The Gay Debate: The Bible and Homosexuality

Lucid, passionate and well-argued. I just wish perhaps that homophobes were as wise and coherent.

 

I am sorry i did not realize you live in Norway. Also you do not have to be a member of a church to believe in God and the Bible. That is just a religious institution and it does not reflect the true word of God. There are people who worship God in their own way and they don't go to church. I am very sorry about the way your country treats LGBT people and wish it was different there. I respect your opinion and you have every right to it. I am just trying to spread the word.

---------- Post added 28th Mar 2012 at 07:39 AM ----------

I am happy that you are so brave and willing to take that next step. Videos like these show that you can be gay and christian. There are so many christians who are still in the closet going into their thirties and forties and in public are very homophobic to hide their own sexuality. God is love and i wish more people could see it the way I and many others do.

---------- Post added 28th Mar 2012 at 07:51 AM ----------

Even though I am gay christian I believe in the separation of Church and State. The Church should not be involved in government matters except abortion. I would challenge someone to make me a atheist but it probably won't work.

 

The Church should not be involved in government matters at all, including abortion. If you belong to a religion or faith that believes that abortion is wrong, then don't get one. However, just because certain people and their faith believe it is wrong does not mean that they should have the authority to prevent everyone from getting abortions. That would be forcing your religious views onto others, which should not be allowed. /end rant

 

I am a man so it is not possible for me to get abortion. I should clarify I believe in a woman's right to choose but I also believe that is not the best option. I would suggest adoption or keeping the baby but its up to the mother to decide. Sorry I should of restated that.

 

Touching video, but the thing is: it's no secret that the main (if not only) obstacle to gay rights is religion. I'm sorry, but it's true

 

You do make a great point and its true that religion in some aspects is a obstacle to gay rights but there are different perspectives on religion in this country so you cannot blame it all on religion when there are churches who do accept equality for gay people.

 

Agreed completely.

Blaming religion for all homophobia and making it our enemy is wrong and a very simplistic way to see the situations. Even if you didn't care about religion and were more into politics, making religion our enemy also slows our progress for equality.

We shouldn't be aiming to get rid of religion and to get everyone to stop believing in their deities. We should be aiming to increase over all tolerance for differences (even religious ones) and let it be understood that religion has no place in the debate. Not because religion is wrong, but because religion has no place in the writing of laws.

I have A LOT of friends who are very religious, yet they are very supportive. I have also personally worked with two different religious clubs on my campus and, while they don't "condone it", they also don't hate it and most understand that its all about equal rights and respect, and not about going against religion. Many of their members also started to go to our meetings in order to understand everything more.

Also, not to mention that we have very religious people in the LGBT community and by going agasint religion you are in essence making them choose a side and its not fair to them at all.

 

Thanks for reinstating the whole point I was trying to make in my posts. We need to be united in getting equality for all atheist or christian and we actually cannot get equality by tearing us apart from religion. We need to unite ourselves with all groups of people to get equality in the USA. So you cannot make a fight for equality a war against religion at the same time. Yes there are some religious people who will never change their views but that is just life and we cannot put people in groups. Look at it this way the more some may hate religious people the more they will hate back. If we choose to hate and they choose to hate nothing will ever be accomplished no matter if your a christian or a atheist.

 

I watched the whole thing and agree with his analysis for the most part. I'm no expert on the Bible so I've read opinions of people who I think know what they're talking about and compare them and decide for myself which meanings I think are right. I guess everyone decides what they believe each verse means. I think, however, that most people who believe the traditional meaning of those verses haven't seriously researched all opinions on them. I'd like to think that if more people prayerfully read all possible meanings of the verses and other context like this guy showed, they could conclude that the Bible supports GLBT people just as much as straight people. Like I said before, sadly it will take a death for some people to ever take the time to realise they were wrong.

 

I understand why you might think that, but I myself, as well as most of my friends are atheists because there isn't any evidence to convince us any god exists.
Do agree with not painting the entirety of theism or theists as homophobes or enemies.

 

Yes i know people being atheists can have nothing to do with homosexuality but just God's existence in general I just stating what I heard from some people on other sites. In some cases people see the hate in religion and turn away from religion all together because of it. I would never have a problem with having a friend who is a atheist as long as they don't shove their views down my throat and I will do the same. I would never date or have a serious relationship with a atheist because it would be awkward and complicated.

 

Good on him for giving it a go, but ultimately this video is going to be rejected by hard core Christians. Whether or not he can disprove the particularly homophobic parts, the fact remains that there is nothing in the Bible which specifically supports gay relationships - the New Testament portrays the only officially accepted relationships to be straight.

But who needs the Bible anyway. Not me.

 

I became an atheist because I read Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, and then thought about things a bit more and so no good reason to see a divine element to this universe.

 

Might I quote Tutu:

Bishop Desmond Tutu on For the Bible Tells Me So - YouTube

And I encourage watching the documentary "For the Bible Tells Me So" though it might be hard to find on the web, great stuff!

P.s. Can anyone link the video properly I cannot seem to find out how to post YT video's here.

