren life-style?
2. Given that the gay life-style is associated with a deadly disease and a drop in life expectancy of one to two decades, is it wise for public policy to encourage what is a disease-prone way of life with the health care burden it generates for the rest of society?
The Bible discourages homosexuality because for common sense reasons it is not in the interest of society to promote it. This does not mean we should not care for those that suffer its consequences or not seek ways to mitigate its effects and lessen its impact on those that suffer from HIV/AIDS. We should do all we can to eliminate the suffering and the disease.
Nor should we interfere with the personal and private decisions people make with regard to how they wish to live their lives. That is their own business.
But it does mean we should not encourage gay unions or gay clergy or make the gay life-style equal to that of heterosexual unions and relationships.
First to Gay Unions. I feel that is a personal freedom and should be recognized by the state. Equal is Equal. Marraige = Marriage, wether gay or straight.
Second, Gay Clergy. That is for the church administrators to decide. Good luck.
As someone who dosen't believe in all the religious bs, keep your dogma off my life. People need to realize the intellectual, moral, and various contributions homosexuals make to our society, and quit lumping them in with murderers, child molestors, alcoholics, etc., etc.. Get outside your 'storybook' and see how good people are already living. Evolve, people.
Jim - Your'e living proof of Christianity's infinite malleability. A truly elusive religion. Starting with that hodgepodge, the Bible, anyone can concatenate just about any doctrine. It's made Christianity a strong and resilient religion, unlike its brittle cousin, Islam. Also a profoundly repellent religion to those who love reason and the human virtue of intellectual honesty.
John,
Some pro-homosexualists assert that Christian elimination of certain Old Testament laws is reason to now allow the acceptance of active homosexuality. This is false teaching.
The elimination of Old Testament cleanliness, ceremonial and dietary laws was directly linked to Christ's death and resurrection. Christ fulfilled the law and broke down the barriers between God and man, Jew and Gentile, which Scripture says these cleanliness and dietary laws represented. It had nothing to do with food, per se, but what it represented.
However, the Levitical prohibition against active homosexuality is placed squarely with adultery, child sacrifice, bestiality and cursing your parents. Christ's death and resurrection undid none of these moral prohibitions. Unlike cleanliness and dietary laws, these sins carried the death penalty in the Old Testament to signify grave immorality. Jesus eliminated the death penalty, but the Old Testament death penalty pre-figured eternal damnation - and this still looms
as an outcome.
Jesus moves us closer to God's original plan.He makes the moral teachings tighter. He forbids divorce, he rasies the status of women, he calls a lustfull eye equivalent to adultery, he says we are in danger of hell if we curse someone.
Accepting active homosexuality does not move us closer to God's original plan, rather it regresses us beyond the distortions from God's original plan permitted in the Old Testament
As far as homosexuality being natural (therefore presumed by some pro-homosexs as made by God) -
It is now natural to die, but death is a consequence of Man’s Fall (Original Sin). Death was never God’s intent for Man. Same with all diseases and disorders, Homosexuality, even if it has a biological component, is theologically explainable as a consequence of Man’s Fall also, and not something intended by God.
And prior to Man’s fall there was the fall of the Angels, which may have had negative effects on Creation in general, hence animals with homosexuality.
Homosexuality among mammals in nature, not to mention penguins, is commonplace and has now been extensively studied. Do some google searches. Often it even involves life-long attachments. As for the Bible, anyone who actually bothers to read it, rather than just make assumptions on its content based on what they remember from Sunday school or the ravings of the dearly departed Jerry F., should realize that the God of this book is vastly more concerned with food than with sex. Christians die in peace having violated His dietary commandments thousands upon thousands of times. And don't forget about not wearing cloth made of more than one fabric. And...
The bible does not support homsexuality and it is clear. Scriptures have been quoted so I will not qoute any. No wisdom in this world can change the mind of God.
But I just want to ask because majority of the people now believe in evolution, if so why is it that animals from whom some people supposedly evolved not involve in homosexuality. As for me it's God that created me in His likeness. If common animals were not created homosexuals biologically how come humans.
Think on it or may be prove to the world that animals are homosexuals. There is no amount of window-dressing that can make same-sex relationships right. It is in today's society that iniquity is taking over and people who are not 'wise' see it as civilization.
God in his love is calling you to repent before it will be too late. The judgement of God is nearer than you think, not only on this matter but on all manner of iniquity. I pray that I will not be a partaker of the wrath to come. What about you?
Nobody should think he can prove God into existence or out of existence. he is God and there is none else.
as to gay unions - i did not know they were illegal. gays can live together, have sex together, and even adopt children, or have their own using the services of the opposite sex, so are they illegal now? any gay can marry anyone any other person can marry, ie. a person of the opposite sex who is not otherwise then married, of lawful age, and not a relative of the first degree, and is a human being. i am limited by those same rules.
as for gay clergy - that would depend on the religion. some religions do not allow the priests to marry - so that is not a problem. a catholic priest can be gay or not, and neither can have sex with anyone and not violate their holy orders, as they are called. the rules are the same for both. it is illegal to have sex with minors no matter what their sex.
then there are those religions that allow marriage. those are more difficult, but only if they are christian or jewish. both of those religions have strong proscriptions againts sam sex sex. very strong prohibitions. with that in mind i cannot see a practicing gay being in those religions. i dont see a prohibition about being gay but only doing gay. so having a gay priest living with a same sex lover is a violation of that religion. the fiction now used by some religions that say they are christian is just that, a fiction. bishop robinson of the episcopal church and which might get the american episcopla church kicked out and is already in the middle of lawsuits to steal the individual parish property, is a good example. his assertion that the prohibition does not apply to LOVING same sex relationships is absurd. the same argument could be made for every currently prohibited relationship, and the LOVING test apply to multiple partners, marrying your mother - father - sister - brother - minors - or even animals. the fiction that the only thing that matters is that jesus did not condemn it - well he did not condemn sex with animals, children, or even stones or trees, but that is not approval. and the assertion that one should be forgiven, we during the course of committing the sin and then demanding forgiveness when you intend to continue to do it, is absurd too.
so while a church may say its christian it cannot be if it rejects basic tenants of the religion. it may be a warm and loving place for people, but that is not what makes something christian.
“The laws of this country are not based on Christian Fall or Original Sin theology”
No where do I say law in this country should be formally based on Christian theology. My inclusion of remarks on Original Sin were in responds to LEPIDOPTERYX bringing up LEPIDOPTERYX’s individual religious beliefs. I was merely responding to this and would have mentioned regardless of prior discussion concerning State. This forum is meant for religious discussion primarily. I was not trying to use my religious belief as the formal basis for law as you infer.
“Actually, families are created lots of ways - sometimes by sex (with or without marriage), sometimes by adoption (with or without marriage), sometimes by close friendship which evolves into familial affection”
That may be so, but nevertheless, it is the family (mostly comprised of heterosexual marriages) that has historically form society and it is society that dictates to the State what marriage is, not the other way around. In law today the State recognizes the legitimacy of certain religious marriages as marriages.
“And some states have done exactly that. The problem is that while male-female marriages legalized in one state are portable across state lines, while same-sex marriages are not. If my husband and I leave our state on vacation and (goddess forbid) he should fall ill and require emergency care, I can legally give consent for his care in any state in the union. If my lesbian friends, who are legally married in their state of Massachusetts, come to viti me, and (goddess forbid) one of them should fall ill and require emergency treatment, her wife cannot sign the consent forms."
I would like to see a national popular referendum on this (if I thought it were possible, I would even want a world-wide popular referendum). This would solve the state to state issue you mention. As to the lack of consent ability, I would think new laws could be established or old laws changed to allow consent, etc rather than changing the law to re-define marriage.
“Civil rights are not a matter for popular vote. If they were, my white daughter would not be able to marry her black boyfriend in my state”
You presume same-sex marriage is a civil right. I see no evidence for this . Most people do not see this in the Constitution. If the people add a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between 1 man and 1 woman, then the people have spoken and the State must obey the people – your presumed civil right does not exist because the people have said so.
Jim:
"Marriage created family, the family created society, society created the State."
Actually, families are created lots of ways - sometimes by sex (with or without marriage), sometimes by adoption (with or without marriage), sometimes by close friendship which evolves into familial affection.
"Society has demanded that the State protect marriage. Society has demanded that the State recognize religious based marriages (as well as civil-only marriages) and that the State cannot interfere with the Church in performing marriage."
I think that's more of a holdover from the days when the local judge was also the minister of the church, which also served as the courthouse.
"Unless the society, thru a people’s referendum, defines same sex marriage as a civil marriage – it is not civil marriage."
And some states have done exactly that. The problem is that while male-female marriages legalized in one state are portable across state lines, while same-sex marriages are not. If my husband and I leave our state on vacation and (goddess forbid) he should fall ill and require emergency care, I can legally give consent for his care in any state in the union. If my lesbian friends, who are legally married in their state of Massachusetts, come to viti me, and (goddess forbid) one of them should fall ill and require emergency treatment, her wife cannot sign the consent forms.
"Nor can the State tell the people what influences the people may take into account when the people are making their decision .
Are you afraid of a popular vote on the definition of civil marriage?"
Civil rights are not a matter for popular vote. If they were, my white daughter would not be able to marry her black boyfriend in my state.
"You are free to create a religion for yourself based on your particular beliefs. However, many Christians would consider such a religion sub-Christian."
S'okay. I consider Christianity sub-pagan, so it makes us even.
"Indeed, many Christians would consider it a repeat of an aspect of Original Sin where Man decides for himself what is good and what is evil. Pro-homosexs want Christians to change their beliefs on active homosexuality. Many traditional Christians regard such a pro-homosex attitude also as a repeat of this aspect of Original Sin."
The laws of this country are not based on Christian Fall or Original Sin theology.
LEPIDOPTERYX:
Marriage created family, the family created society, society created the State. Society has demanded that the State protect marriage. Society has demanded that the State recognize religious based marriages (as well as civil-only marriages) and that the State cannot interfere with the Church in performing marriage. Unless the society, thru a people’s referendum, defines same sex marriage as a civil marriage – it is not civil marriage . Nor can the State tell the people what influences the people may take into account when the people are making their decision .
Are you afraid of a popular vote on the definition of civil marriage?
You are free to create a religion for yourself based on your particular beliefs. However, many Christians would consider such a religion sub-Christian. Indeed, many Christians would consider it a repeat of an aspect of Original Sin where Man decides for himself what is good and what is evil. Pro-homosexs want Christians to change their beliefs on active homosexuality. Many traditional Christians regard such a pro-homosex attitude also as a repeat of this aspect of Original Sin.
Jim:
Actually, I am not comfortable with any religious ceremony resulting in a change of legal status. That puts clergy in the position of acting as agents of the state, which, IMO, is unconstitutional.
I would like to see any couple, regardless of gender composition, who want a legal union have go through exactly the same legal process - go to the courthouse, purchase a union permit, take it to a judge, and have him or her sign it - and receive exactly the same legal status with exactly the same nomenclature. My gay friend and his husband should have exactly the same legal relationship and rights regarding each other as you and your wife. Anyone wanting a religious ceremony to bless their union would have to do that separately through a church, but the religious ceremony should carry no legal weight, whether the couple are opposite sexes or the same sex. Laws cannot be passed to force churches to bless unions that they don't approve of - Catholic priests cannot be legally forced to marry Protestants or divorcees. Rabbis cannot be legally forced to marry Gentiles.
A church has the right to change its bylaws to adjust to changing times. That does not obligate individual parishoners to change their personal beliefs. I am a member of three very different religious organizations, and I do not agree 100% with the doctrines of any of them. I have yet to find a religion or church that I agree with 100%. I chose the fellowship communities to which I belong because I find that they agree with my personal beliefs more than they differ.
I was responding to Robert Stansfield and his apparent wanting of a separation of Church and State when he says:
“3) marrage is religious ceremony and should be precluded from any governmental involvement (1st amendment)”
whereas this Forum concerned itself with Faith and therefore discussion in regards to religion is quite appropriate.
You say:
“This includes many same-sex couples. And marriage is one of the few, possibly the only, religious ritual that carries with it a change in legal standing. “
I agree. You should note that to Mr. Stansfield.
Your mention of Unitarian Church is quite appropriate to the forum. But it is not the “forcing of someone to be married to a member of their own sex” that is the concern of traditional religious.
It is the attempt to change the belief system with their traditional churches that concerns them. They fear such church’s represent the apostate church of prophecy and do not want anything to do with such a Church. “A little yeast….”
Jim:
"The title of the Forum is not “ ‘Gay’ Civil Marriage” or views of 'gays' in secualr society.
The title of this Forum is “On Faith” . Most people are married in a religious context.
This includes many same-sex couples. And marriage is one of the few, possibly the only, religious ritual that carries with it a change in legal standing.
"The Forum title/discussion implies acceptance of ‘gay’ marriage in a religious context .
Traditionally, most religions have rejected active homosexuality as immoral without qualifiers because they believe God has condemned homosexual activity. Many people still hold to this position."
And no one will ever attempt to force those people to be married to a person of their own sex. But there ARE churches (the Unitarians come to mind) who are affirming of BGLT people, and who were performing same-sex wedding ceremonies, giving them the blessing of the church even if they could not confer legal recognition on them for years before any of the recent legislation came about. They have also been ordaining openly gay/lesbian clergy for a long time. A close friend of mine is an ordained UU minister who is also a lesbian. She and her wife were married in a UU church by an ordained minister over a decade ago.
Robert Stansfield,
The title of the Forum is not “ ‘Gay’ Civil Marriage” or views of 'gays' in secualr society.
The title of this Forum is “On Faith” . Most people are married in a religious context.
The Forum title/discussion implies acceptance of ‘gay’ marriage in a religious context .
Traditionally, most religions have rejected active homosexuality as immoral without qualifiers because they believe God has condemned homosexual activity. Many people still hold to this position. Pro-homosex’s want to change people’s religious views on this subject - in particular the younger generations. Traditional belivers belive such acceptance would put people's souls in danger. Pro-homosex do not like to hear this. Therein, lies the problem.
This whole "gay rights" movement has gone overboard. God created man and woman to procreate and replenish the earth. How can you justify or condone gay unions? The Episcopalian denomination not only condones these unions, their "bishop" recently had a ceremony with his lover. The Word of God says a bishop should be the husband of one wife. (Unless I can't read, I did not take it to mean the husband of another man. It is sin, plain and simple. Paul said "follow me, as I follow Christ". My question is, are you following Christ or your religious leader who in infallible and capable of commiting sin. No, I am not passing judgement, I am just quoting the Word. If you have a problem with my statement, read the Word, it's in there ! God loves the sinner, HE hates sin.
I was shocked when I was pastoring a church and found that members believed that sodomy was an acceptable practice. I knew that there were people who believed this but I did not expect to get called to a church where many thought a homosexual relationship could be condoned.
In my studies on Postmodern Christianity I have seen that this is the result of the aposticizing of the "maineline" denominations. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that denominations like the American Baptists, United Methodists (in many instances), Lutherans, etc., have all abandoned the historical teachings of their founders and have embraced homosexuality.
The Bible condemns homosexual behavior and homosexuals. They are condemned to hell. We must preach the gospel. If it bothers people then they have an argument with God.
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"Pedophilia is not the same as homosexuality. Tell me, when a man rapes a little girl, do you make the claim that heterosxuality is inherently harmful?"
a man rapes a little girl, he is a pedophille and a rapist.
a man rapes a boy, he is a pedophille and a rapist.
in both cases a pedophille and in bot cases a rapist.
in the first case a heterosexual and in second case a homosexual.
April 13, 2008 8:39 PM | Report Offensive Comment
A New Earth – Excerpt 2
By Eckhart Tolle [Continued]//
Spirituality and Religion //
What is the role of the established religions in the arising of the new consciousness? Many people are already aware of the difference between spirituality and religion. They realize that having a belief system, a set off thoughts that you regard as the absolute truth, does not make you spiritual no matter what the nature of those beliefs is. In fact, the more that you make your thoughts, your beliefs, into your identity, the more cut off you are to the spiritual dimension within yourself. Many religious people are stuck at that level. //
The new spirituality, the transformation of consciousness, is arising to a large extent outside the structures of the existing institutionalized religions. This large scale opening of spirituality outside of the religious structures is an entirely new development. In the past, this would have been inconceivable, especially in the west, the most mind-dominated of all cultures, where the Christian church had a virtual franchise on spirituality. //
Partly as a result of the spiritual teachings that have arisen outside the established religions, but also due to an influx of the ancient eastern wisdom teachings, a growing number of followers of traditional religions are able to let go of form, dogma, and rigid belief systems and discover the original depth that is hidden within their own spiritual tradition at the same time that they discover the depths within themselves… //
Some religious institutions will be open to the new consciousness. Others will harden their doctrinal positions and become part of all those other manmade structures through which the collective ego will defend itself and fight back. Some churches, sects, cults, or religious movements are basically collective egoist entities as rigidly identified with their mental positions as the followers of any political ideology which is closed to any alternative interpretation of reality. //
But the ego is destined to dissolve, and all its ossified structures, whether they be religious or other institutions, corporations or governments will disintegrate from within, no matter how deeply entrenched they appear to be. The most rigid structures, the most impervious to change will collapse first. This has already happened in the case of Soviet communism. How deeply entrenched, how solid and monolithic it appeared. And yet within a few years it completely collapsed from within. No one foresaw this; all were taken by surprise. There are many more such surprises in store for us.
[Why is this of such interest to me? Because this new awakening, or enlightenment is all that will save the human race. From the seemingly intractable Arab/Israeli conflict to the seemingly insolvable problems such as population explosion and resulting global warming and food/water/energy shortages, it will take a new awakening to resolve these problems.]
April 13, 2008 2:38 PM | Report Offensive Comment
A New Earth – Excerpt
By Eckhart Tolle //
The Arising New Consciousness //
Most ancient religions and spiritual traditions share the common insight that our normal state of mind is marred by a fundamental defect. However, out of this insight into the nature of the human condition, we may call it the bad news, arises a second insight, the good news of the possibility of the radical transformation of human consciousness. In Hindu teachings, and sometimes Buddhism also, this transformation is called enlightenment. In the teachings of Jesus it is called salvation. In Buddhism it is called the end of suffering. Liberation and awakening are other terms used to describe this transformation. //
The greatest achievement of humanity is not the achievements of its art, science or technology, but rather the recognition of its own dysfunction, its own madness. In the distant past, this recognition already came to a few individuals. The man called Gautama Siddhartha, who lived 2600 years ago in India, was perhaps the first who saw it with absolute clarity. Later, the title of Buddha was conferred upon him. Buddha means the awakened one. //
At about the same time, another of humanity’s early awakened teachers emerged in China. His name was Lao Tzu. He left the record of his teachings in one of the most profound spiritual books ever written, the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching). //
To recognize ones own insanity is of course the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence. A new dimension of consciousness had begun to arise on the planet, the first tentative flowering. //
Those three individuals then spoke to their contemporaries. They spoke of sin, of suffering, of delusion. They said, “Look how you live, see what you are doing, the suffering you create.” They then pointed to the possibility of awakening from the collective nightmare of normal human existence. They showed the way. //
The world was not yet ready for them, and yet they were a vital and necessary part of human awakening. Inevitably, they were mostly misunderstood by their contemporaries, as well as by subsequent generations. Their teachings, although both simple and powerful, became distorted and misinterpreted. Over the centuries many things were added that had nothing to do with the original teachings, but were the reflections of a fundamental misunderstanding. Some of the teachers were ridiculed, reviled or killed. Others came to be worshipped as gods. Teachings that pointed the way beyond the dysfunction of the human mind, the way out of the collective insanity, were distorted and became themselves part of the insanity. //
And so religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an end to violence and hatred, through realization of the wonders of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as divisions between different religions, and even within the same religion. They became ideologies, or belief systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of self. They could make themselves right and others wrong and thus define their identities through their enemies, the others, the nonbelievers or wrong believers, who not infrequently they saw themselves justified in killing. Man made god in his own image. The eternal, the infinite, the un-nameable was reduced to a mental idol that you must believe in and worship as my god or our god. //
April 13, 2008 8:56 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Where is the Line? :
"What about Pedaphilia? Beastiality? Necrophilia? Are those OK, too?"
How many times does this tired argument have to be rfuted? Pedophilia, bestiality, and necrophilia all take place without the consent of at least one involved party. Children, animals, and the dead can't give consent.
"Are they considered reprehensible until Practitioners band together, lobby congress for legislation, boycott TV stations that don't air supportive sit-coms, and have Man-Boy, Man-Dog, & Man-Corpse Love Marches?"
No - because they involve lack of consent.
"Morality draws a line in the sand for the protection of society. Just because homosexuals have Gay Pride parades, have successfully lobbied for gay-friendly legislation, and have infused Hollywood with their ideals, Doesn't legitimize the practice in the least."
If you don't think homosexuality is "legitiamte," don't enter into an intimate relationship with someone of the same sex. I've been told by various people that m marriage isn't legitimate, even though it's legal, because both my husband and I were divorced from previous spouses, and because our wedding did not take place in a church with clergy officiating. I call BS on other people's criteria for the legitimacy of my relationship.
"Homosexuality doesn't hurt anybody, you say? Tell that to the molested Catholic altar boys. They might beg to differ."
Pedophilia is not the same as homosexuality. Tell me, when a man rapes a little girl, do you make the claim that heterosxuality is inherently harmful?
April 11, 2008 1:48 PM | Report Offensive Comment
What about Pedaphilia? Beastiality? Necrophilia? Are those OK, too?
Are they considered reprehensible until Practitioners band together, lobby congress for legislation, boycott TV stations that don't air supportive sit-coms, and have Man-Boy, Man-Dog, & Man-Corpse Love Marches?
Morality draws a line in the sand for the protection of society. Just because homosexuals have Gay Pride parades, have successfully lobbied for gay-friendly legislation, and have infused Hollywood with their ideals, Doesn't legitimize the practice in the least.
Homosexuality doesn't hurt anybody, you say? Tell that to the molested Catholic altar boys. They might beg to differ.
April 11, 2008 12:08 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Take the lesson from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Does GOD forgive former gays after they have repented and changed their views upon same sex marriage and relationships? YES! and GOD doesn't just stop there..He infuses HIS HOLY SPIRIT within us..to be our Comforter and protector when the old urges try to resurface.
DOes GOD bless, support and embrace those who continue to have 'same sex" marriages, sodomy and and gay relationships? NO...but HE's still standing there with open arms to forgive and embrace those that run from it and seek HIS Divine intervention.
April 9, 2008 11:25 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Jesus (a.s)said my father is greater than me.
Also said my God is a Jealous God.
Also said I do every thing with the Will of God.
He also said I do not come to change but to confirm the Law.
My question TO THE CHRISTIAN WORLD IS DOES JESUS (A.S.) EVER ONCE SAID, I CAME TO GIVE MY SACRIFICE FOR YOUR SINS?
Instead JESUS (A.S) SAID, """"who break one Law will not enter the kingdom of Heavean""".
DID OR HAVE CHRISTIANS EVER FOLLOWED WHAT JESUS(A.S) SAID???????
HE ALSO PROSTRATED AND PRAYED, my question is TO WHOM ???
My another question is DOES CHRISTIANS "EVER" prayed and prostrated like Jesus (a.s) to his God (Father)?
THE WORST WAY OF CALLING NAME TO THE ALMIGHTY CREATOR:
When Christians say that Jesus (A.S) was the only BEGOTTEN son and not MADE like Adam (A.S) or like all other creatures or creations? (Like when and what God wihes, it happens)
What are you insinuating??? That God Almighty Him self came down to perform the lowest form of animal act like dog, donkey or monkey, i.e., sexual reproduction?
And on top of it Jesus (A.S) was His begotten son not legitimate!!!!!!!!!!
THAT IS THE WORST KIND OF ABUSE AND NAMING ANY BODY COULD HAVE DIRECTED TOWARDS THE GOD ALMIGHTY!!
Well down you so called CHRISTIAN believers??
You are getting your rewards in this world and will definitely get infinitely here after!!!!!!
YOUR BEST OF BEST ARE PREIST, BISHOP, CARDINAL AND POP AND NUNS RIGHT!
You say Nuns don't marry there whole life b/cause they are married to the Father. Alright!
My Question is Your Priest up to Pop, are they also married to the Father?????
Extremely Natural concept, behavior or shall I say believe????
April 6, 2008 12:29 AM | Report Offensive Comment
I think its sad when people of all faiths are intolerant with those who either lack faith or have a different view point of religion. To argue with gay people why being gay is wrong is a waste of time,all sinners try to excuse the wrongs they do.The scriptures are replete with the abomination of homosexuls, exp SODOM and GOMORHA, the scriptures are full of Christ like ideals and also the condemnation of spousal abuse, child abuse obedience to both Gods law and mans law, once we pass to the world of spirits those who didnt believe will know things they didnt learn here, many will remain as they were on earth,others will hear and see and desire to accept the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We as followers of Christ bear testimony of him, we follow him, we honor him and accept him as the Son of God and we acknowledge his atonement, that he died for each of our sins, and that thru believing in him we maybe saved from sin and destruction. I would like to bear my testimony that Jesus is the Christ the he lives and loves us, that he created this heaven and earth under the direction of the Father. I bear witness that Jesus Christ, God the Father and the Holy Ghost are 3 seperate personages and that they are 1 in purpose and that is to bring the gospel to mankind and to once again help them to know of Christ as he has asked us to. May we so read and study his word and thru prayer and scripture study learn of him who is meek and gave his life for each of us. I bear this witness and know its true, in the name of Jesus Christ AMEN
Iam a memeber of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, so all of you who thought Mormons didnt believe in Christ, now you know!!
April 5, 2008 4:35 PM | Report Offensive Comment
My faith is based on God’s Word, the Bible.
John 17:17: “your word is truth”
2Timothy 3:16-17: 16 All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work.
According to the Bible, governments are free to pass whatever laws they see fit.
True Christians are careful to maintain neutrality by avoiding political debates. (John 17:16) Even when the laws of the land are in conflict with a Bible-trained conscience, a true Christian does not engage in protests or any form of political campaigns in order to change such laws.
As a Christian, I recognize that our Creator sets the standard. Our Creator established rules governing marriage long before governments began regulating the institution.
(Genesis 2:24) “A man will leave his father and his mother and he must stick to his wife and they must become one flesh.” The Hebrew word “wife,” according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words, “connotes one who is a female human being.” Jesus confirmed that those yoked together in marriage should be “male and female.”—Matthew 19:4.
According to the Bible, God intended marriage to be a permanent and an intimate bond between a man and a woman. Men and women are designed to complement each other so they may be capable of satisfying each other’s emotional, spiritual, and sexual needs and desires.
The well-known Biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah reveals God’s feelings about homosexuality. God declared: “The cry of complaint about Sodom and Gomorrah, yes, it is loud, and their sin, yes, it is very heavy.” (Genesis 18:20) The extent of their sinful depravity at that time was apparent when two guests visited the righteous man Lot. “The men of Sodom . . . surrounded the house, from boy to old man, all the people in one mob. And they kept calling out to Lot and saying to him: ‘Where are the men who came in to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have intercourse with them.’” (Genesis 19:4, 5) The Bible says: “The men of Sodom were bad and were gross sinners against Jehovah.”—Genesis 13:13.
The men became “violently inflamed in their lust toward one another, males with males.” (Romans 1:27) They had “gone out after flesh for unnatural use.” (Jude 7) Some may object to using the word “unnatural” to describe homosexual behavior. However, is not God the final arbiter when it comes to nature? He commanded his ancient people: “You must not lie down with a male the same as you lie down with a woman. It is a detestable thing.”— Leviticus 18:22.
The Bible is clear: God does not approve of or condone homosexual practices. He also disapproves of people who “consent with those practicing them.” (Romans 1:32) And “marriage” cannot give homosexuality a cloak of respectability. God’s direction that “marriage be honorable among all” precludes homosexual unions, which he considers detestable.—Hebrews 13:4.
Imperfect human standards change. Jehovah’s righteous standards are perfect and unchangeable.
April 3, 2008 8:10 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Moody:
No one is trying to get you to have anal sex. In fact, I think it's probably best for everyone if you continue to be satisfied with yourself.
The reason for the prohibiton against close biological ADULT relatives marrying is that it shrinks the gene pool, concentrates recessive genes, and makes genetic birth defects more likely to occur. It has nothing to do with sexual morality or ethics. That said, if your brother turns you on that much, and he's ok with it and of legal age, boff away.
If you're talking about adults having sex with their underage children, you should realize that ANY adult having sex with ANY underage child is already a crime - it's called statutory rape. No one has the right to rape.
January 17, 2008 9:21 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Moody:
Exactly what habit am I in - at least in your febrile imagination?
I have to wonder when was the last time you had sex with anyone other than Rosy - maybe you're just jealous that gay men and lesbians are getting more than you are.
January 16, 2008 9:25 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Moody :
**Let’s analyze Gay Union (physical relation).
It consist of two parts
1- Emotional part that is LOVE which alone without physical part doesn’t fall in the category of Gay relation.**
Actually, it does. Men who feel romantic love for other men are gay. Women who feel roamntic love for other women are lesbian.
**2- Physical part ONLY that defines if the relation is Gay or not. OR you can say that if two men are sexually involved ONLY THEN IT IS GAY REALTION.**
Not so. A gay man can have sex with a woman and he is still gay. A lesbian can have sex with a man and still be a lesbian. Gay men and lesbians can be celibate - they're still homosexual. Both of these situations often happen with gay men and lesbians who are closeted.
A straight man can have sex with another man and not be gay. A straight woman can have sex with another woman and not be a lesbian. Sometimes this happens because people are curious and just want to see what it's like. Sometimes it's a power thing, such as among incarcerated individuals.
**So basically this relation is based on SEXUAL NATURE only!**
No, it's much more complex than simply who you have sex with. It's about which sex you're physically and affectionally attracted to, regardless of whether you act on that attraction or not.
**Now lets analyze its MAIN ASPECT that is physical sexual relation.
1- From male satisfaction and sensation point, the best you get is from women.**
Only if you're heterosexual.
**Question : Is it normal and hygienic or SICK behavior to get it willingly by hitting a s.h.i.t hole??**
Newsflash - there are straight people who enjoy anal sex. Orientation is more than just a question of orifices and appendages.
**2- And from the point view of person who is allowing the unnatural intercourse through his s.h.i.t hole. Question : Is in love he force the other to hit his s.h.i.t.? Is it normal or extremely unhygienic insane behavior??**
As long it's consensual, there's nothing wrong with any combination of orifices and appendages.
There are those who would say that male-female fellatio and cunnilingus are "unhygienic" - shall we condemn those as well? You're going to have quite a battle on your hands there.
**Now the last question does love really demand such unhygienic and UNNATURAL behavior??**
Love doesn't demand sex of any kind. People who love each other generally desire to have sex with each other. Sex is often a form of expression of love. And sometimes it's just plain fun.
**Are we so lost that don’t know countless other ways of showing our love and compassion like caring, helping and protecting each other rights etc?**
You could say the same about straight people. There are lots of ways to show love, including those you listed AND through mutual sexual pleasure.
**Rights doesn’t mean s.h.i.t bashing or adopting insane activities.**
So are you planning to deny rights to straight people who have sex in positions you find unacceptable?
**Insanity is a DESEASE and not the normal course or nature of life.**
And homophobia is a form of insanity. Congratulations, you've realized you have a problem. That's the first step to healiong yourself.
**BAD HABITS ARE NOT NATURE, YOU ARE ONLY SO AROGANT NOT WILLING TO LIVE THEM!!!!!!!!!**
Biting your nails is a bad habit. Wanting to be able to marry the person you love isn't. Please learn the difference.
January 15, 2008 3:22 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I meant to say,
BAD HABITS ARE NOT NATURE, YOU ARE ONLY SO AROGANT NOT WILLING TO LEAVE THEM!!!!!!!!!
January 15, 2008 2:44 AM | Report Offensive Comment
My faith is grounded in Jesus Christ and the Word of God. I believe what God's Word says regarding homosexuality; it is sinful. This does not mean that I personally condemn homosexuality above any other sin, because the Bible says that all sin is equal.
Because I believe God's Word, I understand that we were made for His use. God clearly states in the Bible that man was intended for woman, and woman was intended for man. But because of sin, man has strayed from God's righteous Word and has been turned over to a repobate mind, thus accepting sin.
According to the scripture, homosexuality is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. Thus, when put into a spiritual context, I say that it is sinful and that Christians should repent of their sins.
I feel it is important that I reiterate, all sin is equal in the eyes of the Lord. Therefore, homosexuality is no worse a sin than lying, stealing, killing, etc.
My political views on same-sex unions are different from my spiritual views, because I understand the separation of church and state, as stipulated in the U.S. Constitution. Politically, I believe same-sex couples should be granted the same rights and privileges as married couples; however, I believe that marriage should be defined as the union of one man and one woman. It is a pre-political foundation of civilization.
Let me add one last thing. I feel many Christians are quick to judge and condemn homosexuals, and they do a disservice to our faith. Our purpose should always be to show Christ's love and to seek salvation for the unbeliever and restoration for the backslider.
January 13, 2008 9:52 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I think you misunderstood Bobby, Lepidopteryx. He just came out and stated before all of us the primary conflict of his life. He's gay and can't accept himself for all the reasons he stated. He is imploring you and me to do as he attempts but will never achieve.
The tiny, little problem is that you and I live with such a profound integrity he will never know. The inabiliity to accept reality via derivative religious dogma facsinates me no end.
August 14, 2007 4:04 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Bobby:
**Please please give up your desires for same sex partners and learn to live within the norms of society. You will find that you will be much much happier and much more productive in life. You will have a lot more peace in your life.**
Can you give up your attraction to opposite sex partners? I'm not asking if you can abstain from sex - anyone can do that. I'm asking if you can stop finding women attractive. If you can't, then what makes you think that those who are attracted to the same sex can just stop being attracted?
And how exactly will pretending to be attracted to the opposite sex, perhaps even marrying someone they cannot love in order to, in your words, "live within the norms of society," make their lives happier?
August 10, 2007 9:48 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I just want to know why gays and lesbians refuse to accept that God does not accept homosexuality as a lifestyle. As a matter of fact its one of the things that He hates among other things. So I just want you to stop trying to make the rest of us accept something that is un-natural. We will not accept the behavior. We accept you as human beings period. I don't want to see this behavior portrayed on television or the movies and I don't want it espoused in our schools to the children as an acceptable lifestyle. It isnt acceptable period. Please please give up your desires for same sex partners and learn to live within the norms of society. You will find that you will be much much happier and much more productive in life. You will have a lot more peace in your life.
August 9, 2007 5:03 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I ask, does the Washington Post really reach out for TRUE Faith, and one thought on Wade, I believe death of of a word is the death of a smile, is the death of belief that we mean something. I write no more. Short edit that on life's meaning and the taking away from what someone wants to mean in life, such as getting out in a world we all hope will get better.
August 9, 2007 3:02 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I ask, does the Washington Post really reach out for TRUE Faith, and one thought on Wade, I believe death of of a word is the death of a smile, is the death of belief that we mean something. I write no more. Short edit that on life's meaning and the taking away from what someone wants to mean in life, such as getting out in a world we all hope will get better.
August 9, 2007 3:01 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I ask, does the Washington Post really reach out for TRUE Faith, and one thought on Wade, I believe death of of a wrod is the death of a smile, is the death of belief that we mean something. I write no more. Short edit that on life's meaning and the taking away from what someone wants to mean in life, such as getting out in a world we all hope will get better.
August 9, 2007 3:00 PM | Report Offensive Comment
TOP DOWN PROCESSING
1. Separation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see Other Groups fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways.
August 9, 2007 2:52 PM | Report Offensive Comment
TOP DOWN PROCESSING
1. Separation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see Other Groups fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
August 9, 2007 2:47 PM | Report Offensive Comment
TOP DOWN PROCESSING
1. Separation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see Other Groups fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
August 9, 2007 2:47 PM | Report Offensive Comment
TOP DOWN PROCESSING
1. Separation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see Other Groups fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
August 9, 2007 2:47 PM | Report Offensive Comment
TOP DOWN PROCESSING
1. Seaparation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see the NAACP or Other Groups fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
August 9, 2007 2:44 PM | Report Offensive Comment
TOP DOWN PROCESSING
1. Seaparation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see the NAACP or Other Groups fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
August 9, 2007 2:43 PM | Report Offensive Comment
TOP DOWN PROCESSING
1. Seaparation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see the NAACP or Neo Nazi's fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
August 9, 2007 2:40 PM | Report Offensive Comment
TOP DOWN PROCESSING
1. Seaparation of Races in History; such that of in the Deep SOuth of Columbia, SC - Numbers 9:19 - when the cloud tarried long upon the tabernacle many days, the children of (Israel) kept the journey of the Lord and journeyed not.
'On cloudy days outside the State House in Columbia, SC - given early summer days you may see the NAACP or Neo Nazi's fighting for their Journey to stay alive and speak, all the meanwhile Field Trips of Hundreds of youth take hands of teachers later on in the summer so they may be guided through life to view under all flags and monuments upstanding that they are in fact created equal, and may live in a better world where people make consecration of Faith that they may take this world on hand and hand. Im no John Lennnon, possibly a Bono follower and believe that believe as with Magic Johnson, 1st Samuel 30:8 ..."Pursue(!) for thou dhalt surely ovetake them and without fail recover all." defeating opponents on court with Showtime, recovering defeating HIV (as with Bono's Finding a place), and for the children (taken this into context) David's recovery for his brethren and children of his land, "DUST OF THIS LAND" I may see on 100 day Columbia heat where 'dead squirrel pups' of the Squirrelies(!) I love so much makes me think does not the birth of my puppy who curls up to me not make me think that The Weaver of this Joy of Life and its Trials to find Joy in Time is Worth a Catholic (and pup breeding old roomate) -as I am Methodist - Mel Gibson path for Elisha school for Prophets Pride that every look to a youth in the eye, as they look away with developmental psychology puts Wade Hampton upon high standing as I walk by on path to the horseshoe. A Patrioit who fights from the swamp and muck of muckrakers begs upon Solomons song that a Greek overcast Temple under Columbianm, SC sky asks to the Call upon Faith "Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh, and Frankinsense and all the powders of the merchant" FOR Y"ALL TO HEAR, IT IS ME WALKING HOPING MY BAD STARED DAY THAT ENDED WITH MY WALK UPON GERVAIS AND MAIN UNDER THE CONFERATE FLAG - seeing the alive and exuberant, jubilamt youth, at hands length of the Faith of the TEachers who mark their path, ist is the SOng Sung as the Renaissance of birth is given to the hope for a loving life bestowed upon on all parameters of a community that wishes for parallelism between private religious bounds of "gladness in the heart, and a Sooner spice to life that PReachers, Poets and Professors may liven their everyday gate unto this NEW BRAVE NEW world! The power of this examination is guiltless of sacrifice, as I feel no guilt at the moment for my sacrifice to freedom, but from the Oak trees not far away, I resound to resolution of this ideal form shaping of my belief that alrm is only desolate from the front-facing "LOVE ALMOST" of WHat we may see --> I see "Woodrow Wilsons room rang TRUE to growing up as a boy in Columbia, SC ---> there are people willing to show a path to scholarship, religion conventional supprt and an upright path to develop personal structure such that this Living World with Living Words may not be Wilderness to the zealous youth with search for lives of lawyers, nurses, engineers, and research biologists, store managers - preachers, those who make life go round, from afar the state of my mind is Inifinite in thought of youth bringing joy to their care free ways, to be taken by the hand of the old horsemen and the men of the pulpits and Lady Justice and Lady Angels. So I am lost in a day, call it a thought on Faith. ROundabout points, I just see Wade Hampton standing upright, and a Father praying with his children, so the velvet seas of this earth have been sailed, but more want To Follow.
August 9, 2007 2:37 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Terra Gazelle, that was beautiful.
It fascinates me no end that the most intolerant and disrespectful persons toward G-d's creation are the most devout Fundamentalist Christians. It's so contradictory and hypocritical.
Religion isn't a club. If anyone is using it as such *THAT* ought to be a clue right there.
Thanks for your post.
sw
July 26, 2007 5:58 PM | Report Offensive Comment
RP,
It's incompetently derivative hermeneutics and erroneously imposed bigotry upon the texts. If you like you can read "The Sins of Scripture" by John Shelby Spond c2005 or "The Good Book" by Peter J. Gomes c1996 to find out all about it.
It's stems from a rationalization derived from the Cain/Able fratricide as a justification for "dark-skinned" people being descended from Cain and so deserving of abusive enslavement to atone for Cain's crime. It is pure tripe and staggering stupidity that not 150 years-ago was solidly considered competent biblical certainty.
The irony is that the very same certainty about gay persons is just as specious and incompetently construed today.
Read the sources I cited to find out about this.
sw
July 26, 2007 5:45 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Anon,
You are the one who brought it up and you are the one spouting errneous information. Read the book I gave you to read and educate yourself. You speak only in abusive uninformed bigotry.
Stop doing that. Do you understand?
You are making incorrect statements and refusing to listen when facts are presented to you.
Stop doing that, too.
Or continue to do so and get the responses your are getting.
sw
July 26, 2007 5:03 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Useing religion as a bat to hit others with is disrespectful to your God and reason. My best friend is gay...he is the most balanced person I know. Now for those who think being gay is an imbalance that will not make sense...but to those who see it as merely another way humanity was created...it makes perfect sense. In fact my gay friend says that Bisexuality is the most balanced. he wouldn't know...
What if all us hetros are the abnormal? How bout if 80% of all those who profess hetrosexuality are really in the closet gays?
I see only one way to ensure not being intolerant and bigoted...respect all people, not for who they love, but what they do to help others and make this a better world for all of us.
Useing a religion to preach intolerance is stupid, not all people care what another religion says, unless it effects them. I am not of a religiion that sees homosexuality as wrong. We respect all of the diversity created. It is not for us to say what is good and what isn't. We honor the Creator, She knows what She is doing. Mama does not play favorites.
terra
July 26, 2007 3:58 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Useing religion as a bat to hit others with is disrespectful to your God and reason. My best friend is gay...he is the most balanced person I know. Now for those who think being gay is an imbalance that will not make sense...but to those who see it as merely another way humanity was created...it makes perfect sense. In fact my gay friend says that Bisexuality is the most balanced. he wouldn't know...
What if all us hetros are the abnormal? How bout if 80% of all those who profess hetrosexuality are really in the closet gays?
I see only one way to ensure not being intolerant and bigoted...respect all people, not for who they love, but what they do to help others and make this a better world for all of us.
Useing a religion to preach intolerance is stupid, not all people care what another religion says, unless it effects them. I am not of a religiion that sees homosexuality as wrong. We respect all of the diversity created. It is not for us to say what is good and what isn't. We honor the Creator, She knows what She is doing. Mama does not play favorites.
terra
July 26, 2007 3:58 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Useing religion as a bat to hit others with is disrespectful to your God and reason. My best friend is gay...he is the most balanced person I know. Now for those who think being gay is an imbalance that will not make sense...but to those who see it as merely another way humanity was created...it makes perfect sense. In fact my gay friend says that Bisexuality is the most balanced. he wouldn't know...
What if all us hetros are the abnormal? How bout if 80% of all those who profess hetrosexuality are really in the closet gays?
I see only one way to ensure not being intolerant and bigoted...respect all people, not for who they love, but what they do to help others and make this a better world for all of us.
