I’ve talk to many people of all faiths who support gay rights. But I will say that most of them who don’t are very fundamental Christians or Muslims. While not all of these people are against gay rights, anti-homosexuals are usually the religious fundamentalists.
I offer the same challenge I’ve offered before:
Have there been many non-Christian societies? Yep.
Non-Christian societies in which there were no taboos against sodomy? Yep again.
Non-Christian societies in which there were no taboos against sodomy AND in which the monarch himself regularly engaged in homosexual relations? Yep yet again- ask Alexander, Trajan or Hadrian.
Now the challenge: explain why Alexander, Trajan and Hadrian never even THOUGHT about changing laws to allow men to marry each other, if the only possible explanation for opposing that is Christian bigotry or squeamishness about sodomy. Explain why they’d have LAUGHED at the idea, if the only possible explanation for opposing gay marriage is hatred or ignorance.
I’m curious as to what anti-gay Christians make of the young man “naked under his nightdress” who was with Jesus at Gethsemani
In their times, “marriage” was an alliance between families to ensure the legitimacy of heirs.
It is no longer that. The legitimacy of heirs between the families, heck the existence of heirs, is no longer the purpose of people being married. Hasn’t been so for a long time, becoming instead primarily a civil instrument to establish a legally recognized sworn bond between two people.
My response to that is WHO THE FUCK CARES?! It’s not 3000 years ago. Why do people insist on retaining the dead hand of tradition in a chokehold around our necks?
Because ancient Greece and Rome, like all other cultures on the planet, were morally inferior to the United States of America, which was the first country to enshrine separation and church of state (a correct way to govern, all others being incorrect) and the equality of all people under the law (a correct way to govern, all others being incorrect) in its Constitution, and is still the country which comes closest to living up to these ideals.
The fact that we have the First Amendment, barring laws from being made on religious grounds, and the Fourteenth Amendment, requiring that a government privilege such as marriage available to one person must be available to all people, makes the U.S. *better *than places which do not have those things.
I say the above without any irony or sarcasm whatsoever. I believe these things because they are true. Christians who do not believe in them or people who have read too many Frank Miller comics and pine for a pre-modern fascism are both wrong and anti-American to believe the way they do.
Considering that both Trajan and Hadrian succeeded Nero, who was involved in two different same-sex marriages, I’m not sure why you think they’d have found the idea so outrageous. Considering that same-sex marriage wasn’t made illegal in Rome until the reign of Constantius II (a Christian, incidentally), around two hundred years after Trajan, I’m not sure why you think they’d have needed to legalize it.
Thanks. Romans 1:26-27 is a clear exception to what I said; it’s explicit about just “vile affections” which clearly seem to include homosexuality:
(BTW, I love http://biblegateway.com since I can quickly compare many different versions, to see how things are translated differently in English. I sure wish I could read ancient Latin, Hebrew, and Greek!)
The others are, as I said, just an item in a litany, and the Jude one is pretty controversial. So we’re pretty much left with a couple passing mentions. Furthermore, it’s always in the context of base lust and not in the context of a committed, loving relationship, which the Bible never appears to consider.
But this is clearly a point against my argument. Thanks.
I admit that when I posted, I was just pissed off at the holier-than-thou approach of so many self-labeled Christians, who use the Bible as a justification for their bigotry. But that approach isn’t conducive to a rational discussion, and I appreciate your rational replies.
Perhaps, but I think not. I’d like to examine this objection more closely, along with clarifying my own point of view, which I’ll do below.
Good question. For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll say it’s an emotional reaction (like the “ick factor” or like assuming Blacks are criminals) based on prejudice, rather than on a rational basis. For the purposes of this discussion, I will treat commitment to a religion as a rational basis.
This is a good point. It’s important to distinguish between proclivities and actions. We have desires that we did not choose and have little control over (that is, control over feeling the desire). For example, consider someone who, through no fault of his own, finds himself powerfully sexually attracted to very young children. That person is not a criminal unless he acts on his desires. (He may be dangerous, but that’s beside the point here.)
So, I grant that the Biblical ban is against the behavior, not the proclivity. Sad that a merciful God would create people with such proclivities, but that’s also beside the point here.
Nope. You’re right. I’m not arguing about behavior. I’m arguing about arguments. More on this below.
The bigots I’m referring to are those who use the Bible to argue for their prejudices, while ignoring the Bible when it disagrees with them.
No doubt. Also, no doubt we all do this, in all sorts of ways, not just over religion. We’re imperfect creatures.
The tu quoque fallacy applies to a discrepancy between arguments and actions. It does not apply to inconsistent beliefs.
If I ask someone why gay marriage should be illegal and they refer to the Bible, can’t I ask them whether they think divorce should be illegal? If they say divorce is OK but gay marriage isn’t, don’t they have the burden to explain why the Bible is valid for one subject but not the other?
I believe you’re right. My father has long been against gay marriage (or gay anything; the squick factor hits him really hard, over that and a lot of other things.) Recently my niece, an intelligent, deep-thinking, and lovable young woman, came out of the closet. No big fanfare, it just became evident. She’d had a pretty rocky adolescence but is a lot happier now. I don’t know that it’s a cause-and-effect, but not long after that my father said he was no longer against gay marriage. Good for you, Dad! 
