Homosexuality

[Breetai]

Being allowed to do that is part of democracy. If enough voters agree with this and vote that way, then the laws of that land will reflect this.

These rights are outside of what can be voted, for they are the foundation of democracy itself and stronger than it's process.

I have to disagree here. Those rights are part of freedom and liberty (which I DO value!), but not democracy.

Voting against homosexual marriage makes as much sense as voting to see who can vote, voting instead of a fair trial and voting if someone must be equal and free.

It it helps, I have NEVER used this issue as a basis for voting. Despite me posting in this thread, it is quite far down my priority list. So much so that it doesn't barely even register with me when choosing someone/party to vote for.

Those who oppose same sex marriage are using religious freedom as a tool to attack religious freedom. And that simply doesn't work.

Some do. I actually agree with this. There is definitely a danger that this could backfire on the people who do this.

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In other words, the Bible clearly condemns acts of homosexuality, but there is a minority of Christian groups that reject certain things in the Bible as not being relevant anymore.

I'll grant that it is a minority of Christian groups that interpret the scriptures as being ok with loving, committed same-sex relationships, but you are mischaracterizing these groups by suggesting that they see certain things in the Bible as "no longer relevant" as the reason for their interpretation. Like all interpretations, it is grounded in an understanding of historical context, translations from original language, etc. It isn't simply a logic of "oh it no longer applies because we don't think it should."

In this case, I am right and you are wrong. I can prove it.

If you look in the Old Testament law book of Leviticus, you read in English:
"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."

The translation is very black and white (which is not the case in some other similar verses; especially in the New Testament books/letters). It is clear as day in Hebrew and translated as such. This is not an "interpretation." It is like saying that the sky looks blue. It means what it says.

Those who say that this is now acceptable really do claim that this is "no longer relevant." Yes, they do use a number of reasons to explain why, but I am not doing any mischaracterization here.

I did not bold the last part of your quote because I did not to imply that people were giving that exact reasoning.

Well, the act might be a nature desire for some, but the physics of it generally require something unnatural to make it happen in order to avoid physical harm (ie. lubricant). The same cannot be said for hetrosexual sex (with exceptions, of course).

Isn't breaking the hymen/"popping the cherry" equally as "unnatural" as conditioning the anus? You can look for ways to define homosexuality as "unnatural" all you want, but I am putting stock in scientific evidence to suggest that by any definition that matters to any field of science, homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality.

Nope, because there is still the fact that the act of sexual intercourse results in the continuation of our species. Everything is already in place for this to occur naturally. I seriously hope you do not consider the natural fluids that come from the anus to be meant to be used for sexual reason (yes, this is a joke).

If a democratic government turns into a theocracy (or another form of government) though that process, then that is a result of democracy.

So..."hooray for tyranny of the majority?!" Even if it is unlikely, I can't abide any ideology that essentially thinks it has dominion over every aspect of life for every person and would seek to impose that on everyone it can if it can.

Hopefully I conveyed above that I agree with you here. Even the Christian God does! We were given a choice; the law was not forced upon us. I really am all for liberty and freedom. Although I disagree with the concept of homosexual marriage and speak against it if asked out of religious conviction, if the government of a free nation allows this, then so be it. I'd rather my tax money not be used for something I do not agree with, but aside from that... to each their own. If two people want to engage in this sort of thing on their own accord, that is their own business. I do not go out on the streets condemning them. If they come to me and ask their opinion, I will give it, but that's about as far as I go (which is what this thread is, isn't it?).

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Now I feel like I am starting to repeat myself. I'm happy to continue spinning these wheels if people really want to, but let me know if I start to sound redundant...

You might be, but I really just breezed over the first 20 pages of this thread. I think both of us have made our opinions clear. I just wanted to make some notes on what you said in your summery, because I thought you had a few points off (especially in your summery of Christian thinking/teachings). Nothing major really, but I thought I'd pick what you wrote apart a bit.

[optmusprimenumber]

If God is capable of immorality then who is to say any of his moral teachings have any ethical grounds to stand on...

that's not too far from what i was driving at about the dirty priests.. since clergymen are supposed to be the go-between, what-with their ability to grant you forgiveness through confession and penance, and baptize babies.. if all that and the other things he swears his life too, including celibacy, can drive him to become mentally ill and pursue heinous acts of molestation to boys who think they are completely and wholly on the path of righteousness and godliness.. who says the book is all that good in the first place? and furthermore, how does one witness that and still say "well, i believe that because it says so"? Cuz it says lots of things that the priest didn't even listen too. And yet it finds its way between two men or two women who love each other and their marriage in some peoples' hearts and in some states who are still influenced by those hearts.

[Breetai]

@ bree and dsh you guys know a large amount of gay guys don't actually do any anal right?