Useing a religion to preach intolerance is stupid, not all people care what another religion says, unless it effects them. I am not of a religiion that sees homosexuality as wrong. We respect all of the diversity created. It is not for us to say what is good and what isn't. We honor the Creator, She knows what She is doing. Mama does not play favorites.
terra
July 26, 2007 3:58 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Useing religion as a bat to hit others with is disrespectful to your God and reason. My best friend is gay...he is the most balanced person I know. Now for those who think being gay is an imbalance that will not make sense...but to those who see it as merely another way humanity was created...it makes perfect sense. In fact my gay friend says that Bisexuality is the most balanced. he wouldn't know...
What if all us hetros are the abnormal? How bout if 80% of all those who profess hetrosexuality are really in the closet gays?
I see only one way to ensure not being intolerant and bigoted...respect all people, not for who they love, but what they do to help others and make this a better world for all of us.
Useing a religion to preach intolerance is stupid, not all people care what another religion says, unless it effects them. I am not of a religiion that sees homosexuality as wrong. We respect all of the diversity created. It is not for us to say what is good and what isn't. We honor the Creator, She knows what She is doing. Mama does not play favorites.
terra
July 26, 2007 3:57 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Useing religion as a bat to hit others with is disrespectful to your God and reason. My best friend is gay...he is the most balanced person I know. Now for those who think being gay is an imbalance that will not make sense...but to those who see it as merely another way humanity was created...it makes perfect sense. In fact my gay friend says that Bisexuality is the most balanced. he wouldn't know...
What if all us hetros are the abnormal? How bout if 80% of all those who profess hetrosexuality are really in the closet gays?
I see only one way to ensure not being intolerant and bigoted...respect all people, not for who they love, but what they do to help others and make this a better world for all of us.
Useing a religion to preach intolerance is stupid, not all people care what another religion says, unless it effects them. I am not of a religiion that sees homosexuality as wrong. We respect all of the diversity created. It is not for us to say what is good and what isn't. We honor the Creator, She knows what She is doing. Mama does not play favorites.
terra
July 26, 2007 3:57 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Useing religion as a bat to hit others with is disrespectful to your God and reason. My best friend is gay...he is the most balanced person I know. Now for those who think being gay is an imbalance that will not make sense...but to those who see it as merely another way humanity was created...it makes perfect sense. In fact my gay friend says that Bisexuality is the most balanced. he wouldn't know...
What if all us hetros are the abnormal? How bout if 80% of all those who profess hetrosexuality are really in the closet gays?
I see only one way to ensure not being intolerant and bigoted...respect all people, not for who they love, but what they do to help others and make this a better world for all of us.
Useing a religion to preach intolerance is stupid, not all people care what another religion says, unless it effects them. I am not of a religiion that sees homosexuality as wrong. We respect all of the diversity created. It is not for us to say what is good and what isn't. We honor the Creator, She knows what She is doing. Mama does not play favorites.
terra
July 26, 2007 3:54 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Karma,
I have read the Bible but never saw any verses that "condemns black and dark skinned people throughout", as you asserted. Could you point out where in the Bible contains such a message?
July 26, 2007 9:55 AM | Report Offensive Comment
IF you like to keep refering yourself to animals then by all means, if you do your research and studies most so called homosexual behavior by animals is out of pecking order and dominance. What reason does a female dog hump a male because she is horny? No she proveing her dominance over the male. Maybe when we can determine we did not come from animals we will quit acting like them and walk upright again in the truth.
July 26, 2007 8:56 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Anon,
You're parroting a 250+ year-old argument that is no longer operant. At least be original. John Wesley gave a "Sermon #38: A Caution Against Bigorty" in which he used the polemic: same-sex atrractions were "lusts against nature".
This is untrue. It was untrue then. It is now. 450 Animal species have been well documented for 200 years that express homosexual, bisexual and bimodal sexualities.
Read all about them in "Biological Exuberance: Animial Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" by Bruce Bagemihl, PhD, c1999.
It is ironic in the extreme that Wesley's sermon is resurrected in suppor of anti-gay rhetoric when it was a CAUTION AGAINST BIGOTRY. Grow up, please. Read a little too, and come with your own ideas will ya?
sw
July 25, 2007 5:18 PM | Report Offensive Comment
ANON: "The fact to the Point stands is it lust or Love. Because as we know, especially men we know sex without love,"
Straight people have sex without love as well. In my single days, I had a few hookups that were strictly lust.
"If two men live together without lust then it is not sex you seek but companionship same with a women."
If two people live together without sexual desire for one another, they are roommates, not lovers. If two gay men live together without desire for one another, it doesn't mean that they really want women. It simply means that they don't desire each other. Being gay doesn't mean that a man wants to sleep with every man he meets any more than being a straight woman means that I want to knock boots with every man I meet.
I had a straight male roommate years ago - he and I were not attracted to each other. We shared rent and utilities, not a bed. The fact that he did not desire me didn't mean that he didn't desire any other woman. The fact that I had no sexual interest in him did not mean that I was not attracted to men. We just didn't have any erotic chemistry - we were friends. He had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend.
July 25, 2007 10:47 AM | Report Offensive Comment
You still avoid the point of lust and love. Also if it was not in our ability to do all those things you say are actually un natural,Those do not conflict with the realm of creation, because I am sure if animals or other creatures where givin the choice they would use fire to warm themselves etc. The fact to the Point stands is it lust or Love. Because as we know, especially men we know sex without love, If two men live together without lust then it is not sex you seek but companionship same with a women. We forget we are responsible for ourselves and when we do something wrong we try to find a way to justify ourselves, and convince people it is ok.
July 25, 2007 10:16 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Anon:
The 'unnatural" argument really isn't valid. After all, we human beings do lots of things that are "unnatural". Things like:
Cooking food
Distilling alcohol
Rolling dried leaves in paper, igniting them, and sticking them in our mouths
Making fire
Making paper
Wearing clothing
Tanning leather and fur
Creating art
Driving
Written language
Drilling for and processing petroleum
Mining and processing minerals
I could go on for days, but I think you get the point. No other species does any of these things in the wild, and all are learned or invented behaviors - none are instinctive.
For gay men and lesbians, it IS instinctive to be attacted to a member of their own sex.
And please, enough with the sterotypes - not all lesbians are butch and not all gay men are effeminate. And even if they were, a gay man would not be attracted to a woman, no matter how "masculine" she might seem, nor would a lesbain be attracted to a man, no matter how "feminine" he might seem.
If that were the case, you could just as easily argue that a straight woman could be attracted to another woman if she were butch enough, or that a straight man could be attracted to another man if he were highly effiminate.
July 25, 2007 9:51 AM | Report Offensive Comment
We are intelligble, and anyway you look at it, it is un natural show me another creature that has procreated through time as same sex. Instead how about if a gay man is to feminine then why not seek a women whose is to masculine. Plus you have to ask yourself is it lust or love when you distinguish the two then you will know the truth. Sounds like a silly Idea but has it ever been tried. We need to right our wrongs before we can walk justly in the future.
July 24, 2007 2:47 PM | Report Offensive Comment
THC,
None of the gay men or lesbians I know consider themselves to have settled for less by having fallen in love with a person of their own gender, any more than I do by having fallen in love with a person of the opposite gender. They found their soulmate, as did I.
And while everyone chooses the individual(s) with whom they have sex, no one chooses what (or whom) they find attractive. I could choose to have sex with a woman, but it would be a hollow act, because I would not actually be attracted to her.
Orientation is in the attraction, not the action.
July 22, 2007 8:56 PM | Report Offensive Comment
How desperate you are to make this irrational plea, TCH.
You are wrong. Only gay men who can't admit they are gay make the claim that sexual identity is a choice.
It is not a choice. Submit *your* proof. The sceince is settled.
sw
July 22, 2007 7:02 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Its very sad, that a man can only find a man who can touch his e- spots. and same for a woman who cannot find a man. but has to settle for less. NO ONE IS BORN THAT WAY IT IS A POOR CHOICE THEY MAKE.
July 21, 2007 7:01 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Its very sad, that a man can only find a man who can touch his e- spots. and same for a woman who cannot find a man. but has to settle for less. NO ONE IS BORN THAT WAY IT IS A POOR CHOICE THEY MAKE.
July 21, 2007 6:59 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Its very sad, that a man can only find a man who can touch his e- spots. and same for a woman who cannot find a man. but has to settle for less. NO ONE IS BORN THAT WAY IT IS A POOR CHOICE THEY MAKE.
July 21, 2007 6:55 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Brent Humber:
My sexual orientation IS hard wired. Is yours mutable?
Why does it have to be hard wired into the brain for you to be willing to allow same-sex couples to marry?
There are plenty of factors that are not hard-wired that can affect the quality of a marriage that are not cause for a legal or church prohibition:
Religious preference - often couples with differing faiths find that it's a hard issue to resolve. But they are allowed to legally marry, and many churches will marry non-adherents.
Income disparity - if one person has a significantly higher income than the other, it sometimes causes friction. But there is no bank account audit required to legally marry, nor do any churches that I know of require that both members of a couple have similar incomes before agreeing to perform a wedding.
Parenting philosophies - my ex and I had VERY different ideas about how my daughter should be brought up. His refusal to honor my wishes was one of the things that led to our breakup. No court and no church requires that a couple have an agreed-upon parenting plan before being allowed to marry.
Anatomy? Pheh. If the couple is happy with their collection of parts, more power to them.
July 19, 2007 1:37 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Brent Humbler,
Read my posts. That day is here. Start reevaluating now. You have no excuse to procrastinate any longer.
It is conclusively shown to be so. Are you a man of your word?
sw
July 18, 2007 1:12 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Gay unions, Gay clergy, sorry I can't make that leap. If one day it is proven beyond a shadow of doubt these people are hard wired in the brain to act that way...well on that day I'll need to reevaluate.
July 17, 2007 3:44 PM | Report Offensive Comment
So many posts, I only read a few. Similar debate happening in Australia, I'm afraid. Efforts to legalise same sex marriages in some areas were vetoed by the Federal Government, when it was able.
For the record, male, hetero, married, two boys. Absolutely believe in complete equality of same sex couples on all levels, social and legal. I have no problems at all if either or both of my sons turn out to be gay, except for one thing.
They will have to endure the ignorance, intolerance and prejudice from homophobes, some of whom have expressed their opinions here.
The most astonishing quote, of many, that a skimmed through was from AH. He/she stated that, as a Christian, he is required to love everyone, even homosexuals (oh the sacrifice you make, sir/madam, how big of you). But, as a Christian, he/she is not required to tolerate them. Right. I see. As you beat the crap out of some gay bloke, or order them out of your house, or torment them for their lifestyle, or ban them from your church, that is all OK as long as you are all the time yelling at the top of your voice "But don't forget. I love you". Interesting argument.
In any case, I wonder how long mankind has to do something before it is considered natural? If Christians believe literally in the Bible, then they will consider this.
The Old Testement dates back many thousands of years, and yet the writers of that ancient text saw fit to include a reference to homosexuality in it - by way of condemnation, depending on how one interprets it.
Now, if we accept that the Old Testement was written from 4000 BCE as is sometimes claimed (not that I accept this claim) then it stands to reason that mankind has been practising homosexuality for at least 6000 years. Of course, we know nothing about pre-history, but one would imagine that civilised man didn't simply wake up one day and think "I wonder what that's like. I think I'll give it a go".
And then there is the race argument. The Bible condemns black and dark skinned people throughout, indeed far more than it villifies homosexuality. Now that commonsense has prevailed on that issue, and Christians have repudiated the previous belief that black were to be the servants of whites as interpreted by the Bible, one hopes that eventually Christians will see the absurdity or their opposition towards homosexuality.
July 12, 2007 1:57 AM | Report Offensive Comment
So many posts, I only read a few. Similar debate happening in Australia, I'm afraid. Efforts to legalise same sex marriages in some areas were vetoed by the Federal Government, when it was able.
For the record, male, hetero, married, two boys. Absolutely believe in complete equality of same sex couples on all levels, social and legal. I have no problems at all if either or both of my sons turn out to be gay, except for one thing.
They will have to endure the ignorance, intolerance and prejudice from homophobes, some of whom have expressed their opinions here.
The most astonishing quote, of many, that a skimmed through was from AH. He/she stated that, as a Christian, he is required to love everyone, even homosexuals (oh the sacrifice you make, sir/madam, how big of you). But, as a Christian, he/she is not required to tolerate them. Right. I see. As you beat the crap out of some gay bloke, or order them out of your house, or torment them for their lifestyle, or ban them from your church, that is all OK as long as you are all the time yelling at the top of your voice "But don't forget. I love you". Interesting argument.
In any case, I wonder how long mankind has to do something before it is considered natural? If Christians believe literally in the Bible, then they will consider this.
The Old Testement dates back many thousands of years, and yet the writers of that ancient text saw fit to include a reference to homosexuality in it - by way of condemnation, depending on how one interprets it.
Now, if we accept that the Old Testement was written from 4000 BCE as is sometimes claimed (not that I accept this claim) then it stands to reason that mankind has been practising homosexuality for at least 6000 years. Of course, we know nothing about pre-history, but one would imagine that civilised man didn't simply wake up one day and think "I wonder what that's like. I think I'll give it a go".
And then there is the race argument. The Bible condemns black and dark skinned people throughout, indeed far more than it villifies homosexuality. Now that commonsense has prevailed on that issue, and Christians have repudiated the previous belief that black were to be the servants of whites as interpreted by the Bible, one hopes that eventually Christians will see the absurdity or their opposition towards homosexuality.
July 12, 2007 1:54 AM | Report Offensive Comment
SW:
Thanks. And here I was thinking I was too old to blush....
July 11, 2007 5:21 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Lepidopteryx?
I love reading your posts. You have an awesome mind. Thanks for writing here. You inspire me.
sw
July 11, 2007 4:58 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Ethan?
Exactly. Well stated. Concise. To the point and conclusive. Nicely done. Thanks.
July 11, 2007 4:52 PM | Report Offensive Comment
AH: **If homosexuality was a correct way of life, we would not be here today.**
One could say the same thing about celibacy. Do you contend that everyone who has the ability to generate progeny has the obligation to do so? What about those who are sterile by choice? Do you oppose their right to marry as well?
**So why should we encourage or "tolerate" this behavior? All it will lead to is the destruction of the human race.**
FYI, gay men and lesbians DO reproduce. Gay men have been sperm donors and lesbians have gotten pregnant using the same reproductive technologies employed by infertile heterosexual couples. Not to mention the gay men and lesbians who enter into heterosexual marriages and have children trying to "go straight."
**I don't care what science or studies that you throw into this, no matter that male or female animals hang out with the same sex, that has no relation to them being homosexual.**
We're not talking about just hanging out- we're talking about sexual behavior.
**It is like saying that little Johnny has invited his ten best friends over for his birthday party. They are all boys. Does that make him gay? NO.**
It does if he's sexually attracted to them.
**We have already found that if homosexuality was right, we would not be here, but since we are here, that makes homosexuality the wrong lifestyle.**
Your ability to make a perfect circle without the use of a compass is truly astounding.
**the institution of the family, the traditional family is the correct way of life, shown and proven through thousands of years of life on Earth.**
Actually, if you look at other cultures, the nuclear family (mom, dad, 2.5 kinds, and a cocker spaniel) is one of many widely varying family structures. All have their advantages and their disadvantages, There is no single "correct way of life." One size does not fit all.
**Now if you bring religion into it, the Christian bible clearly defies and denounces homosexuality.**
I'm neither Christian nor Jewish, therefore the rules set forth in the Bible don't apply to me.
**Many try to refute this argument by saying that homosexuals are born the way that they are. No they choose it.**
If homosexuality is a chosen lifestyle, then heterosexuality must be as well. I'm going to assume you are a straight male (feel free to correct me if I am mistaken). When did you choose to be attracted to girls? Note that I did not ask when you chose to have sex - I asked whrn did you decide what gender you would be attracted to.
**When you question whether homosexuality should be tolerated or not, if you are a Christian, you are not questioning the issue itself, you are questioning YOUR FAITH, and in what you believe.**
My religion accepts homosexuality as one of many points on the sexual spectrum. My church performs same-sex weddings, and we have several married gay and lesbian couples in our congregation.
July 11, 2007 3:58 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Y'all have no idea how idiotic it is to read anti-gay comments based on religion. Religion has NOTHING to do with it, it's all a matter of biology. Do you think for a single nano-second that if any omnipotent being had anything against gay people they'd still exist? What kind of omnipotent being do you worship anyway? You think WAY too much of your selves and attach your beliefs to a being you create to validate what you want to believe. Ranting against love, you wonder why the world is in the state it is. Isn't it time you gave up your battle against rational reason, fairness, and human justice? Crawl out from under your rocks and celebrate the evolved brain your creator gave you!
July 11, 2007 3:39 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Oh, and Ah, YOU proved in your post the fact that G-d did create gay persons and animals as well as straight, and the fact that we all have been here for many millions of years and are still here now. G-d does see that it was and is good.
Why exactly do you rebel against what G-d has wrought? It's the glaring illogic that fascinates me so.
What is your agenda?
sw
July 11, 2007 1:28 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Ah,
No one "chooses" their sexual identity. That is the flaw in your argument. The whole of your thesis is dependent upon it. It is a false premise. Therefore, your entire thesis is false.
Now, what will you do? Admit your error? Or, require fidelity to untruths as the standard for your beliefs? I hold to the truth. Straight persons are born straight. Gay persons are born gay. You are requiring the invalidation of G-d-created human beings as sacrificial offereings before G-d usurping the Grace of Christ.
You are also ignorant of Calvin J. Roetzel's scholarship on the Apostle Paul/Saul of Tarsus. Read his books to correct your many deficiencies.
This makes no sense at all. Don't you see this?
As Bitner said, it makes no difference to heterosexual couples for homosexual couples to marry -- in fact, it strengthens both kinds of couples. That is now a fact in Massachusetts. What are you really affraid of? I really want to know.
sw
July 11, 2007 1:16 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Ah,
Before quoting Holzinger's 1991 "paper" which is neither scientifically nor academically competent, you should read the exchange between David and myself posted here.
You also employed the discredited 2,200 year old Greko-Latin Complementarian argument. Your anti-gay stance is not supported.
You are left with religious bias that is tautological and fallacious. "Animal" urges? You mean like the exact same animal urges you have? Come on, get serious. This is ridiculous.
Christianity has to mean something more important than gay-bashing. It has to.
Or it will die of its own growing irrelevancy.
sw
July 11, 2007 12:55 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I am heterosexual. I am married. We have 5 children. My marriage will not be effected in the least by allowing two people of the same sex marry. Not in the least. Let them marry, in a church willing to perform the ceremony, or in the courthouse. They are not harming us by being in a monogamous, committed relationship.
July 10, 2007 5:47 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Why Homosexuality is not an accepted way of life in the Christian religion (and should not be):
- If homosexuality was a correct way of life, we would not be here today. It is as simple as saying that the parts do not fit. It is common sense, males and males or females and females can not reproduce, and therefore that lifestyle would have led the human race into extinction, if it would have been tolerated.
- So why should we encourage or "tolerate" this behavior? All it will lead to is the destruction of the human race.
- The foundation of humanity has continued through the 5000=years (scientifically) on the basis of heterosexuality. It can not be denied that no matter what God or what way this Earth was created, heterosexuality, has sustained and continued life on earth for ALL SPECIES.
-this leads to my second point,
-I don't care what science or studies that you throw into this, no matter that male or female animals hang out with the same sex, that has no relation to them being homosexual. It is like saying that little Johnny has invited his ten best friends over for his birthday party. They are all boys. Does that make him gay? NO.
-and another of my questions is, why on Earth are you comparing humans to animals. The defining factor that makes the human race superior to all races, is the fact that we humans know the difference from wrong and right. Animals do not. You can not compare humans, (that is moral and decent humans) to animals, because animals are stupid. Humans are not animals, we are humans which is why we have been the strongest and smartest form of life on the planet.
Homosexuals are acting like animals in the sense that they only listen to their body’s sexual impulses, totally ignoring what is right from wrong. We have already found that if homosexuality was right, we would not be here, but since we are here, that makes homosexuality the wrong lifestyle.
-the institution of the family, the traditional family is the correct way of life, shown and proven through thousands of years of life on Earth.
Now if you bring religion into it, the Christian bible clearly defies and denounces homosexuality. Throughout the bible, many references are made to sexual immorality and homosexual prostitutes, as being wrong and that these people will not inherit the kingdom of God, Heaven. Read 1st corinthians: 6, and Tell me that what I just said is not true.
Many people refute this fact, saying that aren't Christians supposed to love all people and accept all people?
The answer is yes. As a Christian, it is our duty to love all, including homosexuals. But, that does not mean that as Christians we should tolerate their lifestyle. As Christians, we are supposed to help these people. As we know, from clear and precise scripture, homosexuals will not go to heaven, so it is our job to help them to pursue a healthy lifestyle: heterosexuality. That is where the love and forgiveness of Christ comes into play, he loves all people, even if they sin and turn from his way, but he does not forgive those who do not try to be forgiven, those who do not try to change. That is the Christian mission in the lifestyle of homosexuality, to help homosexuals to change.
-For example: as a Christian, I can have a gay friend, a friend I dearly cherish, but as a Christian, it is my duty to extend the love and forgiveness of God, and try to help my gay friend to change. You can love a gay or lesbian as a human, a person, but you cannot accept their lifestyle.
Many try to refute this argument by saying that homosexuals are born the way that they are. No they choose it. If you, as a Christian, accept homosexuality, and believe that homosexuals are born that way, then you are being a hypocrite. Why would your loving God, who according to your religion, loves everyone and everything, who, as you believe created the universe and everything in it, say that homosexuality is wrong and denounce it, and then create homosexuals? Are you saying that God, your God, who created everything, did not know what he created? So he didn't know that he created homosexuals, yet says that their lifestyle is sinful? You are confusing your own faith. Homosexuals are not born gay, if you are a Christian, you can not believe that they are, because why would God make homosexuals and say that their way of life is wrong? He wouldn't because he loves all of his creation. He just gives his creation free will, and that is why homosexuals choose to be gay.
-And if you want to bring science into it, there is no clear scientific evidence that declares the cause of homosexuality in humans or animals.
These are all reasons why gay unions or homosexuality in general is not okay. This is not a political issue; it is a moral issue, and issue of right or wrong. When you question whether homosexuality should be tolerated or not, if you are a Christian, you are not questioning the issue itself, you are questioning YOUR FAITH, and in what you believe. They question you need to ask yourselves is what is right? And very clearly, for a Christian: the bible declares homosexuality wrong, as a member of another faith: I'm sure there is some piece of data in your books denying homosexuality, and for atheists or people who don't follow a common or specific religion: common sense shows the truth and living proof of life.
Thank You
July 10, 2007 5:41 PM | Report Offensive Comment
m263k
July 7, 2007 11:18 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Ahhhh ... *blush* ... you are most welcome and truly the pleasure is all mine because what we did here is truly great. I am honored.
Hey David,
Do me a favor and try to talk to W. Irby. Get her to understand a little better, will you try? My apologies transfer to her too.
I have a reading assignemnt for you and ME!!! That'll come as a shocker won't it? A book "I" haven't read? Ha-ha. I just found out about a new Joan Roughgarden book that came out last year.
"Evolution and Christian Faith: What Jesus and Darwin have in Common--Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist" c2006
With a title like that how can we not be intrigued!? I'm gonna find it. Mabe we could compare insights? I would love that.
Here's couple of good articles about her work too that I think would help you understand your questions better.
http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/the_gay_animal_kingdom.php
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9C01EED71E3FF934A25753C1A9669C8B63
Thanks again, G-d bless,
sw
July 6, 2007 4:27 PM | Report Offensive Comment
SW,
Your gonna make a grown man cry! I totally agree with you, I wish the same as far as our conversation goes. I wish it could be this way for all people no matter their differences. I've been on this post for quite some time. I really have no idea why, but I can say I have learned a lot...from you, from atheists, mormons, etc. I think this is why I keep coming back. Because of the knowledge I have obtained from different points of view.
When I first starting reading posts on here, I was so offended. I couldn't believe atheists considered Christians illogical, unreasonable, believers in fairy tales, etc. It was offensive at the time. Now I understand why they think these things. I know I could never change their minds or their views about faith or anything, but what I have learned to do is to help them understand that no matter our differences, we need to keep a respectful and honest tone. Unfortunately that's not the case with everyone on here. And of course when they attacked, I attacked back. I learned to change my tactics a little. Don't attack back. I think forums like this tend to divide people. We all think we're right, when all of us are really wrong. I see a lot of veterans to this post that are finally realizing the same thing as I am. Why use this forum to divide ourselves when we could unite ourselves in our differences? I think you and I SW have shown how it should be. How can it get any better than two people who differ on major life issues that can come together with respect and love. Isn't that what God is all about?
So of course I will continue to post my opinions on the several topics on this forum, but what I continue to learn is HOW to post them. I've learned to accept peoples differences as the norm in society and realize that no matter what these differences will always be a part of society and no one can change that. I guess I'll keep praying that we can all accept one another as people regardless of accepting one anothers beliefs.
Have a great day SW. It's been quite a pleasure chatting with you. You know it's funny. As much dialogue as I've put in with certain people here, I haven't come away with as much of a learning experience as the short dialogue that I've had with you. Thanks for that.
God bless
July 6, 2007 2:39 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Oh, David, I'm sorry I told you you were gay because you were forcefully expressing your views. I didn't mean it. I was so frustrated and angry with you and took it out on you. I regret saying it. It doesn't matter who we are. All that matters is that we love and respect each other. Thanks for forgiving me -- both ways, huh?!
sw
July 6, 2007 11:55 AM | Report Offensive Comment
David,
The very best thing you have said in all of your posts I have read so far is:
"I have a lot to learn."
ME TOO!!! I always tell my friends and family that the day I stop learning is the day I die. I believe this with all my soul. Keep learning and I promise to do the same. You taught me a lot. I really appreciate that you sent your love to my family as well as me. Sometimes I get so sad because many Christian people seem to have forgotten that every gay person has a mother and father and family. Now I know a Chrsitian I might not agree with who does know it and cares too. That's a great thing.
Thanks,
sw
July 6, 2007 11:29 AM | Report Offensive Comment
David,
This is truly remarkable. You made me cry. That was beautiful; what you wrote I mean.
If only we could export this conversation our to the greater country. You are absolutely right. I am stimiulus-respondent to the words "homosexual" and "sin". I do only perceive it as an attack upon my being. Just as I asked you to step back and take a more reasoned approach to my views I was just as resistant to stepping back and taking a more reasoned approach to yours. I felt yours was not reasonable and only mine was. I was doing precisely what I accused you of doing. I wanted you to stop what you were thinking when I wouldn't stop what I was thinking in return. Pretty hypocritical of ME. I see it now.
We really could be frineds. You have come along way and so have I. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will try harder to listen with as much love and care as you ask.
You do the same, please.
Thank you and G-d bless you too,
sw
July 6, 2007 11:00 AM | Report Offensive Comment
m342k
July 6, 2007 5:58 AM | Report Offensive Comment
m423k
July 6, 2007 3:16 AM | Report Offensive Comment
SW,
Now that was a wonderful response.
I think your right about us coming to an empasse. I think what we are trying to establish here is the legalistic view in God's eyes as homosexuality being a sin or not. I see it one way, and you see it the other. You know what's great about that is that no matter our differences we can still have a respectful and quite loving conversation. I appreciate that.
I do want to clarify, that even though we have established our beliefs and the differences they have, I do want to let you know that I in no way judge you or consider you less of a human than any other. We are equals in God's eyes. We all have our shortcomings and will face judgement one time or another. Of course I leave that up to God to decide who's righteous and who's not. I think I have come a long way in giving the love and respect to all people who were made in God's image and I thank you for the kind words about that.
I guess to conclude this I should say I'm glad I came back to talk to you. At first I thought you just hated all people who went against your beliefs. I see different now. I guess we got off on the wrong foot. But I'm glad I made a new friend. If I could give you any word of advice it would be this. Please do not consider any Christian that comes to you and says homosexuality is a sin to be a bigot. It is obviously evident that the Bible establishes a strong case against homosexuality even though I know you see it differently. I would hope that you could give them the benefit of disagreeing with you (as I have) but still find the love that Christ intended for us to give one another. I in turn will also learn to be more patient and sensitive to the subject of homosexuality upon those I encounter on this subject. I have a lot to learn. Thank you so much for your time SW. I wish you the best and will keep you in my prayers. Much love to you and your family.
God bless
July 5, 2007 11:23 PM | Report Offensive Comment
SW,
Now that was a wonderful response.
I think your right about us coming to an empasse. I think what we are trying to establish here is the legalistic view in God's eyes as homosexuality being a sin or not. I see it one way, and you see it the other. You know what's great about that is that no matter our differences we can still have a respectful and quite loving conversation. I appreciate that.
I do want to clarify, that even though we have established our beliefs and the differences they have, I do want to let you know that I in no way judge you or consider you less of a human than any other. We are equals in God's eyes. We all have our shortcomings and will face judgement one time or another. Of course I leave that up to God to decide who's righteous and who's not. I think I have come a long way in giving the love and respect to all people who were made in God's image and I thank you for the kind words about that.
I guess to conclude this I should say I'm glad I came back to talk to you. At first I thought you just hated all people who went against your beliefs. I see different now. I guess we got off on the wrong foot. But I'm glad I made a new friend. If I could give you any word of advice it would be this. Please do not consider any Christian that comes to you and says homosexuality is a sin to be a bigot. It is obviously evident that the Bible establishes a strong case against homosexuality even though I know you see it differently. I would hope that you could give them the benefit of disagreeing with you (as I have) but still find the love that Christ intended for us to give one another. I in turn will also learn to be more patient and sensitive to the subject of homosexuality upon those I encounter on this subject. I have a lot to learn. Thank you so much for your time SW. I wish you the best and will keep you in my prayers. Much love to you and your family.
God bless
July 5, 2007 11:21 PM | Report Offensive Comment
David,
I lived in the South Bay for five years. You might of have seen me holding hands with my boyfriend! HA!
Let's get some of my views staight between us. I do not believe that both Leviticus verses are gay-affirming. Far from it. But what was meant 2,500 years ago to that Jewish society post-Babylonian Exile is lost to us as Christians today. You cannot honestly say with certainity it applies to gay persons today. Yet, you say, yes. I say, no. We are at an empasse.
The three Pauline verses -- one is fraudulently Pauline, and the other two are Pauline political statemnts, not moral ethical statements. Gay persons are not being talked about here. Read Roetzel. Paul's thorn is never overtly specified, only obliquely referenced. This alone attests to Paul's shame in even discussing it. The very shame I lived through in my teen years and twenties. I know this kind of shame, David. Paul's words of self-immolation before G-d are hauntingly resonant for me.
The Sodom and Gomorrah story is about rape both attemtped homosexual & heterosexual rape -- not about gay persons.
You have come a long way, David. I acknowledge you for the progress you have made. I am proud of you. It is very good.
Here's what I ask of you. In Christ, let go of condemning gay persons. In your eyes, its a sin. Fine. But, that doesn't get you off the hook in the matter of giving up forever in Christ judging that sin and those who sin in your eyes by being gay. In Christ you are to love the sinner the very same as the righteous. It makes no difference that gay persons are sinners by your view as your have attested. In Christ you are called to forgive the sinner and love him or her as righteous regardless of whether or not they continue to sin in your eyes. That is between they and their G-d, NOT you and them. Your treatment of other sinners in your eyes is between you and your G-d. And Jesus is attributed to have said love even the sinner the same as the righteous for no one but G-d can tell the difference. So, in Christ G-d looks with sorrow and pity upon your attempt to usurp G-d's purview arrogantly. You are not to do this.
So, let's suppose the Great Commandment didn't exist, in Christ-like love forgiveness still does, no matter what. Be a great Christian and show this generosity of heart. Gay persons are born the way G-d made them. Can you claim to hate what G-d has wrought? I'm not talking about whether you accept that gay persons are born gay -- I'm talking about gay persons who were born human, regardless of your judgments about their sexual identity. Humans with the life G-d gave them. Who are you to cut off what G-d has wrought? This is haughty, David. Just as those long-ago Jewish people didn't eat unclean foods because they didn't understand the effects of bacterial infesction so it was an abomination, being outwardly different in appearance would confuse which were Jews and which were Gentiles they didn't understand that all humans are G-d's children so it was an abomination, men raping men as spoils of war and emmasculating insult they didn't understand that some men were different in their love so it was abomination -- it is not so today.
That's the point. We understand far more today than they did then. You understand far more now than your did several years ago as you attest.
Don't confuse my words as the arrogance of modernity. I am speaking of thoughtful introsepction, reflection and study. And changing ones view when overwhelming evidence warrants and Christ-like charity demands.
Do you see?
sw
July 5, 2007 9:12 PM | Report Offensive Comment
SW,
I do appreciate your apology. And of course apology accepted. I tried initially to maintain a respectful dialogue with you and I hope that we could do so furthermore. If for any reason my comments in the past or what I may post in the future offend you, then I am truly sorry. I know sexuality is a sensitive subject and therefore should be treated that way. There are two things I would like to share with you. First, a little bit about me.
Before I studied the Bible or accepted Christ, I hated homosexuals. I thought they were disgusting, unnatural, and beneath me. Of course that is far from a Christian attitude but like I said I wasn't a Christian at the time. I live about 30 miles from san francisco, so you know that I am exposed to a large amount of homosexual persons. Of course before my Christian life, I chose to call homosexuals all the disrespectful, hate mongering names. I enjoyed going to s.f. on occasion and saw many gay couples and of course first thing that pops up in my mind is the "f" word. I'm ashamed of how I acted in the past. In fact I was beneath them. I know this now. Now that I know the Lord, I look at gays as equivolent to any other human being. I want you to know this because you assumed before that I hated gays. I did at one point in my life. But it is because I am now a Christian that I love them all. It is Christ that brought me to realize how to love all people. Because now I know that we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God. But here is where we differ.
You claim that the Bible accepts homosexuality as I do not claim that. I do see homosexuality as a sin just like any other sin. If you live as a gay person and I live continually lying to people, then we are both sinners and both deserving of God's judgement. But I cannot justify myself in saying that it is o.k to lie. Either can it be justified to say it is o.k to have homosexual relations. They are both sins and to God no sin is greater than another because if you break one law you are a lawbreaker. So here's the great part. Jesus died for our sins. All we need is faith to recieve His grace. Eph 2:8-9. With faith we recieve the Holy Spirit that indwells in us. And through the Spirit we regenerate. Titus 3:5. Meaning we turn from sin. The Holy Spirit convicts us of these sins. John 16:9,14. So if I lie, I know realize that I am lying and can find no way to justify that lie. I know I sinned.
My point is that homosexuality cannot be justified as not being a sinful act. I have read your other posts and they are quite assumptuous on the passages of homosexuality in the Bible. You claimed that Paul was gay. You claim that homosexuality as an abomination to God is not true. But it's right there in the Bible. I have to believe what God says not man no matter how unpopular it may be in current society to believe these things. You mention how homosexuality is in the animal world as well. I wouldn't disagree with that. I've seen certain studies on that. So it is "natural" to be homosexual because animals do it as well? But it is "natural" to be a sinner as well. There are certain species of animals that eat each other as well. So if we accept homosexuality based on the animal kingdom, then shouldn't we allow cannibalism in the human kingdom? I would hope not. I hope I made some valid points. And I do hope that you can forgive me if these are offensive in any way. You have a great evening SW. Take care.
God bless
July 5, 2007 8:18 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Homesower,
Now you are reaching. I think you know this. Most of what you posted deserves no response from me for two reasons. One, Lepidopteryx did a much better job than I would have. [Thanks for getting my back, L.] Two, it would waste my valuable time to repeat anything L. says.
I am not worried about you being attracted to your neighbor's "wife" but your neighbor -- the husband. Of course it is immoral to have a sex with a married man behind his wife's back -- the fact that it would be with another MAN is another issue entirely for the husband that HE ought to discuss with her, but the fact of two consenting single adults having sex the bible is at best ambiguous on this. Read The Song of Songs for yourself -- it's about beautiful, erotic love and intimacy between two unmarried consenting adults. L. said it beautifully and the bible which you hold so dearly affirms his statement.
I am strongly in favor of gay guys and gals marrying to promote monogamous healthy stable relationships. This is G-dly and holy.
Chronic promiscuity is jsut one of many criitcisms thrown disingenuously in gays' faces. It's hypocritical in the extreme. Letting them marry solves this, does it not?
H., repression of your true self will only cause harmful damage to you. Think about our conversation seriously. Please.
sw
July 5, 2007 7:17 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Anon,
You should go back and reread my responses regarding the genetic/endocrinological issues.
You are an incompetent doctor if you truly think so narrowly. Dr. Roughgarden has a great deal to say about quacks such as you. Read "Evolution's Rainbow" to find out why. I am medically trained as well.
sw
July 5, 2007 6:55 PM | Report Offensive Comment
David,
I have been harsh to you -- too harsh now that I have read your other posts on other threads. Will you forgive me being abusive towards you? I hope so. I am sorry for it. May we start anew? Treat me with the repsect I deserve and have earned in deep scholarly study and we may have a basis for a productive exchange.
I want to make sure I get this right. You said:
----------------------
David :
So if you are born gay does that mean you have a genetic problem? Or is it a disease? I'm just wondering because naturally when you look at a woman and man, they fit together. Doesn't creation seem to indicate that man and woman were naturally supposed to be together. Not man and man, or woman and woman? That seems unnatural. I'm wondering from your perspective SW if you think being "born gay" is a genetic malfuntion?
Thanks
July 4, 2007 9:57 PM
---------------------------
This is a fair question.
It's the perspective that is skewed. I am not attacking you or berating you. I am asking you to see this issue outside yourself and your perspective and do what it is attributed to Jesus: That if someone asks you to walk a mile, walk it and another also -- do not presume to judge another's life until you have walked a full day in their sandals.
I want you to google Dr. Jeffrey Jensen's 1997 Sunstone paper, "We See What We Believe: The Heterosexualization of Gay Men and Lesbians in the LDS Church." You do not have to be Mormon to get the point of this paper. It is an important paper for you to undertand how deeply you are heterosexist and how slavishly derivative your question is.
With the book, "Born Gay," I have two more for you. "Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" by Dr. Bruce Bagemihl, c1999 & "Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People" by Dr. Joan Roughgarden, c2004.
Read them if you are truly interested in an honest answer to your question.
Here's the short version. No. Sexual identities are as varied as the rainbow. There is nothing pathological at all. There is nothing wrong or negative at all. Go back several posts to my argument with Debbie J. I gave her several excerpts from Bagemihl's book.
Only Homo religicus expresses severe negativity towards homosexuality or bisexuality. That's a joke but not the negativity. In nature no species, except one, expresses negativity towards alternate expressions of sexual attraction. That's why naturalists and field biologists were so confused about what they were actually seeing for 200 years.
The most compelling proof is this. If it is injurious to the species then why is it not only prevalent but resistant to exclusion? Anthropologists have documented "feminized" male/male remains that go back 10,000 years ago. Gay persons have been around as long as humans BUT more importantly it shows up in many other species.
It is not a genetic disorder or any kind of "disorder". The American Psychiatric & American Psychological Assocations' position statments have removed homoseuxality as a "disorder" since 1973. This is not a disorder.
It's just people who are little different from you. That's all.
BTW, Holsinger's 1991 "paper" is a piece of trash that any competent community college GE course instructor would have graded "F" and thrown out for a severely biased perspective destroying objectivity, narrowly selective citations, speciously predetermined conclusions and incompetent research. The pseudo-complementarian argument is false and not supported in competent biologic research.
sw
July 5, 2007 6:43 PM | Report Offensive Comment
You are ignorant. It is conclusively proven. Read "Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation" by Dr.'s Glenn Wilson & Qazi Rahman. c2005. All the scientific support and criticism is presented. Everyone is born with the sexual identity they have. The "nurture" arguments supporting "choice" are roundly refuted by hard, cconcrete evidence and irrefutable logic.
-----------------------
Oh my goodness.
Your not born gay. You can say it all you want but until its clinically proven, sorry. Just isn't true. You may want to be for whatever insane reason but dont use the excuse "im born this way".
My ass.
Show me the proof.
There is not a *homosexual* gene in people.
There is however an instinct that tells people they have to reproduce.
Which means obviously you have to be with the opposite sex.
I know some of you people will say they could get sperm donated, adoption, blah blah blah. But that should be only used if the man or woman is for some reason unable to reproduce.
Not for gay's to have.
I mean children with homosexual parents are 10 times likely to grow up with problems.
Its wrong. Plain and simple.
--------------------------------
You are wrong, plain and simple. Gay people are born gay, also, plain and simple. Your derivative anti-gay stance is fallaciously "choice" depentent. There is no choice in persons' sexual identity except the choice to tell the truth or lie.
sw
July 5, 2007 5:54 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Homesower: **So in your opinion gay sex is okay as long as you are not heterosexual?**
Any sex is okay as long as it's between consenting adults.
**So someone who is bi can enjoy neither, or does he get to pick and choose?**
You misuderstand bisexuality. Most bisexuals, while being attracted to both sexes, are more strongly attracted to one or the other. Just as heterosexuality does not mean wanting to bed every person of the opposite sex you meet, bisexuality does not mean wanting to bed everyone you meet.
**I am not really familiar with heterosexuals having homosexual sex, but I would certainly agree that it would be sin.**
It happens occasionally, usually out of curiosity. And homosexuals having heterosexual sex happens a lot more often, usually as a result of being closeted.
**How about sex in general? If I desire my neighbor's wife should I be able to enjoy her sexually?**
That depends on your neighbor and his wife's views on extra-marital sex. If they agree that it's ok for either of them to have other partners, then it's fine. But if they have promised each other monogamy, then it's wrong.
**Is it only monogamous sex that is not a sin?**
Only non-consensual sex is a sin.
**I'll share a little secret with you. The homosexual community is not monogamous. Randy as rabbits.**
That's going to come as big surprise to the numerous gay married couples I know.
**I'll admit I can't speak for all, and my insight is especially weak with regards to lesbians, but fidelity is not a virtue that most of them would recognize.**
Your insight is indeed weak. In fact, it's worse than weak - it's blind.
July 5, 2007 10:26 AM | Report Offensive Comment
So if you are born gay does that mean you have a genetic problem? Or is it a disease? I'm just wondering because naturally when you look at a woman and man, they fit together. Doesn't creation seem to indicate that man and woman were naturally supposed to be together. Not man and man, or woman and woman? That seems unnatural. I'm wondering from your perspective SW if you think being "born gay" is a genetic malfuntion?
Thanks
July 4, 2007 9:57 PM | Report Offensive Comment
To SW:
I accidentally posted without adding my name. My apologies.
I agree that sexual identity is only a part of who you are.
As for not being gay "fully" that can be taken a number of ways. I choose not to be because I cannot be so and be obedient to Christ. "Be excellent in what is good, be innocent of evil". I have already delved too deep in what is evil, should I delve further? It would profit me nothing.
So in your opinion gay sex is okay as long as you are not heterosexual? So someone who is bi can enjoy neither, or does he get to pick and choose? I am not really familiar with heterosexuals having homosexual sex, but I would certainly agree that it would be sin.
How about sex in general? If I desire my neighbor's wife should I be able to enjoy her sexually? Is it only monogamous sex that is not a sin? I'll share a little secret with you. The homosexual community is not monogamous. Randy as rabbits. I'll admit I can't speak for all, and my insight is especially weak with regards to lesbians, but fidelity is not a virtue that most of them would recognize.
You can rationalize any sin away. We usually start with our favorites. In the end its still sin.
