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Fellow Liberals, Please Stop Claiming Jesus Accepts LGBT People

 
 
 
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Potoooooooo

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris...us-accep_b_7051550.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices

There's a troubling trend in liberal America: the desire to marginalize right-wing Christians by claiming they don't understand their own religion. While this is true in a number of respects, it doesn't change the fact that they're right about something: Paul condemns queer folks. And there isn't a shred of evidence that Jesus was a fan either, assuming he existed.

I'm all for dismissing opinions that are damaging and harmful. But we can't do so by being openly insincere and insecure in the process. Queer identity, as it's commonly understood (if it even is commonly understood today), wasn't a concept until very recent history. The entire Bible had been finished for over a millennium by the time the word "gay" came to exist.

What the Bible does do is prescribe behavior. Gay sex is not once directly described in a positive manner, and it's explicitly condemned in the Hebrew texts. When Christians tell you that their book calls you an "abomination," they're more right than wrong. Despite how infrequently it occurs, clobber passages are there.

But there's an incredibly good reason LGBT folks and their allies should agree with anti-gay Christians that the Bible condemns them: if we bother arguing that the Bible supports us, we're conceding its validity as a moral text. And once we free ourselves from its shackles, fundamentalists can just use it to abuse the next minority group unfortunate enough to stumble across their path.
 
Point of order - the entire bible won't have been 'finished for over a millennium' for at least another thousand years.

Even the KJV won't have been 'finished for over a millennium until several years after 2600AD - that's about 590 years away.

Conceding the historical fact that the bible is unfinished - and that even the most popular older versions are only a few hundred years old - in favour of the popular lie that the thing is contemporary with the events it purports to describe, is to concede too much.

Not only is invalid as a moral text; it is also invalid as an historical primary source.
 
Potoooooooo said:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris...us-accep_b_7051550.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices

There's a troubling trend in liberal America: the desire to marginalize right-wing Christians by claiming they don't understand their own religion. While this is true in a number of respects, it doesn't change the fact that they're right about something: Paul condemns queer folks. And there isn't a shred of evidence that Jesus was a fan either, assuming he existed.

I'm all for dismissing opinions that are damaging and harmful. But we can't do so by being openly insincere and insecure in the process. Queer identity, as it's commonly understood (if it even is commonly understood today), wasn't a concept until very recent history. The entire Bible had been finished for over a millennium by the time the word "gay" came to exist.

What the Bible does do is prescribe behavior. Gay sex is not once directly described in a positive manner, and it's explicitly condemned in the Hebrew texts. When Christians tell you that their book calls you an "abomination," they're more right than wrong. Despite how infrequently it occurs, clobber passages are there.

But there's an incredibly good reason LGBT folks and their allies should agree with anti-gay Christians that the Bible condemns them: if we bother arguing that the Bible supports us, we're conceding its validity as a moral text. And once we free ourselves from its shackles, fundamentalists can just use it to abuse the next minority group unfortunate enough to stumble across their path.
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The Bible is a confusing mess of contradictory advice. In order to be able to use the Bible at all as some sort of moral guidance a Christian needs to cherry pick. LGBT Christians will of course cherry pick the bits that support their cause. So I think you´re wrong. Super wrong.

The Bible also says that it´s easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than enter into the kingdom of heaven. If Christians followed that advice the Tea Party would be utterly fucked.
 
DrZoidberg said:
The Bible also says that it´s easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than enter into the kingdom of heaven. If Christians followed that advice the Tea Party would be utterly fucked.
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I don't see why. If you have money, you can just hire somebody to build a very large needle with a big eye. Walking through that would be easy. Unless you have gout or something because you spent all your cash on wine and sugary foods - then you'd be fucked.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
DrZoidberg said:
The Bible also says that it´s easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than enter into the kingdom of heaven. If Christians followed that advice the Tea Party would be utterly fucked.
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I don't see why. If you have money, you can just hire somebody to build a very large needle with a big eye. Walking through that would be easy. Unless you have gout or something because you spent all your cash on wine and sugary foods - then you'd be fucked.
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You need no more guidance, my son. You´re thinking (and reading the Bible) like a Christian already.

/Heaven-bound
 
I'm in overall agreement with the OP. The trouble is, dialogue with believers on their holy text is fruitless. I've read Christian apologists who think the Bible is antislavery when it is clearly no such thing. They're not only cherry-pickers, they are truth-stranglers. Also, to be a consistent Bible believer, you have to believe that genocide is a morally neutral concept and that when the skybeast orders it, it's a moral event that's necessary to improve mankind (which is what Heinrich Himmler would say.) Dialogue is fucked, with considerations like these. And again, as Dr Z posts above, you can prove diametrically opposite points with selected Bible verses. I say, kill the beast with snark!!!
 
Not being gay I don't really have personal insight but I've always just assumed that the reason this argument is made has more to do with gay folks wanting to be accepted in the christian community. This article seems to be written from the perspective of a skeptic more than the perspective of someone who is gay.
 
