Gays vs. the bible -- "USA Today" debate

[adamblast]

Looks like some baptist minister wrote a pro-gay editorial in USA Today on Monday, so the debate is raging in their online edition...

When religion loses its credibility

Galileo was persecuted for revealing what we now know to be the truth regarding Earth’s place in our solar system. Today, the issue is homosexuality, and the persecution is not of one man but of millions. Will Christian leaders once again be on the wrong side of history?

By Oliver "Buzz" Thomas

Last paragraph:

The suffering that gay and lesbian people have endured at the hands of religion is incalculable, but they can look expectantly to the future for vindication. Scientific facts, after all, are a stubborn thing. Even our religious beliefs must finally yield to them as the church in its battle with Galileo ultimately realized. But for religion, the future might be ominous. Watching the growing conflict between medical science and religion over homosexuality is like watching a train wreck from a distance. You can see it coming for miles and sense the inevitable conclusion, but you're powerless to stop it. The more church leaders dig in their heels, the worse it's likely to be.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2006/11/when_religion_l.html
_______________________________

As you might expect, some of the religious bile in the letters/responses is striking.

Glad USA Today saw fit to print it, though... Thoughts?

[ThomCat]

1. Wow. I'm impressed that US McNews

printed that. :applause:

[LeftCoast]

2. Ultimately, this is why 'the big religions' have zero credibility with me

In a sense, being gay has given me a special ability to determine whether a religion is BS or not. If they tell me that being gay is a choice and evil then I know they're full of shit and don't have to pay any further attention to them.

[adamblast]

4. I wish it'd been that easy for me...

...unfortunately I swallowed fundamentalist christianity hook-line-sinker at just the wrong age: about a year before realizing I was gay, at puberty. I'm *still* trying to detox the hidden corners of my brain.

[LeftCoast]

10. I did have the added blessing of not being raised in a strongly religious

household. That certainly helped.

[Sapphocrat]

6. They're projecting.

Religion is the choice.

And when you point that out, their heads explode, like Peter Brady's volcano. And it's just as much fun to watch.

[ThomCat]

9. Very true.

:D

[LeftCoast]

11. That is a very good point!

I hadn't really thought of it that way.

[mitchtv]

15. It's a kind of

"Godar" I have it too

[LeftCoast]

16. LOL! That's a perfect name for it!

:thumbsup:

[The Deacon]

3. Ho Hum

Doesn't matter to me whether Science discovers that homosexuality is innate (which I suspect.) It is a matter of HUMAN RIGHTS, something which doesn't require the imprimatur of Science.
By the way - count for me again the number of times Jesus mentioned homosexuality. Oh. Zero. Hmmm...guess He really didn't consider it a Big Threat, eh? Not like Hypocrisy. (And don't tell me about Deuteronomy or Leviticus - those are the Old Covenant, which Jesus replaced.)

[orpupilofnature57]

7. Kick ! Jesus took the religion out of spirituality ,mentioned only Lust which is

multi-sexual ,and yes he spoke of pureness of motive, the spirit of forgiveness, and Greed and it's evils ,but no not once is homosexuality mentioned by Jesus ,Biggest point often missed is, Jesus superseded the old testament in every area ,and for those with ears they understood and judged not.

[Sapphocrat]

5. Reverse the subject line...

...it's never been "Gays vs. the Bible," but "The Bible vs. Gays."

Otherwise, I read the piece, and it gives me hope that not everyone wants to stone us in the streets. Most of them, yes, but not everyone.

[davidinalameda]

23. actually it's the misinterpretation of the Bible v. Gays

there are plenty of Christians and Jews who don't use the Bible to condemn gays and lesbians

[Mythsaje]

8. This is what I posted...

Not much of a debate, actually. I see a lot of "I believe what I'm told to believe" and a lot of pseudo-intellectual "well, Paul said this and this and this."

Paul was an sexist, bigoted idiot and Christ, had he met him while still alive, probably would've tossed him out on his donkey.

This is the same quality of discourse that happened surrounding the issues of slavery, civil rights, and interracial marriage. Some people will continue to justify bigotry and hatred regardless of anything anyone says or any scientific evidence to the contrary.

"Well, we can't hate black people any more, but at least we can hate gays!"

Good luck with that.

[JeremyWestenn]

12. Thank the Gods I'm a Pagan.

Notice how these people all but refuse to respond to the crack pot versus in the Bible? Condeming interracial marriage, death for sassing parents, condoning slavery, and cutting off your hand if you jack off? These people are crazy batshit men and woman in a dying religion.

I'm happy the freaks in mine tend to be young and not stick around.

[Mythsaje]

13. Most of the time pagans know more about the bible than

most Christians.

[RedXIII]

14. tsk,tsk, christians never seem to learn,

Because during the dark ages Charlemange conquered Saxons and he gave them 2 options either convert and be baptized or be executed,so he killed them all when they refused.{the following information can be gotten from the Book," A World Lit Only By Fire"} and it also goes on about how the author of the Worm's version of the bible was persecuted and stuff,read to learn about how the so called christians haven't changed.

[Occulus]

18. Just remember: they are ALL christians and they are ALL following the faith.

Without exception.

Which makes the faith itself pretty goddamn motherfucking sick in and of itself.

[Occulus]

17. So... I have to wait hundreds of years for the church to admit it is wrong? n/t

[Vorta]

19. never debate religion in the context of gay rights

Unless you want to do it for exercise. The Catholic Church has had 2000 years to come up with answers to every imaginable question. They may not be good answers, though some are pretty well done, but they are the answers they have and they believe them. It is pointless to argue with these people, and that includes all those people who think the Catholic Church is illegitimate and somehow reason that upstart congregational churches are the "real" church. Me thinks the latter is the piano imagining that it has written the concerto.

