I take your point; they can be rote. But I mean what I say. (Note that prayer can be either, as well.) God bless you as well, my friend.
Wow, I’m sorry everyone for just posting my views. I don’t think my interpretation of the Bible was better than anyone elses! I’m not trolling, I’m just a normal person trying to spread the truth. In no way do I think I’m better than anyone, just because I believe homosexuality is wrong. I’m sorry if I sounded like I felt like I was superior when I said that I didn’t read all the posts… I’m not going to make excuses, and ya’ll don’t even know me, so think what you want…
Btw, I don’t hang around this site 24/7 seeing when someone will post just so I can go ahead and post back! I have a life besides the internet, and people are in different time zones, so theres a lot of people posting at different times… Sheesh.
…
Polycarp, Jesus freed us from other sins than just homosexuality (which is still wrong today). We can eat meat now, can’t we? Among other numorus things…
God didn’t create us with clothes because Adam and Eve were perfect, and didn’t need them. Then they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and they realized they were naked, and hid.
Polycarp… “Pay a little attention to what Paul is saying, and you’ll find that he’s writing to a church in First Century Rome, which was noted for having a group of socialites who, out of … a quest for new thrills, turned to homosexual practices and other kinky stuff when they got bored with heterosexual sex.”
Alrighty. I’m paying attention. But, there are people who go “on a quest for new thrills” anywere else. You reap what you sow, and that’s what Paul was saying here:
“Men did shameful things with other men and, as a result, suffered within themselves the penalty they so richly deserved.”
That happens here in America. People suffer the penalty which they so richly deserve. And another thing, the people who get bored with heterosexual sex are only bored because:
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They are having premarital sex and are finding that it only leaves them empty and violated (in the end… it may be fun in the beginning…).
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They don’t have a spiritual relationship with God and their spouse- they only want a physical relationship, and because of that, their spiritual relationship is strained.
As for people being “born gay”, I don’t understand why they think that. I don’t have cites for this or anything, but I know a couple lesbiens, and they are what they are because of a non-existant realtionship with their mother, and they want another woman’s love, so they look for sexual love, not genuine love. This isn’t always the case, however. Satan can communicate with us, whether we know he is or not. I’m sure there was a point in that person’s life when they thought, “Maybe I like my own gender better than the opposite one”. They chose to “go after” their own, and that’s what Satan wants. He communicated with that person, and got what he wanted. I KNOW somewhere in that person is a desire for the opposite sex. They may not feel it now, or ever, because they either don’t want to, or they are so blinded in their acts now that they “can’t” stop…
It’s a confusing topic because there are so many reasons or excuses that people make, and you never know exactly what they are thinking.
Okay, ElbaliavanU, let me apologize for an answer geared to the sense that you were just “trolling” – saying something controversial in an effort to “get a rise” out of people. But I do stand by my responses. First, Romans 1:27-8 does not apply to the people who self-identify as gay, for the reasons I gave. Does it apply to the bisexual people who had a healthy heterosexual relationship and then a gay one? In the only case I know well enough to judge (a member here from my state, though we’ve never met in person) I can say emphatically not – she was not actively rejecting God and therefore punished with gayness for it, but quite the reverse.
As for this statement, I can only go by the data I have: there is a near-universal assertion among gay people (100% among gay men, high 90%ile among Lesbians) that they did not choose their orientation, but that it was something they discovered about themselves). I have never seen anyone honestly assert that one can stop having a gay orientation – I have seen men choose to “give up the gay lifestyle” (by which they mean the promiscuous bar-scene lifestyle they’d engaged in as gay men) for religious motivations and hold to their beliefs, I’ve seen men honestly choose to abstain from gay sex because they believed it sinful or, in one case, because they were bi and gay sex left him socially uncomfortable to a point he preferred not to have to deal with, but I have never seen an honest account of a man who was miraculously “cured” of a Kinsey-6 desire-for-men-only state into a Kinsey-1 desire-for-women-only state.
There are a lot of people who honestly believe that “being gay is a choice” – but they’ve come to this because they’re convinced that God would not afflict someone with an unchangeable desire for what they believe always to be a sin, and because any gay desires they themselves may have had were the normal childhood/early adolescence experimentation, not the permanent and dominant sexual orientation of gay people. (As well as a few egotists who are convinced that they way they are is the way everybody ought to be, about whom the less said the better.)
