I can’t spek for Czarcasm, but I’m only worried about those with a voice. That means the leaders of the good churches.
That’s pretty much why I limited my comment to those living in the same town.
I live in the Bay Area. I’d feel less frustrated if I could picket my local Congresscritter - but mine is a Democrat who votes the way I’d want him to vote, and so picketing his office wouldn’t do much good.
Now those who lived in the Civil Rights years did come from far away to help.
And in my example I noted that the people in the town not being personally bigoted doesn’t mean they don’t have an obligation to speak up for the oppressed and against their bigoted neighbors. I understand that there is only so much they can do - they can’t send a thug to threaten the bigoted churches (though it might be interesting to have a gay branch of organized crime).
If a certain denomination has strong support for why God and Jesus support their views as opposed to the Baptists, perhaps they could loudly proclaim it. I understand that there is not one Christianity (I’m Jewish, so it is all confusing to me) but they should be able to find Biblical justification for the position. If God, however, is a homophobe, they are invited to join the atheist club.
I apologize for causing the confusion with the 14,000,000 number I posted for United Methodists. It’s the total number of Methodists on the planet. Since the discussion has clearly been focused on the United States, I should have used that number instead. I messed up on that one, and it in turn caused problems in the discussion. I’m truly sorry.
What’s wrong *with *saying, “Homosexuality is wrong, but so are a thousand other things, and we are all sinners, and so we accept sinners into the church?”
In (sort of) answer to the question whether there are any atheists who are opposed to homosexuality, surveys show that (in the U.S.) Unitarians, Buddhists, Reform Jews, and agnostics are only slightly less likely to be opposed to homosexuality, while Conservative Jews and Quakers are only slightly more likely to be opposed to homosexuality:
I suspect that what’s going on is that acceptance of homosexuality is usually just part of the standard package of beliefs for American liberals:
So if you’re an American liberal, you have a standard package of groups that you believe in tolerance for, and it’s not really your belief or non-belief in God that determines that tolerance.
FTR, the RCC isn’t on their clear affirming list. Also, they don’t hold gay marriage ceremonies right?
Stumbling blocks:
There are intra-institutional issues which have been brought up. In addition there are the seven clobber passages, some of which are worse than others. None of them involve the 4 gospels: Una mentioned the queer friendly remark spoken by Jesus in Matthew 19:9-12. Still, Christian doctrine, taken as a whole, provides a less than sturdy foundation for those who espouse something like the brotherhood of man.
Even if loving thy neighbor is at the core of the teachings.
Since when are Reform Jews atheists? They may not follow Jewish law as strictly as I’d like, but they still believe in G-d. Reconstructionist Jews on the other hand, tend to focus on the Jews as a people and a community- sometimes to the extent of being atheist.
The RCC absolutely doesn’t recognize SSM at this time.
Several years ago, I attended the wedding of my college girlfriend (who had, years after we parted, realized that she was a lesbian) and her longtime partner. It was at a Catholic church in St. Louis…and, at first, I wondered about that.
I quickly discovered that St. Stanislaus Kostka Polish Catholic Church is an independent Catholic church; they had disassociated themselves with the St. Louis Diocese several years ago, when the diocese attempted to take control of the non-profit corporation which held the church’s assets (as the diocese was looking for a way to pay off their legal bills surrounding priest sex abuse cases). They swear fealty to Rome and the pope, but follow their own path, and their priest and parish happily officiate and host same-sex marriages.
I think the big problem here for so many is that many churches have made homosexuality like the ultimate sin. And they have sometimes ignored other sins or downplayed them (such as the married person committing adultery) so as to target gays. That is homophobia and is wrong.
Yes sin is sin and in my book and homosexuality is just one of those sins. But again, at my church a gay couple coming thru the doors would be welcomed just like a cohabitating straight couple or a person who just has a hangover from last nights party at the bar or the person who just scammed some people out of their money. Sin is sin and God deals with the hearts of people. Sometimes thru the word and inspiration, sometimes thru the words of others. In the Bible sinners would repent and make amends.
DocCathode, you misunderstood my point. I was replying to the idea that all atheists tolerate homosexuals, while that’s not true of any other group. If you look at the websites that I linked to in post #112, you can see that Unitarians, Buddhists, Reform Jews, and agnostics are on average just as tolerant (in fact, a little more tolerant on average) as atheists (in the U.S.). Conservative Jews and Quakers are only a little less tolerant on average as atheists (in the U.S.). My point can be seen if you ask yourself what all those groups (Unitarians, Buddhists, Reform Jews, agnostics, Conservative Jews, and Quakers) have in common. It’s not whether they believe in God. It’s that all of them tend to be more liberal than other religious groups (in the U.S.). There’s a standard package of beliefs among American liberals. One of them is tolerance of certain groups, and homosexuals are one of those groups.
Nor lesbian ones, no. But that’s not the same as “not marrying gays”, and for a bisexual couple of different sexes the behavior the Church would expect of the spouses is exactly the same as if they happened to be straight. For a couple where one or both spouses happen to not really be attracted to the other, the main question would be whether the marriage can truly fulfill the conditions to be canonically valid, but that also applies in many other cases such as when one of the spouses-to-be or both are of highly advanced age. A cousin of mine got married in the RCC, is still married in the RCC (civilly separated) and gayer than a Pride parade (we knew he was gay before we knew the word… other guys would get lost looking at the girls, he got lost looking at the guys); his wife and him have shared custody of the two kids.
I think it’s one of those rules where what the rule means and what it says are a liiiiiittle bit different.
I’m surprised to see quakers even that low. They may be conflating quaker meetings and quaker churches. The latter of which are a modern aberration of those who got caught up in the evangelical movement. Why they keep the name, I don’t know.
And they proselytize, hence all the supposed quakers in africa who are bigots on this issue.