July 4, 2007 11:26 AM | Report Offensive Comment
I agree that sexual identity is only a part of who you are.
As for not being gay "fully" that can be taken a number of ways. I choose not to be because I cannot be so and be obedient to Christ. "Be excellent in what is good, be innocent of evil". I have already delved too deep in what is evil, should I delve further? It would profit me nothing.
So in your opinion gay sex is okay as long as you are not heterosexual? So someone who is bi can enjoy neither, or does he get to pick and choose? I am not really familiar with heterosexuals having homosexual sex, but I would certainly agree that it would be sin.
How about sex in general? If I desire my neighbor's wife should I be able to enjoy her sexually? Is it only monogamous sex that is not a sin? I'll share a little secret with you. The homosexual community is not monogamous. Randy as rabbits. I'll admit I can't speak for all, and my insight is especially weak with regards to lesbians, but fidelity is not a virtue that most of them would recognize.
You can rationalize any sin away. We usually start with our favorites. In the end its still sin.
July 4, 2007 11:23 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Oh and btw
I am dr. so I do know already there is no gene for homosexuals.
It is impossible to be born "gay"
July 4, 2007 12:49 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Oh my goodness.
Your not born gay. You can say it all you want but until its clinically proven, sorry. Just isn't true. You may want to be for whatever insane reason but dont use the excuse "im born this way".
My ass.
Show me the proof.
There is not a *homosexual* gene in people.
There is however an instinct that tells people they have to reproduce.
Which means obviously you have to be with the opposite sex.
I know some of you people will say they could get sperm donated, adoption, blah blah blah. But that should be only used if the man or woman is for some reason unable to reproduce.
Not for gay's to have.
I mean children with homosexual parents are 10 times likely to grow up with problems.
Its wrong. Plain and simple.
July 4, 2007 12:44 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Yes, Homesower, but you can't be gay -- fully -- and be Christian by your own admission so your statement is false. Are you married to a wife with children as your chosen moniker implies? Or single, doomed to lonliness forever?
These are the options under your theology.
The former is a lie and passionless by your own admission. The latter is inhuman and proven scientifically to be emotionally, psychologically and physically abusive and injurious.
Your view is by your own admission skewed. It breaks my heart. I feel so very sad for you.
sw
July 3, 2007 2:17 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Homesower,
The equation that
being born gay + biblical infallible authority = sin
is the faulty reasoning. You accept that you are gay yet you also condemn yourself of being sinful becasue of your being.
I am saying that being gay is not sinful by definition. How you reconcile your being is your business but don't make your business my business for me. I do not rationalize sin away. I look deeply at what sin is. The literal meaning of the Greek word for sin is to miss the mark -- nothing else. If you are being other than your authentic being then you miss the mark -- this is the essential nature of inauthenticity.
The argument is that gay persons are only their sexual identity. This is a lie. You are so much more than that. You are a universe of possiblity that is good and worthy and the matter of your sexual identity is a tiny PART of you, not the whole of you. This is the fraud of the churches prepetrated against gay persons. Who you are attracted too is not the whole of you. It is a small -- though not insignicant -- part of who you are.
Here's the problem as I see it. You and a great many others -- you are not alone -- erroneous conflate the word abomination with the notion of sin. This a big problem. They are not interchangeable words. When it is attributed to Jesus that we are thrown to be sinful it is not congruent that we are thrown to be abonimable.
This is the problem as I see it. To be abominable is something else entirely. The Leviticus verses are referring to heterosexual men who abuse other men, it is not talking about gay persons who are being themselves authentically as they were born. You are expressing a self-referential conclusion -- that you universally externalize -- which is derivative from patriarchal sexism, heterosexism and homophobia.
How do I know this? Because it is exactly what I did and moved beyond. I have been there -- I know of where I speak from direct experience.
As long as the lie that people -- whose being is unalterable -- are convenced that their being is sinful and therefore alterable, there is no room for authenticity or even some level of becoming soemwhat authentic about their essential inauthenticity.
All of THAT is sin -- not being gay and honest about it.
A Wesleyan does know who Jesus was. I don't understand your statement. Did you read my post about Wesleyan grace, the quadrilateral and salvation? Go back and find it.
I do have a sharp pen. This in no way means I love you any less or not at all. It means I love you so much and have such high regard for you that I will treat you as a fully capable adult who can take the heat -- rest assured that I can too.
We can no longer appeal to a Christianity of yesterday that is nonsensical in its embedment in ancient obsolete language and theological forms. We must appeal to a Christianity of today in this age. It's very hard work. It is easy to contort ones mind into pretzels to maintain an anachronistic theology. It is difficult to forge an understanding for our time consistent with reality as we know it now and the truths lying underneath -- even beyond -- the words from 2,000-3,000 years ago.
The first approach is inauthentic. The second is an attempt at forging some level of authenticity about the inauthentic approach. Personal integrity comes into play in concrete terms -- will I or won't I? Am I wed to the pursuit of the truth?
The process of becoming authentic about our religious inauthenticity naturally evolves new authentic religious experiences -- that's what reformation is.
It's a work in progress never to be completed, always engaging til the end of time beyond my -- and your -- tiny span of years. That's the kind of game I like playing. Arguing about persons' essential sexual being and its "sinfulness" is a PUNY zero-sum-game. It's a waste of valuable energy. Notice how much energy is wasted here ...
There's another basic problem drivng the energy quotient on this issue. Can you guess what it is? Look deeply inside yourself ...
sw
July 3, 2007 1:50 PM | Report Offensive Comment
To SW:
I did not mean to impugn your belief in Christ, rather to provide an understanding of my viewpoint, as a good many posters are not Christian. Though frankly, having not read all of your posts I was not entirely sure of your place. I have known many Wesleyans who haven't a clue who Jesus is, having been raised a Methodist myself. Certainly your interpretation of the Gospel is not your traditional Wesleyan understanding.
You have a sharp pen, but I am sure there is love behind your words. Let me respond to one comment you made "You seem to be saying that being Christian is prima facia conclusive that gay persons are invalidated, irredeemable and irreconcilable."
I cannot claim the view you make for me. I am proof that its not true. I am redeemed, I am reconciled and I am gay. But I am those things because I am forgiven, and I can't be forgiven for something that isn't a sin. Christ paid the price to redeem me, not to leave me a sinner. He offers me eternal life, but in turn I give him myself, my desires and my obedience. I cannot say "Yes" to Christ in all but one area of my life, or rather I can for a while, but He will surely claim it in the end, and if I refuse to give it up then I will have chose it over Him and I will no longer share his name.
I could choose to rationalize away this sin. I would frankly enjoy the sin. Its always been one of my favorites. Actually I have, but I was miserable. God has a claim on my life and I cannot escape it. When I grieve the Holy Spirit eventually it grieves me.
July 3, 2007 1:01 PM | Report Offensive Comment
PASTOR POLLARD - I have no doubt you would love to amend those Ten Commandments, like that renegade judge in Alabama who, I believe, added Four more, since, lamentably, they don't say anything about homosexuality. By the way, while you're busy not hating gay people, you might want to add a good number of those animals you mention to your list of things you supposedly feel sorry for, since a good number of them, God's creatures one and all, are also homosexual. What a mockery people like you make of religion.
July 3, 2007 11:36 AM | Report Offensive Comment
OOOOPS, now I did it. I didn't mean to out Repugnican Senator Ted Stephens of Alaska!!!
I meant Miss Ted Haggart of Colorado Springs, CO.
But now that I think about it, I guess I had a little Freudian slip of the keyboard, didn't I? Cuz it does make sense in a weird way ...
tom
July 2, 2007 10:17 PM | Report Offensive Comment
To "pastor" Gary Pollard,
Spoken like a true Dominist and Christian Reconstructionist. Thanks for proving Singularization right. He is right on the money without you but the synchronicity of your posts is deliciously satiric.
Thanks for the laugh, Gar. There's a little problem with your rant. If SW is right, and I think he is, I check his citations, then you are gay and way, way in the closet. Come out little Gar, don't want to end up like Miss Ted Stephens do you?
Pastor Gary Pollard :
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
July 2, 2007 9:52 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I make this statement for every anti-gay bible-quoter. Don't bother quoting Pauline scripture if you have not read any of Calvin J. Roetzel's corpus. He is without doubt one of America's premier biblical scholars on the Apostle Paul/Saul of Tarsus.
Do yourself a favor and do an Amazon search for his books. Read one. Read them all as I am now doing.
For those of you who do -- you truly have no idea what you are doing when you erroneously misquote Romans 1:26, I Timothy 1:9-10 and I Corinathians 6:9-10 in support of your anti-gay agenda. These verses have NOTHING to do with gay persons. They are political statements of an entirely different intent. You do not understand what they actually mean and you really have no idea how hilarious the irony is.
Read a Roetzel book and find out for yourself. Save yourself the embarrassment of gratuitously exposing your ingnorance. Save your reader of that too.
sw
July 2, 2007 9:39 PM | Report Offensive Comment
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
July 2, 2007 9:37 PM | Report Offensive Comment
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
July 2, 2007 9:35 PM | Report Offensive Comment
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
July 2, 2007 9:33 PM | Report Offensive Comment
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
July 2, 2007 9:33 PM | Report Offensive Comment
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
July 2, 2007 9:32 PM | Report Offensive Comment
In the beggining GOD made all animals after their own kind...from man HE made woman as a helpmate...same sex marriage is not only an abomination in GOD'S eyes..but it is sin pure and simple. Some say that it is a sickness and they can't help themselves..no;it is sin and regardless of how anyone trys to justify it ..it is wrong and immoral. If you say it is a sickness then you could use the same excuse for every other immoral thing that people participate in..such as murder..rape..child molestation..the list can go on forever. Those that try to justify this sin; usually are also the ones that want the ten commandments and prayer done away with...they don't like for anything to make them feel guilty. I don't hate homosexuals..I feel sorry for them and pray for them because it is a matter of sin and GOD is a loving GOD, but HE is also a just GOD and unless sin is repented of WE; not GOD are to blame..GOD is true to HIS WORD.......
July 2, 2007 9:24 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The only problem with homosexuality is that religion still exists and thrives. Take away the religion and all the reasons for the hatred and uncomfortablness go away. People become reduced to pure equals. Christopher Hitchens, author of "God is not Great" has it pegged quite squarely. Religion simply poisons EVERTHING.You-tube him for some interesting dialogue and a fresh perpective. He was on recently with Jon Meacham as well.
July 2, 2007 9:13 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Homesower,
It's VERY interesing that you think I don't ineterpret the bible or conduct theological discourse "from a Christian prespective." I told eog I am a Wesleyan Methodist Chrsitian and have been all my life with deeply passionate theological and philosophical roots. You missed that I guess ...
That is fascinating. What makes you say this? Did you read the Essay posted by Anonymous on the fracturing of the churches by literalist Christians over this issue? You should read it. You seem to be oddly unaware of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Ruth, I & II Judges, I & II Samuel, I & II Kings, I & II Chronicles. Surely you have read these? Perhaps not because you are also unaware of the special love shared by David & Jonathan, and Ruth & Naomi.
In all these texts slavery is most certainly not critisized. It is only obliquely critisized when the stage was occupied by G-d's Chosen people under enslavement by Pharoah, NOT when Jews were the slaveholders -- this is affirmed by G-d's Law not abolished. Paul wrote extensively that slavery was the law of the land under Cesaer but that all men's hearts were free in Christ. Paul did not critsize the practice of slavery nor advocate for abolition of slavery.
A strict literalist has a big problem here. Biblically, the faithful South was proof-texting the Law as justification FOR the maintenance of slaveholding, NOT for Abolitionism. The churches were split assunder during the conflict. In my home state of Arkansas it wasn't until 2004 that the rift in the Arkansas Methodist Conference between the Northern Abolitionist Conference and the Southern Slaveholding-affirming Conference was healed and the Conference reunited. That's 139 years of emnity after the war's close.
Why do you look to the bible for it to prove for you -- via an impossible absolutist external standard of ethic -- what is right and wrong? Christ is attributed to have said that all of us in the Holy Spirit know within us what is right and wrong and that the Great Commandment fulfills the SPIRIT of the law. Love G-d with all your heart, mind and strength. Love your neighbor as you love G-d. The Commandments are fulfilled by doing this. I am quoting from Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. Mark's and Luke's Gospels are a bit different in their sayings.
You seem to be saying that being Christian is prima facia conclusive that gay persons are invalidated, irredeemable and irreconcilable. That that is an exclusively "Chrsitian" way of thinking. Any other way of thinking is invalid and "not" Christian?
This is the conclusion I am questioning directly and I am doing it in Christian love by the Great Commandment exactly as the Northern Christian Abolistionists did which you extoll in your post.
I am saying that this divide between us is very similar and that history seems to be eerily repeating itself. I am saying that bible-quoting to affirm anti-gay bias is no different than the past bible-quoting to support slaveholding. In fact enslavement to heterosexism and homophbia is really no different -- and NO, I am not saying they are the same, I am saying they have similar characteristics and are effectively similar. I am also saying that welcoming Christians who take the Great Commamdment every bit as seriously as the past Abolitionists are making the case for full loving acceptance and the end of discriminatoy hostilites towards gay persons.
Blacks were scapegoated by white society for decades as the root cause of many problems in the country. Just as gays are being scapegoated the very same way right now.
The bible is not literally factually true -- though SOME of it might have actually happened -- and we have known this for more than 400 years. It is however metaphorically "really" true. You seem not to have read my post to Steve where I cautioned him to not invalidate the bible because it is not literally true. That is just as wrong as bibliolatry. The bible is very important if one can unlock its message for us today beyond the limitations of its various translations, changes and meanings trapped withing 3,000 year-old far earlier understanding.
I am saying that it is staggeringly arrogant to think one can pick it up, do a cursory reading and believe one can undertand it on its terms within these realities without intense scholarly research, thought, discourse and reasoned theological study.
Anyone can erroneous misconstrue it to support their biases. And political proof-texting for the advancement of advantageously stereotyping prejudice is deeply human, provane and has nothing to do with G-d but a great deal to do with domination, alienation and invalidation of the targeted scapegoat. Profound reasoning where the bible is concerned is reached by first admitting I know nothing, next admitting that I will read into it my biases -- this is human -- then to read deeply beyond my biases and limitations to unlock what it has to say that I might learn from knowing full well it was never written for ME but written thousands of years ago for communities that I have no connection to nor understanding of experientially yet has survived millennia in greatly altered form but with meaning under the words that the words could never capture for all time -- not even for its time -- but beyond time in metaphor, allegory and poetry.
The best I can explain this is not even in my own words but the words of a great American poetic prose literaturist, Norman Maclean, in "A River Runs Through It and Other Stories."
"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs."
The bible is like this. Exactly like this. I don't misuse the bible to undergird my prejudices of others. I take responsibility for my prejudices - we ALL have them, no one doesn't -- and read the bible to unlock G-d's love for me to live out in making a garden of my tiny patch of ground by the power of the Great Commandment for the delight of others that they might undertake the tending of their own gardens.
Thereby the world might become the Kingdom of G-d on Earth as it is in heaven.
Anti-gay prejudice works against this. Let it go. G-d WILL love you for it. I promise. Gay persons are deserving of loving committed relationships covenanted under G-d, before their peers just like everyone -- David and Jonathan included if you take the time to read. Gay men and women make wonderful clergy, bring a valuable spirit to the table of faith and have done so for many thousands of years -- some ages in the closet and some not -- if you take the time to read Jewish, Catholic and Anglican history. It's true, read it for yourself.
Oh by the way, you are the one who proved conclusively that the bible is not inerrant, absolute or literal. There's no getting around the fact that your post proved what I am saying. So, don't take my word for it. Take yours. That is if you have the intergity in Christ to do so ...
sw
July 2, 2007 9:07 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Thanks to the poster who writes the truth about the Sodom and Gommorah story - that story that anti-gay bigots cling to like drowning men to a raft. As anyone who actually bothers to read it will recognize, it's simply an instance of enraged men threatening to rape other men in order to put them in the position, quite literally, of women - the ultimate degradation in ancient Middle-Eastern society (not to mention other societies of both the past and present). In fact, unless you believe that many of today's most hardened and violent convicts suddenly become gay upon incarceration , it's the same thing that routinely occurs in our nation's prisons.
July 2, 2007 8:11 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Thanks to the poster who writes the truth about the Sodom and Gommorah story - that story that anti-gay bigots cling to like drowning men to a raft. As anyone who actually bothers to read it will recognize, it's simply an instance of enraged men threatening to rape other men in order to put them in the position, quite literally, of women - the ultimate degradation in ancient Middle-Eastern society (not to mention other societies of both the past and present). In fact, unless you believe that many of today's most hardened and violent convicts suddenly become gay upon incarceration , it's the same thing that routinely occurs in our nation's prisons.
July 2, 2007 6:58 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Thanks to the poster who writes the truth about the Sodom and Gommorah story - that story that anti-gay bigots cling to like drowning men to a raft. As anyone who actually bothers to read it will recognize, it's simply an instance of enraged men threatening to rape other men in order to put them in the position, quite literally, of women - the ultimate degradation in ancient Middle-Eastern society (not to mention other societies of both the past and present). In fact, unless you believe that many of today's most hardened and violent convicts suddenly become gay upon incarceration , it's the same thing that routinely occurs in our nation's prisons.
July 2, 2007 6:53 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Thanks to the poster who writes the truth about the Sodom and Gommorah story - that story that anti-gay bigots cling to like drowning men to a raft. As anyone who actually bothers to read it will recognize, it's simply an instance of enraged men threatening to rape other men in order to put them in the position, quite literally, of women - the ultimate degradation in ancient Middle-Eastern society (not to mention other societies of both the past and present). In fact, unless you believe that many of today's most hardened and violent convicts suddenly become gay upon incarceration , it's the same thing that routinely occurs in our nation's prisons.
July 2, 2007 6:49 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Gay ppl. are human.
all americans are human.
all life is sacred.
individual rights are sacred.
the church must attend to their business of churching.. not judging. dividing, sensoring..
church is for personal spiritual growth. not destruction, execution, pain and hurt..
If you don't pay gay ppl.'s bills you don't get to tell them how to live.. yet we tax them like the next one. they pay for our 16 children's education....
LIVE AND LET LIVE. look at the beam in yer eye before ye calls for the grain of sand on your brother's....
July 2, 2007 6:36 PM | Report Offensive Comment
*Sigh*
Bottom line to all the nonsense on Christian beliefs homosexuals are wrong or not...God is nonjudgmental and has unconditional love for ALL his children. Judgements and conditional love is a human factor and does not belong to God. He gave us free will. Use your brains and think what that actually means. He gave us free will and then if we don't do exactly what he wants, we go to hell? He would torture his children? He would allow such a place as hell and the devil? Would you allow your children to be tortured for eternity? Do you parent based on fear and not love? Poor God, he sure gets a bad rap. So many religions have turned him into a monster. You can have your monster God. Mine is loving, kind, forgiving and I feel loved, cared for and know I will go to Heaven. Having that knowledge gives me motivation to help others to understand the same thing. To live a great, good and loving life. I don't know who the hell you people are that judge others so darn much...God? Nope, guess not since he doesn't.
July 2, 2007 4:56 PM | Report Offensive Comment
*Sigh*
Bottom line to all the nonsense on Christian beliefs homosexuals are wrong or not...God is nonjudgmental and has unconditional love for ALL his children. Judgements and conditional love is a human factor and does not belong to God. He gave us free will. Use your brains and think what that actually means. He gave us free will and then if we don't do exactly what he wants, we go to hell? He would torture his children? He would allow such a place as hell and the devil? Would you allow your children to be tortured for eternity? Do you parent based on fear and not love? Poor God, he sure gets a bad rap. So many religions have turned him into a monster. You can have your monster God. Mine is loving, kind, forgiving and I feel loved, cared for and know I will go to Heaven. Having that knowledge gives me motivation to help others to understand the same thing. To live a great, good and loving life. I don't know who the hell you people are that judge others so darn much...God? Nope, guess not since he doesn't.
July 2, 2007 4:56 PM | Report Offensive Comment
*Sigh*
Bottom line to all the nonsense on Christian beliefs homosexuals are wrong or not...God is nonjudgmental and has unconditional love for ALL his children. Judgements and conditional love is a human factor and does not belong to God. He gave us free will. Use your brains and think what that actually means. He gave us free will and then if we don't do exactly what he wants, we go to hell? He would torture his children? He would allow such a place as hell and the devil? Would you allow your children to be tortured for eternity? Do you parent based on fear and not love? Poor God, he sure gets a bad rap. So many religions have turned him into a monster. You can have your monster God. Mine is loving, kind, forgiving and I feel loved, cared for and know I will go to Heaven. Having that knowledge gives me motivation to help others to understand the same thing. To live a great, good and loving life. I don't know who the hell you people are that judge others so darn much...God? Nope, guess not since he doesn't.
July 2, 2007 4:51 PM | Report Offensive Comment
*Sigh*
Bottom line to all the nonsense on Christian beliefs homosexuals are wrong or not...God is nonjudgmental and has unconditional love for ALL his children. Judgements and conditional love is a human factor and does not belong to God. He gave us free will. Use your brains and think what that actually means. He gave us free will and then if we don't do exactly what he wants, we go to hell? He would torture his children? He would allow such a place as hell and the devil? Would you allow your children to be tortured for eternity? Do you parent based on fear and not love? Poor God, he sure gets a bad rap. So many religions have turned him into a monster. You can have your monster God. Mine is loving, kind, forgiving and I feel loved, cared for and know I will go to Heaven. Having that knowledge gives me motivation to help others to understand the same thing. To live a great, good and loving life. I don't know who the hell you people are that judge others so darn much...God? Nope, guess not since he doesn't.
July 2, 2007 4:50 PM | Report Offensive Comment
To Strangely Warmed:
Since you are not a literalist, what authority do you give the Bible in forming your opinions (on any topic)? To what degree do you accept the words and actions of Jesus as having an overriding claim on your life and your thoughts? How about the epistles, are they valid? The prophets? Genesis?
Can you better explain this comment?
"If G-d did indeed "have a better plan" then why did G-d write that slaveholding and forced servitude by G-d's Chosen People of non-Jews was acceptable and correct behavior -- in fact sanctioned by G-d?"
God does have a better plan, better for us than the way we are currently living, better for the Israelis than they way they were living. Otherwise why bother living God's way. Just live how you want. However I assume your main point of contention had to do with the God's law to the Israelis. You seem to believe that it is not historically valid, that it is too flawed to have God's fingerprints on it.
Let me answer this in two ways. First, if we can't accept it as God's Word, why believe in Jesus as your Savior? Jesus said that the scripture pointed to Him. If you can't accept the scripture why accept Jesus? And if you accept Jesus why not accept his words? Perhaps you are of the opinion that we really don't know Jesus' words. In that case, can you trust Him as your savior? Find a savior you can quote with assurance.
Second, God revealed Himself in time. He chose one man, Abraham, as a starting point. I don't know why. He had His reasons. In accepting Abraham as that man, he took him in the context of the time and culture in which Abraham lived. He change Abraham over time, but He focused on one area, Abraham's relationship to God. As God continued to work on the descendants of Abraham that was the foundation. He dealt first with their relationship to Him, and only later with their relationship with each other. Get the first right, and the second will follow. He still operates this way.
Abraham lived in a slaveholding society, but that wasn't God worked on first. He did give the Israelis a strong distaste for slavery by letting them serve the Egyptians. Following that He gave them his law, and in this he allowed a period of indenture for up to 6 years for Israelis. But why did he allow the Israelis to own foreigners? He was teaching them that they could not enslave their brother, but he expanded that lesson over time. In the new testament we learn that all who are of Christ are our brothers, and that there is now no Greek or Jew, slave or free. Maybe that lesson took a while to sink in, but God's timeframe is distinctly different from ours, and His word does not return void but accomplishes its purpose.
How does this relate to Gay Unions and Clergy? Others brought up the issue of slavery and suggested that the church was evolving on the gay issue just as it had on slavery. But with slavery you can point to an echo throughout scriptures in which freedom is good, and slavery is bad. Moses told Pharoah "Let my people go". He instituted the Jubilee year to eliminate the slavery of debt. He bought his people back from the nations, and finally he paid the price of our sins so that we might be free. Where is the similar echo for homosexual relationships? You can't hear it because it isn't there.
July 2, 2007 2:42 PM | Report Offensive Comment
SW: I apologize for not getting back to you but I only occasionally blog. You are obviously quite prolific, and with a sharp mind will probably get the best of me, but I will plod on.
My comments may not make sense to someone operating outside of a Christian worldview, so let me provide some background through which to interpret my arguments.
God created the world perfect and holy, but he gave certain elements in his creation free will. Man rebelled and is fallen. In this fallen state the world and man are corrupted. Each person is born with a desire to be in union with God, but we are incapable of doing this ourselves. Our corrupted natures are bent toward evil. This can be manifested in different ways. Lust is certainly one of the more common, and sexual lust one of the more powerful. Homosexuality is simply a variation of that corruption. Its "natural" only in the sense that nature itself is corrupted.
If I am born with a predilection for lusting after someone of the same sex that does not make it right. Lust is still a sin, as is the homosexual act itself. Its not any more damning than lust of the homosexual variety, but a heterosexual act can be right, whereas a homosexual act can never be right.
Calling it right does not make it right. Allowing a homosexual to feel good about a sin does not make it any less a sin. The difference is that a homosexual who recognizes it as a sin has the chance to repent. The homosexual who does not know this loses this chance.
If a church endorses gay unions, they have now become a facilitator in sin. God himself will hold their leaders accountable
July 2, 2007 12:51 PM | Report Offensive Comment
W.IRBY: **W.Irby :
Gay/lesbain/bi.. they are all just wrong. I mean if everyone turned gay we would have no one left. You can't continue "the cycle of life".**
People don't "turn gay." Every BGLT person I know (and there are many in my circle of family and friends) has told me bascially the same thing. When my gay and lesbian freinds hit puberty, they simply were not attracted to the opposite sex. It wasn't a matter of choosing.
My bisexual friends found themselves attracted to varying degrees to both sexes. And my transgender friend knew, from the time that they were old enough to understand the difference between boys and girls, that they had the wrong body.
**If people were meant to be gay then perhaps it would be possible to have kids and stuff. But it's not. You can look at that in a religious way or not.**
Gay people can and do have children, some as a result of marrying and attempting to live as if they were straight, and some as a result of the same reproductive technology that straight infertile couples use to help them procreate. Besides, making babies is not the only reason people marry. When my husband and I met, I had a teenage daughter from a previous relationship and was in the early stages of menopause. He was sterile as a result of radiation treatment for cancer years before. We could not make a baby together if the fate of the free world depended on it. Furthermore, he has no desire to be a parent, and I have no desire for any more children, so we have no plans to adopt. Nobody at the clerk of court's office asked if we could make a baby. They didn't even ask if we were in love. All they asked for was picture ID and exact cash. Should we not have been allowed to marry?
**One because I do believe in God and the Bible. And two because it would end life. Literally.**
There is no reason to assume that the entire population of the planet would ever be gay, any more than there is to assume that the entire population of the planet would share any other single trait. And even if the entire population WERE gay, babies could still be made via sperm donation, so there would be no need to fear the end of human life on the planet.
July 2, 2007 12:27 PM | Report Offensive Comment
m689k
July 2, 2007 5:10 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Homesower, you should really think carefully about what you write before you write it. Especially if your intent is to support biblically-derivative anti-gay bias.
If you take the bible to be the literal speech of G-d, then your statement is self-negating, mutaully and exclusively contradictory:
"While it is true that the Bible was written in the context of a slave-holding society, its also true that Bible points toward a Messiah that would "release the captives". So slavery may have been a reality, but God had a better plan."
If G-d did indeed "have a better plan" then why did G-d write that slaveholding and forced servitude by G-d's Chosen People of non-Jews was acceptable and correct behavior -- in fact sanctioned by G-d?
You make no sense at all. Isn't G-d consistent and all-knowing for all time?
You just made the case that all credible biblical scholars accept for the bible NOT being the literal or absolute Word of G-d. You just proved why the bible is a human work in progress and how the evolving thinking regarding G-d and humnaity's relationship with G-d is an ON-GOIING, nevere-ending process and subject to reforamtion and correction of older thinking and texts.
You just proved that the inequality of the Law towards gay persons should and must be revised when new thinking makes plain the error of the older thinking.
Thank you so much for doing what you did in your post.
You proved why YOU should accept and validate all gay persons in Christian love just exactly they way they were born, unconditionally.
Fantastic job. I'm very impressed.
Amazing. G-d's grace really does work.
sw
June 30, 2007 4:25 PM | Report Offensive Comment
And Homesower, it is interesting how much negativity towards gay persons makes THAT seem pervasively normative and acceptable in our time. As captivity under bondage to slave masters for the 19th-century person was perceived as the norm then, Christian people who resonated with the Exodus story of the Jewish plight under bondage to Pharoah emboldened Christian Abolisionists then and began a process of violent change. It seems that Christian fairness and liberation from horrifying inauthenticity regarding personal sexual identity is the this age's call to reformation now.
The Law in the old testament is not antagonistic to slaveownership and bondage in general. In fact it is affirmative of it in every instance. Christians 150 years ago saw the error in the Law in this regard and took action to deactivate the Law and empower a standard of fairness beyond the Law in accordance with Jesus' ministry. The Slaveowner bible-quoted in the same strident tones as we hear now regarding anti-gay rhetoric and hermeneutics that the bible was on THEIR side in support of the maintenance of slaveholding.
Notice how you and many others bible-quote that the Law is on YOUR side in the matter of the maintenance of your anti-gay agenda. Notice also how conscientious Christians and many others today see the error in the Law in this regard and are taking action to deactivate the Law and empower a standard of fairness beyond the Law in accordance with Jesus' ministry.
Do we have to fight another war to make this transition? Or can we learn from the past and empower bloodless, civil reformation in Christ-like fairness?
Because gay persons aren't going away and neither is the unfariness, dishonesty, hostility and harm done to them which demands redress and reconciliation.
[Sorry for getting your moniker wrong in the last post, please forgive it.]
sw
June 30, 2007 2:16 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Homeowner, are you actually saying that to be who you are born to be is a sin of pride?
I challenge you to be who your have not been born to be and tell me how virtuous that is. You are actually suggesting that to live a lie is preferable to living the truth, not to mention being truthful about it in the first place. How interesting the lengths to which you will go to require inauthenticity as the standard for being one with G-d for everyone else -- especially gay persons for whom you have no compassion.
That is illogical and irrational. When you can make a reasoned argument perhaps a reasonable person will listen. But if you actually expect stupidity to be virtuous you will convince only the imebecilic which is what has been pervasively demonstrated on this thread.
I learn more and more about how great are the dimensions of faulty thinking and incompetent concluding driving the anti-gay religious agenda. It's very instructive.
These posts are greatly edifying. I have been deeply deluded that reason and logic would make a difference with the true believer. It doesn't. Important to know.
The evolution of anti-gay argumentation is what facinates me. As soon as facts are presented a ready made rebuttal shifts to a new ground of anti-gay justification to keep the anti-gay stance in place. If you have to work so hard at maintaining it that ought to be a clue to its inauthenticity and futility. Very interesting.
sw
June 30, 2007 1:49 PM | Report Offensive Comment
There were some interesting comments made early in this thread that seemed to indicate that the Civil War was somehow a struggle of an enlightened, progressing North against a Christian South (and trying to put the whole gay debate as a continuation of that struggle). Such a view ignores the history of the political crisis that led to the Civil War. It was Christians in the North that fueled the abolitionits fire. I won't claim all Christians were abolitionists, but its certainly not true that abolitionists were a nineteenth century equivalent of a liberal agnostic. These were people willing to risk jail because of their Christian beliefs.
While it is true that the Bible was written in the context of a slave-holding society, its also true that Bible points toward a Messiah that would "release the captives". So slavery may have been a reality, but God had a better plan.
Its understandable how a 19th-century man would see slavery as a given, and as part of the natural order. It was all around them, and not just in the U.S. A big problem with our slavery was that we made it a race issue. If your slave looks just like you, its harder for you to rationalize your owning him. When he looks different, you don't run the risk of becoming like him. This made it harder for the slaveowner to come to a realization that what applied to the owner should apply to the slave.
June 29, 2007 10:02 PM | Report Offensive Comment
It doesn't matter whether you are born gay or a product of your environment or corrupted along the way. You are what you are, but that doesn't make it right.
I have a strong tendency to self-centeredness, conceit, pride and gluttony. I am quite certain I was born this way, but it would be foolishness to say that this makes these vices right, or to demand that God change the rules so that I can continue as I am. If He did heaven would gain a lot more entrants, but it wouldn't look much like heaven anymore.
People who are gay are not any more damned to hell than those who are straight. They are all equally damned to hell if they don't accept God's forgiveness for their sin. He is perfectly willing to forgive all the times I had sex with a man (yes, me) since He already paid the price for that sin. But, he never paid the price for my lifestyle, or my problem, or my issue. He paid the price for my sin. If I don't have the humility to recognize God's sovereignty over that sin, and His right to define what is a sin and what isn't then I will be the one outside looking in (with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes with that condition).
The current insistence on a gay person's "right" to be gay is simply the sin of pride. Mind you, they have good company with lots of other sinners who want the world to condone their sin, but it still leaves them in the same position to God. "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble".
June 29, 2007 9:22 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Oh, eog,
I forgot to thank you for publicly acknowledgiing your political hostility and authoritarian threat against my personhood and the personhood of all GBLT people in these United States of America where ALL Americans are guaranteed under the auspices of the Declaration of the Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America to Life, Liberty and the Pursuir of Happiness, and Civil Liberties specified but not limited to the Bill of Rights and Amendments to the Constitution.
In America you most certainly may not do this.
Move to Iran or Iraq if you wish to impose your theolcratic will on an undeserving minority by religious/political fiat.
You are entitled to your beliefs any way you wish but you are not entitled to abusively impose your theocratic authoritarianism on other free, tax-paying, productive AMERICANS.
Get that straight. Get that damn straight.
sw
June 29, 2007 4:18 PM | Report Offensive Comment
You are unfamiliar with the scientific studies and operating outside of your scope of understanding, Elect of G-d. It is not the truth. It is derivative anti-gay hermeneutics. Did you read Anonymous' Essay below? How about Rabbi Waskow's that "A Fish in the Sea" posted?
I said nothing about genetics although it is being better understood though far from conclusive -- their is no single "gay" gene, but a great many genes that in the presence of hormonal infusing express a variety of sexual identities. This is the same kind of process that converts the female fetus into a male. All life starts out female. In the presence of the rightly timed hormones and the receptive genes and chromosnes the fetus switches from female mode to male mode. In the presence of the rightly timed hormones and the receptive genes and chromosones the fetus continues its development into a female. This is why males have nipples and inactive nascent mammory grands when they serve no actual evolutionary purpose. In vitro endocrinological fetal development is the most illuminating of scientific studies. The ring/first finger ratio anaylsis, head hair whorl analysis, twins analysis, fraternal birth order analysis, and brain architecture analysis are all compelling evidence. But the sexual lie detector analysis is most compelling. There is no single one factor that predominates but all inquiries paint a picture that is concensus conculsive. Dr. Roughgarden and Dr. Bagemihl make compelling cases for the obsolescence and retirement of mechanistic Darwinian sexual selection theory. Your citation speaks to a unfamiliarity with the now 30-year long post-Darwinian scientific research being done today.
Sexual identity is fixed in males prenatally. Straight men are born staight. Gay men are born gay. G-d makes gay men gay at birth.
Your hermeneutics will crumble or change.
It's your choice. If you speak only the truth will you speak these truths as well?
That's the acid test. The science is settled. Everyone is born with the sexuality they have. Now, how are you going to treat gay men who are born gay? Or women for whom their sexuality is much more plastic than men's? The biblical referents are not as iron clad as you would have them be. They are completely dependent upon anti-gay, heterosexist and patriarchally sexist biases. Once one lets go of these biases and looks more closely at the originating languages of the biblical passages, their fuller contextualization with which you and I are well familiar and comprehensively critiqued by Anonymous in his/her Essay below it is most definitely not conclusive.
You wish it to be so becasue it is much more convenient to the maintenace of your anti-gay stance.
But the relationship of David and Jonathan, and Ruth and Naomi make your view far more problematic. Read I Samuel latter half of the book and II Samuel chapter 1 and you have to reconcile their deep love for one another. The same is true for the Book of Ruth. How does that fit into your clear interpretation? It doesn't. It refutes it.
Rabbi Waskow makes a very compelling case for the Book of the Song of Songs. It celebrates love and sexual delight outside of marraiage between mutually consenting adults. The primacy of marriage is not enforced at all and the Rabbi makes a strong case for gay persons being included as well. That definitely does comport with your adamancy.
This is a much bigger dialog than lines drawn in the sand allows for. As Anon pleads let's turn down the volume 95%. Unless you are willing to speak all the truth then you make a mockery of the truth. I will turn down my volume if you give me room to be myself honestly. If you don't then we cannot have a conversation that serves a useful purpose anymore.
Let's have an honest discussion about your moniker. "Elect of G-d" presupposes an authority that is nonsensical. In Christ we are all equal no one better nor worse. You imply an authoritian appeal that does not exist and you do it hautily. Show some humility before G-d. I do not speak for G-d. I do not know the mind of G-d. It is an impossiblity with which I am completely comfortable. I rest in G-d's glorious grace. You do not speak for G-d. You do not know the mind of G-d either. You show a marked insecurity, self-asteem issues and megalomaniacal need for self-agrandisment by the use of your moniker.
That is not G-dly. It is presumptuous. Your words would go down much better if you were less strident.
"Strangely Warmed" is a refernce to John Wesley's moment of epiphany. It speaks to Wesleyan balance of a "both/and" kind of theology. It recalls the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. It posits the opportunity of Wesleyan grace for all.
I chose it intentionally not to brow-beat but to celebrate his intellectual and theological ideals.
Pease and grace of Jesus to you,
sw
June 29, 2007 3:14 PM | Report Offensive Comment
sw,
The issue to me is not whether someone chooses to be "gay" or not. The issue is whether someone who practices certain behaviors (homosexuality in this case) can rightfully call themselves a Christian, a true follower of Christ. On that count, I think the Scriptures give a resounding no. I've examined carefully the various ways some have tried to get around the clear teaching of Scripture, and I remain unconvinced.
As to the "medical, biological, and endocrenological scientific inquiry", I'm no expert, but I think you might be overstating your case just a little. To my knowledge, up to this point there has not been one definitive study showing a genetic link to homosexuality. Be that as it may, in my eyes it's really a moot point. While science is helpful in many areas, it cannot tell us whether or not certain behaviors are moral. We need the truth of God's word for that.
Yes, we can agree to disagree. I hold no ill will toward you or anyone else who I disagree with. However, if by "hampering your life" and "leave me be" you mean I must cease speaking the truth, that I cannot and will not do. As you have pointed out, this is America, and many thanks to God I am free (for now) to continue speaking His truth (and to participate in the political process of this country), but even if I were not or someday may not be, I will still speak His truth since His authority is greater than that of man.
God bless,
eoG
June 28, 2007 9:49 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Elect of God,
You are right. No one is done a service if the truth is not the currency of discourse. Here's the truth. Gay persons do not choose their sexual identity. Gay persons are born exactly the same as straight persons with the sexual identity they awaken to. No one changes their sexuality -- it is unalterable. For men it is bimodally fixed well before birth -- the majority expression is heterosexual the minority expression it homosexual and the superminority expression is biseual. For women most are sexuaully plastic in that periods of either are exclusive or bisexuality predominates, a signifigant portion is exclusively bimodal all their lives but the point is that while male sexuality is fixed, female is far more fluid.
One's sexual identity is morally neutral. G-d loves all creation regardless of sexual identity. A rainbow of expression is natural and normal. A literal reading of the bible is wrong on this issue. Your certainty is not supported by medical, biological and endocrenological scientific inquiry. Mine is.
You and I cannot agree on this. That is the truth. For me you are wrong. For you I am wrong. There is no bridging this gap so we will have to forge a way to agree to disagree and you don't hamper my life and love I won't hamper yours.
If you cannot agree to leave me be do we have to go to war over this? I will leave you be in your anti-gay bias. But this is America. You must leave me be in my gay-embracing bias.
The truth couldn't be made clearer.
sw
June 28, 2007 6:15 PM | Report Offensive Comment
W.IRBY: "He knows he wasn't "born that way" because you aren't."
You better be prepared to back that statement up with some heavy-duty research, because there are a lot of gays who say they WERE "born that way".
"I am 19 year old woman."
Nineteen and already on your second kid?
June 28, 2007 6:09 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Anonymous,
I love your thinking and your call. There's a serious problem though as evidenced here. Your appeal must fall upon listening informed by receptive intelligence and caring compassion. As you can read here often times the ones most in need of your message are the ones most obdurately impervious to it. You -- and I most definitely -- are casting pearls before swine in our efforts at a reasoned discourse on this highly charged subject.
I do not believe they are capable of change nor do they want to. They want their rejection of gay persons and maintenance of anti-gay bias. It's comforting and soothing to them and no ammount of reasoned evidnece will sway them one iota.
The churchs will split over this issue. History is a very good instructor in this. Just read these responses. One side has dug in its heels against full acceptance. The other cannot in good conscience reject the growing evidence of the moral neutrality of gay persons and their full acceptance in the human family of love, worship and fellowship.
Thank you all for this exchnage. I provoked you on purpose. I wanted to find our if a bridge between us was even possible. I have my answer. It isn't. There is no compromise possible for either side on this issue. Both are assured of their moral territory.
Enjoy your anti-gay churches. I'll enjoy my gay-embracing churches. Hopefully, you won't bomb or murder gay persons or the churches that embrace them. Though if Iraq is any tutor that is probably exactly what you will resort to in righteous piety. Just remember, Thou Shalt Not Kill is a Commandment even if you justify it by killing "immoral" [by your hermeneutics] gay persons. Hopefully we can coexist in mutual aggreement to cordially disagree.
Rather doubt it though but I prayer for it anyway.
sw
June 28, 2007 5:55 PM | Report Offensive Comment
strangely warmed,
Love is being compassionate enough to tell people the truth. No one is done a service when we fail to tell them the truth and pretend they are something they are not. Christ's church hears His word and keeps it. Those who practice homosexuality, or any other sin for that matter, have no part in Christ and His Kingdom.
God bless
June 28, 2007 5:48 PM | Report Offensive Comment
strangely warmed,
Love is being compassionate enough to tell people the truth. No one is done a service when we fail to tell people the truth and pretend they are something they are not. Christ's church hears His word and keeps it. Those who practice homosexuality, or any other sin for that matter, have no part in Christ and His Kingdom.
God bless
June 28, 2007 5:47 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Elect of God, you proved my thesis that the churches will split assunder into those churches that take Jesus' ministry of Love seriously and those that don't. It's fascinating to me that the traditional Christian church cleaves to Pharisean legalism eschewing the Commandment of Love rejecting our gay brothers and sisters and the progressive Christian church cleaves to Jesus' commandment of Love eschewing Pharisean legalism about sexual morays embracing our gay brothers and sisters in Christian love.
We are expereincing a very similar split right now as happened 2,000 years-ago. Something to think about. While then the Christian movement was the minority and the Jewish the majority, now Christianity is the majority while the Jewish is the vast minority.
The same thing is happeing now. It's very exciting, scary, troubling and exalting.