In short, my dataset consists of people who are in fact exclusively or predominantly gay and able to speak of their own orientation, and who state it as unchangeable; of people of bisexual orientation who claim that they can successfully suppress one aspect or other of their sexuality; and the opinions of people who substitute conclusions from their religious beliefs for analytical data.
And on this basis, I’m sorry, but people are “born gay.” Whether that phrase is to be understood literally or in the figurative sense of “made gay by early childhood experience” does not matter; it’s an unchangeable condition for them.
Now, let’s look at the Biblical commands. The two passages in Leviticus are speaking of sexual offenses forbidden to the children of Israel. It would be obvious to the reader that these are things one might do for the gratification of one’s lust, as opposed to sex within the marriage bond for the reasons discussed above (see posts by and responding to Susma Rio Sep for some background on this). Paul’s condemnations are written largely of people described by Greek nouns, not of particular acts, but it seems evident from context that these are people who engage in self-gratification of one sort or another.
In all of Scripture, there seems to be no case of someone laying down the law on what’s sinful and what is not that contemplates the idea of two men or two women loving each other and engaging in physical contact on that basis. (Note my choice of words: “physical contact” not “sexual contact.”) However, in a historical account, an instance of the latter – two men who love each other and express that love physically – is described – and, far from being condemned, is made the means whereby God’s purposes are carried out, and classified as “good” – and the extensive sins later engaged in by one of the two men are condemned, but not this relationship.
The conclusion, as they say, is left as an exercise to the student.
If you make a claim like ‘lesbianism is caused by lack of a mother figure’, you’d better have a cite to back it up.
How do you explain gays and lesbians who grew up with good loving relationships with their mothers and fathers?
I’d also like a cite on how it is that you know that these lesbians secretly want a man, when they themselves don’t realize it. What qualifications do you have that give you the power to know them better than they know themselves?
Re-Being Born Gay
I’ll be back with cites.
Um, 'cause we were. I was. Every gay person I’ve ever met (and I daresay I’ve met quite a few more than you) has said they were.
Then perhaps getting some might help. I don’t know if you’ll give it any weight or not, but the APA has much to say on the topic.
How do you know this? Did you ask them this? Did they tell you this? You do realize that the “overprotective opposite-sex and/or distant same-sex parent” theory has been extinct for about 40 some odd years now, right?
Homosexuality is caused by Satan? :eek:
And, no, I didn’t “just wake up one day and decide.” :rolleyes:
You leave Sophia Loren out of this! (Those who know me will understand… 
)
Satan’s addiction? Homosexual junkies?
Amen.
Esprix
No! No! No.
You’re too early. Your cue is ‘It’s raining men! Hallelujah! It’s raining men!’ Then you say your line.
Dear Kong:
After having read the messages in this thread, I think I have found nuggets of learning, which for me is not exactly knowledge but more acclime to what we might call wisdom.
Since you, Brother Kong, appear to be making a request for personal guidance, I will take the liberty of giving you my own directives based on what I have found reasonable and liberating in the messages replying to his thread.
Q1. To follow the teachings of the Bible do you have to believe that homosexuality is a sin? I know a person could just reject the verses that are negative towards homosexuality, but I think this leads to path where you can reject anything in the Bible.
A. Selective adherence to the words in the Bible is the rule rather than the exception among peoples who do take the Bible seriously. So, Kong, you should do likewise. It all depends upon what you think is reasonable and good for yourself and your neighbors and society at large, or at least not harmful. If you have rejected 99% of the Bible, it still does not mean that you are rejecting all 100% of the Bible. Beware of argument from exaggerated alarm.
Q2. I ask because, I have been looking at the religion I grew up in more closely lately and this is one issue I can’t get over. I can’t see how an entire group of people are sinful because of a way of life that in and of itself does not hurt anyone. While not a homosexual myself, I have know people who are. They don’t seem any different, so I can’t find them sinful because of who they are.
A. In regard to homosexuals, there are good people among them and there are bad, just as with non-homosexuals. More and more, society is coming to the acceptance of the principle that what two parties or more do with their genitals among themselves is no business of other people and not of the law, provided they are acting consensually, doing no harm to themselves and to others, and they observe the canons of health, hygiene, and maybe also aesthetics. I think there is only one exception to this rule: don’t practice homosexual acts with children, because society insists that they can’t think and decide for themselves, or more properly they should not owing to their lack of knowledge and experience; to be perfectly safe, don’t have sex of any kind with kids.
Q3. So do I have to believe homosexuality is a sin to follow the teaching of the Bible?
