iampunha, I only meant that I didn’t know how you could go from Bryan’s post to implying MrVisible was a homophobe himself.
…Wait a tic.
Oohhh. Okay. I see it. Carry on. 
Or at least, let the real topic of the thread carry on. I’m gonna quietly bow my nitpicky self out of here.
You know, Bayle, in my current (non drug-induced) state, I’m surprised I managed to spell “I” correctly, let alone parse ANYTHING!
Note to self: it’s nearly 3.
GET YOUR ASS IN BED!!!
[sub]Why do I do this to myself?[/sub]
Egad! A critic!
You cut me to the quick, sirrah. While the straight supremacists[sup]tm[/sup] can merely take away my rights, threaten my life and my livelihood, and espouse arguments that make me laugh myself into conniptions, you, you fiend, assault my literary merit.
I happen to consider second person to be a completely valid perspective when addressing a particular group. More a speechwriting technique, if you will, than a proper format for an essay, granted. Friends, romans, countrymen, and all that. Quite proper for this forum, as a quick perusal of the rants across the ages would reveal.
You have aroused my dudgeon. My honor is impugned, sullied even. I demand satisfaction! Would you prefer the pistols, or the rapiers? Or perhaps a better solution presents itself.
Prepare a treatise, if you will, explaining you views on the rights of homosexuals in the U.S., and the future you see for the rights movement. Then, if the Dopers hereabouts are willing to do so, we will decide which has more merit; your piece, or mine.
What say? You’ve already seen my piece; care to show me yours? If not, then go away, kid. You bother me.
Polycarp, I do believe you’ve gotten an answer from both H4E and Joe. Thank you for showing us that Jesus and your god have more to teach than sticking your nose into other people’s business and denying them basic U.S. citizens’ rights “for their own good.”
Esprix
Sorry, I’m straight. Put your dudgeon back in your pants.
Are you willing to bear a burden equally as heavy? Has a day gone by that you haven’t sinned? Ought people to love you while hating what you do? Will God consult you for your insights on Judgment Day?
Despite some evidence to the contrary, there exist homosexuals who will love and accept you just as you are without judment. I submit that Jesus has reserved for them rooms in His Father’s mansion.
This is my last appeal to you. You’ve never paid me any heed. After this, I’ll kick the dust off my sandals and move on. Are you there?
Lively thread here - a lot of catching up to do.
First of all, MrV, great OP. I’ve already cited it in another thread.
“Old woman!” [sub]Sorry, couldn’t resist. :)[/sub]
I was going to say something along this general line of thought, but I doubt it would have come out half as well.
Hey, wait a sec, gobear, I saw her first! And I’m straight, too.
Of course, I’m married, which puts a damper on my proposing to anyone of either sex. Besides, cj’s already stolen my heart.
Now, JerseyDiamond:
In 32 years as a Christian, I continue to fall short of being able to follow God’s rules. (Rom. 3:23.) That’s why salvation is through accepting God’s grace.
Besides, as others have pointed out, there’s some disagreement as to what the full rule set is. We’re all picking and choosing, based on our mortal understanding, which of the Biblical rules God really means. (Does your house have a rail around the roof, to keep people from falling off? Mine doesn’t either.)
There are many people who love the Lord, and also feel that God’s created them to romantically and sexually love people of their own sex. They believe the only honest way they can square the circle is by believing the OT verses are as applicable as the one about the rail around the roof, and that the NT verses are about pederasts.
Suppose they’re wrong. What’s God going to do after they’ve lived a life that’s otherwise as faithful to Him as yours or mine? If He’s gonna play ‘gotcha’ with them, and send them off to Hell without a second thought, then I’ve been living a hallucination for the past 32 years, because the God I know isn’t anything like that. He loves His children.
Speaking of children, I have to agree with those who’ve said that pushing laws restricting gay rights is effectively treating all gays like children. Preach against homosexuality if you want, but you don’t have the moral right to attempt to legislate against it.
Thylacine - **Jodi’s right. Right now, we’re in the midst of a GD thread about the use of the word ‘Zyklon’ as a consumer product. If this board were in the business of rejecting the discussion of offensive ideas, that one would have been shut down fast. I’d be upset if it was.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by minty green *
**Certainly, they would be permitted to say exactly that. You don’t get to call people epithets, but you’ll find that all kinds of whacked-out positions are tolerated by the administration here–though the members would instantly eviscerate the dumbass. Kinda like what happened here.
Oh, and I’d like to say something about the continued reference to blacks comparing it with homosexuality. IMHO it’s a faulty comparison. A person has no choice in what race he’s born, be it black or whatever. Skin color is a physical characteristic that cant’ be changed whereas homosexuality is a behavioural choice. I don’t really see how you can compare the two, skin color can’t be changed, behaviour can.
