Jaicee said:
The Bible is not subtle in its view of gay people; especially of gay men. All mentions of gay men and lesbians in the Bible are extremely negative, with some passages equating same-sex intimacy to murder, for example, and accordingly prescribing execution for gay men. Lesbians are less often discussed in the Bible because women had no freedom to speak of back then anyway, so intimacy between women seemed to be less of a societal worry...although once you get to the New Testament, the apostle Paul noticeably expands the Bible's critique of gay relationships to explicitly include lesbianism once he finds himself in more open societies. Let's not kid ourselves. I know because growing up I was made to memorize and recite most of these passages to one of my Sunday school teachers as part of my punishment after my parents discovered that I had a girlfriend. Now are there gay people who jump through hoops to retain a sense of Christianity? Of course there are. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg would be an obvious example. The Human Rights Campaign has even authored this very creative re-imagining of the Biblical view of homosexuality for the benefit of those who wish to play that game for the sake of positive memories and friendships or just a sincere need to believe in a higher power or other positive connections they may have to the church, but as I think you'll observe, their re-imagining of the intent behind the passages on gay people feels like more than a small reach just in general. I mean people can believe what they want to believe and not many today will choose to actually support executing people for being gay despite their ostensible dedication to a strict reading of Biblical scripture because they have more of a conscience than their God does. Some do support it though and many of those who do are Biblical literalists. Or literalists of other mainstream faiths for that matter. For the most part, religion and gay people don't go well together. That's the truth. Gay people tend to have to either subscribe to less common faith persuasions like Wicca or embrace a salad bar approach to their faith to find acceptance within a religious framework. Personally, I've given up on that and count myself an atheist these days. |
The problem with using the Old Testament is that before Jesus came, everyone was consigned to purgatory. In other words, you could not obtain heaven because no matter how good you believe you are you were never clean enough to be in the presence of GOD. Once Jesus came and washed away everyone sin then there is only a specific thing you must do in order to enter heaven no matter the sin you commit.
In other words, you could kill a thousand people but still enter heaven. You could commit horrible crimes and sin but still enter heaven. One of the specific issues with most people is that they know absolutely nothing about the bible and thus are easy prey to people who use specific parts of it as an agenda. As I stated, many sins have been done in the name of GOD and nothing changes as of today. When people want to use Christian or Christianity for an agenda, all they have to do is fine some specific text that says something but leave out all relevant contexts. Now I grew up in the Church but in the Church I grew up in, studying the Bible was something that was pushed from the very beginning. One of the tenants of our Pastor is how easy people can be deceived into going against GOD because they allow themselves to be used by false prophets. Meaning, Christians allow themselves to be used by people pretending to be believers in GOD and following his will because they do not know the bible.
We have many examples of such cases, Slavery. Many Christians accepted it because they convinced themselves that Black people were descendants of Cain. Inquisition, Witch Hunts, Crusades the list is long.
One main example I love to debate is Trump. I will save that discussion for another day but he is pretty much what I consider as someone who easily play the role of appearing as a Christian but actually living as one well that is debatable.
