LGBTQ+ Rights and Religion

First time posting here.

Well, I have been a Christian for almost over 20 years. For now I think I'm heterosexual, but there's a possibility that I'm a bisexual, because man, the top spots in my hottest celebrities are all filled by men (Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris are hottest things ever, I won't take any objection, damn it!).

My dad and his family are predominantly Christians (my mother's side is Buddhist), and they seem to have a sort of consensus:

At least according to the Bible, homosexuality and such are sinful, so they are not exactly very fond of LGBT people. However, religious doctrine and civil rights are separate matters, and it is against universal human rights to persecute them (they support same sex marriage). Lastly, even if it was really sinful, if Jesus is the Jesus that appears as in the gospels, he would accept LGBT people too.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

It's nice to see you on the left side, dRoy.

Yep, Yeshua would have been friendly with LGBT people.

This is a signature.

Jesus would be too freaked out at the sight of giant metallic birds carrying people through the skies to really even get into the whole LGBT and religion conundrum.

edited 1st Feb '16 8:20:54 AM by Aszur

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

The best versions of Christianity are the ones that reinforce the idea that Jesus loves, rather than the ones all about listing things that are condemned.

More churches need to be like the one I pass on the way home from work, which proudly displayed "LOVE WINS" on their marquee after marriage was legalized.

edited 1st Feb '16 11:05:05 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

So, the Pope released an encyclical about love, Amoris Laetitia. I'm bringing it up here because it makes even less sense than the usual Catholic position on gay marriage.

"No union that is...closed to the transmission of life" can be a true marriage. Yet...

Pope Francis is not this stupid. He has to know that his newest exhortation is self-contradictory, and I don't think he's irony-blind, which leads me to wonder what he actually means by this. Is this just the Jesuit reminding everyone that he's required to believe that black is white? Is he simply bringing the contradictions out in plain view and telling people to believe anyway? Or is there some agenda underneath this that I'm not seeing?

I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.

It's like he knows homophobia makes no sense but still has to stick with doctrine.

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If the failure to see any contradictions there amounts to stupidity or an assertion that "black is white," then hand me my dunce cap. Nobody has to like Francis' statements or the Church's well-established arguments on the subject, but they look sound enough from here—"sound" as in internally consistent and well formed, not as in "indisputably right." I don't happen to agree with the Catholic position on contraception, which Amoris Laetitia also discusses. But it's a sophisticated enough position, articulated with enough careful thinking and weighty, consistent arguments, that I'm not going to lazily assume that anyone who agrees with it must have an ulterior motive. Maybe that's a failure of my imagination.

Now, it'd certainly be convenient if the views one didn't like were so badly formed that no intelligent man could buy into them, and sometimes the wish can be father to the belief. But in the real world, neither polemics nor theology nor moral philosophy usually works that way.

edited 11th Apr '16 9:08:37 AM by Jhimmibhob

"She was the kind of dame they write similes about." —Pterodactyl Jones

well... Francis has been trying to distance the Church from The Old Testament which is where the homophobia comes from, I think he may have a long term plan...

advancing the front into TV Tropes

Decided to look at some argument from the right. [1]

He says that big names like Paypal and Apple are hypocritical for denying services to states wherein small businesses deny their services to LGBT people in those states.

Though this part...

Seems sketchy. If religious freedom includes the right to discriminate to others, then, sure, I suppose Springsteen is wrong. Though I don't believe that.

As for the travel bans, Anderson might be right about that.

Didn't know which gay thread to put this on though, so I put it on ALL OF THEM.

The thing these people tend to (intentionally?) overlook is that their type of "religious freedom" actively infringes on the freedom of others.

Not Three Laws compliant.

Oh it's deliberate, remember gay a marriage bans were starting to be challenged on the ground that they discriminated against particular religions before they were all throw out. There's nothing freedom based in such bills, it's about enforcing a very specific type of religion onto everyone regardless of their beliefs.

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

Cardinal Robert Sarah demonizes government attempts at fighting transgender discrimination at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast

1. Isn't it about time the Catholic hierarchy stopped acting like they have any right to lecture the rest of us about morality and human dignity?

2. Do you think the other religions are jealous that the RCC gets their own national prayer breakfast? The Evangelicals must be livid.

1. No.

2. The Evangelicals do have their own, if I'm not mistaken.

edited 18th May '16 1:13:49 PM by Jhimmibhob

"She was the kind of dame they write similes about." —Pterodactyl Jones

Why not?

"Yup. That tasted purple."

