Originally Posted By CuriousConstance Because he personally finds homosexuality distasteful and unnatural. He knows that unless he can come up with an understandable excuse for feeling that way, he will be thought of negatively and be called things like "bigot". So, what to do? What to do? Oh I know! Religion! It's a sin! And look! Others who are just as desperate as I to keep people who are different than they are from taking over their sheltered realities are saying the exact same thing! I really wish it wasn't a sin, so everyone could be treated completely equally, but unfortunately there is no way out of this one! Yayyyayay! I mean, it's really too bad. Just a pity.
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/71466_10151398630526275_78525835_n.jpg
Originally Posted By planodisney This is the last post Im going to make on this thread. By coming back her and responding to others posts, it comes off as if Im trying to rub sal in wounds. Which i am most definitely not. believe me, this is the most uncomfortable I have ever been posting. Look, I understand the revisionist history about words and texts in the Bible to justify certain beliefs or lifestyles. If you arent looking to find something to support your belief and just want the truth, it is actually very clear. i wont even get into the counter argument against the revisions of the meaning of the word arsenokoites. Or scholar Samueal Haas, after researching both sides of the debate, says there the evidence clearly supports the traditional interpretation of the word. real, in depth research into the word brings up numerous historical uses of the word including the Sybilline Oracles and in particular 2.73 But you dont even need that research. there are many things that were and are considered sinful that jesus never mentioned. he never mentioned pedophilia either. And, please dont take this as equating pedophilia with homosexuality. just an example of something so obviously a sin, yet Christ never uttered a word about it. However, the greater proof comes from the understanding we get about this world, Gods creation, who we are in it and Gods ultimate plan for what is BEST after reading and studying Gods word. If one honestly searches for the truth on this matter, there is NO way you can come up with God honoring homosexuality. There are so many passages talking about man and woman, honoring marriage. There are many, many relationships talked about and used as examples in the Bible and everyone of them between a man and a woman. Jesus did however speak of relationships and marriage. "Have you not read that he has made them male and female in the beginning and for this reason a man shall leave his family and join his wife and the two shall become one flesh." Even just trying to translate 1 simple word translated differently in order to support that homosexuality isnt being labeled wicked, requires a ridiculous level of mental gymnastics. Not that it would prove that god honors homosexuality, but just that it isnt being labeled as wicked in that single passage. However, the context of the entire Bible which we gain in the end, leaves ABSOLUTELY no doubt. And skinnerbox, in reference to your interpretation of the old testemant, Jesus said" I have come not to destroy the law, but to fullfil it." The old law realy refers to things of the flesh and the new law to that of the spirit. Jesys clearly made this statement to let the people understand that they were going to have to go EVEN further beyond fleshly obediance and didnt want the crowd to misunderstand that he would be replacing the old moral values, but addressing even more important spiritual values. When Christ died and rose for us, our punishment of death for breaking the laws was carried out so that we wouldnt have to suffer that punishment and our sins were forgiven us,IF WE HAVE A REPENTANT HEART. Look, it is EXTREMELY clear what is an honored lifestyle and relationship by God after reading the Bible and what is not. ANY reasonable person who isnt just looking for something, anything to hold onto to support a particular belief, but is just looking for truth, CANT come to the conclusion that homosexuality is NOT considered sin or that a sexual relationship betweeen a male and male, or a female and female, is honored by God. I could go one and on about referances, relationships given as examples in the Bible, the fact that homosexuality would be the only physical or sexual deviance from the old testemant to be changed into honorable by the death and resurrection of Christ. The evidence, if you believe the Bible, is absolutely overwhelming. If we are believers, we dont get to pick and choose what to believe. Particularly if we are bible believing Christians. What good is a religion of our choosing. I want truth, not something that just superficially supports a God given longing i have fo something greater yet make sure not to challenge what i am comfortable with. Im not going to post one more comment on here or talk about homosexuality ever again on this site, even if asked for a rebuttal. However, I will check back tomorrow to read anything you guys want to say to me on the issue. I just think that after making the comments I have, considering the audience here, I owe it to you to do so.