A. You don’t have to believe everything in the Bible, as I said earlier, even the best peoples don’t accept everything in the Bible. They first determine what in the Bible is obligatory and what not. And you should be surprised that among various Bible believing peoples, they have a lot of differences and contradictions on what is obligatory and what not in the Bible. If from a scholarly study of homosexuality in the Bible you reach the conclusion that the Bible does forbid homosexuality; you can still say to yourself that the prohibition is no longer relevant in modern society.
I hope you have the courage of your rational and autonomous convictions. Above all as with everything else, so also with the Bible, you have got to be intelligent, rational, free and independent; do no harm and don’t get in trouble with laws still being enforced – get laws changed before you openly contravene them, or don’t get caught if you have to act against laws which to you are no longer relevant today.
Good luck.
Susma Rio Sep
Huh. I’d have given seven-to-nine odds you’d have named someone else!
I’ve been in a committed relationship with my partner for nearly 2 years (our anniversary is July 21). In that time, we have plenty of hot, sweaty monkey sex. Because we are both negative and monogamous, we have zero chance of “suffering the penalty we so richly deserve”. So <snaps finger> snooks to you and your deity.
BTW, have you considered the wisdom of worshipping a being who exacts such Draconian penalties for following our own inborn instincts to love and be loved?
Gotta call you on this one, gobear – the Big Guy didn’t do that, just a bunch of His misguided followers.
BTW, if I manage to make it up to NoVa in the near future, would you and your partner consider joining me for dinner? (Dutch treat, unfortunately – while I’d love to treat you two, my budget won’t stretch.)
Um … I think you mean “cast the mote out of your own eye” (as in a mote of dust).
Having a moat in your eye would be a significantly bigger inconvenience. Especially if it was the kind of moat that had crocodiles.
What’s good for the gander is good for the goose.
I’m just about as straight a guy as you’re likely to find … but I’d do Brad Pitt in a cocaine hearbeat.
You miss the point. The OP does indeed believe that God casts disease on people who piss him off. I’m merely calling him on it. Your take on the matter doesn’t count because we’re not talking about your beliefs, but his.
Nonsense, we’ll treat you (although it may be just you and me–my bf is not Dope-friendly)
The way i understand it, and leanred from reading books, not fromchurch people, is that all humans are sinners, needing of Jesus’ substitutionary death on our behalf.
ANYTHING else, homosexuality (for those who think its a sin, smoking for those for do also, etc. etc.) is just side issues.
Its sortof a distraction from the real message.
Does I seem to make sense on this?
Were I to discover that Polycarp, Zev, and I were wrong about G-d being loving and merciful, and that Jack Chick and ysuB were right in their claims of a harsh and judgemental deity, I’d abandon Judaism. Any god who would cast you, Esprix, etc into eternal torment simply for being gay is a monster.
BTW-It’s that octopus tentacle that worries me. Hot, sweaty, monkey sex with your bf is a beautiful expression of your love. But chopping a limb off of a living creature, dropping the octopus back in the tank, and eating its flesh while it watches is just cruel.
I wonder if we’ll be seeing ElbaliavanU in this thread again…
Esprix
How do you KNOW this? Are you psychic?
Really, you don’t KNOW this. You ASSUME this, and you know what they say when you “assume”…
At any rate, if Esprix, gobear, and other gay Dopers aren’t welcome in Heaven with us straight folk (I just mentioned two of the people in this thread), then quite frankly, I don’t care to be there, either.
I’d much rather be around a compassionate, sweet, good, kind understanding being who just happens to be attracted by their own gender than someone who is a cruel, nasty, narrow-minded bigot, but is straight. (and I’m NOT saying that anyone in this thread is, just making a point).
And like I keep saying-even if being gay IS a sin-it’s not for us to make that judgment. So in this case, it would be between Esprix and God (if God exists, whatever you believe, standard disclaimer applies).
See, this is why I can no longer really go with Catholicism (well, that and issues on feminism, birth control, love, sex-mainly for their positions on women in the church and birth control)-despite the fact that I was raised in the faith. I get closer and closer to being a Unitarian Universalist everyday.
w00t! Another UU convert! 
Esprix
Don’t get too excited Esprix. Guin’s conversion to UU is just one step in my plan for her. Eventually, she’ll be Jewish. Her fascination with the Tsars will make her unable to resist my Rasputinesque powers. It’s only a matter of time.
You can be UU and Jewish, too. 
Esprix