Thread: Why is Evangelicalism associated with homophobia? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
(This thread is a spinoff from the Death of Evangelicalism thread in Purgatory).

My answer to the question in the title is quite simple; Homophobia is an Evangelical Shibboleth. It may or may not be the issue that Evangelical Christians are all homophobes - but dissent from the homophobic party line and they will throw you out - as happened in the case of Steve Chalke. On the other hand if you're only a little shy of the level reached by Fred Phelps and Christianity Today may call you "Too Christian". No, I don't consider Fred Phelps had much to do with normal Evangelical Christians, but based on the Christianity Today response, his was a fault on the right side.

And even within as "moderate" a church as the Church of England (where moderate means "We try to remain friends both with the persecutors and the persecuted, judging neither") the high ranking Evangelicals are trying desperately to defend their homophobia - with results ranging from the laughable and knowingly wrong to a straight up surrender to terrorism (in Justin Welby's case) - which is considerably better than someone of the intellectual stature of N. T. Wright can manage. Neither of them are stupid people - they must know how much hogwash the arguments I've linked are. But to remain Evangelical and in good standing they need to support the party line.


Dealing with the reply on the Purgatory thread that lead to this

Homophobia is the word for this form of bigotry. Object or not, I do not care. But if you oppose the right of people who love each other to get married and are working to separate families (as opponents of gay marriage are) then homophobia is being polite. If you have a pharisee-like dedication to the rules and are callous and unempathetic about those they hurt, that's worse. If you deny your approach leads to suffering, that's just callous blindness. If you're going by the derivation rather than the meaning of homophobia, the phobia part at least gives you an excuse. If it's a matter of religious purity and making man for the Sabbath, who cares? And destroying mutually loving relationships is, I trust, failing to love your neighbour as yourself.

As for society changing on you, cry me a river. Evangelical Christians didn't generally seek an end to slavery either (there were a few exceptions - and an Evangelical Anglican like Wilberforce had to lead the Abolitionists in parliament because Quakers were banned). For that matter, one major evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, was founded explicitly for the purpose of being pro-slavery.

Jonathan Edwards of the Great Awakening was not just a slaveowner but lobbied successfully to have slavery expanded into the state of Georgia. And before you claim he was a man of his time, that was also the time of John Woolman - who converted the Quakers into an anti-slavery denomination. The Quakers then, as now, were far ahead of the times.

But that "society has changed" is even used as a defence only underscores the fact that unless actively evangelising you need the shibboleths to tell Evangelicals from everyone else in day to day life. (And in Britain we don't have the "Right wing" shibboleth and abortion isn't such a big thing).
 
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :
 
Preach it, Brother!

I've never understood how Christians, who supposedly follow the Two Great Commandments as laid out by their Inspiration, can mange to be so utterly hate-filled in their dealings with some groups of people.

Remember? Those who are made in the Image of God?

But then I don't understand Bishop Amalric "Kill them all. God will know His own" either. There are times when I wonder if certain Christians have moved past that viewpoint even now.

Makes it difficult to attempt to evangelise among people who know and like LGBTs, women, the disabled, the oppressed ethnic minorities, blacks....

And I'm seeing more notes about the "nones" who are "spiritual, but not religious". Funny that - you'd think they would love to join in doing oppression, slander and lying.
 
Posted by ToujoursDan (# 10578) on :
 
I was raised an Anglican/Episcopalian and went to an evangelical university (Azusa-Pacific U. in southern California) and returned to the Episcopal Church my senior year, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I'm gay.

Biblical literalism and an idealization of 1st Century moral norms and culture are at the root of it. Homophobia is merely a subset of evangelical patriarchy which manifested itself in many ways. Women went to college to find a husband (also known as getting your MRS degree). Female purity was celebrated. On our college campus, dancing was prohibited because it might lead to inappropriate touching, etc. Men and women were in separate housing and could not be in a closed room together. And of course homosexuality, particularly male homosexuality, is a no-no.

All this feeds on a literal interpretation of the Bible where the culture of 1st Century Palestine is believed to be an ideal that we're falling away from.

The evangelical outcry over homosexuality is such because it cuts to the root of this patriarchy. It's a direct challenge to it in a way that divorce, slavery, charging interest on a loan, materialism, worship of celebrity and the powerful (all condemned in the NT) isn't.

Conservative evangelicalism as we know it is falling apart for the reasons articulated here: 3 Key Reasons Why Religious Right Leaders Are So Angry. Younger evangelicals are far more egalitarian and much more relaxed about homosexuality. My former university even has a gay-straight alliance now. The Baby Boomer leaders can see the writing on the wall and try to use homosexuality as a last attempt to rally the troops and stop these changes from happening, but you can't stop this kind of social change.

[ 27. June 2014, 17:36: Message edited by: ToujoursDan ]
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Jonathan Edwards of the Great Awakening was not just a slaveowner but lobbied successfully to have slavery expanded into the state of Georgia.

[pedantry] I think you're confusing Jonathan Edwards with George Whitefield. And he lobbied for the legalization of slavery in the colony of Georgia, which wouldn't be a state until about a quarter of a century later. [/pedantry]
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
The association is not helped by reporting bias in the media. Not all evangelicals believe homosexual activity to be a sin. And, of those that do a large number would consider that it's not the business of the church to be dictating what laws should be passed in a secular society and, therefore, would not protest against same sex marriages. But, one person standing up and shouting about the evils of homosexuality attracts the press. A hundred, or a thousand, people sitting in their homes not making a protest at all goes unreported. And, even when evangelicals stand up and say they support same sex marriage and do not consider that homosexuality is a sin it fails to make the news. Unless there's some form of counter protest - in which case what do the papers say? "Evangelical says 'homosexuality is not a sin'"? Do they heck, you get "bunch of raving lunatic evangelicals denounce tolerant views".

Just in case anyone wonders. I'm an evangelical. Give me a copy of the UCCF doctrinal basis, the EA statement of belief or something similar from a broad evangelical organisation and I will sign where it says "I believe this".

I also believe that all people have the right to form permanent, faithful, loving relationships called marriage. And, I don't believe it matters one jot whether those people are gay or straight.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Evangelicals, by definition, are relatively conservative about matters of sexual behaviour. That's why they're 'associated with homophobia'.

Like all religious groups they change in various ways over time, but if (gay or straight) evangelicals with contemporary moral sensibilities find it's all taking too long, the most reasonable thing to do would be to abandon evangelicalism, since there's no shortage of other more tolerant churches that desperately need more members.
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
Hi, long-time lurker delurking to say ...

Evangelicalism's fixation on gay relationships is really about biblical authority. Homosexuality is just the presenting issue. It's a conflict between types of revelation: did God's revelation close with the Bible, or can evidence reveal new things today?

TBF, there are affirming evangelicals who believe the Bible doesn't condemn loving gay relationships, but they're currently in the minority.

The precedent of evangelicals who affirm women's ministry indicates that pro-gay evangelicals may end up in the majority, which is why anti-gay evangelicals work furiously to separate the two issues.

If evangelicalism does stop fighting a proxy war over homosexuality, expect a new "issue" to emerge in short order. Unless it fundamentally changes its beliefs about revelation and authority, it needs one.

[ 27. June 2014, 21:20: Message edited by: Byron ]
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
It's not that easy to ditch evangelicalism. As I said, I agree with the basic theological position of evangelicalism. If I was to transfer my allegiance to a different part of the Christian tradition I would have to change my theological position on a lot of things, just to find a better fit for a secondary issue.

As it happens, I don't belong to or worship in a self-defined evangelical church. That's because I find too much evangelical worship fails to reflect the spiritual and intellectual depth of evangelical belief. But, I'm still an evangelical. And, I still find what some evangelicals say about homosexuality disgusting, and I wish I could disassociate myself from them. But, I am evangelical, it's the core of what I believe.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
Byron,

That is a while to lurk. Thanks for that post.

You are, of course, right that homosexuality is a presenting issue over a deeper question. I'm not sure it's as simple as "is the Bible authoritative?". The big questions are, what do we mean by saying the Bible is the "supreme authority on matters of faith and conduct"?, what does "authority" mean anyway?. Also there is a whole bunch of questions about interpretive methods.
 
Posted by TheAlethiophile (# 16870) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Evangelicals, by definition, are relatively conservative about matters of sexual behaviour. That's why they're 'associated with homophobia'.

What definition is that you're referring to?
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:


TBF, there are affirming evangelicals who believe the Bible doesn't condemn loving gay relationships, but they're currently in the minority.

I suggest that they'll always be in the minority, because churches that go down this path may eventually cease to label themselves or to be labelled as evangelicals. The term may lose its appeal for them (although 'evangelicalism' seems to be a 'brand' that many people are reluctant to give up these days).

In terms of women in leadership, it's not clear why it should be considered as exactly the same sort of issue as homosexuality. If it's a matter of evangelicals choosing to 'go against the letter of Bible' on one but not the other, you have to admit that all Christian groups, evangelical or otherwise, aim to be biblically literal on some matters but not on others. I don't see why evangelicals alone should be called out on this!
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Byron,

That is a while to lurk. Thanks for that post.

[Smile]

(Do like to warm up. [Big Grin] )
quote:
You are, of course, right that homosexuality is a presenting issue over a deeper question. I'm not sure it's as simple as "is the Bible authoritative?". The big questions are, what do we mean by saying the Bible is the "supreme authority on matters of faith and conduct"?, what does "authority" mean anyway?. Also there is a whole bunch of questions about interpretive methods.
Yup, different types of authority is an interesting one. Open evangelicals do seem to tend towards a more holistic approach, emphasizing the overall message of scripture over proof-texting.

The thread that links the evangelical types is whether words gain special weight from being in the Bible. Liberal theology would, by and large, say no, that source is irrelevant to merit, going right back to differences over revelation.
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I suggest that they'll always be in the minority, because churches that go down this path may eventually cease to label themselves or to be labelled as evangelicals. The term may lose its appeal for them (although 'evangelicalism' seems to be a 'brand' that many people are reluctant to give up these days).

In terms of women in leadership, it's not clear why it should be considered as exactly the same sort of issue as homosexuality. If it's a matter of evangelicals choosing to 'go against the letter of Bible' on one but not the other, you have to admit that all Christian groups, evangelical or otherwise, aim to be biblically literal on some matters but not on others. I don't see why evangelicals alone should be called out on this!

I agree that most Christian groups are guilty of using selective authority: even someone as liberal as John Shelby Spong deploys the word "heresy" unironically. The problem's most pronounced in traditions that place particular weight on special revelation (evangelicals; Catholic and Orthodox churches).

Evangelicalism's framework (Bebbington quadrilateral, roughly) needn't be lashed to dead horses. Its model of authority and salvation can stand apart from them, which is why affirming evangelicals are keen to keep the name. They have far more in common with their fellow evangelicals than they do with the Spongs of the world.

Sexuality and headship are different, true, but there're more similarities than selective traditionalists want to admit. Those who've rejected headship but not straight-as-norm, like Fulcrum, are in a very difficult position, unable to control the precedent they've set.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by TheAlethiophile:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Evangelicals, by definition, are relatively conservative about matters of sexual behaviour. That's why they're 'associated with homophobia'.

What definition is that you're referring to?
I'm assuming that evangelicalism promotes relatively high standards of personal sexual restraint because this quality seems to be promoted as virtue in the NT; there may also be an anxiety about maintaining borders around the family as the protected site of religious transmission and acculturation, which would also be backed up by appeals to the NT.

It might be possible to found an evangelical church that positively claimed biblical justification for sexual liberation, rather than simply inching towards it as a result of cultural pressure or of personal sexual preferences, but perhaps such strict positivity might have been more in evidence in some Christian groups in earlier centuries rather than today. Polygamy is now depicted as existing only as a means of oppressing women, but googling suggests that some early Anabaptists allowed it as an outworking of personal conscience (see p. 29). Presumably this attitude would work for other kinds of sexual relationships as well.

Such groups never seen to become normative. They remain small and often to die out. Persecution contributed to this, of course, but even in modern America, where religious diversity runs rampant, how many self-proclaimed evangelical churches have a theology that openly proclaims the value of polyandry or even the biblical acceptability of the ever-new practice of sowing one's (heterosexual) wild oats? I suppose there's the Amish 'rumspringa' period, but even that seems to be more about pragmatism than theology.

I stand to be corrected! It's a very interesting subject.
[Smile]
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:


Sexuality and headship are different, true, but there're more similarities than selective traditionalists want to admit. Those who've rejected headship but not straight-as-norm, like Fulcrum, are in a very difficult position, unable to control the precedent they've set.

I don't know anything about Fulcrum, but it would be interesting to know if gay relationships tend to be more tolerated or acceptable in congregations led by women ministers than otherwise. I've read research which claims that women clergy tend to be more liberal than men. Tolerance may be allowed in certain congregations, but whether denominational teachings will change is another matter, especially since there are fewer women leaders the further up the ladder you go.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The association is not helped by reporting bias in the media. Not all evangelicals believe homosexual activity to be a sin.

I'm not sure you can blame media bias for this one. No one ever got their membership in the evangelical tribe revoked for being too anti-gay. On the other hand, you frequently hear the evangelical bonafides questioned when someone previously thought of as evangelical endorses any kind of rights for gay people.

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
It's not that easy to ditch evangelicalism. As I said, I agree with the basic theological position of evangelicalism. If I was to transfer my allegiance to a different part of the Christian tradition I would have to change my theological position on a lot of things, just to find a better fit for a secondary issue.

Part of the problem is that modern evangelicalism seems to be not so much about theology as tribal boundary markers. In other words, it doesn't seem to matter how closely you conform to the Bebbington quadrilateral, or any other combination of theology and geometry. What matters is that you're anti-gay, complimentarian, and creationist.
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
The boundary markers that Crœsos notes are likely tied to evangelicalism's long history of separatism, forever in tension with its desire for revival. If you're the elect of God, with an eternity in hell awaiting if you get it wrong, boundaries are everything.

Get your boundaries fixed, and you can be in the world, but not of the world, be the diamond in the mire.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Jonathan Edwards of the Great Awakening was not just a slaveowner but lobbied successfully to have slavery expanded into the state of Georgia.

[pedantry] I think you're confusing Jonathan Edwards with George Whitefield. And he lobbied for the legalization of slavery in the colony of Georgia, which wouldn't be a state until about a quarter of a century later. [/pedantry]
Point. Edwards was "just" a slaveowner. It's Whitefield who was the active advocate of slavery.

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The association is not helped by reporting bias in the media. Not all evangelicals believe homosexual activity to be a sin.

Indeed. And not all Roman Catholics believe that contraception is a sin. Nevertheless the most directly influential leaders almost all do (and in Britain I'll start with Welby, Sentamu, and N.T. Wright) - and when someone like Steve Chalke refuses to toe the party line they try to throw him out.

quote:
But, one person standing up and shouting about the evils of homosexuality attracts the press.
I will accept that Fred Phelps and Stephen Green attract the press. But to say that it's "one person standing up and shouting about the evils of homosexuality" is thoroughly disingenous I'm afraid. I suppose that the current Archbishop of Canterbury is one person. The current Archbishop of York is a second. The last but one Archbishop of Canterbury is a third. Nicky Gumbel and his Alpha Course is a fourth. N. T. Wright and his influential scholarship is a fifth. And we can add the official position of the Evangelical Alliance

Find me five non-homophobic Evangelicals as influential and in the positions of power of those five. (OK, so George Carey's over the hill so that leaves four).

You yourself mention the Evangelical Alliance (which has just kicked out Steve Chalke for not being homophobic) and the UCCF. Both unapologetic promoters of homophobia. And you could sign your name to the UCCF and EA mission statements? I could probably sign the majority of the Tory manifesto and I've been playing The Internationale earlier today. The implementation on the other hand?

And one of the things the late Fred Phelps and Stephen Green allow decent evangelicals to do is wash their hands and thank God that they are not like that pharisee. This while turning a blind eye to the fact the leaders that they empower are in many cases preaching things that, once you look at what is being said rather than how it is being said, more resemble Stephen Green than their own views.

So no, you don't get a free pass for being so far as I can tell a thoroughly decent person. You especially don't get a pass for trying to distract attention by bringing up Stephen Green, Fred Phelps et. al. filling column inches. You want an Evangelical movement that represents your views on things other than the Doctrinal Bases? Get. It. Changed. It's your movement, not mine.
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I don't know anything about Fulcrum, but it would be interesting to know if gay relationships tend to be more tolerated or acceptable in congregations led by women ministers than otherwise. I've read research which claims that women clergy tend to be more liberal than men. Tolerance may be allowed in certain congregations, but whether denominational teachings will change is another matter, especially since there are fewer women leaders the further up the ladder you go.

When a person who's been subjected to oppression gets power, two responses appear common: empathy and solidarity with the suffering of others; or shoring-up your newfound status by joining the (modified) status quo.

I don't think women in leadership will be any less of a mixture than men: in the Church of England, the eight women invited to the House of Bishops as "Participant Observers" have, sadly, proved more than the equal of their male counterparts in keeping silent about the rights of lesbian and gay people.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
In terms of women in leadership, it's not clear why it should be considered as exactly the same sort of issue as homosexuality. If it's a matter of evangelicals choosing to 'go against the letter of Bible' on one but not the other, you have to admit that all Christian groups, evangelical or otherwise, aim to be biblically literal on some matters but not on others. I don't see why evangelicals alone should be called out on this!

Hypocrisy. Few groups other than Evangelicals claim full biblical literalism so the charge that they aren't being doesn't sting.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
I don't think all evangelicals claim 'full biblical literalism'. That's fundamentalists.
 
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :
 
They do, however, tend to bang on about how Biblical, Bible-believing and/or Bible-based they are, with the strong implication that other Christians are deficient in that area. "I believe what the Bible teaches" as a preface is almost always followed by a splurge of homophobia, and less commonly misogyny too.
 
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
Continued association is an ongoing issue for me. On balance I'd rather be inside the tent pissing out. That was the line I took over women In leadership and ministry thirty years ago. It cost me some credibility with conservatives in the short term. Earned me respect in the long term. I think that's the way it will go on the gay issue as well.

But we'll see. I'd rather work for reform than posture. In an independent Congo like the one I go to and where I have many friends after 40 years association, it feels like the right way to go. Most of the folks I know who are conservative about this issue are very fair minded on lots of other issues. I'd rather work with that, patiently. advance the good moral and hermeneutical arguments.

But I appreciate why others regard it as akin to condoning prejudice. The problem is that bias is normal and everyone has blind spots over something. Including me. So I keep on trying to make a difference and I'm far from being on my own on this issue. In my Congo, I don't think this will be an issue in a few years time.

There is a groundswell of movement. Steve Chalk spoke at our celebratory service when we moved to a new building. His social action agenda earned him a lot of respect. Loads of people read Brian Maclaren and find him helpful. I think these are very good signs.

But the issue remains a tricky one for me personally.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:

You yourself mention the Evangelical Alliance (which has just kicked out Steve Chalke for not being homophobic) and the UCCF. Both unapologetic promoters of homophobia. And you could sign your name to the UCCF and EA mission statements?

What I said was I could sign their respective doctrinal statements - Evangelical Alliance and UCCF - neither of which say a word about sexuality. I said that as a statement of my evangelical "credentials", not that I necessarily support all that those organisations do (I'm not at present a member of either). I've not looked at what UCCF have said about sexuality recently. But, clearly the EA has been making noise recently with the severing of the membership of Oasis Trust. It's still interesting to note that that decision followed an extensive period of discussion within the Alliance, and between the Alliance and Oasis Trust. If there was a simple, single opinion within the EA then there would have been no need for that discussion - Oasis and Chalke would have been out much earlier. The affirmations of the Pastoral Responses to Homosexuality report make interesting reading, and certainly don't represent a virulent homophobia - although personally I still think they are not as affirming as I would like. But, we have to remember that the EA represents a broad constituency (even if recent events has probably resulted in a narrowing of their constituency to the more conservative end of the evangelical spectrum), and a large part of that membership would hold very conservative attitudes to marriage, who probably thought that same document went too far in affirming homosexuality.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:


Homophobia is the word for this form of bigotry.

"Homophobia" is not the word, but on the contrary a manipulative, dishonest and unacceptable smear.

And a theologically based opposition to homosexual practice is not bigotry.

Caliing opponents of homosexual practice "homophobes" is like calling homosexuals "poofters", girls who wear short dresses "sluts", supporters of the welfare state "communists", policemen "fascists", and boat-people "queue jumpers".

quote:
if you oppose the right of people who love each other to get married and are working to separate families (as opponents of gay marriage are) then homophobia is being polite. If you have a pharisee-like dedication to the rules and are callous and unempathetic about those they hurt, that's worse. If you deny your approach leads to suffering, that's just callous blindness.
This is nothing more than a confused and moralistic attempt at emotional blackmail.

Jesus taught love of God and neighbour AND what we would call "traditional" sexual ethics; they are not mutually exclusive.
 
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
...a theologically based opposition to homosexual practice is not bigotry.

Okay, but what about a theologically based desire for homosexual practice and homosexual people to be treated differently in the eyes of the law?
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Jesus taught love of God and neighbour AND what we would call "traditional" sexual ethics; they are not mutually exclusive.

Even if one grants this, did Jesus teach that we should campaign for so-called traditional sexual ethics to be favoured by the law? (For example, with regard to pension and inheritance rights, differing ages of consent, tax breaks for opposite-sex but not same-sex couples etc.)

Wishing that one's own particular take on morality should be made law without a clear evidence base for why such laws would benefit society surely merits use of the word 'bigotry'...?
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by TheAlethiophile:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Evangelicals, by definition, are relatively conservative about matters of sexual behaviour. That's why they're 'associated with homophobia'.

What definition is that you're referring to?
I'm assuming that evangelicalism promotes relatively high standards of personal sexual restraint because this quality seems to be promoted as virtue in the NT; there may also be an anxiety about maintaining borders around the family as the protected site of religious transmission and acculturation, which would also be backed up by appeals to the NT.

It might be possible to found an evangelical church that positively claimed biblical justification for sexual liberation, rather than simply inching towards it as a result of cultural pressure or of personal sexual preferences, but perhaps such strict positivity might have been more in evidence in some Christian groups in earlier centuries rather than today. Polygamy is now depicted as existing only as a means of oppressing women, but googling suggests that some early Anabaptists allowed it as an outworking of personal conscience (see p. 29). Presumably this attitude would work for other kinds of sexual relationships as well.

Such groups never seen to become normative. They remain small and often to die out. Persecution contributed to this, of course, but even in modern America, where religious diversity runs rampant, how many self-proclaimed evangelical churches have a theology that openly proclaims the value of polyandry or even the biblical acceptability of the ever-new practice of sowing one's (heterosexual) wild oats? I suppose there's the Amish 'rumspringa' period, but even that seems to be more about pragmatism than theology.

I stand to be corrected! It's a very interesting subject.
[Smile]

I don't think it necessarily follows that promoting high standards of sexual behaviour equates with being opposed to homosexual behaviour. Indeed, I know of some gay Christian groups that take the line that while sexuality is not a choice, sexual morality is and that homosexuals ought to have the same high standards of sexual behaviour as heterosexuals.

But of course, such a position requires taking the view that homosexual behaviour is not, in and of itself, a falling below standard and a departure from a heterosexual norm. Many Evangelicals are wedded (if you'll pardon the expression) to a reading of Scripture that presupposes it's the very homosexuality of the behaviour that makes it wrong when a piece of homosexual behaviour is condemned in the Bible, not any other aspect of the behaviour. The fact that much heterosexual behaviour is condemned in the Bible - and not because it is heterosexual - is not generally considered.

Thus, Sodom is destroyed because the perpetrators were male and the intended victims were male, not because raping houseguests is wrong regardless of gender.
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The affirmations of the Pastoral Responses to Homosexuality report make interesting reading, and certainly don't represent a virulent homophobia

Nope, the 'affirmations' you link to are pretty strongly anti-gay, so I would regard them as a thousand percent unacceptable on grounds of homophobia.

I was particularly amused and angered by "We do not accept that holding these theological and ethical views on biblical grounds is in itself homophobic." LOL. What meaningless drivel! They might as well just write something like "We do not regard racism as in itself racist." Why not just be done with it and add an affirmation: "We do not regard the definitions of English words as applying to us, so we can write whatever self-contradictory stuff we like. And so, no matter how homophobic we are, if we say it isn't homophobia then it isn't, because we get to define words."

There is, I think, a pervasive delusion within evangelical Christianity that being against gay people living their lives is different to "homophobia". The delusion is that if someone is anti-gay in a nasty way that stems from simply an innate fear of gay people, then that is "homophobia" and bad; whereas if a person is anti-gay in a "kind" and "loving" way that stems from sincerely held biblical belief, then that is totally okay and not "homophobia" at all. This absurdity stems, I think, from the conviction that it must be not a bad thing to be anti-gay because "the bible says to be", but that "homophobia" must be bad because society says it is and because even the staunchest evangelical can see that there are ways of being nasty to gay people that are just too nasty and are overdoing it. So then they set up "homophobia" as bad and representing the bad ways of treating gay people, versus the "good" ways of being anti-gay which they convince themselves are "not homophobia".

This, I think, is behind the patently absurd pronouncements that Evangelicals then make about how they hold anti-gay views because they're biblically based but they themselves definitely aren't homophobic. Such statements read, to the outside observer, exactly like saying "well I don't think black people should be able to marry, because from a biblical standpoint I've come to that view, but I'm not "racist", I really don't think it's fair to call me "racist", I just don't like black people is all." The outside observer can then only conclude that the person is an idiot who does not understand English, and also that they are very definitely racist. The really strange thing is that nearly all evangelicals would agree immediately that someone who was opposed to black people being able to marry would be "racist", but they go into massive denial mode at the suggestion that being opposed to gay people being able to marry is "homophobic" or "anti-gay" and start pulling word-redefinitions left, right and centre. Because of course when they do exactly the same thing to gay people as the racist does to black people, they aren't doing anything wrong, but the racist of course is. The hypocrisy is sickening.

For this reason, I myself tend to avoid using the word "homophobic" because anti-gay Christians deliberately misinterpret it and respond "oh, no, no, I'm not homophobic, I just have a biblically based view about why gay everything is bad", so to avoid myself from having to bang my head repeatedly against walls and call them morons when they give that response, I prefer to simply talk about them being "anti gay-rights" or "anti gay-marriage". Even they can usually agree that they are "anti gay marriage", and they don't usually start playing stupid word games to try and paint themselves in a less negative light (except when they decide "oh no, I'm not anti anything, I'm just for traditional marriage!" [brick wall] )
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
ADDENDUM: The fact that the Bible itself equates Sodom with inhospitality, rather than homosexuality, on at least 2 occasions tends to be ignored in many Bible-quoting churches.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
There is, I think, a pervasive delusion within evangelical Christianity that being against gay people living their lives is different to "homophobia".

One has to examine why that's a 'delusion', though. Because on a proper etymological derivation, it is different.

Phobias are not about being 'anti'-something, they are about irrational fear. Being irrationally afraid of black people is not actually the same thing as being 'racist'. I don't know what the correct word 'phobia' word would be for fear of black people, but it would have 'phobia' in it. 'Racist' has to do with treating one race disadvantageously in comparison to another.

Similarly, 'sexist' does not necessarily connote fear of women.

So how is it, then, that 'homophobia' has come to be the go-to word for being against homosexuals in any way whatsoever? Is it just because 'sexualist' or 'heterosexualist' didn't roll off the tongue?
 
Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The affirmations of the Pastoral Responses to Homosexuality report make interesting reading, and certainly don't represent a virulent homophobia - although personally I still think they are not as affirming as I would like.

You know how if someone says, "I'm not a homophobe, but...", and how as a rule of thumb, everything after "but" is homophobic? Well, statements 1 and 2 in your link are "I'm not a homophobe", and somewhere between 2 and 3 there's an invisible "but". I'm sure that, from this, you can deduce what I think about everything that comes thereafter.
 
Posted by ToujoursDan (# 10578) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:


Homophobia is the word for this form of bigotry.