Yes, I’m here. And yes, we all sin in some way everyday, I’m sure, in thought word or deed. But there’s a difference between knowing Christ and with the Holy Spirit’s help trying to live for Him and occasionally falling. I ask His forgiveness, determine not to do it again and move on. That’s different than deliberately doing something over and over and over and knowing in my heart it’s wrong. I’ve done that before and the Holy Spirit would not leave me alone but kept at me pointing out this sin to me and it had to stop. I believe the Bible says this behavour (homosexuality) is wrong but it’s not up to me to say who will be in heaven. Only God knows whether a person has truly been born again or not, although if a person has, there should be some outward evidence of it in their life. Some people probably get saved on their deathbeds. I, and maybe a few others on this board, have no understanding as to how a person can say they’re a Christian and then continue to remain in their gayness. 
Those wishing to call me a hater for these views can do so if they want, that doesn’t make it so. As I said before, the OP was directed toward what the poster considered to be “homophobes”, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have responded.
Homosexuality is not a behavioral choice, it is an attraction.
But let’s say skin color could be changed, would that make it OK to persecute people who don’t change their skin color to something you like?
I don’t think this is your problem. You are not required to understand this.
I’ve read John 8:1-11. Do you notice the last verse? Go and leave your life of sin? Of course, Jesus forgave the woman taken in adultery. Yet He didn’t condone her sin, He told her to go and sin no more. She was to stop her adulterous ways.
Prove it.
I just want to pop in and say this:
Jodi, you ROCK!!!
Those were some awesome, kick-ass responses. I bow in the dust before your magnificent, literary talents!
To H4E, JD, J_C, WV_W et al… why you chose to remain willfully ignorant in the face of the evidence is beyond me. Your co-religionists have shown that the passages you cite have many interpretations yet you maintain that yours in the only correct one.
Then, dear His4Ever, you are being a cosmic idiot, and wilfully closing your mind to a tenth of the people for whom Jesus died in agony on the cross.
I put my credibility here on the line to request that people give you opportunity to clarify your position – and you did. It’s that you’re going to stand by what is your literalistic understanding of a few scattered passages in the Bible and ignore what our Lord said was the most important part. As Jodi made explicit to Jersey Diamond when she decided to jump in on your side in this debate in what is probably the most eloquent post on the subject ever, by anyone. Thank you, Jodi, for making that position clear. Would you forgive me for being jealous of your eloquence and clarity in saying what every Christian should have at his or her right hand as guidance in everything that he or she does?
In case it has escaped you, the overwhelming testimony of virtually every gay person, including Rick Wilkins of Wake Forest NC, who runs an “ex-gay” ministry, is that one’s sexual orientation, the people one finds sexually desirable, is not subject to choice. It is something that you are either born with or develop prior to the age of reason.
I grant that whether or not to actually engage in any action whatsoever, including whether or not to indulge in sex with someone else, is an act of free choice (barring situations such as rape and the seduction of an intoxicated person where one’s capacity for choice is overridden by the circumstances, a matter not at dispute here).
But the question at hand, what Mr Visible and all his colleagues have been arguing about, is not whether or not they are being condemned for committing such acts – it’s that they can lose their jobs, can be evicted from their homes, are persecuted and condemned, sometimes even killed, for the hideous crime of being honest about being something that they cannot change. And self-proclaimed Christians like yourself and Jersey Diamond are leading the forces of hatred against them by perpetrating the lies such as the one I quoted above. If this is “showing love to them,” then I must be a Southern Baptist, because I don’t see a thing but hatred and fear in it. “Perfect love casteth out fear” and “If I speak with the tongues of men or of angels, and have not love, then I am nothing” are quotations you might recognize – one from John the Beloved Disciple and one from Paul, who never ceased to be amazed that Christ’s love conquered even his hatred of those Jewish heretics who proclaimed that the Messiah was somebody that any good Jew would recognize as a blasphemer, proclaiming Himself as equal to God.
I asked you to think about some theological questions and how they apply to the circumstances in which we find ourselves, back on page one. You did not grace me with a response – I ask again.
If you cannot find it in yourself to show Christ’s love and not your opinion of what His judgment is supposed to be to the people who find your words about Scripture as messages of hate to them, then you are not witnessing for Him – but rather doing the work of Satan, who wants nothing more than to have people reject Christ out of misunderstanding of what He had to say.
I love you and everybody who has posted here, as my brothers and sisters whom our Father loves – regardless of what they may think of Him. It’s my less-than-desirable task to call you to account for words that you claim to be speaking in His name that are turning people away from Him. I am only doing it because Scripture and my own understanding of how to show love to my fellow man require that I do so. Please, please look carefully at what I and Jodi and cjhoworth and a few others have had to say, and then at what you and Jersey Diamond have had to say, and tell me which better shows the love of Christ. Then review what I said in my first post, and come back here and apologize.
