Shinto accepts homosexuals. But since that’s about as far away from Christianity as you can get, I guess it doesn’t help much.
Shinto doesn’t really accept or deny anyone. It’s also only on the edge of being classified as a religion (even though it is, IMO)
Shinto has no moral code, no laws, and no scriptures/bible. Therefore, it can’t discriminate against any type of person. The only thing Shinto discriminates (and not in a negative way) is between the living and the dead/kami.
There is no accepting of people, you live your life that way or you don’t, and nothing will happen either way.
Wait a moment, please. Didn’t this attempt at conversion occur at a government-run school? Why hasn’t the school district been sued for violating the separation of church and state? Better yet, why is the counsel(l)or still “working” there?
Even an evangelical Christian minister should recognize that accepting Christ, important as that may be, isn’t a magic wand that fixes everything.
Girl on the metro: “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. I wonder if you’re aware that freedom from homosexuality is available through the power of Jesus Christ?”
Me (smiling sweetly): “I wonder if you’re aware that freedom from Jesus Christ is available through the power of homosexuality?”
Why didn’t they just call it the Education Network? I think they’ve got us all covered.
Apparently it is the first step of a 12-step program:
- Accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior.
- Buy our books, magazines, videotapes, etc.
- Hi Opal!
- Realize that everyone that doesn’t believe as we do is doomed to Hell.
- Attend regular meetings or watch television programs proclaiming the faith.
- Continue to make sizable donations to convert others to the faith.
- Get friends and family to join the faith.
- Continue to believe in Jesus and that the faith is right and good even though the preacher wears a Rolex and the Church has artistic golden accoutrements.
- Change your will so that the faith gets all of your possessions upon your death.
- Chastise others who do not believe as you do.
- Go out onto the world and ask strangers to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and savior.
- Welcome to Guyana, would you like some Kool-Aid?
In my own church, The Episcopal Church (legal name the “Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America,” constitutionally defining itself as to be commonly known as “The Episcopal Church,” for that pedant who insisted on “correcting” me on it last week), the majority of both houses of the General Convention, the governing body, including specifically the Presiding Bishop, our national church’s Primate, have made it clear that gay people are welcomed, whether practicing or not. This has led to some strong protests among conservative members (e.g., Ivorybill) who see this as “catering to immorality,” and the authoritative bodies have moved slowly and inclusively to minimize the amount of friction – from either side. It strikes me that showing welcome and compassion to persons harassed for their sexual orientation and also to those who are sufficiently blinded to see them as immoral and hence hurt when their church home takes a stance of welcoming them is not a horrible position. I’m inclined to think that most of you, faced with an intelligent individual who was naive about your ethical stance, would attempt to persuade him or her to your view, rather than practicing arrant “homophobophobia.” Yes?
AsDear Abby has said, a church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints. Certainly, brethren in Christ should try to work together in a spirit of compassion and Christian charity.
If I were a Christian, I would agree that trying to educate the unenlightened about God’s love for all beings with love and tolerance is the way to go. I would point out the example of David and Jonathan, as well as St. John, the beloved disciple. I would point out that the saints and angels neither marry nor are given in marriage, so in heaven God’s love will overwhelm all Earthly loves, making sexual orientation irrelevant.
However, since I’m a Hell-bound sinner doomed to the fires of perdition, I have no problem telling some latter-day Pharisee to piss off.
I also take exception to the word “homophobophobia,” as if both poitions were ethically and morally equivalent. Homosexual haters are wrong, period. Rejecting that hatred is NOT “homophobophobia.”
It’s not an authentic Christian church, just a bunch of gays creating a faux church and making up their own rules. I could set up Gobear’s Reorganized Jewish Synagogue and decree that oysters dipped in pork sauce are kosher, but that doesn’t make it authentically Jewish.
Thanks. “Unreasoning hatred of persons practicing homophobia” was essentially the meaning I intended by that neologism, and I took the stance because there have been people naive or otherwise ignorant of the facts of the matter who have raised questions here that were seen as homophobic, clarified their stance and apologized to those they’d offended after being equipped with information on the real state of affairs. In my experience, most Episcopalians are not homophobic; the few that appear to be are simply ones who have not confronted their own misunderstandings of what gay people really think and feel.
