Comments on: What dominionists would do with gays, part 2 – Enter Bryan Fischer

By: Emily K

Emily K — Wed, 30 May 2018 21:47:22 +0000

I for one just happen to believe that the bible is an accurate record of the history of the world, it’s my starting point.

Well, if that’s your starting point, it’s also your ending point. Since I do NOT believe “the bible” to be a history textbook, it’s moot. Thank goodness our government has a secular basis (no matter what david barton tries to say; expertly refuted by the author of this blog).
Honestly, people get so obsessed with our sex lives. We want equal protection for ourselves and our spouses under the law, not permission for public sex orgies.

By: Richard Willmer

Richard Willmer — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:34:34 +0000

Joe
It is so dirt-shovellingly typical of some people to lump bestiality and paedophilia with consensual same-sex relationships. It’s that tired and dirty propaganda line loved by homophobic people everywhere. Really!
The is a fundamental moral and jurisprudential difference between the first two and the third. It’s called ‘informed consent‘ – which doesn’t apply in the first two cases, but does in the third.
As for questions you asked (well, the ones I understood) … SGM is correct: it’s none of your business.

By: StraightGrandmother

StraightGrandmother — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:34:34 +0000

Joe,

You have an orientation in which you DID NOT choose, so what are you going to do about it? What should you do about it?

SGM- It is none of your business what other people do relativ to their private sexual life, it is not your business nor is it the governments business.
Joe-

You don’t like the term sexual behavior, you prefer sexual orientation and sexual minorities. We can use your terms but they do not stop with homosexuality. You would also have to include bestiality. pedophilia, polygamy, incest, necrophilia,
all I assume innate sexual orientations.

SGM- let the animals make their case if they want to fool around with humans. Yes all you are doing here is trying to create a diversion. Doesn’t work.
Joe,

That was the manual William Wilberforce used against slavery and the one Martin Luther King, Jr. used against segregation, and if memory serves correct the founding fathers used it as a basis for equality.

SGM- Oh yes our real nice slaveholding founding fathers.

Twelve American presidents owned slaves and eight of them, starting with Washington, owned slaves while in office. Almost from the very start, slaves were a common sight in the executive mansion. A list of construction workers building the White House in 1795 includes five slaves – named Tom, Peter, Ben, Harry and Daniel — all put to work as carpenters. Other slaves worked as masons in the government quarries, cutting the stone for early government buildings, including the White House and U.S. Capitol. According to records kept by the White House Historical Association, slaves often worked seven days a week — even in the hot and humid Washington summers. CNN

Seems to me you are saying that the Bible should be the basis for our laws. Funny you should mention MLK using the Bible, as the white slave holders and segragationalists claimed that their actions were also Biblically sanctioned. Our laws are built on a foundation of Human Rights, not your interpertation of the Bible.

By: Richard Willmer

Richard Willmer — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:34:34 +0000

Dave
You put it rather more gently than I did!
I take the view that paedophilia has nothing to do with sexuality – it’s really about (the abuse of) power … as is rape.
By the way, didn’t King Solomon have rather a lot of wives?! Maybe our ‘dominionist’ friends should hire a time capsule and go and sort out that little situation!

