Why do so many Christians think it’s sinful? They have no scriptural support for it.
Muslims do get harassed, and there is no social acceptance for bullying Christians as Christians per se. 80% of the population in the US is Christian. What you do see is some resistance to Christians who themselves are hectoring bullies.
Because the specific person in the OP was a Christian minister, and because Christianity is by far the majority religion in the US.
If we’d nailed bin Laden’s ass at Tora Bora like we should have, I’m sure much of the U.S. population would have spontaneously demonstrated that they had serious issues.
In general, Christians need to stop imagining they are the arbiters of other people’s private lives.
We need to learn to stop those things which are bad, because they harm other people. We don’t necessarily need to stop those things that harm only ourselves, or those things that involve harm that is a figment of the imagination of some people.
No, an ironic death would be if he were killed in a gangland shooting, or something similar.
That’s basically my point. While it may seem to be a stretch to equate terrorism with Christian evangelicalism, one cannot deny that Christians are responsible for far more death, torture, and genocide than any other religion can ever hope to achieve. Rev. Wilkerson may not have been directly responsible for molesting Catholic altar boys or infecting primitive nations with syphilis, but he did represent the monolithic institutions who brazenly commit such acts based on divine authority.
After all, nobody’s complaining about the recent death of Qaddafi’s son.
As evil as Christianity is, for all we know in the year 5000 Reform Transcendental Gnosticism will be responsible for the deaths of 50 billion people in the Third Interplanetary Crusade.
In my evangelical days of teenhood, I read TC & TS as well as listening to Mike Warnke. I realized even then that Warnke’s comedy routine and 'Satan Seller ’ didn’t add up - names, ages, etc and wasn’t surprised when his story was blown.
I never got that w/ the pastor who died this week; I learned some valuable things from his book about doing things for others and didn’t know about his homophobic views until this thread. I’m sorry for his family’s loss and I can only hope he’s in a place where he sees the error of the hate he spread on Earth.
The introduction to Romans seems to contradict this since there is mention among other things of men “who are full of lust for one another”
Not all Christians get “bullied” obviously, but hellfire and brimstone people for instance tend to get mocked even by their fellow Christians.
I don’t believe forcing people via the government to change their private lives. However this is persuasion by private citizens not coercion by the Morality Police.
In this case, what’s the difference? What exactly is wrong with homosexuality? (BEYOND what the Bible says, Qin. If that’s the only reason you can come up with, then you need to come up with something else. And if so, WHY does the Bible say it’s wrong?)
Only if there is belief in the wrongness of the act. I think we actually argued about this subject in general a while back - if intent and knowledge of wrongness are not there, how can we hold someone to account? I mean, on the other side of things, if the act, the physical motions, are all that matters, why is rape a crime, a sin?
Right. And it can be sexual. You’re denying that aspect of love to homosexuals (and bisexuals). Not only may these acts of love lack the goodness that is (i’m under the impression from your posts) almost inherent in other forms of love, it is a sin. It’s a very strange concept to me - it’s akin to saying that, giving money to a needy person is a good and virtuous thing. But giving money to a needy person of the same sex is a sinful act. Why does the gender of the person concerned matter? What’s so terrible about the mere physical act that it overrules the good aspect of that form of sharing love?
Edit: I note that you point out the differences between lust and love to me, yet in your response to Diogenes, you conflate the two to make your point when you use Romans. It doesn’t seem reasonable to both say that lust and love are two seperate things, even when talking about sex, yet then say that a pronouncement against lust is a pronouncement against all sex.
Noted (although others do try to direct legislation), but why is it even acceptable for person A to privately persuade person B to change a behaviour that does not adversely impact person A (or anyone else)?
Also, what is the intended outcome of trying to influence behaviours? Most of Christianity holds that no amount of right behaviour is enough to make a person righteous. By persuading homosexual people to stop being homosexual, you’re not making saints - you’re just making miserable sinners.
For moral reasons. For instance someone commiting adultery on his or her spouse does not affect his acquaintance, yet if asked whether that was immoral would you not say it was.
Obviously talk of morality must be coupled with the Gospel but God wants Christians to be moral, thus if they’re Christian they will try to act morally.
