LGBTQ+ Rights and Religion

That's nice, read Silasw's post again and actually try to understand it rather than going into whatever your next planned point was.

I think it’s impossible that neither the original transcription nor later translations were free from the whims of the hands they passed through. However, from the presupposition “the Bible is entirely divinely inspired; the words were channeled directly through human hands”, then yes, the only logical conclusion is homosexuality is immoral by Christian standards.

Granting that there is at least divine influence in the original writing, I would first check the translation work for an agenda, then if the translations still seem direct, I would check the influence of the culture at the time of the original writing for influences on the transcribers’ values that may have led them to take liberties.

Whether the Bible is God-inspired or not doesn't change the fact it's completely written by Man. As noted above, every translation is yet more Men adding to the telephone game of theology.

All of their posts got thumped so you may be right.

Edited by sgamer82 on Feb 20th 2023 at 6:31:44 AM

And this is where we learn about the wonderful subject of context and why it’s important to understand things in the context of which they are written.

• Sodom and Gomorrah is a take about the abuse of visitors and attempted rape, the fact that the rape is male on male is a side point.
• Leviticus talks about the laws handed down to the Israelites, so there’s already a significant point of debate around if the laws even apply to Christians (as most of them are not followed by Christians), before we get to the context of the laws existing to separate the Israelites from neighbouring religious groups which practised ritual homosexual intercourse.
• Corinthians has hotly debated translation, some translate it as “men who have sex with men” while others translate it as “nor abusers of themselves with mankind”, which is a very different translation. The additional context here is that the letter are being written to Corinth, a Greek city where the Greek practise of older men sexual abusing younger men/boys will have been common.
• Timothy has the same thing, we’re dealing with Macedonia (part of the Greek world) where homosexual sex was commonly seen in the context of teachers sexually abusing students, there are also similar translation issues to Corinthians.
• Romans is an even simpler one. It’s not even a condemnation but is instead a description of what the people did when they gave up god. It talks about people becoming overwhelmed with lust to the point of abandoning their traditional sexual desires. That’s not a condemnation of homosexuality, it’s a commentary of being so full of lust that your normal sexual preferences are suspended.

It’s only God’s word if you’re a biblical literalist, which the vast majority of Christians are not. For the majority of Christians (and all non-Christians) it’s man’s word, interpreted/translated by other men multiple times and then provided to us.

Edit: I figured that was coming, as the entire set of posts seemed like a poor attempt at trolling by a passing homophobe. But I’ll leave my context explanation for the parts of the Bible that (maybe) talk about homosexuality incase they’re of value to others.

The header rule is to only argue about it here rather than in other LGBT threads.

Edited by Silasw on Feb 20th 2023 at 2:33:11 PM

I think we're being baited into arguing about the Bible itself now, which goes against the header rules.

Edit:

And all the posts got thumped anyway, so we should move on from it.

Edited by M84 on Feb 20th 2023 at 10:31:36 PM

This thread has been dormant for a while so before I open up it’s casket, I’d like to get confirmation on one thing: are personal anecdotes fair game such as, in this case, a personally witnessed and cringeworthy moment during a visitor’s sermon in a important religious holiday?

is there a current religion that doesn't have a rule against homosexuality?

> I’d like to get confirmation on one thing: are personal anecdotes fair game such as, in this case, a personally witnessed and cringeworthy moment during a visitor’s sermon in a important religious holiday?

I expect so

Buddhism to my knowledge.

Based on the wiki, some Mahayana scholars were against homosexuality and Buddhist stances on it are varied based on tradition. Another article also refers to a group of queer people called pandaka which were disparaged by all ancient indian religions including Buddhism. Though that article also says that things are slowly changing in Buddhism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_sexual_orientation#:~:text=The%2014th%20Dalai%20Lama%20has,Lama%20on%20this%20topic%20(March

https://theconversation.com/traditional-buddhist-teachings-exclude-lgbtq-people-from-monastic-life-but-change-is-coming-slowly-191567

I heard Sikhism has no stance on homosexuality because their scripture didn't talk about it at all. But the wiki also states it was taboo subject.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikhism_and_sexual_orientation#:~:text=Sikhism%20has%20no%20specific%20teachings,%2C%20color%2C%20creed%20or%20gender.

Spiritism doesn't say anything against it, either. In fact, it believes that souls need to reincarnate in male/female/straight/gay/white/black/etc bodies to achieve perfection. Come to think of it, Spiritism is pretty similar to Buddhism in the aspect of reincarnating until it's no longer needed.