---------- Post added 12th Apr 2012 at 07:59 PM ----------

Some more powerful quotes from Desmond Tutu:
"1. "I am deeply, deeply distressed that in the face of the most horrendous problems — we’ve got poverty, we’ve got conflict and war, we’ve got HIV/AIDS — and what do we concentrate on? We concentrate on what you are doing in bed." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu gave this quote at a conference in Kenya in 2008. The reason it's so good? Because all too often, religious leaders (hello, Minnesota Catholic Bishops) focus on who people choose to love, rather than critical social problems like poverty, health, or war.

2. "We struggled against apartheid in South Africa, supported by people the world over, because black people were being blamed and made to suffer for something we could do nothing about; our very skins. It is the same with sexual orientation. It is a given." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote this in 2007, in the wake of the launch of a book by Amnesty International UK, "Sex, Love and Homophobia." The point? That people are born who they are, and to discriminate against them on the basis of a natural characteristic is both flawed and immoral.

3. "When will we learn that human beings are of infinite value because they have been created in the image of God, and that it is a blasphemy to treat them as if they were less than this and to do so ultimately recoils on those who do this? In dehumanizing others, they are themselves dehumanized. Perhaps oppression dehumanizes the oppressor as much as, if not more than, the oppressed. They need each other to become truly free, to become human." - This was part of Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Nobel Peace Prize address in 1984, when he was honored for his work to end apartheid. Doesn't tie specifically in to LGBT rights, of course, but the theme there is pretty clear: those who would oppress others violate one of the central tenets of humanity.

4. "If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu said this nugget in an interview with the BBC in 2007. At the time, it was direct and very blunt criticism at the Anglican Church for its seemingly endless focus on questions of sexuality, instead of actual social problems in the world. Pretty powerful stuff to have someone like an Archbishop say that he'd abandon his own religion if he ever believed God was homophobic.

5. "Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are part of so many families. They are part of the human family. They are part of God's family. And of course they are part of the African family." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote this in March 2010, addressing directly efforts in Uganda (and other parts of Africa) to criminalize homosexuality with harsh penalties, including even the death penalty. It was both a call to remember that we're all a part of the same human existence, but also a call that homosexuality is indeed part and parcel of Africa's identity."

 

Yeah I completely get your point and I changed my perspective on the issue. No offense I don't need a book to tell me whether God is real or not because my belief in God is in my heart and mind.

 

From what I'm getting from his post, he was not saying that he doesn't believe in a "God" because the book told him to. He thought about different ideas and perspectives that the book brought up and reached that conclusion by himself. The only time someone has to use "no offense" is when they're about to say something offensive...I personally don't see why you needed to put in that could-be-offensive last sentence which implied that the previous poster couldn't think for himself. If it was meant to show that you are spiritual and religious, it wasn't needed, I think he could have figured that out from reading your other posts in this thread.

 

ok that was not cool of me. I realize that it can go both ways and I regret that statement. I believe that people become atheists for all sorts of reasons and like many others on this board I was making a generalization about a group of people and that was wrong.

 

I wonder at this, in terms of cause and effect.

You have to wonder whether homophobia exists as a result of religious belief, or whether homophobia just exists and religious belief allows a convenient external justification for people who feel it. I think homophobia is well ingrained in society, and that this is more likely just to be from bad luck than by any religious design.

If you ask someone to rationally justify homophobia, or any anti-homosexual sentiment at all, it's not really possible in any rational terms - no-one will say "i don't agree with homosexuality because i am insecure" or "i don't agree with homosexuality because of this traumatic childhood experience", or "i don't agree with homosexuality because i'm actually completely gay, fighting hard against it and don't even admit it to myself"

No, instead religion provides a convenient basis for justification of the emotion. I don't think religion CAUSES homophobia, so to speak... but it does sort of aid and abet by continuing to declare homosexuality immoral.

example: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8450362

So far as i'm aware, even according to buddhist dogma, homosexuality is considered sexual misconduct, so kudos to Ven Bhante Sujato for having the courage to 'cross the floor' so to speak, and go against his own faith's doctrine in favour of common sense and compassion. I wish i could say the same for the catholic, lutheran, anglican, seventh day adventist and sikh representatives who hold on to and promote their harmful prejudices.

 

I tend to view homophobia as an offshoot of sexism. It's about enforcing gender roles that uphold the patriachal norms whether it's slut-shaming or homophobia or apologizing for rape (not in the sense of saying sorry, but in the sense of excusing). However, there's a flaw in my theory. The atheist community in the US is overwhelmingly pro-gay rights. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone in atheist activism who doesn't advocate for gay rights (with the exception of a handful of ultra-libertarians who don't support anti-discrimination laws of any type). But, misogyny is rampant in the atheist community. Not that all atheist activists are sexists, but a lot of them will occasionally say stuff that's really anti-woman. It's even worse on places like the atheist subreddit, but it's prevalent just about everywhere.

Which is to say that based on the levels of homophobia versus general sexism and misogyny in the atheist community, there's a much stronger case for a correlation between religion and homophobia than between religion and misogyny.

 

I like your theory, i think it makes sense.

Really? That surprises me a great deal. Can you expand on that? I want to learn more...