The most intersting thing about your post is that you accept -- though you don't like it all -- that issue of gay persons' acceptance is well on the way to becoming universal in the US. Thanks for confirming that. Most enlightening.
sw
June 28, 2007 5:22 PM | Report Offensive Comment
My faith in Christ leads me to believe His word is true...homosexuality is an abomination and no one practicing homosexuality will inherit the Kingdom of God. Therefore, practicing homosexuals are unbelievers and should not be considered as leaders in the church. Further, the church should not condone their abominable behavior in any way. If the world wants to approve them and their behavior, that is to be expected, but not the church.
June 28, 2007 5:05 PM | Report Offensive Comment
did you the essay by anonymous, david?
June 28, 2007 4:54 PM | Report Offensive Comment
HAHAHAHA, that's a good one, David.
10 "A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject;"
Self-satisfied sactimony is so very secure isn't? Doesn't change an iota that the world evolves and time marches on. Just remember Titus was never written by the Apostle Paul.
I am proud to be declared by you a "heretick". I'll wear it as a badge of honor. How very judgmental of you -- such sweet exemplifier of Chirst's love and acceptance.
sw
June 28, 2007 4:51 PM | Report Offensive Comment
W.Irby,
Titus 3:10
June 28, 2007 4:02 PM | Report Offensive Comment
What a ridiculous thing to say: plagiarize it improperly!!!
Ha!
That's not what I meant at all. I meant I will not plagiarize it, use it improperly or for improper purposes. I will do none of these, I promise.
Just a Fish in the Sea,
I did not give you enough credit for your submission. Rabbi Waskow is amazing. I was honored by my church to play the role of the Rabbi for our summer vacation bible school series to kindly appreciative accolades so Judaism is much on my mind these days. I have always loved the Song of Songs and felt it and appreciated it just the why Rabbi Waskow talks. I love that it is much more elevated in the Jewish consciousness then in the Christian. Christianity could learn a great deal from this. Awesome paper. Thank you.
sw
June 28, 2007 3:19 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Anonymous, I have my suspicions as to who your identity might be but I will respect your desire for anonymity. That was beautiful. Well organized and researched. May I copy it. I realize that it is posted openly on this thread but without proper identification I would feel as though I am plagiarizing it improperly.
With your kind premmission I will attribute this post to Anonymous with the webpage URL, the posting and thread information for proper citation.
This sounds very Wesleyan in its tone and appeal. Could you at least confirm or correct that assupmption, please.
Thank you for sharing this.
-------------------------------
Just Another Fish in the Sea,
Your contribution was great too. I love having both a Christian and Jewish perspective. Your submission has its provenance cited and I will faithfully attribute it. Thank you too.
sw
June 28, 2007 2:32 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby,
You said:
1. All homosexuals are sinners.
2. G-d says that all homosexuals are sinners.
3. G-d will not admit homosexuals into heaven.
4. No one is born homosexual. All persons are born heterosexual.
5. G-d said all homsexuals choose to be homosexual because they are willfully rebellious to G-d's will. G-d does not make homosexuals homosexual because G-d does not make anything sinful.
6. All homosexuals are unrepentent sinners.
7. All homosexuals if they "act" upon their homosexual unnatural desires are the same as anyone who has murderous or heterosexual rapist feelings, or feelings of anger or rage. It is a sin to act on performing murder or rape or anger or fury. Homosexuals who "act" on their desires are just the same as rapists, murderers, angry or enraged persons. No difference.
8. Jesus will convert homosexual desires into heterosexual normal desires.
9. I a gay person who refuses to repent to G-d and become heterosexual will not be saved or enter heaven.
10. Homosexuals are undeserving of full acceptance in our churches, covenants of marriage or ordination under any circumstances. They is no room for compromise or change because G-d said this.
You tell me where I got your words wrong. Oh Wise One. These are your Ten Commandments of Thou Shalt Never Be Gay.
sw
June 28, 2007 2:12 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Exactly SW I know what i meant.
I am glad you know exactly what I meant as well.
I am through with this room. You have completely proved to me that you are ignorant. Really.
Take everything I say out of context. I could do that with plenty of things that you have said.
But I didnt.
I am not going to try and tell you what you said! Because you know better than I what you said. Just as I know better than you what i say and mean.
When ya'll decide to quit putting words in others mouths let me know.
You keep proving that you think you know everything, including me. Well you dont. Trust me. You dont.
June 28, 2007 1:13 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Wise Woman Irby,
Your arrogant presumption is that "EVERYBODY" thinks that the universal horror of rape and murder is just like "acting" on the desire of the heart if it is for a person of the same sex.
You did make this equation. Stop playing around. Take responsibility for your words and stop BSing about it. Get real. You know exactly what you meant and what your said.
sw
June 28, 2007 1:09 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Wise Women Irby,
Your arrogant presumption is that "EVERYBODY" thinks that the universal horror of rape and murder is just like "acting" on the desire of the heart if it is for a person of the same sex.
You did make this equation. Stop palying around. Take responsibility for your words and stop BSing about it. Get real. You know exactly what you meant and what your said.
sw
June 28, 2007 1:08 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Sexual issues are tearing our churches apart today as never before. The issue of homosexuality threatens to fracture whole denominations, as the issue of slavery did a hundred and fifty years ago. We naturally turn to the Bible for guidance, and find ourselves mired in interpretative quicksand. Is the Bible able to speak to our confusion on this issue?
The debate over homosexuality is a remarkable opportunity, because it raises in an especially acute way how we interpret the Bible, not in this case only, but in numerous others as well. The real issue here, then, is not simply homosexuality, but how Scripture informs our lives today.
Some passages that have been advanced as pertinent to the issue of homosexuality are, in fact, irrelevant. One is the attempted gang rape in Sodom (Gen. 19:1-29). That was a case of ostensibly heterosexual males intent on humiliating strangers by treating them "like women," thus demasculinizing them. (This is also the case in a similar account in Judges 19-21.) Their brutal behavior has nothing to do with the problem of whether genuine love expressed between consenting adults of the same sex is legitimate or not. Likewise Deut. 23:17-18 must be pruned from the list, since it most likely refers to a heterosexual prostitute involved in Canaanite fertility rites that have infiltrated Jewish worship; the King James Version inaccurately labeled him a "sodomite."
Several other texts are ambiguous. It is not clear whether 1 Cor. 6:9 and 1 Tim. 1:10 refer to the "passive" and "active" partners in homosexual relationships, or to homosexual and heterosexual male prostitutes. In short, it is unclear whether the issue is homosexuality alone, or promiscuity and "sex-for-hire."
Unequivocal Condemnations
Putting these texts to the side, we are left with three references, all of which unequivocally condemn homosexual behavior. Lev. 18:22 states the principle: "You [masculine] shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination" (NRSV). The second (Lev. 20:13) adds the penalty: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them."
Such an act was regarded as an "abomination" for several reasons. The Hebrew prescientific understanding was that male semen contained the whole of nascent life. With no knowledge of eggs and ovulation, it was assumed that the woman provided only the incubating space. Hence the spilling of semen for any nonprocreative purpose--in coitus interruptus (Gen. 38:1-11), male homosexual acts, or male masturbation--was considered tantamount to abortion or murder. (Female homosexual acts were consequently not so seriously regarded, and are not mentioned at all in the Old Testament (but see Rom. 1:26). One can appreciate how a tribe struggling to populate a country in which its people were outnumbered would value procreation highly, but such values are rendered questionable in a world facing uncontrolled overpopulation.
In addition, when a man acted like a woman sexually, male dignity was compromised. It was a degradation, not only in regard to himself, but for every other male. The patriarchalism of Hebrew culture shows its hand in the very formulation of the commandment, since no similar stricture was formulated to forbid homosexual acts between females. And the repugnance felt toward homosexuality was not just that it was deemed unnatural but also that it was considered unJewish, representing yet one more incursion of pagan civilization into Jewish life. On top of that is the more universal repugnance heterosexuals tend to feel for acts and orientations foreign to them. (Left-handedness has evoked something of the same response in many cultures.)
Whatever the rationale for their formulation, however, the texts leave no room for maneuvering. Persons committing homosexual acts are to be executed. This is the unambiguous command of Scripture. The meaning is clear: anyone who wishes to base his or her beliefs on the witness of the Old Testament must be completely consistent and demand the death penalty for everyone who performs homosexual acts. (That may seem extreme, but there actually are some Christians urging this very thing today.) It is unlikely that any American court will ever again condemn a homosexual to death, even though Scripture clearly commands it.
Old Testament texts have to be weighed against the New. Consequently, Paul's unambiguous condemnation of homosexual behavior in Rom. 1:26-27 must be the centerpiece of any discussion.
For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
No doubt Paul was unaware of the distinction between sexual orientation, over which one has apparently very little choice, and sexual behavior, over which one does. He seemed to assume that those whom he condemned were heterosexuals who were acting contrary to nature, "leaving," "giving up," or "exchanging" their regular sexual orientation for that which was foreign to them. Paul knew nothing of the modern psychosexual understanding of homosexuals as persons whose orientation is fixed early in life, or perhaps even genetically in some cases. For such persons, having heterosexual relations would be acting contrary to nature, "leaving," "giving up" or "exchanging" their natural sexual orientation for one that was unnatural to them.
In other words, Paul really thought that those whose behavior he condemned were "straight," and that they were behaving in ways that were unnatural to them. Paul believed that everyone was straight. He had no concept of homosexual orientation. The idea was not available in his world. There are people that are genuinely homosexual by nature (whether genetically or as a result of upbringing no one really knows, and it is irrelevant). For such a person it would be acting contrary to nature to have sexual relations with a person of the opposite sex.
Likewise, the relationships Paul describes are heavy with lust; they are not relationships between consenting adults who are committed to each other as faithfully and with as much integrity as any heterosexual couple. That was something Paul simply could not envision. Some people assume today that venereal disease and AIDS are divine punishment for homosexual behavior; we know it as a risk involved in promiscuity of every stripe, homosexual and heterosexual. In fact, the vast majority of people with AIDS the world around are heterosexuals. We can scarcely label AIDS a divine punishment, since nonpromiscuous lesbians are at almost no risk.
And Paul believes that homosexual behavior is contrary to nature, whereas we have learned that it is manifested by a wide variety of species, especially (but not solely) under the pressure of overpopulation. It would appear then to be a quite natural mechanism for preserving species. We cannot, of course, decide human ethical conduct solely on the basis of animal behavior or the human sciences, but Paul here is arguing from nature, as he himself says, and new knowledge of what is "natural" is therefore relevant to the case.
Hebrew Sexual Mores
Nevertheless, the Bible quite clearly takes a negative view of homosexual activity, in those few instances where it is mentioned at all. But this conclusion does not solve the problem of how we are to interpret Scripture today. For there are other sexual attitudes, practices and restrictions which are normative in Scripture but which we no longer accept as normative:
1. Old Testament law strictly forbids sexual intercourse during the seven days of the menstrual period (Lev. 18:19; 15:19-24), and anyone in violation was to be "extirpated" or "cut off from their people" (kareth, Lev. 18:29, a term referring to execution by stoning, burning, strangling, or to flogging or expulsion; Lev. 15:24 omits this penalty). Today many people on occasion have intercourse during menstruation and think nothing of it. Should they be "extirpated"? The Bible says they should.
2. The punishment for adultery was death by stoning for both the man and the woman (Deut. 22:22), but here adultery is defined by the marital status of the woman. In the Old Testament, a man could not commit adultery against his own wife; he could only commit adultery against another man by sexually using the other's wife. And a bride who is found not to be a virgin is to be stoned to death (Deut. 22:13-21), but male virginity at marriage is never even mentioned. It is one of the curiosities of the current debate on sexuality that adultery, which creates far more social havoc, is considered less "sinful" than homosexual activity. Perhaps this is because there are far more adulterers in our churches. Yet no one, to my knowledge, is calling for their stoning, despite the clear command of Scripture. And we ordain adulterers.
3. Nudity, the characteristic of paradise, was regarded in Judaism as reprehensible (2 Sam. 6:20; 10:4; Isa. 20:2-4; 47:3). When one of Noah's sons beheld his father naked, he was cursed (Gen. 9:20-27). To a great extent this nudity taboo probably even inhibited the sexual intimacy of husbands and wives (this is still true of a surprising number of people reared in the Judeo-Christian tradition). We may not be prepared for nude beaches, but are we prepared to regard nudity in the locker room or at the old swimming hole or in the privacy of one's home as an accursed sin? The Bible does.
4. Polygamy (many wives) and concubinage (a woman living with a man to whom she is not married) were regularly practiced in the Old Testament. Neither is ever condemned by the New Testament (with the questionable exceptions of 1 Tim. 3:2, 12 and Titus 1:6). Jesus' teaching about marital union in Mark 10:6-8 is no exception, since he quotes Gen. 2:24 as his authority (the man and the woman will become "one flesh"), and this text was never understood in Israel as excluding polygamy. A man could become "one flesh" with more than one woman, through the act of sexual intercourse. We know from Jewish sources that polygamy continued to be practiced within Judaism for centuries following the New Testament period. So if the Bible allowed polygamy and concubinage, why don't we?
5. A form of polygamy was the levirate marriage. When a married man in Israel died childless, his widow was to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bore him a male heir. Jesus mentions this custom without criticism (Mark 12:18-27 par.). I am not aware of any Christians who still obey this unambiguous commandment of Scripture. Why is this law ignored, and the one against homosexual behavior preserved?
6. The Old Testament nowhere explicitly prohibits sexual relations between unmarried consenting heterosexual adults, as long as the woman's economic value (bride price) is not compromised, that is to say, as long as she is not a virgin. There are poems in the Song of Songs that eulogize a love affair between two unmarried persons, though commentators have often conspired to cover up the fact with heavy layers of allegorical interpretation. In various parts of the Christian world, quite different attitudes have prevailed about sexual intercourse before marriage. In some Christian communities, proof of fertility (that is, pregnancy) was required for marriage. This was especially the case in farming areas where the inability to produce children-workers could mean economic hardship. Today, many single adults, the widowed, and the divorced are reverting to "biblical" practice, while others believe that sexual intercourse belongs only within marriage. Both views are Scriptural. Which is right?
7. The Bible virtually lacks terms for the sexual organs, being content with such euphemisms as "foot" or "thigh" for the genitals, and using other euphemisms to describe coitus, such as "he knew her." Today most of us regard such language as "puritanical" and contrary to a proper regard for the goodness of creation. In short, we don't follow Biblical practice.
8. Semen and menstrual blood rendered all who touched them unclean (Lev. 15:16-24). Intercourse rendered one unclean until sundown; menstruation rendered the woman unclean for seven days. Today most people would regard semen and menstrual fluid as completely natural and only at times "messy," not "unclean."
9. Social regulations regarding adultery, incest, rape and prostitution are, in the Old Testament, determined largely by considerations of the males' property rights over women. Prostitution was considered quite natural and necessary as a safeguard of the virginity of the unmarried and the property rights of husbands (Gen. 38:12-19; Josh. 2:1-7). A man was not guilty of sin for visiting a prostitute, though the prostitute herself was regarded as a sinner. Paul must appeal to reason in attacking prostitution (1 Cor. 6:12-20); he cannot lump it in the category of adultery (vs. 9).
Today we are moving, with great social turbulence and at a high but necessary cost, toward a more equitable, non-patriarchal set of social arrangements in which women are no longer regarded as the chattel of men. We are also trying to move beyond the double standard. Love, fidelity and mutual respect replace property rights. We have, as yet, made very little progress in changing the double standard in regard to prostitution. As we leave behind patriarchal gender relations, what will we do with the patriarchalism in the Bible?
10. Jews were supposed to practice endogamy--that is, marriage within the twelve tribes of Israel. Until recently a similar rule prevailed in the American South, in laws against interracial marriage (miscegenation). We have witnessed, within the lifetime of many of us, the nonviolent struggle to nullify state laws against intermarriage and the gradual change in social attitudes toward interracial relationships. Sexual mores can alter quite radically even in a single lifetime.
11. The law of Moses allowed for divorce (Deut. 24:1-4); Jesus categorically forbids it (Mark 10:1-12; Matt. 19:9 softens his severity). Yet many Christians, in clear violation of a command of Jesus, have been divorced. Why, then, do some of these very people consider themselves eligible for baptism, church membership, communion, and ordination, but not homosexuals? What makes the one so much greater a sin than the other, especially considering the fact that Jesus never even mentioned homosexuality but explicitly condemned divorce? Yet we ordain divorcees. Why not homosexuals?
12. The Old Testament regarded celibacy as abnormal, and 1 Tim. 4:1-3 calls compulsory celibacy a heresy. Yet the Catholic Church has made it mandatory for priests and nuns. Some Christian ethicists demand celibacy of homosexuals, whether they have a vocation for celibacy or not. But this legislates celibacy by category, not by divine calling. Others argue that since God made men and women for each other in order to be fruitful and multiply, homosexuals reject God's intent in creation. But this would mean that childless couples, single persons, priests and nuns would be in violation of God's intention in their creation. Those who argue thus must explain why the apostle Paul never married. And are they prepared to charge Jesus with violating the will of God by remaining single?
Certainly heterosexual marriage is normal, else the race would die out. But it is not normative. God can bless the world through people who are married and through people who are single, and it is false to generalize from the marriage of most people to the marriage of everyone. In 1 Cor. 7:7 Paul goes so far as to call marriage a "charisma," or divine gift, to which not everyone is called. He preferred that people remain as he was--unmarried. In an age of overpopulation, perhaps a gay orientation is especially sound ecologically!
13. In many other ways we have developed different norms from those explicitly laid down by the Bible. For example, "If men get into a fight with one another, and the wife of one intervenes to rescue her husband from the grip of his opponent by reaching out and seizing his genitals, you shall cut off her hand; show no pity" (Deut. 25:11f.). We, on the contrary, might very well applaud her for trying to save her husband's life!
14. The Old and New Testaments both regarded slavery as normal and nowhere categorically condemned it. Part of that heritage was the use of female slaves, concubines and captives as sexual toys, breeding machines, or involuntary wives by their male owners, which 2 Sam. 5:13, Judges 19-21 and Num. 31:18 permitted--and as many American slave owners did some 150 years ago, citing these and numerous other Scripture passages as their justification.
The Problem of Authority
These cases are relevant to our attitude toward the authority of Scripture. They are not cultic prohibitions from the Holiness Code that are clearly superseded in Christianity, such as rules about eating shellfish or wearing clothes made of two different materials. They are rules concerning sexual behavior, and they fall among the moral commandments of Scripture. Clearly we regard certain rules, especially in the Old Testament, as no longer binding. Other things we regard as binding, including legislation in the Old Testament that is not mentioned at all in the New. What is our principle of selection here?
For example, virtually all modern readers would agree with the Bible in rejecting: incest, rape, adultery, and intercourse with animals. But we disagree with the Bible on most other sexual mores. The Bible condemned the following behaviors which we generally allow: intercourse during menstruation, celibacy, exogamy (marriage with non-Jews), naming sexual organs, nudity (under certain conditions), masturbation (some Christians still condemn this), birth control (some Christians still forbid this).
And the Bible regarded semen and menstrual blood as unclean, which most of us do not. Likewise, the Bible permitted behaviors that we today condemn: prostitution, polygamy, levirate marriage, sex with slaves, concubinage, treatment of women as property, and very early marriage (for the girl, age 11-13).
And while the Old Testament accepted divorce, Jesus forbade it. In short, of the sexual mores mentioned here, we only agree with the Bible on four of them, and disagree with it on sixteen!
Surely no one today would recommend reviving the levirate marriage. So why do we appeal to proof texts in Scripture in the case of homosexuality alone, when we feel perfectly free to disagree with Scripture regarding most other sexual practices? Obviously many of our choices in these matters are arbitrary. Mormon polygamy was outlawed in this country, despite the constitutional protection of freedom of religion, because it violated the sensibilities of the dominant Christian culture. Yet no explicit biblical prohibition against polygamy exists.
If we insist on placing ourselves under the old law, as Paul reminds us, we are obligated to keep every commandment of the law (Gal. 5:3). But if Christ is the end of the law (Rom. 10:4), if we have been discharged from the law to serve, not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit (Rom. 7:6), then all of these biblical sexual mores come under the authority of the Spirit. We cannot then take even what Paul himself says as a new Law. Christians reserve the right to pick and choose which sexual mores they will observe, though they seldom admit to doing just that. And this is as true of evangelicals and fundamentalists as it is of liberals and mainliners.
Judge for Yourselves
The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. There is no Biblical sex ethic. Instead, it exhibits a variety of sexual mores, some of which changed over the thousand year span of biblical history. Mores are unreflective customs accepted by a given community. Many of the practices that the Bible prohibits, we allow, and many that it allows, we prohibit. The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period.
The very notion of a "sex ethic" reflects the materialism and splitness of modern life, in which we increasingly define our identity sexually. Sexuality cannot be separated off from the rest of life. No sex act is "ethical" in and of itself, without reference to the rest of a person's life, the patterns of the culture, the special circumstances faced, and the will of God. What we have are simply sexual mores, which change, sometimes with startling rapidity, creating bewildering dilemmas. Just within one lifetime we have witnessed the shift from the ideal of preserving one's virginity until marriage, to couples living together for several years before getting married. The response of many Christians is merely to long for the hypocrisies of an earlier era.
I agree that rules and norms are necessary; that is what sexual mores are. But rules and norms also tend to be impressed into the service of the Domination System, and to serve as a form of crowd control rather than to enhance the fullness of human potential. So we must critique the sexual mores of any given time and clime by the love ethic exemplified by Jesus. Defining such a love ethic is not complicated. It is non-exploitative (hence no sexual exploitation of children, no using of another to their loss), it does not dominate (hence no patriarchal treatment of women as chattel), it is responsible, mutual, caring, and loving. Augustine already dealt with this in his inspired phrase, "Love God, and do as you please."
Our moral task, then, is to apply Jesus' love ethic to whatever sexual mores are prevalent in a given culture. This doesn't mean everything goes. It means that everything is to be critiqued by Jesus' love commandment. We might address younger teens, not with laws and commandments whose violation is a sin, but rather with the sad experiences of so many of our own children who find too much early sexual intimacy overwhelming, and who react by voluntary celibacy and even the refusal to date. We can offer reasons, not empty and unenforceable orders. We can challenge both gays and straights to question their behaviors in the light of love and the requirements of fidelity, honesty, responsibility, and genuine concern for the best interests of the other and of society as a whole.
Christian morality, after all, is not a iron chastity belt for repressing urges, but a way of expressing the integrity of our relationship with God. It is the attempt to discover a manner of living that is consistent with who God created us to be. For those of same-sex orientation, as for heterosexuals, being moral means rejecting sexual mores that violate their own integrity and that of others, and attempting to discover what it would mean to live by the love ethic of Jesus.
Morton Kelsey goes so far as to argue that homosexual orientation has nothing to do with morality, any more than left-handedness. It is simply the way some people's sexuality is configured. Morality enters the picture when that predisposition is enacted. If we saw it as a God-given gift to those for whom it is normal, we could get beyond the acrimony and brutality that have so often characterized the unchristian behavior of Christians toward gays.
Approached from the point of view of love rather than that of law, the issue is at once transformed. Now the question is not "What is permitted?" but rather "What does it mean to love my homosexual neighbor?" Approached from the point of view of faith rather than works, the question ceases to be "What constitutes a breach of divine law in the sexual realm?" and becomes instead "What constitutes integrity before the God revealed in the cosmic lover, Jesus Christ?" Approached from the point of view of the Spirit rather than the letter, the question ceases to be "What does Scripture command?" and becomes "What is the Word that the Spirit speaks to the churches now, in the light of Scripture, tradition, theology, and, yes, psychology, genetics, anthropology, and biology?" We can't continue to build ethics on the basis of bad science.
In a little-remembered statement, Jesus said, "Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?" (Luke 12:57 NRSV). Such sovereign freedom strikes terror in the hearts of many Christians; they would rather be under law and be told what is right. Yet Paul himself echoes Jesus' sentiment when he says, "Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, matters pertaining to this life!" (1 Cor. 6:3 RSV). The last thing Paul would want is for people to respond to his ethical advice as a new law engraved on tablets of stone. He is himself trying to "judge for himself what is right." If now new evidence is in on the phenomenon of homosexuality, are we not obligated--no, free--to re-evaluate the whole issue in the light of all the available data and decide what is right, under God, for ourselves? Is this not the radical freedom for obedience in which the gospel establishes us?
Where the Bible mentions homosexual behavior at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether that Biblical judgment is correct. The Bible sanctioned slavery as well, and nowhere attacked it as unjust. Are we prepared to argue today that slavery is biblically justified? One hundred and fifty years ago, when the debate over slavery was raging, the Bible seemed to be clearly on the slaveholders' side. Abolitionists were hard pressed to justify their opposition to slavery on biblical grounds. Yet today, if you were to ask Christians in the South whether the Bible sanctions slavery, virtually everyone would agree that it does not. How do we account for such a monumental shift?
What happened is that the churches were finally driven to penetrate beyond the legal tenor of Scripture to an even deeper tenor, articulated by Israel out of the experience of the Exodus and the prophets and brought to sublime embodiment in Jesus' identification with harlots, tax collectors, the diseased and maimed and outcast and poor. It is that God sides with the powerless. God liberates the oppressed. God suffers with the suffering and groans toward the reconciliation of all things. In the light of that supernal compassion, whatever our position on gays, the gospel's imperative to love, care for, and be identified with their sufferings is unmistakably clear.
In the same way, women are pressing us to acknowledge the sexism and patriarchalism that pervades Scripture and has alienated so many women from the church. The way out, however, is not to deny the sexism in Scripture, but to develop an interpretive theory that judges even Scripture in the light of the revelation in Jesus. What Jesus gives us is a critique of domination in all its forms, a critique that can be turned on the Bible itself. The Bible thus contains the principles of its own correction. We are freed from bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible. It is restored to its proper place as witness to the Word of God. And that word is a Person, not a book.
With the interpretive grid provided by a critique of domination, we are able to filter out the sexism, patriarchalism, violence, and homophobia that are very much a part of the Bible, thus liberating it to reveal to us in fresh ways the inbreaking, in our time, of God's domination-free order.
An Appeal for Tolerance
What most saddens me in this whole raucous debate in the churches is how sub-Christian most of it has been. It is characteristic of our time that the issues most difficult to assess, and which have generated the greatest degree of animosity, are issues on which the Bible can be interpreted as supporting either side. I am referring to abortion and homosexuality.
We need to take a few steps back and be honest with ourselves. I am deeply convinced of the rightness of what I have said in this essay. But I must acknowledge that it is not an air tight case. You can find weaknesses in it, just as I can in others'. The truth is, we are not given unequivocal guidance in either area, abortion or homosexuality.
Rather than tearing at each others's throats, therefore, we should humbly admit our limitations. How do I know I am correctly interpreting God's word for us today? How do you? Wouldn't it be wiser for Christians to lower the decibels by 95 percent and quietly present our beliefs, knowing full well that we might be wrong?
I know of a couple, both well known Christian authors in their own right, who have both spoken out on the issue of homosexuality. She supports gays, passionately; he opposes their behavior, strenuously. So far as I can tell, this couple still enjoy each other's company, eat at the same table, and, for all I know, sleep in the same bed.
We in the church need to get our priorities straight. We have not reached a consensus about who is right on the issue of homosexuality. But what is clear, utterly clear, is that we are commanded to love one another. Love not just our gay sisters and brothers who are often sitting beside us, unacknowledged, in church, but all of us who are involved in this debate. These are issues about which we should amiably agree to disagree. We don't have to tear whole denominations to shreds in order to air our differences on this point. If that couple I mentioned can continue to embrace across this divide, surely we can do so as well.
June 28, 2007 1:08 PM | Report Offensive Comment
How magnanimous of you. You are truly a saint. You'll tolerate your own child if "they want to be gay"!!!
What a horrible thing to say. That is without doubt the most condescending, sanctimonious piece of crap I have ever heard. With that kind of attitude your child would know eons before he did come to you to never do it. Irby, you are sad.
You have know idea what love is. You are not wise by any reasonable standard. I feel so sorry for your children and community but I feel more sorry for your "gay friends". I don't believe you have any. I think this a lie because they wuldn't put up with your fake condescention.
You are hopeless. You don't get it at all.
ron
June 28, 2007 12:59 PM | Report Offensive Comment
(Rabbi) Arthur Waskow :
Some have argued that the Bible prohibits male homosexuality for sure, and perhaps lesbian sexuality as well. (Those who might want the government to poke around in private bedrooms might recall that the Rabbis suggested that the Bible also calls for privacy: that what Balaam found "Mah tovu," "So good!" in the tents of the House of Jacob was precisely that they were pitched at angles to each other so that each household preserved its privacy -- especially its sexual privacy.)
Some have argued that "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman" is ambiguous, leaving open to question what the text really means. (Is this
physically possible? Was it only about casual or ritual homosexuality, not committed relationships?)
But I think we need to go beyond these historical or midrashic quibbles, to look more deeply into Torah.
Does Torah look forward to its own transformation? If so, under what circumstances?
There is wise and powerful teaching in the passage of Talmud that cautions against raising goats and sheep in the Land of Israel. Since our forebears Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rivkah, did precisely that, how could the Talmud have the chutzpah to oppose it?
The Rabbis know the world had changed. They knew that the numbers of goats and sheep, and of the human population, would denude and ruin the Land if these animals were bred there.
The world had changed, and so did Jewish holy practice.
Biblical Judaism, out of which sprang the Leviticus prohibition on homosexuality, professed three basic rules for proper sexual ethics:
1. Have as many children as possible. Gen. I: 28: "Be fruitful, multiply, fill up the earth, and subdue it."
2. Men were to be in charge. Genesis 3: 16, where God says to Eve, "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."
3. Sex was delightful and sacred. (Song of Songs, throughout.) Celibacy was almost unheard of, and almost always strongly discouraged.
How did these affect attitudes toward homosexuality?
"Be fruitful and multiply, fill up the earth and subdue it"" worked against homosexuality, since having children was presumably impossible. But what shall we do today, in a generation when the injunction to "fill up th earth" has been accomplished? H
Today the sheer number of humans is putting impossible burdens on our global ecosystem and plunging into extinction thousands of the species that God commands in the story of the Flood we must not allow to die.
Today we need to encourage, not forbid, forms of sexuality that avoid biological multiplication. We might now read the command as teaching us to
be fruitful and expansive emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually rather than biologically.
What were the effects of "He shall rule over you"? If a man had to be in charge in a sexual relationship, there was no way to deal with a relationship of two men. Neither one could be subordinated -- "as with a woman." Such a relationship would blow out all the circuits. Conversely, a relationship between two "subordinate" women would not even turn the power on - and so it was ignored in biblical tradition.
Is this statement in Eden intended by Torah to persist forever? No more than the twin statement (Gen. 3: 17-19) that human beings (or at least men) shall "toil in the sweat of their brow," wringing a livelihood from a hostile earth. Do we think Torah commands us to eschew the machines that make our labor easier?
Like this statement about toil, and like "Be fruitful and multiply," the overlordship of men applied to a history that should be transcended. It was not an edict to be obeyed.
Modernity has transformed the world we live in. The Modernity that eases our work and makes women and men equal and brings the human race to fill up
and subdue the earth seems to be what God intended.
So then we must ask ourselves, as the Rabbis of the Talmud understood that in their new world they must oppose raising sheep and goats as their forebears did, what must we change in our new world?
In a world filled and subdued by the human race, multiplying our numbers may actually contravene God's intention. In a world where men are not required to be dominant nor women to be subordinate, a relationship of two men or two
women need not be either destructive or irrelevant.
So we are evolving past these two rules that underlay the opposition to gay and lesbian relationships and marriages.
The third basic rule -- that sex is delightful and sacred - still stands. The biblical Song of Songs embodies it, and the Song -- far from being outdated - may point beyond the Eden of the past, of a childish human race, past our history of toil and hierarchy, toward an Eden of the Future. "Eden for grown-ups," for a grown-up human race and for newly mature individual human beings.
In the Song, bodies are no longer shameful as they were after the mistake of Eden; the earth is playful, not our enemy; and women and men are equal in desire and in power. And God is never named - no longer Papa/Mama as in Eden, giving orders, but inherent in the very process of life.
Though the drama of the Song is on its face heterosexual, it describes the kind of sensual pleasure beyond the rules that has characterized some aspects of gay and lesbian desire, especially since marriage was forbidden.
So we now have the opportunity to open heterosexual relationships and marriages to the kind of joy the Song embodies, while opening gay and lesbian life to the more planful structure that marriage makes possible.
Love and marriage are present in the Song, suffused with joy and pleasure rather than with rigidity and rules. For millennia, Jews have prided ourselves on the worth of marriage as a carrier of holiness and community. Now we can expand the circles in which marriage - a new kind of marriage - is possible.
From a spiritual as well as a legal standpoint, our courts are opening the way to enhancing, not destroying, marriage. They have opened the gates; but only spiritual communities can enter. Let the tents of Jacob and the shrines of Israel rejoice, "Mah tovu! How wonderful!"
___________________________
* Rabbi Arthur Waskow is director of The Shalom Center ,
author of Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, & the Rest of Life, and
co-author of A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven: The Jewish Life-Spiral
as a Spiritual Path. The Shalom center's Website carries many thoughtful reexaminations of the Bible in the light of God;s will for the world we live in.
"For example, read 1Corinthians6:9-10"
Thanks for bringing it up, because false translation is a significant crime on the part of those people who condemn homosexuality.
I Corinthians was written in Greek, not English. The two greek words that your fraudulent translation reports as "male prostitutes, homosexuals" are arsenkoitai and malkoi - neither means men who have sex with men, i.e., homosexuals.
Greek of Paul's time and place had two commonly used words that meant men who have sex with men - erestes and eranamos. Paul used neither one.
Instead, Paul invented a word, arsenokoitai, whose meaning has changed over the course of time, and he used a word that is essentially a criticism of anything feminime.
So you are reviling my relationship based on a text where Paul did not use the two words that would have actually conveyed the meaning you hunger for. Bully for you.
As for Romans2:26 - The error here is right in front: "That is why - - - " It means that whatever came before (which happens to be a description of specific fertility practices) is too blame for what follows.
If the Romans 1 passage is to be used to condemn homosexuality entirely, on the grounds that it appears to be condemning same-sex sexual acts in a specific situation, than the hundreds of verses condemning specific acts of heterosexual intimacy constitute a much stronger condemnation of all heterosexuals and all heterosexuality.
Keep in mind, of course, that you are leaing on the word of a fallible man, instead of Jesus Christ, who summed up the law without ever condeming homosexuality: The whole of the Law is love God with your entire self and love your neighbor as yourself."
Every person, including you, Aurora, who condemns homosexuality, is in direct and deliberate disobediance, defying and rejecting Jesus Christ, because that condemnation violates both clauses of what Christ said was the whole of the law.
Aurora, you've sinned against me, my partner, our friends, people we worship with, work with, millions of human beings.
Please repent of your sin against us as publicly as you committed it.
June 28, 2007 12:57 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The whole idea of what is right and what is wrong has to be grounded in something other than what the individual thinks. Otherwise, anyone can justify whatever they want to do. Even the whole idea of sexuality, in its entirety has to be greater than what I think, or I can even justfy pedaphilia, incest, rape, or literally any behavior I think is "right for me". Ultimately, it comes down to one decision. Is there a God or isn't there. If you don't believe there is a God, then you have to come up with a paradigm for determining acceptable behavior. If you do believe in God, than by the very definition, God gets to say what is right and wrong, and you can't overturn that. As one who has become convinced there is a God, it then logically follows that He is perfect, and has the right to set the rules. Therefore, regardless of what I "think" or "feel", I'm compelled to subordinate my desires to God's will. So, whether I'm born gay, or develop gay desires because of enviornment, or other factors, I must consider my behavior, not in light of how I feel or think, but in light of what God says. By the way, the same logic applies to any behavior. Selfishness is a good example. God says selfishness is wrong. Anyone who has been a father or mother knows that even infants are selfish. That's why, as children grow older, they must be taught to be unselfish. But, what if someone were to say "By trying to make me be unselfish, you are denying how I was made. If I were unselfish, I would not be true to that person I really am. Unselfishness may be ok for you, but it isn't ok for me." How would we argue that selfishness is wrong? If we allow individuals to establish what is right for them, then we can't even intimate that selfishness is bad, because we are imposing a value on them that is illegitimate in their life. One would have to say "Well, that's really ok to be selfish. What right do I have to tell you how to live?" While that is certainly possible, I think we would all agree that ultimately, being selfish in not healthy or profitable. But God says selfishness is wrong, and therefore it is wrong, regardless of what I think or feel. Ultimately, we will be judged based upon what God says is good or bad, not on what we think is good or bad. Thanks for allowing me to give my opinion
June 28, 2007 12:53 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Wrong again. I am neither a mormon or a baptist.
And I wont teach my children to hate either. I dont hate and i wont teach them to.
I will teach them God's word. They will make their own choices.
And you know if my child comes up to me and tells me they want to be gay then I will live with it. I will continue to them Gods word. But I will not punish them or condemn them. Because I dont condemn them.
I will pray for my child. But I will not love them any less.
June 28, 2007 12:49 PM | Report Offensive Comment
W.Irby :
Like I said. I have sinned. Plenty of times.
As a matter of fact, no i am not a virgin. I am happily married and this is my second pregnancy.
They could learn to love and live their life as God intended. With someone of the opposite sex.
You know you guys really are helping me change my mind. Your helping me see how much I really do dislike it. Congrats. Your helping me get my faith even stronger with God. Im so glad I found him. I am so glad I dont have to lie to HIM!
-----------------------------------
You are either a Mormon or a Baptist. The stink of their propaganda is dripping of this one.
I said that to pretend who you are not is stupid, Irby. My brother and his husband are not stupid nor are they liars nor are they miserable nor are they faking an existence that isn't true for them.
You don't get it. You are asking them to fake and existence that isn't true and then lie about how wonderful it all is. You are the one who ie sick. I weep for your children.
You need help.
My children love their two uncles just the way they are. We don't teach our children hate.
ron
June 28, 2007 12:45 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Ok then give me the exact quote from me that says
"gay people are just like murders and rapist"
please bc i dont see it.
no i didnt say that.
you dont know what i said. you dont understand.
i using something EVERYONE thinks is a horrible and bad thing since you think i feel this way about gay people.
And you SW are constantly putting words in my mouth. I give up with you. You are hopeless. You are more stubborn than I am. Thats pretty bad.
June 28, 2007 12:39 PM | Report Offensive Comment
"W.Irby :
Once again take my words out of context.
Ya'll are acusing me of comparing them. Im not.
Read my stuff before you overanalyze.
Your taking everything I say way out of context, again, to try and turn things around. Go ahead. I know the truth. I know what I meant. God knows what I meant."
--------------------------
You said that gay people are the same as murderers and rapists if the "act" on their desires. That is not taken out of context. That is what YOU wrote. YOU wrote that.
----------------------------
"I didnt compare gay people to murders. Ya'll I think i look down on gay people and you think its a sin. Well I dont look down on them.
But do you look down on people who do sinful things as bad people? Yes you do.
Thats what I meant."
-----------------------------
G-d doesn't "look down" on gay persons and call them sinful. YOU do this. Against Jesus' ministry to not do this. YOU presume to know the mind of G-d and speak G-d's mind.
----------------------------
"You knew exactly what I meant. But you chose to be IGNORANT again and turn it around.
And you know while im thinking about it ya'll just proved my point.."
---------------------------
Yes, that is correct. WE do know exactly what you meant. Just what yuo wrote. That gay persons are just like murderers and rapists who murder and rape. You seem to be the one who doesn't know what you wrote.
But that's what you wrote. YOU are the one not taking responsibility for your views.
sw
June 28, 2007 12:32 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Like I said. I have sinned. Plenty of times.
As a matter of fact, no i am not a virgin. I am happily married and this is my second pregnancy.
They could learn to love and live their life as God intended. With someone of the opposite sex.
You know you guys really are helping me change my mind. Your helping me see how much I really do dislike it. Congrats. Your helping me get my faith even stronger with God. Im so glad I found him. I am so glad I dont have to lie to HIM!
June 28, 2007 12:27 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Once again take my words out of context.
Ya'll are acusing me of comparing them. Im not.
Read my stuff before you overanalyze.
Your taking everything I say way out of context, again, to try and turn things around. Go ahead. I know the truth. I know what I meant. God knows what I meant.
I didnt compare gay people to murders. Ya'll I think i look down on gay people and you think its a sin. Well I dont look down on them.
But do you look down on people who do sinful things as bad people? Yes you do.
Thats what I meant.
You knew exactly what I meant. But you chose to be IGNORANT again and turn it around.
And you know while im thinking about it ya'll just proved my point..
June 28, 2007 12:19 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Repent of being who they are in their deepest selves? Is that it? Lie about who they are? Pretend to be what aren't or spend their whole lives alone and sexless? These are the options?
You haven't had sex yet have you? You are a virgin aren't you? Becasue only a virgin who has no expereince with life would condemn other people she doesn't understand to the kind of h&ll on earth she advocates by proxy.
My brother and his husband are beautiful just the way they are and they are going to heaven with all of us because they love G-d with all their strength, mind, and body.
You have no idea what "repent" means do you? It means to return to God. That's all it means. It doesn't mean be a faker and fake an existence that is inauthentic to please religious zealots who don't know their a$$es from holes in the ground. Repent doesn't mean, "I'm really, really sorry for who I am and make me who I am not so ignorant fools don't have to be afflicted with my existance as I truly am."
What an idiot you are. You have no idea what you are talking about. Go to school and learn something. Gays are real people with real feelings that are just as valid as yours. Grow up.
ron
June 28, 2007 12:16 PM | Report Offensive Comment
That's right, you're wonderful, Irby. You don't hate gays. You think they are the same as rapists and murderers for "what they do". But you don't say that to their face; you say it here.
You're a Sicko.
June 28, 2007 12:01 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Oh Wise Women, Irby, you compared gay pserons to rapists and murderers and made that equation the standard of justifcation for anti-gay rhetoric and hermeneutics against them.
Those are your words. You wrote that. You are sick and deluded. You need help too.
sw
June 28, 2007 11:56 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Being gay is not a sin.
A heterosexual committing homosexual acts fraudulently and abusively is a sin. Every reference in the bible is a reference to this and not gay persons. The bible says nothing about gay persons. You read your anti-gay bias into the text fraudulently and then bear false witness against gay persons.
This is the point.
You just don't get it.
David, you need psychological help.
Irby, you are defintely not wise by the classic Greek standard of measure: wisdom is the courage to say I know nothing and start from there to learn.
You know it all and thereby cannot learn anything new.
The point of the question was to examine whether you can learn to change your mind.
You have proven you cannot and never will.
OK. We all get it. You are agressively ignorant. I'm so proud of you.
I guessed right about you. You are also too young to know what wisdon is. Wisdom develops with age and openness to truth and love.
Gay persons are not the "acts" they do. Stop exclusively sexualizing them. This is obscene. I would never refer to you with the catch-all demeaning title, "heterosexuals". They and you are who G-d made them and where born to be. I feel sorry for your gay "friends". With a friend like you who needs enemies.
You know nothing. Sad.
sw
June 28, 2007 11:48 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Hey Irby,
Thanks for defending God's Word. Sheep amongst the wolves, huh? Best thing to do if they continue with the hateful comments and poor assumptions of our character and beliefs is to just leave. Let em be sista! I agree with everything you said. I wish they would realize that what we believe is not hateful but actually the complete opposite. Take care Irby. God bless you.
June 27, 2007 11:03 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Ok let me just throw this out there..