"Homophobia" is not the word, but on the contrary a manipulative, dishonest and unacceptable smear.
A lot of racists had that term too, but it doesn't make it any less applicable.

quote:
And a theologically based opposition to homosexual practice is not bigotry.
Again, the same was said about those who had theologically based opposition to interracial marriage or desegregation. (i.e., God put the different races on different continents just so they wouldn't mix.) Just because one can find some rationale in the Bible doesn't make the animus go away.

quote:
Caliing opponents of homosexual practice "homophobes" is like calling homosexuals "poofters", girls who wear short dresses "sluts", supporters of the welfare state "communists", policemen "fascists", and boat-people "queue jumpers".
Hardly. Being gay is an innate and unchangeable part of a person. Homophobia is a consciously chosen belief or attitude.

quote:
if you oppose the right of people who love each other to get married and are working to separate families (as opponents of gay marriage are) then homophobia is being polite. If you have a pharisee-like dedication to the rules and are callous and unempathetic about those they hurt, that's worse. If you deny your approach leads to suffering, that's just callous blindness.
This is nothing more than a confused and moralistic attempt at emotional blackmail.

quote:
Jesus taught love of God and neighbour AND what we would call "traditional" sexual ethics; they are not mutually exclusive. [/QB]
Jesus said nothing about homosexuality.

[ 28. June 2014, 11:38: Message edited by: ToujoursDan ]
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Homophobia is the word for this form of bigotry.

"Homophobia" is not the word, but on the contrary a manipulative, dishonest and unacceptable smear.
If you are against a certain race of people being able to have rights that other people have, then you are "racist". That is a descriptive word that is used in English to describe that kind of view. It secondarily has taken on negative connotations since racism is widely disapproved of, so we perceive people who are "racist" in a bad light. So the word is primarily a simple description but secondarily a derogatory term that can be used as a slur on people's character by accusing them of holding the opinions denoted by the word.

In English the word for being against gay people having the same rights other people have is "homophobic." Like the word "racist", this word is primarily descriptive, but has secondarily become a negative slur because of the widespread disapproval of being against gay rights. If you are against gay rights then by definition you are homophobic, and if you don't happen to like that word then sad day for you.

quote:
And a theologically based opposition to homosexual practice is not bigotry.
Would you regard theological based opposition to black people as bigotry? I would. And the gay case is analogous, so of course such opposition is bigotry.

quote:
Jesus taught love of God and neighbour AND what we would call "traditional" sexual ethics; they are not mutually exclusive.
Jesus also apparently accepted slavery and yet we've rightly come to realize that slavery is not consistent with the true love of one's neighbour. You also severely overstate your case in claiming Jesus was a teacher of "traditional" sexual ethics. He said nothing anti-gay. He possibly said something very pro-gay depending on how the word "eunuchs" is interpreted. And he responded very positively in the case of the Centurion's beloved sick slave where Jesus would have known there was a definite possibility that it was a gay relationship.

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
if you oppose the right of people who love each other to get married and are working to separate families (as opponents of gay marriage are) then homophobia is being polite. If you have a pharisee-like dedication to the rules and are callous and unempathetic about those they hurt, that's worse. If you deny your approach leads to suffering, that's just callous blindness.

[Axe murder] [Overused]
Excellent summary of the important points!

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
So how is it, then, that 'homophobia' has come to be the go-to word for being against homosexuals in any way whatsoever? Is it just because 'sexualist' or 'heterosexualist' didn't roll off the tongue?

That's an interesting historical question. Because obviously if you break the word "homophobia" down into its components, "homo" and "phobia" then it looks as if it would mean "fear of gay people" and thus that only a person who feared gay people would be "homophobic". Obviously it doesn't actually mean this, and thinking that the meaning of a word is the sum of its etymological pieces is a pretty basic fallacy in linguistics, but I think it's a fallacy that a lot of people do fall into with regard to this word ("I'm not afraid of gay people, therefore I'm not 'homophobic' right?" [Disappointed] ).

The question of why the word in English for being against gay people and gay rights is "homophobia" rather than "hetroist" or "sexualist" as you suggest is an interesting one, which I can offer absolutely no insight into! I think, however, if one of those alternates had been adopted historically then there wouldn't be nearly as many problems today with people saying the nonsensical: "Well I'm anti-gay but I'm not homophobic!" [Roll Eyes]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by ToujoursDan:
quote:
Caliing opponents of homosexual practice "homophobes" is like calling homosexuals "poofters", girls who wear short dresses "sluts", supporters of the welfare state "communists", policemen "fascists", and boat-people "queue jumpers".
Hardly. Being gay is an innate and unchangeable part of a person. Homophobia is a consciously chosen belief or attitude.

Forgive me, but that is a massive non sequitur. Since when is being a policeman innate and unchangeable? How does your response actually have anything to do with what was said?
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
Obviously it doesn't actually mean this, and thinking that the meaning of a word is the sum of its etymological pieces is a pretty basic fallacy in linguistics, but I think it's a fallacy that a lot of people do fall into with regard to this word ("I'm not afraid of gay people, therefore I'm not 'homophobic' right?" [Disappointed] ).

I agree it doesn't actually mean this in usage. I don't agree that it's "obvious". That's the point, really. It's actually a very odd choice of word.

I can't immediately think of any other example of a 'phobia' coming to mean opposition instead of fear. It certainly stands apart from the vast majority of 'phobias', which have continued to mean something that we are afraid of. Which is why I can well understand that people object to being called homophobes when they're not exhibiting a fear response. Actual usage does trump etymology, but the usage here is inconsistent with all the other usage as well.

I really do suspect it simply has to do with the word being 'catchy' and easy to say. All those 'o' sounds together are nice.

And I suspect the reason that the usage causes conflict is because the usage is recent. Not that I have any data to hand, but I suspect the word 'homophobia' can't be more than a few decades old.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
What I said was I could sign their respective doctrinal statements

An organisation's mission statement doesn't say everything there is about them. There is very little in the Conservative Party's Aims and Values I couldn't sign up to. But my chances of voting Tory in the next fifteen years? About the same a genetic engineer succeeding in creating a Pigasus.

The Tory Party exists beyond its aims and values, and the UCCF and EA exist beyond their doctrinal bases.

quote:
The affirmations of the Pastoral Responses to Homosexuality report make interesting reading, and certainly don't represent a virulent homophobia
Really? If you want to know whether a document is homophobic, there's one simple test. Go through the thing replacing the mentions of gay sex with inter-racial sex. Your entire document there reads to me as fairly virulent homophobia that's dressed up and put on makeup for the cameras.

quote:
From the linked statement:
5. We oppose moves within certain churches to accept and/or endorse sexually active same-sex partnerships as a legitimate form of Christian relationship and to permit the ordination to ministry of those in such sexual relationships. We stand prayerfully with those in such churches who are seeking to resist these moves on biblical grounds.

6. We oppose church services of blessing for civil partnerships and other forms of gay and lesbian relationships as unbiblical and reject any redefinition of marriage to encompass same-sex relationships.
...
9. We believe both habitual homoerotic sexual activity without repentance and public promotion of such activity are inconsistent with faithful church membership. While processes of membership and discipline differ from one church context to another, we believe that either of these behaviours warrants consideration for church discipline.

10. We encourage evangelical congregations to welcome and accept sexually active lesbians and gay men. However, they should do so in the expectation that they, like all of us who are living outside God's purposes, will come in due course to see the need to be transformed and live in accordance with biblical revelation and orthodox church teaching.

"Not as affirming as [you'd] like"? That's one way of putting it. Me, I wouldn't call that document affirming in the slightest. Quite the reverse. I would say that the very central message is "You must not affirm gay relationships in any way, shape, or form, and if people are truly members of the Church they will lose any gay relationships they have."

After reading that link I'm in full agreement with Adeodatus. "I'm not a homophobe but..." never goes anywhere good. And there's an unspoken but between points 2 and 3.

quote:
And back to Alan Cresswell:
But, we have to remember that the EA represents a broad constituency (even if recent events has probably resulted in a narrowing of their constituency to the more conservative end of the evangelical spectrum), and a large part of that membership would hold very conservative attitudes to marriage, who probably thought that same document went too far in affirming homosexuality.

Could you tell me how that statement is in practice any different from:
quote:
Justinian sumarising Alan Cresswell:
But we have to remember that EA has a lot of members, and a lot of those members are raging homophobes. It is more important for us to make nice with raging homophobes than it is for us to provide any support or affirmation to gay people in any way, shape, or form. And even the line we have drawn might be too much for the raging homophobes - and they are more important to us than the gay people they would oppress.


 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I don't think all evangelicals claim 'full biblical literalism'. That's fundamentalists.

Fundamentalists are normally a subset of Evangelicals IME. And I really must stop confusing inerrancy with literalism (although both the Bebbington Quadrilateral and the Five Fundamentals refer to inerrancy rather than literal truth).
 
Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on :
 
According to the OED homophobia has had two distinct meanings

1. Fear of men (either 'male' or 'human') with quotes from 1920 and 1960

2. "Fear or hatred of homosexuals and homosexuality" dating to 1969 (Time magazine), "such homophobia is based on understandable instincts among straight people, but it also involves innumerable misconceptions and oversimplifications". The 1975 example from the Globe and Mail (Toronto) is "There is no such thing as the homosexual problem any more than there is a black problem—the problems are racism and homophobia" and so directly equates racism and homophobia.

So 40 to 45 years and probably a bit longer since the 1969 reference doesn't treat the word as completely new.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
And a theologically based opposition to homosexual practice is not bigotry.

I'm intensely suspicious of any definition of "bigotry" that excludes Fred Phelps. Theology isn't a magic "Get Out Of Bigotry Free" card.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
"Homophobia" is not the word, but on the contrary a manipulative, dishonest and unacceptable smear.

Would you prefer "bigotry" then? Or "apartheid supporter"? I'm trying to think of another single word that fits for people trying to deny rights to others based on who they are.

Homopobia is the word in common use in English.

quote:
And a theologically based opposition to homosexual practice is not bigotry.
As Creosus pointed out, this sort of non-sensical apologetics would excuse Fred Phelps. It doesn't matter that the bible is your excuse to ban inter-racial marriage. Doing so still makes you a racist. It doesn't matter that the bible is your source of approval for slavery - you are stil pro slavery. Likewise homophobia.

quote:
Caliing opponents of homosexual practice "homophobes" is like calling homosexuals
Stop right there. You're already starting with the anti-gay slurs by calling them "homosexuals" rather than people.

quote:
Jesus taught love of God and neighbour AND what we would call "traditional" sexual ethics; they are not mutually exclusive.
He spoke not at all about gay marriage or other such acts.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Net Spinster:
According to the OED homophobia has had two distinct meanings

1. Fear of men (either 'male' or 'human') with quotes from 1920 and 1960

2. "Fear or hatred of homosexuals and homosexuality" dating to 1969 (Time magazine), "such homophobia is based on understandable instincts among straight people, but it also involves innumerable misconceptions and oversimplifications". The 1975 example from the Globe and Mail (Toronto) is "There is no such thing as the homosexual problem any more than there is a black problem—the problems are racism and homophobia" and so directly equates racism and homophobia.

So 40 to 45 years and probably a bit longer since the 1969 reference doesn't treat the word as completely new.

But the 1969 example does not equate with the modern meaning. It does appear as if the 1975 example could.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
You're already starting with the anti-gay slurs by calling them "homosexuals" rather than people.

Eh?

That's just silly. Calling people "people" completely fails to identify a particular subset of "people" to which you wish to refer. If I have to call all people "people" then everything I might say about "people" applies to all people on the entire planet.

As a homosexual, I simply cannot understand why you would object to talking about "homosexuals". What people SAY about "homosexuals" may well be completely erroneous, but that doesn't make it wrong to use "homosexuals" as a category. Heck, I'm quite sure I've made remarks about both "heterosexuals" and "homosexuals" because, you know, sometimes I'm trying to say something where sexual orientation is relevant.
 
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on :
 
Justinian, Croeos and others - would you say it is homophobic to believe that same-sex activity is wrong? Not wishing to ban it, or to treat people any differently based on who they choose to have sex with, but just believing it is not approved of by God.

I certainly think that treating people any differently because of the gender of who they sleep with constitutes homophobia, but what if you simply believe on a personal level that it's wrong? So you won't be doing it yourself, but you have no wish for those who do so to be in any way restricted or discriminated against.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
ADDENDUM: Saying that "homosexuals" is an anti-gay slur makes about as much sense as saying that "gay" is an anti-homosexual slur.

And in fact 'homosexuals' is actually the more inclusive term, seeing as how 'gays' would often be taken to mean only male homosexuals, not female ones.

Really, folks, there is quite enough in the world for us homosexuals to be outraged about without manufacturing new outrages out of thin air.

[ 28. June 2014, 14:52: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
ADDENDUM: Saying that "homosexuals" is an anti-gay slur makes about as much sense as saying that "gay" is an anti-homosexual slur.

And in fact 'homosexuals' is actually the more inclusive term, seeing as how 'gays' would often be taken to mean only male homosexuals, not female ones.

Really, folks, there is quite enough in the world for us homosexuals to be outraged about without manufacturing new outrages out of thin air.

That's certainly not one I've manufactured - but it comes up under two circumstances.

The first is when the word homosexual (or any other group term) is preceeded by the definite article. "The homosexuals" "The gays" "The blacks". Using such a term with the definite artice is inherently othering and is a problem.

English, however, makes a lot of things implicit and the normal procedure is to give the benefit of the doubt in any communication or it breaks down. Benefit of the doubt, however, changes in discussions where standard words in standards usage that have been standard words for longer than I have been alive are claimed to be slurs.

quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Justinian, Croeos and others - would you say it is homophobic to believe that same-sex activity is wrong? Not wishing to ban it, or to treat people any differently based on who they choose to have sex with, but just believing it is not approved of by God.

Wrong as in incorrect or wrong as in bad?

Assuming you mean bad, intent isn't magic. As long as it's a purity code you apply to yourself and don't insist others follow then I'd say that having your heating on and your windows open (and thus wasting electricity/gas) is worse. As long as you stick there and don't let it affect how you see others.


Googling the term homophobia itself it does indeed appear to come from little before 1969.
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Justinian, Croeos and others - would you say it is homophobic to believe that same-sex activity is wrong? Not wishing to ban it, or to treat people any differently based on who they choose to have sex with, but just believing it is not approved of by God.

I certainly think that treating people any differently because of the gender of who they sleep with constitutes homophobia, but what if you simply believe on a personal level that it's wrong? So you won't be doing it yourself, but you have no wish for those who do so to be in any way restricted or discriminated against.

If a person doesn't act on a belief, since they're doing no harm, labeling it is academic. As most people do act on their beliefs, it's by the by.

This does illustrate the potency of authoritarianism. Clamp "because the Magisterium/Bible/Jesus said so" to a statement and many people act like they don't need to defend it further.

I'd draw no distinction between theological homophobia and the regular kind. All beliefs should be held to the same standards, and fall if evidence and reason don't support them.
 
Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
But the 1969 example does not equate with the modern meaning. It does appear as if the 1975 example could.

Which is why I said 40 to 45 years. It would be interesting to have the fuller context in the Time story.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
That's certainly not one I've manufactured - but it comes up under two circumstances.

The first is when the word homosexual (or any other group term) is preceeded by the definite article. "The homosexuals" "The gays" "The blacks". Using such a term with the definite artice is inherently othering and is a problem.

Which isn't what Kaplan Corday did, so I don't know what that has to do with anything.

quote:
English, however, makes a lot of things implicit and the normal procedure is to give the benefit of the doubt in any communication or it breaks down. Benefit of the doubt, however, changes in discussions where standard words in standards usage that have been standard words for longer than I have been alive are claimed to be slurs.
And now I don't even know for sure which words you're talking about. Are we talking about 'homophobe'? I've already pointed out that the OED reference, with a 1969 example, says fear. The entire point is that people are now using 'homophobia' to mean something other than fear. People are now using 'homophobe' to simply mean 'anti-homosexual'.

And I don't even see how that was a second circumstance, and it just doesn't make sense. You're basically saying that because Kaplan Corday complained that use of a certain word was a slur, he MUST have been using a slur himself because hey, apparently you've decided he must be talking in bad faith.

It's precisely conversations like this that make me sympathetic towards someone like Kaplan Corday. The reaction he's getting is frankly quite embarrassing to me. If someone is complaining about homosexuals engaging in cheap verbal shots, you do not prove him wrong by engaging in cheap verbal shots. And cheap shots, it seems to me, are coming from a variety of sources.
 
Posted by Jolly Jape (# 3296) on :
 
Just a few points about the extent to which evo opposition to same sex relationships is "traditional", I would say that before, say, the 1980s, these matters were barely thought about at all in evo circles. Rather, the casual homophobia of the background population pretty well permeated, not only the evangelical constituency, but, with honourable exceptions, the whole of the church. I became a Christian in 1969, and for twenty years not only did I not hear a sermon on the subject, but I never even heard it mentioned. So much so, that I assumed that the Pauline references to homoerotic activity were along the lines of "and don't let you homosexuals think you are exempt from the prohibitions on porneia which are binding on heterosexuals". In other words, I assumed that what the Bible forbade was not any particular expression of sexuality, but rather that all sexuality should be expressed in committed, loving relationships, rather than in orgies, riotous living, and prostitution. I suppose that background position has stayed with me, but I can well remember my astonishment when a church member made some comment about lesbianism in the presence of two highly respected members of the church who I had always assumed were in a gay relationship. Apparently, this idea had never entered the head of the person making the comment, and there was much raising of eyebrows and shrugging of shoulders between me and the two ladies concerned.

Anyway, my point is that until fairly recently, overt and focussed opposition was a matter of agnosticism rather than faith amongst most evos, certainly the ones I knew, and the circles in which I moved at the time were pretty conservative .

In a way, this is quite encouraging - the homophobia within the church is no more deeply rooted than it was within the background culture, in spite of the best efforts of those who have sought to stir up "culture wars" in order to mark out their territory. "Hey, we might all be getting divorced and selling out to the almighty (insert currency of choice), but at least were not like them lot over there. We'd never fall for that temptation! And whilst were on about it, I thank Thee that I was not born a woman..." [Disappointed] But what we learned yesterday, we can unlearn tomorrow, God willing.

And, of course, the advent of SSM makes it much more difficult to make those accusations of "porneia"-type casual sex being inherent in same-sex relationship patterns.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Justinian, Croeos and others - would you say it is homophobic to believe that same-sex activity is wrong? Not wishing to ban it, or to treat people any differently based on who they choose to have sex with, but just believing it is not approved of by God.

I'm reminded of the man temporarily dubbed "The Most Racist Pastor In America".

quote:
Hybreeding, hybreeding, oh, how terrible, hybreeding. What white woman would want her baby to be mulatto, made by a colored man? Let’s stay the way God made us. I believe it’s right.
Pastor Reagan didn't express any desire to enforce his views via the law, yet I can't think of any way the descriptor "racist" doesn't apply. The same reasoning would seem to apply to homophobia. Hating others is less problematic if you're not trying to use the law to enforce your bigotry, but it's still hate.

For those arguing the semantics of the term "homophobia": Would you prefer to use the term "anti-gay bigotry"?

[ 28. June 2014, 17:27: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The affirmations of the Pastoral Responses to Homosexuality report make interesting reading, and certainly don't represent a virulent homophobia

Nope, the 'affirmations' you link to are pretty strongly anti-gay, so I would regard them as a thousand percent unacceptable on grounds of homophobia.
Just because yours in the first response to my post. Hopefully I'll address in passing most of the subsequent points.

I did say I found that report inadequate in not going as far as I would like. It forms part of the reason why I have not renewed my EA membership for several years. However, I stand by my claim that there is a lot in there that would be a lot further than many evangelicals would want to go, and as such represents a step (albeit a small one) in the right direction. Whether the EA takes further steps in coming years I doubt, partly because so many of the Evangelicals and Evangelical groups who would want to go further have probably given up on the EA, so the end of the evangelical spectrum that would pull in the direction I would like to see is not as strong within the EA as it was only a few years ago.

I never claimed there weren't homophobes within the EA, there clearly are. My point was that the document produced by the EA had sufficient not too bad statements that they're clearly trying to include the non-homophobic evangelicals, ie: it is further evidence that evangelicals (even within the relatively conservative EA) are not all homophobes, despite how the media might want to portray us.

Some of the bits of that document that are much better than might have been expected include:
quote:
1. We recognise that all of us are sinners, and that the only true hope for sinful people – whatever our sexuality – is in Jesus Christ. Our earnest prayer is that his love, truth and grace would characterise evangelical responses to debates on homosexuality, both now and in future.

2. We affirm God's love and concern for all human beings, whatever their sexuality, and so repudiate all attitudes and actions which victimise or diminish people whose affections are directed towards people of the same sex. We are encouraged many Christians now recognise and deeply regret the hurt caused by past and present failures in their responses to those who experience same-sex attraction.

Which directly attacks the "we're better than you" attitude of too many of the anti-gay factions in evangelicalism.
quote:
4. We encourage evangelical congregations to be communities of grace in which those who experience same-sex attraction and seek to live faithfully in accordance with biblical teaching are welcomed and affirmed. Such Christians need churches which are safe spaces where they are able to share and explore their stories with fellow believers for mutual encouragement and support as we help each other grow together into maturity in Christ.
I don't think anyone would want churches to be anything other than a safe space for anyone. I agree this could be a problematic phrase if you read it with certain assumptions about "biblical teaching" on the subject of sexuality. Of course, if you approach it with a view that biblical teaching is not clear on the subject (indeed that the usual "proof texts" are irrelevant to the contemporary questions of sexuality) and therefore more general statements about how we relate to each other (love your neighbours as yourself etc) take precedence then the focus of the clause changes dramatically. Because, based on biblical teaching, the clause affirms loving, committed, monogamous marriage regardless of the gender of the partners. Though the context of the rest of the document doesn't really allow that interpretation.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
1. We recognise that all of us are sinners, and that the only true hope for sinful people – whatever our sexuality – is in Jesus Christ. Our earnest prayer is that his love, truth and grace would characterise evangelical responses to debates on homosexuality, both now and in future.

2. We affirm God's love and concern for all human beings, whatever their sexuality, and so repudiate all attitudes and actions which victimise or diminish people whose affections are directed towards people of the same sex. We are encouraged many Christians now recognise and deeply regret the hurt caused by past and present failures in their responses to those who experience same-sex attraction.

Which directly attacks the "we're better than you" attitude of too many of the anti-gay factions in evangelicalism.
Which would be more convincing if the rest of the list wasn't composed of ways that "we're better than you". Again, I think it's helpful if we ask whether we'd consider it racist if these kinds of distinctions were made on racial grounds. For example:

quote:
3. We affirm that marriage is an institution created by God in which one [white] man and one [white] woman enter into an exclusive relationship for life. Marriage is the only form of partnership approved by God for sexual relations and [inter-racial and non-white] sexual practice is incompatible with His will as revealed in Scripture. We do not accept that holding these theological and ethical views on biblical grounds is in itself [racist].
Saying "God approves of us but not you" is all about asserting "we're better than you".
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
It's precisely conversations like this that make me sympathetic towards someone like Kaplan Corday. The reaction he's getting is frankly quite embarrassing to me. If someone is complaining about homosexuals engaging in cheap verbal shots, you do not prove him wrong by engaging in cheap verbal shots. And cheap shots, it seems to me, are coming from a variety of sources.

I am treating Alan Cresswell very differently from Kaplan Corday because the two cases are different. Alan I believe to be a fundamentally decent person who simply isn't looking around him and seeing what those he aligns himself with are saying. I'm trying to not leave him anywhere to hide because I believe that he is fundamentally a decent person who can be engaged with and is passing on inaccurate information.

Kaplan Corday on the other hand I do not believe can be truly engaged with on an internet message board. His excuse for his beliefs is the Phelps Excuse. That his theology says to do something and therefore he must do it - meaning that he does not himself have moral reasoning outside his theology - or if he does then he stops listening to the voice of his conscience when his theology disagrees. (I believe the thing to do at that point is stop listening to your theology and reassess it). His position is therefore not open to engagement as the only way to change it would be to completely burn the theology down - and that's beyond the scope of message board posting. He also doesn't produce such ... interesting and intensely logical posts as IngoB that are frequently worth reading if only to find where the bedrock assumptions are wrong and how people can get there.

So what is the purpose of engaging with his posts? The audience. Kaplan Corday explicitly states that "homosexual practice ... is unacceptable" (link provided in part so others can confirm that this abridged quote is a fair reflection of what he is saying). Kaplan Corday is happy to say that things are unacceptable. This is one of the tools in his box and that of his church. Yet for some reason he objects to sauce for the goose becoming sauce for the gander. His stated belief that homosexual practice is unacceptable is itself unacceptable. And this is why, I believe, he objects to the word homophobia - it underscores that the beliefs he subscribes to and preaches are unacceptable. Which is precisely what he does say about others.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I never claimed there weren't homophobes within the EA, there clearly are. My point was that the document produced by the EA had sufficient not too bad statements that they're clearly trying to include the non-homophobic evangelicals,

That entire single page document should, in my opinion, be taken as a whole rather than proof texted/quote mined to take the individual sub-statements out of context. That's a curate's egg of a statement.

quote:
ie: it is further evidence that evangelicals (even within the relatively conservative EA) are not all homophobes, despite how the media might want to portray us.
Really? Given that the document itself is homophobic, it's lending evidence to the idea that the media presentation is accurate. You do not get to pick and choose from a document like that.

quote:
Some of the bits of that document that are much better than might have been expected include:
...
quote:
4. We encourage evangelical congregations to be communities of grace in which those who experience same-sex attraction and seek to live faithfully in accordance with biblical teaching are welcomed and affirmed. Such Christians need churches which are safe spaces where they are able to share and explore their stories with fellow believers for mutual encouragement and support as we help each other grow together into maturity in Christ.

4, however, needs to be taken in conjunction with 10.

quote:
10. We encourage evangelical congregations to welcome and accept sexually active lesbians and gay men. However, they should do so in the expectation that they, like all of us who are living outside God's purposes, will come in due course to see the need to be transformed and live in accordance with biblical revelation and orthodox church teaching. We urge gentleness, patience and ongoing pastoral care during this process and after a person renounces same-sex sexual relations.
10: If they are genuinely Christians then their homosexual activity will stop pretty soon. (And by 9 they should be thrown out of the church if it doesn't).

Which means that the two combine to say "We welcome a safe space for ex-gays to share their testimony".

quote:
I agree this could be a problematic phrase if you read it with certain assumptions about "biblical teaching" on the subject of sexuality.
You mean biblical teachings that suggest that being a sexually active lesbian or gay man is being outside God's purpose? (Point 10). Or biblical teachings that "Marriage is the only form of partnership approved by God for sexual relations and homoerotic sexual practice is incompatible with His will as revealed in Scripture" (Point 3).

quote:
Of course, if you approach it with a view that biblical teaching is not clear on the subject
... then you need to dissent from point 3 which states in so many words that "homoerotic sexual practice is incompatible with His will as revealed in Scripture"

quote:
Though the context of the rest of the document doesn't really allow that interpretation.
Indeed. The context of the rest of the document explicitly deniess that interpretation.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:

I don't think it necessarily follows that promoting high standards of sexual behaviour equates with being opposed to homosexual behaviour. Indeed, I know of some gay Christian groups that take the line that while sexuality is not a choice, sexual morality is and that homosexuals ought to have the same high standards of sexual behaviour as heterosexuals.

But of course, such a position requires taking the view that homosexual behaviour is not, in and of itself, a falling below standard and a departure from a heterosexual norm.

Do these evangelicals expect gay church members to remain celibate until marriage? Many gay people would presumably have no interest in inheriting such a conservative and 'straight' view of relationships, even if they see SSM as something worth fighting for.

The ongoing public assumption that SSM is a way of defying conservatism makes the job of pro-SSM evangelicals harder, because religion is an essentially conservative force, even when combined with theological liberalism. Lots has been said about love, tolerance, freedom, etc. regarding SSM, but maybe what unconvinced evangelicals need to hear is how it bolsters uprightness, piety, self-restraint and responsibility - things which are often claimed for marriages between Christian straight couples.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Alan I believe to be a fundamentally decent person who simply isn't looking around him and seeing what those he aligns himself with are saying.

I align with evangelicals. And, I'm aware of, and disgusted by, what many evangelicals are saying. My point is that not all evangelicals are saying the same thing. I no longer align myself with the EA, their views on homosexuality being part of the reason for that. My point is that there are (or, maybe were a couple of years ago) members of the EA who were saying things on the subject of homosexuality that I agree with. And, although the statement we're discussing does not say what I would say, it's not as bad as it would have been without the members who dissent from the majority view.