I do have to differ with you on the MCC, though. It is, quite simply, a full-fledged Protestant church formed to provide a church home to gay and Lesbian people before almost any denominational power structures realized that there could be such a thing as gay Christians (dunno about you, but I remember when gays were “perverts who live in New York City, who could choose to straighten their lives out if they weren’t so…” Thank God we’ve learned and grown since then!) Troy Perry was an ordained minister in a conservative denomination (Assembly of God, I think) who was closeted, and excommunicated when he came out. He refused to take it lying down (no pun intended!) and simply convened others whom he knew to be gay people of faith and proposed forming the first MCC. No different from Luther, Asbury, or Campbell, except for the reason for the new denomination.
Are you telling us that you’re an amateur gay? I guess Esprix, matt_mcl, andygirl, and the other select number of professional gays are going to hold a conclave about your lack of advancement. It’s such a shame too… we really thought you deserved the toaster oven.
I believe I started a thread on this very subject - Should we be intolerant of intolerance?
Being the last person in the world to defend Christianity, I’ll take strong objection to this, go. I believe the first tenant of being Christian is accepting Christ as your savior - the rest is details (important details, albeit, but details nonetheless). If a group of Christians decide to worship together in their own church, I feel morally obliged to refer to them as a legitimate church. How many offshoots of Protestantism started this way? Why do you think Lutherans and Methodists and Baptists and UCC’s and so forth all have different churches, yet all consider themselves Christian? MCC is just as legitimate as any of them, IMHO.
Esprix
Hastur
Amateur gay? Color me confused. Anyway, what’s a good pagan like you doing defending the Christians, your oppressors?
**Esprix,
Sorry, man, I stand by my post. Other denominations–Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians–were founded due to differing interpretations of Christian doctrine. The MCC was founded because homosexuality is condemned in the Bible, and therefore gays weren’t welcome in most Christian churches. Founding a denomination because you like to suck dick is not on the same level as founding a denomination because you object to infant baptism. The MCC exists becuase gay men and lesbians want the thrills of religion without repentance for sin or the call to modify one’s conduct.
And how is this not a differing interpretation of Christian doctrine? 
Protestantism splintered for a wide variety of reasons, some of them patently trivial, IIRC. I’d say inherent sexual orientation is hardly a trivial reason to want to seek some other spiritual home.
Bottom line - could you please tell me what Jesus specifically said about homosexuality? If you can answer that, you might be right after all.
Esprix
Gaaaaaaaaaaah! Bolding… hurts… eyes…
Esprix
Whoa! Two years ago Esprix and I were maintaining that gays could be Christians against FriendofGod; today we’re arguing that against gobear?? Did somebody push a button and transsubstantiate us all onto Bizarro Earth? :eek:
Gobear, bud, I don’t know where to start. Not all Christians think that everything written in the Bible is ipso facto God’s command on how to live. In particular, we make it a point not to interpret Biblical commands as condemning things over which you have no control (like sexual orientation). If a bunch of closet-case bullies decides to “unman” one man by anal rape, that’s condemned – by every decent human being of any orientation. To a Jew, patronizing a temple prostitute of Baal was sinful – and that was the only place he could get a man to bottom for him, so far as the legislators knew. How they felt about two men loving each other is best illustrated in the story of their most beloved king, prior to his taking the throne, and the doomed crown prince of the king at the time.
As for the rest of your post, founding a denomination because the existing denominations have thrown you out, contrary to the will of Christ, because they don’t understand what it means to be openly gay, is hardly what you posted about sucking dick. From any straight person on this board, that line would reek of homophobia. Are you internalizing a bit here?
In short, I don’t think that what you do in bed with your beloved partner is necessarily sin, any more than you think what I do in bed with mine is. MCC is as stringent on proper moral conduct as any other church, but like me and my church, they and we see it as loving God and your fellow man, not as in adherence to a set of rules carefully edited to the customs of the day.
