I guess what I want to know is why does your God consider it a sin? If you were the Supreme Being and Creator of the universe, would you care if person x sleeps with person y instead of person z? I can understand being against sins like rape, murder, and adultery which cause harm to others but what is so offensive about loving someone of the same gender? If it's such an afront to the Lord, you would think Jesus would have said something about it.
Mrs JB, I think MadMax answered that for me. (Thx Max!) I am using obvious counterexamples to point out the absurdity of a not-so-obvious instance. In this case, the obvious examples (alcoholism and child molestation) shows that we reject such behaviors even if their tendencies are genetically predetermined. Therefore, using genetically predetermined tendency to justify a certain behavior is wrong. My point is, you must have ethical reasons rather than scientific reasons to justify or condemn any behavior. I see that you use "harmful to society" as the criterion. That, imo, is much better than the genetics criterion (although I think that is still not quite enough--but that's another story). We can ask the same question: Why should married people refrain from having sexual relationships with people other than their spouses when they are (obviously genetically predetermined to be) attracted to these people? Of course, there are some people who don't see having sex outside of marriage is ethically wrong (because it doesn't seem to harm the society). But many do. Why? Why is polygamy rejected in modern societies, even though it is more "natural" for men to have multiple sexual partners? Is it harmful to society? Not that obvious.
Since you find it plausible that sexuality is genetic, what would you advocate for gays and lesbians if it is ever proven that their desires are not within their control. Life long celibacy? Spaying and Neutering? So what are your ethical reasons to condemn homosexuality?
I honestly have no clue...that's why I said they were shakey beliefs. I guess I've been in a bit of a "conditioning" phase in my life where I tend to think that just about every aspect of a person's life was altered and formed by previous experiences. I can't even begin to say what I think would be the causes for someone to become gay. I'm not saying you have to be molested or have something dramatic happen to you to be gay, I think it's more subtle than that... These are shakey beliefs though that could be changed rather easily. In all honesty, I try not to think about things that don't really have clear answers (to me at least). I'm just a guy that posts too much...
I don't understand this logic at all. Keep smoking because it is only a 50% that doing so will lead to premature death? Don't worry about breast cancer screening after 50 because what you only have a 25% of getting it if you are a woman? If you can account for 50% of some human behavioral or biological outcome via genetics that is a huge component. That means it is the primary component--as we never have perfect prediction so even if there was only 1 other factor working it wouldn't account for the other 50%. I subscribe probabilities are tremendously important to our daily lives and find it funny someone would discount them because it doesn't mean definitive “proof”. Shoot, they guide the medical treatments that give us our best chance, they guide whether a plane we are on should take off, they guide how often we change our oil and tires on our car, it is the reason we get insurance to protect our home, car, or kids/life. Heck, I guarantee over 90% of us if facing a major disease are going with the treatment that gives us our best odds—not wait for some proven 100% treatment (there are none for any condition). I imagine if we waited for mr_gootan’s definition of proof we would still be saying smoking doesn’t cause cancer and HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. Similarly if being gay is 50% genetic don’t you think that is meaningful even if not meeting some unattainable level of proof across all conditions? If they identify a gene or combinations that show you have a 50% chance for some cancer don’t you think that is relevant (you would take remedial actions/precautions). Back on topic I think the dominant factor is genetic but certainly environment (larger cultural as well as specific incidents like abuse) and other biological factors (like things that happen in the womb/breast feed—nutrition, certain hormones form the mother) probably also are at work. Not to go off on you Mr_gootan—but when someone so dismissed the role of probabilities in science and our daily lives to me in shows they have not thought about how they are used to guide so much of our daily lives and the real decisions we make.
Avoided wading into this argument for days, but could no longer resist. The politically correct answer is the only one which accounts for all the variables. While clearly some cases of homosexuality, just like any other less than approved social distinction holds some appeal for a select group of peaople for various reasons; wanting to belong to a definitive community, wanting a sense of individualism, etc...and there are also probably some who have psychological reasons; father related issues, etc...those kinds of things can also be used to explain why a man might prefer brunettes, or why someone chooses to be a Clippers fan...but the point is, we cannot try and ever say it's limited to a majority of people who are reacting to some sort of socialized norm for this very reason: Society has changed and evolved for millenia, and homosexuality has been there all along. There were times when homosexuality was considered a norm, and it was extremely common. There were times when it was punishable by death, and still fairly common. And there were times, like now, when it was somewhere in between...and it's still pretty common. I don't know that you can limit the argument to genetics either...are we genetically pre-disposed to be 'butt' men vs. 'breast men'? Or prefer Asian women, blondes, tall girls etc... Can we explain our preference in music or foods by genetics? And I mean within reason, not within the self-agrandising field of genetic research, where, if you believe some of the experts, there is a genetic explanation for why you just scratched your nose... I think that, like most preferences, it's not definable by any one factor, certainly not as a qualifier. Sad to say, the PC answer, ie a mix of the above, is the only one which accounts for all the variables.
I didn't say I condemn homosexuality, did I? I said genetics were not enough to justify it. If I were a homosexual and I was trying to figure out whether it was an acceptable behavior, I wouldn't say, "Well, since I am born like that, it must be OK to do it." (I know this sounds frivolous because I am not gay, but that's the point I was trying very hard to make.) I honestly don't know what I would do if I were gay and believed it was wrong. I guess I probably would do the same thing as I do now about my attraction to sexy women who are not my wife. I got to run. Talk later.
Hey Desert Scar, I'm sorry for this misunderstanding. Part of it is due to me not wanting to derail the thread away from discussing homosexuality, and another part due to being a lazy typist. The reason BBob made me laugh was his assumption (uninformed because he doesn't know me) that I was making uninformed and unresearched assumptions because I'm a Christian. (which leads to a good question about people's views about discussions on this board. Are you optimistic in thinking everyone has a valid, well-informed point of view, or pessimistic in believing no one knows as much as you?) For it to be true, I would have to believe as he does that the editors of his stated periodicals have the unbiased authority to determine which scientific studies are accurate, repeatable, and interpreted appropriately. But just because I'm Christian, I wouldn't even bother with any scientific sources, right? C'mon... we're talkin' my eternal life here. As for probabilities, I agree that it is good science. I don't argue with the method, but the conclusions. 50%, which is a flip of the coin, isn't a solid basis to establish conclusions, but instead is a basis for furthur studies. Genetic homosexuality won't have conclusive evidence until it can be mapped to one or more genes. All other scientific methods only have the ability to prove environmental homosexuality, because the environment cannot effectively be eliminated from all consideration. {Outlaw - }Here's something I snipped - "Unlike other sins, homosexuality has a severe judgment administered by God Himself. This judgment is simple: They are given over to their passions. That means that their hearts are allowed to be hardened by their sins (Romans 1:18ff). As a result, they can no longer see the error of what they are doing. Without an awareness of their sinfulness, there will be no repentance and trusting in Jesus. Without Jesus, they will have no forgiveness. Without forgiveness, there is no salvation. " edit for above: After thinking about it at the gym, I realized this isn't what you were looking for. It essentially becomes circular logic. "Don't do it because God says so. He knows better than us." So what would a reasonable response be like? Something like, "the rectum isn't designed to produce its own lubrication, and as such trauma is more pronounced during intercourse, leaving the individual more susceptible to infection. This is magnified not only by the hostile environment that the vaginal canal presents to harmful pathogens, which the rectum lacks, but also by the monthly renewing of the uterine lining, also which is unavailable to the rectum. Ergo God doesn't want you to be needlessly sick."? I don't want to be part of that research. Jesus does validate homosexuality=sin indirectly by quoting the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy extensively. By quoting them, he validates them and in turn validates everything else contained in those books. (I can see where you could still find that a reach, though.)
I'd wager 99.9% of the people on this BBS have had premarital sex. How many have asked for forgiveness for those acts or even think they need to do so? If homosexuality offends God so much, why doesn't he do anything to stop it? Hmm. Straight people have anal sex too and what about Lesbian sex? And hard as it may seem to believe, not all gay men practice anal sex. Leviticus says a lot of things that most people today ignore: Circumcision: And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. Adultery: And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. Eating Pork: And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you.