Since the bible says ( in more than one place ) that homosexuality is a sin. I look at homosexuality as an act.. i dont look at the people. Bc I dont think the people are bad. I just think the actions are bad.
What about rapist and murders. Im sure all of you at one point or time have seen something on tv, heard something on the news about either of those. And thought to yourself or outloud. How awful, how could someone do such a thing. That is judging. Which by the way yes I have said that. Im not denying it.
But that is you calling the PERSON bad. Saying the PERSON is going to Hell.
As for me saying homosexuality is a sin. I am saying the ACT is a SIN. Not the people doing it.
You people just dont understand, either that or you just want to make me out to be some horrible person who hates gay and is out to get them. well Im not. IF that were so i wouldnt have gay friends. If that were so i would say how much i hate gays and i think they are just horrible people. WELL I DONT. So stop putting words in my mouth.
Hell ya'll are judging me right now. You know that?! Bascially calling me a bad person bc i dont agree with you.
Its a freakin website that posted a question
"What does your faith lead you to believe about gay unions and gay clergy? Could you ever change your mind?"
All I did was answer that question.
Just as all of you did.
I gave my opinion and thats it. I am not a bad person and I am not judging anyone.
If you can't get that.. Im sorry your so ignorant.
June 27, 2007 10:39 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Ron,
I never once said a gay person couldnt repent and end up in heaven.
All they have to do is ask for forgiveness and they will get it.
But they shouldnt keep doing it knowing that it is a sin. And yes it is a sin.
Homosexuality is a sin.
I am not judging them. God is. I am just saying what the bible says. You people who say that i am judging them are ignorant.
I like my gay friends. They are wonderful people. That is just one of the things we dont agree on. They know how i feel about it. They dont dislike me for it bc they know why i feel the way i do. As a matter of fact I talked to one today ( named Ryan) bc he was interested in everything i have been talkin about on here. He asked me to show him all the verses in the bible that talked about it and you know what he agrees. He thinks that he should stop what he is doing. He knows he wasn't "born that way" because you aren't. God doesn't make people into homosexuales. He didn't intend for people to end up that way. If he did he wouldnt have made a man and woman in the beginning. He wouldnt' constently say over and over again in the bible one man to one woman. one man to one wife.. and so on.
Oh and SW. i didnt use Leviticus. YOu used it first. I just simply put it up there to show you what you posted and how it worked against your arguement, not for yours.
I don't care what you people think. I know how i feel on the inside. I do not hate gay people. just because they are gay doesn't make them any less. but ACCORDING TO GOD homosexuality is a sin and since they participate in it. The ACTIONS not the PEOPLE are sins.
And yes SW I am a woman. I am 19 year old woman. I have probably seen more in this world and been through more than a 60 year old. I am wise way beyond my years and i know I am.
I am not concieted by any means because over half the stuff I have done and seen I am not proud of but you know what that is between me and God. I repented and asked for my forgiveness.
June 27, 2007 10:24 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I am a heterosexual, married woman. If two people love each other and wish to make a commitment to share their lives, I don't care if they are the same sex. It will not hurt my marriage at all. I fail to see how it is anyone's business.
IF you believe that it is a sin, why not let your god decide? Doesn't the bible include the admonition to not judge?
June 27, 2007 10:23 PM | Report Offensive Comment
To: CONCERNED THE CHRISTIAN NOW LIBERATED
GOOD NEWS! There is a cure!
You are precisely right; the problem is your Christian upbringing. To cure yourself, try reading one of the books on the bestseller list like "the God Delusion" or "Letter to a Christian Nation”. You can lead a rational life if you try to think.
June 27, 2007 9:58 PM | Report Offensive Comment
To: CONCERNED THE CHRISTIAN NOW LIBERATED
GOOD NEWS! There is a cure!
You are precisely right; the problem is your Christian upbringing. To cure yourself, try reading one of the books on the bestseller list like "the God Delusion" or "Letter to a Christian Nation”. You can lead a rational life if you try to think.
June 27, 2007 9:58 PM | Report Offensive Comment
To: CONCERNED THE CHRISTIAN NOW LIBERATED
GOOD NEWS! There is a cure!
You are precisely right; the problem is your Christian upbringing. To cure yourself, try reading one of the books on the bestseller list like the God Delusion of Letter to a Christian Nation”. You can lead a rational life if you try to think.
June 27, 2007 9:57 PM | Report Offensive Comment
No SW I don't need help. I never said that you are demon possesed. Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said I don't love you or that I don't respect you. I merely stated homosexuality as a sin. The level of sin I commit on a regular basis as well. This will definately be my last post on this subject, but I just wanted you to know that I don't hate homosexuals. I never said that, and stop assuming that!
June 27, 2007 9:49 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Are the Gay Unions part of the AFL/CIO?
Shouldn’t they pay dues like the rest of us?
June 27, 2007 9:47 PM | Report Offensive Comment
There is no hope if religious people really believe and will not change their notion that gay people = sin and are forever chronically sinful, irredeemable, irreconcilable, unsalvagable.
This is outrageous. If this is Christian teaching then I want no part of it and will tell any religious zealot to go straight to H&ll.
Gays are not unrepentant sinners. This is the 21st century for chrissakes. Leave them alone. My brother and his partner are good people, fine citizens and worth my, my wife and our kids' love.
Why is Christian faith tied to excluding gays? Is that really the future of Christianity?
It is doomed to die out, if it is.
ron
June 27, 2007 8:52 PM | Report Offensive Comment
David,
G-d did not say this. Men wrote this and you fraudulently concluded it. Fallible men. Pre-analytic men. Pre-sceintific men. Writtten words by men are by definition not eternal. They are time-bound and time-warped to future understanding. Our words today are not eternal for all time. They represent our understanding today -- the same is true as for yesterday. They are works in progress, never to be finished, never to capture the eternal, always attemping to understand the mysteries beyond our current understanding.
--------------------------------
The Bible consistently tells us that homosexual activity is a sin (Genesis 19:1-13; Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9). Romans 1:26-27 teaches specifically that homosexuality is a result of denying and disobeying God.
[This is untrue -- you bear false witness. II Samuel 1:26 of G-d's Word refutes your claim.]
When a person continues in sin and disbelief, the Bible tells us that God “gives them over” to even more wicked and depraved sin in order to show them the futility and hopelessness of life apart from God. 1 Corinthians 6:9 proclaims that homosexual “offenders” will not inherit the kingdom of God.
[This is untrue -- it presumes that gay attraction is demonic possession or Satanic influence. You maintain a 2,500 year old superstition that demon-possession is the "explanation" of gay persons -- you bear false witness to gay persons.]
God does not create a person with homosexual desires.
[This is a lie you maintain in order to keep your false biblical inerrancy claim -- you bear false witness to gay persons.]
The Bible tells us that a person becomes a homosexual because of sin (Romans 1:24-27),
[It does not say this at all. The King James Version does not support your claim -- you bear fasle witness to gay persons.]
and ultimately because of their own choice.
[This is a lie you use to maintain your false biblical inerrancy claim -- you bear false witness to gay persons.]
A person may be born with a greater susceptibility to homosexuality, just as people are born with a tendency to violence and other sins. That does not excuse the person choosing to sin by giving into their sinful desires. If a person is born with a greater susceptibility to anger / rage, does that make it right for then to give into those desires? Of course not! The same is true for homosexuality.
[This is a lie. Gay persons may not with any kind of integrity epsecially in America be equated with states of anger or rage. No ones' sexual identity is chosen. No one makes a conscious "choice" to be any kind of sexual identity. Only gay men who do not accpet themselves and engage in anti-gay rhetoric or hermenuetics make the claim that sexual attraction is changeable, lie about their true sexual identity and attempt to fabricate a false sexual identity. This is called heterosexist bias -- the attempted fraudulent heterosexualization of gay persons inauthentically -- you bear false witness to gay persons.]
However, the Bible does not describe homosexuality as a “greater” sin than any other. All sin is offensive to God. Homosexuality is just one of the many things listed in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 that will keep a person from the kingdom of God. According to the Bible, God’s forgiveness is just as available to a homosexual as it is to an adulterer, idol worshipper, murderer, thief, etc. God also promises the strength for victory over sin, including homosexuality, to all those who will believe in Jesus Christ for their salvation (1 Corinthians 6:11; 2 Corinthians 5:17).
[This is a lie supported no where in the bible. Jesus' salvation will not make a gay person straight -- or the converse, Satan's possession make a straight person gay . This is an outrageous claim that has no basis in reality -- you bear false witness to gay persons.]
David, you need help. Serious mental help. Being gay is not 5th century BCE demonic possession. Demons don't make you have "those attractions". It is how you were born.
If being insane is the litmus test for being a faithful Christian than serious intervention is called for. Thank you for allerting me to the dimension of the problem in our churches.
Get some help.
sw
June 27, 2007 8:31 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I'll just leave you with this:
Whether you like it or not, homosexuality is a sin in God's eyes. I agree with God. I can tell from all the hateful ranting from SW and others that it is not acceptable to agree with God. I could care less what you think. I never said I hated anyone nor did I ever talk in offensive language. But as I can see those who accept sin as a positive thing are prone to hateful and ridiculous accusations. So keep it coming if you want, but I'm gonna leave this conversation since it is a hateful and demeaning conversation on your part. I was willing to have a respecful conversation and try to show why you are deserving of God's grace, but all the hateful rant is quite convincing that I'll just go. Have a blessed day and God bless you in all you do.
June 27, 2007 6:30 PM | Report Offensive Comment
http://www.religioustolerance.org/homosexu.htm
June 27, 2007 5:04 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby,
You said that ALL G-d's commandments and rules are to be followed equally without regard to hiearchy.
You are the one who said this.
You said no one can follow all of them but you try.
Be consistent. You are being inconsistent and that is my point. Why is the issue of homosexuality so hyperinflated for you? You said that all sins are equal with no one more important than any other.
In fact David agreed and said the same. Yet David then claims that homosexuality is the most eggregious of sins when Ezekiel makes plain that sins of commission are third in the heirarchy and that sins of pride are most eggregious, and sins of ommmission second.
You both seem to be unfamiliar with Ezekiel since he makes this heirarchical distinction and you don't but then do for gays but are wrong in your execution because he says sins of commission are third in importance.
Kevin said to stop using the bible as a sheild for your bigotry. He called it. That is exactly what you do but you do it incompetently and ignorantly. You don't even know what it actually says nor how to deal with it -- unless you are undergirding your anti-gay bigotry and then yu misuse it to do so.
Wake up.
sw
June 27, 2007 4:36 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby, how ignorant can YOU get?
Kevin is right on. It matters a great deal how, when, where, in what languages and cultures the orginal materials were written and then the pathways that they came to us today.
The Torah was rewritten, significantly altered and revised 4 times that we know of. It's first incarnation would bear little to no resemblance to what we read today.
The Hebrew texts were never written for "you" but for societies long past. The orginal referents are lost to us. The Hellenistic tranlation from Hebrew to Greek in the Septugant made uncounted errors and "revisions" that divorced us from their Jewish origins. The new testament texts wre written for JEWS of their time in the 1st century CE. "Christians" did not exist at the time of their writing. The subsequent translation by the Constantinian Board of Canon in the 4th century CE that Kevin rightly specifies intentionally mistranslated the Greek as well to serve a political agenda of its time.
It's all about very human political agendas, control, imperialistism and authoritarianism.
You reveal your ignorance, irrational fear and deep insecurities every time you post.
Read a little will ya? I gave you several resources.
Kev, I would caution you. The bible is most certainly not literal, absolute or inerrant. That doesn't mean it is worthless. It is a great work of high value when put to scholarly, literary use. It is not literally, inerrantly nor absolutely true. Yet it is metaphorically, allegorically, mythologically true and possibly has some valid historicity associated within. It has great value from the perspective of being really true, but the price of admission is to give up forever irrational claims of inerrancy, absolutism or literalism.
I hope you meant this.
sw
June 27, 2007 4:18 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby,
You have learning disabilities. I always refer to you as a person. I don't assume you to be male. I think you are a female because you are so literal and legalistic about the bible. That is a very female characteristic. I don't know, though, cause you might be a deeply closeted gay male.
Tell which it is, I'd like to know.
I am a male, btw.
You just said we "are to go by the new testament". Then why do you use Leviticus to justify your anti-gay rant?
Why do you judge gay people if we "are to go by the new testament"? In Christ no one is to judge anyone else for any reason. In Christ we are to treat the sinner exactly the same as the righteous and leave judgment to G-d. Why do you refuse to go by this?
I just figured it out! You're a female. That's why you have so many "gay friends" and why they don't talk to you. Fundamentalist Christian fag-hags are so boring.
sw
June 27, 2007 3:50 PM | Report Offensive Comment
David, you are funny.
II Samuel 1:26 is most certainly not "consistent" with your anti-gay rant. It is radically inconsistent. You are hilarious. I quoted it to you and you ignored it.
Gay people are born gay. For men it is prenatally fixed. We are all born the way we are born. You are wrong and if yuo you appeal to the bible to fix the "choice" notin of sexual identity not only will it not be successful but science will invalidate that view as it has.
It is settled science.
You didn't read Rev. Lowe's paper, "A Letter to Louise".
You have a big problem, David. Straight men do not engage in anti-gay rhetoric or hermeneutics. Straight men do not think sexual attraction is elastic and changeable and neither do gay men who accept themselves -- only closeted gay men who hate themselves do.
You are gay, David. Very gay.
Accept yourself and stop ranting you can change. The more you rant the more you give yourself away.
You are who G-d made you.
sw
June 27, 2007 3:36 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Kevin,
How ignorant can you get.
It doesnt matter what century, year or decade we are in. And it doesn't matter how many years it took to write the bible. Its called Faith.
I have had a wonderful life ( yes I have had a lot of downfalls, disappointment and heartache) but thats life. Everytime I fall down, I pray and I feel better. So if reading the bible is a waste of my time oh well. At least I tried. Believing in God isn't holding me back from doing anything I want to do. So I won't stop reading the bible.
If you have a problem with reading the bible.. then dont. I could careless if you do or not.
And as for "using the bible as a shield for your own prejudice." I most certainly do not do that. I just use the facts from the bible. It helped me form my opinion that i dont think homosexuality is right. People think that just because today its starting to become more popular that its ok. Well thats fine for them, but just because times are changing doesn't mean I will or my opinion.
June 27, 2007 12:16 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Can we stop believing that the bible is literal truth already? It's the 21st century. Honestly people, the bible is a collection of distinctly separate books written by several different writers over many centuries, and synthesized into one book by a bunch of bureaucratic clergy. It's no more a book to live by than a collection of 19th century English literature. You don't believe Ebenezer Scrooge existed, do you, even though he might have a historical context? Did Dorian Gray's soul really age through his portrait? NO! Certainly there are moral themes and messages in each, but they aren't written by a deity. Come back to reality, please. If you want a world worth living in, quit being bigoted and using the bible as a shield for your own prejudice.
June 26, 2007 11:45 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Me first me first me first...
I bet that you are a 9 yr old hermaphradite Madagascan on vacation in Madrid, posting from an internet coffee bar, whilst you mum is chasing David Beckham through the airport, all the while over the the PA system throughout the airport echoes your name;
{{Bingadulli}}
because you've gone missing as you decide to wind up a few uptight american religious nutters to kill time.
I nailed it, huh?
June 26, 2007 10:09 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Can someone please tell me if TD Jakes is gay or not...
That lisp is so thick, Jim J Bollock laughs at him while pointing in hysterics.
June 26, 2007 9:55 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Just a question.
Please tell me how old do you think i am.
do you think im a man or a woman.
Im curious. some of things you say i think you might have me mistaken for something im not.
i bet you'll be surprised to know the truth.
June 26, 2007 8:38 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Once again you are not listening and takin everything I say way out of context.
I did not say I dont sin. Of course i do. There is not one single person on the planet who doesn't sin.
And for the 100th time i do not condemn gay people. I could care less what they do. as long as they dont try to drag me into it.
I just gave my opinion along with everyone else. Sorry you dont like it.
And just so you know we are not suppose to go by anything from the old testiment anymore. The new testiment is what we go by. The old testiment is meant to be a history about everything.
As for the currency part I dont see how the presidents face being on there along with 'In God we trust' is a big deal. They are not implying the presidents are God. I dont worship our presidents or the money.
But that is one that thing we can control. money is what we have to use in this world to survive. God understands that. so once again you have proven nothing to me.
you just keep on and on with stuff that makes no sense or relevance at all.
June 26, 2007 8:27 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The Bible consistently tells us that homosexual activity is a sin (Genesis 19:1-13; Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9). Romans 1:26-27 teaches specifically that homosexuality is a result of denying and disobeying God. When a person continues in sin and disbelief, the Bible tells us that God “gives them over” to even more wicked and depraved sin in order to show them the futility and hopelessness of life apart from God. 1 Corinthians 6:9 proclaims that homosexual “offenders” will not inherit the kingdom of God.
God does not create a person with homosexual desires. The Bible tells us that a person becomes a homosexual because of sin (Romans 1:24-27), and ultimately because of their own choice. A person may be born with a greater susceptibility to homosexuality, just as people are born with a tendency to violence and other sins. That does not excuse the person choosing to sin by giving into their sinful desires. If a person is born with a greater susceptibility to anger / rage, does that make it right for then to give into those desires? Of course not! The same is true for homosexuality.
However, the Bible does not describe homosexuality as a “greater” sin than any other. All sin is offensive to God. Homosexuality is just one of the many things listed in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 that will keep a person from the kingdom of God. According to the Bible, God’s forgiveness is just as available to a homosexual as it is to an adulterer, idol worshipper, murderer, thief, etc. God also promises the strength for victory over sin, including homosexuality, to all those who will believe in Jesus Christ for their salvation (1 Corinthians 6:11; 2 Corinthians 5:17).
http://www.gotquestions.org/homosexuality-Bible.html
June 26, 2007 7:36 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The Bible consistently tells us that homosexual activity is a sin (Genesis 19:1-13; Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9). Romans 1:26-27 teaches specifically that homosexuality is a result of denying and disobeying God. When a person continues in sin and disbelief, the Bible tells us that God “gives them over” to even more wicked and depraved sin in order to show them the futility and hopelessness of life apart from God. 1 Corinthians 6:9 proclaims that homosexual “offenders” will not inherit the kingdom of God.
God does not create a person with homosexual desires. The Bible tells us that a person becomes a homosexual because of sin (Romans 1:24-27), and ultimately because of their own choice. A person may be born with a greater susceptibility to homosexuality, just as people are born with a tendency to violence and other sins. That does not excuse the person choosing to sin by giving into their sinful desires. If a person is born with a greater susceptibility to anger / rage, does that make it right for then to give into those desires? Of course not! The same is true for homosexuality.
However, the Bible does not describe homosexuality as a “greater” sin than any other. All sin is offensive to God. Homosexuality is just one of the many things listed in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 that will keep a person from the kingdom of God. According to the Bible, God’s forgiveness is just as available to a homosexual as it is to an adulterer, idol worshipper, murderer, thief, etc. God also promises the strength for victory over sin, including homosexuality, to all those who will believe in Jesus Christ for their salvation (1 Corinthians 6:11; 2 Corinthians 5:17).
June 26, 2007 7:14 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Errata--
Small error, SW. Your citation of Jermaiah [sic] was incorrect. The three classifications of sin you refere to is found in Ezekiel not Jeremiah. They are in order Pride, Ommission and Commission. Very interseting arguments. I am enjoying this immensely.
Didn't want a "bible-quoter" to derail ya.
Thanks.
June 26, 2007 5:58 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Oh here's one for you that you pay no attention to at all, Irby.
You break the 2nd Commandment habitually without any regard to G-d's Law or remorse for your stiff-necked hardhearted rebuke of G-d.
Know how?
Because you carry US Currency with our Presidents' likenesses and "In God We Trust" graven upon it. Which is a willfully sinful affront to not making, nor bowing down to nor worshipping graven idols.
The Jews' money was never struck with any graven images so as to never break this Commandment.
I look forward to your complete adherence to G-d's Holy Word and throwing all your money away and never again carrying any kind of currency becasue you only do what G-d tells you to in the entire bible.
sw
June 26, 2007 5:05 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Oh here's one for you that you pay no attention to at all, Irby.
You break the 2nd Commandment habitually without any regard to G-d's Law or remorse for your stiff-necked hardhearted rebuke of G-d.
Know how?
Because you carry US Currency with our Presidents' likenesses and "In God We Trust" graven upon it. Which is a willfully sinful affront to not making, nor bowing down to nor worshipping graven idols.
The Jews' money was never struck with any graven images so as to never break this Commandment.
I look forward to your complete adherence to G-d's Holy Word and throwing all your money away and never again carrying any kind of currency becasue you only do what G-d tells you to in the entire bible.
sw
June 26, 2007 5:04 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby,
You just don't get it. You refuse to even read your own posts critically. Gay persons are not abominations. Gay persons are not sinful.
Even if you are right and I am wrong -- in Christ it makes no difference what so ever. G-d's grace makes us one. You are not to be concerned with others' sin at all. Why are you so concerned for others' imperfections --in your opinion -- anyways? Jesus calls you to treat the sinner exactly the same as you treat the righteous. You are to tenderly love and care for the sinner as you do the righteous. You and I can't tell the difference between the two -- only G-d can.
That's what the Parable of the Wheat and Tars is all about. You have missed the point entirely.
Being Chirstian isn't some exclusive club for you to indulge your prejudices and exclude those you deem "unacceptable"! That's not G-dly in any way shape or form. No wonder your gay friends won't listen to you and what an appauling witness you are to them of intolernace, bigorty and exclusivity. You make them run from G-d not becasue they are gay because you are such an awful representative.
I want them to read this to hear another way of being Christian entirely. I didn't ask for your pleasure but theirs. I aksed for their sake.
How pitiful that you treat them so condescendingly and judgmentally.
You and Dave have no clue how abusive, injurious, blatantly mean-spirited and horrible your rhetoric is. Nor how insulting and spiteful.
You know not what you do. Others knew not what they did too and look what happened.
I am genuinely praying for your soul that the scales might fall from your eyes and your ears become unplugged so you could know beauty that is staring you right in front of your face.
You won't read "A Letter to Louise" because the addy says "godmademegay"? That is the height of stupidity and aggressive ignorance -- and arrogance.
Bruce Lowe is a retired Baptist Minister. As aggressively anti-gay as you and he changed.
You're a coward. You're frightened by the truth. You don't want to change. You want to go right on condemning gay persons as abominations before G-d. That's a mighty reckless disregard for the truth.
Here's Rev. Lowe's opening letter to you.
"Dear Reader,
"Shortly after I had gone from the seminary to my first pastorate in 1948, Louise invited my wife, Anna Marie, and me to have Sunday dinner with her family. She has been one of our dearest friends ever since. Recently, during one of the many visits we have had since then she said to me “My brother hates God because God made him gay, and he knows he is going to hell, and I do, too, for that is what the Bible says.” At that time I had only some suppositions - quite negative - about homosexuality and had never thought it needed study. But her words made me want to know as much as I could learn.
"When I began reading I soon realized things about myself I now deplore: I was ignorant of the many facts about homosexuality and what the Bible says about it. Yet, without facts, I had pre-judged it; I was prejudiced. With little thought I had read into the Bible what I presumed it ought to say instead of reading out of it what it did say. My idea of not needing to study the subject was pure anti-intellectualism. I am now grateful to God that He led me to study.
"I read some two score books, most by eminent sociologists, psychologists and theologians. Then I wrote this letter to Louise, reflecting what I have come to believe is the truth about homosexuality, what the Bible says and what God wants us to think and do about it.
"Now I want others to study seriously this matter of such importance to many lives and many churches and denominations. I asked for and received Louise’s permission to share her letter with others. I pray it may be helpful.
"Bruce W. Lowe, January 2002"
Read the rest of it.
You eat bacon, ham, shrimp, pork chops, pork rinds, lobster, mussles, scallops and calamari? You cut your hair and shave your face, don't you or if not at least trim your beard?
All are abiminations. You commit abominations before G-d too. Self-righteous, sanctimonious hypocrite.
sw
June 26, 2007 4:47 PM | Report Offensive Comment
SW,
If you give me a link to those articles you want me to read and I will.
I will not go to godmademegay.com
Like David said. God does make sin, people do.
God makes the people, and allows them to make their own choices, hoping those choices will be to follow him and live their life through him.
As for my gay friends reading this. they wont. i have asked. before me and you got into our arguements. they do not like reading what i have to say about it bc they know exactly how i feel. that is one thing that tears us apart.
And no i didnt say you were wrong. I disagreed with you. There is a difference. You actually flat out said I was wrong though.
I do not think I am DEAD RIGHT. I will never know until I make it to heaven whether or not im right. But I will continue to read the bible and I will take things in as i read them. Thats all God asks of me. To live my life by him. Doing what I think is right by him.
Obviously not everyone is gonna live their life just as God would like. It will never happen. There is too much stuff to go by in the Bible. I understand that, God understands that. But we also have to ask for forgiveness and not intentionally do things he calls "abominations". I try my best to live my life how i think God would want me to.
Yes i have screwed up. I had sex before I was married. I have done drugs, i have gotten totally drunk out of my mind. I have lied, cheated, and have stolen stuff before. I have even said God's name in vien. But after all that. I asked for forgiveness.. I really meant it. And I know he forgave me. Because he told me he would.
What you fail to see is that you think i am just so agaisnt gay people and will not rest until every single gay person has turned straight. Well im not. Its not something i have even thought about that much until i got on this website and answered a simple question. Told my opinion about how i felt about it.
And somehow it turned into this huge arguement. As soon as i get done writing this it wont even cross my mind again until the next time i get on. Because i really could care less. They can do what they want. It doesn't affect my life any. But when asked about it, yeah I will give my opinion. Im not ashamed to say that I do think it is wrong. But that doesn't mean I condemn them. It doesn't mean I hate them.
I have a lot of opinions about all sorts of stuff.
Ask me anything. i will give you my opinion just the same.
June 26, 2007 3:43 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby, I challenge you.
You say you "have lots of gay friends" and you don't condemn them. OK. Prove it. Have all your gay friends read this exchange between you and me let them have their say about your views and mine.
Let them speak to you honestly about your posts to me. And to me about mine to you as well.
Hmmmm? I await with great anticipation their responses.
sw
June 26, 2007 3:17 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby, read "A Letter to Louise" by Ret. Rev. Bruce Lowe at www.godmademegay.com and find out exactly how you took I Corinthians 6:9-10 out of context and misused it. He treats it in the body and then has a specific appendix for it.
You did not cite I Cor. You cited I Timothy 1:9-10 incorrectly. I cited I Cor.
Please stop being so angry and start using your head.
sw
June 26, 2007 2:58 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Oooops, I made a mistake. See? I man-up to them and correct them. Every decent person does this.
My John citation was incorrect. It is John 10:10b KJV. Accept my apologies.
sw
June 26, 2007 2:48 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Your arrogance, David, is your claim and double-teaming sense of entitelment with Irby that you two know the mindof G-d on the issue of gay persons' being and relationship with G-d.
That is arrogant and I really don't care how long you have participated in this conversation -- that is irrelavant.
You feel you can bear false witness about gay persons with impunity of G-d's imprature and do it "righteously".
That is unbeleivablly arrogant.
Then you respond by using your hurt feelings as some sop to an entitled expectation from me for forbearance with no better justification than you have opinions too. Have either of you ever read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"?
The full measure of contempt I have for that presumption of looter's mentality is well captured in it. I commend it to you.
sw
June 26, 2007 2:10 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Why, Irby,
You did say something insightful and beautiful!
I was completely caught off guard by it. I am not dissing you or being sarcastic. There is a pearl of great worth in your recent words. I want you to think about it deeply, please.
I, a great many theologians and the scholars I have cited DO read the bible very differently than you and David.
That is a spot-on observation. It is beautiful in its simplicity and accuracy. You really need to think deeply about this. It is possible for us to come togehter if you do.
Read Dr. Thomas S. Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" c1962 first and Dr. Marcus Borg's "The Heart of Christianity" c2004 second to find out why and just exactly how this phenomenon works.
Good job, Irby, you made your first step into a much larger world you had no idea that you had no idea existed. I'm impressed. It made this exchange very rewarding for me. I thank you for allowing me to press you so hard. It was worth the effort for you to make this important discovery.
sw
June 26, 2007 1:37 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby, you did call me wrong.
You are a very confused person. You just can't tell the truth, can you? The primary purpose of your posts is tell me I am wrong in your view and then you attempt to tell me G-d says I'm wrong too and that all gay persons are wrong as well.
What is your problem taking responsibility for your biases? What is your problem being truthful about your anti-gay rhetoric and hermenuetics.
You want me to fake reality for you so that you can continue to justify your anti-gay bias with impunity.
You want to have your cake and eat too.
No one gets to have this -- ever.
You want to maintain that gay persons "are wrong in your opinion" but then claim you have nothing against them and do not hate them. You might not hate them though your first post speaks otherwise -- reread it -- but if you love someone unconditionally, then you would never tell them that who they are that they cannot change is wrong. That is contradictory. There are no contradictions. If you encounter one, check your premises -- you'll find one of them is wrong. Hint -- your attitudes about gay perosns is the incorrect premise.
This is about accepting fully the grace of G-d without exception, evasion or condition. This about G-d's grace being wastefully extravagant and all-consuming to the point of letting go all condemnations, exclusions, invaldiations and loving fully everyone as G-d did you first and you do G-d.
You just don't get it. You just don't get what love is. Gay perosns get it though and that is a great gift to everyone that you would cut yourself of from.
It's sad. So very tragic.
There will become two Christianities. The old-time one that maintains gay persons are sinful and immoral, and the new one that takes Jesus' ministry seriously to condemn no one for any reason and include everyone even gay persons just as they are.
And so, you have ansewered the second part of the question. There is nothing anyone could say or anything anyone could do to change your mind on this issue. You will never accept gay persons as real, life-loving, life-affirming human beings with every bit as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, be honest Christians, G-dly recipients of spiritual grace and heaven-bound. That's your position and you're sticking to it like grim death. OK. I get it.
Be dead right.
There's a little problem with that position. It's antithetical to John's Gospel 14:6, "I am come that you might have LIFE and have it abudnantly."
You can't be dead right in G-d's grace. That is your sinful arrogance before G-d.
But, you can admit you are wrong and have life abundantly. I get to admit I was wrong too and have life abundantly.
Not about being gay but about thinking I can change you. I can't. Only you can do the work -- I can only witness to you in truth and grace. I will grant that Leviticus condemns male/male sex but it says nothing about love -- especially the love beautifully portrayed of David and Jonathan. And the bible says NOTHING about female/female sex or love at all. Oh, wait. I am wrong. It does say something wonderful about love bewteen two women as beautiful as between David and Jonathan. The loved shared between Ruth and Naomi is recounted in the book of Ruth.
You know, you still never honestly faced Jesus' teaching on the Eunuchs ...
The peace of Christ be with you,
sw
June 26, 2007 1:18 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Dont bother replying. You will just make up some more crap about how your right and im wrong.. blah blah blah. This will be a never ending thing.
So
I do not condemn gay people. But I think its wrong. Notice I said THINK. I didnt say KNOW. so it is my OPINION that being gay is wrong.
And yes I do get that opinion from what I have read and know about the bible.
So DO NOT tell me I am wrong or i misconstrued what the bible says. Because unless I intentionally change the entire meaning of the bible then I am not wrong in my way of thinkin or reading the bible.
The entire bible has to be interpreted by everyone in their own way. No two people are going to agree on exaclty everything the bible has to say. Its impossible.
So no we are not wrong. I have not called you wrong. You just keep callin me wrong so i continue to give you my opinion along with verses to back it up but yet I am still wrong. so i give up.
Perhaps you just read the bible differently than David and I. And there is nothing wrong with that. But dont you dare call us arrogant or wrong just because we do not agree with you.
We have yet to call you any names. Its a bit immature.
Yes I will admit I have said a few things I shouldnt have, and I am sorry. But we try to talk civilized to you and then you talk down to us like you are better and know exactly how everything in the bible is really meant to be read.
I give up.. you are impossible. You will never change and neither will I.
So our conversation is done.
June 26, 2007 1:17 AM | Report Offensive Comment
For the last time i do not CONDEMN gay people. They can do whatever they want. They will not get me invovled with it. I will not participate in it. Because I do know what the bible says and it specifically says HOMOSEXUALITY IS AN ABOMINATION AND THE PEOPLE WHO PARTICIPATE IN IT WILL NOT INHERIT THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
And please tell me how i took 1 corinthians out of context..
"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."
There aren't too many other ways to interpret that... but please tell me how i taking it out of context.
As for david and jonathon, what do you wanna talk about. Ok so they loved each other. That didnt make it homosexual. A lot of people try to turn that around and make it something its not. They had a wonderful friendship.
"I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women."
No where does it say your "lovemaking".
I love my mother.. i love her more than my husband. Does that mean I am gay with my mom.. no it most certainly does not.
You my friend are takin the bible out of context there. You give me full proof they were homosexual. Bc if that one little verse is all you have to prove it with, then sorry you are just fooling yourself.
June 26, 2007 12:43 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Anon,
I admitted I'm a sinner right? Of course I have sinned and I continue to sin. I don't get it? Why do you assume that because I say the Bible calls homosexuality a sin (which it does) that I consider myself better than any of you. Far from it! I am a sinner like anyone else. Yes I take the Bible as a whole. Yes I know from right and wrong according to what the Bible says. What's your point? I agree with you that I do things that God would not want me to do. I really am having a hard time understanding what your point is. Your upset at me like I did something. I'm just stating the fact that the Bible calls homosexuality a sin. Wut da problem is?
Also, it is clear to me that you have no idea what justification is compared to sanctification. You point out all these Jewish laws of the OT and tell me that I need to follow these laws. Not so! I am saved by grace, not works. You might not understand this.
SW,
I just joined this conversation and already I'm "arrogant". Sorry if you feel this way. I'm just telling you what the Bible says. I really don't get all the name calling. I guess I stepped into the lion's den huh? I've never meant to be offensive. I'm simply stating that the Bible says homosexuality is a sin. That's what is says! What's so hard about that??? Should I agree with you SW, or God. I think I'll stick with God. He created everything, so if your mad, yell at Him for making the rules, not me!
June 25, 2007 7:12 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I forgot, forgive the typos.
And I Timothy, II Timothy and Titus are Pseudo-Pauline. They were never authored by the Apostle Paul/Saul of Tarsus and they are fraufulently maintained as Pauline.
That's a big problem for your case. A BIG ONE.
The bible is not inerrant nor absolute.
It just isn't. As Marcus Borg has said, "It's really true but not factually accurate."
Or as a Jesuit once said, "It is true and SOME of it might have actually happened ..."
A little humility before G-d is not out of line, David & Irby. Your claims are false, presumptuous and so very arrogant. Quite unlike the ministry of Jesus.
sw
June 25, 2007 6:41 PM | Report Offensive Comment
SteveMD2,
Thanks for what you said and the way you said it. I appreciate it. It is well research cogent, logical and compelling.
Warm regards,
sw
June 25, 2007 6:17 PM | Report Offensive Comment
David, I have a challenge for you.
You say you take the WHOLE bible as the Word of G-d.
Then you never, cut your hair, shave, trim your beard, have tattooes, piercings, masterbate, eat: shrimp, clams, lobster, muscles, crabmeat of any kind, steak rare, bacon, pork chops, pork roast, bacon, pork rinds or ham?
Right?
You have never nor will ever do any of these, right?
Cause they are all abominations before G-d and it is G-d's Holy Word you are not to partake of any of these ever.
Come on, man-up. Tell the truth.
sw
June 25, 2007 6:07 PM | Report Offensive Comment
David, you and Irby's view is that gay persons are barred from Chrsitianity and heaven without any speculation otherwise.
I am a Christian. I take the bible every bit as serisously as the two of you. You and Irby have not answered on of my points of evidence.
You avoid the discussion all together citing cover of "G-d's Word" niavely thinking you have no farther to go.
This is wrong. What do say to G-d's Word that David and Jonathan loved each other like their own souls? That Jonathan's love was wonderful, surpassing the love of women. That is quite conclusive, yet you avoid it completely. The bible was used just as you use it now to affirm and defend racism, sexism and slavery exactly like you are using it to defend your right to condemn gay persons -- all in defiance of Jesus' ministry.
You have not read Ret. Bishop John Shelby Spong, Rev. Peter Gomes, Dr. Marcus Borg, James Mullholland, Phillip Gulley, Ret. Rev. Bruce Lowe, Dr. Victor Furnish or Dr. Calvin Roetzel's criticism, historical, literary and hermeneutic treatments of the Pauline corpus yet you act as though I and the greater academic world have not. We have. Paul's thorn is well examined.
There are three classifications of Paul's work. The authentically authored Episltes. The Deutero-Paul epistles and the Pseudo-Paul eispltes. The first was actually written by the Apostle Paul/Saul of Tarsus. The second was written by anonymous discpiples of Paul AFTER his death and not authored by him. To continue to claim them as Paul's is a lie and if you ignore the truth you lie about lying by ommission which is the 2nd worst form of lying specified in Jermaiah. The third were anynomously authored in the late 1st/early 2nd century CE to refute inconvenient authentic Pauline materials such as no physical resurrection but a spiritual resurrection. These are blatant forgeries not authored by Paul. To continue to hold them as Pauline is a lie. Paul's actual letters were never written nor expected by him to become anything more than personal letters of instruction and formaultion at the beginning of the formation of the fledging faith. You make claims for them that are no longer supportable nor rational - but more importantly no longer truthful.
Both you are obviously unfamiliar with this material.
Irby, you misquoted I Timothy 1:9-10. The KJV does not say what you said. The Roman Latin was intentionally mistranslated and has compounded mistranslations into what you misquoted. Doesn't surprise me at all, given your poor education and biblical iliteracy. The orginal Greek word meant morally soft, not "homosexual". This is the strongest evidence of your zeal to bear false witness in a blatantly anti-gay bias with no remorse for it.
Romans 1:26 and I Corinthians 6:9-10 have been grossly taken out of context and misused. Exactly, David, as you claimed should never be done - yet you and Irby do so because it serves your anti-gay bigotry. Show some honesty and integrity and be consistent and hold yourself to the same standards you impose on others.
Christianity if it is to survive this crisis must mean more than being anti-gay. It must or it will die of its own irrelevancy. In fact your zealotry for anti-gay hermenuetics speaks to this very demise -- it is the last gasp before the change moves forward. Carlton Pearson is the best example of this transforming power. Did you watch him on CNN last night? I did.
Gay persons are Christians and G-d loves them just as fiercely and completely just the way they are. There is nothing sinful about being gay BUT there is a great deal that is sinful about lying about who and what gay persons are, pretending to be straight when you are gay because there are no Gay Christians - Ted Haggart and Paul Barnes -- and thinking that the only option is a false exclusive binary that does not exist in nature.
I know facts and evidence mean nothing to either of you but I will try again.
"Scientists now recognize that there is not a clear, one-way causal relationship between how many males or females are available in a population, and the form that their mating system takes […]. Rather, a complex interplay of many factors is at work. Unfortunately, the subtlety of this interaction is generally only recognized where heterosexual mating systems are concerned."
—Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance, ©1999, pg. 144
"In 1959 noted evolutionary biologist George Evelyn Hutchinson published a proposal that was radical for its time (and even now remains controversial): he advanced the first theory of the evolutionary value of homosexuality. Hutchinson argued that since homosexuality appears to be a biological constant, appearing in generation after generation (in both humans and animals) at a rate that far exceeds that of biological "mistakes," it must perform some useful function rather than be an aberrant behavior, and moreover, it must have a genetic basis. Nearly 20 years later, in 1975, renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson published his seminal work Sociobiology, in which he took up the same theme; homosexuality must be beneficial to a species if it keeps reappearing. Since then, many other "positive" explanations have been proposed for animal homosexuality: some provocative, some absurd, but all revolving around the idea that breeding, heterosexuality, or the overall reproductive profile of an individual or species may be enhanced by homosexuality."
—Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance, ©1999, pg. 168-169
"The primary reason that animal homosexuality is considered problematic by many scientists an "abnormal" by many nonscientists—and therefore in need of "explanation"—is that it does not lead to reproduction, and reproduction is considered the be-all and end-all of biological existence. However, animal life and sexuality are not organized exclusively around procreation. Just as there is a multiplicity of kinds of homosexuality in the animal world, so, too, there are innumerable ways that males and females interact (sexually and otherwise) with each other, only some of which involve reproduction. […] Some form of nonreproductive heterosexuality has been observed in nearly every animal species, far exceeding the incidence of homosexuality."
—Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance, ©1999, pg. 195
Both you need to read. You are about at the 4th grade level in biblical literacy and 200 years out of date on scientific biological understanding.
Leave gay persons alone and love them as your neighbor as you love G-d. Let them marry and be clergy openly. The healing spirit of G-d can unharden your hearts if you open yourselves to Christ's healing mercy.
Precisely as Jesus calls all of us. Take that as seriously I as I do as a Chirstian who happens to be gay, I dare you.
sw
June 25, 2007 5:51 PM | Report Offensive Comment
W.Irby,
I agree totally. I feel the same way. No sin is greater than another. If I seemed to insinuate otherwise, that was not my intention. I agree fully with what you just said.
June 25, 2007 4:49 PM | Report Offensive Comment
David-- I agree with you almost completely. HOWEVER. I dont think any sin is worse than another ( excpet of course denying God as your lord and savior) but if you keep doing something even though you know it is wrong i do not think you will be forgiven.
A homosexual will not pray every night for forgiveness because he/she does not think it is wrong. And in order to be forgiven you have to ask for it. Thats why you must pray everyday and ask for forgiveness everyday.
June 25, 2007 1:45 PM | Report Offensive Comment
SW,
Thanks for your response. I guess if I get involved with a discussion with you I should let you know a little about myself.
I am a Christian. I believe in the Bible as the divined inspiration from God and that His words are true. I heed His warnings about sin and try to the best of my abilities to abide by his rules, even though I fall way short of the glory of God. I know I am a sinner and always will be. However, I have faith in Christ that he died for my sins on the cross and rose on the third day so that I may be forgiven of my sins. And most importantly I believe in the Bible as a WHOLE, not to be taken out of context or to take out anything that does not agree with my own sinful heart.
This includes homosexuality. The Bible is very clear on homosexuality as a sin. I myself have struggled with the fact that loving people can be together by love and still be considered sinful. But that is why I'm not God. I consider homosexuality equivolent in the eyes of God as any other sin. A sin that can be forgiven as well. The problem I have is when sin is glorified or celebrated. If all sin is equivolent in God's eyes, then why not celebrate murder or rape?
Your description of Paul having his own sexuality inspiring him to write in a biased form is quite off. I consider Pauls epistles to be divinely inspired as the rest of the Bible. If he wrote what he did about homosexuality because of his own guilt about it, then his testimony is invalid.
Regardless of any one's beliefs, homosexuality is considered a sin in the Bible. It is what it is. If I told you I didn't think it was then I would be going against what God says to please you. I can't do that. The thing is we all sin. So therefore, homosexuals cannot be considered morally corrupt people because we all are. But it is a sin that must be repented just like any other sin. Is this agreeable to you?
I want you to know, because I am a Christian, I do not hate anyone or look down upon homosexuals as less deserving to recieve salvation. No one deserves salvation. It is only by the free gift of grace that we recieve salvation. Jesus died for all of us and paid the penalty for sin that He did not owe. So I am just as un-deserving of salvation as any other man. The difference being that I accepted Christ and accept all that He says, therefore I am saved. I try not to sin, but the Holy Spirit convicts me when I do. I cannot tell myself that it is ok to do it when I know it is wrong. That would be lying to God. Same goes with homosexuality.