[bluedawg12]

20. It's about fairness.

Faith is personal a belief. It is borne of deep and often life-long reinforcements made by family, peer groups, and sometimes school, viz. parochial schools.

Faith is not based on reason so it can’t be debated with reason.

There is a branch of theology called apologetics that claims to prove faith, God, etc.

For a closer look at Apologetics link to this:

http://www.catholic.com/library/Starting_Out_as_an_Apologist.asp

I have heard some of these arguments and wonder why they bother. After all as Teilhard De’Chardin said: faith is a leap. Also, the apologetics tend be self referential a kind of looping reasoning, You start off with a premise, such as God is truth and go from their to prove that because God cannot lie God must exist, etc.

Now, the church has a history of being anti-science and the inquisition is a powerful historical example of virulent self righteousness and ignorance gone horribly amuck. Eventually, the idea that the earth was not the center of the universe seeped in but it took a long time and many were murdered to keep that truth from becoming accepted.

The anti-gay position of the universal church is not derived from one peep or quote attributed to Jesus. It derives from middle eastern values, long established, 3,000 years prior to Christ, through the Mosaic laws of the people of Israel. This was the background of Saul, later St. Paul who, did not espouse marriage, but had to add something about sexual needs and reproductive needs, so he, a man who remained single, wrote about marriage as the other state besides celibacy. He also brought with him his background from the Mosaic laws and simply echoed Leviticus in his writings in regards to homosexuality.

Now, how does this relate to debating fairness issues, a political concept, to dealing with religious arguments against homosexuality itself? It does not. As previously stated, walk away, don’t argue. The issue is not wether being and behaving in line with ones sexuality is an abomination or not. If someone believes it is- that’s intrinsic to them, at least for the moment.

The issues at hand are this: this is the 21st century, in a land that espouses it’s mission to promote life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to it’s citizen’s. To be fair, the right to life, liberty ad the pursuit of happiness cannot be restrained or restricted or abridged by one group against another, if the group seeking rights is of no harm to themselves and society.

That’s where the efforts for our debate need to focus.

Do the research and develop good arguments to counter the claims that gays are bad for society, bad for families, intrinsically mentally ill.

This is the argument that radical right wing would be tyrants fear, they know that the facts of the matter are not in their favor. This is why it was so important to them to stack the court with conservatives, who, euphemistically, were called strict constructionists.
After all the founding fathers did not specifically mention gay rights, or reproductive rights did they?

Once again, as with St. Paul, it is the interpretation of man, and the selective readings by man, that is used as a way to prop up a concept of the greater good. Because, in strict constructionist terms, there should be no emancipation of slaves, nor should there be any constitutional amendments- excepts when it suits a power hungry elite, then, watch them pay lip service to a national, federal, constitutional amendment to “protect” marriage.

[NMMNG]

21. Good article

Mostly disgusting responses. Did you see this tripe from "Susan from Nevada"?

Tolerance already exists. (And please dont bring up Matthew Sheppard - his murderer admitted that he only killed him for money; didn't even know he was gay!)

Yeah, mere robbers always take their victims to secluded areas, strap them to fences and then beat them to death. :eyes:

[donco6]

22. Here's my favorite reply:

JG -

Sure, it'd be nice if you 'approved' of homosexuality. But I'm not asking for your approval. You don't have to invite me and my partner of 18 years over for tea. You don't have to walk our gay dog in our gay park in our gay neighborhood, as we dutifully pay our gay taxes. You don't have to carpool in our gay truck.

You can pretend we don't exist. You can sit at home and fume about how much we are sinning.

But what you can't do is use the force of law to make life difficult for us. You can't refuse us medical coverage, hospital visitation rights, and the 1000 plus benefits that straight married couples automatically get.

No one is demanding your approval. But we are demanding that you stop treating us like second class citizens, and we are demanding that you act like a civilized human being and stop making life hard for us.

As for the 'gay agenda' you refer to, please tell me what that is. I've known I'm gay for 35 years. Yet in that entire time no one has clued me in on the gay agenda.

Since you seem familiar with it, please tell me what it is.

My 'gay agenda' is to be happy with my partner and family and friends. To lead a decent life, filled with love and decency.

Funny. That sounds a lot like the average 'straight agenda'. Except you seem to have forgotten the part about love and decency, at least toward others.

Wish I'd written it. It says exactly what I think about this whole thing.

[TaleWgnDg]

24. What causes me to *pause* and ponder . . .

.

What causes me to *pause* and ponder . . . is wtf is this bile-filled right-leaning hate mongering that is passing as "evangelical" religion? What has happened in America? Why this turn in America? Why this so-called "fundamentalist" religion?

And, why religion at all?

Europe is backing away from its hundreds -- no, thousands of years -- of religious war-mongering amongst themselves. Odd but as Europe is tossing away religion in the twenty-first century, America is embracing extremist religions where Europe left off.

Seriously.

It's a puzzle. The answer that I come up with . . . is that it is ignorance. Plain and simple ignorance. Extreme religion banks on the ignorant. Europe has been there and done that and has learned the hard way, America has not and must evolve through it and out the other end.

Dammit, why the hell should I, and millions of other Americans, be negatively impacted by the learning curve of American ignorants?



.

[RedXIII]

25. Yeah i know...

And it seems that christians today seem to forget that their religion was spread by the sword during the middle ages,like there is a story in "A World Lit only by fire" that Charlemange(Charles the Great) conquered Saxons and gave them two options,to be baptized or be killed and he killed them all.

Please note i'm not degrading all christians because there are many progressive liberal christians like DignityUSA.