Homosexuality

[dingchavez]

Yes. There is no doubt that God struck down the cities of Sodom and Gammorah because they were filled with homosexual individuals. Therefore it impossible for there to be a Christian homosexual.

I'm pretty sure if you go by all that Old Testament bollocks its impossible for anyone to be Christian nowadays.

Eat any pork lately? Any tattos? You're going to hell.

[kami]

I'm pretty sure if you go by all that Old Testament bollocks its impossible for anyone to be Christian nowadays.

Eat any pork lately? Any tattos? You're going to hell.

Thank you for that point. Nobody is a true Christian these days. It is impossible in this day and age to follow all the teachings in the bible to a T. I haven't read the bible, so I don't know any specific examples, but I'm betting all you Christians out there have gone against something said in the bible. By my definition, Christians are people that believe in God and use the teachings of Jesus as guidelines for their lives.

I do wonder if there are more homosexual males than females. It seems like either they are more common, more obvious, more open, or just more publicly criticized.

[wondering]

I'm pretty sure if you go by all that Old Testament bollocks its impossible for anyone to be Christian nowadays.

Eat any pork lately? Any tattos? You're going to hell.

Have you read the Bible? If not, about that pork:
Romans 14
2 One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables.
3 The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him.
4 Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
5 One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
6 He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.


Acts 10
Peter went up on the roof to pray.
10 He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance.
11 He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners.
12 It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air.
13 Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."
14 "Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."
15 The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."

About the tattoo:
Romans 18
13 Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way. 14 As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. 15 If your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died. 16 Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil. 17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, 18 because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men



Now, sorry about pounding bible verse after bible verse on you, but I wouldn't have done that if it wasn't for the fact that you said if I ate pork and had a tattoo then I'd go to the hell, lol. Now, how did all of that even relate to this? lol, I was only trying to disprove a point used in this thread.

[dingchavez]

You missed the point. Thoses verses are from the New Testament.

Most of the hardline stuff about gays is from the Old Testament. Which is where the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is from. The point was the stuff in the Old Testament is hardline about a lot of silly things that most christians disregard. With pork and tattos being only two examples.

Leviticus 11:7 Regard the pig as unclean, for though has a cloven hoof, it does not chew the cud.'
Leviticus 11:8 'Do not eat their meat or touch their dead bodies. You will regard them as unclean.'
Leviticus 19:28 'And do not put tattoo marks on yourselves.'

How about the part where you have to kill your family if they try convert you? Or the rule that says you can't trim the edges of your beard? Or the stoning of new wives that are not virgins?

[crystalgazer]

^ Thanks for those points, ding. I think people like to apply the words of their holy book of choice literally when it suits them, forgetting that if you're going to do that with one section, it's only fair and logical that you follow it all literally - if you don't want to do that, don't take any of it literally; it's quite simple.

I have a great deal of sympathy for homosexual people; it saddens me greatly that people are discriminated and ridiculed because of who they love and are attracted to, just because it makes narrow-minded people uncomfortable. The vast, vast, vast majority of the time, who a gay person decides to get with doesn't affect a straight person in any conceivable way, so why in the world is there any reason to judge them? Why do you care, people who dislike gay people? As for whether gay people are born that way, I think it's a non-issue; I believe you love who you love, and you should never be discriminated against because of that.

I heard somewhere that around 10% of the population can be expected to be homosexual, so there should be just as many female gay people as male. I think that society tends to ignore female homosexuals and bisexuals by and large; male homosexuals are more targeted and noticed probably because what constitutes 'manliness' and 'masculinity' in society is much stricter than what's considered female and feminine, though simply ignoring a sub-set of society isn't right either.

[kami]

I heard somewhere that around 10% of the population can be expected to be homosexual, so there should be just as many female gay people as male.

I don't think the one in ten figure is quite accurate. Here is some information I dug up from the internet. Also, I have a question: Do you guys, in general, have more against homosexual males than females? Do they seem worse?

D. More revealing: gay leaders now admit to abusing the 10% figure for their own gain

NY Times 4/16: "Gay leaders have contended that the number of gay and lesbian Americans was around 10 percent, a figure that many of them suspected to be inflated. But they repeated the number often, they said, as a way of encouraging the nation’s large population of closeted homosexuals to be open about their sexual identity."

Newsweek, 2/15: "Some gay activists now concede that they exploited the Kinsey estimate for its tactical value, not its accuracy. ‘We used that figure when most gay people were entirely hidden to try to create an impression of our numerousness,’ says Tom Stoddard, former head of the Lambda Legal Defense Fund."

III. Kinsey’s Role in History of 10% Figure

A. Before Kinsey, homosexuality considered fairly rare

1. Medical and psychiatric communities speculated that the figure was around 2% or so

Kinsey’s claims

a. 10% predominantly homosexual for at least 3 years of adulthood
b. 18% bisexual or homosexual for at least 3 years of adulthood
c. 4% exclusively gay throughout adulthood
d. 37% of men with some post-pubertal homosexual experience

V. The Truth as Best We Know It

A. FRI research: we examined over 35 of "best" studies available
D. Findings on homosexual orientation

1. Overall, certainly less than 4%, probably around 2-3% M, 2% F are homosexual or bisexual
2. The best studies include

a. USA:

Bell/Weinberg 1970 – < 2% total M and F (ratings of siblings)
Cameron/Ross 1975-78 – 3.1% M, 3.9% F
FRI 1983 – 5.4% M, 3.6% F (4,340 respondents)
Trocki 1988-89 – 3% M, 2% F
NCHS 1988-91 – ² 3.5% M (over 50,000 respondents)
Catania/NABS 1992 – 2% M, 2% F (4% in urban areas; 10,600 respondents)
Billy/Battelle 1993 – ³ 1.1% M

b. Denmark

Schmidt 1987 – 0.6% M

c. Canada

MacDonald 1988 – 2% total M and F (> 5,500 college student respondents)

3. Median of studies listed above: 2% M, 2% F

Upper Quartile: 3.3% M, 3.7% F

[wondering]

You missed the point. Thoses verses are from the New Testament.

