Part three of my discussion on Blogging Theology concerning gay rights kicks off with a response of mine to the following statement by Ken Temple – as before, my comments are in blue, his are in pink, and further comments will be in black (parts one and two, for reference, provide some background):
“homophobia” is just thrown out to try and shut down conversation. I am not afraid of homosexuals as people. I have led one to Christ and he appreciated it; and taught another guy in the Christian faith after someone else led him to repentance and faith in Christ.
I ate meals with them and visited them in their homes; and they told me I was the first Christian who reached out to them and visited them and ate meals with them.
We became good friends. the second guy eventually got married to a woman and had 4 children.
They both confessed they were wrong and they even knew they were doing wrong even while doing their homosexual lifestyle before they repented and came to faith in Christ. The confessed they were suppressing their consciences.
So, “patrobin” – you are wrong and take it back.
In one sense Ken, you are correct – homophobia is not the right word, for that implies fear. What you harbour is hate.
In one of your earlier posts you decried the idea that homosexuality was being forced into peoples’ faces – well, I know of no gay Churches, I know of no gay people who canvas people to convert to homosexuality, I know of no gay people who knock on peoples’ doors to preach the Word of the Gay.
No; the highest form of love is preaching the love of God in Jesus Christ and His gospel. How dare you call my genuine concern for homosexuals “hate”. Christians do not hate homosexuals at all. Tough love includes telling people the truth and not giving in their childish demands.
And you are also wrong in that they are constantly in the bias left wing news and media and liberal agendas by the propaganda of how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama “changed their minds” and “evolved” about so called “gay marriage” – and the courts and TV Shows and movies are definitely shoving their debauchery and perversions in our faces.
*Gasp* oh no, the government in the US took steps to ensure arbitrary discrimination couldn’t happen by granting equal marriage rights, which did precisely nothing to undermine anyone else’s marriage in the process! Such a terrible evil…
I’m not wrong. You call them perverted. You expect them to hide away and you think they shouldn’t be allowed to get married. You support businesses being free to discriminate against them. That isn’t ‘showing concern’. You have also failed to address my point RE preaching and Churches, in favour of a whinge about supposedly biased media. Hate is the appropriate word
No; “hate” is wrong. You just use that and others use “homophobia” as a way to shut down argument and debate. I already proved that entering a shop and buying an already made plain cake is fine; but demanding that someone has to put two plastic men on top (a symbol of perversion) is wrong and force and the meme that Paul Williams put up is right.
You and that agenda is demanding that we change the meaning of words of also.
homosexuals cannot get married. Marriage is only between a man and a woman. Genesis 1-2; Matthew 19:3-6
What exactly does Ken think he’s proven? He hasn’t provided anything to support his bigotry beyond… his opinion!
Marriage is not a Christian institution and you are supporting (as Paul is) the arbitrary discrimination of anyone, for whatever reason, by suggesting businesses are not held to rules. Do you believe it would right for a Christian to refuse service to a Muslim, or vice versa? What if someone refuses service to black people, just because they want to? This is the sort of society you would favour, by failing to hold businesses to a single standard.
Marriage is a Christian institution, and a creation ordinance – Genesis 1-2 – it is basic to all cultures in all history and is inherently only for a man and a woman.
An electrical wire connection will not work if you force the wrong parts into the wrong socket.
Plumbing will not work if you don’t connect the right pipes together.
Male and Female were made to fit with one another, compliment one another.
Many blacks have said it is such an insult to equate their struggle for civil rights with the gay rights movement of wanting the right to perversion and immorality and changing language and society and history.
Whilst technically more black people oppose gay marriage than support it, the number of black people who support gay marriage is around 40%, which is not a trivial percentage, and it is growing.
Marriage predates Christianity (the concept of unions between people existed throughout Greek and Roman times, to say nothing of it outside Europe). It is wholly arrogant to claim marriage is therefore a Christian institution, unless you’re saying you regard Genesis as literally true (in which case we can add pseudo-scientific creationist dogma to your homophobia). Your false examples regarding wiring and plumbing strike me as an effort to dehumanise the discussion, ignoring the impact such discriminatory ideals has on people, and I see you have no answer to my point regarding wholesale discrimination, so instead you change tact and try to suggest blacks would be against the gay rights movement (which is false).
You have still to address my point RE the ongoing denial of jobs (or dismissal from jobs) to homosexuals, for no other reason other than that they are homosexuals. Is this something a fair and just society indulges in?
the Truth of Christianity includes the Old Testament Scriptures, the Torah, the book of Genesis being the first.
“God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” = still a great truth and bears repeating.Conservative Christians have several ways of dealing with Genesis – there are several legitimate interpretations that do not affirm Darwinian Evolution – the days of Genesis may be long epochs or the first verse is a general statement and the days are days of arranging matter that was created in verse 1. The 3-4 basic views are 1. Young Earth – literal 24 days, God creating age within the first creation – as Adam and Eve were already mature, etc. 2. Day Age or Epochs, 3. Some kind of gap theory between verse 1 and 2 or John Sailhaimer’s view. 4. The Framework Hypothesis is another form of the days being long periods of time or epochs.
Aside from the desperation to justify creationism, the childish Adam and Steve argument is barely even worth acknowledging. If this is his justification for discrimination… urgh.
Except that creationism as defined by Genesis is completely unverifiable as a scientific medium – and your argument about Adam and ‘Steve’ is just childish. It remains completely untrue that marriage is a Christian institution.
Furthermore, your narrative assumes we must all abide by a very specific set of rules, in order to have certain rights. You still haven’t answered my points RE denial of jobs and rights.
the issues about denial jobs and rights would have to taken on a case by case instance – it is just too general to make a judgment on that. If the person is humble and not flaunting their homosexuality out in the open, there is no reason they should be fired, etc.
What defines ‘flaunting’? Do you know? Basically you’re saying ‘because of my belief system, you have to totally hide who you actually are, otherwise I’m going to be mean to you and deny you rights’. You’re also saying ‘my belief system should be the overriding one upon which everyone should be judged and upon which laws and rules should be made, regardless of other faiths and beliefs’. You’re not supporting equality – you’re supporting a theocracy, and we know how well they usually turn out…
Since God exists; and He does miracles; and is all powerful and pure; there is no good reason to not understand that God can create things with age already within them and that He can do the kinds of miracles described in the Bible. (parting of the Red Sea; Noah’s ark; the virgin Birth of Christ, the resurrection of Christ from the dead, etc.)
There are dozens of creation narratives out there. Each one will claim to be to utterly true. Upon which do we hang our hat and use to form a system of rules?
The only fair means to represent everyone is for no single faith to be the dominant one. To do otherwise is to invite oppression.
This is a key point for me. To declare that your personal belief system should override the rights of everyone else is extremely arrogant.
Will there be a part four to this? I don’t know – the problem with arguing with religious fundamentalists is that nothing – nothing – will move them from their positions – no degree of logic, no amount of evidence. Still, I cannot stand to see such ideas go unchallenged, so there may yet be a part four. Watch this space!
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“Hate” is intense dislike for someone, the dislike may derive from fear, anger or a sense of injury. Sexuality is definitely part of who someone is, composes identity. Christians claim to hate the sin and not the sinner. I’m sure some do fear homosexuals ruining themselves and others, doing injury to society, hence not wanting homosexuals to raise children and so on. I think it’s fair to say that many Christians do hate homosexuals, though it may be very light. I do think hate and love can be applied simultaneously.
A friend of mine could cheat on her husband, and I may be disgusted by it, disappointed by it, lose some respect for her, but I still love my friend. I feel compassion for what led her to cheat, although there are no excuses for her ever cheating. She was dishonest, she broke her vow to her mate (a vow I witnessed as a bride’s maid), she was selfish, she hurt him. Some people cheat only once, many make a habit of it. They are cheaters. If my friend were a cheater, that becomes part of her identity, a part I will always dislike. A flaw in her I want to help her mend, if she will let me. It’s only my business if she makes it mine. I guess I could say I hate that part of her. But that is not really one part of her, it is her. She used her whole brain and body to make those decisions, her conscience failed, her rationale was wrong. The same way of thinking she used to cheat may lead her to make other harmful judgments. I guess, while I love my friend I also hate her. Hate can ruin love.
Hate is a very stirring word, though. We can call bigots out without offending them at the start. Offending someone never helped change their minds. No one is like, “Someone called me a bigot, now I see the error of my ways. I am going to stop being a bigot now.” My uncle didn’t. Instead, he said I am a bigot because I called him a bigot for simply disagreeing with him about the nature of homosexuality. When bigoted opinions are derived from a person’s religion, they are going to stubbornly defend the religion. Even bigot is a hot word, when it merely means that someone’s opinion is based on narrow, intolerant ideas resulting in unfair dislike. Someone who forms all of their opinions from one holy book, not consulting any other literature, is easily a bigot by definition. It is easy to call someone hateful or bigoted. It’s harder to interact in ways that are effective. Rather than saying, “You’re being a bigot,” we can try, “You form all of your opinions from only the Bible? Why is this source or that source so wrong to consider?” I have a progressive Christian friend. We were talking about evolution one day and I said that chimpanzees and humans shared 90-something percent of their DNA. She had not known that, it was never mentioned in the Creationist pamphlets she read. I said, “You do think that paternity tests are correct, right? So does it now make sense that chimps and humans are related?” She understood perfectly.
Christians go on about the institution of marriage without knowing much about the history of marriage.
“Prior to the declaration of the Lateran Council, the presence of clergy at weddings was not only unnecessary, it also seems to have been rare. The original role of the priest in a wedding celebration was to give a blessing to the couple. Georges Duby notes that ninth-century religious texts of Northern France make no mention of nuptial benedictions other than as part of joint wedding-coronation ceremonies where a queen simultaneously married the king and was crowned. During the same time period, the Bishop of Bourge forbade the priests in his diocese to even take part in wedding ceremonies mainly due to the bawdy nature of what was a celebration of the couple’s physical union (The Knight 33-34). As late as 1194 we find a record of a wedding celebration in Ardres, France where the priest was called in solely to bless the couple, sprinkle them with holy water, and cense the bridal bed (Duby, The Knight 18). Yet we also find instances of ceremonies fully overseen by a priest in the 1120’s and 30’s in Laon, France (Duby, The Knight 152). The presence of clergy at weddings was still somewhat uncommon throughout the twelfth century, but became more standard in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In fact, in 1403, the Bishop of Magdeburg went as far as threatening to excommunicate those who married without clergy in attendance (Cohen and Horowitz 235). From this we can see that, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the presence of clergy had become standard” (http://celyn.drizzlehosting.com/mrwp/mrwed.html).
In Europe at some early point, the Church had nothing to do with marriages. Marriage has been a Christian institution for far less a time than homosexuality has been historically recorded.
Homosexuals sued for equal legal benefits from the federal government, that is all. In the same webpage, Martin Luther’s ideas about the church’s role in marriage is also worth reading. I wonder, do Christians think their marriages are only legitimized by a marriage license issued from a courthouse, or when they are presided over by their designated holy person in the holy ceremony? Are they really going to let the government tell them when they are bound to each other’s souls for eternity? I also wonder, do they think their religion is only legitimized as a religion when the U.S. government agency the IRS grants each church tax exempt status, or were they an established religion long before then? Homosexuals getting marriage licenses and legal benefits has nothing to do with their Christian institution of marriage. Government-issued marriage licenses also have nothing to do with it.