Religion and Gay people (again)

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The standard view that everybody I know has is, "yes, Scriptures have anti-gay parts, but they also have bizarre verses about having to sacrifice pigeons on your period right next to it, they're full of all sorts of nonsense that people conveniently ignore, homophobic Christians just cherry-pick the anti gay parts and conveniently ignore the rest of the bizarre rituals, they just use obscure verses to justify the bigotry they already have".

I grew up with fundamentalist evangelical Christians, and they were kind and gentle people. They did charity work, and were a strong community. They were against gay relationships and thought gay people needed counselling and praying to either turn them straight or stay celibate. They weren't violent or aggressive, that had an attitude like gay people were ill and needed to be cared for. I myself am not a Christian anymore, I am for gay rights and do not agree with that view.

But, I think people disagreeing with them using that old argument, "the Bible bans shellfish too, so you're picking and choosing to justify you're hatred", people saying that don't understand how religious people think and what religious culture is like. It does need to be criticized and changed, but I don't think that argument is effective.

I think there are lots of religious people, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist etc, who are kind caring people, who disapprove of gay rights and gay relationships because they genuinely believe it is unhealthy, due to the culture they were brought up into. I don't think they're all violent bigots who decided they hated gay people and then fine-combed through obscure scriptures "looking for a verse to justify their hate". I think they're wrong and mistaken, but I think painting all gay-disapproving religious people as violent is looking at it the wrong way. I don't know what alternative arguement would persuade them though.

I mean I was talking to a friend of mine and she said, Christians who disapprove of gay people aren't practicing Christianity properly, because Christianity is about love and they are showing hate. I said to her that, the christians I knew didn't think they were hating gay people, they genuinely thought that being gay was unhealthy and that they were loving gay people by trying to persuade them their life was wrong. In their view, letting people live as gay without criticism was hating and cruel, they were the only ones showing love. I couldn't explain my point clearly enough though. I guess what I think is religious intolerance of gay people isn't going to be helped by demonising all non-progressive old fashioned religious people as violent, panicky "phobes".

I am disappointed that the Dalai Lama is on the record for similar disapproving views of gay people. Even the supposedly most compassionate of people can come out with some real culture-related bigotry.

But you have to respect religion or you're "racist". Respect it but gloss over the bad parts, brushing them under the carpet with "well atheists can be bigots too" "it's all just interpretation" "the're just twisting the words" "they're just looking for obscure passages to justify their hate".

Sorry? You were zenbuddhist you said. Try entering a zen monastery with:'Hi there, i'm gay!'.
A monk is celibate.

A monk can be straight and celibate, gay and celibate, bisexual and celibate or asexual and celibate, take your pick. You missed the point entirely, the Dalai Lama wasn't referring to monks anyway but people in general.

I want to support vunerable countries against western imperialism, but not if it means fighting for their right to hang gay men and raped teenagers.

The bible doesn't say for a brother not to screw his sister because they might make ret*d children... thats a health issue. Morality uber alis! The bible says so based on the morality of it and its affects of not affiliating with the stranger. Men are not strangers to men, family members are not strangers to each other, people who belong to social, economic, territorial, or ethnic groups are not strangers to each other. The same is true of it's position on gay people, it's position on valuing blood lines, etc. Abraham and his love of the stranger is what made him the patriarch of many religions that would follow. Tell me if you want to examples.

Those passages you cite is God's instruction to a specific group of people during a specific time long ago to a people that God ruled over. They are not for you and I to follow, but to understand his social experiment. He gave us conscience and that wasn't enough to stop people from hurting each other and unethical behavior. He wiped out humanity, but that didn't stop people from hurting each other and unethical behavior. He then came down and experimented with a group of people, the jews, to forth and make known his will on earth in the hopes that we would be ethical, and stop hurting each other lol. Contrast with what he commanded of the Jews, there are only a few specifics commandments in the Bible for us non-jews to follow. Tell me if you want examples.

I am not in favor of Gay Marriage but for some reason, everyone pins ones tolerance of gay people on that issue... and I don't think thats fair. I don't buy into fokuism and think that there is something unique to each sex in what it has to offer to a child. I can explain more if you'd like.

Woo-hoo - first time I ever heard / saw racist used THAT way! I personally strive to respect coreligionists, allotheists, atheists, liberals, sexuals of all prefixes und so weiter while striving to avoid excess contact with most people however complected and hoping and praying that a proportion will if not respect at least tolerate me.

