LGBTQ+ Rights and Religion

I'd leave if I weren't used to having my intelligence insulted every time I come in here. I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment.

Yes, I see that the FRC is......not really a group I could support. I didn't know it then, true. With all that said, I pointed out that the very logic used to penalize a group for contributing to the FRC is the exact same as penalizing a group for supporting Planned Parenthood. I still say that it is sets a dangerous, and hypocritical precedent to penalize people for supporting groups who you don't agree with, that you slap with the overused "hate group" label, in an effort to silence them.

You get people to stop supporting groups and causes the way we do here, through superior reason. Not through strong-arming. That was my viewpoint then, and it is now.

Exactly my point. You're tired of having to listen to religious beliefs you don't agree with?? Guess what, too damn bad.

I get tired of having people with incomplete information badmouth Christianity. I get tired of the constant broadbrushing (which admittedly has lessened of late). I get tired of Christians getting called homophobes for daring to have an opinion. But you know what Morgikit? That's too DAMN bad. If I don't like it, I can stop posting in this discussion. I continue to do so because I like the people here, I like the intelligence, I like the pop-culture references, and I like being challenged.

If the takeaways from this discussion doesn't supersede your discomfiture then you are as free to leave as I am. But that is your only option. You don't have another.

I'm no hypocrite. I respect rights. I disagreed with the hypocritical backlash against Chick-Fil-A, but as a Christian who's (learning to be) unafraid to speak his peace I understand people must be allowed to boycott, to ridicule, to get angry with us.

We're big boys and girls. We can handle whatever you can dish out.

And you'll forgive me for saying that while your Personal Dictionary is quite nice and all, it has no place in actual practice.

Simply put, it means you are entitled to what everyone else gets; not more, not less. Polygamists don't claim special rights to have people not agree with their lifestyle choices. No one would dare dream of boycotting Chick-Fil-A if Dan Cathy said, "While I respect Muslims, I think their faith is wrong, and I think we're making a mistake making Sharia law the law of the land." Cause, y'know, that comes part and parcel with being in a faith.

In other words, people disagreeing with you doesn't make you victims. People get to disagree with me and I don't call them Starshipphobes. You don't get to either.

I guess in the end, it's just that people don't understand each other.

I don't understand why people believe that gay acts are a sin, because there are simply neither reasonable nor acceptable arguments for thinking like this (for me). And they probably don't understand why I think there is nothing wrong with it.

/Captain Obvious

Ahem, Captain, that's not quite right. I understand fully why someone wouldn't agree with Biblical non-approval of homosexuality. There's no empirical, easily observable, reason to not approve, outside of squick (if you're squicked out by it). I get it. Not to mention it's root are in what many consider a "fairy tale" written by "desert nomads" about a "dusty sky god". I completely get that, and I respect it.

But I still expect people to understand that I choose to follow it and respect that as I have to respect their right to the way they live their lives.

But the Bible doesn't disapprove of homosexuality. A few bad translators disapproved of homosexuality and people without proper historical reference who didn't read the document as a whole agreed with them. That's not the same thing. There's a lot of documented evidence that it doesn't.

Without the Biblical argument, then there's no reason for Christians to discriminate against homosexuals except they do, because they were raised to.

edited 3rd Jan '13 7:28:28 PM by shimaspawn

Shima, with all due respect, there's some actual proof of this, and I mean proof, not "well, we're reasonably sure, we think...." then I'll buy that.

I probably should have written "some people", yeah. :V

Anyway, what do you think of the Pope and that whole Uganda thing?

There's actual proof if you look at the translations. The hatred of homosexually all comes from bad translations and linguistic shifts. And assuming that saying men sleeping with male prostitutes is bad is the same thing as saying consenting loving relationships with the same sex is bad.

Yeah, funny thing is, actual scholars have actually looked at these false translations and haven't come to that conclusion. So, um, yeah..... And your argument is a little undermined by the whole "So the word might not have meant....." Hardly proof. And as I said, it's amazing this bad translation as lasted through all the centuries where ''homosexuality was accepted and approved of.

@Kay, Pope and Uganda what now?

edited 3rd Jan '13 7:36:09 PM by TheStarshipMaxima

This. :V

Kay, do you do this on purpose?