The opposition to homosexuality within Christianity is far from universal, there are significant segments that view the Old Testament rules as no longer applying and Paul’s condemnations as being about the specific Greek/Roman practise of adult men sexually abusing boys in their care (normally students).

Yeah, with Christianity, the biggest problem with Paul's stuff on homosexuality is that we have no idea why he talked about it. (this is a recurring issue with Paul, he never reiterated the question he was responding to, so a lot of his proclamations come out of nowhere, and there's a couple that directly contradict each other. Like, he praises one church for being run by women and tells a different church to stop letting the women take charge. It's pretty clear that the details between the two churches are different, but we don't know for sure, and a lot of Christian branches focus on the "don't let women run things" one.)

We do know he was kinda down on relationships in general and seemed to think that marriage was only a good idea if you couldn't restrain yourself otherwise. That's partly because he was under the impression that the world would end within or near his lifetime, but when you get a guy who straight up says "don't get married unless you burn with too much passion to hold back", he's probably not going to accept any non-reproductive relationship.

That being said, one of the other problems is that the particular word he uses that is translated to mean "sodomy" or other similar things is only ever used in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy and nowhere else. It shows up literally nowhere in any other Greek scholarship at the time.

Edited by Zendervai on Jul 15th 2023 at 5:14:13 AM

What about Shinto?

Shinto doesn't have a code of moral behavior as we understand the term in the first place, nor a single unified leader of any sort. Shinto priests have conducted (non-recognized) same-sex marriages, while the current position of the Shinto Association for Spiritual Leadership is that homosexuality is a mental disorder (they have no business doing so, but they're part of Japan's version of the religious right and spout hate just like every other form of religious right, irrespective of whether it has anything to do with their actual religion or culture - haters gonna hate).

Reading up more, there appear to have been transwomen accepted as priestesses in Ancient Japan, as well as a fair amount of homosexuality among Shinto gods, and ritual weddings between Amaterasu herself and mikos.

Edited by Ramidel on Jul 15th 2023 at 6:24:25 AM

The leading theory is that the one about women needing to shut up in church was that a) it was not written by Paul, but by one of Paul's students and b) that it was referring to a specific problem in that community with women not paying attention to and gossiping in church.

Unfortunately, with so much context removed, we don't really know for sure, and it has been used for a lot of harm over the years despite some women clearly having been important in the early days of the church (and to Jesus, for that matter, who had very close female friends and sometimes preached to women alone, such as the woman at the well).

Edited by PhiSat on Jul 16th 2023 at 12:16:49 PM

Looking at the answers to this question in the thread made me realize that, I never ONCE thought about non-Abrahamic religions' view on homosexuality. Not gonna lie, I'm a little bit ashamed. XP

While we're on the subject, I found this Wikipedia entry about LGBT-affirming religious groups, which I found pretty interesting.

I'm unsurprised that the LaVeyans are going both ways on the subject. That is, their Satanism doesn't prohibit homosexuality, but it also permits you to be a homophobe just to be a dick.

A little bit late to the party, but I find it embarrassing that when it comes to LGBT Rights and Religion, I never, not even once thought about non-Abrahamic religions.

Looking at this thread again I just realised what Paul’s letters remind me of. Policy via FAQ.

So in organisational/HR policy there’s a problem that after policy is written weird and special situations occurs and in the name of efficiency you don’t deal with them one at a time, you record them in an FAQ document for all to see. Except each situation is so unique that your FAQ ends up effective rewriting policy, but with none of the policy safeguards (like union consultation) being followed.

Paul’s letters are an FAQ to specific questions that if applied broadly end up rewriting Christian doctrine/policy, and they’re made even worse by not even having the questions included with them.

This is an amazing description. Need to keep this in mind any time the Epistles come up.

Unnatural (according to the priests) but not unclean... AKA fine, the spiritual cleanliness is the big part.. Which there are rules on for other sexual acts (no bestiality, no incest).... so again fine.

Though its worth noting that fertility is encouraged, having kids, bringing prosperity to the community, which is a bit harder with same-sex relationships, but like if your insistent on following as written (no one really does so any way), its not like you cant get some help on the reproduction front and meet that duty....

Basically just still figure out a way to make babies and your good.

This is correct, like I noted, mostly okay, just have to take care of some other things with it.... that given the uhhh.... "imense sexuality" of the gods was more then easy to meet.

Edited by Imca on Jul 24th 2023 at 6:10:02 AM

So what I'm getting from this is that Shinto authorities in Japan generally frown upon same-sex relationships, but it doesn't make a huge difference because it's not an especially dogmatic belief system in the first place, nor is there an emphasis on a central authority like the Pope that can dictate what's Good and what's not. Is that right?