Why should evangelical Christians treat gays with respect?

Great Debates
1

This is something I don’t understand: Falwell, Dobson, Robertson, etc., constantly state that homosexuality is a grievous moral sin who should be denied legal rights, etc., “though gays should be treated with respect as individuals” (the evangelical equivalent of “not that there’s anything wrong with that”).

What I don’t understand is this: most of the same Bible verses that condemn homosexuality (or, more specifically, that condemn male on male homosexual acts) state in equally uncertain terms that the homosexuals should be killed. Given that millions of evangelicals including our president and the men mentioned above fully support the death penalty, wouldn’t “treating gays with respect” and reaching out to them “with Christian love” be, essentially, going against the will of G-d? And if the answer is “Christ says we shouldn’t judge others”, then why judge gays at all?

I’m really not trying to be flip, but I honestly don’t understand this.

2

The above should be read as “in equally unequivocal terms”, not “uncertain terms”.

And your Dope Workplace Safety Bingo number for today is N-22. That’s N as in norelco, 22.

3

Because if they said what was really in their hearts – that homosexuals should be stoned to death or burned at the stake – the majority of the populace would recognize them for the hate-mongers they really are and turn on them in a New York second(*).

The only gay-bashing “Christian leader” who says what he really thinks is Fred Phelps, and look at how much support he gets…

(* = Defined as the amount of time in New York City between a traffic light turning green and the car behind you honking his horn :wink: )

4

Christianity’s namesake preached love.

Show me one place Christ said gay was bad.

5

The Falwells and the Dobsons don’t actually feel any genuine respect or compassion for homosexuals as equal human beings but I will grant they they probably don’t really wish violence on them either. They’re idiots but I don’t think they’re complete psychopaths (except for Phelps).

There’s also an element of CYA in play for them. They don’t want to risk assuming any civil or criminal liability if another college kid gets crucified on another barbwire fence so they’re careful to call for “respect,” but in their case that just means “we know they’re disgusting perverts and sinners but we shouldn’t kill them or hit them with bats because that wouldn’t be Christian and God will fry them anyway.”

6

He didn’t, nor did he say it was good or neutral- he didn’t speak to the issue at all. (He had a LOT of things to say about divorce and remarriage- in fact every canonical gospel and some of the gnostics cite him as saying ABOUT REMARRYING WHILE YOUR EX-SPOUSE IS STILL ALIVE… DON’T DO IT, but somehow this has become majorly downplayed over the centuries among all but conservative Catholics and a few super fundamentalist Protestants (and I’m still working on how Ted Kennedy got an anullment [or my former boss, who got three]). Could it be that the fact there are far more remarried divorcees registered to vote or in the ranks of Christian ministers (John Hagee, Jim & Tami Fay Bakker, Robert Tilton, etc.) or among right wing Christian politicians (Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, Henry Hyde*, etc.) than there are gays? Nah… sure it’s a coincidence.

However, if there teachings are limited to those of Christ, then why say anything about gays at all? Jesus grew up in a culture heavily influenced by Hellenism and reading the scriptures of the Tanakh, he would most definitely have known that homosexual acts existed and could certainly have taken a stand, but chose not to. So I don’t understand why 1) gays have become the new n*ggers for the right wing and 2) why they don’t just follow their God all the way on the prognosis.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly glad they don’t, but why more people don’t question the logic is beyond me.

7

Jesus showed love and respect to all sinners. Just like we don’t stone adulterers and prostitutes today, followers of Jesus must show compassion and recognize the inherent dignity of all people. Even evangelical christians know that mistreatment and hatred of other sinners is wrong.

8

Then why does the U.S. have a higher percentage of its population imprisoned than any other western nation? Why do evangelical Christians usually support the death penalty or bomb other nations that have not attacked us?

9

Actually I’m not sure they do. Like most of us they believe what they want to believe and will read from the bible the parts that support what they believe.

I think they really do believe that not only is homosexuality wrong but that God hates homosexuals.

