Is being gay wrong?

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PMSL ! !

some of the posts on here remind me of springer. not that i've much experience of it, mind you, as i find the people on it just too appalling to bear after a couple of seconds, on the rare occasions it's forced its way into my consciousness.

It's not illegal to criticize homosexuality, as far as I know. It may well be illegal to harass people about it, though.

I can remember walking on a campus somewhere and seeing a guy standing on a stage, preaching loudly and saying "Fags and lesbos, God hates you all!" As far as I know, he wasn't arrested. He was allowed to say that, and other people were allowed to respond (although most people were ignoring him).

The people who appear on Springer or any other reality show do NOT reflect reality. They pick the most commercially appealing people. Whether it's Big Brother ro wahtever, they want you to believe that the jocks are the norms of society and that many people on Springer are nuts who give minority groups a bad name. A lot of people think that all transsexuals, for example are nuts who trick partners into not realising their sex, because they're only ones they've ever seen are on Springer.

Believe me, the commercial media is a VERY evil force.

best thing to do, really.

The person I mentioned in other posts whose known as The Snake once said to me via AIM "I'm not homophobic, I just hate fags".

Hehe, you remind me of my friend. He's got such thrilling stories of how Armageddon gonna whoop everyone's tail. Anyways, check this out. The people of Sodom weren't gay, or at least, weren't called gay.

All well and good, assuming you are talking about the original words spoken by God. The problem is that God didn't speak in English (or any other living language), and therefore those words have been translated several times. There are a lot of cases where the translation is, quite simply, wrong.

Please have a look at the following:
http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights ... m_bibh.htm
http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights ... m_bibc.htm
http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights ... e-gay.html
http://www.bibble.org/gay/religious/bib ... ation.html

As a side issue, Leviticus contained 614 "purity laws". According to the Christian religion, 612 of them are not applicable to modern Christians. That suggests to me that they would have thrown the whole book out if those last two weren't so darn convenient....

lol. now why aren't i surprised...?

The point that you appear to be missing completely is that the rights gay people are seeking are the same ones you already have. The right to not get beat up by roving groups of drunk bigots. The right to not be fired without cause. The right to not get evicted without cause. The right to form a family unit, raise children, and inherit. There are actually three different sets of rights involved here. One is the so-called "protected grounds" which specifies types of discrimination that are illegal. Gay people wouldn't need "protected grounds" coverage if straight people would stop discriminating against them.... The second kind are "equality rights" which say that gays and straights should be entitled to equal treatment. Again, there wouldn't be any need to campaign for equality if it already existed.... These sound like the same thing, but in general terms the "protected grounds" protection applies where gays and straights mix in public or private life, whereas "equality rights" tend to apply where gays interact with government agencies. The difference is that in private life, discrimination is an overt act by one person intending to deny another "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (or employment, accomodation and freedom of association), whereas with government the discrimination usually occurs when the government creates an exclusive list of beneficiaries and discriminates against gay people by omission. One set of rights requires enforcement by the police agencies, while the other merely requires ammending some documentation. The third kind of right is really not a right, but a recognition that "herd mentality" can lead people to say and do things they wouldn't do if they were alone. Legislation that protects queers from "hate speech" isn't much different from the law that makes it illegal to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theatre. It doesn't say that straight people can't criticise gay people, or vice versa, but says that the aims of society are not served when one bigot with a bullhorn (or web site or newspaper) can gather like-minded people in order to enjoy violent or dehumanizing entertainment at the expense of a minority. I welcome your criticisms (although I wish they were more in the form of argument and less in the form of personal character attacks).

