… and Communists aren’t real atheists …
Ah, the old atheists = communists, therefore atheists are all mass murders routine. So it would be perfectly reasonable to round up all of us atheists and kill us, correct?
No, communists were not motivated by atheism - which is why people like yourself keep bringing them up and not other groups that happen to have atheists in them. Where’s the other massacres and tyrannies committed in the name of atheism, if the motivation of people like Stalin & Mao was atheism and not communism? How can atheism motivate anyone to do anything, for that matter? Where does it say to kill people in “there are no gods”?
The absence of any prohibition against lesbianism is notable in Leviticus.
I do not buy the “it’s because female sexuality was ignored” argument. Reading Leviticus, this just isn’t true at all. There are lots of prohibitions specific to female sexuality. For example, the rule against beastiality applied specifically to women as well as men:
I have never heard any definitive explaination for why lesbianism gets ignored in Leviticus.
Probably a combination of the fact that women can’t get each other pregnant, and that their preferences didn’t matter because they’d just be raped if they didn’t submit willingly.
Honestly, I’ve always thought the best explanation for the modern religious emphasis on hating homosexuality is the fact it’s safe.
If you preach against drunkeness, well, there are likely going to be some guys in the audience who pound a six-pack while watching the game in your congregation.
If you preach against adultery/divorce, well, that’s a big percentage too.
However, if you preach against homosexuality, it’s very likely that few of your congregation will be gay, and those who are will be so far in the closet they’re practically in Narnia.
It’s safe, therefore–it’s a genuine biblical sin, it’s a “big” one because it involves sexuality, and you’re not going to offend anyone who might make an attempt to have you fired and replaced for preaching against them, personally.
(yawn) Say what you please, nobody was ever killed simply in the name of theism. Claiming that religion is inherently evil because of what some religionists have done is every bit as silly as saying that atheism or socialism is inherently evil because of what Stalinists and Maoists have done. Your overblown, nearly hysterical anti-religion rants are getting really, really tiresome. Give it a rest.
Male homosexuals can’t get each other pregnant, either. 
One explaination I’ve heard (dunno about its validity) is that the prohibition in Leviticus arrives by way of a prohibition against foreign practices - the whole chapter is prefaced by “don’t do what those rotten Egyptians and Cananites do” - and (male) homosexuality, incest etc. were dissapproved of with extra venom because they were considered ‘dirty foreign practices’ (for example, the Egyptian royals at least thought nothing of incest and commonly married into close family, like brother-sister marriages).
Male homosexuality may be tained by Caananite practices, like the use of male temple prostitutes. Lacking a female equivalent, the authors of Leviticus saw no need to condemn lesbianism.
If this is the case then the prohibition against male homosexuality is simply a historical accident.
But they can say “no”. Women have historically been essentially slaves.
Nor have there ever been a significant number of “theists”. The people doing the killing are religious people doing what their specific religion tells them to do; kill. Where does it say “kill” in atheism?
Trying to smear atheists with blood does not make atheism and religion equivalent. Religions are belief systems, atheism is simply the lack of a particular belief. Communism is also a belief system, and is much more like religion than it is like atheism.
Let’s get back to the subject of religion and homosexuality instead of having another debate on the body count of religions and atheism. That’s a subject for a different thread.
I didn’t notice anybody make this point, forgive me if it has been mentioned–
I think it would be helpful if the OP defined hate. I think the gay activist version of hate isn’t exactly always “hate” in its traditional sense.
What I mean to say is gay activists will frequently throw the term hate around when the truth is more like “lack of 100% support.”
For an example, no matter how friendly you are to gays personally, no matter how much you support sex between two consenting adults being legal, no matter how much you say it is wrong for gays to face housing discrimination, or employment discrimination, etc, if you dare utter “I don’t think gay marriage is constructive” you’re called a hater.
I don’t have hateful reasons for not being in favor of gay marriage. I also decry a number of sociological trends that seem to be making marriage a rather meaningless concept. My attitude, whether mistaken or not, is not founded in hate.
it’s easy to mistake though–I suppose I can be somewhat snarky when I come across a gay activist who insists without exception that gay relationships are loving and committed while heterosexual breeders are dysfunctional–I have no sympathy for those who do a 180 with bigotry. Cry out the bigots hate you and I am not gonna ahve any sympathy if you turn around and engage in the same behavior.
Please, no-one try to twist this into some claim from me that ALL gays do the 180 bigot. I’ll be the first to admit that many gays are much more fair and really do want to get along with a straight majority. But you can’t get along with a straight majority when you insist that the straight majority is inherently inferior either.