10

Gotta admit I don’t really see a connection between hating sinners and putting people in jail.

11

I agree with Imasquare, that people can pick and choose little snippets here and there out of the bible to support whatever it is they wish to justify. People who want women to play a lesser role than men in society can find “support” for that, people who want to start wars find “support” for that, and then justify it by saying God is on their side, and like the subject here, people who are homophobic feel their prejudice is justified by God.

And since Christians generally seem to feel they have the market cornered on God, which means they are right and everyone else is wrong, (in their mind) it magnifies their feelings and actions.

To quote Christian dogma, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

So, if homosexuality is a sin (not my personal view anymore), then what makes it any higher degree of sin than adultery? And believe me, before I stopped going to Baptist church, there was plenty of that going on! One of the many things that drove me away was the hypocrasy of it all. As I began to mature, I began to think, within my narrow little Christian mind, that a sin was sin, and homosexuality was no worse or better than any other sin, so why single out them for condemnation? Because after all, glottony, jealousy and greed are also sins, right? We aren’t singling out anyone who does that, so why homosexuals? Now of course, I have even moved beyond that line of thinking, thank goodness.

I just think that people should spend more time worrying about what they don’t know about the bible and their religion and educating themselves, and less time using it as a sledgehammer to bash other people in order to somehow elevate themselves. Does that really make you a better person?

Yes, unless you are prepared to start making people wear scarlett letters again, or tying obese folks to stakes, then you should treat gays with repsect.

12

For that matter why do the right-wing fundies get more upset with gays then with people who eat shrimp or who wear cotton poly blends? Those are also abominations in the eyes of the Lord (the exact same Hebrew word, toevah is used to describe men who sleep with men and the eating of shellfish and many other proscribed activities in the books of Moses). Why don’t we see Baptists picketing Red Lobster as a house of sin?

13

I think most of them fall into the “love the sinner, hate the sin” camp. As morally bankrupt as Falwell and Bush are, I don’t believe either of them is cold enough in the heart to want to incite violence against gays.

14

You know, while I have absolutely no patience or use for the evangelical condemnation of gays, and think that what they are in fact doing is calling down condemnation on themselves, there is a legitimate answer to this in their theology, and in fairness to them, it probably ought to be addressed.

According to their formulation of moral theology, we are free from the Mosaic Law, but not so that we may sin, but that we may live lives founded in Christ. Which means that those “moral” propositions of the Law that are reiterated or referenced in the New Testament are still binding, but not the others, and in particular not the food ones, which were specifically abrogated by Jesus’s teaching and Peter’s vision. And as you are no doubt well aware, their readings of Romans and I Corinthians are taken to condemn “homosexuality” and “the homosexual lifestyle.”

It is, of course, not anywhere near what I understand to be proper moral theology, but it at least deserves to be stated clearly in refutation of the gay sex/shellfish argument.

15

What does the imprisonment rate have to do with anything?

The Noachic Law for all humanity (Gen 9) has God commanding the death penalty for murder. The New Testament does not retract this command.

Germany didn’t attack us in WW II. Why do you love Hit GODWIN INTERRUPTS THIS SENTENCE :smiley:

Poly actually gives the best answer to the OP, tho MaceMan’s a close second.

To answer other posts-

The food laws of Leviticus were definitely limited to Jews- especially in light of the New Testament. The sex laws of Leviticus weren’t necessarily limited to Jews, the same chapter (18) condemns adultery, incest & bestiality. It also notes that because the Canaanites practice all these, they are being expelled from the land God gave to Israel- thus showing an application to these laws to Gentiles. (The exception may be sex during menstruation- at any rate, the penalty for that was to be ceremonially unclean for a day until ritually cleansed.) Also, the ban on homosexual acts is repeated in the NT (Romans 1 & I Corinthians 6), unlike the food laws.

Jesus didn’t speak a word against bestiality, either (neither did Paul for that matter) or heroin addiction or many other things because they weren’t issues to His Jewish audience. The Jewish stance was completely clear on that issue. Paul address gay sex precisely because it was an issue among the Gentiles.

