Homosexuality and Christianity

The issue popped up in the "Ku Klux Klan vs. Westboro Baptist Church" thread, and it probably deserves a thread of its own.

Is homosexual behaviour compatible with Christianity, or not? And why?

For the sake of reference, I report the corresponding posts in that thread (please correct me if I misquoted or forgot something):

Bobby G:

Deuxhero:

Aondeug:

Bobby G:

Carciofus;

Feotakahari:

Carciofus:

Ukonkivi:

Carciofus:

Vijeno:

My own opinion, as mentioned in some of the above posts, is that it should be permitted as long as it is not abusive, and that the passages forbidding it should be understood as a consequence of the prevalent mindsets at the times in which they were written.

But I am aware that this is not the most common opinion among Christians (or even among the members of my own denomination).

Thoughts?

edited 31st May '11 9:33:49 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

It's a flag in the culture wars, nothing more, nothing less.

Edit: Christianity is a lot more firm on the idea of fighting the culture wars for the "glory", than any of the other individual issues/subjects. (Homosexuality, abortion, etc.). It's just that those are pretty easy flags in our culture to fight for. Fighting to end poverty and war, not so much.

edited 31st May '11 9:22:13 AM by Karmakin

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

Actually, I think that Christian organizations do much to fight against poverty and war (and abortion, but that's because according to most variants of the Christian worldview it amounts to infanticide).

Most Christian groups agree that these issues are more of a concern than homosexuality. But there seems to be some disagreement about whether Christianity should or should not disapprove of homosexual acts (not homosexuality as an orientation: sins are actions, after all), and this looks like an interesting topic to talk about.

edited 31st May '11 9:31:21 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I disagree. I think that most Christian organizations do very little to fight war and poverty. They do a significant amount to TREAT it, but that's something different from fighting it.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

Well, they are trying to do their best — as many non-religious organizations are also doing, of course. It's just that they are very difficult problems.

In any case, the issue at hand here is a different one.

There is a class of actions that have been traditionally been disapproved of on religious grounds, and at least some Christians are arguing that this was (and is) not justified. Regardless on your opinions about the importance of the matter or about the validity of the Christian world-view, do you think that such a worldview is compatible with an acceptance of homosexual behaviours?

edited 31st May '11 9:44:31 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I actually think there's such a thing as an objective moral "right" answer...it's just often absurdly complex. I don't think that comes from religion in any way shape or form. The question is what harm does homosexuality have towards other people. My answer is not very much at all. I can understand centuries ago that hygiene and population concerns might have been valid, but that's clearly not the case anymore. In fact, I'll go a step further and make the argument that considering overpopulation concerns, that homosexuality (to a degree) is a positive thing for our society.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

Jesus hung out with how many dudes, and how many women?

That's a good point. Since now we have better hygiene, more safety precautions, and more knowledge, it's safer. I think that the discouragement of homosexuality is yet another artifact of the time.

My opinion: If you're careful, go right ahead. Besides, we already have enough babies in our hands, no need to ramp up the "production".

That's a good point too, although that implies even more things.

edited 31st May '11 10:09:17 AM by chihuahua0

My 2 cets:

Note, that every culture has laws both written and unwritten, that aren't objectively protecting anyone, they are just there because most people expect them to be there, but they are otherwise useless, or even counterproductive.

Emphasis on "otherwise". Keeping the status quo together is still a pretty important element of stopping a civilization from turning into chaos, so even if a relatively enlightened lawmaker knows that these laws are "otherwise" useless, they still serve an important purpose of stopping the majority from freaking the hell out, and falling apart.

I don't think that there is anything inherently wrong about banning gay sex on that basis, and I believe the same about ancient views of slavery, sexism, or religious intolerance.

Those laws served their purpose in their own time, we just happened to outgrow them in the last decades.

edited 31st May '11 10:10:46 AM by EternalSeptember

I don't know how common that view is, but it is what I was brought up to believe.

What I object to is the apparent whitewashing of the parts of the Bible that are no longer politically correct, the unsupported "my interpretation of the Bible is right, yours is wrong" assertions that I've seen from Christians (and atheists, in fairness) on a number of occasions, and behaviour which appears to suggest that homophobia is just some crazy idea the WBC cooked up, as opposed to an extremely common form of prejudice in our society.

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A text like the Bible is in need of interpretation anyway, at least if you want to use it as the foundation of a religion. And, I would argue, there is such a thing as correct and wrong interpretations of it.

For example, I think that a strictly literalist interpretation would be really quite incorrect, and that there are many aspects of the Bible — for example, the fact that it often contradicts itself, at least on a purely literal level — that suggest that this is not really the proper way to read it.

And yes, homophobia is very common in our society, and people are using the Bible and Christianity to defend it. Three hundred years ago, people were doing the same to defend the principle of the Divine Right of Kings. I think that both attempts are about as justified from a purely religious perspective, but I may be wrong about this — after all, these are certainly complex issues.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Well, I'll weigh in. But first, I want to make clear that, as a Christian, I do not regard the Bible as definitive. It contains divinely inspired guidelines, but God gives us other sources of information, including our own conscience, which sometimes are more important. So the Bible could contain a completely unambiguous passage like "Homosexuality will forever be a sin and should never be tolerated" and I still wouldn't accept that as definitive. If anyone wants to debate how important the Bible should be regarding what Christians are required to believe, we should start another thread on that.