See, this is why the Christian concept of “hate” has no place in intelligent discourse. It’s just a meaningless distinction–disliking things the Christian is allowed to dislike is just good sense, while disliking things the Christian is supposed to like is this “hate” boogeyman. What does “hate” mean, why is it inherently bad? No one can answer these questions.
The bottom line is, you oppose equal rights and have some bizarre conspiracy theory that the real bigotry is when gay people insist they are capable of having relationships, so I hope you never vote. I couldn’t care less whether your beliefs qualify as “hate” or not.
Let me propose the First Rule of Talking to Christians on the Internet: As a rule, semantic jerkoffery about whether your desire to keep Constitutional protections from one class of Americans constitutes “hate” or not is intended as a distraction from your desire to do so or any real analysis of same.
Well, demonstrate a position against gay marriage that isn’t founded on some sort of claim that it impacts straight marriage (through mysterious means) or that gays are inferior. I’ve never heard one, but you can be the first!
Barring that, being against gay marriage is being against equal rights. And that, in my opinion, IS hateful.
I don’t think your explanation of your attitude is what matters to people.
[QUOTE=David42]
I don’t have hateful reasons for not being in favor of gay marriage. I also decry a number of sociological trends that seem to be making marriage a rather meaningless concept. My attitude, whether mistaken or not, is not founded in hate.
[/QUOTE]
You are trying to deny the rights that the majority of humans take for granted to a minority, simply because of their sexual orientation. Whether your reasons stem from hate or from whatever you think are valid reasons is irrelevant, in the long run. It’s WRONG. Full stop.
-XT
Despite the insult you “removed,” this post is still insulting to David42 and your comments about Christians are more suited for the Pit than for Great Debates.
If anyone intends to respond to what Condescending Robot said here, I’ll point out that he’s started a new thread on this topic, so any answers should go there.
Gays do not characterize themselves as hateful when the question of the rights of the polygamous or the incestuous come up.
The answer tends to be “I am supporting gay rights, there is no requirement to support the rights of these other categories of people.”
Yet, my FAILURE to support gay marriage is “hate.” Either we’re both haters for failing to support someone’s rights, or neither of us is a hater for not having a duty to support ALL equal rights.
The illogic is that gays tend to argue “Equal rights for ALL” so long as they mean “gay” for “all”
When straights argue that recognizing a right for “loving consenting adults” (which is the core gay argument for the source of the right) also means recognizing the rights of the incestuous and the polygamous, for they also are “loving consenting adults,” all of a sudden gays argue, oh no, there isn’t a right to THAT. If asked why, we hear a regurgitation of the traditional marriage arguments which the gays claim are invalid as applied to them.
Gays argue it won’t lead to incest, because we have a biological interest in preventing that, but, if you apply biology to gays, it is irrelevant; artificial families are the answer for gays. Why artificial families aren’t the answer for incestuous people I do not know.
For polygamy, the gays want to cut the right of “loving consenting adults” off, in an arbitrary fashion, at the number 2. They have to fall back on the traditional marriage argument that they claim does not apply to them.
But for some reason gays aren’t haters of the practitioners of other sorts of kink when they want the other kink to remain outlawed.
Equal Rights for All is a faulty slogan unless you really MEAN equal rights for all. The gay marriage movement is and always will be subject to criticisms of hypocrisy so long as they continue to deny that we must also extend rights to certain other forms of kink as well.
As it is, gay is the only kind of kink that is worthy of elevation to the esteem that we place on the production of life, according to the gay activists. Which really is just saying, “Some animals are more equal than others.”
Obviously. They prefer to substitute something else for my attitude.
They’re saying your description of your attitude doesn’t matter to anyone except you. They don’t care if you say you’re opposed to gay marriage because gays are evil or because of some other thing. The result is the same. That you say it’s not a hate thing doesn’t matter. On the other hand, describing an adoptive same-sex couples as “artificial families” does imply some prejudice.
I for one appreciated the clear and- to the point way the O.P. titled this thread, and I did see
other references here that christians don’t hate anybody. Oh, but it was fresh of you to ask the OP to define “hate.”
I think the term “hate” is being avoided for a reason.
Have you ever heard the phrase that “awareness is half the battle”?
I believe that it’s in one of the steps to recovering from alcoholism,
once you have come to terms with your HATE, then maybe it will help you go the next step- of working on it.
Do not be afraid to admit your hatred, the truth will set you free.
It seems to me that truth should matter and people who aren’t motivated by hate should not be falsely accused of it.