Haha, yes. I did go off on a bit of a tangent there.

And also with that whole line of thinking that anal is unnatural you are only focusing on men when there are women just as gay that want to get married as much as the guys. I find it funny that gay sex conversations always leave out women and only focus on men.

The answer: I'm a guy. My mind was deep in the gutter!

For arguments sake, say I believe in the Christain God. Why should I take his moral laws regarding any subject as absolute when God doesnt? If "Thou shall not Kill/Murder" is an objective moral law, and God is obviously not concerned with obeying it as demonstrated throughout the old testament, then he seems to be capable of immorality.

The phrase "thou shall not kill" is not an accurate translation. "Thou shall not murder" is correct.

Justified killing, such as in war or as a result of the death penalty, is allowed.

[optmusprimenumber]

i guess i just think that if i were a churchgoer and i hung on every word the priest said and then i found out he was touching the altar boys i would go running/screaming for the hills and would no longer be able to ground any of my beliefs in the book from which he preached. maybe it's just me

k, i'm done

[sevin0seven]

i guess i just think that if i were a churchgoer and i hung on every word the priest said and then i found out he was touching the altar boys i would go running/screaming for the hills and would no longer be able to ground any of my beliefs in the book from which he preached. maybe it's just me

k, i'm done

to me that just makes the preacher or priest shows he is only human "not perfect" and of course he will pay for his crimes one way or the other. it has nothing to do with the good book he preach. if the books tells him not to sin, yet he does it's called temptation... which happens to everyone. his temptations should had been in video games

[BurningDoom]

i guess i just think that if i were a churchgoer and i hung on every word the priest said and then i found out he was touching the altar boys i would go running/screaming for the hills and would no longer be able to ground any of my beliefs in the book from which he preached. maybe it's just me

k, i'm done

to me that just makes the preacher or priest shows he is only human "not perfect" and of course he will pay for his crimes one way or the other. it has nothing to do with the good book he preach. if the books tells him not to sin, yet he does it's called temptation... which happens to everyone. his temptations should had been in video games

Exactly. Preachers aren't suppose to be perfect. Their human like all of us. And according to the Bible, all humans sin. It's been in our nature since Adam & Eve's downfall.

Does that mean what they did was okay? Absolutely not, and we should all be appalled by it. But, my point is they are and man and men sin. They aren't God.

And someone mentioned that their supposed to be the go-between for God and people. I believe you're getting Christianity mixed-up with Catholicism. And IIRC, it was only the Pope that has that kind of stature in their religion.

[optmusprimenumber]

i guess i just think that if i were a churchgoer and i hung on every word the priest said and then i found out he was touching the altar boys i would go running/screaming for the hills and would no longer be able to ground any of my beliefs in the book from which he preached. maybe it's just me

k, i'm done

to me that just makes the preacher or priest shows he is only human "not perfect" and of course he will pay for his crimes one way or the other. it has nothing to do with the good book he preach. if the books tells him not to sin, yet he does it's called temptation... which happens to everyone. his temptations should had been in video games

Exactly. Preachers aren't suppose to be perfect. Their human like all of us. And according to the Bible, all humans sin. It's been in our nature since Adam & Eve's downfall.

Does that mean what they did was okay? Absolutely not, and we should all be appalled by it. But, my point is they are and man and men sin. They aren't God.

And someone mentioned that their supposed to be the go-between for God and people. I believe you're getting Christianity mixed-up with Catholicism. And IIRC, it was only the Pope that has that kind of stature in their religion.

fair enough, i'll take my confusion elsewhere

[Hobie-wan]

Kind of a derail, but also a bit of a parallel to the way the discussion has gone.

Debate after the release of Life of Brian in 1979 - Parts 1-4





And a parody of the above

[Crabmaster2000]

If you guys want to define the law specifically as thou shall not murder, in order to distinguish it from killing thats fine. I'm pretty sure God didnt drown infants during the flood in self defence. Or explode them in Sodom and Gomorrah because of a home invasion. I'd bet a significant number of the children during the final curse of Egypt werent at war with him either. Where Aaron's sons deserving of death while they tried to glorify your God? Or the man that attempted to prevent the Ark from crashing to the ground? Or was it moral for God to ask men to dash babies against the rocks in order to end their lives?

So again if God is capable of immoral acts himself, why would we hold his ideas of morality at a standard any higher than our own?

Also since when our most wars justified? Do you really think that any war in the last 100 years has been commanded by God? They all seem very man-made to me.

[Original_Name]

First off: I MISS INAZUMA.