I was once a bigot against it. 10 or 12 years ago, younger friends raised the subject and I said I was against it (despite having had a number of gay friends), though we didn’t argue the point at the time. But it made me consider my reasons, and I found that they really didn’t hold water, so I changed my mind.
I confess I’m not “over” the squick factor myself. I don’t have a problem with gay friends, but I don’t want to think about what they do in the bedroom. Then again, I don’t want to think about what my parents do in the bedroom either. The squick factor exists, but I’d be foolish to give it much power, except over my own choices (like, please don’t pass the beets. SQUICK!)
Well, and there’s the rub.
I will grant that there are many who don’t fear or hate, but love the sinner and hate the sin, like good true Christians. I suspect they’re in the minority, though, among those who post on the subject in Facebook.
My OP (especially the title) swept all anti-gay Christians into a single bin, and that was wrong.
But I still feel justified in saying that anyone who uses the Bible to argue against gay marriage, while believing that divorce should be legal, does not have a very consistent or convincing argument. Most of them feel the way they do because they were brought up that way, not because they read it in the Bible, and they’re just using the Bible to justify it.
Pinmin, are you against legalizing gay marriage? If so, how do you feel about the legality of divorce?
I’ve made a similar point before. That resistance to SSM is no restricted to Christianity, or any religion. We look back thousands of years and we can see contributions made by ancient societies. They were all mini experiments in how to live together. And, as you point out, while homosexual activity had periods where it was openly part of society and enjoyed very little if any stigma, marriage really wasn’t in the cards. People acknowledged the desire some had for gay sex and had no problem with it. There was also an understanding that people of the same sex could genuinely love each other. But taking those two things, putting them together and equating them with the ideal of opposite sex marriages and the institution responsible for the raising of children was not fathomed. So the tactic that many SSM proponents use, blaming it all on the church, doesn’t hold up.
This all points to a feeling some of us have that SS unions are not equal to OS ones. Nature supports that belief. People like to disparagingly refer to it as the squick factor, attempting to minimize its validity. But while I support extending all the same legal benefits and privileges to SS couples that OS couples enjoy, I do draw the line at “marriage”. It’s just factually a different relationship.
Thanks, that’s very helpful. I was trying to find that and failed. In my recollection, it was only “blood” (and I’m not quite sure what that really means anyway).
I’ll admit it takes quite a bit of the wind out of my argument against Leviticus.
I think it’s funny that a couple of guys can just decide things like this and it becomes The Word, but that’s a theological issue that’s not debatable in this context.
Feel free to argue this, but I’m not interested in mere semantics, nor am I interested in statements of truth by fiat, or the certainty implied by your tone.
Only fools are certain. Of that, I’m certain.
LOL
Yeah, good point.
But if their argument is “The Bible Says X …” can’t I counter with “The Bible also says Y and you don’t believe that” and have a valid criticism?
Still, you’re right that it’s rather fruitless to argue theology.
That was one of my points, but it turns out not to be a particularly strong one, as I acknowledged above.
I don’t believe anyone made that point in this thread. If you’re raising a new point of debate, fine.
I don’t mind tangential discussions, but this is being discussed rather exhaustively HERE, so it’d be rather pointless to discuss it here.
I rescind that because that may not even have been you…sorry.
That’s largely a strawman. Marriage advocates do not “blame it all on the church.” No one has ever suggested that homophobia is unique to the Christian religion, or that homophobia is caused solely by religion. What is argued by many marriage advocates is that bigotry rooted in religious beliefs remains bigotry.
As for the lack of recognition of same-sex marriage among ancient cultures, let’s keep in mind a few other things that most ancient cultures could not fathom. Stuff like, “Women should have the same rights as men,” or “Government should be controlled by the people,” or, “It’s wrong to own people.”
And that’s what it comes down to in the end. For all the talk of “love the sinner, hate the sin,” or “I don’t have anything against gay people personally, but…” or whatever dodge you prefer, at the heart of all these sentiments is what you’ve just stated here: homosexuals aren’t equal to heterosexuals.
And that’s bigotry, no matter how you slice it.
Do you realize that applies to about 80% of your thread?
No, it’s discernment. It’s fact. Just because I love steaks and milkshakes, that doesn’t make a steak a milkshake or a milkshake a steak. If I like both cats and dogs, I don’t have to delude myself into thinking they’re one in the same for me to fully appreciate either. Sorry, that’s not how logic works.
Gays and straights aren’t steaks and milkshakes. They’re both people, and you think one group of people isn’t equal to another group of people. That’s pretty much all there is to it.
Nonsense. The only “intending” that’s present when sex is happening is the intending that the participants bring to it. :dubious:
So…it all comes back to “the meanings of words change over time and I don’t like it?”
The universe is far from unchanging. We know more today than we did 2,000 years ago. We have evolved a more advanced moral stance.
We don’t stone adulterers, just as one example.