I notice you seem to be perseverating on the topic of finances. Before you used to simply complain that gays earned more money and therefore weren't really members of a victim class. Now you seem to be implying that gays have an undeserved "right to earn more money" that straights don't enjoy. I don't know what the financial rules are like in Australia, but I've never heard of any place where gays have a statutory right to a higher income than their straight peers. Usually it works the other way around, as governments give tax breaks to heterosexual couples that aren't available to same-sex couples. I can think of two reasons why queer people, on average, have more money than straight people:

They earn more. In a white-collar environment queer people tend to work much harder than everyone else because they know that if their boss ever has to decide who to promote and who to fire, the queers who do the same quality work as everyone else will suffer, but the "super-achievers" may be valuable enough to keep their jobs, get some recognition, and sooner or later get promotions and raises in spite of their sexuality. In a blue-collar environment, the lower paying jobs are particularly unattractive to queer people because that's where the less educated (and therefore less tolerant) straight people end up. No body wants to spend their working life doing manual labour with Bubba and listening to him rant about fags. A lot of gay people I know have opted out of the straight workplace entirely and have started their own businesses. They have a lot of stress in their lives, but entrepreneurs are well rewarded if they have any skill.

They spend less. Heterosexuals tend to start having children in their early 20's (although that average age is climbing quickly in the last few decades). Children are an incredibly expensive and time-consuming part of a straight adult's life. There are a lot of gay couples who would love to adopt a child and experience the joys and pains and expense of raising kids, but in many countries they are prohobited from doing so. You can only spend so much money on cat and dog stuff (or in my case, bird food). It's worth mentioning that there is absolutely *nothing* preventing straight people from choosing to not raise a family, and thereby retain their income. In fact, the acronym "DINK" (double income, no kids) was created just for those people.

Not sure about that less educated = less tolerant thing. Explaining why I am not sure about it would be pretty complicated though. :/

Perhaps "less educated" isn't the right term, but I was trying to avoid "less intelligent" because that's both wrong and condescending. Many good people climb the rungs of blue-collar employment and those in trades can do quite well financially. My point was that there are people who gravitate toward or stagnate in low-level blue-collar jobs. I think the factors that prevent advancement are generally going to be the same ones that result in unsophisticated opinions about sexual orientation. Namely, an inability to think critically and independently.

I once had a signature that read "I'm not gay but my boyfriend is." It takes some people a few minutes to figure it out....

Well said, Sean. Even if homosexuality is something that people cannot control, they can at least control their behaviour. ASDs are neurological differences in the brain and people cannot change that. Autistics are wired differently than other people.

I don't believe we should discriminate against homosexuals (after all, the Bible tells us that we should love others just as God loves us), but rather against the homosexual behaviours. I've been in heated debates over this so many times (almost as many as the creation/evolution debate). I don't think being gay (modern definition, because when C.S. Lewis used the word "gay", it meant "happy" or "joyful") is right, but I'm not going to stop anyone from doing so.

In the early days of the AIDS epidemic in America (I don't know what it was like in other parts of the world, except for Africa), AIDS was considered a gay man's disease because the majority of people who had AIDS were either gay, hemophiliac (because of blood transfusions) or drug addicts. There is also a higher percentage of STDs among gay people than among heterosexual people. If anyone wants to look up the exact statistics, I'm sure there's a link from http://www.cdc.gov/ that can give any information.

I should probably mention I have a friend who is fundamentalist (his own description) and believes that homosexuality (the state or the act, I think) is a sin. But he also has a problem with discrimination against people on the basis of homosexuality (the state or the act) because of other aspects of his religious beliefs.

He has told me that he thinks being gay is a sin and why he thinks so, but that's all. He hasn't bothered me about being gay, he hasn't tried to make me straight, and so forth. Likewise, I've discussed my theological disagreements with him (I'm a Quaker, he's a Pentecostal, things get interesting at times) and we both respect that the other one has reasons for their views and that God will sort it out in the end.

And in the end I find his attitude much more refreshing than some of the liberals I know who pretend to be "tolerant" but really have a problem with gay people. With him, we know where we stand, we know that arguing about it won't change either of our minds, and we get on with our friendship. With a lot of liberals, I end up having to deal with people who are trying so hard to look "tolerant" that they will lie about their real opinions on the matter. Which feels like walking on quicksand, where form is valued more than reality.

sounds like the christian adage, "Love the sinner; hate the sin."

Methinks that's what we're trying to get at. I don't believe in discrimination against people (even if I don't care much for them anyways), but the act of being gay (I believe) is wrong. I'm not forcing anyone to side with me on this, though, and am trying to stay as open-minded as I can.