Homosexuality as a sin

Well...

Just remember eating shrimp and wearing two types of fabric at the same time is an abomination to god as well.

Just saying.

 

Oh...so much to work with here...like shooting fish in a barrel, so let's start shall we?

There is no gene (that we know of), true, but it is a very common logical fallacy to assume that lack of evidence is evidence of absence. You are incorrect in assuming that if a gene were found they would accept homosexuality. In truth, if a gene were found, they would find some other way to deny its validity. Remember this well: there is no arguing with these people, they will only see what they believe.

Funny that they should start spouting off about evolution when they don't believe in it (but I digress). Tell that to the hundreds of species in the animal kingdom that display homosexual behaviour.

As for being judged by God, you can judge Him right back and ask why he made you that way.

Sadly, there are health effects when practicing unsafe sex, it affects heterosexuals just as much as it does us. But of course their obsession is with anal sex and the supposedly intrinsic bad effects from that practice. The real reason they are so against it is that they have a strong notion of what things are "supposed to be", that only certain things can go into certain orifices, and anything that deviates from that is "disgusting" and an "unclean abomination". If you look at it carefully, what is religion's obsession with orifices anyway? There are very strong taboos about what to put in your mouth, what you eat, and with what comes out...

A child needs a loving home with parents that will care for him or her. Period.

I prefer to call myself gay, but they don't think we can form deep, loving and lasting relationships, that's why they will refer to us with a word that has "sexual" in it, just calling us "homosexual" or their preferred phrase "suffering from same-sex attraction" or "SSA" denies our assertion that it is far more than just sex. Call yourself gay, and stick to it.

Sadly many gay men and women, because of societal pressure, conformity, fear, or self-repression have entered into heterosexual marriages, with disastrous results. This is another fallacy of logic, otherwise known as pointing out something while leaving a few crucial details out...

 

You could consider these:

Six reasons why the Bible is not against gays

Bad News For Bible Thumpers: New Evidence Confirms The “Gay Gene” Exists / Queerty

And also there's books, some written by pastors and biblical scholors (warning: this website has both sides of the argument): https://www.gaychristian.net/books.php

And so much more.

 

Oh yes.

Jesus never condemned anyone in the LGBT community. I think he would be appalled at the state of the church right now.

 

Oh, yes, I forgot one last one: that whole "I am against the act of homosexuality but I like the homosexual"...well, apart from that condescending holier-than-thou attitude, this is a pernicious statement.

Remember this: I am by definition gay because I have relationships (that's relationships, not just sex) with members of my own gender. Deny me the act and you are denying my being gay. You cannot neatly separate the two.

 

I'd like to see their prove of these health problems caused by being gay. I doubt me simply being gay is causing any danger to my health.

Ah, there was a really good post somewhere where someone listed multiple clever comebacks to all sorts of homophobic comments. I can't find it though. >.<

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUn38vRuhAg delete this post if it's too much, but oh well... Onision perfectly described and acted out how homophobic people look like.

They negate themselves - they say that everything God created is perfect and God created you, then why are they hating on about who you are?

 

I was raised in a tightly wound christian community, and I have asked every pastor and religious studies teacher that I could find what they thought about homosexuality. They all had the same answer - The church does not, or should not, refuse homosexuals their basic needs and rights. They are all children of God, and all will be accepted into his kingdom. The church should not be against same-sex marriage, relationships or homosexual people. It is stated in many, many of the books written in the Vatican that it is not homosexual people that they do not agree with, it is homosexual acts, and even if someone has - in their words - "Committed a homosexual act" they should not be persecuted by God or any of God's followers.

Basically, it less Christ-like to hate someone than it is to be a homosexual.

It always depends on what pastor or teacher you want to ask too, some will say homosexuality is 100% wrong and against the bible, but there are others who have read the Book properly, and they understand that it is not to be taken literally.

God's number one rule is to love everyone, no matter who they are, or what paths of life that they are walking. Jesus repeatedly healed people of different faiths, of different colors and should a follower of Jesus or God be cruel or malicious to any of His other creations than they aren't proper followers.

Side note: I myself am not Catholic. But I do greatly respect the religion and it's followers (The ones who actually follow the religion and don't hate or turn the words in the Bible around). As I said, I have had many conversations with priests and religious teachers on the topic of homosexuality and all of them think the same thing (at least the ones where I'm from).

Good luck with trying to figure it all out! I hope it goes okay for you.

 

These arguments against homosexuality are ones I hear all the time... As someone with waaay too much biblical knowledge for my liking, I could probably help you answer some of these. Forgive me if some of this gets a little rant-like/salty. I spend a lot of time biting my tongue about this irl.

1. Sin is generally considered by Christians as something that harms others or goes against God's creation. Being gay doesn't hurt anyone, of course. And it couldn't possibly be going against God's creation because, as someone mentioned above, hundreds of species practice homosexual behaviors. It's part of nature and a way to prevent overpopulation.

2. A lot of anti-gay people I know seem to lack understanding of how gender works. They get really shocked when I mention the existence of intersex people and pose the question "Who would it be acceptable for them to be in a relationship with?". It can't always be as simple as the one-man-one-woman mindset. Love is complex.

3. Homosexuality (not the actual idea of being gay, falling in love with the same gender, etc) is mentioned in the Bible twice. I'm not too sure about the second time, but the first time is in Leviticus. The listed punishment for it is stoning. Severe punishments like this are all throughout Leviticus, for really silly things like eating seafood, wearing cotton, getting period blood on a couch, touching someone within a week after masturbating. All of these laws were made to protect the safety of the people at the time, because those things used to be dangerous. We don't punish people for them anymore because now we have safer ways to go about them and it's the same with homosexuality. People just seem to be hooked on this one law for whatever reason.