I hope what I'm saying is understandable. I mean no offense to anyone, but am inspired to write the truth of the Bible. Have a great day.
God bless
June 25, 2007 1:04 PM | Report Offensive Comment
David let me be very clear and direct.
It is not a sin to be either heterosexual or homosexual. Sexuality is not sinful at all. It is a gift from G-d for all to enjoy in committed relationships or at least in non-forceful or non-injurious co-consenting adult relationships.
Rape of any kind is sinful. Being gay is not synonomous with rape, pederasty, pedophilia or polygamy as hetersuality is not either. Genesis 19, 20 & 21 is taking about both homosexual & HETEROSEXUAL forced, abusive, brutal, seflish rape. This is the greatest of misuses of the Scritpures in condemning gay persons. I abhor it for its self-serving homophic anti-gay propagandism.
A strong case has been made by many biblical scholars that the Priestly Authors of Leviticus, post-exilic period's -- it is a lie that Moses wrote Leviticus, for it is a physcal impossiblity -- two admonitions agaist "Man lying with mankind" is actually a rebuke of the Babylonian practice of war-spoils rape of vanquished enemies to humliate and abusively subjugate them -- it says nothing at all about committed love between two men or women or a man and a woman.
A strong case is made by biblical scholars that Paul's thorn to bear was his own internalized homophobia related to his own sexuality that he could not accept under his study of the Septgunant version of the Torah. His Damascus experience was a breaking open of self-acceptance beyond the condemnation he lived with under the law.
Something to think about.
sw
June 25, 2007 11:58 AM | Report Offensive Comment
First of all Steve- God bless your soul!
I was never brainwashed by any church, as a matter of fact most of my life i was never able to go to church bc i lived overseas. When we moved back to the states I came a little bit but never really paid attention. So everything I know and believe about the Bible is stuff I have learned all on my own. I know right from wrong. No one except me taught that to me.
People like you are the reason this world has gone to crap. If everyone lived the right way ( by God) we would have a wonderful world to live in.
We wouldnt have drugs, murder, any crime at all.
Its pretty simple rules to live by.
By its too hard for people to live by, they are too ignorant. So God bless them all.
And seriously Steve.. I am praying you buddy, you need it bad.
June 25, 2007 11:14 AM | Report Offensive Comment
When you cut through all of the homophobia we see, which comes from conservative religions, and seeps into our societies, a few things stand out.
Homophobia is an attempt to denigrate, deny, and make untouchables of our gay citizens. It is an attempt to impose religious 'values' on others who do not believe in them. It is an attempt to say that religion should define our society, ignoring what happens when conservative, always backwards looking religions gain control. Look at parts of Islam and 9/11. Look at how the Catholic Church - corrupt popes combined with corrupt kings/emperors gave the world a thousand plus year dark ages, murdered upwards of 50 million Muslims in a holocaust that has poisoned their society/culture today, no wonder so many find it so easy to hate us, and they don't even see it as hate, so blinded are they by their religion and its influence on society
Religion must not be allowed to dominate our culture. It must not be allowed to define who is right and who is wrong. Personally I totally reject the right wing religion of my youth. I accept science, not leftovers from superstition and ignorances such as God created the world in seven days, the earth is flat, disease was Gods punishment for our sins (until science/medicine explained viruses and bacteria, etc) and a whole host of ideas whose implementation has led to uncountable murders and wars, all in the name of God.
So, no matter what religious people - right wing conservatives say (there are a lot of good religious people who support equality for gays) don't you dare to tell other people how to live, who is right and who is wrong on this issue. If you can't stand gays holding hands walking down the streets, how would you like it if people couldn't stand heteros doing the same (kiss heterosexualy in public in India and watch the outcry - you might well be beaten.
By the way, the reason you can't stand gays is because your church brainwashed you from an early age, destroying the mind that God gave you, just so they could have power over you and others. In a basically non-religious setting look back at how Hitler took a cultured nation suffering from economic collapse, mixed it with Christianity's long just under the surface hatreds of Jews, and gave us 50-70 million deaths in WWII and an attempt to wipe out a whole group of people. (in Poland for example they were 99.9 % successful).
So as a str8 married guy with 3 str8 children, I'll continue to fight for equality for our gays, and freedom from religious interference in our lives.
By the way, virtually all of western Europe, with the exception of Ireland and Italy and Greece (gay marriage/civil unions in Ireland / italy are already issues) legally recognize gay relationships. Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Holland have gay marriage. The others all have civil unions - a different non-religious that grants gays almost all the legal rights of their married counterparts (in some nations the term is called registered partnerships). Also Israel, Republic of South Africa, and Canada have gay marriage. Mexico city (equivalent to a state), another mexican state, News Zealand and Buenos Aires also have civil unions. It almost happened in Columbia, and will within a couple years. Polls in Australia say 70% of the people favor gay marriage. One might say that virtually all of the western / European cultural nations recognize, protect and grant legal equality to their gay citizens.
It's also interesting to look at US religions. All but the orthodox Jewish branches of Judaism support gay marriage, as does the Universalist-Unitarians and many of the United Churches of Christ. Middle of the Road Christian denominations such as Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Episcopals are struggling with the issue and some do what are called gay committment ceremonies, marriage except they won't use that word. I've attended one for 2 gay friends. It is only the Catholic Church - our own only semi-reformed version of Islam - they do good things, and they do lots of bad things, the Southern Baptist white churches who were the biggest supporters of slavery and Jim Crow, and some right wing non-denominational Christian groups who are the enemies of progress in or civil laws.
To close all this, if you look through all of mankind's recorded history, you will see that our species greatest and most terrible failing is how we follow blindly, often in the name of God and bibles written by men when the churches were the only publishing houses and used them to terrorize people, and meanwhile promise salvation if one toed the line. Don't these threats /promises simply constitute mental terrorism and a bogus insurance policy? This ability of our species to believe without fact, to follow leaders without thinking, and btw to forget about the ten commandments, has led to mankinds most terrible endeavors of mass murder. Gay people are just another of the victims of blind following of bibles and religious leaders, who unthinkingly follow what they were taught, only looking to find other ways to justify what they say. In a hypothetical example, if 'people' from another star system, happened upon our planet, they'd probably go away quietly, putting us down as little better then animals whose nature is to be murderous carnivores except we steal posessions rather then eat our enemies, and never return. And we dare to call this 'civil'-ization?
June 25, 2007 3:30 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Strangly warmed-- NO actually I did not base my entire arguement on lev. YOU DID. you said that was the only place it talked about it. "Only in two places does Leviticus talk about homosexuality negatively" YOU said that!
I just posted it bc it made my point even more valid. But obviously you didnt read that right bc it specifically says in I Corinthians 6:9; 10 that HOMOSEXUALS shall not enter the kingdom of God. Because it is a SIN. Which means it is WRONG.
I dont have to prove anything else. If you dont understand that then perhaps you should go see a minister to explain it to you. Its really not that hard to comprehend.
And your right I will not change my mind. I read the verses and i do know my bible. I know that homosexuality is wrong. I know that people who participate in it ( according to the bible) will not go to heaven. Thats not me saying that .. thats what the bible says.
Think what you want, I could careless. I know im going to heaven. I sin, yes. Everyone does. But I ask for forgiveness like I should and I know God forgives me.
June 25, 2007 12:21 AM | Report Offensive Comment
SW,
Just a quick question. Is homosexuality a sin? Do you believe it is a sin?
June 24, 2007 6:23 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby, the other half of the question is can you change your mind?
Obviously, you cannot.
I can though. The anti-gay hermeneutics is going out the door. I use to think exactly as you do and I do so no longer. The scales have fallen from my eyes.
You hang your entire argument on Lev 18:22 & 20:13 -- yet we no longer use Leviticus to justify other prejudices such as racism, sexism and slavery, and this one - homophobia and heterosexism -- is being let go as we speak.
No where is it attributed that Jesus speaks about it at all except in Matthew 19:1-12 which I have already quoted. Search for it. In it Jesus says to not use the Law -- Leviticus -- to condemn persons for whom the Law could not apply; namely, intersexed persons, castrated males and Jewish Eunuch Tenors to name a few but not limited to only those. You can no longer use heterosexist and homophobic hermeneutics to bolster your case because Jesus says specifically for you not to do this.
So does Peter in the Dream of Plenty. You don't know your bible.
Or do you willfully dismiss these inconvenient truths for no better reason than you don't like them because they undermine your case?
sw
June 24, 2007 6:07 PM | Report Offensive Comment
That's right, Irby. It is about gay unions and clergy. They both are G-dly, holy, prevenient, justifying and sanctifying.
There is nothing "wrong" about either. It is only wrong in your head. As far as G-d is concerned there is nothing wrong about gay persons at all. They are already clergy -- just lying about it and closeted. They are already in committed relationships -- many that out last by decades hetersexual marriages.
As I have proved. You didn't even read the source I provided you because it would expose and invalidate your anti-gay stance and hermeneutics. You have not read the materials, Irby. Therefore, you have no idea what you are talking about. I have read the materials.
I am a Methodist. A Wesleyan Methodist. Which means I believe in balance and salvation. The balance between both/and; not either/or. Wesleyan salvation follows these 4 steps: prevenient grace, awareness/repentance, justifying grace and sanctifying grace. I follow the Wesleyan Quadralateral: Reason/scholarship, Prayer/introspection, Scritpural Study and life experience -- all in balance to one another.
You are out of balance in your negativity towards gay persons. Let that go and have a real conversation with me.
sw
June 24, 2007 5:49 PM | Report Offensive Comment
No, Irby, you don't.
How come you guys never quote this:
26 "I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women." II Samuel 1:26 KJV
Before future King David married to produce heirs he was covanented to JONATHAN. Jonathan died in battle to David's utter despair. Take particular note of last line will you?
It is most inconvenient to an anti-gay agenda. I notice no bible-quoters ever quote this one.
I wonder why?
sw
June 24, 2007 5:29 PM | Report Offensive Comment
godmademegay.com??????
Sorry, but God does not create sin. Man does.
June 23, 2007 9:58 PM | Report Offensive Comment
One more thing.. since i dont know the bible.. just let me leave you with some other things..
.. its not just in leviticus..
"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor HOMOSEXUAL offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." (I Corinthians 6:9; 10)
In genesis (Genesis 1:27,28) it talks about God creating man in his image.. a male and female. Adam and Eve.. (not adam and steve.) In Matthew (19:5) it talks about marriage.. every man shall have his wife ( it does not say husband!!!)
Homosexuality is an illicit lust forbidden by God. He said to His people Israel, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination" (Leviticus 18:22). "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them" (Leviticus 20:13).
June 23, 2007 7:59 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I am not here to argue with anyone. I was stating my opinion bc this is a room that asks the question about it and I answered it. I could care less if you agree or disagree.
Both of you can keep on posting your crap excuse opinions about it being ok, thats fine. I dont care. It wont change my mind one bit.
I am set in my ways as you are set in yours.
And if ya'll are gay yourself then God Bless your soul. I hope he can forgive your abominations.
I pray and ask for forgiveness everyday.
I am praying right now that he will forgive me, because I know I sin, every single day. I say things, I do things, I think things that I know are wrong but I do them anyway. He will forgive me though because I ask for forgivness.
But I will NOT ask for forgivness for something that isn't wrong. And me giving my opinion is not wrong. If it were no one would be in Heaven.
Why don't you two get over yourselves and go lecture other people because I do not care what either of you have to say. :).
June 23, 2007 7:47 PM | Report Offensive Comment
First of all-- to Strangly warmed-- It is NOT bearing false witness when I say its wrong bc me saying its wrong is a freakin opinion. Do not try and tell me what i was or was not doing. I was stating it as an opinion. So no i dont have to ask for forgiveness for that.
And to anonymous-- NO me saying that i think its wrong is not me judging the PEOPLE. I am judging the action. And that is NOT wrong. Apparently ya'll didn't read the bible as carefully as you thought.
Back to Strangly warmed--
"I notice you will use this to condemn gay persons but you have no problem with everyone eating crab, shrinp, lobster, clams, muscles, or cutting their hair short -- these are all abominations too you know. I don't read you denouncing these, yet you will use 2 references to denounce gay persons."
- Because were not freakin talkin about all that stuff smart one. This discussion is about "gay union and clergy". Its not about lobster and hair.
June 23, 2007 7:33 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby,
You don't even know what it says in the bible. You parrot what others have told you it says without having done the hard work to find out for yourself. I have read the bible cover to cover and some passages 2-3 dozen times or more. I have made it a life-vocation to study the bible.
No where does the bible talk about gay persons specifically. Only in two places does Leviticus talk about homosexuality negatively and yet it speaks 164 times about heterosexuality negatively. Using your brand of logic that would be proof of the far great danger and abomination of straight sex given that 164 is far greater than 2. I notice you will use this to condemn gay persons but you have no problem with everyone eating crab, shrinp, lobster, clams, muscles, or cutting their hair short -- these are all abominations too you know. I don't read you denouncing these, yet you will use 2 references to denounce gay persons.
Go to www.godmademegay.com to learn what the bible actually has to say and the horrible malpractice and misuse that it has been put to in condemning gay persons.
sw
June 23, 2007 4:05 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby,
Your opinion is yours. My opinion is mine.
Thank you for stating the obvious. I am not talking about your opinion or mine. I am speaking about facts. You attempted to pass off your opinion as FACT. I did not. I will not. And I called you on it -- don't you do it either, especially where gay persons are concerned.
I am only interested in the truth, not opinion. You only know what you call the truth as opinion. It isn't. They are vastly different things. Don't get them confused. Wake up and use your head -- its that lump 3 feet above your @$$.
sw
June 23, 2007 3:48 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby,
Listen carefully. When you say "it's wrong" THAT is JUDGING. That is you pronouncing judgment. You use the bible to do it when Jesus was attributed to have said don't do this. Specifically, you are judging your neighbor when you say you take the bible seriously and then disregard it so flagrantly in order to judge others when you are told specifically to NOT do this.
Listen to your words and then apply just a little bit of reason, logic and critical thinking.
In your post you made the erroneous conclusion that if 5% of the population was accepted for being gay then ALL the population would turn gay and the species would die out. YOU said this. Use your head.
sw
June 23, 2007 3:37 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby,
These are your words from your post.
"Gay/lesbain/bi.. they are all just wrong." -- No, they are not. This is a false statement. Which is bearing false witness against all gay persons -- your words. Take responsibility for this.
"I mean if everyone turned gay we would have no one left. You can't continue "the cycle of life"." -- False. As I showed you in my post. Why are gay persons persistent thoughout time -- at least 5,000 years in recorded history? Why does G-d continue to make them? There is a sound Post-Darwinian Evolutionary theory now being investigated that postulates gay persons actually vitalize the species by encouraging same-sex cooperation in the whole species, thus making it more fit adaptively.
"If people were meant to be gay then perhaps it would be possible to have kids and stuff. But it's not. You can look at that in a religious way or not." -- False. Bighorn Sheep are quite successful in spite of their nearly exclusive homosexual behavior.
"I believe its wrong for both reasons. One because I do believe in God and the Bible. And two because it would end life. Literally." -- False. Read my post carefully. I demonstrated to you why.
Your entire post is false. You assert its validity in spite of concrete evidence to the contray because you are not interested in the truth. You are only interested in undergirding your anti-gay bigotry and lying to do it and then lying about lying about it. You use the bible as an ally in this disingenuously. The 9th Commandment says to not bear false witness against your neighbor -- yet in your Machiavellian hypocrisy you cling to doing so even when your error is exposed to you.
YOU are the one who said the bible was important to you. Follow it and apologize for bearing false witness against all gay persons. You started your post with that word: ALL. I am responding to your words -- you take responsibility for them. You wrote them after all.
sw
June 23, 2007 3:02 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Nietsche is right - God Is Dead. How else to explain the arrogance of modern "Christians" who secretly (the dirty little secret of modern Christianity) wish His Son had been more like themselves - not so concerned with the poor and a hell of a lot more worried about one's neighbors' sex lives? What a failure Jesus was, really. Didn't even once mention the most important thing in the world - homosexuality.
June 23, 2007 2:12 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I just re-read that, let me be more specific.
When I said I do not judge them, I don't. But I do judge their actions and you know what there is nothing wrong with that.
And exactly what do you mean I bear false witness, thats make no sense. Specify, please.
June 22, 2007 3:49 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Strangly-warmed
Gee thank you for pointing out the obvious. I know not everyone is gay. I know not everyone will be gay either. However.
Your right it's not in the 10 commandments but it is in the bible, and its not right.
I have friends that are gay, my cousin (whom i have always been close with) is gay. I do not dislike any of them, its their choice. But it's wrong. Im not judging them. I am just going by what it says in the bible.
It is my opinion. Opinions are niether right or wrong. So you stick with yours and i will stick with mine.
June 22, 2007 3:44 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Irby,
The obvious fallacy of your position is so very simple yet so very hidden to you.
Everyone is not gay, nor ever will be. Being gay is not a choice. Only 5% of the male population is gay and it is quite stable through time. The obvious reason that gay persons are more prevalent now is that population explosion has become so massive the shear numbers of gay persons has exploded with the overall population.
5% of 1/2 of 300,000,000 is 7,500,000 in the US alone & 5% of 1/2 of 6,500,000,000,000 is 162,500,000 world wide. Your view is shockingly skewed and strangely hyper-exaggerated. Why is that? What are YOU hiding about yourself?
While men are quite consistently exclusively bimodal -- male "bisexuality" is a myth because men lie about their sexual attraction, less then 0.1% of men are actually bisexual -- women are far more flexible in their sexual attraction and more problematic to quantify yet there no support for the failure of the species. This is crazy talk. Bighorn Sheep are exclusively male and female homosexual except in rut season. It is nonexistent for heterosexual pairbonding in Bighorn Sheep, yet the overwhelming norm is for male/male & female/female pairbonds that do all the juvenile-rearing. The species is highly successful in the Colorado Plateau and elsewhere world wide.
Stop this mess of unreason. You bear false witness against your gay neighbors. Being or not being gay is not one of the 10 Commandments -- BUT bearing false witness against your neighbor for any reason is. You are not to do it. So, stop doing it right now to your gay neighbors. That is if you actually follow G-d's Commandments instead of merely giving lip-service to them ...
sw
June 22, 2007 2:41 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Gay/lesbain/bi.. they are all just wrong. I mean if everyone turned gay we would have no one left. You can't continue "the cycle of life". If people were meant to be gay then perhaps it would be possible to have kids and stuff. But it's not. You can look at that in a religious way or not.
I believe its wrong for both reasons. One because I do believe in God and the Bible. And two because it would end life. Literally.
June 22, 2007 12:45 AM | Report Offensive Comment
It couldn't be clearer that Christianity today is largely a tool that people use to advance their personal prejudices, in particular, the very modern obsession with homosexuality. Jesus admonished His followers to abandon their families if they would follow Him and said, as well, that in Him there is neither male nor female - sounds a lot more radical than gay couples trying to marry, to say the least. His kind of spiritual challenge seems to be light-years beyond current American "values", let alone those who obsess about what two people in love do together in bed.
June 21, 2007 10:45 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Lepidopteryx - It's interesting you note the connection between homophobia and desert culture. The generally most intolerant religions, conservative Judaism, Christianity and Islam all arose within desert societies. Where nature is more bountiful, in India and China, religion, Hinduism, Buddhism and Toaism, makes little or no effort to regulate human sexuality. In Buddhist Thailand, for example, being gay is regarded as little more than an innocuous quirk. In Saudi Arabia it can get your head chopped off.
June 20, 2007 12:27 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The problem with this is in the interpretation, which in most cases is man’s interpretation by man’s wisdom, not God’s interpretation by God’s wisdom.
Religion of man is God’s Faith that has been made convenient to fit man’s desires.
Science of man is God’s Wisdom (knowledge, understanding, and comprehension), by man’s wisdom, with knowledge, little understanding and no comprehension.
The Gay issue by God’s Wisdom is immoral, and comes from the chaos of emotional desire, not from the order of God’s Wisdom or Law.
As for anyone going to heaven, God will forgive anyone of any sin except one, condemning God himself. Nevertheless forgiveness hinges on the persons repenting, salvation through Christ, and living a life in Christ from that moment on. That means, in this case, the person must give up, stop practicing, their immoral acts. The physicals acts or expressions of their sexual desires toward the same sex, they must make their Faith in Christ righteous through their Deeds.
June 20, 2007 9:28 AM | Report Offensive Comment
The problem with this is in the interpretation, which in most cases is man’s interpretation by man’s wisdom, not God’s interpretation by God’s wisdom.
Religion of man is God’s Faith that has been made convenient to fit man’s desires.
Science of man is God’s Wisdom (knowledge, understanding, and comprehension), by man’s wisdom, with knowledge, little understanding and no comprehension.
The Gay issue by God’s Wisdom is immoral, and comes from the chaos of emotional desire, not from the order of God’s Wisdom or Law.
As for anyone going to heaven, God will forgive anyone of any sin except one, condemning God himself. Nevertheless forgiveness hinges on the persons repenting, salvation through Christ, and living a life in Christ from that moment on. That means, in this case, the person must give up, stop practicing, their immoral acts. The physicals acts or expressions of their sexual desires toward the same sex, they must make their Faith in Christ righteous through their Deeds.
June 20, 2007 9:19 AM | Report Offensive Comment
One of my closest friends and the person whom I consider "my" minister (she is an ordained UU minister), even though she no longer serves the church I attend is a lesbian. She and her wife were married by a UU minister over a decade ago. Their relationship is every bit as much a marriage as my relationship with my husband. The only difference is that the law recognizes mine and not theirs. Simply by virtue of having opposite gonads, we can collect the other's Social Security if one of us should die. They cannot. If one of us dies, the other automatically inherits our jointly held property. Not so with my friends. Simply by signing a marriage license, my husband and I became each other's power of attorney. They had to hire a lawyer to accomplish that.
In a constantly warring desert culture where popping out future soldiers was a necessity for survival, I can see where homosexuality would have been a major issue. But those texts were written millenia ago, and were written to address issues that, for the most part don't apply anymore.
June 19, 2007 5:05 PM | Report Offensive Comment
My faith leads me to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. Civil unions on the other hand don't really represent marriage in the traditional sense of religion. As far as homosexual clergy, it goes against the teachings of my religion so could I ever change my mind, I doubt it.
In the sense of religion seems as though the two should not intertwine since they contradict one another.
June 19, 2007 11:32 AM | Report Offensive Comment
My personal observation, supported by scripture is:
Very few "Christians" are.
Many are swayed by the opinions of the day. Many never truly understand the meaning of chritianity and if Jesus were alive today and preasching, they would reject him, just as was done in the dirst century (John 6).
For proof, look at all the bloodshed done in the name of christianity. Look at the history of christianity.
You can believe what you want, but that doesn't make it truly christian. A label is just that. It doesn't make anything real, it's just a label.
June 18, 2007 11:22 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I am the Associate Web Producer for Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. Moyers recently interviewed Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, who spoke about this issue in depth.
The entire interview is viewable online at:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06082007/watch2.html
Yours,
Matthew Kirsch
June 18, 2007 3:02 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Too bad for the anti-gay Christian bigots - the horse is already out of the barn. Gay marriage in Massachusetts is now a permanent reality. None of your hysterical predictions have come true, of course. From now on you will only being discrediting yourselves and your religion.
June 18, 2007 2:14 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Much of what is being said by these folks is in grave error. Homosexuality is as natural and normal as Heterosexuality, and to constantly deny the findings of science and psychology of all the major American mental and psychiatric associations regarding this is downright stupid. Homosexuality occurs across the Primate species and all animal, insect, and organism species and does so for various evolutionary reasons: genes promoting Same-Sex Attraction boost fertility in Mothers furthering reproduction, Gays act as shamans and greatly gifted instruments and pass on their "genes" to subsequent generations, Homosexuality acts with natural inferility, etc. in keeping a reproduction check while boostinf fecundity in the Mothers, etc. Get over it, Homosexuality will always be.
June 18, 2007 12:40 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Much of what is being said by these folks is in grave error. Homosexuality is as natural and normal as Heterosexuality, and to constantly deny the findings of science and psychology of all the major American mental and psychiatric associations regarding this is downright stupid. Homosexuality occurs across the Primate species and all animal, insect, and organism species and does so for various evolutionary reasons: genes promoting Same-Sex Attraction boost fertility in Mothers furthering reproduction, Gays act as shamans and greatly gifted instruments and pass on their "genes" to subsequent generations, Homosexuality acts with natural inferility, etc. in keeping a reproduction check while boostinf fecundity in the Mothers, etc. Get over it, Homosexuality will always be.
June 18, 2007 12:39 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Much of what is being said by these folks is in grave error. Homosexuality is as natural and normal as Heterosexuality, and to constantly deny the findings of science and psychology of all the major American mental and psychiatric associations regarding this is downright stupid. Homosexuality occurs across the Primate species and all animal, insect, and organism species and does so for various evolutionary reasons: genes promoting Same-Sex Attraction boost fertility in Mothers furthering reproduction, Gays act as shamans and greatly gifted instruments and pass on their "genes" to subsequent generations, Homosexuality acts with natural inferility, etc. in keeping a reproduction check while boostinf fecundity in the Mothers, etc. Get over it, Homosexuality will always be.
June 18, 2007 12:39 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I don't understand why gay persons are vilified so. If your brother was gay you would never talk this way to him. Or to your sister, uncle, aunt or whomever. Why is being Christian synomoous with hating and judging gay persons as is shown here? I really don't get it. Why?
150 years ago the exact same arguments were used to support slavery. There is far more in the bible that affirms slavery as being the Word of God than the paltry pittance used to support homophobia. We no longer use the bible to affirm slavery but we did have to fight a war over it to change our view. Why is it so mandatory to keep far less in the way of proof-texting to affirm anti-gay hatred?
Is your faith really so flimsy?
It's stupid to not accept gay people. And particularly so for Christians. Given that Jesus supposedly died because he said to love your neighbor as yourself and judge no one - leave all that to God the Father and nurture and care for everyone you know. How come the proof-texters never quote that? That is the Word of God too, you know.
Answer that simple question, will you?
June 16, 2007 2:49 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Anonynous, your post, June 9, 2007 12:34 AM,
There is no cynicism in my post whatever. I feel and live the words truthfully and honestly. I also brook no compromise upon this basic ground rule of integrity. Your cynicism is quite evident in that you supplied no name and no specific reference to a single apsect of my arguments. Not one. That is profoundly cynical and speaks volumes.
sw
June 16, 2007 1:52 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Anonynous, your post, June 9, 2007 12:34 AM,
There is no cynicism in my post whatever. I feel and live the words truthfully and honestly. I also brook no compromise upon this basic ground rule of integrity. Your cynicism is quite evident in that you supplied no name and no specific reference to a single apsect of my arguments. Not one. That is profoundly cynical and speaks volumes.
sw
June 16, 2007 1:51 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Strangely Warmed - There is nothing more repugnant than a person who responds to sincerity with expressions of cynical bombast.
June 9, 2007 12:34 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Back to the original question, if I may interject: As an outside observer, It’s pretty simple.
Whatever your faith or your belief. Squabble amongst yourselves.
If you are glued to a particular denomination, church, etc. you have effectively joined a private club. If you as a private club wish to believe that homosexuality is an abomination and wish to exclude them, then by all means, that is, and should be your right to do so. If there are amongst you dissenters, then according to the policies, rules, and dictates of your private club, they do what they can do. If protest/voting is allowed, so be it. Losers are always free to quit this club and either seek out another, or form their own.
Since every town I’ve ever traveled through has many, many churches, exactly because there are differences in opinion, I’m sure that you could find one that closely resembles your image of god, salvation, and the hereafter.
Why beat each other up over this? You DO KNOW that there are different versions of belief, all the way from whether the Methodist ‘sprinkling’ is equivalent to the more fundamentalist ‘dunking’ to the creeds you recite, the speaking in tongues, and other gifts. I could go on forever… These differences, including who is truly worthy of passing in to the promised land, is why, again and again, the Christian faith has splintered into so many denominations. Why can’t you just get along? Why do you INSIST that others believe your EXTREME and MINORITY view? (notice I haven’t actually picked sides)
Even within your own faith, no where does the judeo-christian ‘I Am’ let on that YOU get to pick or even guess the winners! I-Am instead insists that IT gets the only vote that counts, and any presumption you make to fully know the mind of ‘I Am’ is very close to a mortal sin against the holy trinity.
The Baptists think they are right, the Methodists think they are right, Catholics, Mormons, AG, COC, Quakers, Branch Davidians, ALL think they have it right. Why not just join up with a like minded bunch and bigot your own brains out! Why must you HATE the other’s opinion to the point of such froth and fury?
As an outsider to this little pi55ing match, I have to say I see no problem with priests and nuns griping about the pope’s position, that’s their little club! I’ve got no problem when Falwell spewed to his own flock that gays caused the hurricane… that’s his private club. Members are free to come and go as they please.
Now, you want to make that POV the law of the land? That’s when I’ll get up off my leathered and worn arse and fight you.
As a child I was dragged to quilting bees twice a week. I came to dislike quilting bees and nearly everything about them…. I still think they are boring, ignorant, serve no real purpose and may actually be taking much needed jobs from poor Chinese children. (kidding)
Anyway, what would you suggest I do about my dislike and distaste of quilting bees.. it’s driving me mad!!! I personally would like them banned, or at least have the TRO revoked so I can start protesting outside their meeting places again….
June 8, 2007 5:13 PM | Report Offensive Comment
ooops
intersexed not "intersexes"
sw
June 8, 2007 3:45 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Right on, Alex & John.
Nicely done. I wish I had thought of making a referral to PFLAG. Very awesome.
John, your hermeneutics is unassailable. What can I say, except thanks? A heart-felt thank you. Your assertion is directly supported regarding this discussion by Matthew 19:1-12. It is attributed to Jesus that no one's physical condition is just cause for condemnation under the law for whom it is inapplicable. The citation is inclusive but not limited to all intersexes persons, castrated males and Jewish Tenor pre-pubescent eunuchs. Very good work, John.
sw
June 8, 2007 2:44 PM | Report Offensive Comment
fr angie:
>...You are not born Gay, you become Gay...<
Wrong. One is indeed born gay or straight. Nobody "becomes" gay. Would Mathew Shepard have "become gay" had he known how he would die? No.
I'd suggest you contact your local PFLAG group, or see www.pflag.org for the FACTS about GLBT's.
June 7, 2007 10:22 AM | Report Offensive Comment
People who oppose gay people and their desire to marry, in a society in which marriage is an important institution, are being unChristlike. Jesus never condemns any condition over which people have no control and sexual orientation is such a condition. The disowned gay teenager who longs for his parents' love didn't choose his or her sexuality, obviously . Neither did Mary Cheney, who apparently adores her father, choose to be gay in order to embarrass him while in the White House, obviously.
June 6, 2007 4:34 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Will, thank you. That was well reasoned and consistent with competent seminary scholarship. You have stated the issue with accuracy of hermeneutic insight. The real crisis is the tension produced by the need for letting go of obsolete & incorrect notions about gay persons and those who adamantly refuse to do so. That tension is roundly attested to in this thread.
As the eve of the Lambeth Conference approaches have you read 1998's "Catechesis on Homosexuality" that was preemptively dismissed 9 years ago? The seeds of that folly are being reaped now.
It is most instructive because the correctness of its thesis is demonstrated here.
sw
June 6, 2007 1:23 PM | Report Offensive Comment
As an Episcopalian, I am part of the growing crisis in the Episcopal Church and our place in the larger Anglican Communion dealing with the issues of civil unions and homosexual clergy. I am also a young person who feels the primitive stages of a call to ordained ministry. I am not gay, but there are two clergy at my parish that are, and are in committed unions blessed by the Church. As I have gotten to know these individuals, I have seen their blessed call to ministry and the holiness in their lives. From this I have faith that God has truly called them to this vocation, and that He didn’t turn them away because He made them in His image in the first place. As Christians, we all believe, no matter the denomination that we belong to, that we are ALL made in the image and likeness of God. We must dismiss our fear and leave our judgment for God and move on to the difficult, but attainable issues of global poverty, equality, and social justice – the issues that Jesus actually preached - not those from isolated verses taken out of context in the Epistles of Paul or Leviticus.
June 4, 2007 9:19 PM | Report Offensive Comment
SW is right. It is codified homophbia. It's homophobia read into the texts -- not the other way around. America is not homophobic. Church people are. America is changing its stance on overt or covert bigotry against gay people. The majority of Americans do not think hatred expressed against gay people is right or fair. It is changing. Young people could give a frig about it.
Only you idiots are sooooooooooo obssessed with gay people.
WHAT'S that all about anyway????
Think about it real hard.
God weeps when YOU judge others ...
June 4, 2007 7:31 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Where does it say gay people don't go to heaven. THAT is no where to be found in the entire bible.
How crazy are YOU?
IIIICCCCCKKKKKK!
What a fool.
June 4, 2007 7:15 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The one thing that I beleive to be tru:
If you are homosexual, you don't go to heaven.
That is clearly defined throuout the bible.
June 3, 2007 9:13 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Hey, religious whackos, who can't seem to get a life, gays have been marrying in Massachusetts for three years now with no resultant harm to anyone. The proof is in the pudding. Give it up.
June 2, 2007 9:25 PM | Report Offensive Comment
If a man foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me. ~Buddha (c. 563-483 B.C.E.), The Sutra of Forty-two Sections
June 1, 2007 8:53 PM | Report Offensive Comment
To refer to pop culture, which I do rarely, it is like the scene in "Little Buddha" where Siddhartha is sitting under the tree and he is met with attack after attack.
And yet he remains calm.
SW, you are mere illusion, you do not exist.
Be Blessed all, I am signing off for good this time. SW, your words will fall upon the ether but not my eyes henceforth.
And I only read the first line of the last one too and did not proceed. Save your time and energy, I am not reading them.
Please get some professional help with yuor anger issues.
June 1, 2007 4:28 PM | Report Offensive Comment
To refer to pop culture, which I do rarely, it is like the scene in "Little Buddha" where Siddhartha is sitting under the tree and he is met with attack after attack.
And yet he remains calm.
SW, you are mere illusion, you do not exist.
Be Blessed all, I am signing off for good this time. SW, your words will fall upon the ether but not my eyes henceforth.
And I only read the first line of the last one too and did not proceed. Save your time and energy, I am not reading them.
Please get some professional help with yuor anger issues.
June 1, 2007 4:28 PM | Report Offensive Comment
To refer to pop culture, which I do rarely, it is like the scene in "Little Buddha" where Siddhartha is sitting under the tree and he is met with attack after attack.
And yet he remains calm.
SW, you are mere illusion, you do not exist.
Be Blessed all, I am signing off for good this time. SW, your words will fall upon the ether but not my eyes henceforth.
And I only read the first line of the last one too and did not proceed. Save your time and energy, I am not reading them.
Please get some professional help.
June 1, 2007 4:26 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Thank you Gaby! I have long since turned brother Sw over to the Lord. His opinions mean nothing to me as he means nothing to me.
June 1, 2007 4:05 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Gay Marriage: NO
Gay Unions: NO
Gay Priests/Clergy: NO
NO NO NO AND NO!
It is a sin and it is an Abomination unto God The Creator God. He says a number of times and I will not, Have Not nor will I ever accept or tolerate Homosexuality.
You are not born Gay, you become Gay
We ALL ARE NOT GOd's children. We are his CREATION but we are not his children. The bible clearly says by the words of Jesus that We have the power to become his children only through and by receiving Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. So unless you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you are not his child and I am not your sister or brother in the Lord.
God doesn't hate the person he hates the sin. You can be delivered from your sins by asking Jesus to help you. He is there to make us all holy and the Holy Spirit is there as well to live in the inside of us and to direct our lives.
The bible states that homosexuality is as sleeping with animals (beastiality) and it makes God Vomit. How on earth could you accept and live like something that makes God Vomit. Hmmm..I didn't think so. I don't understand how anyone who calls themselves a Christian could ever or would ever accept homosexuality as being right or correct. So what that "Times have changed" does that make it any more right. God will never change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever more so why is it that we think because the World is changing and people are accepting of things more now that God is supposed to accept that and get over it. Will never happen. And We will see on Judgement day.
Man + Woman= Marriage unto God. God even looks at Marriage as the way people are to look at the Body of Christ. When people see a married couple, they are to know that that is how the Kingdom of God and the Order of God is. So how could we see the Order of God in 2 men or 2 women being together when it is "OUT OF ORDER" it doesn't go together. The man is to enter into the woman and there is no other way.
June 1, 2007 11:17 AM | Report Offensive Comment
I think Jesus was gay! He always surrounded himself with men....and when he let women into his stories, they were only there to wash his feet!
Yup, definitely gay!
June 1, 2007 1:01 AM | Report Offensive Comment
(appoligies for the redundant post, this version felt better)
Yes, homosexuality is biological.
Can it be changed? That is an awefully unchristian proposition. Because if it is biological, wouldn't it have to be God intended?
Anyhow, the whole gay issue is a distraction used by the media and politicians. As they point at the gay issue there is always a dirty politician getting elected, or the pharmacutical industry suddenly ships all of it's manufacturing out of the US, or healthcare for children vanishes throughout most states, or the US politicains create a war to rape a country of it's natural resources, or 10's of millions of illegal aliens are replacing middle income jobs and on and on and on...
In the spirit of WWJD, Jesus' story is somewhat about his struggle with the Roman political industice. How in God's name can this topic continue? --- now that's a good question!
May 31, 2007 7:22 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Yes, homosexuality is biological.
Can it be changed? That is an awefully unchristian proposition. Because if it is biological, wouldn't it have to be God intended?
Anyhow, the whole gay issue is a distraction used by the media and politicians. As they point at the gay issue there is always a dirty politician getting elected, or the pharmacutical industry suddenly ships all of it's manufacturing out of the US, or healthcare for children vanishes throughout most states, or the US politicains create a war to rape a country of it's natural resources, or 10's of millions of illegal aliens are replacing middle income jobs and on and on and on...
In the spirit of WWJD, Jesus' story is somewhat about his struggle with the Roman political industice. How in God's name can this topic continue? <<<now that's a good question!
May 31, 2007 7:15 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Yes, homosexuality is biological.
Can it be changed? That is an awefully unchristian proposition. Because if it is biological, wouldn't it have to be God intended?
Anyhow, the whole gay issue is a distraction used by the media and politicians. As they point at the gay issue there is always a dirty politician getting elected, or the pharmacutical industry suddenly ships all of it's manufacturing out of the US, or healthcare for children vanishes throughout most states, or 10's of millions of illegal aliens are replacing middle income jobs and on and on and on...
In the spirit of WWJD, Jesus' story is somewhat about his struggle with the Roman political industice. How in God's name can this topic continue? <<<now that's a good question!
May 31, 2007 7:11 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Yes, homosexuality is biological.
Can it be changed? That is an awefully unchristian proposition. Because if it is biological, wouldn't it have to be God intended?
Anyhow, the whole gay issue is a distraction used be the media and politicians. As they point at the gay issue there is always a dirty politician getting elected, or the pharmacutical industry suddenly ships all of it's manufacturing out of the US, or healthcare for children vanishes throughout most states, or 10's of millions of illegal aliens are replacing middle income jobs and on and on and on...
In the spirit of WWJD, Jesus' story is somewhat about his struggle with the Roman political industice. How in God's name can this topic continue? <<<now that's a good question!
May 31, 2007 7:10 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Of course it's a biological problem, but can it be changed?
Here we have one of the media/politician's tools to distract people from the important issues such as healthcare and war and outsourcing jobs (for that matter - insourcing illegal latin labor) and on and on...
As a portion of America points at the homosexuals with disgust another dirty politician gets elected or another piece of legislation gets passed to further the divide between the haves and the desperately needy.
It's disgraceful that the Christian right feel the need to influence politics in such a way. Maybe they've forgetten Jesus' struggle with the unjust politics of his time. It is no different, only that the people that claim to follow Jesus are hypocrates, nowadays.
May 31, 2007 6:57 AM | Report Offensive Comment
SW,
Please come down to earth. You like to throw a lot of weighty words around and seem to believe that the entire "religious" community is against gays.
I appears to me that you are in defense mode because you can't reconcile on your being gay.
The majority of people all over the world could give a rats *** whether you are gay or not. Most countries in Europe have laws that legalize gay marriage, notibly Spain, a primarily Catholic country.
So what is your point? That Americans are homophobic? Please!!! Americans have no sense of true sexuality. On one hand they glorify it by showing off sex in movies, ads, etc., on the other hand it's a taboo subject. Talk about puritanical nonsense.
If you are comfortable with your sexual orientation then that's fine, why try to convince the rest of the world?
May 30, 2007 11:55 PM | Report Offensive Comment
SW,
Please come down to earth. You like to throw a lot of weighty words around and seem to believe that the entire "religious" community is against gays.
I appears to me that you are in defense mode because you can't reconcile on your being gay.
The majority of people all over the world could give a rats *** whether you are gay or not. Most countries in Europe have laws that legalize gay marriage, notibly Spain, a primarily Catholic country.
So what is your point? That Americans are homophobic? Please!!! Americans have no sense of true sexuality. On one hand they glorify it by showing off sex in movies, ads, etc., on the other hand it's a taboo subject. Talk about puritanical nonsense.
If you are comfortable with your sexual orientation then that's fine, why try to convince the rest of the world?
May 30, 2007 11:49 PM | Report Offensive Comment
SW,
Please come down to earth. You like to throw a lot of weighty words around and seem to believe that the entire "religious" community is against gays.
I appears to me that you are in defense mode because you can't reconcile on your being gay.
The majority of people all over the world could give a rats *** whether you are gay or not. Most countries in Europe have laws that legalize gay marriage, notibly Spain, a primarily Catholic country.
So what is your point? That Americans are homophobic? Please!!! Americans have no sense of true sexuality. On one hand they glorify it by showing off sex in movies, ads, etc., on the other hand it's a taboo subject. Talk about puritanical nonsense.
If you are comfortable with your sexual orientation then that's fine, why try to convince the rest of the world?
May 30, 2007 11:45 PM | Report Offensive Comment
You made me think, Gaby. I guess you have a point eventhough I don't like looking at it. I have acted like a pompous ass here. I understand fully that it is very disconcerting and profoundly upsetting to contemplate this question. I am sorry that my words are upsetting to so many.
The problem has many dimensions. One that comes to mind primarily is that the state of biblical scholarship and hermeneutic discourse in the our churches is painfully misinformed and down right incorrect.
It is of no consequence if a person is straight, bi or gay. It's not a fit subject for discourse in our churches. No where does the bible say that being gay is wrong.
I want all of you to think about this serisouly. Only two direct instances talk about it in terms of being a post-exilic newly reconvenanted Jew 2,500 years ago. Most of the underpinnings for all the other Mosaic admonitions aren't even thought of much less practiced fby contemporary humans. You must consider this seriously.
The idea of persons being more than their biological machinery or being reduced to exclusively procreative is the point. All the anti-gay rhetoric is incorrectly derived. I could go through the whole bible but I wouldn't want to be accused again of being pompous.
Of course clergy should be encouraged and supported in coming out of the closet and having sancitfied unions. This questions is so misleading. All of the churches are filled with closeted gay men. There is no question about there being gay clergy. They are here right now and ever have been. The church has always been a haven from reality for gay men. Let's open a little room here for people to be themselves and be it openly with integrity.
Marriage is not a religious institution. It is a political/legal institution sancified by religious ceremony. It a fine distnction but an important one. There are no marraige ceremonies specied in the bible. Want proof? Look through the entire bible -- while marraige is spoken of in hetersexist and patriarchally sexist terms -- in no instance is the ceremonial accoutrements specified in all of the bible. In fact, in Deuteronomy and Leviticus you will find more said about terms for divorce than is said for terms of marriage.
It's true.
Marriage ceremonies are found in accompamying books of prayer and doctrinal specification which have evolved markedly throughout time. In fact, marraige as we know it today would be unrecognizable 200 years ago.
Of course same-sex unions should and ought to be sancified before G-d. It is happening now. I really believe all the anger is homophic abuse towards gay persons because the change is under way and so many don't like it.
That is no excuse its continuation.
That's all I'm saying.
sw
May 30, 2007 6:19 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Gaby,
Name-calling is the basest of discourse. It is only used when an inferior mind encounters thinking it cannot match or confesses an inability rise to the occation. Why did you feel compelled to say such a spectacularly stupid thing? I really would like to know. You couldn't find anything more uplifting to impart?
sw
May 30, 2007 5:31 PM | Report Offensive Comment
SW,
After reading through a hefty portion of this thread I have concluded that you are a POMPOUS ASS. Why anyone would want to discuss anything with you is beyond me.
May 30, 2007 3:55 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Debbie J :
And as for feeling shame, it is not my practice to feel ashamed of treating my fellow man with the dignity due him even when it is not returned in kind. I am too old to be shamed by anyone. I left that island a long time ago. The opinions of others will never dictate my self worth.
Be Blessed.
May 29, 2007 4:35 PM
So, Debbie J, basically what you are justifying is that you can say whatever you please with no connection to reality or consequence for the results of your speech because you have the imprimatur of supernatural self-arrogance.
You have not responded to one physical empirical statement of mine. You are clear that gay persons are not deserving of the very same rights and privileges as all Americans simply because of a flawed derivative hermeneutic that allows you to do so with impunity.
I have no desire for or interest in your opinion. Nor my own -- truly. I am not defined by what others think -- I do not care. But I do speak out for fairness and equanimity when it is withdrawn unjustly as any decent human being ought.
That is what this is about. Stop aggrandizing your personal view and begin embracing reality beyond your point of view.
You claim to be a scientist interested in energy and cosmological physics. A person so employed would never allow the kind of drivel you have posted here on this subject into a serious academic paper on the former subject. Show some epistemological consistency.
That's the decency of which I am speaking.
sw
May 30, 2007 1:53 PM | Report Offensive Comment
And as for feeling shame, it is not my practice to feel ashamed of treating my fellow man with the dignity due him even when it is not returned in kind. I am too old to be shamed by anyone. I left that island a long time ago. The opinions of others will never dictate my self worth.
Be Blessed.
May 29, 2007 4:35 PM | Report Offensive Comment
SW:
I was so disgusted by the tone between us that I vowed never to return to this post. But I decided that this is what the enemy would want.
If you read my posts carefully you will see that my intention has always been to ask for compassion and respect for gay people. Why I am then subjected to personal attack in return is beyond me.
I am from a very conservative religious background and my Godfather was a minister. Yet I do not believe that gay people are evil. I am at a loss as to why you seem to feel that I do.
It has never been my intention to insult you nor am I looking for company to be hateful in concert with. Read what I have said again without this assumption, and you will see this. Yet twice you have said things to me that are stunningly ugly. I have not returned the venom.
I extended a hand of friendship to you to discuss common interests and was vilified. I still have not read beyond the first line of your last post to me. I was too horrified to continue. And by the way, I have attended the finest schools here and in Europe so I do possess the mental skills required, contrary to what you have asserted.
I am bewildered as to why you should be hurt that I have an opinion that, while it does not mesh with yours, does not in turn deny you your humanity or your right to find happiness as you deem fit. It is between you and your deity at the end if you have or have not lived a proper life. I said so many times.
I do not agree with my sister's choice in husband but that does not mean I do not honor their marriage and the love they have for one another. She never approves of the men I select either, but they are always welcome in her home.
Can we not make each other welcome in God's home?
May 29, 2007 4:26 PM | Report Offensive Comment
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May 26, 2007 11:59 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim, I told you that I made a mistake in not filling the name space for that post and made sure you knew it was mine.
You truncated my post on the Sacificial, Atonement and Scapegoat theology issue. I explained that these are deeply Judaic ideas that must be understood Judaically to correctly undertand the underlying meaning of the resurrection. You need some schooling.
Just becasue a great many people believe untrue things does not mean that I must. I trust that G-d gave us all minds to work not to allow to atrophy.
Debbie J, I am sorry that you are offended my standing up for myself. You have no idea how hurtful and damaging your rhetoric is -- nor do you care whom you hurt as long as you are in good company in doing so. That is unconscienable. You should be ashamed of yourself.
I know you probably hate John Shelby Spong -- he's prophetic too -- but he wasn't kidding about the fact that "Christianity Must Change or" [it will] "Die".
Jim, your posting sounds so reminscent of a passage in Luke. Do you know it?
15And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.
16And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read.
17And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,
18The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
20And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.
21And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.
22And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?
23And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.
24And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country.
25But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land;
26But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow.
27And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.
28And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath,
29And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.
Luke 4:15-29 KJV
Aren't you casting me down for much the same reason? I am NOT Jesus but I am speaking in a prophetic manner not only as he did but as the great and minor prophets did who recieved much the same treatment ...
sw
May 22, 2007 8:42 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Oh, and Jim, thank you for admitting that Jesus was a prophet that contradicted past teaching when it was wrong and correctly required revision for which he was labeled apostasy.
He defintely did revise incorrect past teaching:
"You have heard it said 'an eye for an eye' but I say no. Love even your enemies."
That sounds fairly contradictory of past incorrect teaching does it not?
The justification for persectuing gay persons by incorrect past teaching is just as wrong and is being revised as we speak.
sw
May 22, 2007 8:18 PM | Report Offensive Comment
So basically, Jim, your argument is that the truth of my evidence from the bible which you have no credible answer to eventhough it is in black and white is superseded by the primacy of the sancitfication of longevity simply because the truth contained within the bible that I raised to your consciousness -- which previously resided in profound unconsciousness -- for no better reason than it is inconvenient to unsupported beliefs you and a great many hold fraudulently?
Check your logic circuits they aren't working very well.
You didn't answer one piece of evidence I presented but evaded my quesitons.
Poor you that you believe untrue things so fervently. Rational persons don't possess this malady.
sw
May 22, 2007 8:07 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Basically, this whole argument has wound down to the Jesus-maniacs, and the people who hate them.
May 22, 2007 4:37 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Thank God that the obsessive and anal people who post here represent only a tiny fraction of human beings or we'd all be hurling atomic bombs at one another by now.
May 22, 2007 1:44 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Strangely Warmed:
You mock the Fall:
“The "Fallen" explanation of the human condition, like the heavens being a bowl above our heads, the underworld a watery bowl below the earth under our feet, the Ptolemaic cosmological model and epilepsy being daemon possession, is disproved and no longer operant in a Post-Modern contemporary world.”
Your clinging to them so desperately is revealing and pitiful.
Wow, I had no idea such ignorance still exists.
I trust you never fly in an airplane because it would crash into the Genesian bowl, never go caving say in Carlsbad because you would drown, continue to explain the wayward planetary retrograde motion as daemonic influence upon the heavens and never treat a person with physiogenic epilepsy pharmacologically but damn them as possessed. 5/18/07 12:08PM
I believe this is you because it has an ‘SW’ at the bottom of the post. You also know very well much of Christianity believes in the Fall – not just me. Another attempt to intimidate and marginalize?
You deny Christ’s sacrifice and atoning for sin.
“Jesus' death was not Sacrificial, Atonement or Scapegoat theology” – 5/18/07 3:53PM
(I asked for confirmation that my understanding on this was correct and you never responded so I took above at face value.)
You deny the physical resurrection:
Paul's authenticated corpus -- you are aware of the Deutero-Paul and Pseudo-Paul materials that are not authentically Saul of Tarsus/The Apostle Paul's work of course -- has no resuscitated corps accounting and in fact in I Corinthians 15 is quite clear that no ones, especially Jesus' physical body is resuscitated because the physical body is corruptible BUT the spiritual soul is not and therefore IT is resurrected not a physical body.
These are serious theological matters with which you seem to be wholly unfamiliar. If your faith is dependent upon a physical resuscitation then you are in for a big disappointment. It just isn't so. Resurrection means something altogether different than a physical resuscitation of a dead corps.
Again, you know very well much of Christianity believes this – not just me. Another attempt to intimidate and marginalize?
All of these things are been traditionally believed by Christians and still are believed by Churches faithful to Jesus’ teaching.
I can understand pagans and atheists not abiding by these principles, but not those who claim to be Christian. I simply believe the above items as a given. Perhaps others can argue the above points with you – I cannot.
I believe you need to undermine the Church’s teaching on the Fall and the physical resurrection because they undercut your pro-homosex view points.. The Church does allow deeper understanding of doctrines and morals but only if it does not contradict past teaching. Jesus had the authority to reveal new teaching and change laws. We do not. In several places Scripture says we are charged with holding and protecting – not changing teaching. Indeed scripture says the Church is the preserver and authoritative interpreter of scripture truth. Allowing active homosexuality would be a change not allowed to us.
It does not follow that because Jesus was wrongly considered an apostate by some Jewish officials, that people who now ascribed to the points above are not apostates. (Assuming they are baptized and believed the points above at one time.)
Though we are all sinners and people have not always lived up to the standards Jesus would want us to, authoritative Church teaching has always said active homosexuality is always wrong. Your posts consistently want to insinuate people, who admonish active homosexuality, have some kind of psychological problem. I do not understand this. Is the purpose of this to intimidate and silence opposition? Does it not occur to you that they want the Church to remain faithful to Christ’s teaching and do not wish others to be led astray – because it puts their souls in danger?
As Debbie J. says, your posts are too much hateful rhetoric. People will have to discern for themselves whether they wish to remain faithful to Christ’s teaching or enter apostasy.
May 21, 2007 6:53 PM | Report Offensive Comment
From the Quran, if I am not mistaken. Those who follow this faith correct me if I am:
"And tell my servants that they should speak in the most kindly manner [unto those who do not share their beliefs]: verily, Satan is always ready to stir up discord between men - for, verily , Satan is humanity's open enemy! (17:53)
May 21, 2007 5:41 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Proverbs 6: 16-19
"There are six things that the Lord hates,
seven that are an abomination to him:
17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
18 a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that make haste to run to evil,
19 a false witness who breathes out lies,
and
one who sows discord among brothers."
May 21, 2007 4:24 PM | Report Offensive Comment
SW:
I have not even finished reading this post from you after I saw the first line. Here we are once more in the realm of the hateful rhetoric and personal attacks I had hoped would come to an end.
I entered this site to offer some compassion and calming to a debate that has become far too contentious to be within a supposed theological context. If you and others wish to take aim at one another using God as a weapon, so be it. I do not intend to join you. I will not dishonor my faith by entering into battle with the faithful, and that includes you SW. I am horrified by what I see happening here.
Who do you think thrives on discord? Not the God I serve.
To one and all, Be Blessed.
May 21, 2007 4:07 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim :
Strangely Warmed’s admission that Strangely Warmed does not believe in the basic beliefs of Christianity – Jesus’ atonement for our sins and His bodily resurrection indicates the extent Christians, who wish to accommodate active homosexuality within Christianity, will have to change their beliefs . Are you prepared to enter apostasy? An apostate church is predicted in Scripture and I believe it already exists in embryonic form.
May 20, 2007 9:19 AM
-----------------------------------------
Interestingly, Jim, you did not address my direct biblical quotations and argumentation.
You draw an incorrect conclusion and then draw further fallacious conclusions from it.
Address the direct hermeneutics I addressed to you and stop pulling a Newt Gingrich.
The claim of apostasy is ever the defense of last resort before utter capitulation to reason.
Really, you need to take a chill pill and relax.
Jesus in Matthew 19:10-12 makes clear it is not apostasy to open new understanding from old tenets. The three classes of eunuchs are intersexed individuals, castrated males and Torah Tenors who were castrated prepubescent males to preserve their beautiful voices to sing the Torah. You know, Jesus' ministry was apostasy to a vast minority of Jews and the Romans. That's why he was politically executed for sedition by the Romans. Or do you not read history or the Gospels? Crucifixion is the compelling factor. Jews never meted out this punishment. Only the Romans did for only 2 capitol offenses: a chronically rebillious slave or sedition against the Roman Empire. Face this fact.
You have indeed hit upon a valid truth quite by accident though. We are witnessing a reformation in the churches to end persecution of gay persons. The Jewish faith is right now granting acceptance of gay persons so is the Episcopal Church and UCC. Churches innumerable are accepting gay persons, ordaining them and marrying them. It is happening. Even Disneyland is in the business now -- gay couples can purchase the Disney Marriage package, so really, how far away is legal recognition?
This question is directed to a faithful view of gay unions and clergy.
Let's be perfectly honest. The church has been for millennia populated by gay men and women. Why do think the Catholic Church is filled with homosexual pederasty? Not 200 years ago it was accepted that male Catholic initiates would bed TWO to a room with only one bed. The Anglican Church of England is filled with gay clergy while profoundly closeted now -- not a 100 years ago they were quite openly known and accepted. Why is rabid anti-gay rhetoric and hermeneutics rampant now?
Because only deeply closeted, profoundly fearful, self-hating GAY men engage in this. Straight men and gay men who accept themselves do not. Women are a much more complicated mixed bag that would consume far too much room here to exposit. The churches are predominately male-dominated patriarchally sexist and heterosexist anyway so the male factor is the compelling characteristic anyway.
Allowing gay persons to be openly gay heals all the hurtfulness present now -- Christ calls us all to this healing action. There is no more important Christian doctrine than to love G-d and love ALL our neighbors as we love G-d: all the Commandments are fulfilled by this.
What more faithful way to look at this issue is there if one is Christ-like about it?
sw
May 21, 2007 2:58 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Debbie J,
You have serious reasoning disabilities. I would not be interested in discussing physics with you. You have not the prerequisite research background nor the creative ability to leap beyond convnetional thinking. Issacson's biolography makes plain Einstein's distinct advantge in creative thinking beyond conventional "wisdom". And a fierce devotion to personal integrity beyond self-serving opportunism.
Your claims are baseless becasue they are dependent upon assumptions that are fallaceous.
The fact that a biological characteristic which is not as obvious as skin or eye color is invalid in your view because of that very inobviousness is bigoted to spectacular degree.
Your arrogance before creation and G-d is staggering.
Gay persons are completely deserving of full acceptance. Your argumentation to the contrary is affirmation of a dying view. Your tenancity in its maintenance is pitiable.
You have supplied no competent evidence other than incompetent hermeneutics that is dying of its own growing irrelevancy. I supplied a wealth of competent evidence you dismissed for no better reason that it conflicted with your conventionally-derived view.
I am confident your efforts in theoretical physics will come to little consequence because your discourse here shows a shocking lack of originality or curiosity.
Both are essential to ground-breaking work.
Or didn't Brian make this clear to you in your correspondence -- as he did in my brief conversation with him after a lecture.
sw
May 21, 2007 2:14 PM | Report Offensive Comment
ANONYMOUS:
"Jim - So why are all the Old Testament prohibitions to be disregarded except that single line about a man lying with a man?"
I do not understand basis for this statement. Clearly, adultery, cursing your parents, incest and others are also prohibitions retained in the New Testament.
May 21, 2007 12:51 PM | Report Offensive Comment
In other words, Aspasia, you can be gay and see the merits of the Bible, and as a Christian you can understand that God gave us the laws but he also allowed us the free will to choose otherwise, rightly or wrongly.
In the end, He is the sole person to whom we must plead the case of our lives, not man. So we must not seek the will of man to approve our choices on earth, but that of God when called upon at the final life review.
And I would suppose that King James must have had a lively discussion with God in the end (smile).
May 21, 2007 9:22 AM | Report Offensive Comment
I may be incorrect in my memory, but believe the King James version of the Bible was commissioned by a King who was an active homosexual from his youth. If he did not see fit to remove the prohibitions against homosexuality in Leviticus and elsewhere and saw no conflict between it and his personal choices, why must modern clergy and practitioners be called upon to denounce and negate these prohibitions.
"By Dr. Laurence M. Vance
As the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603) was coming to a close, we find a draft for an act of Parliament for a new version of the Bible: "An act for the reducing of diversities of bibles now extant in the English tongue to one settled vulgar translated from the original." The Bishop's Bible of 1568, although it may have eclipsed the Great Bible, was still rivaled by the Geneva Bible. Nothing ever became of this draft during the reign of Elizabeth, who died in 1603, and was succeeded by James 1, as the throne passed from the Tudors to the Stuarts. James was at that time James VI of Scotland, and had been for thirty-seven years. He was born during the period between the Geneva and the Bishop's Bible.
One of the first things done by the new king was the calling of the Hampton Court Conference in January of 1604 "for the hearing, and for the determining, things pretended to be amiss in the church." Here were assembled bishops, clergymen, and professors, along with four Puritan divines, to consider the complaints of the Puritans. Although Bible revision was not on the agenda, the Puritan president of Corpus Christi College, John Reynolds, "moved his Majesty, that there might be a new translation of the Bible, because those which were allowed in the reigns of Henry the eighth, and Edward the sixth, were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the Original."
May 21, 2007 6:30 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Didn't Jesus say that in Him there was no male or female? Hard to imagine a more repugnant statement to the family values crowd. They obsess about stereotypical gender distinctions . Dobson, in particular, likes to go on about how little boys smell different from little girls and how little boys should see their daddies naked so that they don't become homosexuals. Need I say more?
May 21, 2007 12:35 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim - So why are all the Old Testament prohibitions to be disregarded except that single line about a man lying with a man? Yes, and then there's Paul, who at one point in his letters goes into a rather embarassing and decidedly unsaintly paroxysm of hatred over sexual decadents about whom he seems to know a bit too much and who resemble the average gay person to the extent that someone who swats flies resembles a serial killer. And why isn't female sexuality ever mentioned? Could it be that they weren't really talking about our modern concept of sexual orientation? After all, in the West until the 19th century, people's conception of the moral person had remained quite crude - you were what you did. This is no longer the case. People now recognize that the celibate person with homosexual desires is just as homosexual as the homosexual who acts on his or her desires. Increasingly, they also recognize that people who feel free to pursue such fundamental pursuits as love are more likely to lead happy and productive lives to the ultimate benefit of the society in which they live.
May 20, 2007 11:33 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Martha,
“What I find most troubling about this whole debate, is the fact that No One but God is without sin. That the log out of one's eye before trying to take a speck out of thy neighbor's. The focus should be internal and no so much external from my opinion.”
Scripture does not allow us to judge one another (make a final determination) . However, it does allow and instruct us to admonish (warn) one another. Are you judging others when you tell them not to judge or are you admonishing them? Is judging the only sin that can be admonished?
Also, what many interpret as human judging is often the preaching of judgments already made by God.
May 20, 2007 1:27 PM | Report Offensive Comment
John,
“Not too long ago it was common among many Christians, especially the Southern types who wear it on their sleeves , to speak of marriage between people of different races as "unnatural", "ungodly", "unbiblical", an "abomination" in the eyes of the Lord. "God made the races separate and they shouldn't be mixed." etc...”
Your examples are Christian’s misrepresenting scripture to fits their own theology – sounds similar to the what pro-homosexs do today. If I use Jesus’ standard and look to the way God originally intended , there is only one distinction made – male and female. By the original standard there are none of the restrictions you mention..
May 20, 2007 1:20 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Clarification.The the earlier post from today was made by me. I inadvertently forgot to input my name so it defaulted to Anonymous. I re-post my note to another person under name Anonymous.
Some pro-homosexualists assert that Christian elimination of certain Old Testament laws is reason to now allow the acceptance of active homosexuality. This is false teaching.
The elimination of Old Testament cleanliness, ceremonial and dietary laws was directly linked to Christ's death and resurrection. Christ fulfilled the law and broke down the barriers between God and man, Jew and Gentile, which Scripture says these cleanliness and dietary laws represented.
However, the Levitical prohibition against active homosexuality is placed squarely with adultery, child sacrifice, bestiality and cursing your parents. Christ's death and resurrection undid none of these moral prohibitions. Unlike cleanliness and dietary laws, these sins carried the death penalty in the Old Testament to signify grave immorality. Jesus eliminated the death penalty, but the Old Testament death penalty pre-figured eternal damnation - and this still looms
as an outcome.
Others assert allowance of slavery somehow allows for change in belief toward active homosexuality since slavery was eventually disallowed within Christianity. However, slavery, divorce, concubines, diminution of women, etc., are also all consequences of man's fall. They were never part of God's intent for man.
Jesus moves us closer to God's original plan.He makes the moral teachings tighter. He forbids divorce, he rasies the status of women, he calls a lustfull eye equivalent to adultery, he says we are in danger of hell if we curse someone.
Accepting active homosexuality does not move us closer to God's original plan, rather it regresses us beyond the distortions from God's original plan permitted in the Old Testam
Not too long ago it was common among many Christians, especially the Southern types who wear it on their sleeves , to speak of marriage between people of different races as "unnatural", "ungodly", "unbiblical", an "abomination" in the eyes of the Lord. "God made the races separate and they shouldn't be mixed." etc...
May 20, 2007 1:04 PM | Report Offensive Comment
ANONYMOUS
Some pro-homosexualists assert that Christian elimination of certain Old Testament laws is reason to now allow the acceptance of active homosexuality. This is false teaching.
The elimination of Old Testament cleanliness, ceremonial and dietary laws was directly linked to Christ's death and resurrection. Christ fulfilled the law and broke down the barriers between God and man, Jew and Gentile, which Scripture says these cleanliness and dietary laws represented.
However, the Levitical prohibition against active homosexuality is placed squarely with adultery, child sacrifice, bestiality and cursing your parents. Christ's death and resurrection undid none of these moral prohibitions. Unlike cleanliness and dietary laws, these sins carried the death penalty in the Old Testament to signify grave immorality. Jesus eliminated the death penalty, but the Old Testament death penalty pre-figured eternal damnation - and this still looms
as an outcome.
Others assert allowance of slavery somehow allows for change in belief toward active homosexuality since slavery was eventually disallowed within Christianity. However, slavery, divorce, concubines, diminution of women, etc., are also all consequences of man's fall. They were never part of God's intent for man.
Jesus moves us closer to God's original plan.He makes the moral teachings tighter. He forbids divorce, he rasies the status of women, he calls a lustfull eye equivalent to adultery, he says we are in danger of hell if we curse someone.
Accepting active homosexuality does not move us closer to God's original plan, rather it regresses us beyond the distortions from God's original plan permitted in the Old Testam
May 20, 2007 9:24 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Strangely Warmed’s admission that Strangely Warmed does not believe in the basic beliefs of Christianity – Jesus’ atonement for our sins and His bodily resurrection indicates the extent Christians, who wish to accommodate active homosexuality within Christianity, will have to change their beliefs . Are you prepared to enter apostasy? An apostate church is predicted in Scripture and I believe it already exists in embryonic form.
May 20, 2007 9:19 AM | Report Offensive Comment
That is my concern as expressed in an earlier post. Marriage is not working in this country for most people. And that saddens me. Greatly.
We need to address the core institution and refine it. If gay people want to marry they have to reinvent it, because a 50% failure rate and all the rampant infidelity that is inherent in marriages today is not an endorsement. It is like buying a ticket for the Titanic. They say the divorce rate is declining, but someone added that this is because fewer people may be taking the risk.
But I warned you guys, I am cynical.
May 20, 2007 1:43 AM | Report Offensive Comment
The saving grace of the American people is their pragmatism. We'll never enjoy the delectable food of France or the acute insights of the Germans, but we will always come to terms with what works for the greater happiness. Massachusetts has allowed gay marriage for several years now with no consequent harm to anyone and, as a result, it's spreading. Theologians can continue to argue, but the majority will always care about whether it works. Whether it works - the quintessential American concept.
May 20, 2007 1:15 AM | Report Offensive Comment
The saving grace of the American people is their pragmatism. We'll never enjoy the delectable food of France or the acute insights of the Germans, but we will always come to terms with what works for the greater happiness. Massachusetts has allowed gay marriage for several years now with no consequent harm to anyone and, as a result, it's spreading. Theologians can continue to argue, but the majority will always care about whether it works. Whether it works - the quintessential American concept.
May 20, 2007 1:12 AM | Report Offensive Comment
SW;
At some point I would like to talk to you about the alternative energy source and relativity theories you are pursuing. A less contentious topic (smile).
May 20, 2007 12:23 AM | Report Offensive Comment
And SW, surprise, one of the things I have done that upset my Born Again family is have gay friends. So where you got the notion that I am a homophobe and bigot is beyond me. And no, I won't be asking them if I can watch them have sex (smile).
I don't agree with 90% of what my straight friends do in the romance arena and I am sure the sentiment is returned, but I love them dearly too.
May 20, 2007 12:15 AM | Report Offensive Comment
I don't believe it is fear and ignorance SW.
This is a forum dealing with what people's churches and faith tell them about gay marriage and gay clergy, as someone reminded me earlier, and people who are conservative will follow the doctrine and dogma of that faith to the letter. Conservative denominations do not accept this and other behaviors they consider to be at odds with that doctrine. I would refer to it as devotion and dedication to the tenets of their faith more than fear and ignorance.
I have done things my Born Again family cannot understand or accept, but I am not in the business of making them change their beliefs. I am in the business of making the choices that lead to my happiness and becoming one with my God by living as honorable a life as I can.
As for the second half of the question, can someone's mind be changed; faith thrives on dedication and devotion to concepts that cannot be proven objectively. All the arguments and reasoning in the world will not move an unshakeable faith. You can present the Library of Congress to them and they will not feel the need to read a single volume.
You must exercise the same faith in your convictions and understand that those who do not agree will never agree. The issue is are you happy and are you one with your God. If you believe there is an afterlife, when the time comes it is a one to one conversation, not a juried moment. So the fear and ignorance of others will not be considered. Only how you live your life.
It is their right to believe as they choose. Our nation was founded on that right.
It was also founded on the belief that people have rights and protections under the law and the constitution. Their personal religious beliefs affect you only when they infringe on your civil liberties and constitutional rights as a citizen of this nation.
People erroneously compare the gay rights movement to that of the civil rights movement. Again, apples and oranges. Nonetheless, that battle was fought legally, constitutionally, and in civil disobedience in the main, not by arguing theology or trying to get religious institutions involved. They entered voluntarily.
And civilian agents initiated the change--Rosa Parks refused to leave her seat, not the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi refused to leave the first class section of the train in South Africa, not the Hindu priests.
I would venture that many of the people who allowed interracial marriage did not agree with or believe in it, but they recognized the constitutional rights inherent in supporting it.
Arguing issues of faith with the faithful to change their beliefs is often a losing battle.
The Bible was written many many years ago by people who are no longer with us. We will never really know how they interpreted God's word to suit their world view because that world does not exist any longer. Thousands of years have passed. That is what I meant about the tongue in cheek term Cider House Rules.
So clothing of more than one cloth and using stones to kill the guilty, and selling daughters etc. etc. made sense to them in their time. We have to determine what makes sense in ours.
But the essential fact is that a person's religious belief system is part of who they are and it can rarely be changed until that person is willing to be changed. You will fail time and time again if you try to force it.
My free opinion, worth every penny you paid for it.
May 19, 2007 3:50 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Martha, you have hit it exactly. The arrogance of presuming to know the mind of G-d by anyone and then that it gives anyone the sanction to judge anyone else is staggering. No one is any better nor more attuned to G-d than anyone else. Gay persons exist. That's a fact. They have always existed and the sacred text, ancient Egyptian, Chinese, Indo-American cultural remains all attest to this.
Why do frightened people react so negatively? Why are they so affraid? It's fear and ignorance, pure and simple. What drives the fear? What exactly is it?
sw
May 19, 2007 2:52 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim,
No. But I missed one by not giving a name in the "name" space. If you forget the moderator program fills in "ANONYMOUS". Somebody filled in "ANON" and I wholeheartedly agree with that poster. I'd like to thank that person for their post.
I see your position now. There's a BIG problem with it. It's tautological and fallaceous. There is no physical evidence by definition of a "physical resurrection".
Perhaps what you mean is that you take Matthew, Luke, Acts, and John literally. That ordering is essential. That is the chronological order of each manuscript's creation. When you read them in order they do not agree and in fact contradict one another in their particulars, and become markedly more expansive in the physical manifestation claims. Mark was written well before them and there are no "physical" manifestations of a resuscitated corps just a visionary appearance of ascension in Galilee.
Paul's authenticated corpus -- you are aware of the Deutero-Paul and Pseudo-Paul materials that are not authentically Saul of Tarsus/The Apostle Paul's work of course -- has no resuscitated corps accounting and in fact in I Corinthians 15 is quite clear that no ones, especially Jesus' physical body is resuscitated because the physical body is corruptible BUT the spiritual soul is not and therefore IT is resurrected not a physical body.
These are serious theological matters with which you seem to be wholly unfamiliar. If your faith is dependent upon a physical resuscitation then you are in for a big disappointment. It just isn't so. Resurrection means something altogether different than a physical resuscitation of a dead corps.
It is attributed to Jesus that one dies to ones former self and is reborn anew. Paul says this first and the following Synoptic Gospels and the Logos Gospel expand this idea along with the manifestation expansions. That's resurrection. Not the resuscitations of dead bodies.
New life through the practice of dying to ones former self and awakening to ones true new possibility in G-d.
Gay persons who their lives honestly practice this resurrection every moment of their lives. You and anti-gay church folk could learn so much of value from gay persons in this way -- Rev. Bruce Lowe, Baptist Church, Rtd. says this very thing.
You ought to read him.
sw
May 19, 2007 2:25 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim,
No. But I missed one by not giving a name in the "name" space. If you forget the moderator program fills in "ANONYMOUS". Somebody filled in "ANON" and I wholeheartedly agree with that poster. I'd like to thank that person for their post.
I see your position now. There's a BIG problem with it. It's tautological and fallaceous. There is no physical evidence by definition of a "physical resurrection".
Perhaps what you mean is that you take Matthew, Luke, Acts, and John literally. That ordering is essential. That is the chronological order of each manuscript's creation. When you read them in order they do not agree and in fact contradict one another in their particulars, and become markedly more expansive in the physical manifestation claims. Mark was written well before them and there are no "physical" manifestations of a resuscitated corps just a visionary appearance of ascension in Galilee.
Paul's authenticated corpus -- you are aware of the Deutero-Paul and Pseudo-Paul materials that are not authentically Saul of Tarsus/The Apostle Paul's work of course -- has no resuscitated corps accounting and in fact in I Corinthians 15 is quite clear that no ones, especially Jesus' physical body is resuscitated because the physical body is corruptible BUT the spiritual soul is not and therefore IT is resurrected not a physical body.
These are serious theological matters with which you seem to be wholly unfamiliar. If your faith is dependent upon a physical resuscitation then you are in for a big disappointment. It just isn't so. Resurrection means something altogether different than a physical resuscitation of a dead corps.
It is attributed to Jesus that one dies to ones former self and is reborn anew. Paul says this first and the following Synoptic Gospels and the Logos Gospel expand this idea along with the manifestation expansions. That's resurrection. Not the resuscitations of dead bodies.
New life through the practice of dying to ones former self and awakening to ones true new possibility in G-d.
Gay persons who their lives honestly practice this resurrection every moment of their lives. You and anti-gay church folk could learn so much of value from gay persons in this way -- Rev. Bruce Lowe, Baptist Church, Rtd. says this very thing.
You ought to read him.
sw
May 19, 2007 2:25 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Let me see if I get the jest of this debate?
Gays are unable to reproduce. Then why are there so many Gays on this planet. Sounds to me as if they must have come from Heterosexual Couples. So if you want to get rid of people who love someone of the same gender, than it sounds as if you need to do away with couples of the opposite gender. Just tongue and cheek there.
Anyway, it sounds as if heterosexuals are producing more than enough homosexuals in this world, so why would you worry that homosexuals should increase their population by also reproducing after their kind.
What I find most troubling about this whole debate, is the fact that No One but God is without sin. That the log out of one's eye before trying to take a speck out of thy neighbor's. The focus should be internal and no so much external from my opinion.
May 19, 2007 2:13 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim,
No. But I missed one by not giving a name in the "name" space. If you forget the moderator program fills in "ANONYMOUS". Somebody filled in "ANON" and I wholeheartedly agree with that poster. I'd like to thank that person for their post.
I see your position now. There's a BIG problem with it. It's tautological and fallaceous. There is no physical evidence by definition of a "physical resurrection".
Perhaps what you mean is that you take Matthew, Luke, Acts, and John literally. That ordering is essential. That is the chronological order of each manuscript's creation. When you read them in order they do not agree and in fact contradict one another in their particulars, and become markedly more expansive in the physical manifestation claims. Mark was written well before them and there are no "physical" manifestations of a resuscitated corps just a visionary appearance of ascension in Galilee.
Paul's authenticated corpus -- you are aware of the Deutero-Paul and Pseudo-Paul materials that are not authentically Saul of Tarsus/The Apostle Paul's work of course -- has no resuscitated corps accounting and in fact in I Corinthians 15 is quite clear that no ones, especially Jesus' physical body is resuscitated because the physical body is corruptible BUT the spiritual soul is not and therefore IT is resurrected not a physical body.
These are serious theological matters with which you seem to be wholly unfamiliar. If your faith is dependent upon a physical resuscitation then you are in for a big disappointment. It just isn't so. Resurrection means something altogether different than a physical resuscitation of a dead corps.
It is attributed to Jesus that one dies to ones former self and is reborn anew. Paul says this first and the following Synoptic Gospels and the Logos Gospel expand this idea along with the manifestation expansions. That's resurrection. Not the resuscitations of dead bodies.
New life through the practice of dying to ones former self and awakening to ones true new possibility in G-d.
Gay persons who their lives honestly practice this resurrection every moment of their lives. You and anti-gay church folk could learn so much of value from gay persons in this way -- Rev. Bruce Lowe, Baptist Church, Rtd. says this very thing.
You ought to read him.
sw
May 19, 2007 2:07 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Not too long ago it was common among many Christians, especially the Southern types who wear it on their sleeves , to speak of marriage between people of different races as "unnatural", "ungodly", "unbiblical", an "abomination" in the eyes of the Lord. "God made the races separate and they shouldn't be mixed." etc...
May 19, 2007 12:53 PM | Report Offensive Comment
If I were a Christian and consistent, I would make it illegal to eat shrimp and oysters. No one could wear cloth made of more than one fabric. A woman who's had an affair would be stoned to death as would children who talk back. Women wouldn't be allowed to talk in church and, well, if I were a Christian, unlike most Christians, I would read the Bible often and be able to add hundreds more similar absurdities to this list.
May 19, 2007 12:37 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Why Gay unions should not be allowed:
- If homosexuality was a correct way of life, we would not be here today. It is as simple as saying that the parts do not fit. It is common sense, males and males or females and females can not reproduce, therefore that lifestyle would have led the human race into extinction, if it would have been tolerated.
- So why should we encourage or "tolerate" this behavior? All it will lead to is the destruction of the human race.
- the foundation of humanity has continued through the 5000=years (scientifically) on the basis of heterosexuality. It can not be denied that no matter what God or what way this Earth was created, heterosexuality, has sustained and continued life on earth for ALL SPECIES.
-this leads to my second point,
-I don't care what science or studies that you throw into this, no matter that male or female animals hang out with the same sex, that has no relation to them being homosexual. It is like saying that little johnny has invited his ten best friends over for his birthday party. They are all boys. Does that make him gay? NO.
-and another of my questions is, why on Earth are you comparing humans to animals. The defining factor that makes the human race superior to all races, is the fact that we humans know the difference from wrong and right. Animals do not. You can not compare humans, (that is moral and decent humans) to animals, because animals are stupid. humans are not animals, we are humans which is why we have been the strongest and smartest form of life on the planet.
Homosexuals are acting like animals in the sense that they only listen to their bodies sexual impulses, totally ignoring what is right from wrong. We have already found that if homosexuality was right, we would not be here, but since we are here, that makes homosexuality the wrong lifestyle.
-the institution of the family, the traditional family is the correct way of life, shown and proven through thousands of years of life on Earth.
Now if you bring religion into it, the christian bible clearly defies and denounces homosexuality. Throughout the bible, many references are made to sexual immorality and homosexual prostitutes, as being wrong and that these people will not inherit the kingdom of God, Heaven. Read 1st corinthians:6, and Tell me that what I just said is not true.
Many people refute this fact, saying that aren't Christians supposed to love all people and accept all people?
The answer is yes. As a christian, it is our duty to love all, including homosexuals. But, that does not mean that as christians we should tolerate their lifestyle. As christians, we are supposed to help these people. As we know, from clear and precise scripture, homosexuals will not go to heaven, so it is our job to help them to pursue a healthy lifestyle: heterosexuality. That is where the love and forgivness of Christ comes into play, he loves all people, even if they sin and turn from his way, but he does not forgive those who do not try to be forgiven, those who do not try to change. That is the christian mission in the lifestyle of homosexuality, to help homosexuals to change.
-For example: as a christian, I can have a gay friend, a friend I dearly cherish, but as a christian, it is my duty to extend the love and forgiveness of God, and try to help my gay friend to change. You can love a gay or lesbian as a human, a person, but you cannot accept their lifestyle.
Many try to refute this argument by saying that homosexuals are born the way that they are. No they choose it. If you, as a christian, accept homosexuality, and believe that homosexuals are born that way, then you are being a hypocrite. Why would your loving God, who loves everyone and everything, who, as you believe created the universe and everything in it, say that homosexuality is wrong and denounce it, and then create homosexuals? Are you saying that God, your God, who created everything did not know what he created? So he didn't know that he created homosexuals, yet says that their lifestyle is sinful? how Dare you confuse the living word of God. Homosexuals are not born gay, if you are a christian, you can not believe that they are, because why would God make homosexuals and say that their way of life is wrong? He wouldn't because he loves all of his creation. He just gives his creation free will, and that is why homosexuals choose to be gay.
-And if you want to bring science into it, there is no clear scientific evidence that declares the cause of homosexuality in humans or animals.
These are all reasons why gay unions or homosexuality in general is not okay. This is not a political issue, it is a moral issue, and issue of right or wrong. They question you need to ask yourseleves is what is right? And very clearly, for a christian: the bible declares homosexuality wrong, as a member of another faith: I'm sure their is some peice of data in your books denying homosexuality, and for atheists or people who don't follow a common or specific religion: common sense shows the truth and living proof of life.
Thank You
May 19, 2007 12:50 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Why Gay unions should not be allowed:
- If homosexuality was a correct way of life, we would not be here today. It is as simple as saying that the parts do not fit. It is common sense, males and males or females and females can not reproduce, therefore that lifestyle would have led the human race into extinction, if it would have been tolerated.
- So why should we encourage or "tolerate" this behavior? All it will lead to is the destruction of the human race.
- the foundation of humanity has continued through the 5000=years (scientifically) on the basis of heterosexuality. It can not be denied that no matter what God or what way this Earth was created, heterosexuality, has sustained and continued life on earth for ALL SPECIES.
-this leads to my second point,
-I don't care what science or studies that you throw into this, no matter that male or female animals hang out with the same sex, that has no relation to them being homosexual. It is like saying that little johnny has invited his ten best friends over for his birthday party. They are all boys. Does that make him gay? NO.
-and another of my questions is, why on Earth are you comparing humans to animals. The defining factor that makes the human race superior to all races, is the fact that we humans know the difference from wrong and right. Animals do not. You can not compare humans, (that is moral and decent humans) to animals, because animals are stupid. humans are not animals, we are humans which is why we have been the strongest and smartest form of life on the planet.
Homosexuals are acting like animals in the sense that they only listen to their bodies sexual impulses, totally ignoring what is right from wrong. We have already found that if homosexuality was right, we would not be here, but since we are here, that makes homosexuality the wrong lifestyle.
-the institution of the family, the traditional family is the correct way of life, shown and proven through thousands of years of life on Earth.
Now if you bring religion into it, the christian bible clearly defies and denounces homosexuality. Throughout the bible, many references are made to sexual immorality and homosexual prostitutes, as being wrong and that these people will not inherit the kingdom of God, Heaven. Read 1st corinthians:6, and Tell me that what I just said is not true.
Many people refute this fact, saying that aren't Christians supposed to love all people and accept all people?
The answer is yes. As a christian, it is our duty to love all, including homosexuals. But, that does not mean that as christians we should tolerate their lifestyle. As christians, we are supposed to help these people. As we know, from clear and precise scripture, homosexuals will not go to heaven, so it is our job to help them to pursue a healthy lifestyle: heterosexuality. That is where the love and forgivness of Christ comes into play, he loves all people, even if they sin and turn from his way, but he does not forgive those who do not try to be forgiven, those who do not try to change. That is the christian mission in the lifestyle of homosexuality, to help homosexuals to change.
-For example: as a christian, I can have a gay friend, a friend I dearly cherish, but as a christian, it is my duty to extend the love and forgiveness of God, and try to help my gay friend to change. You can love a gay or lesbian as a human, a person, but you cannot accept their lifestyle.
Many try to refute this argument by saying that homosexuals are born the way that they are. No they choose it. If you, as a christian, accept homosexuality, and believe that homosexuals are born that way, then you are being a hypocrite. Why would your loving God, who loves everyone and everything, who, as you believe created the universe and everything in it, say that homosexuality is wrong and denounce it, and then create homosexuals? Are you saying that God, your God, who created everything did not know what he created? So he didn't know that he created homosexuals, yet says that their lifestyle is sinful? how Dare you confuse the living word of God. Homosexuals are not born gay, if you are a christian, you can not believe that they are, because why would God make homosexuals and say that their way of life is wrong? He wouldn't because he loves all of his creation. He just gives his creation free will, and that is why homosexuals choose to be gay.
-And if you want to bring science into it, there is no clear scientific evidence that declares the cause of homosexuality in humans or animals.
These are all reasons why gay unions or homosexuality in general is not okay. This is not a political issue, it is a moral issue, and issue of right or wrong. They question you need to ask yourseleves is what is right? And very clearly, for a christian: the bible declares homosexuality wrong, as a member of another faith: I'm sure their is some peice of data in your books denying homosexuality, and for atheists or people who don't follow a common or specific religion: common sense shows the truth and living proof of life.
Thank You
May 19, 2007 12:43 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Strangely warmed;
"Jesus' death was not Sacrificial, Atonement or Scapegoat theology. All of that was codified to explain G-d's allowance of Jesus' death by the Romans."
It sounds like you are denying that Jesus' death and resurrection saved us from our sins. Am I correct in this? Do you believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus?
Just for clarification, are you and Anon's posts coming from the same person? If so, responding would be less confusing.
thankyou,
May 18, 2007 8:39 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I corresponded with Brian Greene when we were both at Columbia regarding nonlinear time and the space-time continuum, and he has a few key points in place. There is a missing link that I am chasing that will unite String, Hawking, Einsten and Tesla. Watch out for the paper.
That said, I don't need a jolt. Did you read where I asked people on the posts to show some respect and compassion to gay people and stop being hateful.
Earlier I said the approval of others and their opinions are irrelevant, what matters is that people are given their constitutional rights and are left alone.
So you don't need me to agree with your lifestyle, you just need me to show you the respect I would any other human being. And I do and did.
Without the unnecessary suggestion that I watch animals and humans handle their business (smile). Pleaze.....