Originally Posted By planodisney Im sorry about misspellings and punctiation in that last post. I am also writing my company marketing goals for the month of May while doing this.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "planodisney Sun 4/21/2013 10:49a Im sorry" Fixed it for you. Because you should be sorry. You're also horrendously, unequivocally, shamefully, stupendously wrong. Do yourself a favor. Learn about human sexuality. You obviously don't know the first thing about it. Refusing to learn DOES make you. Your "sincerity" just comes off as nauseating.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder Fixed it again. Refusing to learn DOES make you a bigot. No question.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<If one honestly searches for the truth on this matter, there is NO way you can come up with God honoring homosexuality.>> According to your religion, plano... God created the animals. God created man. Myriads of species of animals have demonstrated homosexual behavior for thousands of years. Man has demonstrated homosexual behavior for thousands of years. Therefore... homosexual behavior in both God-created animals and God-created man is by God's intent and God's design. If God didn't want the animals to engage in homosexual behavior, God would not have designed them that way. Why shouldn't the same logic apply to man as well? Constance nailed it. You don't like gays, don't want them around, and you use twisted ideology from a religion different than your own to justify your bigotry. The only consolation I have from dealing with people like you is that you're all finally losing your death grip on our government and won't be able to codify your bigotry into our civil rights anymore.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox BTW... does anyone else have trouble with the way plano cherry-picks those parts of the Bible he conveniently wishes to adhere to, while disregarding the rest he doesn't like? It's the one major pet peeve of mine regarding 'Old Testament Christians' like him in attempting to re-interpret Jesus' interpretation of Old Testament rabbinical law. And we're still waiting for plano to describe some concrete real-world examples of why homosexuality is a "detriment to society." The Yes on Prop 8 lawyers couldn't come up with any in their court battles. I'm guessing plano can't site any, either. Just warmed over re-interpreted scripture, which he firmly believes EVERYONE should be forced to adhere to, no matter their own personal beliefs. So much for freedom of/from religion.
Originally Posted By doombuggy "The only consolation I have from dealing with people like you is that you're all finally losing your death grip on our government and won't be able to codify your bigotry into our civil rights anymore." BINGO!!!!! separation of church and state works both ways. Government can't tell you how to pray and the church can't tell us what rights we can have. The days of the church telling us what we can and can not do ended centuries ago. If being a liberal means equal rights for ALL Americans then so be it. "extremely detrimental to our society." I still don't know how you think this nor have you explained how. Honest law abiding tax paying gays help society. Our tax dollars spend just as good as yours. And I got to thinking your comments could be VERY harmful to some one that's already having a hard time coming to grips with their sexuality. Some teen reads that, they are already being bullied at school and your comment pushes them over the edge. The bible is being brought up...well how can you take a book that says the the world was populated by incest and inbreeding not once but twice with out question? But being gay is wrong and a sin.