I was in a hurry and didn't finish what I wanted to say. (And I forgot all about it!) Well, here it is. I think the "Because I am born like this, so it must be okay to do it" kind of mentality is a very dangerous approach to ethical questions. It essentially put What You Are, rather than What Is Right, as the standard to judge your behavior. (I am talking in general terms, not particularly in terms of homosexuality.) At best, it zaps away the motivation to improve, to breakthrough one's own limitations. Can you imagine Steve Francis says, "I am born to be not good at passing the ball, so it must be okay to play that way." At worse, it brings anarchy in our moral outlook, everyone the measure of his/her own behaviors. That is equivalent to zero accountability to one's own action.
I wasn't going to post, but this is a misrepresentation of my post and person. I don't judge in the alleged ways. And I don't know anything at all about mr_g except for what he posts. Let me quote your reasoning again, mr_g. That is what I was responding to: your portrayal of scientific information and public perception. The quote did not involve anything about Christianity or other religions. I don't know about your religion. And more importantly, I don't think I'm smarter than you (or anyone else not named Rimbaud or King Cheetah). outlaw, you are really cool to be so open, honest, and thick-skinned in this thread. MacB, it's a tad sloppy to label an entire field as self-aggrandizing. Jim Watson? Absolutely. A few others? Sure. But the field is full of humble, hard-working and brilliant folks who have learned so so much that may not be publicly appreciated for decades. (Not my field, by the way, but it is Mrs. B-Bob's field, hence my obvious bias. ) Again, the science media runs what people will gobble up (just like the news media does), so anything that could relate to human life and health will get mucho coverage and hype separate from whatever scientists actually believe. Genetics may be oversold, but I wouldn't pin that on the researchers just yet. JV, we tried again, and I appreciate the attempt. It is hard to get us both off our turf, but I still believe in overlap. For what it's worth, I don't at all think that you are "wasting your time" within a Christian perspective, (if that's the case). Best wishes, all, regardless of your use of natural or artificial lubricants, and their use to what ... end.
Outlaw - Thanks for tolerating me. If I have gone overboard or have offended you, please let me know. This discussion has proven invaluable to me in not only understanding you but also understanding myself. It's not easy to find a forum to openly delve into these topics like we have been doing. Thanks again for the opprtunity. Some quick responses to your questions that really deserve their own threads: Why doesn't God do something about homosexuality? Short answer: He actively loves them. Answer collage: Choice, Genesis, Sodom, Gomorrah, mercy, Jesus, justification, grace, Holy Spirit, His church, faith, disease What's the sex difference between different combinations of lovers? Short Answer: nothing (I just got carried away.) Answer comment: I agree sex doesn't equal love, but it's the sex that is the cause for concern. Love away! If people today ignore some things Leviticus says, why not ignore everything it says? My answer: You're right that a lot of what was written in Leviticus was meant for an ancient Jewish civilization with archaic medical and legal practices. Still many of these issues were revisited in the New Testament (ex. curcumcise your heart, consider more what enters your heart over what enters your mouth, let him who has no sin cast the first stone) The view on homosexuality, however, was left unchanged when revisited. So the question I now ask myself is, apart from God's Word saying it is so, why is homosexuality such a big deal? Does it hurt society? No, not if it wasn't a God fearing society to begin with. (excluding Sodom and Gomorrah) Does it hurt the participants? No (as far as I know), not if they didn't want a relationship with God in the first place. Does it hurt anybody? As far as I can see, it only hurts God and those who believe the Bible. (and this is only due to not being apart from God's Word.) So the acceptability of homosexuality isn't even the underlying question. It always goes back to the validity of the Bible. B-bob - If you reread your first response to me, I hope you can understand where my interpretation could grossly differ from your intentional meaning in context. If not, I apologize for slandering the good name of B-Bob with my misinterpretation. There are some topics where the results have ethical ramifications outside of the scientific community. This topic, being one of them, would more likely be disseminated if the genetic result was true.