Well, because thinking about "morality and human dignity" within the context of Catholic theology and philosophy, drawing conclusions about them, and teaching those conclusions to whoever will listen is part of their job description. If they didn't think they had the outright duty to do that (much less a "right"), they'd have gone into some other line of work.

edited 18th May '16 1:31:13 PM by Jhimmibhob

"She was the kind of dame they write similes about." —Pterodactyl Jones

lol

Seriously though, @ deadbeat and Morgi, while the Catholic position on the gays is dumb as hell, there's a significant amount of inertia to overcome. The fact that a lot of senior Catholic officials are wizened old cadavers isn't very helpful in this regard.

I suspect the Church will come around on the homos before the century's out, though.

edited 18th May '16 1:45:52 PM by majoraoftime

Gender idolatry implies gender worship. I'd argue that the Catholic heirarchy and others who insist so fanatically on the gender binary (and that anything else is evil) are the ones guilty of idolatry.

edited 18th May '16 1:46:24 PM by Morgikit

Science has spent the last few decades basically mooning every justification Catholicism has for it's gender-essentialist bullshit.

Honestly I don't understand why the RCC can't adopt the same kind of stance on morality as Gelug Tibetan Buddhism: that morality in a religious context is not the same as the morality for a society as a whole. There's not a lot that can be done about the core Catholic doctrine, really, but what can change is its input into secular society. When the Dalai Lama expressed support for same-sex marriage, he specified that the position of the religion he leads had not changed.

I'm not asking for the Catholic Church to start performing same-sex marriages or change their positions on surrogacy or anything, I'm asking that they recognise that their positions do not apply to non-Catholics and they realise that most Catholics don't agree with a lot of the church's teachings and it's their choice whether or not to follow them. I mean I live in a country that's 84% Catholic and I grew up in a Catholic family, and I'm yet to talk to a single person that 100% without a doubt believes that holy communion is actually the body of Jesus, which is arguably far more important to Catholic doctrine than gender. The fact that they're not giving speeches about this every chance they get tells me that their rapid opposition to LGBT+ rights has nothing to do with doctrinal purity, that it's just a group of old white men using religion as a justification to propagate the type of hatred that was commonplace when they were younger.

'All shall love me and despar!'

Your right on most of it but I find your "old white men" bit kinda weird, seeing as the guy in this case in an African bishop. This is far from a white person only problem, African churches are some of the worst for LGBT rights.

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

Yeah, this one is definitely an old black men thing too.

It might be more that the transubstantiation issue has no direct implications for public policy, and the issues we're discussing most certainly do. Now, if multiple national governments were daft enough to start legislating about what the Host is or isn't, then you'd see the same kind & degree of uproar.

"She was the kind of dame they write similes about." —Pterodactyl Jones

Like the "desecrated host" uproar a few years back?

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

& This is fair, but overall the upper ranks of the Catholic hierarchy are predominantly white, and while African Catholics can obviously be equally prejudiced we must remember where the teachings came from in the first place. That said I probably should have phrased it differently, my bad.

True, but like even if we look at public policy and how it intersects with Catholic teaching you see a pretty big discrepancy between what the church ignores and what the church condemns. I grew up being brought to mass on Sundays (not overly rigidly but somewhat regularly) and one of the things I remember most about it was its pretty consistent stance on wealth and money. Like my memory's not great but I'd say at least half of what they talked about was giving to the poor and how the wealthy have a fundamental obligation to give a lot more than poor people because obviously they have more to give. And yet we don't hear speeches from bishops about how Bill Gates and low taxation rates are inflicting wounds on our generation, in fact if I'm not mistaken the Vatican cracked down hard on the idea of liberation theology when priests did start doing so, not to mention the time Pope Pius XII excommunicated all communists. Their opposition to LGBT+ rights seems to be more about upholding the status quo, even when the status quo contradicts Catholic teaching, than about actual religious belief.

Hmmm I wouldn't consider a scandal to be on the same type of ground as like active opposition to a movement. From what I've skimmed on it just there (I hadn't heard about it before) the guy did seem to be doing so in active opposition to the church, so their reaction is a lot more justified than LGBT+ people who are just trying to live their lives without priests condemning them and fermenting an environment that results in violence against LGBT+ people.

edited 19th May '16 6:46:37 AM by VincentQuill

'All shall love me and despar!'

Well we don't hear about Gates because he gives a ton to chairity, but ignoring that for a sec. Under Francis we sure have heard a lot about money, he's been reforming the Vatican bank in what I'd call a modern reselling of Jesus chasing the moneylenders from the temple, he's spoken a ton about the issues of wealth, a lack of empathy and income inequality. Yea this is a new thing under Francus but it is a change, he and his people generally talk a lot more about money and the evils of that then they do LGBT rights, now sadly not everyone in the Catholic hierarchy are what I'd call Francis' people.

The Old Testament, which was originally a set of Jewish rules and traditions, this realy isn't a race thing, I don't see why you're trying to make it one.

edited 19th May '16 6:46:28 AM by Silasw

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran