GLBT Relationships Forum - National Day of Silence

Hello, I'm from the State University of New York at Oswego in NY. Yesterday, April 18th was the National Day of Silence. My school celebrated it today due to other events happening on wednesday.

I'd like to post something from another forum where homosexuaity was being debated. It was a biblical debate; and I honestly feel that for once, the GLBTA communitty won in this case.

Many of you may be familiar with the homosexual references in .leviticus and in .romans. Well, .leviticus is .old .testament so it just plain doesn't matter. "Real" christians love pointing that out to me; so if it doesn't count when debating things like stoning your wife and seven days of uncleanliness after giving birth, then clearly .leviticus doesn't count in reference to homosexuality.

So here's my post. I hope you enjoy it, and take some solace in it. Please don't get offended by how I word things; remember, I'm trying to rationalize the christian religion here! I was raised christian by the way, but I'm buddhist now.

Eiri wrote:

"Romans 1:26-27: "for this cause god gave them up unto vile affections" it then goes on to say that so lusty were these people, that the men were not satisfied with just women, and they went to other men as well. Of course, you have to be able to properly read in order to understand that. It also helps if you look at the verse before that one, so you understand why god is giving them up to vile affections. Remember, god is causing this, the people are not doing this on their own. Here is the previous verse:

"romans 1:25 - they exchenged the truth of god for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rater than the creator - who is forver praised, amen."

so here you can clearly see that god is punishing these people. He does so by causing lust in them, lust so strong that they cannot satisfy themselves with the usual gender relations, and so they switch over to homosexuality as well. I'd take it more as they were bisexual than anything else.

Because this form of homosexuality was caused by god, and was therefore neither the people's natural biological urge (as real homosexuality is) nor their choice at all, I say it does not count as a voice against homosexuality.

You cannot force someone to do something and then say "oh you're so bad for doing that!"

"romans 1:26 (new international version) - because of this, god gave them over to shameful lusts."

giving your pet over to someone who is going to kill it does not absolve you of blame.

Giving your child over to a molestor does not absolve you of blame.

Giving your students over to a teacher who you know will fail them does not absolve you of blame.

God giving the people over to shameful lusts does not absolve him of blame.

But the point is that god caused their behavior . I cannot see how in any way shape for form these people did this themselves. God was punishing them, and he did it by making them lusty. These people worshipped other gods; before god came in and got angry at them, they were not lustful. Perhaps these people were even celibate!! The bible does not say. It simply says they worshipped idols. Then god came along, got pissed, and suddenly everyone had the uncontrollable urge to have lots and lots of sex.

If you keep reading, god also made them mentally insane ( romans 1:28 ) and just generally bad people all over.

These people were not like this before god came along. These were quite possibly celibate, kind, caring people. Their only "mistake" was not worshipping the god of christianity - a god of wrath and jealousy. He couldn't stand not being paid attention to, so he ruined a whole society. That is not justice, that is not right.

Moving on: homosexuality had its reasons for being frowned upon in some societies in the past, just as there was a non-religious reason to not eat pigs. Pig meat was notoriously full of parasits back then; and it was difficult to properly prepare it. Homosexuality (talking man-on man) sometimes lends itself to anal sex, and in a society that hadn't developed very good ways to clean itself in the arid environment of the middle east, disease would have been easily spread by anal sex.

I'd like to note that in cultures that knew how to properly bathe, homosexuality was not frowned upon. It was allowed in athens, and other ancient greek and roman cultures. It was also perfectly permissible among the samurai of ancient china and japan; but again, all of these people knew what soap and water was.

Being anti-gay had nothing to do with religion; or god saying it was unnatural!! It was a matter of sanitation!!! Now of course, I should hope that christians know what soap is.

Homosexuality also wasn't conducive towards building up a population. In a harsh environment such as the middle east, every baby was a blessing. Non-breeders like a homosexual couple would, at the time, have been anti-productive. I hope that today, in our overpopulated world, christians don't have the uncontrollable urge to procreate. Oh wait, they do...

Just as the bible doesn't bother explaining exactly why pig-meat is bad (aside from the fact that it is "unclean") it also doesn't bother saying why exactly homosexuality is bad.

I really hope you can see these reasons and realise what the bible was really trying to do. It was social control, to help keep the people free from actual disease and to keep the population growing.

Don't even try to say "oh! So gay sex is dirty!" I already told you about cultures that were fine with it because they knew what soap and water were. I'm sorry the ancient christians were filthy, horrible cooks. That's not my fault. It's mostly a product of their environment, and they did the best they could. However, rules that made sense back then don't make any sense now!

Besides, didn't jesus wipe clean the slate, negating all of the old testament? The old tesament is the only place I found that directly stated that man-on-man homosexuality was bad. I'd like to note that it never says anything about lesbians but again, this is from leviticus, that huge chapter on rules that moses brought down from the mountain; all of those rules that jesus negated!! So, he negated anti-homosexuality thoughts too.

Homosexuality only pops up once more in the bible, in romans as we all know. In that case, it is caused by god, and so it doesn't count as an anti-gay argument; especially if you read everything in that section and you actually know what's going on, and don't just quote random verses out of context.