I've said it before, but it may be worth repeating. The EA seems to be moving from an alliance of representatives of the full breadth of evangelicalism to an alliance of representatives of conservative evangelicals. Which is something I find profoundly sad, as it marks what might be a definite split in UK evangelicalism - which after surviving disputes over issues such as the nature of the Holy Spirit (eg: does He currently act in the church in presenting specific messages via prophecy and tongues?) it's disturbing that the issue that causes division is secondary, and not even hinted at in the core statements of evangelical belief around which the EA is supposed to identify.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
I'm going to step into this thread tentatively to see where I've got to.

The last time I was in DH I was discussion the French Protestant Federation's stance on the (now-passed) gay marriage law here in France. My mind has changed several times over this issue, not least by views expressed here - and also, as importantly for me, by how they were expressed.

All I'll say about my stance for now is that I could not be a member of the EA, or of many other evangelical organisations, because of their anti-gay stance and the disingenuous language in which it is couched. Off the Ship, I get into trouble for being perceived as pro-gay. I've never got into trouble the other way.

Now in an attempt to address the question in the OP:

It seems to me that sexual orientation is a profoundly emotive issue because it is so bound up with identity - particularly, I would venture to suggest, for those in a minority orientation.

What I haven't noticed yet in this thread is a recognition that for many evangelicals, their evangelical faith, homophobia and all, is similarly inextricably bound up with their identity.

Having the right doctrine and practice in this matter is not perceived by them in terms of mere theology, but (rightly or wrongly) in terms of eternal destination*. Evangelicals' reluctance to change their stance on this may not just be about vested interests but about them feeling affronted in their identity in a similar way to gays feeling affronted that they cannot enjoy the same family structure as straights.

*ETA: specific beliefs being a key functional component of salvation in evangelicalism, as opposed to, say, simply being a member of a particular church

[ 28. June 2014, 21:03: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The EA seems to be moving from an alliance of representatives of the full breadth of evangelicalism to an alliance of representatives of conservative evangelicals. Which is something I find profoundly sad, as it marks what might be a definite split in UK evangelicalism.

Looking at it another way, it might enable the non-conservatives to align themselves with Christians who are closer to the centre, people who might possibly identify as open evangelicals, but whose churches were never as theologically uniform as to be in the EA.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
What I haven't noticed yet in this thread is a recognition that for many evangelicals, their evangelical faith, homophobia and all, is similarly inextricably bound up with their identity.

As a matter of fact this is exactly my understanding of Kaplan Corday and why I've been treating him the way I have. This, combined with a maltheistic belief in hell (which, as far as I know he holds), makes him utterly unreachable from anywhere I stand. Therefore all I can do is use him as an example for others.

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Alan I believe to be a fundamentally decent person who simply isn't looking around him and seeing what those he aligns himself with are saying.

I align with evangelicals. And, I'm aware of, and disgusted by, what many evangelicals are saying. My point is that not all evangelicals are saying the same thing.
And mine is that the leaders are saying the same thing. It's not Fred Phelps and Stephen Green that are the people considered representative of Evangelical Homophobia. It's the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, probably the most influential English-speaking Evangelical theologian this century, and the Evangelical Alliance.

You stand alongside and defend Evangelical Christians. Evangelical Christians en masse support and empower homophobic bigots to speak for them. You therefore stand alongside and defend people happy to have homophobic bigots speaking for them.

And when a leader among Evangelical Christians does break from the party line what happens? Ask Steve Chalke (or others). While you personally provide covering fire - as you did in your first post in this thread.

I know you're better than that, Alan. Do better, please?
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The EA seems to be moving from an alliance of representatives of the full breadth of evangelicalism to an alliance of representatives of conservative evangelicals. Which is something I find profoundly sad, as it marks what might be a definite split in UK evangelicalism.

Looking at it another way, it might enable the non-conservatives to align themselves with Christians who are closer to the centre, people who might possibly identify as open evangelicals, but whose churches were never as theologically uniform as to be in the EA.
I, for one, hope so. And that a split like this will give somewhere for non-homophobic evangelical Christians to go so they aren't aligning on tribal grounds with a group of homophobes.
 
Posted by Louise (# 30) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
What I haven't noticed yet in this thread is a recognition that for many evangelicals, their evangelical faith, homophobia and all, is similarly inextricably bound up with their identity.

As a matter of fact this is exactly my understanding of Kaplan Corday and why I've been treating him the way I have. This, combined with a maltheistic belief in hell (which, as far as I know he holds), makes him utterly unreachable from anywhere I stand. Therefore all I can do is use him as an example for others.

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Alan I believe to be a fundamentally decent person who simply isn't looking around him and seeing what those he aligns himself with are saying.

I align with evangelicals. And, I'm aware of, and disgusted by, what many evangelicals are saying. My point is that not all evangelicals are saying the same thing.
And mine is that the leaders are saying the same thing. It's not Fred Phelps and Stephen Green that are the people considered representative of Evangelical Homophobia. It's the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, probably the most influential English-speaking Evangelical theologian this century, and the Evangelical Alliance.

You stand alongside and defend Evangelical Christians. Evangelical Christians en masse support and empower homophobic bigots to speak for them. You therefore stand alongside and defend people happy to have homophobic bigots speaking for them.

And when a leader among Evangelical Christians does break from the party line what happens? Ask Steve Chalke (or others). While you personally provide covering fire - as you did in your first post in this thread.

I know you're better than that, Alan. Do better, please?

hosting

This line of posting is getting far too personal towards others and needs to stop at once.

quote:
4. If you must get personal, take it to Hell
If you want to make disparaging comments about other posters, then you know where the Hell board is. Don't do it here. This thread is not for your personal opinions on other posters.

Louise
Dead horses Host

hosting off
 
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on :
 
Homophobia, if you want to take a literal etymological approach, ought to be fear of all things or people homo .

But homo does not mean homosexual, it's only half the word and it means 'the same' or 'similar', as in homonyms, homophones or homogenize. So literally, homophobia ought to mean fear of things that are the same. A literal homophobe would avoid wearing matching socks or talking to twins. They would seek out diversity.

I suspect that, sticking with the literal etymological approach, evangelicals are actually inclined to be heterophobic. All sub groups tend by definition to be like-minded people seeking each other's company, but I think that for evangelicals being surrounded by self-affirming sameness is more important, and that diversity feels more undermining, than it does to other brands of Christianity.

Evangelicals feel strengthened by their alliances, and warmed by strong leaders who can unite them. Common enemies, whether heresies, pro-gay people, liberals or communists, also help to confirm the sense of unity. I agree with those who think that sexuality just happens to be a litmus topic at the moment. It will be something else before long.

When a common enemy issue starts to become divisive, as the sexuality question has, then I think it creates real pain. Some people continue to want to emphasise sexuality in order to strengthen unity, loyalty and common cause, only to find that it is causing fracture and weakness. That hurts.
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I stand by my claim that there is a lot in there that would be a lot further than many evangelicals would want to go, and as such represents a step (albeit a small one) in the right direction.

That claim surprises me. I feel like the statements are accurately summarized as "be anti-gay in every way, but be slightly nice about it."

My assessment would thus be (speaking from ~20 years experience of numerous evangelical groups) that there is nothing in those affirmations that the staunchest most fundamentalist anti-gay evangelical (short of actually crazy people like Fred Phelps) would have any reason whatsoever to disagree with. Statement 9 particularly horrifies me - that they think kicking people out of churches for being gay is valid - that's on the very extreme end of anti-gay evangelicalism.

quote:
Some of the bits of that document that are much better than might have been expected include:
"1. We recognise that all of us are sinners, and that the only true hope for sinful people – whatever our sexuality – is in Jesus Christ."

That's the gospel (according to evangelicals anyway). So hardly a step forward or better than expected. Let's imagine they inserted an entire gospel sermon into the beginning of their affirmations... then there would be much you could agree with in there, but it wouldn't make the content of the bits that actually spoke about gay people any less anti-gay.

quote:
"Our earnest prayer is that his love, truth and grace would characterise evangelical responses to debates on homosexuality, both now and in future."
Replace "homosexuality" with the word "everything" in that statement and all evangelicals would sign it. That's just a basic statement that they are always happy to give lip-service to, because basically it's saying "Christians should behave Christianly".

quote:
2. We affirm God's love and concern for all human beings, whatever their sexuality, and so repudiate all attitudes and actions which victimise or diminish people whose affections are directed towards people of the same sex. We are encouraged many Christians now recognise and deeply regret the hurt caused by past and present failures in their responses to those who experience same-sex attraction.
Well that is a nice thing to say. And I 100% grant you that that those words are a looot nicer than what usually is said by evangelical groups about gay people. However those are just nice words and nothing else, as the rest of the affirmations make abundantly clear. Expressing God's love and concern for all is just talking more pious sounding Christianese, so of course everyone will agree. And saying that (other) Christians have done some bad things in the past is part and parcel of believing everyone to be sinners anyway, and plays into an all-to-common hypocritical and judgmental background narrative that people have of personally believing that other people are worse sinners than you yourself are. I feel like whoever wrote this is probably patting themselves on the back for cleverly making it sound like they are nice to gay people, and feeling like they've done a great job of essentially whitewashing the tomb to make it look attractive for the media.

quote:
4. We encourage evangelical congregations to be communities of grace in which those who experience same-sex attraction and seek to live faithfully in accordance with biblical teaching are welcomed and affirmed. Such Christians need churches which are safe spaces where they are able to share and explore their stories with fellow believers for mutual encouragement and support as we help each other grow together into maturity in Christ.
The extreme limitations on this affirmation are made clear by points 8 and 9 which undermine almost everything that point 4 says, as you yourself seem to realize in your own analysis. Points 8 and 9 make clear that churches are only to be welcoming to ex-gays and for gays who are willing to be subjected to invasive ministries designed to remove gayness.

The incredible and life-destroying damage done to gay people worldwide by Christian ministries that seek to change the way gay people behave, and which are subsequently opposed worldwide by nearly every profession medical and psychological organisation who have testify in courts and to many parliaments about the dangers of such approaches, gives the lie to "safe space". It's a "safe space" in the same kind of way the electric chair is a safe space.

As far as being welcoming to ex-gays goes, I've never heard anyone suggest that the church shouldn't welcome ex-gays, so I don't see this as a "step forward" in any way, just business as usual. Part and parcel of the gospel is that repentance and faith are possible, so obviously people who have rejected gayness and found Jesus have to be welcomed.

quote:
I don't think anyone would want churches to be anything other than a safe space for anyone.
Agreed. And, as it stands, evangelical churches are simply not safe spaces for gay people. So I would strongly counsel any gay person I knew not to attend one, because it isn't safe.

quote:
I agree this could be a problematic phrase if you read it with certain assumptions about "biblical teaching" on the subject of sexuality. Of course, if you approach it with a view that biblical teaching is not clear on the subject... Though the context of the rest of the document doesn't really allow that interpretation.
Exactly. The rest of the document provides very clear guidelines for interpretation about what point 4 is and isn't meaning about safe spaces.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
What I haven't noticed yet in this thread is a recognition that for many evangelicals, their evangelical faith, homophobia and all, is similarly inextricably bound up with their identity.

As a matter of fact this is exactly my understanding of Kaplan Corday and why I've been treating him the way I have. This, combined with a maltheistic belief in hell (which, as far as I know he holds), makes him utterly unreachable from anywhere I stand. Therefore all I can do is use him as an example for others.

See you in Hell, cupcake.
 
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Justinian, Croeos and others - would you say it is homophobic to believe that same-sex activity is wrong? Not wishing to ban it, or to treat people any differently based on who they choose to have sex with, but just believing it is not approved of by God.

I'm reminded of the man temporarily dubbed "The Most Racist Pastor In America".
quote:
Hybreeding, hybreeding, oh, how terrible, hybreeding. What white woman would want her baby to be mulatto, made by a colored man? Let’s stay the way God made us. I believe it’s right.
Pastor Reagan didn't express any desire to enforce his views via the law, yet I can't think of any way the descriptor "racist" doesn't apply. The same reasoning would seem to apply to homophobia. Hating others is less problematic if you're not trying to use the law to enforce your bigotry, but it's still hate.

For those arguing the semantics of the term "homophobia": Would you prefer to use the term "anti-gay bigotry"?

Thanks, Crœsos (and sorry for the extensive quote - necessary for the context, I'm thinking). Yes, I take your point but do you think it's possible for there to be no hate (your word) in the expression of the view that same-gender sexual activity is never within God's will? No hate, merely a quiet belief, perhaps only shared with others when the subject comes up, that God intends sexual activity to be only between a married opposite-gender couple.

On your quote from the fragrant Mr Reagan, I'm rather thinking of views expressed in more measured, gentle terms. Comments like his - 'What white woman would want her baby to be mulatto, made by a colored man?' - with the apparent incredulity that anyone could believe differently to him on this issue, are not what I had in mind!
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
No hate, merely a quiet belief, perhaps only shared with others when the subject comes up,

Well, kinda no. Do you think all the opponents of SSM hate gay people? Or think they should be treated differently? But some of those people still voted for anti-SSM legislation, or did not speak out against it. In the same way not everyone who believed/believes black people are inferior hates them.
It is not that your quiet believers do not exist, but that they have impact even if they are completely silent.
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Do you think all the opponents of SSM hate gay people?

To me that's the really weird thing about this whole issue. Opposition to gay rights is demonstrably harmful to gay people. And so it is tempting to assume that the people bringing harm to gay people must hate them, because well, if someone's harming someone else then we don't normally assume they're doing it because they love them!

But in my observation, Christian opposition to gay rights doesn't usually come from a place of hate but is a product of pure ignorance - the Christians opposing gay rights have totally no idea whatsoever of what sorts of harm they are doing to gay people and they have never stopped to think about it, and often enough the idea that they even might be harming gay people with their views has never ever crossed their minds.

I think that there are plenty of honest and sincere and otherwise good people who are Christians are who think "the bible teaches against homosexuality" and therefore oppose same sex marriage. They don't hate anyone. They are simply and sincerely trying to live out what they see as the teachings of the bible. If you suggested to them that they might actually be causing any harm to anyone by following the teachings of the bible their initial response would probably be to laugh incredulously at you in disbelief.
 
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
It is puzzling.

I've posted several times in DH the truth that the widely held medical opinion about homosexuality up to half a century ago was that it was a pathological condition. Here's a link I've also posted before.

I have discussions with my 95 year old mum about this subject from time to time. She was brought up to believe that homosexuality was "not right" and the paradigm shift in both social and medical understanding is something she struggles with, basically because she grew up in a world in which the "not right" view was commonplace. I don't think she's naturally a prejudiced person, she certainly isn't on many other issues, but on this one she has a lot more negative reinforcement to climb over than I ever had.

It was easier for me to approach the issue from first principles, to look at the reasons for supporting the paradigm shifts. That at least suggests that my mum didn't take positive steps to pass on the negative reinforcement she received. I was always taught the importance of fairness, of taking responsibility for making up my own mind. Those things have stood me in good stead.

I guess this is why I prefer dialogue to verbal war. Opinions can change, despite a history of negative reinforcement, but only if you start at least from the position of an exploration which respects the other person's autonomy. "Why do you believe that?" is a better opener than "your belief is just wrong, you've been brainwashed".
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
South Coast Kevin - I am afraid that when I hear Christians holding to the "homosexual sex is sinful line" I wonder how many gay people they know. For most people, gay couples are part of their social circle and as far as anyone can ever tell about relationships from the outside, their relationships are no better or worse than heterosexual relationships. I have been aware of gay couples for 30 odd years. Some of the gay couples I know have been together for longer than that.

Bishop James Jones, retired Bishop of Liverpool, who famously changed his stance on homosexuality from being one of the nine bishops who opposed the ordination of Jeffrey John as a Bishop in 2003 to issuing statements against the CofE line on same sex marriage in 2013 publicly apologised for his opposition and wrote Making Space for Truth and Grace (pdf)* explaining how he thought the Bible could be seen as describing loving relationships between men.

Personally, I don't want to think about what any of my heterosexual partnered friends and acquaintances get up to in the bedroom (or wherever else they might want to engage). As far as I'm concerned, consenting adults in private, not my problem. So why should I want to think of what my homosexual partnered friends and acquaintances do? Why are we making a special case for same sex couples in this instance?

* using an owly link because, there were a lot of characters that were rendered link unfriendly.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
Thanks Orfeo for trying to inject a little sanity into the group hysteria.

I suspect you are wasting your time, but I appreciate and respect your attempt.

You remind me of those episodes of The Simpsons in which Lisa plaintively calls for calm and rationality in the middle of a Springfield mob rampaging with pitch-forks and burning torches.

A few random responses.

1.Neither I, nor any of the evangelicals I know, are interested in political campaigning on behalf of anti-gay legislation. We regard gays in the same way we regard members of other religions, ie as wrong in their beliefs and practices, but as entitled to them as we are in a pluralist society, and as entitled as we should be to openly express their disagreement with other belief systems without being vilified as bigots.

2. To insist that “homophobia” and its cognates are correct and unchangeable is to exhibit a prescriptivist rigidity which would be laughed out of court in other circumstances. To use “homophobe” to describe someone who merely disagrees with homosexual practice is as insulting as calling a black person as a “nigger”, and just as easy to dump in the dustbin of linguistic history. “Homophobia” should be reserved for extremists such as those who have called for capital punishment for gays in Uganda.

3. I agree entirely that it is exegetically invalid to use the Sodom story in Genesis as a theological argument against homosexual practice.

4. The fact that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality is irrelevant. There are many self-evidently wrong things which he did not mention, and to suggest that he upheld traditional sexual morality in areas such as adultery, but was happy with homosexual practice, defies credulity.

5. Conscience versus Scripture is a false dichotomy, naively suggesting as it does that conscience is some sort of infallible, autonomous, objective tabula rasa. Sure, my conscience is influenced by the Bible, but every conscience is historically and culturally the productt of some combination of belief systems and worldviews.

6. The analogy of opposition to homosexual practice with racism is entirely invalid. No-one can choose their ethnicity, and while no-one can choose their sexual orientation, they can choose what they do with it, and therefore can logically be criticized by someone who disagrees with their decision. In the same way, I have an overwhelming inclination, which I didn’t choose, to believe and practise the Christian religion, but in the end it is my choice whether to go along with it or not, meaning that an atheist is perfectly entitled to deny that it is my unavoidable destiny or identity, and just as entitled to question and criticize my choice.

7. Yes, to use “those who engage in homosexual behaviour” or even “practicing homosexuals” is clunky and inconvenient, but it obviates to some extent, the constant confusion over whether the term “homosexual” is being used to describe an orientation, or a life choice to go with that orientation.

And just incidentally, I suspect that this thread must be approaching a Ship record for evocations of Fred Phelps.
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Having at last read that document, I note that it uses "chaste" when they actually mean "celibate". This is word-twisting.

People in marriages, or civil partnerships, or even longstanding non-formalised relationships can be chaste, because it means that they are faithful to their partner, not that they abjure sex.

People in no relationship at all can be chaste, if they believe that sex has to be part of a permanent faithful relationship. Obviously in that case, they are celibate as well.

But to use chaste when you are dealing with couples who you expect to abjure from showing their love physically is not about chastity, it is about imposing celibacy on those who are not called to be harmed by repressing their feelings, or to harm the loved one by denying theirs.

If they mean celibacy, that is what they should state, and then everyone knows that they are in the business of imposing on others restrictions they do not apply to themselves.

Otherwise they are saying "We are all required to be chaste, but you are required to be so in a more rigorous way than we are, and excuse us, we're off to bed."

Having now read Kaplan's piece - he agrees that people cannot choose their sexuality, as they cannot choose their race, but then says they can choose what they do about it. Implicit in that is that the choice, if they also feel called to follow Christ, is to deny themselves. Unlike denying gluttony, or covetousness, or violence, or any other thing we may feel is part of our make-up, denying this is to do active harm to others, rather than sparing them harm. It is not a choice at all. It is an imposition not made on straights.

[ 29. June 2014, 10:42: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:


Having now read Kaplan's piece - he agrees that people cannot choose their sexuality, as they cannot choose their race, but then says they can choose what they do about it. Implicit in that is that the choice, if they also feel called to follow Christ, is to deny themselves. Unlike denying gluttony, or covetousness, or violence, or any other thing we may feel is part of our make-up, denying this is to do active harm to others, rather than sparing them harm. It is not a choice at all. It is an imposition not made on straights.

To be fair, it's an imposition also made on straight people if they can't find a suitable Christian partner. Some evangelical churches have a fairly equal sex distribution, but the majority will have more women than men, especially in the black-majority churches. This imbalance is even more obvious in non-evangelical churches. Strictly speaking, many of these churches would prefer or even expect the women to remain celibate rather than marrying non-Christian men. IOW, the concept of 'denying yourself to follow Christ' is a reality for many straight (or bisexual, or otherwise sexual) female Christians.

Moreover, I think evangelical churches are more committed to self-denial in general than many other churches are (e.g. variously teaching against alcohol, jewelry, certain types of clothing or entertainment, expecting individuals to tithe, etc.). So expecting self-denial in the case of certain sexual behaviours is only more of the same. If you don't believe in self-denial as a concept you probably shouldn't be attending an evangelical church....
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Are you sure the imbalance of women in non-evangelical churches is because they are single? Some are widowed or single, yes, but some are coming to church while their husbands go elsewhere, either a different church or to something secular.
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
The analogy of opposition to homosexual practice with racism is entirely invalid. No-one can choose their ethnicity, and while no-one can choose their sexual orientation, they can choose what they do with it,

People can also choose what they do with their ethnicity: Issues of segregation and interracial marriage were all about people being able to make or not make certain voluntary choices relating to the their race. It's extremely analogous. The analogy only breaks down if you take the position that having same-sex attractions is itself a matter of choice, a view that no longer seems to be seriously advocated by many people.

quote:
“Homophobia” should be reserved for extremists
Wishful thinking about what you would like English words to mean in an ideal world is just, well, wishful thinking. Words actually have meanings in the here and now based on how people actually currently use them.

As I've said, I don't personally like the word homophobia, precisely because it leads to these sorts of arguments over what it ought to mean. I prefer to simply discuss in plain words the issues, which basically boil down to the fact that discrimination and stigmatization of gay people harms them. It saddens me that Christians on the whole have tended to avoid informing themselves about what damage their discrimination does to gay people, and so their zeal for following the bible has not been balanced by knowledge of the actual consequences their actions and words have on the lives of others. Those Christians who personally have gay family members are often forced by this to consider what negative consequences taking anti-gay positions actually have on gay people, and as a result are typically much keener to see the church take pro-gay positions. It speaks to a depressing lack of empathy among Christians that those without direct contact with gay people do not seem to give much thought (usually not any at all) for the harms done to gay people by the Church's negative views and actions.

At the end of the day, it doesn't necessarily matter a lot to gay people whether you are "only a little bit" anti-gay or whether your view is "biblically motivated" or not. Because if you are against them having equal rights and against treating them equally, then from the gay people's point of view your actual actions against them cause the same harms to them regardless of your pious motivations or lack thereof. The reason why no gay people on this board are at all interested in redefining homophobia to only include the "extremists" while allowing the supposedly nicer anti-gay Christians to not fall under that label is because actually the gay people don't see any difference between the two. If you are trying to take away their rights and their freedoms... if you are trying to stop them marrying, stop them adopting children, and force them into harmful and damaging therapies, and condemn and marginalize them... then you are anti-gay in every way that counts, and the reasons for which you are doing it, be they "biblical" reasons or not, make not an iota, not a jot, not a shred, of difference to the gay people that you are actively harming.

So when Christians appeal to gay people to not label the Christian church's anti-gay activities as "homophobia" this comes across as the church saying to gay people: "we're going to continue persecuting, condemning and campaigning against you, but we'd like to not feel bad about it while we do it, so could you please stop calling us "homophobic" while we persecute you, because that word makes it sound like we're doing something bad, and we'd prefer not to feel bad about ourselves while we persecute you, thanks". Funnily enough, such requests are not typically viewed in a positive light by gay people.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Are you sure the imbalance of women in non-evangelical churches is because they are single?

No, that's not what I meant. There is simply an oversupply of women in the church. This means that young, single (straight) women in the church are likely to find it harder to get a Christian husband.

The imbalance is greater in non-evangelical churches, but OTOH those churches have fewer young people anyway, and they're also less concerned about marriages between Christians and non-Christians.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
And when a leader among Evangelical Christians does break from the party line what happens? Ask Steve Chalke (or others).

I tried to respond to this last night, but my computer had a fit and closed my browser with a long, unsaved, reply almost ready to post.

Clearly in the last decade or so homosexuality has become an issue in evangelicalism, with those who consider homosexual activity to be a sin currently in the majority. That can create problems for those in the minority. The example of Steve Chalke is complicated. Yes, he and Oasis are no longer members of the EA. But, first it was after a quite considerable period of discussion over the issue of homosexuality, a discussion that is ongoing. Steve Chalke has held his views on sexuality for a considerable time, he's been criticised for those but so far only one organisation has ejected him, BUGB for example hasn't done so. The EA has said they don't want his membership fee, he hasn't lost his job, for example.

And, he's not unique. Ken Wilson is still senior pastor at Ann Arbor Vineyard despite his letter to his congregation. Admittedly when Marten Woudstra says "there is nothing in the Old Testament that corresponds to homosexuality as we understand it today" it does result in people claiming the NIV is an unreliable translation because the translators were not anti-homosexual. And, when one of the most influential proponents of Biblical hermaneutics Bernard Ramm states "The issues about homosexuality are very complex and are not understood by most members of the Christian church" it doesn't lead to any attempt to try harder to enable members of the Christian church to understand them better. OK, so there's no way that Ramm or Woudstra can lose the positions now (both are dead). I've just picked a small sample of evangelicals who have been or are supportive of homosexual rights, and because the view that Americans are much more conservative I've picked Americans. These are people for whom their views on homosexuality are/were not problems for their continuing employment in evangelical churches or colleges.

So, in answer to your question "when a leader among Evangelical Christians does break from the party line what happens?", the answer appears to be evangelicals spend a lot of time talking, and only rarely do anything else.
 
Posted by Jolly Jape (# 3296) on :
 
quote:
originally posted by Kaplan Corday

...The fact that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality is irrelevant. There are many self-evidently wrong things which he did not mention, and to suggest that he upheld traditional sexual morality in areas such as adultery, but was happy with homosexual practice, defies credulity.

Others might well think that the idea that Jesus would lump together a failure to live up to biblical principles of faithfulness, commitment and permanence in sexual relationships, with the desire to live out those very principles within a marriage, in itself defies credulity.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
4. The fact that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality is irrelevant. There are many self-evidently wrong things which he did not mention, and to suggest that he upheld traditional sexual morality in areas such as adultery, but was happy with homosexual practice, defies credulity.

Why does it defy credulity? It seems that that statement presupposes that being against homosexual practice was part of "traditional sexual morality" as Jesus knew it.

Which is not self-evident. Without going into all the detailed ins and outs of which bits of the OT were about morality and which were about purity, it doesn't at all follow that what is, in your mind, 'traditional morality' was actually 'traditional morality' a couple of thousand years ago, which is precisely why things such as textual examination is important.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
6. The analogy of opposition to homosexual practice with racism is entirely invalid. No-one can choose their ethnicity, and while no-one can choose their sexual orientation, they can choose what they do with it, and therefore can logically be criticized by someone who disagrees with their decision.

Only problem is, you present us with one correct choice. For life.

Which simply isn't "choice".

I've spoken before on the Ship on how that is completely different to the situation for heterosexuals. Heterosexuals are held out the hope of sexual expression within a committed relationship.

I'm honestly not sure that many heterosexuals can actually fathom what it is like to be told that you will never, ever have that opportunity. Maybe some can - those who have given up on ever finding a partner.

Any heterosexual who actually has found a partner cannot, I submit, understand just how soul-destroying it is to believe that you will never have that kind of intimate love and passion. I believe I've written before about how close I was to suicide after attending a heterosexual wedding at my church, right at the time that I had finally come to terms with the fact that I was homosexual and would always be homosexual. I was in my 20s, I was a virgin, and I was led to believe I would always be a virgin - not because I was uninterested or unattractive or had made a commitment to celibacy, but because I was born with the 'wrong' desires.

You call that CHOICE? Hardly.

Which is actually one of the key reasons I think the conservative position on homosexuality is wrong. It proposes that God intentionally created some of his children to have their souls crushed in a fundamental and deeply personal way.

[ 29. June 2014, 15:08: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Jolly Jape:
quote:
originally posted by Kaplan Corday

...The fact that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality is irrelevant. There are many self-evidently wrong things which he did not mention, and to suggest that he upheld traditional sexual morality in areas such as adultery, but was happy with homosexual practice, defies credulity.

Others might well think that the idea that Jesus would lump together a failure to live up to biblical principles of faithfulness, commitment and permanence in sexual relationships, with the desire to live out those very principles within a marriage, in itself defies credulity.
As a devout Jew governed by the law of Moses, Jesus almost certainly would've considered male-on-male sex a sin in all circumstances. A couple's love for one another wouldn't overturn the law given by Adonai to his people.

In the gospels accounts of Jesus showing flexibility, such as eating grain and healing on the sabbath, he cites precedent. He's not overturning the law so much as arguing that his opponents are applying it wrong.

This ought not to matter. Incarnation can still allow that, as a man, Jesus' knowledge was limited. On this, he was wrong.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
ADDENDUM: Any notion that having a partner in life is not all that important is, given the amount of effort that heterosexuals put into coupling, definitely defying credulity.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
As a devout Jew governed by the law of Moses, Jesus almost certainly would've considered male-on-male sex a sin in all circumstances. A couple's love for one another wouldn't overturn the law given by Adonai to his people.

This presupposes that the law Adonai gave to his people was that male-on-male sex was a sin in all circumstances. A position I do not, on examination of the relevant texts, accept.

In any case, taking that position poses you a FAR bigger problem than "Jesus was wrong" which you can get around by saying that Jesus was human. Not only would you have to say that Jesus was wrong, you would also have to say that Adonai was wrong. That the law that Adonai (according to you) gave was bad.

[ 29. June 2014, 15:18: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
And now, one more 'addendum' to clarify what my position is...

I do not think that the law given to Moses prohibited male-on-male sex because it was inherently immoral. I think that any prohibition on male-on-male sex was because such sex was associated with the worship of pagan gods.

Whether your definition of 'sin' encompasses both immoral actions and actions that are prohibited for some other reason may differ.
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
This presupposes that the law Adonai gave to his people was that male-on-male sex was a sin in all circumstances. A position I do not, on examination of the relevant texts, accept.

The Levitical texts do appear pretty explicit. Even if the original intent was different, what matters is how they'd be understood by Jesus.

Of course I could be wrong on this. My overriding point is that it shouldn't matter either way.
quote:
In any case, taking that position poses you a FAR bigger problem than "Jesus was wrong" which you can get around by saying that Jesus was human. Not only would you have to say that Jesus was wrong, you would also have to say that Adonai was wrong. That the law that Adonai (according to you) gave was bad.
Far less drastic than that: whoever authored that section of the law of Moses was wrong. They thought they were writing God's will but were mistaken.

In any case, the Euthyphro dilemma would come into play, which goes back to what I said upthread about authority. Judaism has its own spin on this. There is, within the Talmud, the great story of the halakha outvoting Adonai according to Adonai's own rules!
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Svitlana, that thought did cross my mind. I do know that denying oneself for Christ has a long and honourable history in various branches of the church.

Being of a cohort where there has been an inbalance - which no-one made clear when there was hope in my youth - I am aware that the imposition can be placed on straights, too. Usually women. This may well be a reason for my being quite fierce about those who demand celibacy of others, especially when those others have found loving partners.

It's wicked, though, for some to demand that others deny themselves when they do not personally have to do it in the same way.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
The Levitical texts do appear pretty explicit.

We know exactly and with perfect clarity what they meant in the context of a civilization that has been gone for 3000 years. No hubris there.

quote:
Even if the original intent was different, what matters is how they'd be understood by Jesus.
Given that Jesus said jack shit about homosexuality, that is a rather difficult thing to recreate.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

, and while no-one can choose their sexual orientation, they can choose what they do with it,

So, what you are saying is God created people with a powerful desire which they must never fulfill? How does this jibe with the Loving Creator bit?
The desire to be with another person on an intimate level is one of the strongest urges we have. So you are either saying God is a bastard or homosexuality is deviant. The former is a possibility. Science has put paid to the latter.
I am not attempting to be insulting to your beliefs, I am attempting to understand how you have this working.
 
Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :
 
quote:
The Levitical texts do appear pretty explicit. Even if the original intent was different, what matters is how they'd be understood by Jesus.
Leviticus has a long, long history that many evangelicals do not know. The Book that we have now, was compiled and edited by the Priestly Source, (P) in the post-exilic period. We don't know how much of Leviticus dates to the actual period of Moses. The prohibitions against same-sex conduct may be related to the writers wanting to distance themselves from Persian, Babylonian or Caananite cultures.

As for Jesus, it's a big question. Jews disagree over scriptural texts, just as much as Christians do. We can't say that Jesus would have gone with the "conventional" interpretation of Torah, because frankly in many cases, there were multiple schools and interpretations.
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
We know exactly and with perfect clarity what they meant in the context of a civilization that has been gone for 3000 years. No hubris there.

Yup, that's hubris in perfection. Good thing I don't claim such omniscience! Merely that the Pentateuch's clobber verses appear pretty explicit. The exegetical debates tend to revolve around nuances of the Hebrew terms translated as "abomination", rather than whether they're condemning men having sex with men.

If I'm wrong, and they don't condemn loving relationships, that's great news for traditionalists.
quote:
Given that Jesus said jack shit about homosexuality, that is a rather difficult thing to recreate.
Anti-gay evangelicals expend vats of ink and bytes arguing that Jesus' condemnation of sexual immorality would encompass homosexuality.

Since arguing the point implicitly accepts the authoritarian framework, I'm not that bothered. It matters less what Jesus did or didn't say (to add an extra layer of trouble, we don't even know if the words go back to the historical Jesus) than it does whether there's any reason to condemn gay relationships. I see none.
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Leviticus has a long, long history that many evangelicals do not know.

True, although in many cases, biblical inerrancy commits evangelicals to defend Mosaic authorship.
quote:
The Book that we have now, was compiled and edited by the Priestly Source, (P) in the post-exilic period. We don't know how much of Leviticus dates to the actual period of Moses. The prohibitions against same-sex conduct may be related to the writers wanting to distance themselves from Persian, Babylonian or Caananite cultures.
Yup, this may well be the explanation, likely infused with patriarchal gender assumptions. It's informed guesswork, which is the crucial thing: the Bible itself offers no reason for the command. Absent a doctrine of authority, what's asserted without reason can be dismissed without reason.
quote:
As for Jesus, it's a big question. Jews disagree over scriptural texts, just as much as Christians do. We can't say that Jesus would have gone with the "conventional" interpretation of Torah, because frankly in many cases, there were multiple schools and interpretations.
I've no problem accepting this possibility. Our info on 1st century Judaism is partial in the extreme. It may be there existed multiple schools of thought lost to history, and one of those endorsed loving sexual relationships between same-sex couples. I don't consider it likely, since, if it existed, it seems to have vanished without a trace, but it's possible.

The crucial question for me isn't "Did Jesus condemn gay relationships?" but "Why should we?"
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
We know exactly and with perfect clarity what they meant in the context of a civilization that has been gone for 3000 years. No hubris there.

Yup, that's hubris in perfection. Good thing I don't claim such omniscience! Merely that the Pentateuch's clobber verses appear pretty explicit.
I can't slide a knife between those two. "Pretty explicit" and "perfect clarity" are kissing cousins.

quote:
The exegetical debates tend to revolve around nuances of the Hebrew terms translated as "abomination", rather than whether they're condemning men having sex with men.
I've also seen rabbis say that the prohibition against homosex is a ritual, rather than moral, prohibition. If that's the case then one could argue it doesn't apply to Christians at all.

quote:
quote:
Given that Jesus said jack shit about homosexuality, that is a rather difficult thing to recreate.
Anti-gay evangelicals expend vats of ink and bytes arguing that Jesus' condemnation of sexual immorality would encompass homosexuality.
Which is question-begging in a nutshell. "He must say what we mean because that's what he means because..." Around and around and around you go.
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I can't slide a knife between those two. "Pretty explicit" and "perfect clarity" are kissing cousins.

Something appearing pretty explicit (i.e., by my perception, subjective and timebound as it is) hasn't touched first base with certainty. [Cool]
quote:
I've also seen rabbis say that the prohibition against homosex is a ritual, rather than moral, prohibition. If that's the case then one could argue it doesn't apply to Christians at all.
Yup, that's certainly a possibility, and illustrates just how tough an ask it is injecting the content of Judaism into a religion that rejects its frameworks.

If Paul of Tarsus did condemn homosexuality in all circumstances as self-evident, it wouldn't count against the ritual element, but would add a moral one. Not that ritual and morality are neatly separate in any case.
quote:
Which is question-begging in a nutshell. "He must say what we mean because that's what he means because..." Around and around and around you go.
Evangelical advocates of that position cite a swathe of biblical material to back the claim (Jesus' attitudes to marriage, both upholding and expanding on the law, references to Sodom and Gomorrah, etc) and why argue it when doing so implicitly accepts their beliefs about biblical authority?
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I can't slide a knife between those two. "Pretty explicit" and "perfect clarity" are kissing cousins.

Something appearing pretty explicit (i.e., by my perception, subjective and timebound as it is) hasn't touched first base with certainty. [Cool]
So you're making no claims for the accuracy of what you count as "pretty explicit"? It's just an interesting fact about your psychology?

quote:
If Paul of Tarsus did condemn homosexuality in all circumstances as self-evident, it wouldn't count against the ritual element, but would add a moral one. Not that ritual and morality are neatly separate in any case.
But that's a big IF. And it's not clear he could condemn it in circumstances he wasn't even aware could possibly exist. Applying his condemnations from his world to circumstances in our world is iffy, and it gets even iffyer when you consider that there is a great deal of doubt as to what the circumstances were that he was operating in. In short, applying Paul's thoughts about homosex to 21st century SSM isn't clear or explicit at all. It's a mare's nest. People claiming it's clear or explicit are fooling themselves and are chock full of fundamentalist hubris.

quote:
Evangelical advocates of that position cite a swathe of biblical material to back the claim (Jesus' attitudes to marriage, both upholding and expanding on the law, references to Sodom and Gomorrah, etc) and why argue it when doing so implicitly accepts their beliefs about biblical authority?
Yes and it's question begging. If the question is, "Is SSM part of what is condemned in the bible?" then saying "SSM is condemned by Jesus because he condemns immorality and it's immoral" is begging the question. Whether it is immoral is what we're trying to answer; assuming it's immoral and then saying "therefore it's immoral" is circular.

And the Sodom and Gomorrah question has been answered above. In order to get a condemnation of homosex from S&G you must bring it in from outside, because the passage admits of mmultiple interpretation, and the one place it's glossed elsewhere, the gloss quite explicitly mentions how you treat the poor, but doesn't mention homosex at all. In short, unless you have decided on other grounds that homosex is wrong, you can't derive the wrongness of homosex from S&G. Or, to put it succinctly, that's a circular argument.

ETA: Another huge point that needs to be considered is the difference between the two hermeneutics regarding biblical morality:

1. Everything that is not explicitly prohibited is allowed; and

2. Everything that is not explicitly allowed is prohibited.

[ 29. June 2014, 18:31: Message edited by: mousethief ]
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So you're making no claims for the accuracy of what you count as "pretty explicit"? It's just an interesting fact about your psychology?

Of course I'm claiming accuracy, I'm just making clear that I'm not claiming certainty. It's a question of probability made on limited data.
quote:
But that's a big IF. And it's not clear he could condemn it in circumstances he wasn't even aware could possibly exist. Applying his condemnations from his world to circumstances in our world is iffy, and it gets even iffyer when you consider that there is a great deal of doubt as to what the circumstances were that he was operating in. In short, applying Paul's thoughts about homosex to 21st century SSM isn't clear or explicit at all. It's a mare's nest. People claiming it's clear or explicit are fooling themselves and are chock full of fundamentalist hubris.
Well yes, I agree, they are. Paul may well have been unaware of loving same-sex relationships (or he may have known & condemned regardless, it's pure guesswork). The difficulty of applying his words today are exactly why I'm no fan of using the Bible (or any other text) as a how-to guide.
quote:
Yes and it's question begging. If the question is, "Is SSM part of what is condemned in the bible?" then saying "SSM is condemned by Jesus because he condemns immorality and it's immoral" is begging the question. Whether it is immoral is what we're trying to answer; assuming it's immoral and then saying "therefore it's immoral" is circular.

And the Sodom and Gomorrah question has been answered above. In order to get a condemnation of homosex from S&G you must bring it in from outside, because the passage admits of mmultiple interpretation, and the one place it's glossed elsewhere, the gloss quite explicitly mentions how you treat the poor, but doesn't mention homosex at all. In short, unless you have decided on other grounds that homosex is wrong, you can't derive the wrongness of homosex from S&G. Or, to put it succinctly, that's a circular argument.

It's only question-begging if it's assumed. A reasoned exegetical case can be made that the gospels contain themes authentic to Jesus of Nazareth that would condemn homosexuality. Of necessity, any conclusion will be probable and provisional.
quote:
ETA: Another huge point that needs to be considered is the difference between the two hermeneutics regarding biblical morality:

1. Everything that is not explicitly prohibited is allowed; and

2. Everything that is not explicitly allowed is prohibited.

Hermeneutics are a whole new can o' worms!
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
quote:
ETA: Another huge point that needs to be considered is the difference between the two hermeneutics regarding biblical morality:

1. Everything that is not explicitly prohibited is allowed; and

2. Everything that is not explicitly allowed is prohibited.

Hermeneutics are a whole new can o' worms!
New? That's all we've been doing for the last 5 exchanges is hermeneutics.

quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
It's only question-begging if it's assumed. A reasoned exegetical case can be made that the gospels contain themes authentic to Jesus of Nazareth that would condemn homosexuality.

I disagree. It's all wild interpolation, and depends on bringing a blanket condemnation of homosex in from outside, as you cannot get a blanket condemnation of homosex from either Leviticus or S&G.

[ 29. June 2014, 19:49: Message edited by: mousethief ]
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
New? That's all we've been doing for the last 5 exchanges is hermeneutics.

Well, in the sense of applying a hermeneutical lens to do some slapdash exegesis, I guess we have. More detailed hermeneutics is yet more fun. [Big Grin]
quote:
I disagree. It's all wild interpolation, and depends on bringing a blanket condemnation of homosex in from outside, as you cannot get a blanket condemnation of homosex from either Leviticus or S&G.
As the ancients had no concept of sexual orientation, I'd instead describe it as "a blanket condemnation of sex between men." That (IMO) is what a plain reading of Leviticus and Paul offers. (Paul may also have condemned sex between women.)

This only gets so heated 'cause it's tied to authority. If I come across as relaxed about what the Bible says, it's only because I give it no special weight. As the underlying issue is authority, that, not exegesis, is (again IMO) what we ought to focus on.
 
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:


Homophobia is the word for this form of bigotry.

"Homophobia" is not the word, but on the contrary a manipulative, dishonest and unacceptable smear.

And a theologically based opposition to homosexual practice is not bigotry.

Caliing opponents of homosexual practice "homophobes" is like calling homosexuals "poofters", girls who wear short dresses "sluts", supporters of the welfare state "communists", policemen "fascists", and boat-people "queue jumpers".

quote:
if you oppose the right of people who love each other to get married and are working to separate families (as opponents of gay marriage are) then homophobia is being polite. If you have a pharisee-like dedication to the rules and are callous and unempathetic about those they hurt, that's worse. If you deny your approach leads to suffering, that's just callous blindness.
This is nothing more than a confused and moralistic attempt at emotional blackmail.

Jesus taught love of God and neighbour AND what we would call "traditional" sexual ethics; they are not mutually exclusive.

What is 'homosexual practice'? Can we please stop acting as if being gay and having romantic relationships with people of the same gender is so easily separable? People don't refer to 'heterosexual practice'.

Also, annoyed bisexual alert - G is not the only letter in LGBT.
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
I accept that traditional beliefs can spring not from homophobia, but instead from a sincere desire to obey scripture, so yes, why do the same hoary phrases keep cropping up? It's entirely possible to advocate a traditional position without using phrases like "homosexual practice," and, above all, "lifestyle."

Traditionalists must, surely, be aware by now of how hurtful those phrases are? That being so, why haven't they been retired?
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
Traditionalists must, surely, be aware by now of how hurtful those phrases are?

Why do you think that?
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
Traditionalists must, surely, be aware by now of how hurtful those phrases are?

Why do you think that?
'Cause they get told near every time they use 'em!
 
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
Put it this way - nobody refers to 'heterosexual practice' or 'heterosexual lifestyle'. Heterosexual sex is just seen as a normal healthy part of adult heterosexual existence, rightly so. Why, then, is non-heterosexual sex not seen as just being part of non-heterosexual existence? Are LGBT people a different species? Why not, you know, just treat us as people?

It baffles me that non-affirming evangelicals, who generally believe in some kind of divine Creation and God influencing the creation of a person (even if they're fine with evolution generally) cannot bring themselves to believe that someone's non-heterosexuality is part of how God made them? Why would God, who according to evangelicals is in charge of our lives, create heterosexuals with a sex life to be enjoyed but non-heterosexuals with a sex life to be viewed as awful and sinful? Why would God despise non-heterosexuals so much?
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
Traditionalists must, surely, be aware by now of how hurtful those phrases are?

Why do you think that?
'Cause they get told near every time they use 'em!
Are you familiar with confirmation bias? Add to that a firm conviction that you are on God's side and the people telling you you're being hurtful are in league with the Devil of Hell. Toss in a few people who actually WANT to be hurtful and are using God as an excuse.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Jade Constable

As I said above, it's perhaps because evangelicals are traditionally comfortable with the notion of self-denial?

Perhaps as middle class evangelical lifestyles become more and more like everyone else's, with far less self-denial in evidence, there'll be a corresponding reluctance to insist on self-denial in this respect.

[ 29. June 2014, 20:54: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Are you familiar with confirmation bias? Add to that a firm conviction that you are on God's side and the people telling you you're being hurtful are in league with the Devil of Hell. Toss in a few people who actually WANT to be hurtful and are using God as an excuse.

Yes indeed, but I'm referring not to the Phelps' of the church, rather the moderates. Folk like George Carey, who know gay people socially, and sincerely want to obey scripture. They're not personally homophobic, and genuinely want gay people to feel welcome in the church, but they do keep dropping these clangers.

Are they really unaware of the baggage? I guess they may be, but if so, it's on them to educate themselves.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
Are they really unaware of the baggage? I guess they may be, but if so, it's on them to educate themselves.

Yes, they are unaware. Privilege is blind. How do they know to educate themselves when they can't see that they need educating?
 
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Jade Constable

As I said above, it's perhaps because evangelicals are traditionally comfortable with the notion of self-denial?

Perhaps as middle class evangelical lifestyles become more and more like everyone else's, with far less self-denial in evidence, there'll be a corresponding reluctance to insist on self-denial in this respect.

IME evangelicals are not very comfortable with self-denial - only comfortable with others enduring self-denial! Certainly no evangelical is suggesting celibacy for straight people like they are for LGBT people - to evangelicals, celibacy and monasticism is for gays and Catholics.
 
Posted by Byron (# 15532) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Jade Constable

As I said above, it's perhaps because evangelicals are traditionally comfortable with the notion of self-denial?

Perhaps as middle class evangelical lifestyles become more and more like everyone else's, with far less self-denial in evidence, there'll be a corresponding reluctance to insist on self-denial in this respect.

IME evangelicals are not very comfortable with self-denial - only comfortable with others enduring self-denial! Certainly no evangelical is suggesting celibacy for straight people like they are for LGBT people - to evangelicals, celibacy and monasticism is for gays and Catholics.
Testify. [Devil]

If it's not a cliche for married evangelical leaders to lecture lesbian and gay Christians on the joys of celibacy, it should be.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Ah, well! If evangelicalism is mainly about telling other people what to do then the answer is simple: if you don't want to be told what to do, don't hang around with evangelicals! Shouldn't be too difficult.
 
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
Unless of course you're in a church like the CoE with a large evangelical membership...
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Reading threads like this, I do find myself wondering why gay people or anyone 'nice' would want to be associated with evangelical churches if such churches are so hopelessly oppressive and unhelpful?

If you're a tolerant Christian in a particularly 'evangelical' area and can't commute I can understand that problem. But otherwise, if evangelicalism is so utterly oppressive, outdated and irrelevant then it should surely be abandoned and left to die, rather than argued over. There are gentler alternatives.
 
Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :
 
Don't have any evangelicals in your family, do you? I'd have to write off whole branches of my family to disassociate myself from evangelicals. OK, so that's just a bunch of cousins I don't see very often. But one of them has a son who is gay -- what's he supposed to do?
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:

It baffles me that non-affirming evangelicals, who generally believe in some kind of divine Creation and God influencing the creation of a person (even if they're fine with evolution generally) cannot bring themselves to believe that someone's non-heterosexuality is part of how God made them? Why would God, who according to evangelicals is in charge of our lives, create heterosexuals with a sex life to be enjoyed but non-heterosexuals with a sex life to be viewed as awful and sinful? Why would God despise non-heterosexuals so much?

You have just made a huge leap from the specific issue of Christianity and homosexuality to the huge general issue of theodicy.

No, I don’t understand either why God allows people to be born with (or to acquire) same-sex attraction which he has forbidden them to fulfil.

But neither do I know why he creates people with heterosexual feelings in cases when he knows they will never marry, and will therefore be tormented by them all their lives( a far greater number than gay, or if you prefer, LGBT, people), or why he gives sexual feelings and abilities to twelve year olds (along with the ability for the girls to fall pregnant), or why children are born with a mixture, or lack of, conventional physical gender attributes, with all the complications which ensue.

Or why children are born with an endless list of horrible diseases, deformities and disabilities………

The problem of suffering is easily the most cogent argument against Christianity, but it is every bit as much a problem for Christians who believe that homosexual practice is not forbidden by God, as it is for those who do.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
The analogy only breaks down if you take the position that having same-sex attractions is itself a matter of choice

I stated quite explicitly that sexual orientation is not a matter of choice.

quote:
"we're going to continue persecuting, condemning and campaigning against you, but we'd like to not feel bad about it while we do it, so could you please stop calling us "homophobic" while we persecute you, because that word makes it sound like we're doing something bad, and we'd prefer not to feel bad about ourselves while we persecute you, thanks".
I have no more desire to "persecute" homosexuals than I have to persecute Hindus, and neither do any of the evangelicals I know.

In fact I have had Hindu friends whom I greatly liked and respected as people, and my attitude, which they understood, was, "I don't agree with your beliefs or practices, but in a pluralist society we can co-exist and enjoy a civil relationship".

Ditto for the gay people I know and have known.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
I have no more desire to "persecute" homosexuals than I have to persecute Hindus, and neither do any of the evangelicals I know.

In fact I have had Hindu friends whom I greatly liked and respected as people, and my attitude, which they understood, was, "I don't agree with your beliefs or practices, but in a pluralist society we can co-exist and enjoy a civil relationship".

Ditto for the gay people I know and have known.

I find this disanalagous, as there are virtually no evangelicals who are trying to prevent Hindus from getting married, but millions in this country who are trying to prevent gay people from getting married.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
1.Neither I, nor any of the evangelicals I know, are interested in political campaigning on behalf of anti-gay legislation. We regard gays in the same way we regard members of other religions, ie as wrong in their beliefs and practices, but as entitled to them as we are in a pluralist society, and as entitled as we should be to openly express their disagreement with other belief systems without being vilified as bigots.

Nope. That's not how "a pluralist society" works. It's not a criticism-free zone. You're free to hold and express whatever bigotries you like, but the rest of us are free to form our own opinions about you. What you seem to want is a situation where you are entitled to express your opinions, but no one else is.

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
2. To insist that “homophobia” and its cognates are correct and unchangeable is to exhibit a prescriptivist rigidity which would be laughed out of court in other circumstances. To use “homophobe” to describe someone who merely disagrees with homosexual practice is as insulting as calling a black person as a “nigger”, and just as easy to dump in the dustbin of linguistic history. “Homophobia” should be reserved for extremists such as those who have called for capital punishment for gays in Uganda.

If you don't want to be equated with racists, you should stop copying their arguments! A lot of white supremacists argue, similarly to you, that they don't hate members of other races, they just believe in the inherent superiority of white people and have never personally harmed a member of another race. In short, they argue for a standard where no one can be considered a racist unless they personally assassinated Medgar Evers.

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
6. The analogy of opposition to homosexual practice with racism is entirely invalid. No-one can choose their ethnicity, and while no-one can choose their sexual orientation, they can choose what they do with it, and therefore can logically be criticized by someone who disagrees with their decision. In the same way, I have an overwhelming inclination, which I didn’t choose, to believe and practise the Christian religion, but in the end it is my choice whether to go along with it or not, meaning that an atheist is perfectly entitled to deny that it is my unavoidable destiny or identity, and just as entitled to question and criticize my choice.

So you're saying that anti-gay prejudice is more analogous to religious bigotry than it is to racial bigotry? Because people can (and do) change their religion a lot more readily than they change their sexual orientation. (Evangelicalism is particularly based on the premise that people can change their religion.)

But hey, if you'd rather be analogized to the Inquisition than to the Klan, I can accommodate that.

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
7. Yes, to use “those who engage in homosexual behaviour” or even “practicing homosexuals” is clunky and inconvenient, but it obviates to some extent, the constant confusion over whether the term “homosexual” is being used to describe an orientation, or a life choice to go with that orientation.

It also fits perfectly with the special vocabulary used by the reparative therapy crowd who insist "There is no such thing as a homosexual… He is a heterosexual, but he may have a homosexual problem."
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
That's not how "a pluralist society" works.


Yes it is - or should be, ie a place where disagreement and criticism is possible without gratuitous vilification.

quote:
A lot of white supremacists argue, similarly to you, that they don't hate members of other races, they just believe in the inherent superiority of white people
The idea that anyone is arguing for the "inherent superiority" of straights over gays is entirely a figment of your imagination.

If you really can't understand the difference between disagreeing with someone, and asserting tour "inherent superiority" over them, try sitting
down and thinking about it for a little while.
quote:
So you're saying that anti-gay prejudice is more analogous to religious bigotry than it is to racial bigotry?
Do you seriously imagine that every disagreement between religious outlooks equates to bigotry?

Possibly a dictionary would help.

quote:
"There is no such thing as a homosexual… He is a heterosexual, but he may have a homosexual problem."
I'll take your word for it that someone has said that, but it certainly does not express what I believe, or anyone I know believes.
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
I stated quite explicitly that sexual orientation is not a matter of choice.

Yes. My argument is that your position is inconsistent. If sexual orientation isn't a matter of choice, as you and I agree, then the analogy with race holds. Because both race and sexuality are not matters of choice, but the choice to marry is a choice. So disallowing same-sex marriage is analogous to disallowing interracial marriage or disallowing black marriages.

quote:
I have no more desire to "persecute" homosexuals than I have to persecute Hindus, and neither do any of the evangelicals I know.
Trying to deny myself and others fundamental human rights (eg to marriage) very much is persecution from our point of view. You may not feel like a persecutor, but we feel persecuted, and very justifiably so:

For many centuries the Christian church executed gay people. Did you know that in many decades the Inquisition executed more people for being gay than they did for everything else put together? In the 20th century, the persecution was toned down a notch and instead of outright execution, gay people could simply look forward to receiving such severe punishments at the hands of Christian authorities that it made commit suicide. In most Christian countries, Churches were on the front lines resisting any attempts to change the law and legalize gay sex. In the last two decades, Christian organisations have been funding campaigns to try to prevent gay civil partnerships and subsequently prevent gay marriage. Those campaigns have commonly functioned by spreading hurtful lies about gay people and their ability to parent and to love.

It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you.

If you crunch the numbers, as I have, Christians probably drive approximately as many gay people in the US to suicide per year, as were killed in total by the Muslim terrorists in 9/11. (Give or take, it's hard to get exact stats but the numbers are similar to at least within an order of magnitude)

quote:
In fact I have had Hindu friends whom I greatly liked and respected as people, and my attitude, which they understood, was, "I don't agree with your beliefs or practices, but in a pluralist society we can co-exist and enjoy a civil relationship".

Ditto for the gay people I know and have known.

When I see multiple churches in multiple countries campaigning to prevent Hindus from marrying then I'll agree with your point. It's rather obvious Christians do not treat gay people nearly as well as they do Hindus.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
That's not how "a pluralist society" works,

Yes it is - or should be, ie a place where disagreement and criticism is possible without gratuitous vilification.
As Starlight points out, there's nothing gratuitous about it. The vilification your position receives is thoroughly considered and reasonable.

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
A lot of white supremacists argue, similarly to you, that they don't hate members of other races, they just believe in the inherent superiority of white people
The idea that anyone is arguing for the "inherent superiority" of straights over gays is entirely a figment of your imagination.
I don't think a position that boils down to "God blesses and approves my family, but He despises yours, you horrible sinner" can be interpreted any other way. At any rate, I note you didn't address my point, which was that you seem to be arguing for an incredibly narrow definition of homophobia roughly equivalent to arguing that anyone short of an actual Klansman or Neo-Nazi doesn't qualify as a racist.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
No, I don’t understand either why God allows people to be born with (or to acquire) same-sex attraction which he has forbidden them to fulfil.

Has it never occurred to you that this mysterious problem might disappear if either of the limbs of the proposition is re-examined?

In other words, "are people born with same-sex attraction?" is only one of the two possible questions to wrestle with here. The other possible question to wrestle with is, "does God really forbid people from fulfilling same-sex attraction?".

I think that's one of the biggest problems I have with many conservative Christians in this area. They have haggled and haggled over the first question, and that haggling is finally beginning to diminish. But so few of them ever seem to seriously try out the second question. They treat the answer as immutable. With the result that the only possible conclusion, once they conclude that yes, people really are born with same-sex attraction is to shrug their shoulders and say "sorry, turns out God is a tremendously evil bastard".

I submit that that this simply isn't the inevitable conclusion. Try out the second question.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Reading threads like this, I do find myself wondering why gay people or anyone 'nice' would want to be associated with evangelical churches if such churches are so hopelessly oppressive and unhelpful?

If you're a tolerant Christian in a particularly 'evangelical' area and can't commute I can understand that problem. But otherwise, if evangelicalism is so utterly oppressive, outdated and irrelevant then it should surely be abandoned and left to die, rather than argued over. There are gentler alternatives.

It's called not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The fact that I think mayn evangelical Christians have got one point thoroughly wrong does not mean that I think the entire mode of evangelical thinking is wrong.

I frankly resent the push, from both sides, to define my entire Christian experience based on my sexuality. It pisses me off that I myself have had to make "how do they treat gays" a key criterion in choosing a church. I would far rather be looking at other factors in choosing a church, not ruling out a whole bunch of them just because of one issue.
 
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
It pisses me off that I myself have had to make "how do they treat gays" a key criterion in choosing a church. I would far rather be looking at other factors in choosing a church, not ruling out a whole bunch of them just because of one issue.

Agreed. And in my case the issue is complicated by a forty year association with a single church, and one generally noted for both its kindness and social awareness.

In general, I don't do contempt for others because of what I see as moral turpitude. It just strikes me as another form of finger pointing.

The 19th Century missionary, Anthony Norris Groves, said this (the quote is from memory and not guaranteed perfect) in a letter about a controversial issue which was causing congregations to split.

"I would rather remain in fellowship with anyone, no matter how imperfect, for the sake of the spark of divine life which is in him, than separate from that person and by that act of separation do something to extinguish the spark".

It is a bit like "70 times 7" forgiveness. Contempt and separation are pretty final acts.

My wife and I had a long discussion with a very good friend who is gay and who felt she had no option other than to leave the church where she had been a member for many years. She was right to go, but the people and the community remain wrapped around her heartstrings. It still hurts a lot.

We've talked with her about our personal dilemma, and she is strongly of the view that it is better for us to work for change from within. Otherwise, the field is left open for the intransigent.

[ 30. June 2014, 06:29: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The other possible question to wrestle with is, "does God really forbid people from fulfilling same-sex attraction?".

Well yes, obviously that is the issue underlying the whole thread.

And yes, Christians who try to take their faith seriously on BOTH sides are obliged to permanently heed the famous words of Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible ye might be mistaken".

quote:
"sorry, turns out God is a tremendously evil bastard".
As I pointed out in the post to which you are responding, Christians who believe that God does not disapprove of homosexual practices are still obliged to wrestle with a whole range of other issues relating to his goodness.

Our view of God's character is a broad and complex question which cannot be answered exclusively on the basis of what we decide is his attitude toward homosexuality.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
As I pointed out in the post to which you are responding, Christians who believe that God does not disapprove of homosexual practices are still obliged to wrestle with a whole range of other issues relating to his goodness.

Our view of God's character is a broad and complex question which cannot be answered exclusively on the basis of what we decide is his attitude toward homosexuality.

This is true. I still think, though, that there are some very special forms of cruelty in the proposal that people are born with a form of sexual desire that is perfectly capable of being expressed in consenting adult relationships, but must not be.

The things that make it special, I would argue, are exactly the same things that cause heterosexuals to value their own sexual expression so highly.

Barring all homosexual activity did not have anything like the same cruelty when homosexuals were viewed as basically heterosexuals who've gone astray. The solution was obvious: stop straying and start aiming for 'normal' sexual behaviour instead. But once you recognise that this IS our 'normal', the prohibition becomes a burden that no heterosexual is obliged to bear. A heterosexual who is prohibited from sexual expression in their current circumstances may hope for a change of circumstances. A homosexual, by contrast, is told that the nature of their circumstances is completely irrelevant. The reason for being barred from sexual expression is innate.

I doubt most heterosexuals would think much of a God who told them that they could not have sex no matter what. Even if they found the perfect person and made a mutual lifelong commitment, and ticked every possible box in terms of sexual ethics - how many married heterosexual couples would accept being told they were forbidden from ever having sex ever again?

That strikes me as an exceptionally profound prohibition that strikes at the very heart of the human psyche.

[ 30. June 2014, 07:17: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
If sexual orientation isn't a matter of choice, as you and I agree, then the analogy with race holds.

No it doesn't.

As I explained earlier, orientation still leaves open the the possibilty of choice.

A hetero male's orientation means that he finds many women sexually attractive, which faces him with the choice of whether to say either "I am naturally polygamous, and God has made me this way, so I will go after them", or "I think God has called me to faithful monogamy, so I will try to resist this inclination".

I hasten to add that I am not saying anything here about differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals as regards promiscuity and faithfulness - obviously examples of both can be found in both groups - but simply explaining that sexual orientation involves an element of choice which ethnicity does not.

quote:


When I see multiple churches in multiple countries campaigning to prevent Hindus from marrying then I'll agree with your point.

I regard same-sex marriage legislation as inevitable, and have no interest in opposing it.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
A heterosexual who is prohibited from sexual expression in their current circumstances may hope for a change of circumstances. A homosexual, by contrast, is told that the nature of their circumstances is completely irrelevant. The reason for being barred from sexual expression is innate.


I agree that it is a profound theological difficulty (though not more so than many others) but in practice homosexuals in the West are free to engage in homosexual relationships, and nowadays have access, if they wish, to many churches.

On the basis of the freedom of religion in a pluralist society analogy which I mentioned earlier, I happen to support this state of affairs.
 
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
I think it is a part of the more general challenge in our time, orfeo. As IngoB has pointed out clearly on other threads, traditional Christian sexual ethics are restrictive for single people and married people. There is self denial involved, and self-denial doesn't get a very good press these days, particularly over human sexuality. It is a powerful driving force for a very large percentage of the human race.

A silly line from a poem about caviar comes to me. "The virgin sturgeon needs no urgin'". When it comes to the desire for sexual fulfilment, containment is very difficult. After 30 years in church based youthwork, it's kind of topic A really. What do we actually do with desire, given that it is with us a lot of the time.

Teaching about the virtues of faithfulness and the vices of objectification establishes some moral boundaries. Self righteous pontifications are no use at all, particular from the married to the unmarried.

I heard Elaine Storkey talk about this at a youth conference I attended a few years ago. Her address to the young people in front of her (average age about 18 I should think) included the following bit of self-awareness. From memory it went something like this.

"From the comfort and freedom of my happily married state, who am I to lecture you about sexual containment? I've been married for thirty years, I've had loads of sex."

We forget all too easily what it is like. I think celibacy is a relatively rare calling and perhaps those who are called that way are equipped for the calling. But if you aren't called and equipped, what do you actually do? The answers to that question had better show some empathy and sensitivity, rather than moral high ground proclamation. That's like placing heavy burdens on people's hearts without doing a thing to help them.

Now the truth, far too often, is that there is a good deal of pastoral sensitivity about this in evangelical churches when it comes to heterosexual relationships. Plus a certain amount of Nelsonian blind eyes on telescopes. The perceived moral high ground only seems to emerge when homosexual relationships are discussed. IMO that's a double standard with baleful effects.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
you seem to be arguing for an incredibly narrow definition of homophobia roughly equivalent to arguing that anyone short of an actual Klansman or Neo-Nazi doesn't qualify as a racist.

That is a bizarre comparison, and I find it difficult to believe that you intend it seriously.

For a start, racism is not analogous to believing that homosexual practice is wrong.

And it has nothing to do with "narrow definition"; the simple fact is that the vast majority of Christians who believe that the Bible forbids homosexual activity do not hate or fear homosexuals, but just believe that they are mistaken on this particular issue.

Neo-Nazis and Klansmen - give us a break.

Anyone who can't discuss a question like this without throwing up that sort of image should fall under some variation on Godwin's Law.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
A heterosexual who is prohibited from sexual expression in their current circumstances may hope for a change of circumstances. A homosexual, by contrast, is told that the nature of their circumstances is completely irrelevant. The reason for being barred from sexual expression is innate.


I agree that it is a profound theological difficulty (though not more so than many others) but in practice homosexuals in the West are free to engage in homosexual relationships, and nowadays have access, if they wish, to many churches.

On the basis of the freedom of religion in a pluralist society analogy which I mentioned earlier, I happen to support this state of affairs.

I agree that I am talking about a theological difficulty, rather than a legal prohibition.

Nevertheless, the theological difficulty finds its way into practice, in such areas as the resistance of same-sex marriage. Conservatives who see marriage as an official 'stamp of approval' of a relationship do not want that stamp given to same-sex relationships.

The theological difficulty is also fairly profound for those homosexual Christians who would otherwise find themselves aligned with the relevant kind of theology. The rate of suicide or attempted suicide among homosexual Christians is distressingly high, and it occurs specifically within the theological tradition that condemns homosexuality. The inability to reconcile what a person believes/has been taught to believe with their own personal experience of same-sex attraction is, quite literally, lethal. Being in a pluralistic society only partially solves that, as resolving the conflict still requires moving from one's "home" in that pluralistic society to somewhere else within it.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Don't have any evangelicals in your family, do you? I'd have to write off whole branches of my family to disassociate myself from evangelicals. OK, so that's just a bunch of cousins I don't see very often. But one of them has a son who is gay -- what's he supposed to do?

I've got limited internet access right now and I admit to not having read all the comments since my previous one, but I'd like to use RuthW's as a suitable hook to jump back into the debate.

As (amongst other things) the pastor of a church which describes itself as evangelical, my own convictions at present go something like this:

All other exegetical considerations aside, I can't get away from the idea - largely from Genesis - that the biblical "ideal" sexual relationship is one man, one woman, till they are parted by death. I think that enshrines notions of difference (at least at the level of biology) and faithfulness that are important. I might also be tempted to throw in procreation.

Biblically, I find this ideal hard to get away from, even as biblically, I find abundant examples of people who for one reason or another are not in line with this ideal but who are loved and accepted by God in their non-ideal circumstances. "Non-ideal" does not necessarily mean "wantonly sinful" as far as I'm concerned.

What I would like to do is uphold what I see as an ideal whilst acknowledging that for many people, for whatever reason, this ideal is not realisable and that they are not necessarily to blame for this.

I would like a church that is sincerely, not insincerely, open to all and in which there are no second-class members. A church in which all of us, in our diversity of fallenness, stand only by the grace of God. A church in which all of us, in different ways, reflect the ideals of the Kingdom of God. We don't all reflect the same ones, and we don't feel superior for the ones we reflect. Some of them we don't reflect at all, but that's ok. Is this homophobic?
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
That's not how "a pluralist society" works.


Yes it is - or should be, ie a place where disagreement and criticism is possible without gratuitous vilification.
In which case you first. When you claim that people who do acts you don't like are committing sins you are vilifying them. If you don't want vilification coming right back, drop the language of sin. Because what you are asking here is quite literally the right to vilify others unilaterally and have them not point out what you are doing.

quote:
quote:
A lot of white supremacists argue, similarly to you, that they don't hate members of other races, they just believe in the inherent superiority of white people
The idea that anyone is arguing for the "inherent superiority" of straights over gays is entirely a figment of your imagination.
The idea that suggesting a gay orientation is inherently sinful is anything else is a figment of yours.

quote:
If you really can't understand the difference between disagreeing with someone, and asserting tour "inherent superiority" over them, try sitting down and thinking about it for a little while.
Once you are reaching for the language of sin you are vilifying and talking about the inherent superiority of one way over another. It is possible to disagree amicably. You are not. You are vilifying the the other side by talking about sin, and then objecting to return fire.

If "sin" and "immoral" are allowed, so are "bigotry" and "homophobia". When you talk about homosexual practice being unacceptable, others have the right to talk about your beliefs and practices being unacceptable.

The right to free speech does not mean that everyone has the obligation to sit and listen politely while you make offensive comments.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
As (amongst other things) the pastor of a church which describes itself as evangelical, my own convictions at present go something like this:

All other exegetical considerations aside, I can't get away from the idea - largely from Genesis - that the biblical "ideal" sexual relationship is one man, one woman, till they are parted by death. I think that enshrines notions of difference (at least at the level of biology) and faithfulness that are important. I might also be tempted to throw in procreation.

Biblically, I find this ideal hard to get away from, even as biblically, I find abundant examples of people who for one reason or another are not in line with this ideal but who are loved and accepted by God in their non-ideal circumstances. "Non-ideal" does not necessarily mean "wantonly sinful" as far as I'm concerned.

What I would like to do is uphold what I see as an ideal whilst acknowledging that for many people, for whatever reason, this ideal is not realisable and that they are not necessarily to blame for this.

I would like a church that is sincerely, not insincerely, open to all and in which there are no second-class members. A church in which all of us, in our diversity of fallenness, stand only by the grace of God. A church in which all of us, in different ways, reflect the ideals of the Kingdom of God. We don't all reflect the same ones, and we don't feel superior for the ones we reflect. Some of them we don't reflect at all, but that's ok. Is this homophobic?

In the sense of anti-gay? Yes, it kind of is, for reasons which I will try to unpack carefully.

The very notion of an 'ideal' relationship creates a measuring point. It immediately provides you with an opportunity to assess a relationship and decide in some way how close it is to the ideal - the assessment might be difficult to quantify, but it's still an assessment.

Which then provides you with a way to compare two relationships, and decide that one is closer to the ideal than the other. Which means that it's better than the other.

So if your ideal sexual relationship is a heterosexual one, you've immediately got a reference point that says that if all other factors are equal, a heterosexual relationship is closer to your ideal in one respect than a homosexual one.

Regarding procreation, I will happily accept that a heterosexual relationship is better than a homosexual one. There are other ways, however, in which your notion of an ideal needs to be unpacked, and I'd say there are two key ones (which are interrelated):

1. Why is there only one single ideal for all purposes?

2. Would a procreative relationship really always be 'better' than a non-procreative one?

There are clearly people who see sex in very functional terms and emphasise that sex is for procreation, and therefore procreative sex is 'better' than non-procreative sex. I know IngoB is one. I've had some long discussions with him on the Ship as to why I think that this 'functional' view of the human body (not just the sexual parts) is misconceived. Procreation actually doesn't need a relationship, nor does it need sexual pleasure - there are many examples in the animal kingdom that demonstrate that procreative sex can be achieved with a single encounter and/or an extremely short copulation period. There are animals that can have intercourse faster than I can sneeze.

Sexual relationships for human beings are about far more than procreation.

I also note that most of us accept heterosexual marriages where procreation is either not intended or not medically possible.

I have challenged people in the past about just why marriage services talk about procreation as if it's one of the things that marriage is fundamentally about - the minister at my old church, and I think I've also raised the same challenge on the Ship. I've not had much in the way of convincing answers. It's not evident to me that there is a Biblical basis for seeing procreation as a cornerstone requirement of a sexual relationship, such that a procreative relationship is better in all circumstances.

There is certainly evidence that people in the Bible thought that childlessness was a curse from God. I am less convinced that there is evidence God agreed with this opinion.

And finally, I would say that the statement in Genesis that "for this reason" a man will leave his parents and join his wife does not, in my view, indicate that "this reason" is a procreative one. It is a relational one. It is about one person completing another. I know there are people who think that only a man can 'complete' a woman, and vice versa, but I don't agree with this. The only sense they can do this 'better' is the procreative, a-penis-fits-neatly-into-a-vagina form. I'm not persuaded that men and women are so clearly different in terms of outlook and personality that ONLY a man can fill the holes in a woman's personality/thinking/whatever and vice versa. Those sorts of things are on a spectrum rather than being binary - and while it may well be true that men tend to exhibit certain traits, and women tend to exhibit others, it is not true that either end of the spectrum is the exclusive domain of one gender. So even if you argue that a 'better' relationship involves picking a pair of people from opposite ends of a spectrum, it is false reasoning to conclude that the complementary pair will inevitably be one male and one female.

Any homosexual relationship I'm in is inevitably going to fall short of an ideal that involves procreation. But my response is: what if I'm not trying to procreate? What if I'm trying to achieve deep loving connection with another human being? Why would ability to procreate be relevant to THAT goal?
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
In haste (for now):
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
So if your ideal sexual relationship is a heterosexual one, you've immediately got a reference point that says that if all other factors are equal, a heterosexual relationship is closer to your ideal in one respect than a homosexual one.

My ideal sexual relationship is a heterosexual one: that of Adam and Eve (maybe "archetypal" might be a better word than "ideal").

That is not quite the same as saying that all heterosexual relationships are inherently superior to all others merely because they are heterosexual. And there are lots of ways other than whether or not a couple is hetero that we can fall short of this ideal.

You might as well say I'm anti-divorcee (which I don't aim to be and I'm pretty sure I'm not perceived as).

[ 30. June 2014, 11:06: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
My ideal sexual relationship is a heterosexual one: that of Adam and Eve (maybe "archetypal" might be a better word than "ideal").

It would be better, yes.

But this does tie into what I'm saying. Of course, when there were 2 human beings, you needed a procreative sexual relationship to generate more human beings. Adam and Steve might have had a superb intimacy, but they wouldn't have made babies.

It doesn't follow that making babies is the rationale for all sexual relationships that followed theirs. And if you're going to use Adam and Eve as a model for sexual relationships, bear in mind how they started blaming each other and got turfed out of paradise...

[ 30. June 2014, 11:34: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
From orfeo
quote:
I doubt most heterosexuals would think much of a God who told them that they could not have sex no matter what. Even if they found the perfect person and made a mutual lifelong commitment, and ticked every possible box in terms of sexual ethics - how many married heterosexual couples would accept being told they were forbidden from ever having sex ever again?
Omit the married, and it's still a bit challenging when one's nearest match, to whose wellbeing one has committed oneself, declares that he has embraced celibacy. That he has not been hit on one of the repetitions of this is solely because I have been driving at the time.

Hence my condemnation of those who do this to others on religious grounds. I know what it's like. Though self denial for a known other person's wellbeing is possibly more bearable than for obedience to an incomprehensible edict based on very, very little evidence of God being an utter toad.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
you seem to be arguing for an incredibly narrow definition of homophobia roughly equivalent to arguing that anyone short of an actual Klansman or Neo-Nazi doesn't qualify as a racist.

That is a bizarre comparison, and I find it difficult to believe that you intend it seriously.

For a start, racism is not analogous to believing that homosexual practice is wrong.

And it has nothing to do with "narrow definition"; the simple fact is that the vast majority of Christians who believe that the Bible forbids homosexual activity do not hate or fear homosexuals, but just believe that they are mistaken on this particular issue.

Neo-Nazis and Klansmen - give us a break.

Hey, it's your special pleading, not mine.

quote:
To insist that “homophobia” and its cognates are correct and unchangeable is to exhibit a prescriptivist rigidity which would be laughed out of court in other circumstances. To use “homophobe” to describe someone who merely disagrees with homosexual practice is as insulting as calling a black person as a “nigger”, and just as easy to dump in the dustbin of linguistic history. “Homophobia” should be reserved for extremists such as those who have called for capital punishment for gays in Uganda.
Which is exactly equivalent to arguing that opposing inter-racial marriage and supporting Segregation or Apartheid isn't "racist", but that term should be reserved only for people who want to literally lynch members of other races. While someone running a whites only school may object to being called a "racist" because he's not as bad as those Klansmen down the road, there's no reason the rest of us have to humor his delusion. The same reasoning applies to those who are anti-gay, but reassure themselves that they're not as bad as those "extremists" in Uganda.

Just out of curiosity, how do you parse the idea that the Biblical God literally condemns homosexuality, but doesn't literally command stoning (male) homosexuals to death.
 
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on :
 
by Orfeo;
quote:
Nevertheless, the theological difficulty finds its way into practice, in such areas as the resistance of same-sex marriage. Conservatives who see marriage as an official 'stamp of approval' of a relationship do not want that stamp given to same-sex relationships.
Christians who believe the Church should be separate from the State, and countries not even nominally Christian, should not object to whatever arrangements the state wants to make for citizens who are not of the Christian persuasion. Also they should recognise those relationships as lawful.

As with many other things which are lawful, like gambling, they might still regard SSM as sinful and not want to do it in their own society within the state.

Much of the heat in the current situation arises from the CofE being an established church, so that what the CofE does can be interpreted as an act of the state, in this case discrimination by the state. Changing that situation would considerably change the terms of the debate....
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

For a start, racism is not analogous to believing that homosexual practice is wrong.

And it has nothing to do with "narrow definition"; the simple fact is that the vast majority of Christians who believe that the Bible forbids homosexual activity do not hate or fear homosexuals, but just believe that they are mistaken on this particular issue.

Neo-Nazis and Klansmen - give us a break.

Anyone who can't discuss a question like this without throwing up that sort of image should fall under some variation on Godwin's Law.

I do see them as analogous. Not perfectly, no, but sharing some of the difficulties. Your POV seems much like "separate but equal " to my eyes. Even without rancor, it sends a message to those who are "other" that they are not quite good enough. And when you add the authority of God, so much more the damaging.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Or why children are born with an endless list of horrible diseases, deformities and disabilities………

Perhaps being born gay is a 'disability'?

Normally, we help disabled people to live as 'normal' a life as possible.

We give them wheelchairs.

We don't say that it is OK to be disabled but sinful to use a wheelchair.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Are you familiar with confirmation bias? Add to that a firm conviction that you are on God's side and the people telling you you're being hurtful are in league with the Devil of Hell. Toss in a few people who actually WANT to be hurtful and are using God as an excuse.

Yes indeed, but I'm referring not to the Phelps' of the church, rather the moderates. Folk like George Carey, who know gay people socially, and sincerely want to obey scripture. They're not personally homophobic, and genuinely want gay people to feel welcome in the church, but they do keep dropping these clangers.

Are they really unaware of the baggage? I guess they may be, but if so, it's on them to educate themselves.

Lambeth 1988 bound bishops to 'listen to the experience of homosexuals.'

So they are already supposed to educate themselves.

To help them, a gay friend of mine took out an annual subscription of Gay Times on behalf of both his diocesan and suffragan bishop.
 
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Orfeo;
quote:
Nevertheless, the theological difficulty finds its way into practice, in such areas as the resistance of same-sex marriage. Conservatives who see marriage as an official 'stamp of approval' of a relationship do not want that stamp given to same-sex relationships.
Christians who believe the Church should be separate from the State, and countries not even nominally Christian, should not object to whatever arrangements the state wants to make for citizens who are not of the Christian persuasion. Also they should recognise those relationships as lawful.

As with many other things which are lawful, like gambling, they might still regard SSM as sinful and not want to do it in their own society within the state.

Much of the heat in the current situation arises from the CofE being an established church, so that what the CofE does can be interpreted as an act of the state, in this case discrimination by the state. Changing that situation would considerably change the terms of the debate....

It doesn't seem to have changed the terms of the debate in the US.
 
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Or why children are born with an endless list of horrible diseases, deformities and disabilities………

Perhaps being born gay is a 'disability'?

Normally, we help disabled people to live as 'normal' a life as possible.

We give them wheelchairs.

We don't say that it is OK to be disabled but sinful to use a wheelchair.

Disabled =/= wheelchair user. And disabled lives are normal lives.

Comparing homosexuality to disability and then talking about disability in those terms is incredibly homophobic and incredibly ableist.
 
Posted by Oscar the Grouch (# 1916) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
racism is not analogous to believing that homosexual practice is wrong.

I've stayed out of this discussion so far, because over a decade on the Ship has taught me that threads like this rarely get beyond endless stating and restating of positions.

But I felt that I had to comment on this. Kaplan, do you fail to understand the meaning of the word "analogous"? Because that is the only explanation I can find for your statement.

An analogy is:
quote:
a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based
The key word here is "similarity". To say that racism and opposition to homosexual practice are analogies is not to claim that they are identical - simply that there are sufficient similarities to compare them.

And that seems undeniable:

a) discrimination based on sexuality is like discrimination based on race, as they are both about things which the person being discriminated against has no power to change. A black person cannot simply decide to become white. A gay man cannot simply decide to become straight. (Although there are, of course, additional complicating factors about sexuality, but the basic premise remains.)

b) discrimination based on sexuality is like discrimination based on race, as they are both attitudes which have been defended by Christians, often by claiming authority from the Bible or by saying "that's the way things have always been."

c) discrimination based on sexuality is like discrimination based on race, in that both are attitudes which the wider society (especially in the West) now regards as abhorrent.

d) discrimination based on sexuality is like discrimination based on race, in that the consequences of such discrimination have often been naked bigotry, violence and severe oppression.

Now, you may want to claim that the analogy between the two is not sufficiently strong, or that it is for some reason invalid. But you've really got to make your case on that - simply denying the analogy completely is not enough.
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
The key word here is "similarity". To say that racism and opposition to homosexual practice are analogies is not to claim that they are identical - simply that there are sufficient similarities to compare them.

Everything Kaplan Corday has said (including the words "homosexual practice" which get people so riled up) leads me to believe that he draws a distinction between being homosexual and having homosexual sex.

If I understand his argument, he's not discriminating on grounds of sexuality per se, but only on the grounds of actual sex, and whilst being homosexual is innate, just like skin color, having sex with people of the same sex is a choice.

This strikes me as rather like arguing that you're not discriminating against black people, just as long as they, you know, don't act black.

It's still racism, and it's still homophobia.

Is hating cornrows better than lynching black people? Sure. Is Kaplan Corday's position less homophobic than the Westboro nutjobs? Sure.

But that's pretty cold comfort for the poor buggers he'd condemn to a lifetime of celibacy.
 
Posted by goperryrevs (# 13504) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:
If you really can't understand the difference between disagreeing with someone, and asserting tour "inherent superiority" over them, try sitting down and thinking about it for a little while.
Once you are reaching for the language of sin you are vilifying and talking about the inherent superiority of one way over another. It is possible to disagree amicably. You are not. You are vilifying the the other side by talking about sin, and then objecting to return fire.

<snip>

If "sin" and "immoral" are allowed, so are "bigotry" and "homophobia". When you talk about homosexual practice being unacceptable, others have the right to talk about your beliefs and practices being unacceptable.

The right to free speech does not mean that everyone has the obligation to sit and listen politely while you make offensive comments.

This is fair enough to a point. However, thinking of two other analogies, it's a bit muddier. Firstly, most people who object to 'homosexual acts' would do so as they fall into the category of 'sex outside marriage'. Parents who disaprove of their unmarried children having sex at 16 don't tend to get labelled as bigots, but their reasoning probably isn't vastly different from an anti-homosexual "it's sex outside marriage" stance (however, now that homosexuals can get married, that argument is nicely screwed, anyhow)

The other analogy is vegetarianism. Many vegetarians think that eating meat is morally wrong (i.e. a sin), don't do it, and think that others shouldn't do it, though wouldn't want to make it illegal for others to eat meat. However, we don't tend to label them bigots either. Some vegetarians do get some abuse, of course.

I think anyone who adopts a stance of "I disaprove of your actions/beliefs, but will fight for your right to hold them" isn't in too horrendous a place. Sadly, amongst most evangelicals the stance is "I disaprove of your actions, but think you should probably be legally allowed to do them, however, I'm not going to do anything to help you in your fight for that in case people think I approve of your actions"

quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
I have no more desire to "persecute" homosexuals than I have to persecute Hindus, and neither do any of the evangelicals I know.

Trying to deny myself and others fundamental human rights (eg to marriage) very much is persecution from our point of view. You may not feel like a persecutor, but we feel persecuted, and very justifiably so
Kaplan has already said that he doesn't want to deny those rights, which is a very good thing. There are a lot of evangelicals out there that do, however, and I get the impression that on his thread Kaplan has received a lot of the ire that they should.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Don't have any evangelicals in your family, do you? I'd have to write off whole branches of my family to disassociate myself from evangelicals. OK, so that's just a bunch of cousins I don't see very often. But one of them has a son who is gay -- what's he supposed to do?

I've got quite a few evangelicals in my extended family, but I don't have to deal with them every day, fortunately.

As for your cousin - yes, what can he do? Beg his folks to become Episcopalians? No. When he's of age he'll just have to go off to live his own life, make his own friends, find his own spiritual community, and come back for the occasional flying visit, if that's bearable. Plenty of people in our mobile, global societies hardly ever see their parents; we don't have to wait around for their approval and we don't have to attend their churches.

[ 30. June 2014, 17:36: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
I should say that I have affinities with evangelicalism, but not so much the type that's normally discussed here.
 
Posted by ToujoursDan (# 10578) on :
 
Ummmm... In all the times I have dealt with homophobic behaviour, it has never been because I was engaging in so-called "homosexual practise", it was because I self identified as LGBT. No one ever asked whether I was single or celibate or what plans I had for the future. I was singled out because of that marker: I was a threat to children. I was a threat to Christianity. I had a demon that needed to be exorcised. I needed to be "cured". (The fact that I had tried and it didn't work was my fault.) I self identified with the wrong identifier.

Fundagelicals like to convince themselves that they have nothing against the person but it's directed at the act, but that's a lie they tell themselves. Homophobia has nothing to do with being against "acts" or "practice". Few gays are ever subjected to slurs, kicked out of church, asked to leave their employer or beaten up because people saw them have sex. It's do to who we are, not what we do.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
You must understand that I have nothing against Evangelicals as people : it's their practices I object to...
 
Posted by goperryrevs (# 13504) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by ToujoursDan:
Ummmm... In all the times I have dealt with homophobic behaviour, it has never been because I was engaging in so-called "homosexual practise", it was because I self identified as LGBT. No one ever asked whether I was single or celibate or what plans I had for the future. I was singled out because of that marker: I was a threat to children. I was a threat to Christianity. I had a demon that needed to be exorcised. I needed to be "cured". (The fact that I had tried and it didn't work was my fault.) I self identified with the wrong identifier.

Fundagelicals like to convince themselves that they have nothing against the person but it's directed at the act, but that's a lie they tell themselves. Homophobia has nothing to do with being against "acts" or "practice". Few gays are ever subjected to slurs, kicked out of church, asked to leave their employer or beaten up because people saw them have sex. It's do to who we are, not what we do.

I don't think your second paragraph necessarily follows from the first (though I do think it's true for a lot of people). If there are people whose conscience genuinely prohibits them from acknowledging gay sex is okay by God, but do want to be open, inclusive, accepting to everyone (gays included), then they're not the kind of people that would have treated you in the shitty ways you describe. These are the kind of people who, even if they changed their theology to become more inclusive tomorrow, they wouldn't need to change their day-to-day interactions to become more inclusive, because they're already doing a pretty good job of loving their neighbour. I know a large number of evangelicals that fall into that category. I also do know a large number of genuinely homophobic evangelicals who, sadly, fit the description in your second paragraph.

I have no idea whether Kaplan is former or the latter. I'm uncomfortable with people assuming he must be the latter, just because they've encountered other people who are, and then assume that he must be too.
 
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on :
 
by Leorning Cniht;
quote:
This strikes me as rather like arguing that you're not discriminating against black people, just as long as they, you know, don't act black.
And 'acting black' would mean exactly what acts, please? What distinctively 'black' acts are there? Whereas the biblical prohibitions are specifically about actions.

Basic proposition - what you are in racial terms does not compel you to do particular actions that nobody else might. Your local culture might include acts different to others - those acts would surely be potentially open to moral judgement precisely because they are actions, not just what you are; whatever your race.

Of course if that is right, then gay people using the "It's like racism" claim would actually be taking a bigoted persecuting position...?
 
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Leorning Cniht;
quote:
This strikes me as rather like arguing that you're not discriminating against black people, just as long as they, you know, don't act black.
And 'acting black' would mean exactly what acts, please? What distinctively 'black' acts are there? Whereas the biblical prohibitions are specifically about actions.

Basic proposition - what you are in racial terms does not compel you to do particular actions that nobody else might. Your local culture might include acts different to others - those acts would surely be potentially open to moral judgement precisely because they are actions, not just what you are; whatever your race.

Of course if that is right, then gay people using the "It's like racism" claim would actually be taking a bigoted persecuting position...?

But there are no distinctively heterosexual or non-heterosexual acts. That is what I and others are trying to say. If we're talking about sex (and if we are then just say so, rather than nonsense like 'homosexual acts') then that's still the case - there's nothing same-gender partners do in the bedroom that different-gender partners don't also do.

What you are in sexual terms does not compel you to do particular actions that no one else might. However, people of all sexualities seek companionship and love, expressed through sex. That isn't something that can be categorised as 'homosexual acts' but not 'heterosexual acts'.
 
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
Don't have any evangelicals in your family, do you? I'd have to write off whole branches of my family to disassociate myself from evangelicals. OK, so that's just a bunch of cousins I don't see very often. But one of them has a son who is gay -- what's he supposed to do?

I've got quite a few evangelicals in my extended family, but I don't have to deal with them every day, fortunately.

As for your cousin - yes, what can he do? Beg his folks to become Episcopalians? No. When he's of age he'll just have to go off to live his own life, make his own friends, find his own spiritual community, and come back for the occasional flying visit, if that's bearable. Plenty of people in our mobile, global societies hardly ever see their parents; we don't have to wait around for their approval and we don't have to attend their churches.

Yes, because people can just ditch homophobic family like that [Roll Eyes] In the real world, there's a thing called complex familial relationships which mean that you can love someone who is ultimately damaging to you. People do it all the time - people aren't purely logical, which is what your arguments seem to be suggesting. It's a lot like that for churches too.
 
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on :
 
by Jade Constable;
quote:
But there are no distinctively heterosexual or non-heterosexual acts.
Given the physical differences between men and women that sounds implausible to say the least?
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
I don't have the time this deserves right now, but here goes.

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Which then provides you with a way to compare two relationships, and decide that one is closer to the ideal than the other. Which means that it's better than the other.

I've thought about this a bit more, and decided that I honestly don't think in terms of better. I'm not proud of being straight; I just am. But I will keep on exploring the use of the word "archetype" in preference to "ideal".

quote:
Regarding procreation, I will happily accept that a heterosexual relationship is better than a homosexual one.
And in the really long term, perhaps that's an important point to bear in mind. I think we can be more confident that men and women will be able to make babies anywhere and everywhere than we can be confident that technology can enable us to explore alternatives anywhere and everywhere.

On to your questions...

quote:
1. Why is there only one single ideal for all purposes?
I think this has been addressed by swapping "archetype" for "ideal". There simply is only one archetype. You don't have to go much further in Genesis to realise plenty of people didn't conform to it, though.

quote:
2. Would a procreative relationship really always be 'better' than a non-procreative one?
No, but it would conform to the archetype in a way that a non-procreative one wouldn't. That doesn't mean there's no room for non-procreative relationships any more than it means there's no room for single people.

quote:
I have challenged people in the past about just why marriage services talk about procreation as if it's one of the things that marriage is fundamentally about
I said on the French gay marriage thread that the legal institution of marriage is largely about protecting the rights of the parties and their children, so in that sense at least it is about procreation.

quote:
And finally, I would say that the statement in Genesis that "for this reason" a man will leave his parents and join his wife does not, in my view, indicate that "this reason" is a procreative one. It is a relational one.
I agree.

quote:
It is about one person completing another. I know there are people who think that only a man can 'complete' a woman, and vice versa, but I don't agree with this. The only sense they can do this 'better' is the procreative, a-penis-fits-neatly-into-a-vagina form.
I see your point, but am not convinced. I think biological differences do count for something, part of a broader notion of "difference". I admit I'm going to have trouble backing that up, though. All I can say is that's how the archetype works.

Let me however ask you a question: why, in your view, should committed sexual relationships be between only two people? Why not three or more?

quote:
Any homosexual relationship I'm in is inevitably going to fall short of an ideal that involves procreation. But my response is: what if I'm not trying to procreate? What if I'm trying to achieve deep loving connection with another human being? Why would ability to procreate be relevant to THAT goal?
No, and all I can say at this point is, I won't stand in your way (or parade on your lawn [Biased] ).

My serious, honest problems might begin if you turn up in my church with your other half. I really hope you'd feel welcome and guess you would not be quizzed about your status by anyone, any more than we quiz hetero couples on what they are doing behind closed doors.

So far so good.

Now, if you want a blessing on your relationship, I'd be minded to organise one, though there'd likely be "winning hearts and minds" to do first. If you want a (non-legally-binding, 'cos that's the way it is here) marriage ceremony, I'm struggling.

I'd like to think you'd get a more graceful reception than anywhere else in town, but sadly I'm guessing gay christians here are either firmly in the closet or not feeling welcome anywhere near churches. Sorry [Frown]
 
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Jade Constable;
quote:
But there are no distinctively heterosexual or non-heterosexual acts.
Given the physical differences between men and women that sounds implausible to say the least?
No, not at all - I believe the more polite term for what enables this is 'marital aids'. There is seriously nothing non-heterosexual people do in bed that heterosexual people don't.

Also, gender is not the same as sex - a couple made up of a woman and a trans woman who has not had lower body surgery has essentially the same bodies as a straight couple, but are still a non-heterosexual couple.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by goperryrevs:
This is fair enough to a point. However, thinking of two other analogies, it's a bit muddier. Firstly, most people who object to 'homosexual acts' would do so as they fall into the category of 'sex outside marriage'.

And in almost all cases their logic here is Kafkaesque. "Gay sex is wrong because it's sex outside marriage." "We must not allow gay people to get married." "We will continue to condemn people for homosexual acts outside marriage."

Anyone who believes sex outside marriage is wrong while at the same time campaigning in favour of gay marriage is exempt from this condemnation. And I'd be interested to meet, if only for the rarity value. But supporting and fighting to maintain a Catch 22 situation does not let you off the hook.

quote:
The other analogy is vegetarianism. Many vegetarians think that eating meat is morally wrong (i.e. a sin), don't do it, and think that others shouldn't do it, though wouldn't want to make it illegal for others to eat meat. However, we don't tend to label them bigots either. Some vegetarians do get some abuse, of course.
And I don't want to lock homophobes in the gulag.

quote:
I think anyone who adopts a stance of "I disaprove of your actions/beliefs, but will fight for your right to hold them" isn't in too horrendous a place. Sadly, amongst most evangelicals the stance is "I disaprove of your actions, but think you should probably be legally allowed to do them, however, I'm not going to do anything to help you in your fight for that in case people think I approve of your actions"
That's closer. Add in "I'm also going to fight against your rights to get married and then condemn you for not having sex within the bounds of marriage."

quote:
Kaplan has already said that he doesn't want to deny those rights, which is a very good thing. There are a lot of evangelicals out there that do, however, and I get the impression that on his thread Kaplan has received a lot of the ire that they should.
This can be answered by one simple question. Kaplan Corday, are you unequivocally in favour of gay marriage? If the answer is anything other than "Yes" then you are in favour of legal discrimination and all the words you say otherwise are mere words. Otherwise I owe you an apology - and you are out of step with almost all major Evangelical leaders.
 
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on :
 
Jade Constable

I've a feeling you are making my point, without meaning to - but for tonight, I'm giving up!
 
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Anyone who believes sex outside marriage is wrong while at the same time campaigning in favour of gay marriage is exempt from this condemnation. And I'd be interested to meet, if only for the rarity value.

I think this describes my views. *Basks in glow of quirky individuality*

Mind you, I've not really campaigned in favour of same-sex marriage, just posted the odd Facebook status and blog post. Does that count...?

And well done Eutychus, a few posts upthread. Brave words. [Overused]
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And 'acting black' would mean exactly what acts, please? What distinctively 'black' acts are there?

As I alluded to in my earlier post, due to the difference in texture between standard "black" hair and standard "white" hair, you can't achieve most normal "white" hairstyles without expensive and damaging hair products. In some cases, "acting black" means "having natural black hair in some style that works for that kind of hair".

In other cases, "acting black" is certainly cultural - it might mean having the temerity to have an African or an African-American name, rather than being called John Smith.

quote:

Whereas the biblical prohibitions are specifically about actions.

And if the position that you espouse is correct, and gay sex is forbidden, then God is homophobic (under the normal English definition of that word.) It would certainly follow from this that being homophobic in this particular way was a good thing (God's will and all), but it wouldn't redefine the word in the English language.
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:

Also, gender is not the same as sex - a couple made up of a woman and a trans woman who has not had lower body surgery has essentially the same bodies as a straight couple, but are still a non-heterosexual couple.

I rather suspect that most people who consider homosexual sex sinful also have issues with trans people.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Anyone who believes sex outside marriage is wrong while at the same time campaigning in favour of gay marriage is exempt from this condemnation. And I'd be interested to meet, if only for the rarity value.

I think this describes my views. *Basks in glow of quirky individuality*


I wonder if there are any evangelical clergy or theologians who've ever explicitly argued this. One imagines that many of them tolerate their members being in intimate but premarital gay or straight relationships mostly for pragmatic or for pastoral reasons. But it doesn't really serve the purposes of either pragmatism or tolerance to expect both groups to remain celibate before marriage!

And what about people are unsure of their sexuality, or people who think they're bisexual? Should they be allowed to 'test the waters' before committing themselves to monogamy?
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:


This strikes me as rather like arguing that you're not discriminating against black people, just as long as they, you know, don't act black.

At first I thought that "acting black" was a mindless and meaningless expression, but you clarified it later on by showinging that it means wearing cornrows.

If I come across any black people in future wearing their hair in any other style, I will now know hey are not "really" black.

quote:

But that's pretty cold comfort for the poor buggers he'd condemn to a lifetime of celibacy.

In getting into a discussion like this, I thought
I was ready for anything ("If you don't like the heat, stay out of the kitchen"), but never in my wildest dreams did I anticipate being endowed with omnipotence.

Thank you.

I'm overwhelmed.

Well, got to run - have to start drawing up my list of people whom I am empowered to prevent having sex...
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by goperryrevs:
However, thinking of two other analogies, it's a bit muddier. Firstly, most people who object to 'homosexual acts' would do so as they fall into the category of 'sex outside marriage'. Parents who disaprove of their unmarried children having sex at 16 don't tend to get labelled as bigots, but their reasoning probably isn't vastly different from an anti-homosexual "it's sex outside marriage" stance (however, now that homosexuals can get married, that argument is nicely screwed, anyhow)

The other analogy is vegetarianism. Many vegetarians think that eating meat is morally wrong (i.e. a sin), don't do it, and think that others shouldn't do it, though wouldn't want to make it illegal for others to eat meat. However, we don't tend to label them bigots either. Some vegetarians do get some abuse, of course.


Thanks goperryrevs.

You obviously don't agree with me, but I don't mind that.

It's just such a relief when someone genuinely tries to engage with the issue, instead of pontificating from their moral high horse, attempting emotional blackmail, and tossing around melodramatic imagery.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
This can be answered by one simple question. Kaplan Corday, are you unequivocally in favour of gay marriage? If the answer is anything other than "Yes" then you are in favour of legal discrimination and all the words you say otherwise are mere words. Otherwise I owe you an apology - and you are out of step with almost all major Evangelical leaders.

As usual, Justinian, you display a genius for manipulative use of language.

Of course I am not "unequivocally" in favour of gay marriage, but FWIW, I support legislation legalising gay marriage, in the same way as I disapprove of Hindu worship, but support the legislation which guarantees Hindus (and all other faith systems) freedom of religion.

And as to whether or not that response merits your apology, frankly I don't give a damn.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Let me however ask you a question: why, in your view, should committed sexual relationships be between only two people? Why not three or more?

There was a thread on polygamy in Purgatory some time ago which I attempted to wade into a little. As best as I can recall, I was among those who didn't see any fundamental moral objection to polygamous relationships. The issues are far more likely to be about the practical reality of whether it's possible to share the proper level of commitment and love between all 3 people, not some objection at the level of theory that you must not be committed to more than one person.

It's especially hard to say that polygamy is inherently wrong when the Bible is full of men with multiple wives, some of whom God looked upon with great favour.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
A brief post on some of the legal difficulties involved in plural marriages and how they differ from two-partner same-sex marriages, from the last go-around on this topic.

The tl;dr version: two-party same-sex marriages slot right in to existing marital laws in most modern Western nations, whereas plural marriage would require redesigning virtually all of family law from the ground up.

[ 01. July 2014, 03:28: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
 
Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Leorning Cniht;
quote:
This strikes me as rather like arguing that you're not discriminating against black people, just as long as they, you know, don't act black.
And 'acting black' would mean exactly what acts, please? What distinctively 'black' acts are there? Whereas the biblical prohibitions are specifically about actions.

Basic proposition - what you are in racial terms does not compel you to do particular actions that nobody else might. Your local culture might include acts different to others - those acts would surely be potentially open to moral judgement precisely because they are actions, not just what you are; whatever your race.

Of course if that is right, then gay people using the "It's like racism" claim would actually be taking a bigoted persecuting position...?

If you're looking for a distinctive act, there's Drving While Black

For the gay equivalent, how about two men kissing?
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
You must understand that I have nothing against Evangelicals as people : it's their practices I object to...

[Overused]
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
There was a thread on polygamy in Purgatory some time ago which I attempted to wade into a little. As best as I can recall, I was among those who didn't see any fundamental moral objection to polygamous relationships. The issues are far more likely to be about the practical reality of whether it's possible to share the proper level of commitment and love between all 3 people, not some objection at the level of theory that you must not be committed to more than one person.

Aha, so you think that in some way, even if it's only "practical", monogamous relationships are "better" than polygamous ones...?

It seems to me that following this line of reasoning means that in order for nobody to be left out, "marriage" would need to be redefined as encompassing any sexual relationship between any number of committed and consenting individuals. In fact it might need to include non-sexual relationships too (because after all, why is a sexual relationship "better"?), if there is a sense of "commitment". The definition becomes so broad as to collapse into meaninglessness.

quote:
It's especially hard to say that polygamy is inherently wrong when the Bible is full of men with multiple wives, some of whom God looked upon with great favour.
I think this is actually where you and I fundamentally differ.

You seem to believe that God only looks with great favour upon those who conform to his ideal/archetype/whatever (or at least that the expression of God's favour on those that don't proves that their circumstances are inherently right).

I think the whole point of the Good News is that God looks with favour upon those who don't conform, and that extends to all of us.

Polygamy was just one of the ways all those OT people didn't conform to the ideal, but God accommodated them anyway because he had other priorities for them. Enjoying the scope of God's grace in this respect is not the same as setting up polygamy as a benchmark for all time.

To repeat, I think hetero marriage is closer to the biblical archetype (so I think the church has some responsibility in perpetuating it when possible), but that doesn't make hetero couples inherently better than anyone else, nor does it inherently condemn anyone else.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
You seem to believe that God only looks with great favour upon those who conform to his ideal/archetype/whatever (or at least that the expression of God's favour on those that don't proves that their circumstances are inherently right).

I think the whole point of the Good News is that God looks with favour upon those who don't conform, and that extends to all of us.

Polygamy was just one of the ways all those OT people didn't conform to the ideal, but God accommodated them anyway because he had other priorities for them. Enjoying the scope of God's grace in this respect is not the same as setting up polygamy as a benchmark for all time.

You, of course, have some Old Testament citation demonstrating God's disapproval of plural marriage, right?
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You, of course

Listen, Croesos, I'm happy to try and engage with your questions, but I'd be a lot happier if you could do it without the snark. I'm not claiming to have the definitive Christian™ answer on this, I'm trying to have a conversation and clarify my thinking. If you align with Justinian in the view that, along with anybody else who dares express a differing view to yours, I should simply be treated with contempt, I don't think I'm going to bother interacting.
quote:
have some Old Testament citation demonstrating God's disapproval of plural marriage, right?
Luckily I thought of one while cleaning my teeth just now. There's a bit in Samuel or Kings somewhere where kings are advised not to have multiple wives. Oh goodie, I have a prooftext [Angel]

More importantly, Genesis 2 to me shows an archetype of monogamy.

Also while cleaning my teeth, I asked myself whether I have had to act pastorally on plural marriage. As it happens, yes I have (well, something approaching it). An inmate in the prison I'm chaplain at has two common-law wives. Most of the pastors he's spoken to seem to think he's going to Hell if he doesn't split with one. I told him that wasn't the case. Like many such situations, it's complicated, and I'm not about to be some sorcerer's apprentice by mucking about with it, and I don't believe God's favour on him is conditional solely on ditching one of them.

[ 01. July 2014, 05:47: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
It seems to me that following this line of reasoning means that in order for nobody to be left out, "marriage" would need to be redefined as encompassing any sexual relationship between any number of committed and consenting individuals. In fact it might need to include non-sexual relationships too (because after all, why is a sexual relationship "better"?), if there is a sense of "commitment". The definition becomes so broad as to collapse into meaninglessness.

Laws are all about drawing lines. The thing is, for the line to be defensible, it has to have a rational basis. The line has to be in furtherance of a policy goal.

There are now a long line of US court decisions, and indeed decisions in other countries, saying that drawing the line between heterosexual couples and homosexual couples is not rational in furtherance of any State interest. Other lines, such as between couples and larger groupings, may well be more rational. As Croesos says, polygamy requires massive rewriting of the law in a way that SSM doesn't.

The fact that clearly non-procreative heterosexual couples may marry, but homosexual couples may not, is entirely inconsistent with any claim that the underlying policy rationale of (secular) marriage has to do with encouraging procreation.

I have personally said a number of times on the Ship that I would actually be perfectly happy to leave marriage to procreative heterosexual couples if all non-procreative couples were excluded from marriage. I might not personally like that outcome, but it would be rationally defensible as it would be in accordance with an identifiable objective of the institution of marriage.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
More importantly, Genesis 2 to me shows an archetype of monogamy.

One could just as easily argue that it merely shows the impracticality of polygamy on a planet with a total population of 2.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
polygamy requires massive rewriting of the law in a way that SSM doesn't.

But if you don't see any moral difference, the effort should be worthwhile, shouldn't it? (For the record, I'm in favour of equal treatment for gay couples under the law, specifically with regard to inheritance, reversion (ie pensions being paid to the surviving partner) and (clenches teeth) adoption (I think!).)

quote:
One could just as easily argue that it merely shows the impracticality of polygamy on a planet with a total population of 2.

I wonder why it talks about the man leaving his father and mother then?

[ 01. July 2014, 06:02: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Genesis 2 to me shows an archetype of monogamy.

Your talk about it being an archetype baffles me. I don't really understand what useful purpose you think such a label serves.

As in, does it make non-conforming relationships bad? Does it mean it's sinful not to be like Adam? Are we supposed to actively aim to conform to the archetype? (I've heard of aiming to be Christ-like, but I find the idea of aiming to be Adam-like rather baffling!) I can't seem to find a way to unpack your talk of it as an archetypal relationship into any idea that I can make sense of.

Something I personally think is not remarked on often enough about the Genesis 2 story, is that the major part of the story is all about how the animals were not sufficiently similar to Adam to be his mate. God then clones Eve out of Adam's own flesh, and she is sufficiently similar to Adam to be his mate. The criteria emphasized throughout is sufficient similarity. As such, I would say that the Genesis 2 account is extremely favorable toward same-sex relationships as they meet the criteria of sufficient similarity with flying colours. By contrast the Genesis 2 account is not particularly consistent with the "different but complementary" theology of marriage that is usually taught by those who disagree with same-sex relationships.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I wonder why it talks about the man leaving his father and mother then?

Because it is an allegory and not a literal story?
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I wonder why it talks about the man leaving his father and mother then?

Because it is an allegory and not a literal story?
That's another discussion. But either way, it rather pulls the rug from the idea that it applies only when there is a global population of 2.

quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Genesis 2 to me shows an archetype of monogamy.

Your talk about it being an archetype baffles me. I don't really understand what useful purpose you think such a label serves.
I'm not sure yet either, except that orfeo finds it more palatable than "ideal" [Smile]

The two problems with the term "ideal" I can see are 1) the possible implication that anything less is irredeemably bad 2) the idea that nobody can ever live up to it. A quick Google for a definition of "archetype" produces
quote:
the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies
From a christian perspective, I think that is a good fit for Adam and Eve, and "Adam and Steve" (or where I live, "Adam and Yves") cracks are not really enough to overcome this consideration. I'm not saying no alternative accommodations are possible, but that we should not throw away the archetype too quickly.

quote:

As in, does it make non-conforming relationships bad? Does it mean it's sinful not to be like Adam? Are we supposed to actively aim to conform to the archetype?

That's a really good question and it's one I'm struggling with in this conversation, and struggling even more to answer without falling into too many holes. Here goes...

I think we as a race are fallen. Genesis 2 is pre-Fall. In that sense the archetype is unattainable for all of us; the judgement of God on Adam and Eve resonates for us all. Rather than say it's sinful not to be like Adam, I'd say that we are like Adam in that we are sinful. We can't escape that, and conforming to any archetype, be it Adam or Christ, is necessarily going to be flawed.

I think the Church has the unenviable task of seeking to uphold the "original pattern" in many aspects (not just sexuality) whilst simultaneously acknowledging that we're never going to manage this side of the eschaton (after which it looks like none of us get sex anyway...), and expressing God's grace to all of us in the many ways we variously fall short of that.

Somewhere in the middle of that paradox, believers bump along the road to sanctification, which is going to mean adjusting their behaviours as the Spirit leads them and within their possibilities. Those adjustments will be different for different people, and it is not up to us to make a moral judgement on how people sincerely attempt to adjust.

As regards sexuality, I emphatically don't think that means degayifying all the gays, and I don't think it means all truly monogamous, procreational hetero marriages are paragons of holiness. I hope that makes some sort of sense even if others disagree.

quote:
Something I personally think is not remarked on often enough about the Genesis 2 story, is that the major part of the story is all about how the animals were not sufficiently similar to Adam to be his mate ... by contrast the Genesis 2 account is not particularly consistent with the "different but complementary" theology of marriage that is usually taught by those who disagree with same-sex relationships.
That's a good point too, and one that had occured to me. It probably turns partly on whatever the meaning of the Hebrew translated by "suitable help" or, as some French versions delightfully have it, vis-à-vis. But once again we come back to biology. There was a difference, not just with the animals but also between Adam and Eve. God didn't create another male. Adam and Eve were more similar to each other than to the animals, but they were different.

[ 01. July 2014, 08:36: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
An evangelical preacher I knew some years ago was very fond of saying "a narrative is not normative". He was, basically cautioning against taking any story in the Bible and treating it as an expression of principle that people ought to live by.

As I understood it, he wasn't saying that you couldn't learn anything from stories. He was saying that there was a basic problem in thinking "this happened, therefore this should always happen".

I've no idea whether he would have applied that principle to Adam and Eve, but it does encapsulate the basic problem with ideals and archetypes. There is a crucial piece of logic involved in going from "this is what happened" to "this is what should always happen".

Even if you regard a story as symbolic rather than factual, there is always the question of what, precisely, it is supposed to be symbolising.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
There is a crucial piece of logic involved in going from "this is what happened" to "this is what should always happen".

What about, in the case of Genesis, "this is how it was supposed to be"? The text there is framed as more than simply narrative, methinks. "For this reason...".

quote:
Even if you regard a story as symbolic rather than factual, there is always the question of what, precisely, it is supposed to be symbolising.
Agreed. I've set out my stall in that regard as best I can.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
There is a crucial piece of logic involved in going from "this is what happened" to "this is what should always happen".

What about, in the case of Genesis, "this is how it was supposed to be"? The text there is framed as more than simply narrative, methinks. "For this reason...".

I agree, there is more in that particular spot than simple narrative. But it is still all too easy to jump from "there's a principle here" to "everything here is a principle".

I've already indicated my opinion about what "for this reason" means, and that I can't see any grounds for saying that only a heterosexual couple can fulfil the 'reason'. If you believe in some kind of complementarity of the sexes, as opposed to complementarity of two particular individuals who may or may not be different sexes, then you are inevitably going to come to a different conclusion. But I'm not confident that you can get a principle that "it was vital to their complementarity that they were male and female" from the text. It is just as likely that the complementarity of the sexes is being imported into a reading of the text, not derived from it.

As has been pointed out, the key point in the text is that none of the animals were suitable - it is humanity that is labelled as a key criterion for complementarity, more than gender. Eve is bone of Adam's bone and flesh of Adam's flesh. At last, here is someone sufficiently similar to complement him. Not someone sufficiently different. Adam does not celebrate or highlight Eve's difference from himself. It is not saying "thank God that He created fundamental difference so that men and women could misunderstand each other and work at cross-purposes but reach enough common ground to be worthwhile for each other", it is saying "thank God that He said man should not be alone and needs someone fundamentally similar to relate to".

[ 01. July 2014, 10:24: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
I should perhaps add that "male and female he created them" is, purely on its own, simply a statement of fact.

Exactly WHY God did so is the question. Is it simply because God was well aware of the advantages of sexual reproduction over asexual reproduction? Or is the mix-and-match important not only in literal chromosomal terms but also in relational/spiritual terms?

That's the fundamental issue, really. We know He created males and females. I think it's a lot less obvious just what that was supposed to mean.
 
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on :
 
by Palimpsest;
quote:
If you're looking for a distinctive act, there's Driving While Black

For the gay equivalent, how about two men kissing?

But the point is precisely that driving is a normal general human activity not distinctive to black people. Race is irrelevant to driving, it's just that unfortunately racists improperly pick on black drivers. This illustration is not relevant to this particular case.

Two men kissing - David and Jonathan...?
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Palimpsest;
quote:
If you're looking for a distinctive act, there's Driving While Black

For the gay equivalent, how about two men kissing?

But the point is precisely that driving is a normal general human activity not distinctive to black people. Race is irrelevant to driving, it's just that unfortunately racists improperly pick on black drivers. This illustration is not relevant to this particular case.

Two men kissing - David and Jonathan...?

Kissing is a normal general human activity not distinctive to homosexuals. So what's your point?

EDIT: There are people out there who object, sometimes quite loudly, to homosexual displays of affection - whether it's kissing or holding hands or even talking about 'my boyfriend/girlfriend'. Such people manage to ignore that none of these things are remotely unique to homosexuals. Heterosexuals constantly do the exact same things without much comment.

[ 01. July 2014, 11:15: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
An evangelical preacher I knew some years ago was very fond of saying "a narrative is not normative". He was, basically cautioning against taking any story in the Bible and treating it as an expression of principle that people ought to live by.

As I understood it, he wasn't saying that you couldn't learn anything from stories. He was saying that there was a basic problem in thinking "this happened, therefore this should always happen".

A lot of biblical stories don't supply any moral commentary or reflective judgment on the stories. The writers presumably took it for granted that their audience would judge the character's actions in certain ways. But judgments that modern readers are likely to make from the standpoint of our current culture are probably quite badly out of sync with the judgements of the original audience.

I am often reminded of this problem of "ambiguous moral interpretation" or "open to judgment" (as it could be called) whenever someone shares with me an anecdote about something that happened to them, and then says something that makes it clear that their own take-away from the event was nothing whatsoever like the one that had formed in my own mind while listening to their story. The fact that someone did X, doesn't really tell you whether X is bad or good or something complicatedly in between without additional assumptions that have to come from outside the account itself. And the view taken will likely depend on who the audience is. This is especially true in politics, where the statement "Politician X said Y" will likely elicit cheers from some, ambivalence from others, and face-palms from others.

Part of our arbitrary interpretation of biblical texts is also which phrases or words we choose to focus on. For example with the sentence: "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh". We could focus on the bit about staying with one's father and mother until one marries. So we could have the church make rules that sons are not allowed to move out of their parent's home until they marry, because that is when that passage says the home should be left behind. That has the historical merit of being pretty much exactly how it worked in biblical times, so we could say that the bible is here explicitly endorsing their cultural practice, and any of us (eg me) who have moved out of home before getting married have badly transgressed the will of God (oops).

Or we could focus on the father and mother part, and we could say that a son who is marrying needs both his father and mother to give him in marriage. Indeed the parents coming forward to give the son and/or daughter in marriage is often a ritualized part of wedding ceremonies, so much so that if one of the parents is dead or cannot be present, it is sometimes the case that a substitute will stand in for the absent parent and take the ritual role of the parental figure. But if we were to interpret this passage as implying that the bible teaches that it's really important that a son who is marrying has both a mother and father to give him in marriage, then we could argue for the rule that if it is the duty of any father who has unmarried sons to himself remarry in order for the son to be able to be given in marriage by his father and mother.

The anti-gay reading of this particular passage has focused on the genders mentioned as being all-important, and suggested that the really important part is that a man is marrying a woman. This has always struck me as a rather arbitrary choice of focus. The vast majority of all unions both today and throughout history have been male-female unions, so the fact that the passage happens to generalize it as male-female is simply a reflection of what tends to happen in practice. Usually when generalizing you simply give an example of what happens in general and don't both to go through all the exceptions in detail, but you are not thereby meaning that exceptions don't exist - quite the opposite in fact. So the fact that this wording of male-female unions truthfully reflects typical practice, I completely fail to see why it should be read as a declaration that there can or should be no exceptions rather than simply a general statement of what usually happens.

In fact, I think there is a strong argument that the statement is clearly a statement of what usually happens, rather than a statement to which there ought to be no exceptions. Because the son doesn't always and without exception "leave" his father and mother's house when he marries (he may have already left, or may continue living with his parents plus his new wife), and the father and/or mother may not be alive when the son marries and so that part of the sentence is also a generalization not a hard-and-fast rule. So the passage describes a fairly general situation but one which everyone would agree is clearly not going to be true for each and every marriage. So the fact that the genders of people getting married (which in practice are indeed usually a male marrying a female) happen to be specified can also be reasonably assumed to be just a generality that is no more binding than is the fact that the son must physically move out of his parents' house or that they must be alive. To seize on the words "man" and "wife" in the sentence, as anti-gay readings tend to do, and assert that they are absolutely crucial and that there can be no exceptions to them while taking every other part of the sentence as entirely optional and contingent and allowing for exceptions, strikes me as totally arbitrary, and IMO it says vastly more about the mind of the interpreter than it does about the biblical text.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Thank you, Starlight, for that thoroughly excellent dissection of one sentence!
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I agree, there is more in that particular spot than simple narrative. But it is still all too easy to jump from "there's a principle here" to "everything here is a principle".

Okay, but if you are going to go down that road there's a lot else you have to be willing to jettison too. If there's one place in the Bible where I think we might be justified in looking for universal principles, it's in those early chapters of Genesis - responsible stewardship of the Earth is, for instance, also in there somewhere.

I also think you will have a hard time distinguishing between any configuration of consenting sexual relationship, irrespective of the number of partners. After all, if Genesis has nothing to say about the gender of the partners, it has nothing to say about how many of them there should be, either (presumably it was only limited to two at the time because that was after all the entire global population [Biased] ).

You might express doubts about the practicalities of plural relationships, but I'm sure there'll be a voyeuristic Daily Mail article along sooner or later showcasing some plural relationship or other and how happily they all get along.

quote:
I'm not confident that you can get a principle that "it was vital to their complementarity that they were male and female" from the text.
I'll concede that it may not have been vital to their complementarity, but I persist in the notion that them being male and female says something vital, not about complementarity, but about difference.
quote:
At last, here is someone sufficiently similar to complement him.
And, I would add, add to that complementarity the dimension of difference.
quote:
It is not saying "thank God that He created fundamental difference so that men and women could misunderstand each other and work at cross-purposes but reach enough common ground to be worthwhile for each other"
That wasn't how it was before the Fall. All that stuff came later.
quote:
it is saying "thank God that He said man should not be alone and needs someone fundamentally similar to relate to".
"...and yet different", I interject (again).

Are differences only differences of biology? No. Are differences in gender a guarantee of a relationship that reflects everything God wants relationships to demonstrate? No. Does a lack of difference in gender condemn a relationship to not reflecting anything of what God wants in relationships? No. Should we then ignore the component of differences in gender when describing the divine archetype of relations...? No.

[missed Starlight's x-post, will try and return later]

[ 01. July 2014, 11:30: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
So the fact that this wording of male-female unions truthfully reflects typical practice, I completely fail to see why it should be read as a declaration that there can or should be no exceptions rather than simply a general statement of what usually happens.

Let me just pick that up.

Starlight, in my heart of hearts I completely agree with the way you have phrased that, and if I was sure of everybody involved and looking on seeing any same-sex ceremony I was involved in with that perspective, I'd do one tomorrow. No, today.

However, I think a substantial number of people take exception [Biased] to the fact that that such circumstances are exceptions to what you call typical practice. They would like to see "typical practice" expanded to include every conceivable "exception" (or more usually, to include whichever exception they happen to prefer), seek to make any exceptional event a precedent, and feel discriminated against and second-class when that doesn't happen. That is the very real pastoral dilemma I face (or fear/hope I will).
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Thank you, Starlight, for that thoroughly excellent dissection of one sentence!

Not quite sure whether that's sincerely meant thanks, or a gentle rebuke for wordiness, or both. I guess the ambiguity is appropriate. [Biased]

quote:
There are people out there who object, sometimes quite loudly, to homosexual displays of affection - whether it's kissing or holding hands or even talking about 'my boyfriend/girlfriend'. Such people manage to ignore that none of these things are remotely unique to homosexuals. Heterosexuals constantly do the exact same things without much comment.
There was a 5 minute segment on my local TV last week about gay people kissing in public. (No idea if it will play for ppl outside NZ)

Something I took away from it was that they couldn't even find 3 gay couples in the entire country who were prepared to kiss in public, because gay couples are that scared of negative reactions from passers-by. That totally 100% agrees with what gay people I have personally talked to have said to me, but it was somewhat mindblowing to see that this is such a serious problem nationwide that a major news organisation couldn't find 3 couples willing to kiss in public (you may validly raise questions about how hard they really looked, but I think we can assume that they made a reasonable effort).

I think a lot of straight people just totally have no idea that gay PDA is a thing that gay couples have learned to their cost to never do. To some extent this probably reflects the fact that intimacy is a particularly personal and deep thing, so that even if only a few people say judgmental and nasty things to you both very rarely when you kiss in public then that still taints the entire kissing experience and you feel extremely self-conscious ever after when kissing in public.

The other thing that amuses / saddens me about it, is that people who respond negatively to gay PDA often claim they're not anti-gay that they're just anti-PDA. Of course when opposite sex couples kiss in public no one does anything, but when gay couples do it, it's bad because PDA is bad...?! Ah, the lies people tell themselves...
[Projectile]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I also think you will have a hard time distinguishing between any configuration of consenting sexual relationship, irrespective of the number of partners. After all, if Genesis has nothing to say about the gender of the partners, it has nothing to say about how many of them there should be, either (presumably it was only limited to two at the time because that was after all the entire global population [Biased] ).

You might express doubts about the practicalities of plural relationships, but I'm sure there'll be a voyeuristic Daily Mail article along sooner or later showcasing some plural relationship or other and how happily they all get along.

If you expect me to throw up my hands in horror and say "oh no, we must find some principle that allows us to exclude polygamous relationships", you are going to continue to be disappointed.

Also, I find your response in relation to the point that God created a similar companion for Adam very odd. Every time someone points out that the emphasis is similarity, you just say "and also difference!". It's a bare assertion. People are working from the text on that point, in the very best Evangelical tradition, and it feels like you just flat out ignore the point. The animals were not suitable companions. God made a more similar being to be a suitable companion. Why are you seemingly so dismissive of this point, when it is one of the points that can clearly be made DIRECTLY from the statements in the text made by both God and Adam?
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
ADDENDUM: Because every time you say "she was different", you are emphasising something that the text does NOT emphasise, in the way that it emphasises "she was similar".
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I should perhaps add that "male and female he created them" is, purely on its own, simply a statement of fact.


And wasn't Quentin Crisp's reply to that supposed to have been 'Male and female created he me '?
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
ADDENDUM: Because every time you say "she was different", you are emphasising something that the text does NOT emphasise, in the way that it emphasises "she was similar".

My own literal reading of the passage in light of modern technology (which I grant is a kind of absurd interpretive hermeneutic, yet seems to be a common standard among evangelicals), is that Eve is a literal genetic clone of Adam, being grown from Adam's DNA extracted from his rib. It is possible (theoretically) to clone a female from a male by removing the Y chromosome and duplicating the X chromosome (and keeping the other 22 chromosomes the same). I have occasionally seen this interpretation espoused by evangelical authors (including one who claimed to have essentially predicted the existence of DNA due to this biblical passage - at least insofar as it led him to claim that the entire information necessary to reconstruct a person was contained in a subset of their body such as a rib). That pushes the similarity between Adam and Eve to quite an extreme. (And could be argued as providing a biblical justification for the scientific use of artificial reproductive techniques! Particularly to allow gay couples who can't otherwise have children to reproduce - since we would be following the biblical archetype of God using artificial reproduction techniques on Adam when he was incapable of reproducing. So, if, to pick a very likely near-future example, scientists were to take some blood from one gay partner to turn into stem cells and then into an egg and to fertilize it with the sperm of the other, then that would be a very Genesis 2 type way of creating life, closely following the biblical archetype sans the loss of a rib.)

God's choice to make Eve a female serves a rather obviously necessary function with regard to her purpose in helping Adam populate the world. But the text does not seem to go to any particular lengths emphasize the importance of the gender difference. She is made female because God wants them to reproduce. But it is never stated that a male would have provided a partner incapable of fulfilling Adam's psychological needs - which was the original motivation of the entire biblical story. It is the lack of similarity with the animals that was the original problem in fulfilling his psychological needs in a mate, and it is clear from the experience of gay couples today that a mate of the same sex is indeed psychologically fulfilling for those to whom such is desirable. (We could hypothesize that Adam was straight and that that was another reason that God deliberately made Eve a woman rather than a man, because God happened to know that a man wouldn't have fulfilled Adam's own psychological requirements that Adam himself wasn't yet away of...)

I suspect I'm overanalyzing it... [Biased] It's dangerous to let me get loose on biblical interpretation, I tend to get a little too overanalytical...
 
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :
 
Justinian:
quote:
Anyone who believes sex outside marriage is wrong while at the same time campaigning in favour of gay marriage is exempt from this condemnation.
Does signing petitions and writing to my MP count as campaigning? Because that would be me, too.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
I suspect I'm overanalyzing it... [Biased] It's dangerous to let me get loose on biblical interpretation, I tend to get a little too overanalytical...

No such thing in my book. And by the way, my thanks for your previous discussion was entirely sincere. It was a beautiful demonstration of just how many meaning are possible depending on what you emphasise.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
If you expect me to throw up my hands in horror and say "oh no, we must find some principle that allows us to exclude polygamous relationships", you are going to continue to be disappointed.

I'm not expecting any such thing, but given your moral position on plural marriages, I find your argument suggesting that we shouldn't be legislating to allow them because there are no policy reasons for doing so rather thin.

quote:
Also, I find your response in relation to the point that God created a similar companion for Adam very odd. Every time someone points out that the emphasis is similarity, you just say "and also difference!". It's a bare assertion. People are working from the text on that point, in the very best Evangelical tradition, and it feels like you just flat out ignore the point. The animals were not suitable companions. God made a more similar being to be a suitable companion. Why are you seemingly so dismissive of this point, when it is one of the points that can clearly be made DIRECTLY from the statements in the text made by both God and Adam?
I don't think it's quite that clear-cut. Genesis 1:27 says that God created "male and female" in his image. That's quite clearly "both/and" and highlights difference, not similarity.

As to Genesis 2, the word "similar" does not appear in my (French) Bible. The expression used is "help to be his vis-à-vis". I think we need to know more about the Hebrew to know whether that enshrines similarity, difference, or both. I think the point is that man(kind) needed a companion who was more than what the animals had to offer.

Starlight argues that God had little option but to create someone biologically different simply to ensure reproduction at that point. This runs counter to orfeo's argument that this passage is not primarily about procreation, and also runs into the difficulty that childbearing is not mentioned in the clause following the words "for this reason", which seems odd if that was the main (or only) reason for la différence.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that archetypally, we were created male and female. And for procreation purposes at least, that's how the archetype is. We don't reproduce asexually. There is a difference, and it's there right from the beginning.
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
On the subject of archetypes, I am reminded of the countless times I have heard it expressed in sermons and at weddings that the true archetype of married love is the love that exists between the persons of the Trinity. Apparently the love between a man and his wife, including sex, is a human reflection of the depth of the love that exists in the Trinity itself.

Yet none of the many ministers and wedding preachers I have heard pontificate on this archetypal Trinitarian love have ever even commented on the obvious: The Trinity is a gay three-way.
[Devil] [Angel]

Preachers that use the Trinity as an archetypal example for committed loving (monogamous!) relationships, and who also insist on gender differentiation in marriage, have always struck me being obviously inconsistent, and I have never seen them even attempt to address the obvious inconsistency.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I wonder why it talks about the man leaving his father and mother then?

Because it is an allegory and not a literal story?
That's another discussion.
I am not certain it is. Interpretation is the whole of the issue. Starlight's excellent dissection is one illustration of this. Others would be the passages such as the one instructing you to kill disobedient children.
Everyone interprets the bible and none seem to apply everything with equal measure. So, I think it important to evaluate interpretation through the lens of the complete work.

Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:
We don't reproduce asexually. There is a difference, and it's there right from the beginning.
and homosexuality exist in animals which reproduce sexually. Mallards seem a high percentage of homosexuals and reproduce a little too well.

[ 01. July 2014, 13:45: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
The Trinity is a gay three-way.
[Devil] [Angel]

What makes you think all three members are the same sex, or that the number of genders involved is only two for that matter?
[Devil] [Angel]

I think God transcends gender (CS Lewis referred to this idea as being "trans-sexual", but that was back in the day...), and that humankind being both male and female is a - partial - indicator of that fact.

To me the nature of the Trinity points precisely to similarity and difference. If there's a parallel to be drawn with marriage, it's that God is by nature relational, that's all. No kinky sex need be involved.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I wonder why it talks about the man leaving his father and mother then?

Because it is an allegory and not a literal story?
That's another discussion.
I am not certain it is.
Whether or not it's allegory has no bearing on my point in that exchange, which was that contrary to orfeo's assertion, the maximum number of persons present in the narrative is more than two.

[ 01. July 2014, 13:46: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
homosexuality exist in animals which reproduce sexually. Mallards seem a high percentage of homosexuals and reproduce a little too well.

I'm not denying the existence of homosexuality. The question is how it fits with the instance of Adam and Eve. One of the outstanding questions from the recent exchanges is whether admitting it as an exception (alongside lots of others) to typical orientation (Starlight's words) could be acceptable. My personal headache is how this works pastorally.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
If you expect me to throw up my hands in horror and say "oh no, we must find some principle that allows us to exclude polygamous relationships", you are going to continue to be disappointed.

I'm not expecting any such thing, but given your moral position on plural marriages, I find your argument suggesting that we shouldn't be legislating to allow them because there are no policy reasons for doing so rather thin.

That's not actually what I said. What I said was that the law is about drawing lines, and that there might be policy reasons for drawing a line that bars polygamy. It's not a question I've considered in any great depth.

My point was twofold: that there wasn't a policy reason for barring same-sex marriage (as outlined, in great detail, in many court decisions in recent years), and that your suggestion that somehow it therefore becomes an opening of the floodgates with no other barriers is wrong. Saying that there might be reasons to draw a line elsewhere was merely leaving the possibility open, not attempting to decide the question.

I was certainly not asserting that positive policy reasons are required to legislate in favour of polygamy. It is far more likely that any debate will be about whether there are sound policy reasons for prohibiting it. In Western democracies we tend to allow people to do what they want unless there's a reason to interfere (and in fact, the right-wing conservative arguments in favour of same-sex marriage are some of the best there are, which makes it such a pity that only a small number of right-wing conservatives adhere to them).

My drafter's eye simply sees that polygamy would create practical problems because relationship-based law would have to become a great deal more complex: entitlement to benefits, decision-making powers in case of incapacity, distribution of assets when a marriage breaks up are a few areas off the top of my head.

I'm actually drafting a matter at the moment, in a completely different area of law, where a group concept has been introduced and I am having to point out to my client that the question "what happens when this group partly breaks up" raises all sorts of issues they just haven't thought of, because they never arose when everything was dealt with singly.

I'm not asserting that such difficulties are insurmountable. I'm merely making the point (as others have) that polygamy raises these sorts of questions in a way that same-sex marriage doesn't. Same-sex marriage is dead easy. The existing concepts of "married" and "spouse" are, in fact, totally capable of being applied in gender-neutral fashion, there being almost no part of 21st century law where the male partner in a marriage is treated differently from the female partner. It is in fact the very development of male-female equality within marriage that makes it illogical (from a secular legal point of view) to continue to require that a pairing be male-female. Moving from a 'pairing' to a 'grouping' raises entirely different policy questions.

[ 01. July 2014, 14:03: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
OK, I get all that, but I have to say that these were not the loudest arguments from the SSM lobby over here. The loudest arguments revoloved around the sense of moral outrage at being discriminated against irrespective of the magnitude (or otherwise) of the changes involved, not "it's far easier to legislate for us than for polygamists".

[ 01. July 2014, 14:17: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
OK, I get all that, but I have to say that these were not the loudest arguments from the SSM lobby over here. The loudest arguments revoloved around the sense of moral outrage at being discriminated against irrespective of the magnitude (or otherwise) of the changes involved, not "it's far easier to legislate for us than for polygamists".

Eutychus, it's discrimination precisely BECAUSE there is no rational basis for the distinction. That's what discrimination, in legal terms, means.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
You mean to say you can't envisage polygamists emitting howls of protest about discrimination simply because it would be more complicated to make provision for them?
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
You mean to say you can't envisage polygamists emitting howls of protest about discrimination simply because it would be more complicated to make provision for them?

Yet another relevant post from the last plural marriage discussion:

quote:
This [assertion that allowing same-sex marriage necessarily means plural marriage must also be allowed] seems to come from the questionable assumption that all restrictions on the marital franchise are justified by the same argument, so that if any change is possible, then every change must therefore be possible.
In short, same-sex couples are requesting the right to participate in the same kind of legal arrangement available to other mentally competent members of society. Those who desire legal recognition of plural marriages are requesting a type of legal arrangement that's structurally very different from anything existing under current law in most Western nations. In other words, the former is a question of franchise (who can participate?) while the latter is a question of structure (what are they participating in?).
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
I recall hearing, as a child, that when people with multiple wives emigrated to my country, they were forced to declare only one of their wives to be their legal wife here because we did not recognize polygamous marriage. I thought at the time that it was silly our legal system failed to deal with the truth that these people had multiple wives, and thought that this must make the people involved sad. So I can see a potential case for recognizing the pre-existing polygamous marriages of immigrants regardless of whether we allow such marriages ourselves.

My primary moral concern with polygamous marriage is that the institution has a strong history of harming the women involved. In Islamic and Mormon settings in which such marriages have typically occurred (and continue to occur today in many Islamic nations), they have been closely associated with disenfranchisement of the women involved. Usually the women get no veto power over additional wives their husbands take, and often the newer (younger) wives are poorly treated by the more senior wives who become jealous of the husband's affections.

I do appreciate that in modern western secular society we are talking about quite a different social entity when we consider formalizing polyamorous relationships, one that is fully consensual and not demeaning. I therefore have zero moral objection to the concept of polyamorous relationships being formalized. I however worry that allowing relationships of the consensual non-demeaning type might open the door to relationships of the non-consensual demeaning type. I can't imagine Western societies easily or successfully ensuring full consent and equality in the polygamous marriages that Muslim immigrants would likely want to subsequently undertake.

I do however question whether there is a serious level of demand for such things in the Western world. I haven't personally ever seen any polyamorous groups of people actually requesting such rights. (I could be ignorant of their existence of course) I would theoretically be happy to grant such rights, but I'm scratching my head slightly as to understand what purpose they would really serve. Mathematically, polyamorous relationships seem likely to be an order of magnitude less stable than two-person relationships because each person in the relationship has a relationship with each other person and so the total number of relationships involved (and hence which can be subject to failure) scales multiplicitively with each additional person. I'm not making any moral complaint about this, simply noting that this probably partially explains why I don't see polygamous groups of people queuing up for marriage rights. If the legal complexities orfeo has outlined make working out what to do when one party wants to leave (or partially leave!) the relationship complex in the extreme, and if such events happen with reasonable frequency, then a marriage might be vastly more trouble than its worth in terms of shear practicality and complexity of paperwork. Again this may explain what I perceive to be a relative lack of demand for polygamous marriage.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Croesos: I can see that distinction (between SSM claims to marriage and plural marriages) from a legal point of view.

However, I can imagine a scenario where from an emotional point of view, a threesome that is (or believes it is) mutually loving, committed, able to raise children, and so on, should have just as much right to do so as a twosome. Western society is expected to adjust to SSM claims because (you argue) this is simply a question of franchise, but not to plural marriage claims because, well, that's a structural change. Too bad for the emotional suffering of the plural marriage proponents?

If evangelicals (to return to the subject line) were to accept SSM and refuse plural marriage, would that exonerate them from being homophobes but still leave them plural-marriage-phobes? Or not?

[ 01. July 2014, 15:02: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
I do however question whether there is a serious level of demand for such things in the Western world. I haven't personally ever seen any polyamorous groups of people actually requesting such rights.

As near as I can tell, the only ones who seem concerned about the legal status of plural marriage in a Western context are those who use it as a stalking horse to argue against same-sex marriage. It's not something anyone ever seems to agitate about except in the context of the legalization of same-sex marriages.

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
However, I can imagine a scenario where from an emotional point of view, a threesome that is (or believes it is) mutually loving, committed, able to raise children, and so on, should have just as much right to do so as a twosome. Western society is expected to adjust to SSM claims because (you argue) this is simply a question of franchise, but not to plural marriage claims because, well, that's a structural change. Too bad for the emotional suffering of the plural marriage proponents?

I'm not taking a position on the advisability of legalizing plural marriage other than to assert that it would require restructuring family law in most Western countries to such an extent that the resulting institution's resemblance to what we now refer to as "marriage" would be purely superficial. Whatever the arguments in favor or against revising family law to allow plural marriages, those arguments are separate and distinct from the arguments for legalizing same-sex marriage (or inter-racial marriage or marriage to a dead wife's sister or revising the minimum legal age of marriage or . . . ) I've always taken slippery slope arguments (if you allow this one change then you have to allow every other possible change imaginable!) to be a tacit admission that there are no good arguments against whatever it is that's being opposed, so the ground has to be shifted to argue against something else.

[ 01. July 2014, 15:25: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
You mean to say you can't envisage polygamists emitting howls of protest about discrimination simply because it would be more complicated to make provision for them?

No, because people howl about discrimination whether it exists in a legal sense or not. People tend to use the word 'discrimination' to mean 'you won't let me do the same thing as another person'. What discrimination actually means in a legal sense is 'you won't let me do the same thing as another person, and I and that other person are the same in all relevant respects'.

I mean to say that (again, partly from my drafter's perspective), clear cases of discrimination are easy to spot precisely because they are pretty easy to fix. If two categories of people are identical in almost every respect apart from the label slapped on them - a label that has no actual significance - the easiest way to fix it is to collapse the two categories into one.

Most sex discrimination in the law was fixed simply by replacing "man" with "person" - because in fact most of the actual policies didn't make use of a man's maleness.

Most discrimination against homosexual couples is pretty easily fixed by using gender-neutral terminology as well, because again, almost no policies that relate to couples actually make use of the gender of the 2 people. Providing for same-sex marriage makes it even easier, because then you don't have to keep creating different versions of rules for de facto couples (gender neutral) as compared to married couples (gendered).

The treatment of polygamy is entirely different precisely because the law actually DOES make use of the fact that a couple consists of 2 members quite often. Having 2 people means that "you" and "your spouse" (or partner or whatever) are clear and unambiguous. Having more than 2 people means that "your spouse" is no longer unambiguous. That's where the policy questions are going to arise: which spouse? any of them? each of them? all of them collectively? does it matter when the number of them changes? Policies that work on the basis of there being one "you" and one "not you" cannot work sensibly without revision.

