Homosexuality
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host, Epiphanies Host
Here is a link to the Homosexuality and Christianity thread on the old website.
Feel free to add to this thread or create a new thread on a subset of this topic
Feel free to add to this thread or create a new thread on a subset of this topic
Comments
So now Robert and Cynthia Gifford have resumed renting their property for weddings, ostensibly available for the use of any couple who can legally wed in the state of New York (and who can afford the fee). They have, however, decided to take a "poison pill" approach to same sex couples. Their website now carries this warning/disclaimer:
For those who are unfamiliar with them, the Family Research Council is an SPLC-designated anti-LGBT hate group*. This tactic is perfectly legal and does not seem to fall afoul of any anti-discrimination laws, even ones that prohibit a "hostile environment". It could even be argued that this kind of full disclosure is laudable, given that couples getting married usually don't think about (or care) what happens to their wedding money after they spend it.
Of course there's a good chance this may backfire, losing the Giffords not just the custom of any same-sex couples but also a lot of opposite-sex couples as well. For Robert and Cynthia Gifford it probably won't since anyone who Googles their farm will probably come across this case so anyone who doesn't want to give money to homophobes will likely stay away even without this notice, but it might have a negative impact for anyone else trying it.
*The SPLC does not designate every group opposed to gay rights as a "hate group". You have to really work at it to get that designation.
"You niggers can eat here, But we are giving part of the money you spent to the Klan"
With the Cliffords the calculus is a little different, since anyone who Googles them will come across their protracted legal battle. I'm guessing their thinking is that as long as that's going to be widely known (or at least knowable) there's little to be lost by publicly associating themselves with the FRC. For someone who doesn't have that reputation already I suspect this is not going to be a popular strategy, largely because if it was someone would be doing it already.
Blimey. What a bunch of charmers the FRC are!
We ought to be bothered about more important things. As P J O'Rourke says...
Well indeed. They can be as politically misguided as anyone else.
(not worthy)
And there's already at least one gay Republican group: Log Cabin Republicans.
That kind of concern trolling was probably more convincing before the Republicans adopted a thrice-married serial adulterer as their standard bearer. Of course the quote comes from a column written in 2004 praising Rush Limbaugh, a serial adulterer who was at the time in the process of separating from his third wife. Limbaugh has since married a fourth time, because marriage is so important to Republicans they want to have as many as possible, apparently. Mr. O'Rourke has only had two marriages, so apparently he's not as "pro-marriage" as Limbaugh.
Just out of curiosity, what sort of things are "more important" than your family and your God?
And, respectfully, did Maggie Thatcher support the things you are implying? (Cross-pond question. I really don't know.)
Thx.
(The article also says things about incest that made my head hurt).
Thoughts, anyone?
*And other such instructions.
If you can tell me that inerrantists can vote in support of marriage equality and not vote in favour of limiting it, if you can tell me that inerrantists can teach their children that being homosexual and acting on it is OK; then I think I can begin to think that maybe you don't all share the same guilt. This also goes for other issues, but I think this one is a good start.
Don't know about Lamb Chopped but I certainly know well a number of folks who are happily signed up to an inerrantist view of scripture for whom this is no problem. They think Steve Chalke did a pretty good job in identifying a consistent biblical hermeneutic re a variety of justice issues (e.g slavery, the role of women, gender identity).
It got him into a huge amount of hot water. But I think it captured very well the unease with traditional interpretations and the awareness of the kind of basic unfairness inherent in wooden literalism.
I think Steve Chalke has been moving on personally and he explains his own journey here.
He is no longer a believer in inerrancy. Which has got him into even hotter water. But the 2013 article on homosexuality was a genuine attempt to address the relationship between biblical interpretation and justice issues, pointing out ways in which opinions have moved. He is quite right, for example, to describe the attacks on abolitionists as dangerous liberals. But nobody argues that now. In virtually all conservative church circles the abolitionists are championed as having found the truth of scripture.
What they did was to weigh scripture with scripture and find a new point of balance. What Steve argued in 2013 is that there was a case for a similar journey re homosexuality. I know a lot of thoughtful Christians with very conservative views about the inerrancy of scripture who got that point and agreed with it. They felt the unfairness of the traditional view but did not want to abandon their beliefs about the truth of scripture.
But I think the driving force is this innate sense of fairness. People get torn between well known principles such as the supremacy of unselfish love, the importance of faithfulness, and these darned proof-texts about homosexual behaviour. They know something doesn't add up.
The bible is wrong. Personally, I think the "no it really doesn't say that" crowd are waffling. For the right reasons and towards the right conclusion, IMO, but still trying to fit an octagon into a round hole.
And by that description, does sir have a gay lifestyle in mind, or late capitalism in general? To my mind, it describes late capitalism far better than it does the lives of most of the same-sex couples of my acquaintance.
I've imported this here simply to save having to repeat it piecemeal.