So- homosexuality. I don't think it's a sin. There is absolutely nothing evil or wrong with it at all. Neither the sexual orientation, nor the behaviors associated with it. It does not inherently directly harm anyone, therefore it shouldn't be sanctioned in any way.

Also, dont assume that all Christians are anti-gay rights:

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/05/23/New_Poll_Shows_Christians_Support_LGBT_Equality/

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a905094685

There's more of us liberals than people think...

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

It's plainly possible to interpret the Bible wrongly. If, for example, I were to claim that the entire book was actually an allegory for the Vietnam War, and that it contained a code which identified William Shakespeare as the genuine author of the Book of Mormon, that would be plainly false.

I'm unconvinced that it's possible to claim to know the right interpretation, unless you have a time machine and you went back and asked the author (or authors) in person what precise message they actually intended to convey.

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If nobody can settle on a pure interpretation, it seems like the question of compatibility is impossible to answer, especially if your moral conscience can override the bible whensoever you choose.

I'd also say that interpretation isn't usually a case of trying to make a "better" interpretation, but it's often trying to make an interpretation that fits in with your already existing secular views. There's nothing wrong with this, except that I think that morality is important, and by hiding it by what is to me an old-fashioned form of ruleslawyering, we end up not talking about it, or talking about what matters a lot less.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

Not even then, perhaps — after all, I consider the Bible to be divinely inspired, but I do not think that its human authors were necessarily right in interpreting what they themselves wrote. For example, it may well have been the case that Paul was honestly, 100% against homosexuality in all of its forms; but this would be of relatively little relevance to the problem, I think.

Still, I think that the Bible, if interpreted correctly, contains much that it is of great importance. It is probably impossible to be absolutely sure to have avoided mistakes, in this as in lesser matters; but nonetheless, I think that it is possible to examine the internal evidence, compare it with other sources of information (such as human conscience, for example, as De Marquis said) and come up with some reasonable guesses.

@De Marquis: these estimates are higher than I expected! Perhaps it's a matter of Catholicism being more conservative than average, but I was expecting much less than that...

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I certainly think that some people have a more informed opinion of the Bible than others. I will not dispute that.

Nevertheless, I think just about every text contains passages which are open to interpretation, intentionally or not, and I don't think the Bible is an exception. I have no idea as to whether this applied to the particular original Hebrew passage condemning male homosexual intercourse in the Old Testament at the time that it was written.

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Lets say, just for the sake of argument, that it wasn't open to interpretation. If the Bible unambiguously condemned homosexuality, would a Christian have to condemn it too?

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

I think not, since I don't think a Christian has to follow the Bible to the letter, but as I'm no longer a Christian myself it might not be my place to say.

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That is exactly what is open to interpretation.

The Bible does condemn homosexality very clearly, the question is whether such a condemnation should be applied to every time, place, and culture, or only it's own context.

To be more clear than that, the whole text would need to abnormally directly adress a hypothetical XX Ith century audience, to the extent of "Do not EVER stick it in the ass. SERIOUSLY. Even if you will once have condoms, and understand sexual psychology better than now, and the majority will treat it as acceptable, still DON'T DO IT! PLEASE!"

edited 31st May '11 1:00:48 PM by EternalSeptember

Does it? Sincerely, I think the argument that the bible does not know the concept of sexual orientation, and therefore cannot be opposed to homosexuality, is an argument of great concern and high importance.

And also the fact that the bible does not mention female homosexuality. Not once. It just does not know, or care, whether it exists or not.

Surprised nobody's mentioned this yet.

@Bobby G, about christians do not have to follow the bible - I believe that they don't really follow it at all. I think that the difference between a 21st century AD christian and a 5th century BC jew is much, much larger than the difference between that christian and an atheist like me. Even if the christian were "fundamentalist". Most "christian" values today are really just humanist values, and many "values" they had back then would appal every modern christian to the core.

edited 31st May '11 1:29:03 PM by vijeno

Just to add a little story that might bring more into the conversation:

An acquaintance of mine is getting married this summer to a man from a heavily religious Christian family. They are deep deep deep in their faith. They also seem to be in great denial that their other son is gay. Their viewpoint is that he is a good Christian, so there is no possible way he could be gay. Despite living with a former priest*

. ...whom he goes on cruises with. ...and brings to family functions. All the family functions. (To put the icing on the cake they call themselves "confirmed bachelors".)

So there's the viewpoint that if you're a good Christian there's no way you could be gay. There's no way God would make you gay, because good Christians are not gay. It's a very interesting (and sad) kind of "logic" to watch play out.

edited 31st May '11 1:34:46 PM by Bur

i. hear. a. sound.

Why Christianity Is A Queer Religion

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