16

“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make [pro-choice] an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say: you helped this happen.”
–Jerry Falwell, explaining why the 9/11 attacks happened, 9/13/01

“AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”
–Jerry Falwell

Is there really an appreciable difference between attitudes like this and inciting violence against gays?

17

First off, I’d need a cite for this:

I know some do; but I’m not sure about most. But that’s irrelevant; as Poly said, as there are lots of sins punishable by death in the OT; none that are held so in the NT. Stoning just isn’t done anymore; that doesn’t mean adultery or idol-worshipping or what have you isn’t still a sin.

Another thing you’re going to have to accept is that, for Christians, the letters of Paul are 100% as much scripture as the words of Christ. You may not like that; I don’t. But if you’re trying to understand Evangelicals, you do yourself no good by looking at Christ and ignoring Paul. And Paul, unfortunately, was quite clear in re: homosexuality. Poly will certainly have an alternative interpretation of the Pauline texts; but that’s neither here nor there.

Finally, you’re going to have to deal with the fact that many evangelicals sincerely do like and respect homosexuals as people. Sorry to tell you that, but there it is. I wouldn’t call myself an evangelical now (or here), but when I was the Bible College I attended sent me and others to volunteer at AIDS hospices (no, not preaching) and the president of the school condemned gay-bashing as a sin. Neither of those was in any conflict wth the evangelical view on homosexual activity.

FWIW, I have an uncle who divorced and remarried. I think it was morally wrong, and if he ever asks me I’ll say so (truth be told, I think at this point he might agree). But he’s never asked, and I have no problem relating to him and his wife on a personal level, nor do I see why I should. It is exactly because I believe in sin, and am well aware of all the rotten things I’ve done in my life, that I’m not going to cast stones.

18

Paul never addressed gay sex in his Epistles. Those passages which are usually mistranslated as condemning homosexuals are probably condemnations only of the (then common) practice of married men patronizing young male prostitutes. It all comes down to the interpretation of an obscure Greek word (arsenokoites) which seems to have been coined by Paul and the exact meaning of which is still unknown. The word is found subsequent to Paul mostly on vice lists which do not provide enough context to supply a definition but the word usually appears in close proximity to prostitution. Defining the word as referring to passive male prostitutes is problematic because the suffix koites in compounds was always used to designate the penetrative partner in a sexual act, not the receptive. Matters are also complicated by the fact that there are at least two occasions when the word can be found to refer to heterosexual sex. In one case, it is used to describe male prostitutes with female clients, and on another occasion some men are described as enganging in arsenokoites with their wives.

The word is also used in The Apology of Aristides in conjuction with the rape of Ganymede ( a boy) by Zeus.

The evidence then is too sparse and too contradictory to provide us with a clear definition. It can’t mean “gay sex” because it was used at least sometimes for hetero sex. The weight of the evidence seems to be that it meant pederasty - especially as it pertained to the practice of using “rent boys” (who were mostly slaves) but the meaning may have broadened to mean anal sex or other things. The controversial Yale historian, John Boswell, thought that it referred to active male prostitutes who performed with either men or women but also suggested that it could have sometimes referred to sexually aggressive behavior or rape.

I think the connection with male prostitution is pretty clear, and if it wasn’t for the one gigolo reference I would be completely confident that Paul was only condemning pederasty. I think the cultural context of Paul’s audience supports that as well. It was a common practice in hellenistic cities and is plausibly something Paul would have felt compelled to address.

In any case, a general definition of aresonokoitai as homosexuals cannot be supported by the available evidence.

19

Sampiro, you would do very well to pick up a book or two by Tony Campolo. He might persuade you that “Evangelical” is a broader term than you’ve been led to expect.

20

I think there is. I don’t believe there’s a quote of Falwell advocating active violence against the left. There’s a difference between saying we’re all worthless scum and actually advocating violence.