As I've said, I'm sure it's quite possible to answer those questions in the long term, but the very fact those questions arise shows that the number of spouses is a relevant consideration in a way that the gender of a person or the gender of a person's spouse almost never is in modern law. Discrimination, in a legal sense, is about taking considerations into account when they are irrelevant. Having labels for 2 categories of people when all the relevant characteristics of the people are the same is discriminatory (and also fundamentally bad drafting). Having labels for 2 categories of people when there are relevant differences between the 2 categories - differences that actually provide a basis for different treatment - is not discriminatory.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
To see an example of what I'm talking about, take a look at Australia's Marriage Act.

http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2014C00201

Try doing a search for "woman" and see how many hits you get, and what they relate to.

There are couple of ones that have to do with birth of children - okay, clearly there the gender is relevant.

The other hits you'll find are the bits that were specifically inserted to say "marriage is only between a man and a woman". These bits were inserted in 2004 when it was suddenly realised that the Marriage Act didn't already say that. Because it didn't need to for the rules on marriage to operate.

If you look at the actual rules, you will find that a 'person' can marry once they are 18, but a 'person' who is 16 (a 'minor') can also marry in certain circumstances. You will find talk about the 'parties' to a marriage. You will find rules about who cannot marry each other which, apart from a reference to brother and sister, are not gendered.

You will, in short, find precious little that demonstrates that the gender of a person getting married has practical significance. That's exactly why it was necessary to insert specific sections saying "no sex marriage" - because there was nothing already inherent in the way marriage was dealt with that would make it impossible to have a same sex marriage. There was nothing in the EXISTING law that a same sex couple would be unable to achieve.

I can tell you right away something in the EXISTING law that poses a problem for polygamy. It's the check that neither person is already married. That may be the only one in the Marriage Act itself. All the other issues will arise from other laws that refer to the status of being married and to the notion of a spouse.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
PS "no sex marriage" was supposed to say "no same sex marriage". Boy was that a Freudian typo.
 
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on :
 
by ;
quote:
Kissing is a normal general human activity not distinctive to homosexuals. So what's your point?

EDIT: There are people out there who object, sometimes quite loudly, to homosexual displays of affection - whether it's kissing or holding hands or even talking about 'my boyfriend/girlfriend'. Such people manage to ignore that none of these things are remotely unique to homosexuals. Heterosexuals constantly do the exact same things without much comment.

My point was that as with driving being in itself non-racial, two men kissing is - or should be - regarded as normal behaviour and was so in biblical times. There is quite a bit of evidence that public displays of male affection were much more common in the past irrespective of modern ideas about sexuality. Things seem to have changed a bit in the UK and US after the Oscar Wilde scandal and similar events in the late 19th C, when there was a considerable concern to not appear homosexual and to suppress/discourage activity that might be so interpreted. That change occurred less in Europe - Frenchmen kissing was a source of innuendos well into last century.

In a situation of changing sexual mores people probably would find overtly sexual displays of affection shocking/uncomfortable where previously even just displays of affection had, as pointed out above, become unusual - I'd expect this will change over time.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
One more thought before finally heading off to bed. See what happens when people cause me to exercise my analytical brain (Starlight, we are terribly similar in some ways).

The biggest single issue with polygamous marriage will be: is it regarded as one marriage between several people, or several marriages, each between 2 people, that share a common person?

The implications of that one question are huge!

TEST QUESTION: If man A marries woman B, A then marries woman C, and woman C then marries man D, are B and D in a polygamous marriage?

HINT: If you think that C can't marry D because she's already married to A, you are massively sexist. [Razz]
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I've always taken slippery slope arguments (if you allow this one change then you have to allow every other possible change imaginable!) to be a tacit admission that there are no good arguments against whatever it is that's being opposed, so the ground has to be shifted to argue against something else.

Well, I protest that's not my tactic. I'm trying to think the arguments through, and that was one on my list, is all.

As far as the legal side goes, I think I'm pretty much convinced. One solution to the SSM issue with regard to dissenting christians would be to disestablish marriage altogether, ie use solely the term "civil union" (with all the same rights etc.) in law instead of "marriage". I actually have a friend, an evangelical christian to boot, who is lucky (?) enough to be in a position to get legislation along these lines drafted and probably passed in his jurisdiction. That way christians can redefine "marriage" however they like, separately from the legal issues.

In France that is not an option on the table right now, because "marriage" is right there in the secular text.

So in summary, for me the legal arugments are quite persuasive. Now that we have the mariage pour tous in France, I'm not protesting against it (and indeed didn't protest before either, even though I'm still far from convinced it's been a good thing for several reasons).

This brings me back to the problem of how to, um marry (or dissassociate) whatever we decide to celebrate in church with/from what is done at the Town Hall. Which in turn leads back to the question of what Genesis might or might not mean about difference, whether defining "marriage" other than in whatever sense the law defines it makes christians homophobic, and whether there is room within the Church to set forth a "typical" practice, plus allow "exceptions".
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
TEST QUESTION: If man A marries woman B, A then marries woman C, and woman C then marries man D, are B and D in a polygamous marriage?

HINT: If you think that C can't marry D because she's already married to A, you are massively sexist. [Razz]

Long version here, with additional complications here.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
As far as the legal side goes, I think I'm pretty much convinced. One solution to the SSM issue with regard to dissenting christians would be to disestablish marriage altogether, ie use solely the term "civil union" (with all the same rights etc.) in law instead of "marriage".

Let me offer a counter-proposal. Civil law will continue to define "marriage", as it's done for the past century or so, while dissenting Christians can celebrate "religious unions".

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
This brings me back to the problem of how to, um marry (or dissassociate) whatever we decide to celebrate in church with/from what is done at the Town Hall.

It's almost as if you've never heard of the Roman Catholic Church's position on remarriage after divorce. Let me sum it up for you. The Roman Catholic Church does not believe divorce is valid, ergo a divorced person with a still-living spouse cannot marry someone else because, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, he/she is already married. Despite this, the civil government does not consider the Catholic Church's objections a sufficient reason to deny anyone a marriage license, even if they're Catholic. So we end up with a situation where the state considers a marriage valid but a church does not. Even though you regard this as an insoluble conundrum, most societies seem to be able to make it work.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Or why children are born with an endless list of horrible diseases, deformities and disabilities………

Perhaps being born gay is a 'disability'?

Normally, we help disabled people to live as 'normal' a life as possible.

We give them wheelchairs.

We don't say that it is OK to be disabled but sinful to use a wheelchair.

Disabled =/= wheelchair user. And disabled lives are normal lives.

Comparing homosexuality to disability and then talking about disability in those terms is incredibly homophobic and incredibly ableist.

I hope you realise that I was stating the logical conclusion to what Kaplan Corday posted, not expressing my own view.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Even though you regard this as an insoluble conundrum, most societies seem to be able to make it work.

I don't think the Catholic church's solution to this conundrum is satisfactory from a Christian point of view, because it effectively puts some people beyond the pale.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Even though you regard this as an insoluble conundrum, most societies seem to be able to make it work.

I don't think the Catholic church's solution to this conundrum is satisfactory from a Christian point of view, because it effectively puts some people beyond the pale.
Isn't putting some people beyond the pale the Christian way? I thought that was the whole point of objections to same-sex marriage; that such couples were beyond the pale.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Right now, I can't improve on the way I addressed that here.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
I however worry that allowing relationships of the consensual non-demeaning type might open the door to relationships of the non-consensual demeaning type.

Though, you don't need to worry about polyamorous relationships for that to be a concern. It's hardly as though marriage, in any form, has always managed to avoid inequalities within the relationship.

I've been travelling and have just caught up. But, allow me to go back to the Genesis archetype. God made Eve from Adams rib as a suitable companion. (Merging the two narratives in Genesis 1 & 2), humanity had been made to rule over the animals etc, the subservient creatures were not suitable companions for Adam. Which of the early Church theologians said something along the lines of "Eve was not taken from his head to rule over him, or from his feet to be ruled over, but from his side to be an equal"? Therefore, I conclude, one of the characteristics of the Adam-Eve archetype is that it is a relationship of equals. The same would be true of the Trinity archetype.

Humanity in general has managed to get that completely screwed up, usually considering the husband to somehow be superior to his wife. Evangelicals (just 'cos this is a thread about evangelicals) have been no better in this regard. In fact, in some cases worse. Is there a relationship between the sexist attitude that the husband is the "head" of the family, ruling over his wife, and homophobic views in relation to SSM? I would suggest that there probably is.
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
One solution to the SSM issue with regard to dissenting christians would be to disestablish marriage altogether, ie use solely the term "civil union" (with all the same rights etc.) in law instead of "marriage".

Let me offer a counter-proposal. Civil law will continue to define "marriage", as it's done for the past century or so, while dissenting Christians can celebrate "religious unions".
Seconded!

When it comes down to it, the English word "marriage" (or its French equivalent) is just a word like any other in our languages. It did not originate from the bible, which was written in Hebrew and Greek! The general concept of marriage is also found worldwide and is not something that is specifically Christian. The idea that Christians have some sort of monopoly on the word "marriage" and its use is a laughably arrogant power-grab by them.

I have no problem at all with the concept of religious people wanting to distinguish secular unions from their own religious concepts about unions. That is totally fine. They can talk about their "Holy Roman Catholic matrimony" or whatever they feel like calling it, until the cows come home, and I'd be fine with it. Nothing at all is stopping them from doing this, and indeed "holy matrimony" is a historically common phrase in religious circles which they might conceivably want to revive the usage of, but that is up to them.

What I totally object to is the idea that Christians own the word "marriage" and that they need to or should "take it back" out of the public domain by removing it from secular law, and only applying it themselves. Just no. That is all kinds of epic fail.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
It was especially startling to see the Catholic church becoming so involved in the same-sex marriage debate in France, because unlike English-speaking countries, France (and much of continental Europe, but especially France) rigorously separates civil marriage from religious weddings. There's absolutely no question in France that a church might be forced into performing a civil same-sex wedding, because a church cannot perform a civil wedding, full stop. I would have thought in those circumstances that it was patently obvious there was no need for the civil rules and the church ones to be the same.
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
two men kissing is - or should be - regarded as normal behaviour and was so in biblical times. There is quite a bit of evidence that public displays of male affection were much more common in the past irrespective of modern ideas about sexuality. Things seem to have changed a bit in the UK and US after the Oscar Wilde scandal and similar events in the late 19th C, when there was a considerable concern to not appear homosexual and to suppress/discourage activity that might be so interpreted. That change occurred less in Europe - Frenchmen kissing was a source of innuendos well into last century.


When we worked in India in the eighties, it was very common to see two men walking along hand in hand as an expression of companionship, and my wife used to walk hand in hand with her female Indian friends.

On the other hand, my wife and I never held hands in public in India, where any sort of public display of affection between sexes was culturally unacceptable.

Of course, many things in Indian society have changed since then.
 
Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:

I have no problem at all with the concept of religious people wanting to distinguish secular unions from their own religious concepts about unions. That is totally fine. They can talk about their "Holy Roman Catholic matrimony" or whatever they feel like calling it, until the cows come home, and I'd be fine with it. Nothing at all is stopping them from doing this, and indeed "holy matrimony" is a historically common phrase in religious circles which they might conceivably want to revive the usage of, but that is up to them.

What I totally object to is the idea that Christians own the word "marriage" and that they need to or should "take it back" out of the public domain by removing it from secular law, and only applying it themselves. Just no. That is all kinds of epic fail.

There's also the global problem. Marriages in one country are usually respected in other countries. Civil Unions may not, in part because the laws in many countries don't cover civil unions. So it would be much simpler to let the various churches roll their own ceremony with a distinctive name.

Secondly, the time for such a proposal was in the last century. Now that Gay people have won the right to marry in many parts of the United States and Europe they're not about to give it up because some church has decided it has a better idea after losing the battle to allow same sex civil marriage.
 
Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :
 
No one doubts there are places where men kissing men or holding hands is culturally fine these days. I've even seen pictures of Obama holding hands with another world leader whose culture finds it a mark of friendship. However there are many places in the United States where if two men kiss they will be disparaged, preached at or assaulted on the inference the two are homosexuals..
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:

TEST QUESTION: If man A marries woman B, A then marries woman C, and woman C then marries man D, are B and D in a polygamous marriage?

Actually, I think it's quite straightforward. A polyamorous marriage is a set of N adult members. Adding a member to an existing set requires unanimous consent of all the existing members. No person may be a member of more than one marriage set. All existing marriages then become a special case of polymarriage with N=2.

It's the rules for divorce which are more complicated - you begin with a set of N members, and assume that m wish to leave the marriage, and N-m wish to remain. Division of property might not be to bad, but provision for children (because naturally all children of the marriage would have N parents) would be complicated. The financial part is just math - that's easy enough - it's custody and residency that will get interesting.
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

If I come across any black people in future wearing their hair in any other style, I will now know hey are not "really" black.



I might almost suspect you of misunderstanding deliberately for some kind of comic effect.

If you exclude a significant fraction of reasonable black hairstyles, but no reasonable white hairstyles, because your cultural conditioning leads you to associate white hairstyles with smartness, you're being racist.

It's a fairly mild racist sin, and more often than not springs from ignorance or unthinkingness rather than active animus, but it's still racist.

quote:

but never in my wildest dreams did I anticipate being endowed with omnipotence.

The obvious inference from my comment was that I was talking about gay Christians who are attempting to be faithful to the word of God.

I naturally assume that you, as a faithful Christian, are preaching the word of God as you understand it. Your understanding of the word of God is that homosexual people are called to a lifetime of celibacy, and you would tell anyone who inquired that this was what God expected of them.

The argument about to what extent Christians get to determine how gay non-Christians live their lives has moved on. That ship has sailed - secular gay marriage is a reality in the UK, in a rapidly increasing number of states in the US, and in an increasing number of Western democracies.

The discussion that remains is about how we treat gay Christians.
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
The Trinity is a gay three-way.
[Devil] [Angel]

What makes you think all three members are the same sex, or that the number of genders involved is only two for that matter?
[Devil] [Angel]

I think God transcends gender (CS Lewis referred to this idea as being "trans-sexual", but that was back in the day...), and that humankind being both male and female is a - partial - indicator of that fact.

To me the nature of the Trinity points precisely to similarity and difference. If there's a parallel to be drawn with marriage, it's that God is by nature relational, that's all. No kinky sex need be involved.

Just to be clear, as humorously as I phrased this, I was actually being very serious. In 20 years of attending many evangelical groups and churches and many weddings, I have never heard the archetype of Adam and Eve preached on as a model for married relationships, but I've heard the Trinity used a dozen times or more. So any appeal to the idea of Adam and Eve being archetypically male and female seems to fail pretty badly against the fact that far more commonly appealed to archetype of the Trinity is not a male-female relationship. Now you've gone the obvious route of trying to walk-back the church's usual claims about the genderedness of the Trinity. So let me discuss for a minute what I see as being the standard Evangelical views on these topics:

I grant that at a deep theological level, some theologians have taken the view that there is no inherent gender within the godhead. But, on the other hand, many theologians have argued that the godhead is gendered, going so far as to insist that the Holy Spirit is gendered and masculine - a theology that nearly all modern English bible translations follow in using the pronoun "he" in John 16:13.

The Holy Spirit is overall a somewhat contentious case, and a view that the Holy Spirit is transgendered or non-gendered in nature would probably fall within the bounds of conservative evangelicalism. This is not the case for the Father and Jesus however. Evangelicals typically take a rather dismissive attitude toward feminist attempts to use the pronoun "she" to refer to the Father, arguing that the bible consistently uses masculine pronouns and masculine language such as "Father". They thus tend to infer that though the Father does not have a physical body, and hence cannot literally have masculine sexual characteristics, there is still something fundamental about the Father himself that makes it better and more accurate to refer to him in masculine terms than in feminine terms, since this is what the bible does. And Jesus, well, was literally a man, and we have no particular reason to assume his male body was any different to usual in its sexual and gendered natures. Furthermore many creeds and council declarations have made it an absolute statement of Christian faith that Jesus was fully man and possessed all the attributes that men, as men, posses.

Now probably no evangelical would assert that the members of the Trinity literally have sex with each other, especially since the Father and Spirit are not usually conceived of as having sufficient physical form to perform any such act. However, what is commonly asserted is that the depth of the love and relationship between them is something that is exceptionally deep and meaningful and is something which human love between a man and his wife approximates. Evangelical preachers who are commonly nowadays keen to sanctify and endorse sexual acts between married couples (fearing that they be otherwise seen as ascetic and against-sex) will often go so far as to literally and explicitly add that it is during the deepest sexual intimacy between married couples that human love most and best approximates the unfathomable depth of the connection between the members of the Trinity.

That's how I'd describe standard Evangelical teaching on these issues - I don't think anything I've said above is particularly controversial insofar as I think it's an accurate summary of what Evangelicals typically teach.

But the result of this is that the Trinity, who Evangelicals typically insist is truly masculine gendered in some spiritual way in (at least 2 of) its members, is being used by Evangelicals as an archetype for the ideals of marriage and sex. Their go-to analogy for marriage is an analogy that, by their own theology, involves 3 males in a deep committed relationship. An obvious corollary of this, which Evangelicals stunning fail to draw but which seems entirely inescapable to me, is that at a spiritual level there is nothing at all wrong with two masculine gendered entities being in a deeply loving and committed relationship with one another of the marriage type. Either the dozens of Evangelical preachers talking about human marriage approximating and reflecting the inter-Trinitarian love were just talking complete and utter bullshit, or their analogy really is valid and that two masculine gendered beings can legitimately be in the absolute deepest of spiritual/emotional/psychological/sexual relationships with one another.

This does not, of course, preclude a physical reason existing that might make same-sex relationships off limits, since the Trinity is not incarnate. So it might be entirely legitimate at the spiritual and psychological level to have a same-sex relationship as the Trinity do, but due to some random physical limitations it might be impossible or unreasonable for us humans to emulate their example. So I could entirely understand if Evangelicals took the view that spiritually gay marriage is totally fine and a reflection of the love of the Trinity for one another, and that far from being a sin, such same-sex marriages to be extolled as virtuous imitation of the Godhead, but that for some practical physical reason such relationships happened to be impossible in the flesh but not because of anything wrong with the spiritual ideal of such relationships.

Now, of course, in practice, there is nothing stopping physical same sex relationships in the flesh, as multiple people on these boards alone can personally attest! But far from applauding the spiritually sound nature of same-sex relationships as coming closest to reflecting the Trinitarian ideal, Evangelicals instead typically condemn such relationships, and particularly do so at a spiritual and psychological level, which is precisely what their Trinitarian analogy for marriage precludes them from doing!
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
going so far as to insist that the Holy Spirit is gendered and masculine - a theology that nearly all modern English bible translations follow in using the pronoun "he" in John 16:13.

It's a bit of a side issue, but in traditional English, "he" is the appropriate pronoun to use for a person whose sex you don't know. "She" always implies female, and "it" denies personhood.

Yes, the language is gendered. Yes, male is the linguistic default. No, many feminists don't like this, and there is a modern trend to use the third person plural if you're not specifying a sex.

Nevertheless, I think this means that you can't safely draw any conclusion from the use of the masculine pronoun in in John 16:13.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:

TEST QUESTION: If man A marries woman B, A then marries woman C, and woman C then marries man D, are B and D in a polygamous marriage?

Actually, I think it's quite straightforward. A polyamorous marriage is a set of N adult members. Adding a member to an existing set requires unanimous consent of all the existing members. No person may be a member of more than one marriage set. All existing marriages then become a special case of polymarriage with N=2.

It's the rules for divorce which are more complicated - you begin with a set of N members, and assume that m wish to leave the marriage, and N-m wish to remain. Division of property might not be to bad, but provision for children (because naturally all children of the marriage would have N parents) would be complicated. The financial part is just math - that's easy enough - it's custody and residency that will get interesting.

Straightforward? You've just said that a man with 2 wives has to have the consent of those wives before taking a third. That is not, AFAIK, how it actually works in parts of the world. Nor as I understand it would 2 wives of a Muslim man usually say they were married to each other. They would say they were each married to the same man. If the wives were married to each other that would be a same-sex marriage.

[ 02. July 2014, 04:28: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Random thought: business partnership law would probably provide the most useful clues as to how polygamous marriage could be handled. *makes notes*
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
I'm not intending to contribute much more at this point, but I'd like to comment on two posts:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
It was especially startling to see the Catholic church becoming so involved in the same-sex marriage debate in France

It came as no surprise to anyone here. The fact is that the Catholic church in France still behaves as if it's a state church or at least runs a parallel national organisation to the state.

quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
In 20 years of attending many evangelical groups and churches and many weddings, I have never heard the archetype of Adam and Eve preached on as a model for married relationships, but I've heard the Trinity used a dozen times or more.

In some 25 years of preaching at weddings, I have never to my recollection made allusion to the Trinity, except possibly to make the point I made just now about God being intrinsically relational, and at the last wedding I preached on, I spoke on Adam and Eve.

I've been to a lot of evo weddings too, and while I've heard some toe-curling things (mostly directed at people "living in sin"), I've never heard the Trinity alluded to in the way you suggest. I find many of your other comments similiarly foreign or exceptional when considering the evangelicals I hang out with.

At the least, this suggests more diversity amongst evangelicals than is present in your post. (As a final aside, I also think that there is probably a lot more acceptance of gays amongst evo congregations than one might suspect from the pronouncements of evo leadership).
 
Posted by Starlight (# 12651) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I've been to a lot of evo weddings too, and while I've heard some toe-curling things (mostly directed at people "living in sin"), I've never heard the Trinity alluded to in the way you suggest. I find many of your other comments similiarly foreign or exceptional when considering the evangelicals I hang out with.

Okay. I am only familiar with the English-speaking evangelicalism of NZ / USA / England which does not tend to interact overly much with non-English thinkers and writers. However googling 'marriage trinity' is enough to give pages of results drawing this analogy, which seem to include both Evangelicals and Catholics alike.

[ 02. July 2014, 05:31: Message edited by: Starlight ]
 
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

......this suggests more diversity amongst evangelicals than is present in your post. (As a final aside, I also think that there is probably a lot more acceptance of gays amongst evo congregations than one might suspect from the pronouncements of evo leadership).

True in Catholicism as well. What has happened and what is ongoing is a simple but profound ethical shift about what is fair and just. I am convinced it is irreversible. People 'get' that. The traditional position and the traditional defences sound increasingly hollow in the face of this paradigm shift over what is fair.

To quote Desmond Tutu in a famous incident in which he addressed the powerful representatives of apartheid. "You have already lost".
 
Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

I might almost suspect you of misunderstanding deliberately for some kind of comic effect.


I might almost suspect you of misunderstanding deliberately that I was having a shot at not only your implication that generalisations can be made about black people that go beyond their common skin colour, but also your parochialism which assumes that blacks means United States blacks, ignoring the black people of every continent.
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
and there is a modern trend to use the third person plural if you're not specifying a sex.

A "modern trend" that dates back to Chaucer...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Older_usage_by_respected_authors

[ 02. July 2014, 08:17: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
 
Posted by Zappa (# 8433) on :
 
Chaucer? 'e's bloody post-modern. [Roll Eyes]
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
As a final aside, I also think that there is probably a lot more acceptance of gays amongst evo congregations than one might suspect from the pronouncements of evo leadership

Of this I have absolutely no doubt. On the other hand the evo leadership is what it is. And those are the people the evo congregations are happy to have speaking for them. And when evo leaders show up who aren't homophobic they end up getting kicked out.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Being evangelicals, the leaders who get kicked out are perfectly placed to start new churches or to lead breakaway congregations. They should be quite successful with this if evangelicalism is on the cusp of change.

[ 02. July 2014, 10:51: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
And when evo leaders show up who aren't homophobic they end up getting kicked out.

They may get kicked out, but it's not a certain outcome. We all know Steve Chalke wasn't, he's still in the same leadership in the Oasis Trust and Oasis Church as he's held for 10 years. I linked earlier to a senior paster of a Vineyard church in the US who has also retained his position. There will be others. In fact, it would probably not surprise me if the majority of evangelical church leaders who have publicly affirmed homosexual rights have done so without losing their positions of leadership within the church. Has anyone ever done any research on that?
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
It occurred to me that outside of the Anglican Communion, most evangelical clergy working in an evangelical environment seem to be employed within a congregationalist framework. This surely means that for them, keeping on the same page as their congregations is more important than it would be for ministers who are centrally appointed. Would an evangelical Baptist minister suddenly pronounce in favour of SSM without first exploring it with his/her congregation or team of elders?

[ 02. July 2014, 12:03: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Being evangelicals, the leaders who get kicked out are perfectly placed to start new churches or to lead breakaway congregations. They should be quite successful with this if evangelicalism is on the cusp of change.

I hope this happens. I'm not holding my breath.
 
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Perhaps it's all about demographics. There seems to be an assumption that Anglo-Catholic churches are particularly appealing to gay men. Historical MOTR congregations are generally very skewed towards (straight) women. But (middle class, white) evangelical churches have a higher than average proportion of (straight) men - men who are perhaps more 'traditional' in some of their values than might be the case at other churches. So it could be that most evangelical churches simply don't attract enough male gay members to be led towards a complete turnaround on matters of sexual morality.

OTOH, evangelical churches tend to be larger than others, and large churches are attractive, so they probably DO have more gay members in absolute terms. It's just that they have even more of everyone else as well.

Sometimes I wonder whether the easiest thing for gay-affirming evangelicals to do would be to find the most liberal (but also fairly theologically orthodox) mainstream churches, and then make them look more evangelical. Perhaps this would be far less trouble than trying to make the Baptists and Pentecostals more liberal on matters of sexuality! Or maybe not. The done thing is for strict churches to grow more liberal, rather than the other way round, although there are exceptions.
 
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
I have heard the Trinity used as an example of headship by con evos (cessationist Reformed Calvinist types) at CU events - basically that wives should obey husbands because Jesus obeyed God the Father.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
(sneaking back to answer Jade)

Yes indeed. The last time I heard that was from Wayne Grudem at an NFI conference: "you can't mess with the doctrine of headship because you are impugning the Trinity"*, oh noes. It's tantamount to accusing people of the sin against the Holy Spirit.

Ever since I have seen appeals to the Trinity to back up arguments as a sort of theological nuclear option.

==
*Great counter-argument here. But that's another DH.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
I have heard the Trinity used as an example of headship by con evos (cessationist Reformed Calvinist types) at CU events - basically that wives should obey husbands because Jesus obeyed God the Father.

What a ghastly bunch of fuckers our faith sometimes throws up.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Wow. Does no-one ever point out that while the gender of God is open to debate, Jesus wasn't a woman?
 
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
I think the argument is some kind of mangling of the marriage = Christ and the Church analogy, but then given that at the same event we were taught that we're all individual Brides of Christ rather than the Church being the Bride of Christ, I don't think logic is really a part of the argument.

I did however respond by saying that I thought God was calling me to the priesthood, which apparently caused some amazing facial reactions!
 
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Sorry if it's been said above: as some of you know, I've been on a journey from flatland for nearly 50 years. Flatland where the Bible is read flat, level, like a cookbook (thanks to Greg Boyd, open theist Catholic-Pentecostal for this) where any recipe is right, where every part is equally authoritative and there is no progressive revelation and no transcendence, no trajectory which can be followed beyond it.

ALL who have this approach, and I've had it for most of 50 years and kicked and screamed against it being challenged all the way, are hypocrites, compromisers, backsliders.

The arc (of the moral universe - MLK), the trajectory goes beyond the OT and even the NT, beyond the transcendent human pre-resurrection Jesus. Just as His theology now goes beyond His theology then in PSA.

It's all about putting limits on grace.

And we all do that.
 
Posted by fluff (# 12871) on :
 
So the answer to the OP "Why is Evangelicalism associated with homophobia" is that it is associated with homophobia because evangelicalism is often homophobic, together with Christianity in various other forms, as well.

Obviously not wanting LGBT people to have equal rights is homophobic, and to deny this is disingenuous. It is comparable to those South Africans we used to see interviewed on TV in the 70s, saying they had nothing against black people but did believe that apartheid was a very good system.

Evangelical and other churches attitudes to LGBT people resemble those of a group that says: "We do accept you as a black person: but we do expect you to use this hair straightener and to use this bleaching agent for your skin." Do you see the analogy?

If your religion promotes hate and discrimination - and it does - then it is not worth participating in.
 


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