Originally Posted By mele If all humans are sinners and all sins are equal in God's eyes, I would like for people like plano to tell us which civil rights he would like to surrender. After all, he sees gays as his equal, he admits to and abhors his own sins...he should have to give up one of the rights he currently has. Considering his sin is so detrimental to society, it's only fair that he suffer publicly in some way as people insist gays must. You know, since we're all equal.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <If one honestly searches for the truth on this matter, there is NO way you can come up with God honoring homosexuality.> You're wrong. I looked into this so much deeper than you would ever have had to, when I was younger, that it isn't even funny. I searched for that truth tremendously when I was younger, on a level you would never have had to approach, since I was both Christian and gay. And I discovered that not only did God love me as I am, he made me as I am. And my love for my husband has brought me closer to God, as all love will. You probably can't fathom that, but it's my lived truth. <Even just trying to translate 1 simple word translated differently in order to support that homosexuality isnt being labeled wicked, requires a ridiculous level of mental gymnastics.> Noticing that the same word used in Leviticus to describe men lying with men is the same word used to describe eating shellfish is not mental gymnastics; it is simple observation. Insisting that the two usages just a couple of pages apart would mean entirely different things; THAT's actually what requires mental gymnastics. You go on and on about how "any" reasonable person could not possibly reach a conclusion different from yours. Your post is actually instructive in that it shows someone who just can't fathom himself being wrong on this, even though surely he must know that by now not only have scads of reasonable people (straight and gay) reached a different conclusion, but entire Christian denominations (!) have done so. It is the very picture of sticking one's fingers in one's ears and saying "la la la, can't hear you." In a way it's not your fault - I imagine your church does the same thing. I have visited the churches my aunt and some other relatives go to periodically over the years when I've visited. (Southern Baptist and Assemblies of God.) And talked to the ministers and congregants afterwards. The tone has changed markedly over the years on any number of things. Race is the obvious one (you probably don't want to know what was said from that pulpit in the 60s' - and fervently believed by both the minister and the flock, who believed they had Biblical backing on it as "obvious" as the backing you believe you have now), but on other matters as well. You should hear what was once said about Jews. Or Catholics for that matter. The place of women. They've made progress on all these fronts. The minister is still stuck on gay people, although many of the congregants (especially the younger ones) aren't having it any more. <Look, it is EXTREMELY clear what is an honored lifestyle and relationship by God after reading the Bible and what is not. > Really? Solomon, certainly an honored personage in the Bible, had 700 wives and 300 concubines. If one owned female slaves, sex with them was permissible. Deuteronomy says that if a virgin is raped, she MUST marry her rapist. And if a woman is found not to be a virgin when she is married, she must be stoned. Not a non-virgin male, of course. Just a non-virgin woman. Much of the problem here is with those who believe every word of the Bible to be literal and essentially written by God vs. those who (like me) understand that it was written by flawed humans struggling to understand God, attributing to Him human attributes and prejudices He almost certainly wouldn't have (He seems awfully jealous and petty in much of the OT), following oral history over hundreds of years before it was written down in what in some cases amounted to a giant game of "telephone." I don't know if you believe the world is actually 6,000 years old (as the genealogy back to Adam would have it), but if you do... you're wrong. Belief's got nothing to do with it. It's just wrong. Genesis is a metaphor. Much of the Bible is. Jesus introduces his stories as parables, but much of the OT is as well; just not introduced as such. Some believe that one can't be a "real" Christian if one doesn't believe every word of the Bible as literal. Others understand that it was written by scads of us flawed humans over many centuries, sometimes for very specific reasons. Homosexuality as intrinsic to humans (as opposed to the assumption that everyone was born straight with some insisting on deviating from that for some unknown reason) simply wasn't understood at the time. Look, I don't think I'm going to change your mind on this; not today anyway. But it can happen. It happened with my relatives' congregations on other matters over the years; having been there a couple of years ago, it's happening with this one too among the young. Reality is trumping poorly-arrived-at dogma once again.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <And we're still waiting for plano to describe some concrete real-world examples of why homosexuality is a "detriment to society." > Oh yeah, I'm still waiting on that one too. I outlined a typical day of mine a while back. Still wondering which part of that is so detrimental. ecdc seemed to think it was the part where I walked my dog.
