Homosexuality and the Bible

Scripture is not the ally Christian homophobes think it is. By Bishop John Shelby Spong

www.theposition.com...

"Quoting the Bible is not a legitimate argument to deploy in the current ecclesiastical and cultural debate on homosexuality."

well, that saves a lot of time.
probably explains why he scarcely bothers to.

Where do you find these people, Nans?

Funny. I'm currently reading another title by the same author called; Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism.
A very interesting read. Some good arguments and theology,,,,,for a protestant.

Saw the argument he had concerning Homo's.

That aside, still a very good read.

[Edited on 20-5-2003 by Maddas]

US posters will be more familiar with this tedious, self-promoting old f*rt!
Former Bishop of Newark (Noo Joizee, that is) and he is to modesty and self-restraint what Genghiz Khan was to interior decorating.

There is a story in the new testament that promote homosexuality...............
If someone here on ATS could quote the all text, it would be great

It is a story with a roman centurion who called jesus in order to cure one of his slaves................
After having cured the slave (a man of course.......) Jesus say something like that to the roman that thanks him for the miracle :
Jesus to the Roman "in all my life, i have never seen such faith that yours"

It is most probable that the roman was homosexual, and was loving his slave..............
At that time homosexuality existed, and Roman centurion owned thousands of slaves. Slaves were cheap for these generals.
That is why we can suspect this roman general of homosexuality.

Moreover jesus has never said anything against homosexuals. He always promote tolerance and never punishment in his speechs (with him no hell or Paradise, only "one after life" : the "God kingdom" where all humans will go, but however didn t enter in it in the same way in function of the sins)

To be clear : Jesus was never against homosexuality, he always promote tolerance and love.
Moreover he helpt a roman that could seriously be an homosexual............

Here we go : the rift between jesus and the Church................

I was wondering if I should bother replying to vzh's post. Dont think its worth it...

Dragonrider send me via mail a link that I cant post on ATS and I watch closer the site and found this article.
That was a good occasion because it's a long time I would like to post a thread about religion and homosexuality.

I haven't read the article yet, but I will when I get home for this is one of my favorite subjects that make people's true light shine through. So called Christians who quote from the bible in order to prove that God hates homosexuals and homosexuality and thereby this somehow justifies their hate, instead of reading a bit of parallell history and look into religious customs in the specific area mentioned. What's mentioned in Leviticus isn't homosexuality in general, but religious rituals of the Ba'al worship that was especially deployed there. The same is the deal with Paul in NT. He's addressing hethen customs directly connected to hethen religious rituals. He also speeks of married men who're leaving their wives -- adultary. Both places it is about grave cases of adultary. It's about sex outside marriage, and Leviticus simply points out that it is still concidered fornication and adultary when a man has sex with another man, or let's say a woman to have sex with a calf. Not just regular sex between man and woman. There are no grey sones in the question of adultary. That's the point Moses is giving. If you read the Prophets, you also learn that the sex part of Sodom was merely a secondary reason behind why God destroyed the city, and it was because they did it religiously -- in God's presence (and they worked abomination before me) inside their temples. It was their general unrightiousness that made God destroy the city.

We know that homosexual behaviour is a gene thingy, it exists in all parts of the animal kingdom. One day it will be possible to cure homosexuality just like it will be possible to cure people from certain types of cancer that is genetically conditioned through genetic engeneering.

Blessings,
Mikromarius

What would be the use? People write books trying to rationalize what the Bible says or take things out of context to make a point, when all the reader would have to do to find out they bought junk would be to read the Bible for themselves.

Perfect example of silly rationalization, and I'm sure you're heard it, is where they try and say that God got mad at the townsfolk of Sodom for not being friendly enough to the strangers. Reaching for straws.

Saving the Bible from "fundamentalism" translates into "Playing down the parts of the Bible that curtails our selfish desires."

As the world gets more and more narcissistic, these attacks on the Bible will get more frequent. Why not merely ignore it? Because the Holy Spirit is still here, and He pricks the consciounce, and that makes them feel bad. So they attack.

Spong is a sad case. Someone who twists the basic scriptures either for publicity or to push his own barrow.

