You also can’t rationally decide that there’s only one “correct” way to interpret religious doctrine.
Arbitrarily declaring that Christians who aren’t homophobic are somehow less “authentically Christian” than Christians who are homophobic is no more sensible than declaring that blacks who aren’t homophobic are less “authentically black”.
Hasn’t this whole thread been liberal Christians telling fundamentalists that they do not have the one correct interpretation and are not authentically Christian?
No.
No, this whole thread has been liberal Christians (and various liberal non-Christians such as myself) trying to explain to you that your understanding of liberal Christianity is warped (at least in this particular case) and your Pitting is misdirected.
It’s a valid general point to say that calling homosexuality sinful does not qualify as loving acceptance of it. It’s absolutely true to observe that preaching “We must love gays even though gayness is sinful, just as we must love drug abusers and wife beaters etc.” is proclaiming a homophobic message.
But what you don’t seem able to grasp is that that’s not what the particular Christian you Pitted was actually doing.
He didn’t say “You should love gays even though being gay is a sin.”
Rather, what he said was “You should love gays even if YOU happen to believe that being gay is a sin, because your conviction that being gay is a sin is no more objectively valid or true than some other believer’s conviction that some of YOUR beliefs and/or acts are a sin.”
What the guy is preaching is that moral judgements and condemnations are relative, while the duty to love others is absolute.
That’s a very different thing from demanding praise for one’s goodness in loving others while still claiming the right to condemn them morally, which is what you stubbornly and fallaciously keep trying to argue that he’s doing.
tu quoque is a logical fallacy, actually, and that’s just a version of it. Whether an immoral behaviour is common is irrelevant to its immorality.
American jews are generally known for being very socially liberal as a group, though, which tends to outweigh the religious conservatism that a minority of American Jews actually practice. About half of all American Jews say they have a secular outlook, and of the remainder, I’m sure there are more non-Orthodox types.
A good pointer is that only a sixth of American Jews keep kosher.
But we’re not discussing whether something is immoral. We’re discussing whether it should be vilified, which is something else. There are any number of milder sins that we don’t denounce with full throat, partly due to small consequence but also due to ubiquitousness. There’s a lot that I am affronted by, but don’t villify like murder or arson.
Nitpicking: I’ve known a number of Jews who say they don’t keep kosher but also avoid ham and pork products. They speak accurately, though they also are guided by Jewish dietary law.
I agreed though with your general sentiments. Theologically, a fair number of Reform jews appear to treat the Torah as more a presentation of an historical primary document, than a Law handed down for all time. The single service that I attended at a Reform Judaic temple seemed to treat it in that manner.
The odd part is that there was once a minor Rabbi from Nazarath who also took issue with overly legalistic interpretations of scripture.
There once was a rabbi from Naz’reth…
[sorry, sounded like you were going for a limerick there, but that’s all I got]
Not really. The immoral behaviour in question (intolerance of gays) intersects nicely with that set of behaviours that are worth vilifying.
I have room for a lot of vilifying - basically, if I feel strongly enough about it to consider something immoral, it’s generally worth vilifying. I don’t really believe in “milder” sins - what might those be?
Well I think that’s key to understanding Christian attitudes toward sexuality. I know you asked this in general terms and as it relates to overlooking institutionalized intolerance, but I believe it’s illustrative to examine the concept of sin as the alleged intolerant religion understands it.
To the same sort of Christian who believes homosexuality is sinful (and I am not part of this subset), these would all fall in the same category:[ul]
[li]sexual thoughts directed toward anyone other than one’s own spouse,[/li][li]sexual thoughts directed knowingly toward another’s spouse,[/li][li]lustful objectification of one’s own spouse, and even[/li][li]masturbation, particularly if it includes fantasies involving the previous items.[/li][/ul]Also[ul]
[li]greed,[/li][li]gluttony,[/li][li]laziness, and[/li][li]anger.[/li][/ul]
AIUI, all of those are roughly equal as far as sinnin’ goes. But even if Christians think those things are sinful, or that ‘doing’ is more, less or the same amount of sinful as ‘thinking,’ they’re not supposed to judge others for those thoughts or deeds, which is what the blogger the OP despises is saying.
Which seems to leave practicing Christians with a lot less “room for vilifying” than you enjoy for yourself, MrD, not that most of them eschew it any more than you do.
And I think this is the crux of the problem the OP and others are having with the message-- it doesn’t matter to them if selected Christians base their actions (or their blog posts) on unconditional love; the OP and cohorts can’t abide Christians thinking some specific things like homosexuality are sinful at all, and insist that such moral considerations be yoked to their own, more highly developed ethos.
Makes me wonder if the OP et al can actually respect anyone who thinks differently than they do at any ideological level. And whether they see that as a self imposed limitation.
There once was from Naz’reth a rabbi
Who was a gay bar gadfly
He started to stick it in
Remembered it was a sin
And instead got on a cross to die
There once was a rabbi from Naz’reth
That denounced all those to his left
He emerged from his tomb
To an airport bathroom
And propositioned Mike Jones for meth
A little abrupt, but figured I’d have to have a go.
There once was a bright Galilean,
Who taught about love, law and bein’
In Rome’s Palestine,
Where the Saducees 'pined
“For a rabbi, he’s no Pharisee 'un.”
I am not nearly as good as some of you:
There once was a great rabbi man
Who tried to get the people on his plan
His script was stock
Asking his flock,
What part of love did you not understand?