Nah, she can pull it off by accident.

... Yes?

edited 3rd Jan '13 7:50:17 PM by kay4today

1. You do realize that Sharia law in America thing is more right-wing propaganda, right?

2. I'd say a more accurate comparison would be if Dan Cathy supported a group trying to make it illegal for Muslims to build mosques or something like that.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If our opponents merely disagreed with us and left it at that, that would be fine. But they don't. They discriminate against us all the time. Even here I've seen baseless accusations directed towards the LGBT community. If you think I'm going to ignore that, you're sadly mistaken.

edited 3rd Jan '13 7:59:38 PM by Morgikit

If the man had said "I think we are inviting God's judgment by allowing Muslims to practice their faith and live their lives as they wish in our nation" you can damn well bet their would be a boycott.

I hadn't thought of it quite like that before.

I've changed an awful lot. A year ago, I would have just insulted you and said all Christians were backwards morons.

It's a long, slow road to becoming a better person.

Because I want to be judged by my own merits and not the fact that I'm gay.

If people think I'm a bad person, I want it to be because I've actually done something wrong.

Matues, who burned down the orphanage or Matues, who ate my dog..

Not, Matues, who happens to be gay.

I also personally object to someone thinking something's fundamentally wrong with me.

Ain't that the truth, though?

But, you are judged on the fact of who you are. Where have you and I locked horns because you like dudes/dudes and girls? You orientation and sex choices come up only in the context of these discussions, but nowhere else.

You may recall that King Zeal and I had a similar discussion way back when and I repeat it here. There are gays I've known personally that I'd more readily call my friends, invite them to my home, and allow them to be near my family, before I'd extend the same to someone who's ostensibly Christian.

Dude, I ONLY care about what you do, because at the end of the day that's all that matters.

I don't want to stir that controversy, but....there's a difference between thinking there's something wrong with you intrinsically, and that there's something wrong with the desires you choose to resist or give in to.

As a Christian who's had to come face-to-face the the wrongs done under our banner, it's because too many of us likewise think there's insult in being questioned on your choices.

As I told Morgikit, this is was lack of moral privilege looks like. If you can question me, then I can question you. If you can say I'm wrong then I can say you're wrong. You don't need to agree, of course, but I think society will move forward when we stop takiing disagreement as some sort of thrown gauntlet.

Actually, there are respected scholars who have addressed the homosexuality as a sin in the Bible, even tracing which translations that came to be because in some instances we have the translation notes, as well as the before and after copies.

You'll have to ask Gabrael about it in detail. She's the reigious scholar around here. And I know she's done an asinine amount of translation work.

And there are scholars who've been steadily revealing that this translational mistake myth is, well, a myth.

Simply because somebody with a title declares something so, doesn't make it actually so. The fact is, of this forum post, there's no consensus or hard irrefutable proof that the words on the page weren't the ones that were meant to be.

And like I said, the issue is massively undermined by the fact that everyone keeps saying the Greek word meaning abomination means more like cultural taboo. Except, there's no proof that this word means this.

To revisit the classic scuffle we had over whether "homosexuality" refers to orientation or acts, the fact is they refer to both. So someone a thousand years from now finds a website where a bunch of fiction nerds shouted loudly and says "See, homosexuality is an inclination, not an act," and they'd be wrong.

Like I said, if I wished, I too could say that fornication isn't really a sin and that it only applied to the Levitican code, or whatever. Or, I could just say the words on the page, are the words on the page.

You do realize that there are more languages involved in the Bible than just Greek and Hebrew right?

Yes, of course.

Edit: I officially removed myself from the Family Research Council's mailing list. It was...both harder than thought, and at the same time, surprisingly easy.

Well, either way, it is done.

edited 4th Jan '13 9:18:48 AM by TheStarshipMaxima

Then you would have to acknowledge most of those people with titles who say things are the ones working in those languages, and those are where the more creative pulls were made?

You can't go straight from Hebrew to Greek. Especially since there are what, 7 different versions of Hebrew known for the Old Testament? Maybe just 6. Not sure.

Church of England to allow gay bishops as long as they promise to be celibate