Originally Posted By planodisney Ok skinner, I will give you my answer to why I feel it is a negative on society. My reasons are mainly twofold 1. I believe it is detrimental to a society when we start becoming more obsessed with affirming everyone than in collectively teaching our children that there is an ideal standard to live by. I believe a mom and dad together raising families IS the ideal. We become so afraid of offending anyone that we are willing to compromise what best supports a healthy society for the sake of being accepted. This applies to so much of what is happening in our society other than just the rise of gay relationships. 2. I am one of those crazy Christians who believe that God has had his hand on this nation since our founding. Blessing us like no other nation. I also believe that we have turned our back on him with rampant immorality, greed, materialism and atheism. I believe that God already has, or will take his hand off blessing off of us and let us suffer the fruits of our own works. However, I have increasingly been coming to the realization that whole our founders would have never even remotely considered homosexuality or gay marriage becoming an issue, they nevertheless put nothing in our constitution about it. Therefore, if collectively as a society we are becoming accepting of homosexual relationships, I realy don't see how we can deny that right. I am in no way in favor of a religious state and fully support separation of church and state. So, as much as I religiously disagree with the practice, Im not sure there is a constitutional argument that can be made to deny the right.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>I believe that God already has, or will take his hand off blessing off of us and let us suffer the fruits of our own works.<< Your God has the ability to stop suffering and he doesn't? Your god is a horrible being.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 #1 only makes sense if gay people were actually straight people choosing to be gay and thus not living up to the ideal. But we're not. Gay people exist. So being that we're here, what are we supposed to do? Marry people of the opposite sex? Great. If I'd done that I'd have made myself miserable AND made the poor woman I was lying to miserable at the same time. And prevented her from marrying a straight man she actually could have been happy with. Should we be celibate our whole lives? (I've heard this as a suggestion.) I suppose I could be but there's no real good reason for it. Should we pair up and live AS de facto married, but not insist on equal treatment under the law? This is better - at least it gets us into loving relationships and is essentially where we are in most places now. But ultimately that's "separate but equal" which is never really equal. Having a mom and dad raise kids is great. Totally works for straight people. But not everybody is straight. This seems obvious, but those who go on about "the ideal" seem to want to ignore that pesky little fact. And those of us who aren't straight still need love, and still should be treated as equal citizens, and there's no good reason why we should accept anything less on either front. #2 really is, well, kinda crazy IMO. I believe in God, but I don't believe He picks lottery winners, or football winners (no matter how hard the team prays) or even winners and losers in weightier matters such as war (remembering Lincoln's famous "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.") And I don't think He picks winners and losers among nations in non-wartime either. I certainly don't believe He sends hurricanes or earthquakes as punishments, or "takes away his protection" to allow 9/11 to happen as idiots like Falwell and Robertson would have it. I really hope you're not one of those guys, and are more a "our country has done pretty well, and we should count our blessings" kind of guy; because once you get into specifics it falls apart pretty fast.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<I believe it is detrimental to a society when we start becoming more obsessed with affirming everyone than in collectively teaching our children that there is an ideal standard to live by.>> OK, I don't need to read your post any further. You just lost any modicum of respect I might have had for you, slim as that might have been. Where do you get off defining what the "ideal standard to live by" is? Why is YOUR standard any better than anyone else's standard? Who the F do you think you are to determine this? Christianity is NOT the state sanctioned religion of America. So why do you act as if it is? All of you religious types with your "my god is better than your god" mindset need to listen up. Your beliefs are killing our planet. Literally. This "my god is better than your god" attitude that has cost the lives of hundreds of millions of innocent people over the centuries through war and holocaust. This is the attitude that makes it impossible for women and children to be treated as equals to men and not to be sold or enslaved or relegated to the status of property. This is the attitude that destroys the acceptance of science in favor of religious dogma that in turn keeps the population ignorant to the destruction of the environment and its fallout of famines, floods, droughts, and the like. This is the attitude that any modern first world citizen should drop like a bad cold. There is no excuse for it in light of what we know about the world. There is no excuse for it since we're all responsible for how the planet will survive, moving forward. We live in a sardine can that's growing smaller every day. We don't have the entire universe to choose from regarding our living arrangements. All of us are in it together. We will sink or swim depending upon how we treat each other and the planet. Together we survive or together we fail. So the sooner you religious types stop treating everyone who doesn't adhere to your beliefs as second class ignorant a-holes and start respecting other people's intelligent choices regarding morality, ethics, and the treatment of others, the better for all of us. Including yourselves.