I almost went to alert a moderator that I thought somebody was posting under your name, since that paragraph was so apparently homophobic.
Oh, and given your response to Hastur, a public request to you, him, and all gay posters: If ever I do anything that you take as “oppressing” you personally or gays in general, call me on it, immediately.
The “thrills of religion”… I like that phrase. It harkens me back to my youth, the precious memories of rushing off Sunday morning for that ever exciting rush of the Sunday sermon. The thrills, the chills, the ups and downs. It was just like a roller coaster, except without all the rapid speed and direction changes. 
(zzzz…)
I know this is The Pit, and I’m about to do the equivalent of stepping between two rabid badgers, but I have thoughts on the “MCC is not a real christian church” thing.
It seems to me that the Bible and christian tradition was antithetical to homosexuality. The hardcore religious homophobes can dig up plenty of cites (outright or merely interpretational) that support that case. The question becomes is it fair for a group to form a church that accepts homosexuality as not only occurring, but not in any way a sin, and still be considered a subset of that religious tradition? There are some who argue that the homophobic cites in the Bible are all interpretational, or that our growing enlightenment since then makes them irrelevant, etc. I think the real issue of debate here is whether “homosexuality is a sin” is requisite of christianity, or if it is one of those elements that more liberal churches accept as the human foibles and fallacies interfering with God’s true message. Like a lot of the stuff in Leviticus - woman having to marry her rapist, for instance. If you can allow other changes in tradition (such as no longer giving blood sacrifices, redefining baptism to be sprinkle not dunk, allowing baptism without consent, using crackers and grape juice to represent bread and wine representing flesh and blood, etc) that appear more central to the practice of the religion, then it appears a division over acceptability of homosexuality is equivalent grounds for denominational schism.
Gobear, I think that’s an unfair assessment of the MCC. New churches are started because of doctrinal disputes; the biggest doctrinal dispute going on in the US today is the various denominations’ approach to homosexuality. What reason can you have for not thinking MCC is a “real” church?
Admittedly, I’ve only been to two MCC services, with an old boyfriend. I couldn’t stand it… all the hymns sounded like circus music. I kept thinking about Jesus on the high wire, and it got me all confused.
Uhh, yeah, that’ll be the day. Polycarp, you are, beyond question, the most intelligent, compassionate, earnest, sincere, charitable, wishing-to-conform-to-the will-of-God Christian I have ever come across. You are as far from being an oppressor as it is possible to be.
However, you are something of an anomaly. Christians in my experience condemn homosexual orientation/practice in the strongest possible terms. Oh, some denomination, such as the Roman Catholicism in which I was raised, now say that gay orientation is OK, but not gay sex or gay relationships.
The plain sense of the Bible is clear.
“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”–Leviticus 18:22
“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”
–Leviticus 20:13
“and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.”
–Romans 1:27
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind.”–I Corinthians 6:9
Now many liberal Christian theologians intrepret the Greek words used by St. Paul, * malakoi* and arsenokoitai, as male temple prostitutes or as the passive partner in anal intercourse, since in the ancient Middle East, as today, the active partner is masculine, but the passive partner is not.
Conservatives and Evangelicals are universal in applying St. Paul’s words to homosexuality in general, as his words seem to be quite plain in their meaning. It would be nice to say that you can behave as you like and you will still be saved, but that is not what the Bible teaches. You have to repent and accept God’s grace through the Atonement and Resurrection.
The Bible is clear that I’m evil in my very nature and am rejected by God. I’m cool with that; I reject Him, in return. I have learned not to go where I’m not wanted.
MrVisible and Irishman, I understand your point that the Church’s position on homosexuality could be cause for a denominational schism. However, it seems to me that the MCC was founded, as I said, by gays who wanted to have both uninhibited sex and the acceptance of God. To me, that smacks of antinomian heresy. You can’t trick at the baths on Saturday and sing hymns on Sunday without a severe sprain of the conscience.