4. STDs can be caused by all forms of unsafe sex. It's not a punishment.

Anyway, I hoped this helped a little? I might have left something out, but I said most of what I wanted to.

---------- Post added 13th Jun 2015 at 11:39 PM ----------

Oh, one more thing. Most Christians (at least the ones I know) consider the Old Testament to be the "old law" and that they're free of those particular, overly-strict rules because their saviour has come and set them free of the old expectations. So, really that verse is kinda outdated anyway.

 

I'm an evangelical Christian, and I know many like me no longer need the gene link as proof that you can no more change your sexual orientation than you can your eye colour. Nor is God going to change it because He created and loves you as you are. You are a one-of-a-kind gift to the world. Don't try to prove anything to people who have a closed mind. As I got to know some gay people and studied the few, so-called "clobber passages" in the Bible in an intellectually honest way, my views changed drastically. Even my once very anti-gay brother-in-law is changing his mind about homosexuals . I never got into arguing with his harsh views. God spoke to his heart over time. It's nothing short of a miracle. Maybe this will happen with your friend too.

 

What do you expect from a book that wrote the definition of contradiction?

 

I have to say that it's better to not waste your breath arguing with people who view God as an extension of their own personality and prejudice. It amazes me how very little these people know about The Bible they are so happy to quote. Their arguments are based on quicksand as they are still clinging on to the teachings of the Sunday School. Let them fester in their naivety and prejudice while you get on with living a happy and contented life.

 

Clearly, this is not an argument that you can make to someone of the unaccepting religious right without getting some serious pushback, but I have wondered:

If it's not nature, why does it actually feel so natural?
If it's not natural, for men at least, why can they have anal orgasms?

I am not trying to be funny with this, I have seriously been debating this in my own head.

 

The concept of sin isn't actually a thing, it's like karma. It's a way humans conceptualize keeping score with what we perceived as good things vs bad things.

I would flip the question around: why is love between two consenual adults a bad thing? What about it makes a something that God has deemed sinful that's a strong argument? The only argument I hear is it's not "natural" yet homosexuality is found across the animal kingdom and human history so that argument is incredibly poor....

 

One of the things I have recently come to realize about organized religions is that the laws and prohibitions are not intrinsically about leading a good life. Religions appeal to many because there is a general hunger for guidance on how one is supposed to live, but that is not their core purpose.

In essence, the Bible is considered to be a guide to a way of life, for many it is a strong, coherent, and internally consistent (if you swallow the basic premises) user's manual on how to live your life. It is also the key founding narrative that underlies the Western tradition.

I am beginning to see, however, that organized religion is in essence a political movement, by that I mean that a whole host of irrational, unexplainable rules, as set down in the Bible (for the Judeo-Christian faiths, but other books for other religions have the same pattern) have the purpose and effect of distinguishing one tribe from another. Religion creates a "We" that thinks, and eats and prays and fornicates (love that word) one way, and presto: the "other" (who doesn't believe as you do) is created as well.

I disagree with one of the above posters that sins are intrinsically harmful, although they often are. The concept of sin also encompasses things like violating the Sabbath (Saturday for Jews, Sunday for Christians), or, for Jews, eating non-kosher food (the rabbis admit they have no explanation for eating kosher, they do not exist because it is healthier or more hygienic, they are followed literally because God said so). Working on the Sabbath or eating non-kosher are not harmful activities in themselves. They are called "sin" only because those who disobey these rules, also break their bond with the wider tribe.

When I used to keep Kosher while interacting with others at work or at school, it was pretty quickly obvious that I was a person apart...

So why do these rules exist? Simple, in order to create a tribe with one set of rules and values, one belief system, one narrative on how the world works and how it was created. Organized religions exploit that hunger for answers to the most profound questions of existence. I use the word "exploit" carefully, because as I said, the purpose is political and hierarchical, it eventually creates an ideology that transcends borders.

The word catholic means all-embracing, universal. In the Catholic faith, there is no need to read the texts, the priestly hierarchy will tell you what to do and think. For Catholicism, if not everyone believes as they do, their own religion doesn't make sense, hence their missionaries (the same is true for Islam) and their abject destruction of native cultures and beliefs the world over.

In the Hebrew bible, the worst punishment for grave sins (after capital punishment) is Karet, to be cut-off or exiled from the tribe. To those in the "Abrahamic" faiths who abhor homosexuality, the key thing to remember is that you are rejecting the tribe, you are thereby weakening their influence by reducing their numbers and their power.

So now we live in a world where "only humans have a soul" (that's a particular gift from that old Jesuit-trained philosopher, Descartes). When animism was the closest thing pre-biblical tribes had to a universal religion, where human beings were part of the world instead of apart from it, living in the world with their own (different but remarkably similar) narratives about life and existence, instead of treating this world as a vestibule for the next one in heaven...so we exploit the world and its resources like rapists, because it is all just inanimate matter...

 

I'm not going to write all the reasons above, but here's one that I always use when some die-hard Christians tell me that "struggling with homosexuality" is a sin.

If Jesus stood by lepers, thieves, prostitutes, and other outcasts and pariahs, I can't imagine that he wouldn't have stood by queer people as well. Along with that, here's a good interpretation outlining why Leviticus 18:22 (which is so often cited) does NOT actually look down upon or prohibit gay relationships. http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1180&context=sor_fac_pubs