I agree with George Gordon, Lord Byron. If I rememeber it well, he said he was the eye through which the universe beheld itself and knew it is divine. So is man, so we need not reference animal husbandry to discuss our behavior. Please...
Hawking is the only person I want to discuss Big Bangs with thank you...
May 18, 2007 7:42 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Debbie J,
I forgot to tell ya. I LOVE the "The Song of Songs". It IS the best romantic erotic literature ever written. I agree. But you know what? You can read Solomon's portion TWO ways and make a very minor gender replacement for the wife and it fits for me too. For someone with your interests opening your mind to this subject won't be hard. I am studying Relativity intensely right now and exploring very interesting ideas for its application to energy resources, generation and consumption issues.
sw
May 18, 2007 5:51 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Debbie J, I know it was.
I did it on purpose becasue know you know how I feel when I read your remarks about persons like me when it is patently untrue.
Did you get my reference? Greene is good but String Theory has run its course it is a discpline looking for an application destined not likely to find one.
I didn't mean to offend you; just jolt you a little. Thanks for being a good sport and I am sorry for being a bit crude.
sw
May 18, 2007 5:43 PM | Report Offensive Comment
When I have free time I read about String Theory, Supermassive Black Holes, Relativity, Alternate Energy Sources, and compartaive religions.
Watching animals or gay men do their business is not on the list. Never will be. I do like eco tourism though. And I do want to see the Grand Canyon.
As I said about these , that was mighty hateful what you just said to me (smile).
But I'm not mad at ya!
May 18, 2007 5:30 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Read what I said again. if you read the Song of Songs that is pure unadulterated erotic sex. I was refering to the Love They Neighbor quote of Jesus and Paul. People in this post were getting mighty hateful!
May 18, 2007 5:25 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Debbie J, how do you know this? Eros, erotic love; filios, brotherly-comradely love; and agape, spiritually expansive love are all love, are they not?
Why are you so terrified of erotic love? G-d made erotic love for all of us to enjoy.
If it is true that G-d does not want us to have sex -- except to procreate -- then why did G-d make it so incredibly pleasurable and wonderful. And, why do octogenarians well past child-baring ages engage and enjoy it so much? That is definitely not procreative justification.
The reason animal sexuality is quite relevant is that contrary to your uninformed view, humankind is an animal all with all the rest of creation on this little planet of ours in an obscure little corner of an unimportant galaxy in the unfashionable section of the universe. You can't have it both ways. You don't get to eat your cake and have it too. None of us does. You claim and your ilk such as Jim that gay sex is unnatural.
It most certainly is not. It is pervasive throughout the entire natural world. Let's take a look shall we? Do you know why naturalists and biologists have been confused about what they were seeing for 200 years?
Because their heterosexist bias assumed that they were only seeing heterosexual animal sex -- what little they got the opportunity to see. What confused them is that with the exception of a very few instances never has hostility been observed when animals engaged in sex play. Animals do not have sex for only procreation. They have sex for pleasure and lots of reasons. What was being observed was homosexuality, bisexuality and heterosexuality. There is only one species on the planet that is hostile and abusive to gay members -- human being. Religion has the brunt of the blame.
Big horn sheep all throughout the western US -- quite pervasive a species BTW -- do not pair-bond heterosexually. Males hang with males. Females keep the themselves. Males pair-bond, many for life. Females too. Once a year when the females are in rut for a month or two the males and females fraternize for procreative purposes. After the younglings are born and weaned the next year the females bring the young to be given to male pairs or the female keeps her young for rearing. Works beautifully.
The next time you go to Grand Canyon and see two big horned bucks ramming horns hang around -- it's FOREPLAY for sex and affection. There. You can see some gay sex without having to be traumatized by watching two men do it. It is hot though -- heterosexual women love gay sex just as hetero men love to watch lesbian sex.
Got over yourself. Read some, will you?
sw
May 18, 2007 4:28 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Sorry for the miltiple entries. Computer glitch. Getting a new one soon.
May 18, 2007 4:17 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Why Jim I'm so surprised!
You hit it exactly. I am pleased I don't have to waste time explaining it to you. You are most correct. The Paschal Sacrificial Lamb and Yom Kipper Atonement Lamb & Scapegoat are Jewish rituals of redemption, cleansing, forgiveness and renewal. Their appropriation into an explanation of the Crucifixion is precisely the point.
Jesus' death was not Sacrificial, Atonement or Scapegoat theology. All of that was codified to explain G-d's allowance of Jesus' death by the Romans.
You do have a mind.
Now deal with this reality in a mature manner and stop proselytizing nonsense.
sw
May 18, 2007 3:53 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind. I believe in the beauty of the Song of Songs. The symbolic energy of two people--male and female--uniting in love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. But love built upon the pain of others--adultery or other uneven alliance as you say-- is not a blessed one. David and Sampson can speak to that.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
May 18, 2007 3:45 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind. I believe in the beauty of the Song of Songs. The symbolic energy of two people--male and female--uniting in love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. But love built upon the pain of others is not a blessed one. David and Sampson can speak to that.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
May 18, 2007 3:44 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind. I believe in the beauty of the Song of Songs. The symbolic energy of two people--male and female--uniting in love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. But love built upon the pain of others is not a blessed one. David and Sampson can speak to that.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
May 18, 2007 3:44 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind. I believe in the beauty of the Song of Songs. The symbolic energy of two people--male and female--uniting in love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. But love built upon the pain of others is not a blessed one. David and Sampson can speak to that.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
May 18, 2007 3:33 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind. I believe in the beauty of the Song of Songs. The symbolic energy of two people--male and female--uniting in love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. But love built upon the pain of others is not a blessed one. David and Sampson can speak to that.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
May 18, 2007 3:33 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
May 18, 2007 3:22 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
May 18, 2007 3:22 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
May 18, 2007 3:13 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
May 18, 2007 3:11 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
May 18, 2007 3:11 PM | Report Offensive Comment
The love referred to is one born of mutual respect and compassion for those who must live together in the odd "Cider House" called earth. Not the sexual kind.
I don't agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual clergy but I will do my best against my Born Again leanings to offer them the compassion and respect they are due as human beings.
May 18, 2007 3:11 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jesus tells us to love one another as He loves us – not as we define love. I would not doubt there are those who are engaged in adultery who assert they love one another. But Jesus said if you love me you will keep my commandments
May 18, 2007 2:53 PM | Report Offensive Comment
And can I respectfully request that we not use animal sexuality to reference human sexuality. Apples and oranges. Some animals also eat their young so please....
May 18, 2007 2:41 PM | Report Offensive Comment
If I get my Bible sources wrong, forgive me:
See Matthew 22:36-40). These religious leaders had made almost an art form of classifying all the various laws and giving them relative degrees of importance, so in asking Jesus this question, their aim was to test Him. His answer stunned them: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
In Romans 13:8-10, Paul says:
Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, "You shall not commit adultery," "You shall not murder," "You shall not steal," "You shall not bear false witness," "You shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
May 18, 2007 2:29 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Anon,
"The "Fallen" explanation of the human condition, like the heavens being a bowl above our heads, the underworld a watery bowl below the earth under our feet, the Ptolemaic cosmological model and epilepsy being daemon possession, is disproved and no longer operant in a Post-Modern contemporary world."
Do you then believe that Christ's passion, death, and resurrection allowed for us salvation?
May 18, 2007 12:35 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Every human being is beautiful and precious. Every human being is unique and there has never been another one exactly like him or her nor ever will be.
Can we not in Christ, God, Allah, or All-That-Is not embrace this truth and love one another unconditionally as Jesus, Siddhartha, and Mohammed called us to do?
Every person deserves to be themselves fully, honestly, completely.
All persons heterosexual or homosexual deserve intimate romantic love, fierce devotion to another and the receiving of that same fierce devotion for him or her, universally.
Gay men ought to be encouraged by the churches to marry each other -- it promotes stability and monogamy. The same is true for women. As it has been true for men and women throughout all of human history.
What is everyone so afraid of? I really want to know -- what is it specifically you are afraid of?
If marriage is so heterosexually exclusive that the mere contemplation of expansion of the institution is so unthinkable, then I have a practical solution.
Two gay men who love each other deeply and two gay women who love each other just as fiercely out to find each other so that two pairs of one woman and one man may marry each other.
Problem solved.
I'm going to pitch this -- it'll make MILLIONS.
Thanks for the idea.
May 18, 2007 12:27 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim,
The "Fallen" explanation of the human condition, like the heavens being a bowl above our heads, the underworld a watery bowl below the earth under our feet, the Ptolemaic cosmological model and epilepsy being daemon possession, is disproved and no longer operant in a Post-Modern contemporary world.
Your clinging to them so desperately is revealing and pitiful.
Wow, I had no idea such ignorance still exists.
I trust you never fly in an airplane because it would crash into the Genesian bowl, never go caving say in Carlsbad because you would drown, continue to explain the wayward planetary retrograde motion as daemonic influence upon the heavens and never treat a person with physiogenic epilepsy pharmacologically but damn them as possessed.
Time to grow up and get real.
sw
May 18, 2007 12:08 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Debbie J,
Ok, I can go along with what you just posted. But an objective reader would not have gotten that meaning from your prior posts
May 18, 2007 9:44 AM | Report Offensive Comment
When I say take God out I mean that if we are going to use Him back and forth to attack each other then He has no place here. We can express our opininons without resorting to attack mode.
That said, my faith indicates that it is Toeva, abomination, but so is not loving thy neighbor as they self and I don't see that practiced very much when this topic is raised.
May 18, 2007 9:20 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Gay Unions - Disgusting and Immoral per the bible. I'd list the scruptures but they are listed elsewhere.
Gay Clergy - Doesn't compute - Titus 1:5-9
The pro-gay arguments seems to be (1) a loving christ would never reject gays and (2) god accepts all as we are all sinners.
Regarding 1 - Christ routinely rejected sinners. Didn't her tell Peter "Get behind me satan as you think men's thought, not those of god". Also, didn't he condemn the pharisees because of their hypocrisy. He didn't bend the standards to suit his listeners.
Regarding 2 - Check out 1 Tim 2:3,4 - Not all are saved, only those who come to an accurate understanding.
Read Matthew chapter 7 sometime and think about the comments around verse 21 through 23. Seems pretty clear that some representing themselves as christians will be rejected. Fits into the overall discussion about the broad and spacious road leading off into destruction. The narrow road in the discussion has to do with conforming our lives with god's standards.
And finally, 2 Tim 4:3, let's us know why we are even having this discussion:
2 Tim 4:3 (NIV) - For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
By the way, this doesn't just apply to gays, but any group that rejects the bible standards.
QED - Being Gay is not Christian
May 17, 2007 9:56 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Debbie J.
PS
It is pro-homosexs who assert God created homosexuals. As you note, God created the HETEROSEXUAL Adam and Eve and 'married' them to reproduce.
There is no evidence of God creating homosexuals -though thru our fallen biologies those with a homosexual inclination can now be are born.
May 17, 2007 8:20 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Debbie J.
"So again I say, leave God and the Bible out of this. It is the Cider House Rules. The rules were made by those who do not live in the Cider House. Who lives here?"
The title of this Form is "On Faith" and "What does your faith lead you to believe about gay unions and gay clergy? Could you ever change your mind?"
Talking about God in this forum is quite appropriate. Talking about what you belief God intended for marriage also fits very well with this forum
If you think another Forum should be established to discuss this from a purely secular view, I suggest you contact the owners of this website.
Taking God out of this Forum is inapproriate.
May 17, 2007 8:06 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Call me cynical because I am, but God did not make any of us. Our parents did. After Adam and Eve, He tooks his hand off the wheel.
So again I say, leave God and the Bible out of this. It is the Cider House Rules. The rules were made by those who do not live in the Cider House. Who lives here?
Let's make the rules accordingly.
May 17, 2007 5:48 PM | Report Offensive Comment
John,
In an earlier note you said:
“And, Jim, Jesus did have many pearls of wisdom. The Book of Thomas, which didn't make the cut (maybe not patriachal enough for the early church fathers), is full of them and they're also stangely reminiscent of Buddhism.”
I responded:
“This is one of the saying of the Gospel of Thomas:
"114) Simon Peter said to them: Let Mary go forth from among us, for women are not worthy of the life. Jesus said: Behold, I shall lead her, that I may make her male, in order that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who makes herself male shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. "
Do you agree with this?
You never answered my question.
May 17, 2007 4:55 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Stranely Warmed
"Dr. Mohler has already said that you and churches need to accept the fact that gay men are born gay and straight men are born straight. Sexual identity is fixed in men well before birth. It is fact.
I agree that there is probably a biologcal component to homosexuality. Please reread my earlier note.
My point is that does not mean God created homosexuals. It is a consequence of Man's Fall - like death is now natural and a consequence of Man's Fall - not something intended for Man's creation.
No need for name calling. I am merely defending the Church.
May 17, 2007 3:09 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim, re: your post, May 16, 2007 8:52 PM.
Dr. Mohler has already said that you and churches need to accept the fact that gay men are born gay and straight men are born straight. Sexual identity is fixed in men well before birth. It is fact.
Bruce Bagemihl has presented 200 years of naturalist and biologist's observations of 450 sepcies which incorporate heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality in his book, "Biological Exuberance" c1999. Read it for yourself.
Dr. Mohler was quoting from Dr.'s Wilson & Rahman's book, "Born Gay: The Pschobiology of Sexual Orientation" c2005.
Your anti-gay rhetoric and hermeneutic discourse is positively indicative of your own closeted interanl conflicts. Straight men do not engage in these, only closeted or self-hating gay men do. Read the book and find out why.
sw
May 17, 2007 1:01 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Keep making it up, Jim. Keep making it up as you go along.
May 17, 2007 12:53 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Strangely warmed:
You repeat the pro-homosexs mantra that because it exist in nature, therefore, God created homosexuals.
I think the assertion that God created homosexuals because it exist in nature is false teaching. It is theologically explainable as a consequence of Man's Fall. Death was never part of God's intent for man, but because of Original Sin, death is now natural. Same for all disease and disorders, even if there is a biological component.
Natural from God’s perspective is what He intended – not what is now in our fallen nature.
May 16, 2007 8:52 PM | Report Offensive Comment
John,
“Don't you find it a bit strange that homosexuality has existed in all cultures throughout human history.”
No I don’t find it strange. I believe there is a biological component underlying the behavior coupled with environmental factors. I suspect there are other biological components to other bad behaviors’ such as alcoholism, inclinations to violence, proclivity toward adultery, perhaps pedophilia, as well as other behaviors. But like I said in previous posts, it is theologically explainable as a consequence of Man’s Fall.
“it's an unusual "vice" in that unlike the others it shows no proclivity to appear in people who are otherwise bad; people who lie or are envious are also more likely to steal, for example, yet many gay people, who are sexually active, lead exemplary lives”
I suspect the other bad behaviors you mention (like lying, cheating, greed, stealing) are probably found as frequently in those with homosexual orientations as heterosexual orientation. I say this only because I have no evidence either way and am just assuming homosexuals are no different in these areas. However, when it comes to sexual activity, the studies I have seen indicate that active homosexuals are very active indeed – particularly males. Most (male) homosexuals have many, many sexual liaisons. In fact, many in so called committed relationships engage in ‘adulterous’ activity very frequently – yet assert they are in loving, committed relationships. Indeed, some homosexual theoreticians assert engaging in sex with those outside the committed relationship should be considered as normal for ‘marriage’.
“It's also the only "vice" I know of that appears in sheep, among many other mammals and some birds.”
I suggest you check out studies on ‘adulterous’ behavior in animals (birds just to name one)– there is h evidence for this.
Animals also engage in what in humans would be considered as stealing. They also engage in violence. But like I noted before, in Man such sinful behavior is a consequence of Man’s Fall from Grace. Man’s fallen nature is under the influence of inherited sinful inclinations. The fall of the angels may explain some of the corruption in nature generally.
“At any rate, in your attempts to save souls why the intense focus on homosexuality?”
It is not my only intense focus – abortion also is (I do consider abortion a graver moral evil than active homosexuality). Increasingly, I also find myself becoming a ‘green’ Christian and hope to engage more on that in the future, but I am not well versed enough yet. Also, although I engage on the internet on the issue, I have taken internal, rather bold actions and oral statments to defend workers from being taken advantaged-of (I am semi-retired with a pension and therefore have some ‘cover’).
The reason I focus on abortion and homosexuality is that both of these, unlike adultery, stealing, greed, etc, are being foisted on the Church and society as a ‘good’. Unlike ‘swingers’, etc many pro-homosexs want the Church to say active homosexuality is ‘good’
.“Woe unto those who call good evil and evil good.”
“It is better to have a millstone placed around your neck and you thrown in the sea than to lead astray my little ones”. (False teachers in the Church leading the unknowing laity astray).
If there were those in the Church pressing for the Church’s acceptance of heterosexual adultery as a ‘good’, I would be fighting them also – even more so because of shear numbers.
“It's certainly not consitent with historical Christianity. During the High Middle Ages, the only time that Christianity has ever succeeded in thoroughly molding a civilization, it was regarded as a petty vice, on the level of gluttony”
Scripture and authoritative Church teaching has always considered active homosexuality sinful – backsliding, false teachers not withstanding.
“Lending money at interest, however, was considered a grave sin.”
Charging interest, per se, is not considered wrong since Scripture allows the charging of interest to foreigner’s (Dt 23:21). However, there is no such allowance counterpart for homosexual activity. Unlike interest charging, it is always wrong.
My reading of scripture suggest it is usury (lending money at high rates or any interest to a poor person, or to your brother) is what the real issue is. I would never consider charging interest to my brother, sisters for a loan or even a unrelated person who was poor. Jewish society was much more inclusive in what is family.
May 16, 2007 8:47 PM | Report Offensive Comment
John,
“In my view, it's a an extremely wayward spirituality that concerns itself with other people's sexual orientation. Perhaps that's why Jesus never refers to it.”
You presume that only the Gospel’s are God’s Word. Christian’s believe ALL of Scripture is God’s Word. Active homosexuality is mentioned elsewhere in the Bible.
Jesus does not specifically speak against slavery or bestiality, or incest either. That does not make them something good?
Bestiality and homosexuality, and incest may not have been significant problems in Israel at the time of Jesus (they learned their lesson from the Sodom story) whereas adultery was. Jesus did not go out to the Gentile nations – he left that to the apostles. In the Gentile world the apostles did encounter homosexuality – and spoke against it. Speaking of His apostles He said: “He who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.”(Lk.10:16).
You presume the Gospels tell all that Jesus said – they do not and the Gospel says that.
All positive reference to marriage by Jesus is done in the context of one man and one woman as revealed in Genesis. It is more plausible to believe Jesus just pre-supposed that in ALL marriage male and female was a prerequisite. The wording of Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 make this quite obvious: "Male and female he made them" and "For this reason a man . . . shall be joined to his woman/wife and the two shall become one flesh." Only a "man" and a "woman" are structurally capable of becoming "one flesh" through a sexual union because, as noted above, the creation stories depict gender differentiation as the only differentiation created by the splitting of an original sexual whole. On the level of erotic intimacy, sexual wholeness requires the restoration of the constituent parts. The fact that Jesus cites Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 back-to-back suggests that Jesus understood the "for this reason" introducing 2:24 as alluding to the gender differentiation established in 1:27. For this reason—namely, because God made them male and female, complementary sexual beings (1:27)—man and woman may be joined in a permanent one-flesh union (2:24). For Jesus, then, the Creator ordained marriage—it is not just a social construct—as a lifelong union of one man and one woman for the purpose of forming an indissoluble sexual whole. Both the Scriptures that Jesus cited with approval and the audience that Jesus addressed—indeed the whole of early Judaism so far as extant evidence indicates—presumed the male-female prerequisite. Jesus clearly agreed.
Silence on a behavior does not prove allowance for the behavior. What Jesus did say carries more weight than our speculative view of what He did not say.
May 16, 2007 8:41 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Dear Concerned,
The real question is why does it concern YOU? If you aren't gay why do you care so much about it. Of course it's strange to you if you are straight. It's just as strange and scary to me to think of hetersexual sex. All my youth and church experiences made homosexuality frightening to ME. Think of how much more terrifying it was for me to begin realizing I didn't look ar girls the way of my friends did -- and even worse than that I looked at guys and had the same reactions as my friends for girls, except for guys.
Fear is the common denominator. Can we just be human and compassionate for a moment and see that there is more that we have in common than differentiates us. And that all those differences are miniscule in comparrison to all the binds us in our common spirituality and humanity.
Frankly, G-d made me gay as G-d made you straight. We are the same in that G-d made us who we are.
Dr. Mohler has already admitted that sexual identity for men is innately fixed before birth so that is settled as far as I'm concerned -- for you as well.
Can we in our common bond in Chirst understand the alien for each of us and embrace each other as brothers?
Why is that Christ-like entreaty so difficult?
I don't want to be cured of how G-d made me. I want you to love how G-d makes all of us just the way we are and just the way we aren't. That is Jesus' ministry after all.
sw
May 16, 2007 6:44 PM | Report Offensive Comment
As I said in another post. Let's separate church and state as per the constitution and leave the Bible out of this argument.
That said, why do you need societal acceptance? Take that out of the equation too. You don't need anyone to approve of you. You just need them to get out of the way and let you live happily and freely. As they say in the south, what you think of me is none of my business.
Everyone is supposed to have equal rights under the law per the constitution. Fight on those grounds and leave Jesus and Leviticus, and what will the neighbors say out of the argument.
I for one find marriage in its current state deplorable what with the divorce rate being so high so if gay people can find a better alternative, more power to them.
May 16, 2007 4:29 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim - Don't you find it a bit strange that homosexuality has existed in all cultures throughout human history. Different cultures tend to produce considerable variation in people's inclination to one or another kind of bad behaviour, yet homosexuality remains a constant. Furthermore, it's an unusual "vice" in that unlike the others it shows no proclivity to appear in people who are otherwise bad; people who lie or are envious are also more likely to steal, for example, yet many gay people, who are sexually active, lead exemplary lives. It's also the only "vice" I know of that appears in sheep, among many other mammals and some birds. Scientists are currently looking at the genes of gay rams with an aim to eliminate them since these non-breeding rams are somehow less profitable. At any rate, in your attempts to save souls why the intense focus on homosexuality? It's certainly not consitent with historical Christianity. During the High Middle Ages, the only time that Christianity has ever succeeded in thoroughly molding a civilization, it was regarded as a petty vice, on the level of gluttony, if that. Lending money at interest, however, was considered a grave sin. Now it's a profession engaged in by many Christians. In my view, it's a an extremely wayward spirituality that concerns itself with other people's sexual orientation. Perhaps that's why Jesus never refers to it.
May 16, 2007 4:27 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim - Don't you find it a bit strange that homosexuality has existed in all cultures throughout human history. Different cultures tend to produce considerable variation in people's inclination to one or another kind of bad behaviour, yet homosexuality remains a constant. Furthermore, it's an unusual "vice" in that unlike the others it shows no proclivity to appear in people who are otherwise bad; people who lie or are envious are also more likely to steal, for example, yet many gay people, who are sexually active, lead exemplary lives. It's also the only "vice" I know of that appears in sheep, among many other mammals and some birds. Scientists are currently looking at the genes of gay rams with an aim to eliminate them since these non-breeding rams are somehow less profitable. At any rate, in your attempts to save souls why the intense focus on homosexuality? It's certainly not consitent with historical Christianity. During the High Middle Ages, the only time that Christianity has ever succeeded in thoroughly molding a civilization, it was regarded as a petty vice, on the level of gluttony, if that. Lending money at interest, however, was considered a grave sin. Now it's a profession engaged in by many Christians. In my view, it's a an extremely wayward spirituality that concerns itself with other people's sexual orientation. Perhaps that's why Jesus never refers to it.
May 16, 2007 4:27 PM | Report Offensive Comment
As I said in another post. Let's separate church and state as per the constitution and leave the Bible out of this argument.
That said, why do you need societal acceptance? Take that out of the equation too. You don't need anyone to approve of you. You just need them to get out of the way and let you live happily and freely. As they say in the south, what you think of me is none of my business.
Everyone is supposed to have equal rights under the law per the constitution. Fight on those grounds and leave Jesus and Leviticus, and what will the neighbors say out of the argument.
I for one find marriage in its current state deplorable what with the divorce rate being so high so if gay people can find a better alternative, more power to them.
May 16, 2007 4:25 PM | Report Offensive Comment
John,
This is one of the saying of the Gospel of Thomas:
"114) Simon Peter said to them: Let Mary go forth from among us, for women are not worthy of the life. Jesus said: Behold, I shall lead her, that I may make her male, in order that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who makes herself male shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. "
Do you agree with this?
May 16, 2007 3:20 PM | Report Offensive Comment
John,
I do not dislike homosexuals as you imply. I know some people with this inclination and we have some common interests on other matters that we enjoy discussing. True love consist in informing people of the Christian spiritual Truth concerning active homosexuality in order to save their souls, not to agree with them on active homosexuality and make them feel good. Jesus told us to love one another AS HE LOVES US – not as we define love
May 16, 2007 3:14 PM | Report Offensive Comment
And, Jim, Jesus did have many pearls of wisdom. The Book of Thomas, which didn't make the cut (maybe not patriachal enough for the early church fathers), is full of them and they're also stangely reminiscent of Buddhism. Odd though, given modern Christians' obsession with the subject, not one has to do with same-sex attraction.
May 16, 2007 3:07 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim - You love reason and faith - not just reason. In other words, it's out the window with reason whenever it fails to suit your fancy - in this case your dislike of people who lack your stellar virtue of being born heterosexual.
May 16, 2007 2:47 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim - You love reason and faith - not just reason. In other words, it's out the window with reason whenever it fails to suit your fancy - in this case your dislike of people who lack your stellar virtue of being born heterosexual.
May 16, 2007 2:47 PM | Report Offensive Comment
John,
Apparently, I undercut some of your most treasured anti-Christian arguments concerning active homosexuality. The core points I made have been preached since the beginning of Christianity basically unchanged. I love reason and faith – not just reason.
But as Jesus said, do not cast pearls before swine, they will just trample on them
May 16, 2007 2:36 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Who's asking anyone to 'encourage' homosexual behavior/relationships??? Homosexuals have always been here and will always be here. It's equal rights and acceptance of who they already are!
There will always be enough hetrosexuals to continue the species. It's not like gays are promoting a class to change your 'preference' to be gay. Some straight people can't imagine having sex with their own sex because THEIR STRAIGHT!! They won't be sexually attracted to their own sex. When you're gay, it's JUST AS NATURAL to be attracted to your own sex. It really IS that simple.
So, gays aren't a 'threat' to judeo/christian theology...they just need to be accepted and given equal rights for their own. NOT special rights, equal rights.
May 16, 2007 2:34 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Just asking - I will also add that the incidence of sexually transmitted disease among gay men is much lower in Europe than in the US, Europe that godless continent where worrying about what other people do in bed is considered very bad form. Significantly, there are no gay neighborhoods (ghettos) in European cities. A crazy idea - perhaps gays lead healthier lives in societies that accept them.
May 16, 2007 2:26 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Just asking - Heterosexual black Africans have the highest incidence of the most deadly sexually transmitted disease, AIDS. Much higher than among gay men anywhere. Perhaps it would be in mankind's interest to discourage people from being black and being born in Africa. And since your so worried about other people's sex lives might not gay men become more monogamous if our society quit dehumanizing them, quit telling them all their lives that they're nothing but their sexuality, perhaps even allowed them to marry?
May 16, 2007 2:12 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Questions:
1. At a time when the fertility rate of the native-born U.S. population is significantly below replacement and our population is aging rapidly with a Social Security burden rising as a consequence, is it wise for public policy to encourage what is a barren life-style?
2. Given that the gay life-style is associated with a deadly disease and a drop in life expectancy of one to two decades, is it wise for public policy to encourage what is a disease-prone way of life with the health care burden it generates for the rest of society?
The Bible discourages homosexuality because for common sense reasons it is not in the interest of society to promote it. This does not mean we should not care for those that suffer its consequences or not seek ways to mitigate its effects and lessen its impact on those that suffer from HIV/AIDS. We should do all we can to eliminate the suffering and the disease.
Nor should we interfere with the personal and private decisions people make with regard to how they wish to live their lives. That is their own business.
But it does mean we should not encourage gay unions or gay clergy or make the gay life-style equal to that of heterosexual unions and relationships.
May 16, 2007 1:56 PM | Report Offensive Comment
First to Gay Unions. I feel that is a personal freedom and should be recognized by the state. Equal is Equal. Marraige = Marriage, wether gay or straight.
Second, Gay Clergy. That is for the church administrators to decide. Good luck.
As someone who dosen't believe in all the religious bs, keep your dogma off my life. People need to realize the intellectual, moral, and various contributions homosexuals make to our society, and quit lumping them in with murderers, child molestors, alcoholics, etc., etc.. Get outside your 'storybook' and see how good people are already living. Evolve, people.
May 16, 2007 1:53 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim - Your'e living proof of Christianity's infinite malleability. A truly elusive religion. Starting with that hodgepodge, the Bible, anyone can concatenate just about any doctrine. It's made Christianity a strong and resilient religion, unlike its brittle cousin, Islam. Also a profoundly repellent religion to those who love reason and the human virtue of intellectual honesty.
May 16, 2007 1:44 PM | Report Offensive Comment
John,
Some pro-homosexualists assert that Christian elimination of certain Old Testament laws is reason to now allow the acceptance of active homosexuality. This is false teaching.
The elimination of Old Testament cleanliness, ceremonial and dietary laws was directly linked to Christ's death and resurrection. Christ fulfilled the law and broke down the barriers between God and man, Jew and Gentile, which Scripture says these cleanliness and dietary laws represented. It had nothing to do with food, per se, but what it represented.
However, the Levitical prohibition against active homosexuality is placed squarely with adultery, child sacrifice, bestiality and cursing your parents. Christ's death and resurrection undid none of these moral prohibitions. Unlike cleanliness and dietary laws, these sins carried the death penalty in the Old Testament to signify grave immorality. Jesus eliminated the death penalty, but the Old Testament death penalty pre-figured eternal damnation - and this still looms
as an outcome.
Jesus moves us closer to God's original plan.He makes the moral teachings tighter. He forbids divorce, he rasies the status of women, he calls a lustfull eye equivalent to adultery, he says we are in danger of hell if we curse someone.
Accepting active homosexuality does not move us closer to God's original plan, rather it regresses us beyond the distortions from God's original plan permitted in the Old Testament
As far as homosexuality being natural (therefore presumed by some pro-homosexs as made by God) -
It is now natural to die, but death is a consequence of Man’s Fall (Original Sin). Death was never God’s intent for Man. Same with all diseases and disorders, Homosexuality, even if it has a biological component, is theologically explainable as a consequence of Man’s Fall also, and not something intended by God.
And prior to Man’s fall there was the fall of the Angels, which may have had negative effects on Creation in general, hence animals with homosexuality.
May 16, 2007 12:21 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Homosexuality among mammals in nature, not to mention penguins, is commonplace and has now been extensively studied. Do some google searches. Often it even involves life-long attachments. As for the Bible, anyone who actually bothers to read it, rather than just make assumptions on its content based on what they remember from Sunday school or the ravings of the dearly departed Jerry F., should realize that the God of this book is vastly more concerned with food than with sex. Christians die in peace having violated His dietary commandments thousands upon thousands of times. And don't forget about not wearing cloth made of more than one fabric. And...
May 16, 2007 11:42 AM | Report Offensive Comment
The bible does not support homsexuality and it is clear. Scriptures have been quoted so I will not qoute any. No wisdom in this world can change the mind of God.
But I just want to ask because majority of the people now believe in evolution, if so why is it that animals from whom some people supposedly evolved not involve in homosexuality. As for me it's God that created me in His likeness. If common animals were not created homosexuals biologically how come humans.
Think on it or may be prove to the world that animals are homosexuals. There is no amount of window-dressing that can make same-sex relationships right. It is in today's society that iniquity is taking over and people who are not 'wise' see it as civilization.
God in his love is calling you to repent before it will be too late. The judgement of God is nearer than you think, not only on this matter but on all manner of iniquity. I pray that I will not be a partaker of the wrath to come. What about you?
Nobody should think he can prove God into existence or out of existence. he is God and there is none else.
May 15, 2007 8:12 PM | Report Offensive Comment
as to gay unions - i did not know they were illegal. gays can live together, have sex together, and even adopt children, or have their own using the services of the opposite sex, so are they illegal now? any gay can marry anyone any other person can marry, ie. a person of the opposite sex who is not otherwise then married, of lawful age, and not a relative of the first degree, and is a human being. i am limited by those same rules.
as for gay clergy - that would depend on the religion. some religions do not allow the priests to marry - so that is not a problem. a catholic priest can be gay or not, and neither can have sex with anyone and not violate their holy orders, as they are called. the rules are the same for both. it is illegal to have sex with minors no matter what their sex.
then there are those religions that allow marriage. those are more difficult, but only if they are christian or jewish. both of those religions have strong proscriptions againts sam sex sex. very strong prohibitions. with that in mind i cannot see a practicing gay being in those religions. i dont see a prohibition about being gay but only doing gay. so having a gay priest living with a same sex lover is a violation of that religion. the fiction now used by some religions that say they are christian is just that, a fiction. bishop robinson of the episcopal church and which might get the american episcopla church kicked out and is already in the middle of lawsuits to steal the individual parish property, is a good example. his assertion that the prohibition does not apply to LOVING same sex relationships is absurd. the same argument could be made for every currently prohibited relationship, and the LOVING test apply to multiple partners, marrying your mother - father - sister - brother - minors - or even animals. the fiction that the only thing that matters is that jesus did not condemn it - well he did not condemn sex with animals, children, or even stones or trees, but that is not approval. and the assertion that one should be forgiven, we during the course of committing the sin and then demanding forgiveness when you intend to continue to do it, is absurd too.
so while a church may say its christian it cannot be if it rejects basic tenants of the religion. it may be a warm and loving place for people, but that is not what makes something christian.
May 15, 2007 1:38 PM | Report Offensive Comment
ANONYMOUS
“The laws of this country are not based on Christian Fall or Original Sin theology”
No where do I say law in this country should be formally based on Christian theology. My inclusion of remarks on Original Sin were in responds to LEPIDOPTERYX bringing up LEPIDOPTERYX’s individual religious beliefs. I was merely responding to this and would have mentioned regardless of prior discussion concerning State. This forum is meant for religious discussion primarily. I was not trying to use my religious belief as the formal basis for law as you infer.
“Actually, families are created lots of ways - sometimes by sex (with or without marriage), sometimes by adoption (with or without marriage), sometimes by close friendship which evolves into familial affection”
That may be so, but nevertheless, it is the family (mostly comprised of heterosexual marriages) that has historically form society and it is society that dictates to the State what marriage is, not the other way around. In law today the State recognizes the legitimacy of certain religious marriages as marriages.
“And some states have done exactly that. The problem is that while male-female marriages legalized in one state are portable across state lines, while same-sex marriages are not. If my husband and I leave our state on vacation and (goddess forbid) he should fall ill and require emergency care, I can legally give consent for his care in any state in the union. If my lesbian friends, who are legally married in their state of Massachusetts, come to viti me, and (goddess forbid) one of them should fall ill and require emergency treatment, her wife cannot sign the consent forms."
I would like to see a national popular referendum on this (if I thought it were possible, I would even want a world-wide popular referendum). This would solve the state to state issue you mention. As to the lack of consent ability, I would think new laws could be established or old laws changed to allow consent, etc rather than changing the law to re-define marriage.
“Civil rights are not a matter for popular vote. If they were, my white daughter would not be able to marry her black boyfriend in my state”
You presume same-sex marriage is a civil right. I see no evidence for this . Most people do not see this in the Constitution. If the people add a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between 1 man and 1 woman, then the people have spoken and the State must obey the people – your presumed civil right does not exist because the people have said so.
May 15, 2007 12:11 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim:
"Marriage created family, the family created society, society created the State."
Actually, families are created lots of ways - sometimes by sex (with or without marriage), sometimes by adoption (with or without marriage), sometimes by close friendship which evolves into familial affection.
"Society has demanded that the State protect marriage. Society has demanded that the State recognize religious based marriages (as well as civil-only marriages) and that the State cannot interfere with the Church in performing marriage."
I think that's more of a holdover from the days when the local judge was also the minister of the church, which also served as the courthouse.
"Unless the society, thru a people’s referendum, defines same sex marriage as a civil marriage – it is not civil marriage."
And some states have done exactly that. The problem is that while male-female marriages legalized in one state are portable across state lines, while same-sex marriages are not. If my husband and I leave our state on vacation and (goddess forbid) he should fall ill and require emergency care, I can legally give consent for his care in any state in the union. If my lesbian friends, who are legally married in their state of Massachusetts, come to viti me, and (goddess forbid) one of them should fall ill and require emergency treatment, her wife cannot sign the consent forms.
"Nor can the State tell the people what influences the people may take into account when the people are making their decision .
Are you afraid of a popular vote on the definition of civil marriage?"
Civil rights are not a matter for popular vote. If they were, my white daughter would not be able to marry her black boyfriend in my state.
"You are free to create a religion for yourself based on your particular beliefs. However, many Christians would consider such a religion sub-Christian."
S'okay. I consider Christianity sub-pagan, so it makes us even.
"Indeed, many Christians would consider it a repeat of an aspect of Original Sin where Man decides for himself what is good and what is evil. Pro-homosexs want Christians to change their beliefs on active homosexuality. Many traditional Christians regard such a pro-homosex attitude also as a repeat of this aspect of Original Sin."
The laws of this country are not based on Christian Fall or Original Sin theology.
May 14, 2007 7:52 PM | Report Offensive Comment
LEPIDOPTERYX:
Marriage created family, the family created society, society created the State. Society has demanded that the State protect marriage. Society has demanded that the State recognize religious based marriages (as well as civil-only marriages) and that the State cannot interfere with the Church in performing marriage. Unless the society, thru a people’s referendum, defines same sex marriage as a civil marriage – it is not civil marriage . Nor can the State tell the people what influences the people may take into account when the people are making their decision .
Are you afraid of a popular vote on the definition of civil marriage?
You are free to create a religion for yourself based on your particular beliefs. However, many Christians would consider such a religion sub-Christian. Indeed, many Christians would consider it a repeat of an aspect of Original Sin where Man decides for himself what is good and what is evil. Pro-homosexs want Christians to change their beliefs on active homosexuality. Many traditional Christians regard such a pro-homosex attitude also as a repeat of this aspect of Original Sin.
May 14, 2007 7:19 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim:
Actually, I am not comfortable with any religious ceremony resulting in a change of legal status. That puts clergy in the position of acting as agents of the state, which, IMO, is unconstitutional.
I would like to see any couple, regardless of gender composition, who want a legal union have go through exactly the same legal process - go to the courthouse, purchase a union permit, take it to a judge, and have him or her sign it - and receive exactly the same legal status with exactly the same nomenclature. My gay friend and his husband should have exactly the same legal relationship and rights regarding each other as you and your wife. Anyone wanting a religious ceremony to bless their union would have to do that separately through a church, but the religious ceremony should carry no legal weight, whether the couple are opposite sexes or the same sex. Laws cannot be passed to force churches to bless unions that they don't approve of - Catholic priests cannot be legally forced to marry Protestants or divorcees. Rabbis cannot be legally forced to marry Gentiles.
A church has the right to change its bylaws to adjust to changing times. That does not obligate individual parishoners to change their personal beliefs. I am a member of three very different religious organizations, and I do not agree 100% with the doctrines of any of them. I have yet to find a religion or church that I agree with 100%. I chose the fellowship communities to which I belong because I find that they agree with my personal beliefs more than they differ.
May 14, 2007 4:49 PM | Report Offensive Comment
lepidopteryx
I was responding to Robert Stansfield and his apparent wanting of a separation of Church and State when he says:
“3) marrage is religious ceremony and should be precluded from any governmental involvement (1st amendment)”
whereas this Forum concerned itself with Faith and therefore discussion in regards to religion is quite appropriate.
You say:
“This includes many same-sex couples. And marriage is one of the few, possibly the only, religious ritual that carries with it a change in legal standing. “
I agree. You should note that to Mr. Stansfield.
Your mention of Unitarian Church is quite appropriate to the forum. But it is not the “forcing of someone to be married to a member of their own sex” that is the concern of traditional religious.
It is the attempt to change the belief system with their traditional churches that concerns them. They fear such church’s represent the apostate church of prophecy and do not want anything to do with such a Church. “A little yeast….”
May 14, 2007 4:19 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Jim:
"The title of the Forum is not “ ‘Gay’ Civil Marriage” or views of 'gays' in secualr society.
The title of this Forum is “On Faith” . Most people are married in a religious context.
This includes many same-sex couples. And marriage is one of the few, possibly the only, religious ritual that carries with it a change in legal standing.
"The Forum title/discussion implies acceptance of ‘gay’ marriage in a religious context .
Traditionally, most religions have rejected active homosexuality as immoral without qualifiers because they believe God has condemned homosexual activity. Many people still hold to this position."
And no one will ever attempt to force those people to be married to a person of their own sex. But there ARE churches (the Unitarians come to mind) who are affirming of BGLT people, and who were performing same-sex wedding ceremonies, giving them the blessing of the church even if they could not confer legal recognition on them for years before any of the recent legislation came about. They have also been ordaining openly gay/lesbian clergy for a long time. A close friend of mine is an ordained UU minister who is also a lesbian. She and her wife were married in a UU church by an ordained minister over a decade ago.
May 14, 2007 2:24 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Robert Stansfield,
The title of the Forum is not “ ‘Gay’ Civil Marriage” or views of 'gays' in secualr society.
The title of this Forum is “On Faith” . Most people are married in a religious context.
The Forum title/discussion implies acceptance of ‘gay’ marriage in a religious context .
Traditionally, most religions have rejected active homosexuality as immoral without qualifiers because they believe God has condemned homosexual activity. Many people still hold to this position. Pro-homosex’s want to change people’s religious views on this subject - in particular the younger generations. Traditional belivers belive such acceptance would put people's souls in danger. Pro-homosex do not like to hear this. Therein, lies the problem.
May 14, 2007 10:32 AM | Report Offensive Comment
This whole "gay rights" movement has gone overboard. God created man and woman to procreate and replenish the earth. How can you justify or condone gay unions? The Episcopalian denomination not only condones these unions, their "bishop" recently had a ceremony with his lover. The Word of God says a bishop should be the husband of one wife. (Unless I can't read, I did not take it to mean the husband of another man. It is sin, plain and simple. Paul said "follow me, as I follow Christ". My question is, are you following Christ or your religious leader who in infallible and capable of commiting sin. No, I am not passing judgement, I am just quoting the Word. If you have a problem with my statement, read the Word, it's in there ! God loves the sinner, HE hates sin.
May 13, 2007 3:54 PM | Report Offensive Comment
I was shocked when I was pastoring a church and found that members believed that sodomy was an acceptable practice. I knew that there were people who believed this but I did not expect to get called to a church where many thought a homosexual relationship could be condoned.
In my studies on Postmodern Christianity I have seen that this is the result of the aposticizing of the "maineline" denominations. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that denominations like the American Baptists, United Methodists (in many instances), Lutherans, etc., have all abandoned the historical teachings of their founders and have embraced homosexuality.
The Bible condemns homosexual behavior and homosexuals. They are condemned to hell. We must preach the gospel. If it bothers people then they have an argument with God.
May 12, 2007 10:47 PM | Report Offensive Comment
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