By: Zarron

Zarron — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:34:34 +0000

Joe said:
“That was the manual William Wilberforce used against slavery and the one Martin Luther King, Jr. used against segregation, and if memory serves correct the founding fathers used it as a basis for equality.”
I’m afraid this argument leads nowhere, since it’s had the distinction of being uwed to justify anti-semitic beliefs by the Nazis, was used to instigate the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades, and was used by white Southerners to justify slavery. That’s right. The same book Wilberforce used against slavery was used to justify it as well. It’s worth mentioning that both the new and old testaments explicitly condone slavery, as well. No less than Jesus commanded slaves to obey their masters.
What does this show? It shows that people use the Bible to justify their own predisposed beliefs. It’s rather astonishing to see that whenever someone talks about God, God always seems to believe exactly what the speaker does.
FYI, your memory does not serve. Some of the founding fathers were, in fact, men of faith, but they were also secularists; if you’ll notice, the constitution makes NO reference to religion of any sort, and the Declaration of Independence has only a reference a ‘Creator’, rather an explicitly Christian god. The founding fathers were quite aware of how religion can be subverted very easily, because it is based on ‘divine authority’. They knew that the nation they waged a war against was based on the idea that God had anointed their King to be the ruler. This is just part of the reason that the Constitution is a secular document.
If you didn’t know, many of the Founding Fathers were actually deists, and Masons. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote a version of the New Testament with all the miracles and references to Jesus’ divinity removed, turning it into a story about a jewish man with some good ideas who gets punished by an authoritarian society whose power he threatens with his message of social justice and universal redemption. It’s quite blasphemous, and an interesting take on the story.
Anyway…off of the Bible. You are baselessly linking homosexuality to things like bestiality, pedophilia, polygamy, incest, and necrophilia. Your only argument is that homosexuality is ‘not normal’, so let’s group it with these things I don’t consider normal either. Your refusal to see homosexuals as human beings is nothing short of disturbing.
You cannot seem to understand that homosexuality is, quite simply, a harmless behavior that does not affect you in the least. Two men walking down the street holding hands is not going to unravel the fabric of society. What they do in the bedroom together, with the blinds closed, is not going to affect you. Even if you believe it is ‘wrong’ (which is ridiculous, by the way), it’s not like they are forcing you into the behavior as well. Remember: Judge not, lest ye be judged.
Your assertion that morality is impossible without God is ridiculous as well. Atheists can be just as moral as Christians. I would argue more so; theistic morality is a sham, because the only standard for morality becomes what you believe God says. And we all know just how wobbly that is. I would actually argue that belief in morality coming from God is a sign of moral weakness, indicating that the person in question believes that morality cannot exist without an omniscient God out to punish you for bad behavior. You are leading us to believe that people who ‘fear God’ only abstain from rape, murder, and lies because of fear of God’s punishment. That certainly seems like moral weakness to me.
Most atheists have a morality based on the venerable Golden Rule, which does not need a God in order to operate. Only a bit of logic, and the assumption that other people like to be happy, just as oneself does, among a few other simple, uncontroversial things.

By: Pauliji

Pauliji — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:34:33 +0000

For those who do not think the fight for equality for sexual minorities is similar to the African American experience in the fight for equality, I suggest the following experiments:
#1) Take any statement about the Black civil rights movement and substitute “race” with “sexual orientation”, and “black, negro, african-american” with “gay, fag, lesbian, homo” etc. You will notice that the statement remains exactly the same, has the same validity and import, regardless of the subject. Works every time
#2) Buy yourself a gay rights tee-shirt, or a rainbow themed tee shirt (not the deadhead type, though), put it on, and walk through the food court of your local mall at lunch time on Saturday while holding hands with someone of the same gender, and close to your age. Gauge your level of discomfort. Does it feel weird? Do you think that people are looking at you? Worried about what people might say? You’re not gay, so what difference does it make? It just points out the internal levels of homophobia which reside in all of us, inescapably, since we were raised in America, in a culture which devalues, dehumanizes and disenfranchises anyone who doesn’t outwardly display the standard signs of sexual orientation.
Those who think that the struggle for gay rights isn’t a civil rights struggle just because sexual orientation is a “choice” can ponder this:
Since when is religion not a choice? And yet it’s protected specifically by virtually every constitution in the country. Choice is at the heart of freedom. What point in being free if you’re not free to choose who to love? Since when does the government get to choose for you? Imagine if you were told you were bad, sinful, damned to hell, doomed to die young, fired, evicted, denied a restaurant meal, all because of something in yourself that you first noticed when you were four years old, like me.
LGBT’s are the canaries in the coal mine. We’re the last group in this country to achieve parity. We’re the ones whom it’s still acceptable to vilify and deride publicly, and in fact it seems a necessity to do so if you wish to gain the GOP presidential nomination.
All because of some bronze aged myths written by semi-nomadic goat herders in a barely literate part of the middle east, involving an invisible father in the sky who sends a copy of himself to earth to be tortured to death so we can be released from a debt that was incurred by someone else (who didn’t even exist). Oy.