People do not, in any case, neecd anything to justify their hate. They can and will use any backup they can find, but most people even can they find nothing in Torah or Das Kapital or the Constitution or Deepak Chopra [and usually they can find SOMETHING] will in my experience hate whatever it is they feel; like hating anyway.

I have no interest in your "tolerance"--I want your acceptance. One "tolerates" an itch. One "tolerates" a neighbour's noisy child. One "tolerates" the presence of a halfway house in one's neighbourhood. If you can't accept gay people as fully equal participants in your society (and marriage and raising children come with that package) then your tolerance is of no value.

I will not accept half a loaf and thank you for the charity.

As to whether it's fair that we have set up a new acid test on your acceptance of gay people, tough luck. We're the one's whose civil liberties are at stake here, after all.

I mis-spoke on my not buying into fokuism. The philosopher Foku and professor Judith Butler at UC Berkeley, my gay friends, attending a fashion school, as well as my experiences living in the Castro in San Francisco (Hence my MarketAndChurch name), and attending other colleges inform my opinion on this.

Gay or straightness is not fixed. The way in which people act out gender roles and sexuality is very much induced by society. For the most part, the way people behave sexually is largely determined by society and not by nature. The way we sit and walk and talk are all performances of gender that are culturally based. There is 10-20% on both ends of the spectrum who will be gay or straight, no matter. For the other 80-90% of us, who we make love to is based on the society that we come up in. Who we mate with is obvious... its the opposite sex, but our sexual preferences, or in other words, who we make love to, is a function of culture.

On a side note, much of the non-christian/jewish/muslim ancient world did not have a term for gays. Homosexuality is a torah-based concept. The words for sex in the ancient world didn't divide by genders in that most of them were more for identifying who was the "Giver" and who was the "Receiver".

Knowing this, one can look at modern day society, and note that Marriage is imposing a Judeo-Christian value system on our gender roles and our sexual preferences. It is not difficult to engage in this "bigotry"... one can do so even suggestively to children by asking a little girl: "Would you rather marry David, Josh, or John?" instead of "Would you rather marry David or Bethany?" Bigotry - as some would call it. It is about a statement of what is the ideal human arrangement for our society. In current form, it is 1 male and 1 female. That is what we are instructing the vast majority of people.

Gay Marriage isn't about gaining the ability love or to get acceptance. You can already do that without marriage. It's about liberalizing(freeing) our definitions of sexual preferences and arrangements. Which is fine... but please tell me you've at least considered or will reconsider the basis of which Gay marriage is being marched forth on. And you can do so by asking the question: Is sexuality fixed. The average gay activists position is Yes, it is fixed. It is for political purposes. If you can make the case that no, sexuality is, for the majority of humanity, fixed... then sure, I'll join your cause.

No doubt that is true. I know at least one person myself who fits that description. But I still find those views disgusting and despicable.

I agree with the OP 100%.

Good post.

Exclusively homosexual relations would end the human race. Human sexuality is arrayed on an interval or continuum. Exclusively on one end, never ever on the other. My choice is never ever homosexual relations with another male (I am male). For most people in the world I do not relate sexually to them. The exception being my (female) spouse. If am disinclined to any sexually intimacy with other males and if I am to relate sexually to another human it will be with a female (mutual consent assumed).

The non-sexual love I feel toward other humans (male or female) is that I cherish their virtues and admire their good character. So there are other humans I would die to protect, but this has nothing to do with sexual intimacy. (Exception: I would put my life on the line for my wife).

ruveyn

Do you mean Foucault (pronounced fookoe)? I've never heard of Foku, except when people are swearing at me in a funny accent.

I think the problem is that neither Christians nor their opponents really understand what the deal with sin in general is as it relates to Christianity and the Bible.

We're talking about homosexuality, here. Where is it prohibited scripturally? In both the OT and the NT. There are reasons why that you have to understand.

First the OT. When the Law was codified (written down), Israel was preparing to enter the promised land. It was given at various points, most likely, during the 40-year exodus. God's will for the inhabitants of Canaan was to obey Him completely. The Israelites were His covenant people having descended from Abraham. The practices of the Canaanite natives remaining in the land were offensive to God.

Primarily the worst part of this was that they worshipped other gods practicing, among other things, child sacrifice. In the way of worshipping false deities, they engaged in homosexual activity. God's intent was that sex only be shared between male and female. Not only were they practicing a perverse way of life in doing so, but they were doing so in honor of a god other than Yahweh.

