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Showing posts with label Homosexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homosexuality. Show all posts

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Thinking OF Another Group


































As well as conservative Christians...:)

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Sunday, February 02, 2014

Homosexuality Is Not A Sin According To These Christian Denominations

Here is a list of Christian denominations that do not consider homosexuality or transgenderism to be sins. Take a close look at the list and you may find some surprises. There are some very mainstream faiths that think that the Hebrew text and history that the word sodomy literally means "male temple prostitute", and not a translation for homosexual.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Interesting Thread

Check out this thread over at the Catholic answers forum. Look familiar?

And this was 9 years ago!!

Monday, January 13, 2014

Picking And Choosing

Evangelical Christians continually rip liberal Christians by saying that they pick and choose what verses of the Bible to follow and which ones not to follow. This is ridiculous when one considers, for example what God told Moses in Leviticus.

“‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head. (Leviticus 20:9)

‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death. (Leviticus 20:10)

“‘If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire. (Leviticus 21:09)

Considering I don't see any conservative Christians putting their kids to death for mouthing off to them, they pick and choose as well just like every other Christian. So, their protestations are completely ridiculous. In fact, nearly all of the 600+ commands of the Old Testament are no longer applicable today. Most Christians do not follow them unless they are Messianic Jews. What remains applicable today are the Ten Commandments + Jesus's New Commandment.

It would seem, then, that the issue of homosexuality should also be swept away with archaic OT laws and commands as it is mentioned with all the rest of them. The problem is that homosexuality is mentioned in the New Testament in both 1 Corinthians 6:9 and Romans 1:28. Paul, not God, is talking here so that should be the first clue as to how much weight it should hold. Further, something has clearly been lost in the translation from Greek to English as noted in this excellent piece from St. John's Metropolitan Community Church.

If Paul had wanted to condemn homosexual behavior in general, the word for it at the time was paiderasste. What he did, rather than simply use one of the many existing, quite precise Greek terms for aspects of homosexuality (or for homosexuality in general) – words that he would have been quite aware of – is to coin a new word from the Greek translation of Leviticus 20:13. 

In the Septuagint, Leviticus 20:13 is something like hos an koimethe meta arsenos koiten gunaikos (And not lie-down with mankind [in] beds [of] a woman/wife). Notice the words arsenos koiten together there? It would have surprised no one for the scholar Paul to have compounded the noun arseno with the following Greek verb koiten into a new word, thereby repeating the prohibition of the abuse of temple prostitution in Leviticus – and it would be no surprise that his learned audience had no need of a translation or an explanation of the new word for an old idea; they, too, would have been familiar with the passage in Leviticus. (This would not be Paul’s only reference to earlier Scriptural phrasings; for example, when he wanted a phrase for ‘female’ and ‘male’ other than more common pairs, he used thelusi and arsen, words that had appeared together in the narrative of creation in Genesis.) 

Once Paul’s warnings helped temple prostitution disappear from the landscape, the force of his words very likely caused later Christians to extend the meaning of arsenokoites to cover other behaviors that Christians found regrettable. Early Christians and Jews also applied the word to incest and orgiastic conduct. For a time it designated masturbation (arseno is singular, as masturbation generally is…). The only certain statement that can be made about the word is that it has changed in its perceived meaning and translation over time.

St. John's Metropolitan Community Church also offers this link and this link for more background on the two words that Paul uses.  Given this evidence, it's quite clear that society, not God, decided that homosexuality was a sin and put that bias into later English translations of the Bible. This means that our changing culture is not violating anything in accepting gay Christians as how God made them as opposed to evil sinners who need to be deprogrammed.

When Jesus said "Keep My Commandments," He meant it quite literally. The rest of it can either be viewed as kind advice (Psalms and Proverbs) or a code of laws that no longer applies to today's society.

Friday, January 10, 2014


The Bible and Homosexuality

I found this site on religious tolerance a while back and recently rediscovered it when I had to go to a backup of my bookmarks (beware of the "search conduit" malware---grrrr). Check out what they have to say about the Bible and homosexuality.

Seven or eight main biblical passages that may deal with same-gender sexual behavior are described below. They are often referred to as "clobber" passages, because they are often used to attack persons with a homosexual or bisexual orientation. They have been interpreted very differently by various religious denominations, para-church groups, and traditions. All groups recognize that these biblical passages condemn some types of sexual behavior but there is no consensus within a given religion whether they refer to consensual sexual behavior by persons with a homosexual or bisexual orientation, and whether it refers to all people or only to persons with a heterosexual orientation.

Clobber passages...love it...

Here's an interesting comparison...

Among the full spectrum of faith groups, from the most conservative to the most liberal:

  • Most conservative faith groups tend to interpret all of the clobber passages as condemning all forms of same-gender sexual behavior, whether by men or women. They do this, even though only one of the seven or eight passages actually refers to women, and that sole passage refers only to women with a heterosexual orientation. 
  • Most liberal and progressive faith groups tend to interpret the same passages -- in their original languages of Hebrew and Greek -- as referring to: temple prostitution, how it is unacceptable for two men to have sex if they do it on a woman's bed, kidnapping slaves, adults sexually abusing children, engaging in sexual behavior that is against one's sexual orientation and basic nature, and/or engaging in bestiality -- sexual activity with a non-human species. 
  • Most mainline denominations and faith groups are split on these passages' interpretation with part of the membership taking the conservative position, and another part taking the liberal/progressive interpretation. 
  • We have never found a faith group that accepts same-gender sexual behavior by lesbians while condemning such behavior by males, even though that could be a logical interpretation of Romans 1.
That pretty much sums it up. Check out all the sub links as well, especially this one:)