Most of the hardline stuff about gays is from the Old Testament. Which is where the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is from. The point was the stuff in the Old Testament is hardline about a lot of silly things that most christians disregard. With pork and tattos being only two examples.

And you don't seem to get what Jesus did with the Old Testament. So allow me to explain. The purpose of Jesus' life and work was to fulfill both the Law (the books of Moses) and the Prophets (other Old Testament books). I'm not saying he destroyed the Old Testament. But that doesn't mean that Christians have to keep circumcision and all the other old laws. Jesus' ministry caused many changes in the law- changes so dramatic that laws were "set aside" or declared "obsolete" (Heb. 7:18; 8:13). Some laws remained the same, some were changed, and others were "abolished" (Eph. 2:15).
When Jesus said, "I have not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets," he meant that the purpose and message of the Law and the Prophets remain exactly the same. The Law and the Prophets pointed to him and were intended from the beginning to be fulfilled by him.
Some of the specific laws of the old covenant are still valid, but many of them were set aside when Jesus came and fulfilled them by his life, death and resurrection.
Old covenant laws (such as the laws of sacrifice) have been set aside precisely because Jesus has fulfilled them. He did not come for the purpose of destroying those laws, but for fulfilling their meaning. However, by fulfilling their meaning, he made it unnecessary for Christians to keep those laws. They are unnecessary because they have served their purpose by pointing to Jesus. He is the reality to which they could only point. Now that he has come, they are no longer legally binding.
Yet because they point to Jesus Christ and show how God interacted with a group of people at one time and place, the old covenant laws continue to give us insights into God's will. Even the laws of sacrifice are "useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness" (2 Tim. 3:16).
Jesus also fulfilled various laws about ritual cleanliness. That did not mean that he never became unclean, because anyone with normal bodily functions would occasionally become unclean (Deut. 23:10). Jesus also touched dead people, lepers and other causes of uncleanness. It was not a sin to be unclean. However, Jesus fulfilled the purpose of the purity laws: He was morally and spiritually pure. He had internal holiness, set apart to do the work of God.
Jesus fulfilled the purpose of God's laws. He did not destroy the fact that people should obey God, even though his crucifixion brought a change in some of the details of how they obey God.
Jesus, as the Son of God, has more authority than Moses had (Heb. 3:1-6) or any other Prophets of the Old Testament for that matter. Jesus is the standard by which Moses is judged. Jesus could quote the law of Moses when it supported his point, and he could also criticize the law of Moses as not being strict enough. In some cases the law of Moses requires too much, and in other cases it does not require enough.
Jesus said: Moses said one thing, but I say another (Matt. 5:21-45). Jesus presented himself as the greater authority, the perfect authority, the basis on which people will be judged.
In Christianity, some of the laws of Moses are still valid, and others are not (for an example of each, the law about murder and the law about tassels). How do we know which is valid and which is obsolete? The New Testament is the authority by which the old covenant is to be understood.
Although the Old Testament is inspired Scripture and part of the Word of God, its purpose was to point to the coming and work of Jesus Christ. Therefore, when it comes to understanding what is required for Christian behavior, the Old Testament must be interpreted in light of what the New Testament says.
But hey, I say we just drop it and go back to the original topic.


Personally I don't really care if somebody is a homosexual or not. It's not like I'm going to burn everyone of them on a stake. It's their choice....

[kami]

But hey, I say we just drop it and go back to the original topic.

Thank you. I would appreciate that.

Personally I don't really care if somebody is a homosexual or not. It's not like I'm going to burn everyone of them on a stake. It's their choice....

I don't think people choose to be homosexual. If you had a choice, would you be homosexual? I highly, highly doubt it. Nobody wants to be different in that sense, and have to cope with everyone else's disapproval of their actions. People can choose to hide their homosexuality, they can choose to deny it, but they can't just not be it.

[Pirouette]

Is it wrong to be homosexual? Is it against God? Can people choose not to be homosexual? Are people born that way? Is it a crime against nature? Are any of the homosexual stereotypes true? Are there more homosexual males than females?

No, it's not wrong to be homosexual. The thing is, you can't choose whether or not you want to be homosexual. It just happens.
Personally, I don't think it's against God. God created humans and love each and every single one of us. At least that's what I think.
I don't think people can choose not to be homosexual. As mentioned in my first few sentences, it is who people are and part of people's identity.
Some people are born knowing they're homosexual and others not so.
It is definitely not a crime against nature. How could it be?
Stereotypes are stereotypes and most of them are not even close to being true.
Are there more homosexual males than females? <--That, I'm not too sure of.

[SnifflingDarK]

sorry if weve offended ya snifflingdark, but even though i know its morally wrong to judge people, everyone does it and I do too. I judge people. Someones past makes them do something, its cool with me. Just because I dont agree with them, I try not to be overtly biased towards them. If a female that I liked used to be homosexual or is bisexual, as long as she is faithful to me, her past is important but not the deciding factor.

no i am not offened i get it all the time besides the world is filled all kinds of poeple and all are a little different and have our own minds to make up about the world with live in