I'd like you to explain this in a bit more detail. But if all you mean is that science detects people being same-sex attracted and not opposite-sex attracted, this may not quite prove what you want. As pointed out above
That is, people have 'naturally' all kinds of urges/desires to do things and those things are not necessarily 'good' just because people have desires and urges to do them. Desires and urges to steal, kill, lie, fight wars and so on, just for example.
Which is why Dawkins, in 'River out of Eden', made the point that in an atheist world, essentially everything happens purposelessly in an ultimately purposeless universe, and therefore say Martin Luther King and Ian Brady are morally equal as things that just so happened. And as he explicitly says, there is therefore 'no good and no evil'. And that, according to Dawkins, is very much 'the science'!
I rather suspect that appropriate tests would show that Brady had 'natural' desires to torture and kill children in pretty exactly the sense in which 'homosexuality' is 'natural'. Which is my point - unless really wanting to abandon moral right and wrong totally, then in areas like this involving urges/desires and actions where clearly there is a choice to do or not to do, it really isn't the same simple kind of 'being' whatever as 'being' red-haired or black-skinned, and it must at the very least be open to considerable possibilities of critique and question, and for that matter to there being more than one possible answer depending on alternative presuppositions (eg 'atheism' vs 'theism').
The fruits of faithful monogamous homosexual relationships are good; the people involved are healthier and happier, can support society without fear. Anyone seeing harm is usually hung up on the ickyness of homosexual acts, which are, like all bedroom acts, the business of those concerned and no others.
The fruits of condemnation and conversion therapies are bad.
Brady and homosexuality and your inability to weigh good and evil in the absence of God are genetically determined certainly.
1. By bracketing your comparison of MLK and Brady as "morally equal" by reference to Richard Dawkins creates the impression that you are citing 'River Out Of Eden' on this point. That is not a comparison that Dawkins makes, in the section of his book where he explicitly states there is no good and no evil (p132 in the edition I have) the example he gives of evil is a bus crash killing children. We do not tolerate potential libel on the Ship (see Commandment 7)
2. Likening homosexuals to paedophiles is a very offensive category error. To make that comparison with a child killer like Brady even more so. This is not only a personal attack on homosexuals (see Commandment 3), it may also be close to hate speech under UK law.
On the basis of these two egregious breaches of our Commandments, we hope you spend the next two weeks working on how you can make your points without causing needless offense because you won't be spending them posting on the Ship.
Alan
Ship of Fools Admin
Not sure if that's addressed to me. Scientists tend to assume methodological naturalism, that is, they ignore the supernatural. However, this doesn't mean that a scientist doesn't have personal views about gods, angels, whatever.
Sorry, I meant how can we differentiate between a world with or without God?
First, about Dawkins and “River Out Of Eden”
I tried a bit too hard to be brief and didn’t make it quite clear enough that an example I gave was not a quote from Dawkins himself but bore a different relation to his words. Here is the Dawkins passage
And my comment amounted to “If I take seriously the view Dawkins expresses here, a view of ‘the universe’ (= ‘everything there is’), then it would appear to be a logical consequence that….” And with that clarified, I feel my words to be fair comment and/or a reasonable argument about the business.
On the other “charge” which Alan Cresswell levelled against me I will have to come back with more detail. For now I will comment that I’d already made the basic point in earlier posts that in effect I am challenging the common current view of the ‘category’ in which ‘gayness’ belongs. That is, it is not in the category of something people ‘just are’ like being, say, blue-eyed or red-haired, but very much in the category of things people ‘do’, and unlike being born blue-eyed etc., definitely have a choice about doing. That category is wide – essentially running all the way from what most would consider ‘saintly’ behaviour to what most would consider ‘devilish’. But in that category rather different considerations apply and it is at least very questionable whether, in that category of ‘doing/behaviour’ you can just say “I have these desires and urges to do such-and-such an act and therefore it is ‘natural’ and must be OK for me to do it”.
I would also comment that I did not crassly compare homosexuals to paedophiles. I was responding to a Shipmate’s comment about what ‘science’ showed and asking a question about the extent and limits of ‘the science’ in this kind of context. Namely that as far as I can tell, the same kind of tests that would show the ‘naturalness’ of heterosexuality and homosexuality would also show a similar ‘naturalness’ of other ‘paraphilias’ including some, such as the proclivities of Brady, that would be considered questionable or evil – and therefore the science in this case, when considered more broadly, might well be ‘proving’ either not enough or altogether too much. That is surely a question that needs a proper answer, and being ‘offended’ is not a proper answer but an evasion.
I don't know about you, but I frequently move around in the community and interact with people who are different, and have different values to me.
I don't see the need to compare people who do things I find distasteful to mass murderers. And I'm perfectly happy to allow others to do things I don't like without needing to offend them.
If it isn't specifically hurting someone else, what business is it of mine anyway?