I tried so hard to read every post in this thread, but unfortunately I've worked several double-shifts this week and can't keep my eyes open forever, so forgive me if someone raised a similar point, but there is a point mjm brought up which is common in a vast array of faith systems that I would like to investigate. Unfortunately, mjm seems to have scared himself away, so I suppose the question will be directed in the general direction of Breetai and BurningDoom who seem to be the residing representatives of a Christian basis for viewing homosexuality as a sin. Anyone else can jump in, obviously, but the B-brigade seem most likely to give a comprehensive answer at this point.

Mjm mentioned that homosexuality is inherently a sin because it is a "temporal" pursuit. That is to say -- following, for the sake of discussion, the common Christian belief that the physical body is a vessel for the soul -- that a "sin" constitutes utilizing the God-given body to serve that which is irrelevant to spiritual well-being. There is a quote which goes, "Classicism is the subordination of the parts to the whole; Decadence is the subordination of the whole to the parts," which, while it is not a saying of Christian origin, seems to be an eloquent summary of what is at the crux of the assertion which reasons that temporal pursuits are sins.

Hopefully ya'll will agree, and I've succeeded in building a bridge between us here, because that quote is something that I very much live by. However, our semantic interpretation of the term "whole" will be different as a result of our separate ideologies. My faith is a synthesis of several traditions, which could be sloppily summarized as "Naturalistic Pantheism, Sort Of". So, the way I see things, that "whole" is all that is life (and nothing which ultimately detracts from it). Obviously, this works on several layers -- personal, inter-personal, societal, et cetera. I "disapprove" of decadence (that which ultimately detracts from life). The way you guys would see things would be that the "whole" is the Will of God, if I'm not mistaken.

The difference being that I see the things which my existence immediately effects as being various degrees of temporal. I think that there is in some manner a degree of force which is not temporal (after all, the creation of our universe from any ideological background must be explained as the product of a 0:1 ratio at some point down the line), however all facets of my perception are temporal -- so I do my best, in mortal half-blindness, to serve the highest order that manifests itself. It is for this reason that I am an Environmentalist.

In serving your Lord, however, what is not temporal? The media that faith is transcribed in is temporal -- the apostles, the book, the language, the words. Your very cognitive perception of it is temporal -- might I remind you that you are a scholar of your faith; you discovered your faith by learning about it, just as secluded island-folk do not abide by its laws (unless by total coincidence) by way of unavoidable ignorance. Love between a man and woman is often as temporal as love between two men or two women, yet do they not feel the same sensations of elevation as though they have been freed of their mortal constraints for the duration of their deepest expressions of romance? Do they not feel the same welling of the tear-ducts when they gaze upon their lovers, feeling that even their sacrament of self is too low of a response to the majesty that they feel in eachothers' presence? From whence does the warmth of love arise? And when is that same warmth better called lust?

At what point does a behavior constitute a homosexual one? Many men (obviously women are part of this discussion too, but I hope everyone will be understanding if I shorthand for my own convenience here) with no sexual interest in other men whatsoever engage in anal stimulation within the confines of a heterosexual relationship. They enjoy the presence of objects which must be to some extent phallic to enter their bodies -- at which point does it become homosexual? If you'll excuse the vulgarity made necessary by the content of our discussion, how phallic must the phallus be?

I have a cousin born Nathan who is, and has always been, transgendered. She (she is family, and I choose to address her as the gender that she wishes. I hope you'll understand, at least from a distance) would sit down and tuck her male genitals between her legs everytime she used the restroom because the sight of that wobbling mass dangling between her legs was grotesque and nauseating to her as she mentally rendered her identity as female by default. I have never felt a pity which surpassed seeing my 15 year-old-cousin wiping nausea-induced vomit from her chin and sobbing in tremors because the site of her own body was still -- even after having so many years to cope -- emotionally devastating to her. Her name is Veronica now. She has the genitals of a female. She cried tears of joy when she described losing her virginity to her male fiance. I cried too. Forgive me for my wording, but I cried because I felt like I had witnessed a miracle.

Male. Female. Like the words used to communicate your doctrines of faith, in every passage, these are symbolic meanings placed on a very complex sexual biology which cannot be accurately represented in its entirety through such binaries. I may regret even posing the question, but what is God's Answer for hermaphrodites? Symbols are temporal. We give them meaning. Why would a God which is repulsed by the temporal provide the most widespread manifestation of His Will be known through the temporal?

So, your God endorses temporal love via temporal biological efficiency exclusively. But why then are so many other aberrations from serving the Will of the Lord excused? Playing video games -- a temporal pleasure if I ever heard of one! Why is it alright, even in moderation -- even if viewed as a form of enjoying all that God's creation has to offer -- if no amount of homosexual indulgence whatsoever can be permitted?

From my current perspective, I'm yet to see how the "disapproving" view of consentual, long-term oriented homosexual relationships cannot be at the very least incomprehensibly arbitrary, and damning of nearly all facets of physical existence outside of praise and tempered biological efficiency.