Yes, precisely. And furthermore, it DOES matter, because since Christians teach their children (and, if they get their way re: the public schools, everyone’s children) that homosexuality is a sin, they still cause all of the mental issues and societal stigmas towards gays, regardless of whether they add “but we love you anyway” to it or not.
That’s right, thinking all people deserve equal rights is just egocentrism or possibly fascism. Let’s all be happy relativists who don’t have any opinions about anything except how stupid people with rational values are. Liberal Christian theology, ladies and gents.
Laziness. Insufficient charity in a world of need. Losing one’s temper, then immediately apologizing.
…which of course was the point of the glurg. Let me quote:
So it seems that Condescending Robot and The Glurg are in complete agreement. Let me be the first to congratulate him for coming around. And thank you for calling that glurg and its accompanying photos of happy people to our attention. Now I must go and cleanse my eyeballs.
Except that the particular liberal Christian that you idiotically insist on Pitting is arguing that all people deserve equal rights, and moreover, that they are all equally expecting and entitled to be respected as fellow human beings:
The dude is telling people who condemn homosexuality that they should not regard their condemnation as morally justified, or use it as an excuse to disrespect homosexuals.
I don’t know how you can still manage to avoid seeing that that is not in the least the same thing as saying “Gays ARE to be morally condemned but we must love them as Christians anyway, poor little perverts that they are”.
I’m afraid that by this point you have forfeited all claim to be considered any kind of a spokesperson or representative for “people with rational values”.
All you’re manifesting here is an irrationally stubborn refusal to listen to or understand what other people are saying to you, because it would force you to the embarrassing conclusion that you leaped before you looked and Pitted some random blogger you’d never heard of before for views that he wasn’t actually advocating.
Unfortunately for you, your consistent refusal to acknowledge or retract your error has not prevented other posters from noticing it. You are now strenuously engaged in violating the First Law of Holes.
You know, I had an ‘Eureka’ moment where I realized just what it is that Condescending Robot is upset about in that piece of glurge. And now it makes all the sense in the world why he’s upset.
He is justly offended that the viewpoint character of the glurge appears to be saying that it doesn’t matter whether the homophobes consider being gay to be sinful or not. Which is understandable, because that is exactly what the text of the glurge does say. And if you happen to be a gay person who may well have been personally hurt by said homophobes and their religiously-based condemnation, and is certainly being deprived of civil rights by them and their attitude, saying “It doesn’t matter” sounds heartless, reducing real and objective injury to a shoulder shrug.
The point is, the glurgist is not saying “It doesn’t matter whether the Bible condemns homosexuality” to gay people – he’s saying it to the homopohobes.. And while that at first glance sounds like a distinction without a difference, it actually makes all the difference in the world.
Because what he’s saying to the homophobes is, “If you clowns were gay, then it might make some difference what certain Bible passages may or may not have to say about whether being gay is sinful. But presumably and supposedly you’re not. What you are, according to what you call yourselves, is people who took Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and promised to follow His commandments.. And what he’s telling you – you qho claim the name of Christian, not those people over there with the rainbow flags – to do is pretty damn simple. And it doesn’t involve railing at them about how sinful they are or trying to ban them from equal treatment at law. It’s this: Love them as you love yourself. Treat them as you would want to be treated if the shoe were on the other foot. Try to avoid judgiing them, and if you do judge, judge with lovingkindness, compassion, and mercy, remembering that you too will be judged with the same measure by which you judge. Those are the big commandments, the ones you’re supposed to do first and foremost, the doing of which fulfills the whole Law.” And every word of that can be proved out of the same Bible that they use to condemn gay people. That’s why he’s saying “it doesn’t matter” – because the people he’s saying it to are focusing on other people’s supposed sins and not doing what they themselves have been commanded to do by their supposed Lord.
Love your neighbor as yourself. When asked, “who is my neighbor?”, Jesus replied with a parable. And we’ve facilely used “good Samaritan” in so many contexts that it doesn’t come across how radical making a Samaritan the hero of the story is. Want a modern version?
A certain man was driving down to Washington. And he picked up some hitchhikers, who proved to be thugs who beat him mercilesslyt and robbed him, stole his car, and left him badly wounded by hte side of the road. Now Pat Robertson was driving down the road and saw him lying there. But he was late for a meeting with the Republican Caucus, to let them know what the Religious Right expected them to try to enact. So he drove on by/ Then Antonin Scalia came driving down the road and he too saw him there. But he knew that if he didn’t get back to the Court, the Wise Latina would win a majority to her activist liberal opinion instead of Scalia’s own solid Conservative Republican opinion firmly grounded in his reading of the Constitutional text. So he too drove on by. Then Mubarak Dahir came driving alkong, heading down to Washington to do some lobbying. And he is of co9urse a gay Arab wth Islamic family roots. And he stopped, helped the man into his car, drove him to the hospital, and arranged for the man’s care, guaranteeing that whatever costs were not covered he would pay. Now which of these men did the neighborly thing for the beaten robbery victim? That is how shocking Jesus picking a Samaritan was.
Not immoral.
Vilifiable.
Not immoral.
Leads to bad outcomes. Immoral.
Inevitable for those out of poverty. Not vilifiable.
Leads to non-optimal outcomes. Immoral.
After 300+ posts of people telling you there are plenty of Christians who think there’s nothing wrong with being gay, you still say this?