My personal fave is that the founding documents for the US are inspired by the Bible, yet you'll be hard pressed to find anything in the Bill Rights represented in the Bible. Nor a representational Democracy as well. And the whole "Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness"? Yeah... not really in there either.
 
That really is the problem. Neither camp, fundamentalist or liberal of ANY religion, can draw on facts and reality to substantiate the argument that this (what ever this is) is what God wants. The fact remains though that in this case, like many others, the ones adhering closer to their holy books are the fundamentalists, because that what fundies do. People are often critical of arguments stating that liberal religion, although preferable often provides cover for the fundamentalist sects, but it's true.

To use a less than sensitive analogy (as that's all I can think of at the moment). Even if you win in the Special Olympics, you're still handicapped. This is why it's better to use reason based arguments for any conflict.
 
Christianity periodically gets revised in different ways. I don't think pro-LGBT Christians are arguing anything that radical in that light. If it's a question of political manoeuvring, this sort of progressive adjustment is probably preferable to trying to ideological purism.

But I tend to stay out of it. It bothers me more than it really should when people make up their own evolutionary science regarding sexual orientation and gender identity (especially religious conservatives); I try not to do the same in reverse to religious folks seeing as I have no relevant credentials.
 
Atheos said:
Not being gay I don't really have personal insight but I've always just assumed that the reason this argument is made has more to do with gay folks wanting to be accepted in the christian community. This article seems to be written from the perspective of a skeptic more than the perspective of someone who is gay.
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I agree. The point about how it concedes that the Bible is a moral text doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would resonate with those who feel that the Bible should be a moral text. The gay Christians don't want to move away from Christianity, they want to be embraced by Christianity and cherry pick the tenets of the faith in such a way that it's accepting of them. The fact that the text of the Bible is directly contradictory to this is about as important as it was to anti-slavery and women's rights advocates who wanted Jesus on the side of their arguments - those parts are just ignored and other parts are taken out of context so as to support their cause.

It would be nice if the gays just said "fuck the lot of you" and wandered off, but many of them just don't want to do that.
 
Atheos said:
Not being gay I don't really have personal insight but I've always just assumed that the reason this argument is made has more to do with gay folks wanting to be accepted in the christian community.
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It's not just christians, it's the same for jews and some muslims. They are in denial. There was a documentary about homosexual jews in Israel. The lengths they would go to try to have their lifestyle accepted by the faith was cringe worthy. One guy went to about four different rabbis pleading that the texts said the gayness was actually kosher only to be told each time that no, it's not kosher. The guy would not take no for an answer and moved on to the next rabbi who told him the same thing.
 
krypton iodine sulfur said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
My personal fave is that the founding documents for the US are inspired by the Bible...
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Not just that, but your laws as well, 'cause only Christians in all the world were able to figure out it's not a great idea to permit stealing and murder in society... unless you have a nifty loophole, of course.
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The way I put it:

The freedoms that are locked into the Bill of Rights and our form of Government are wholly unfounded in the Bible. The restrictions on the rights of certain people in our laws were derived straight from the Bible.
 
While we're at it, should we stop claiming that pork or mixed fabric is OK, or that Sunday is Sabbath?
If you're going to cherry-pick, don't complain when someone else picks different cherries.
 
Potoooooooo said:
But there's an incredibly good reason LGBT folks and their allies should agree with anti-gay Christians that the Bible condemns them: if we bother arguing that the Bible supports us, we're conceding its validity as a moral text. And once we free ourselves from its shackles, fundamentalists can just use it to abuse the next minority group unfortunate enough to stumble across their path.
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Eh.
In fifty years, I figure most of Christainity will be claiming that sexual equality was their idea in the first place.

They'll quote: John 13:23 One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus' side,

Hell, with John 19:26-27, they'll claim that they've supported gay marriage the whole time:

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!”
Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home

Because how do you get a new mother except by marrying into the family? Huh?

Forty quatloos on the Gays Should Thank Christains apologists inside of 50 years. Or within 5 years of electing our first gay president, whichever comes first. Christainity is nothing if not adaptable to changing realities.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
My personal fave is that the founding documents for the US are inspired by the Bible, yet you'll be hard pressed to find anything in the Bill Rights represented in the Bible. Nor a representational Democracy as well. And the whole "Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness"? Yeah... not really in there either.
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How can you not understand how the Bible inspired the constitution and the bill of rights?

One of the ten commandments is to kill anyone who practices a different religion, that's how the founding fathers knew to put freedom of religion in the first amendment. Every single part of the constitution and the ten commandments came directly from the Bible in similar fashion. How else do you explain the constitution being written so soon after the death of Christ?

*snicker*
 
Jesus is a semi-fictional character who, as far as we know, never said a word about homosexuality.

To claim one knows what this long dead person feels about the subject is the highest form of insanity.

Only when humans put these kinds of insanities behind them and enter adulthood are they worth anything.
 
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