By: Jayhuck

Jayhuck — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:01:11 +0000

Joe –

From a gem of a little book called “Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction: Eastern Orthodox Reflections” by Father Thomas Hopko. A member of my church.
Immoral behavior doesn’t make anyone less-human.

For the record, I am Orthodox. Antiochian as a matter of fact 😉 I like Fr Hopko, and what he says is true, but what one person defines as immoral behavior another does not. I think he would agree we all behave immorally at times.

Ken,

I don’t believe in your religion or your concept of sin. And in the US you are not allowed to force me (or anyone else) to adhere to your religious beliefs.

Is it still okay in the US to voice my religious beliefs?

Of course it is okay to voice your religious beliefs, that isn’t really what is at issue here. The issue is you, or anyone else, trying to legislate your religious beliefs on those who do not agree with you.

By: Jayhuck

Jayhuck — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:01:11 +0000

Joe –

“Similar lobbying, then by homosexual activists, led to the declassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 in the DSM.”

I agree, you need to explore this issue a bit more. The removal of homosexuality from the DSM involved so much more than just the activism of some homosexual groups. Its removal took nearly a year, and involved much debate and review of the scientific studies that had been done to that point regarding pathology and orientation.

By: Ken

Ken — Wed, 30 May 2018 20:01:11 +0000

Joe# ~ Sep 9, 2011 at 11:59 am
“It has repeatedly been said here, that there is no correlation between homosexuality and pedophilia. I beg to differ.”
To be more accurate, there is no more correlation between pedophilia and homosexuality than there is between pedophila and heterosexuality. Nothing you have posted or cited supports your implication otherwise.
Why do you feel the need to associate homosexuality with pedophila Joe? Your attitude seems no different than when people would keep trying to associate drug dealers (and other criminal activities) with blacks.
“You don’t think this is a first step toward normalization?”
No. Do you not understand what the term “consenting adult” means Joe? it has been used here several times.
“SGM-I have no more interest in this than in any other sexual “behavior” that was once considered immoral, but is now not.”
I doubt that, I have yet to see you post about inter-racial sex. Or sex outside of marriage. Or masturbation (male or female) or a host of other sexual behaviours. I’d say you seem particularly focused on gays.
“Similar lobbying, then by homosexual activists, led to the declassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 in the DSM.”
The lobbying was what got the APA to look at the issue, the science was what got them to remove it from the DSM. This issue has already been discussed here. I’d recommend reading through the whole thread, Jayhuck, William, and some others also had some interesting facts and points about the removal of homosexuality from the DSM.

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:31:43 +0000

Ken,
You really are the king of deflection…it really was just a simple question.
Everyone seems to know exactly what list we are talking about here, and also what is on that list.
Yet, no one seems to be able to tell me how or why homosexuality was removed from that list.

2nd, the Levitican codes are nearly 3000 years old. They have NOTHING to do with our current SCIENTIFIC understanding of sexuality.

That is so lame…
The issue of choice as regards to mere feeling or impulses (orientations) is irrelevant to the question of determining morality since all behavior, at some level, can be traced to differences in brain structure and process. Most men are “polysexual” but that doesn’t validate polygamy for society (at least we don’t yet issue marriage licenses for 3 or more persons).
Pedophiles have as little choice as homosexual persons in their impulses (orientations) but that doesn’t validate the behavior in question.
People may not be responsible for what they feel but they are responsible for what they do with what they feel.
Homosexual unions are considered immoral irrespective of choice as regards to the mere experience of an impulse(orientation).
Most sinful impulses, in fact, are innate; the innateness doesn’t make it any less sinful.

Emily gave some excellent examples of how discrimination is about PEOPLE not BEHAVIORS,

No, she gave some examples of REACTIONS to “peoples behaviors”. It has more to do with affirmation (not getting any) than it does with discrimination.
I can value you as a human being, but that does not mean I have to approve of everything you do. People on both sides of the spectrum have a really hard time with this concept.
Simply put, the Bible is negative toward same-sex behavior in any context, and there is no getting around it.
Not my interpretation, the church has held this view for over 2000 years, (I’m not Protestant or Catholic) and I simple see no valid reason why I should say they were wrong.