I am glad that I won't have to stand before God after saying the things this person has. Liberal theologans can be worse than non-christians.

Rationalisation? Wow man. What in the world is more rational than the Torah? We're speeking of a law here, not some feelydealy love poem. If advocates and judges had treated the law like most religious people treat the Biblical Law, we would have our prisons full of lambs and the streets full of wolves, but what do I know? Perhaps it's their strategy...

A law is rational, God is rational, Kingship is rational... Why should we treat the Bible in a different manner? What the people who shouts rationalism infact does is to rationalise God's Love, for they say the bible condemn all gays, even the virgin ones while saying afterwards that we are all set free from the Law. BS. The thing is that the Law is a rational thing, dealing with crime in a rational manner. When someone is convicted by the Law, he may plead his case before the Judge and the King. If he is guilty, he may still find mercy with the King, but what would be the point with a king if his love is rationalised and systemised? God's Law is rational. God's Love is irrational. If we follow the school of Jesus on the Law, we learn that the reason we are set free from the Law, is that Jesus knows the Law better than Satan, and can win over him in the Court of Doom. Because the Law is the written Jesus. He knows himself better than anyone else.

Blessings,
Mikromarius

PS: the Church has made many of the good deeds of the Law into something disgusting. Being rational is another word for being just and rightious: To treat everyone with the same letter of the same law. And a procelute is one man won over to Christ, but "proceluting" has become a word of hate in the mouth of the pastors and priests. To the people who say God hates homosexuals and say we who try to set some free through the Law are rationalising proceluters: You can go church yourselves!

"Perfect example of silly rationalization, and I'm sure you're heard it, is where they try and say that God got mad at the townsfolk of Sodom for not being friendly enough to the strangers."

Not being friendly enough? That's an understatement, isn't it? Maybe I'm remembering wrong here, but didn't the townsfolk rape the strangers? (i.e. angels)

Nans, the christians, the jews and the muslims are against homosexuality. Not only one of them, but ALL of them.

In Sodom like in many other cities in the surrounding area at the time they followed the Ba'al customs. According to these laws any stranger coming to town was commanded to partcipate in their Ba'al rituals. They had these rituals in the blind faith that if they didn't, the gods (who are the sons of God we meet in the beginning of Job) would destroy their crops and send evil spirits who would close the woumbs of their wives etc. They believed they could calm down the angels by making love to the highest Ba'al (which we know from the golden calf incident by Horeb) by literally ing a calf (if you were a woman) or by, well, the man and man thing in the poo poo hole, to symbolise something else. Ashera pillars were giant falli or big penises that symbolised sex between the Earth (Geb) and the sky (Nut). They did these things in blind faith, thinking that if they didn't, the gods would destroy them by making them fruitless. Well we all saw what happened, it was the other way around. Their ungodly customs lead them to destruction.

Today we are too blinded by the view of the church that sex is a sin in the first place, that original sin was sex, that the tree and the fruit and the snake are somewhat images of sex and genitals. That isn't true, and only shows how far out the Church has become because of their no sex policy.

God loves that we have sex, but from rational reasons (just ask the Italian Mafia or daboyzndahood) sex outside marriage is condemned to avoid problems like people stabbing others in the back because someone had sex with someone's woman etc. Back then it was the other way around. Sex was the gift from the gods, and it was the worshippers' duty to satisfy the gods with symbolic and actual sex. And what was more natural for them than to incorporate it into their religious rituals? We baptise people, they had sex with them. It's as simple as that really! But God hated these ways and destroyed these cities as he saw fit. Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Sebbojjim. If you ask me it was because they raped people, not because they were gay. They were not more gay in Sodom back then than they are in the Vatican or London today. But they looked uppon sex as something holy, abit too holy some would add.

I believe the true path is to marry and make children. To eat healthy food and worship God as Love, and to obey whatever King Jesus (Heaven) and the Word (Earth) tells us to at any time (but times and life has changed since 30 AD, so listen to what the Spirit tells you to do...).