There are people out there who hate their fellow man, and justify it in the name of Christ. They are doing evil in His name, IMHO. I can fully understand why you think that bringing His word to the gay people of this board requires that you stress to them what His commandments are – but they are not ones that affect you (unless you have gay desires). The ones that should matter to you are the two great commandments that Jesus taught as the core and meaning of the Law, the one that says not to judge other people but forgive, as you yourself fear judgment and seek His forgiveness, the idea of the Parable of the Sheep and Goats.
Think about that last one. Inasmuch as you have said anything that any person on this board has heard as condemnation and hatred of himself or herself as a person, you have condemned and hated Jesus Himself. If that does not call for you to repent and ask forgiveness, then you are truly purblind. You, my dear, will be in my prayers, along with the rest of the posters here. (I trust those of you who would object to prayers will not find it offensive for me to ask that you be allowed to live according to your understanding of what is right without having someone condemn you and try to persecute you for a misunderstanding of what you think and believe and feel.)
And, with regard to the OP itself, let me note that Bill O’Reilly, the conservative newscaster, himself said that he doesn’t care what gay people do, and (while opposed personally to a gay marriage law) would not oppose such a law if passed – and that in his opinion 90% of Americans could not care less what you do, and only a vocal 10% constituting a lunatic fringe of Christians condemn you. So maybe you’re right, Mr Visible. Being in the South and hearing a lot of “God says being gay is evil” instead of “God says that He loves everyone and wants them to turn to Him and love Him back” I’ve missed that sense of being on the downhill slope.
And to Jersey and Joe, I am sincerely sorry that you are evidently not interested in bringing other people to Christ, but rather standing in condemnation over them. I would love for you to prove my assessment in that last sentence wrong, but you never seem to do so. You will indeed be in my prayers.
Actually, no, I wasn’t thinking of the aids issue. I was talking about the manner in which 2 male gays have sex (aside from oral and masturbation). They must use the rectum and the rectum wasn’t designed for sexual intercourse, it was designed for waste products to leave the body. Not for things to be inserted into it. How healthy can that be?
Quote -
“Homosexuals are often the victims of exotic infections.
Homosexuals also have a group of rare bowel diseases, usually thought to be limited to the tropics. These are generally lumped together under the designation ‘gay bowel syndrome’. Because many male homosexuals ingest fecal matter, it is estimated that up to one-half have contracted parasitic amebiases, a disease of the colon caused by parasites. One public official found forty percent of homosexual men attending sexually transmitted disease clinics had the problem. It is no wonder that the New York Times Magazine makes the following statement ‘Bizarre infections are so common in the homosexual community that one scientist, presenting a report on these occurences…called his talk Manhatten, the Tropical Isle’.
Such statisitics do not come about by accident or bad luck. The physiology of the rectum makes it clear that sodomy is unnatural. The inward expansion of the rectum during anal intercourse frequently tears the rectal lining, resulting in spasms, colitis, cramps, and a variety of other physical responses. Furthermore, sperm can readily penetrate the rectal wall (the vagina cannot be penetrated) and do massive immunological damage, leaving the body vulnerable to a bewildering variety of opportunistic infections. Simply put, homosexual practices are unhealthy.”
Taken from, INFORMED ANSWERS TO GAY RIGHTS QUESTIONS by Roger Magnuson.
True, but the bible, in both Old and New Testaments, appears to be quite clear regarding the sinfulness of sexual immorality – both homo and hetero. If a person chooses not to accept the bible’s authority, fine. But it’s ridiculous to say that it doesn’t say that. Can you be forgiven of sin? Of course. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still sin.
That’s a pretty clever little point that I’ve seen you raise a few times now. But I have a question - are you also in the habit of entertaining on your roof? The ancient Israelites were. As a matter of fact, it was quite common to have your family and friends hanging out on the roof of the house (You’ve noticed, I’m sure, the story where the crippled guy’s friends lower him through the roof to get him to Jesus, right?). Hence the need for a railing on the roof. Special needs change. Right and wrong do not.
It sure is easy to blindly quote rules at people without caring about the reasons why they were instituted in the first place, isn’t it?
Orientation can’t. Or can you suddenly will yourself to be sexually attracted to other women?
And on the topic of the ability to change behavior, I’ll consider conceding the point if you can honestly tell me that you’ve successfully maintained lifelong celibacy. (The proper response to that question, by the way, does not include claiming that god likes your sex life and hates queer folks’ sex life. The point here is behavior, not divine sanction.)
I wondered how long it would be before the myth of "gay bowel syndrome would be brought up.
shakes head
If it were true I know a
LOT of straight, myself included, that would be suffering from it! As it is I have yet to hear from a “real” gay man that he has ever been afflicted with the syndrome.
Jesus, woman. Could you be anymore wrong? The lining of the vagina can be torn. Women can, and do, get infected with HIV via vaginal sex.
What about heterosexual couples that engage in anal sex? I take it your concern for their health runs just as deep. What about lesbians? Sperm doesn’t even enter into the equation!