So God ordered that ANYONE found guilty of pagan practices in what was to become a Yahwehist theocracy to be put to death, to include the inhabitants of Canaan which the Israelites were to take over. This wasn't limited to homosexuality, but a whole range of associated crimes (sorcery, divination, necromancy, temple prostitution, and so on). It wasn't merely the worship of any other god that's in view here; it's anything resembling the "detestable practices"of those people. And that's where homosexuality falls.

Some people will say that the NT commandments supersede the OT commandments. Well, this true up to a point. Christians are taught that the OT is important, but I think we take for granted the reasons WHY it is important, and it looks like we're just cherry picking what feels good to us. Now, that may happen for SOME people, but that's not what is supposed to happen.

You have to understand what the OT laws where and how/why they were observed in ancient times. There were three main functions of Torah. One was to establish Israel as a nation of people "set apart" for God. This meant that they would have customs/traditions unique to them that would identify them as God's chosen people above all others. This meant eating or abstaining from certain types of "unclean" foods. It meant wearing certain types of clothing. Another type of law were the ceremonial laws. These laws established standards of purity in order to allow the Israelites to properly worship God. For example, women were not necessarily excluded from the various yearly assemblies in and around Jerusalem and going up to the Temple. However, if I woman had recently given birth or had her period, for the purposes of temple worship and other activities, she was unclean and could not participate. If you were her husband and you'd touched her at any point during this time, you were unclean, too. In order to resume worship at the Temple, you would have to wait a short period of time, after which you would bathe in a mikvah. THEN you'd be accepted in the temple. Now, purity laws do not make someone "dirty" or unacceptable wholesale. It just meant if you needed to go to the temple to offer a sacrifice, there were some things you had to do before you'd be fit or pure to go. Even if you were married and you'd just had sex in the morning, you were impure that day. But that's not saying sex is dirty or ugly before God. Only for the purposes of worship. All a couple would have to do is take a bath and they'd be considered clean after sunset (but the Bible says nothing about sex BEFORE sunrise!). The third type of law were what we might call "moral laws," which did govern day-to-day ordinary life. Things like "do not murder, do not steal." It also established penalties for crimes and legal procedures.

Now, if a Christian is looking to the Law in order to do God's will, he must follow ALL of it in order to be considered approved before God. However it is impossible to obey ALL of Torah, in part because the temple was destroyed in 70 AD. You can't just obey kosher laws and NOT offer the required sacrifices. That WOULD be cherry picking. The other thing is that these laws have to be obeyed completely and PERFECTLY, and even OT writers noted this is impossible.

However, Christians don't need the law to stand approved before God. Believers are redeemed by Jesus, negating the need for the law FOR THIS PURPOSE. So Christians need to understand what the purpose of the law was in order to understand which laws apply to us and which do not.

Kashrut laws and related laws establish the identity of the Jewish people. These kinds of laws, as I already mentioned, deal with food and clothing among other things--most notably circumcision. Christians who are Gentiles and do not identify as Jews are subject to their own laws of national identity and other customs/traditions. So these kinds of laws in the Bible do not apply to anyone but the Jews. There is no need for Christians to concern themselves with them.

Ceremonial laws have to do with temple worship. Once again, these rules/regulations had to do with the Jews and "resident aliens" among them who chose to take part in religious activities. They do not apply to foreigners outside Israel. Gentile Christians are exempt from them.

Which leaves moral laws. If you are a Christian, you do not want any part in idolatry. Therefore laws concerning worship of any other god but God still apply to Christians. Laws that maintain an orderly society and establish justice also apply. Among these laws are prohibitions against sexual impurity, and that happens to include homosexuality. If there was any doubt as to the applicability of these laws, they are repeated at various times in the gospels and the epistles (mainly the epistles, though. The intended audience of the gospels was the Jews). So it may seem that we pick and choose. Some Christians that don't understand the reasons why follow some parts of the OT and not other parts might be picking and choosing. Some groups of Christians may have gotten started because one or more leaders had an agenda and "cherry-picked" in order to establish control over a group of believers. But the real reason we don't keep ALL the OT laws is because they are not for us to follow!

you are right, it doesnt help to demonize anything, including homosexuals as well.
yet most of the groups you will find doing that are religious.

to me the interesting question is how one, practically, could break the notion that sexuality is the buisness of anyone but the people involved.