Blessings,
Mikromarius

Isn't that a load of crap. That's generalisation of the grousiest. There are many within all denominations who knows how to read the letter of the Law, and more still who have a heart, who would plead before the Lord day and night that their gay brothers might be saved through the Law. What you have to think about here is that these religions have been important tools in war, they have been born in wars and refined in war, and homosexual behaviour isn't healthy on the barracs. Ask your officer if it's OK to even wank off. It isn't a sin (yeah just come with the Onan story and I'll teach you a lesson), but still it's demoralising and deserves a reprimandum. I'll say like Uriah Heep: "This is a thing I've never known before, it's called easy living!" To make things easy, no sex should be allowed when you are in war, not with your girl, not with someone you find on the way, not with your brother in arms, not with yourself, not with a duck, but with your wife when you come home or the woman you'll marry when you come home (may Arch Michael always light a candle for saint Uriah to remind us of his love for his brothers in arms, and the folly of king David! Uriah was better and more just than the king when he slept by the gate that night).

Blessings,
Mikromarius

[Edited on 20-5-2003 by mikromarius]

[Edited on 20-5-2003 by mikromarius]

And since they can't all be right, that means at least two of them are wrong.
Likely all three.
So now you have three belief systems that are each flawed in some way, that all disagree with homosexuality...
Not a very strong case against, really.

St. Paul writes, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).
We sin when we pervert what God has given us as good, falling short of His purposes for us. Our sins separate us from God (Isaiah 59:1, 2), leaving us spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1).
To save us, the Son of God assumed our humanity, and being without sin "He condemned sin in the flesh" (Romans 8:3).
In His mercy, God forgives our sins when we confess them and turn from them, giving us strength to overcome sin in our lives. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (I John 1:9).

"Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38).

The New Testament records how St. Paul ordered the discipline of excommunication for an unrepentant man involved in sexual relations with his father's wife (I Corinthians 5:1-5).


In the New testament, St. Paul condemns male prostitutes and homosexuals (I Corinthians 6:9-11).
In the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans (Romans 1:24-32), he also judges it as unnatural . Homosexuals are included elsewhere among the immoral persons who, St. Paul says, deserve judgement by God (I Timothy 1:10).
There is no example in all of the New Testament of approval, acceptance, or even tolerance of homosexuality.
St. Paul writes, "Do you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body..." (I Corinthians 6:19, 20).


The marriage bed is to be kept "pure and undefiled" (Hebrew 13:4),


People will always look to the easy wide path to follow because it is easy for them...........while the long and narrow path has obstacles to overcome , you strive to goodness and learn to overcome the things that in the end will do you harm.........

Jesus Christ did not go around telling people that this was wrong or that............He taught that all sin can be wiped clean if one aknowledges it and confesses of that sin...........whether the sin be small or big.........
If one cannot see their sin..........then one cannot be cleansed from it............

No they wanted to rape them but the person gave his daughters up instead and they raped her.

My whole take on this is "He who has not sined cast the first stone"

[Edited on 20-5-2003 by abstract_alao]

Thou Shall Not Judge.

but lets only follow what suits us.

You're both wrong. When Gabriel and Raphael entered Sodom, Lot gave them food and shelter. Later the townsfolk (do you still use that word? It almost sound Norwegian) surrounded the house in order to fullfill the Law of Sodom according to the Ba'al customs: that every stranger who slept over in the town had 2 "have sex with the gods". Lot, who was a rightious man knowing that the two strangers in his house had been sent by God tried everything in his power to make the townsmen dissapare, in shame, he finally tried to offer them his daughters to make them go away (we learn from 2nd Judges that this was unrightious). The townsfolk didn't want his daughters, they were too lawful and godsfearing, and didn't want to see their town being destroyed because some "idiot" closed his door because of some "silky strangers" (anyone who knows about telepathy and writing and how it works through time should understand what I'm saying now) didn't want to see them live. Well Raphael and the Great shook their heads and looked uppon Lot with the look: "How the hell did this guy end up here in the first place". They didn't want the mob to have sex with anyone except their wives, gods as they are, so they confused them with mirrors and twisted dimentions, and they finally went home. And the morning after, Gabe and Raphie sent the Lot family out while they did the things their Key-of-Law demanded.

Blessings,
Mikromarius

[Edited on 21-5-2003 by mikromarius]