No, you haven't offended me at all. You've been civil and logical in this thread and I appreciate it. The only time I do get offended about this issue is when people use the "gross out" factor as their argument against it. I'm glad to have helped you. You have helped me as well to see that not all religious people have a closed mind towards homosexuality and that some of you struggle with conflicting beliefs about it. Hopefully our sides can come to some mutual understanding one day. And thanks for sharing your lubrication theory. I couldn't stop laughing!
mr_gooten, Allow me to make a comment from my perspective. I have very similar view (and belief) of the Bible as you. And I also agree that apart from my faith, I have no good reason to object to homosexuality. I heard some arguments from sociology, biology, or ethics against homosexuality. None of them sound terribly convincing to me. So my stance on this issue is that I don't condemn homosexuals who don't share my faith any more than I condemn atheists for not worshipping God. Yes, I think homosexuality is wrong, just as I think not worshipping God is wrong. But how can I fault an atheist for not worshipping God when there is no good reason to do so apart from believing in God? Does this make sense? I just want a fellow believer to give me some feedback.
The obvious response to that argument, Mr. g, is that as some aspects of Old Testament morality were maintained while some were not, the one thing that does show about theological based moral codes is that they adapt to their times. As such, it is quite arguable that those aspects which were omitted from the New Testament were doen so as they no longer refelcted the conventional morality in question as they once had...those maintained did. But the idea that there is a univeral unchanging moral code brought down to us from on high was probably left in the dust with the anti-foreskin requisite for Almighty Approval. In short, re Biblicam moral codes, hhomosexuality, and Leviticus vs, New Testament...:If it was capable of adapting between the Babylonian captivity and the Council of Nicea, why would it then have been cemented for all eternity?
MacBeth, There's another explanation on the "change" of the biblical code. The Law in the Pentateuch were meant only to the Chosen People, namely, the Hebrews. No other peoples were required to observe these codes. The Gentiles were condemned not because they did not observe the LAW, but because they were morally corrupt. Only the Israilites were condemned for not obeying the LAW (and moral corruption). If you pay close attention to those non-transferred codes, they are all ceremonial rather than moral code. It is a big leap to conclusion that because SOME codes (ceremonial) are non-tranferable, ALL codes (including moral) are time and culture bound. Ceremonial codes are all symbolic, not morally substantive. We can all agree that symbols change from culture to culture. There are also some symbolic moral codes that are not transferable. But the substantive moral principles have not changed from the OT to the NT.
Easy... Yeah, but don't you find that to be post applied deconstructive reasoning? How do we know what what seen as substantive at the time, vs. what was later adopted, and therefore held to be substantive? It's like the old Catholic reasoning re: Papal decrees...The Pope, they contend, is incapable of error only on those issues which deal specifically with spirituality and interpreting God's will. Ok...so then the reasoning follows that any 'mistakes' made in the past were either A) Not made by a 'true' Pope, or B) as it happens, not about 'spirituality' after all. For ex. the whole Gallileo solar debate...there is no doubt that, at the time this was seen as an entirely 'spiritual' issue, as it supposedly challenged the Pope's version of the Biblical interpretation of creation, the sun in the sky ( re: Isiah), etc...so a few centuries later, when our relative position ot the sun has been proven to be of the oribital nature as Gallileo/Copernicus etc. contended, and now the Roman Catholic Church contends that this is ok, and doesn't threaten the Pope's infallibility as it wasn't in his area of perfection after all... I know you weren't speaking about the RC specifically, but that's the kind of thinking I'm talking about; The required observors of the OT were The Chosen Peopl, but the God in question makes no distiction when he translates the Law into the New Testament, and idneed it would seem to be theolgically indistuingishable with moral flixibility to adapt that code for Jews and Gentiles while, as Jesus did, symultaneously advocating a breaking down of cultural barriers to the faith, and calling himself the Son of Man. Also, in Kings, I think, the Gentiles are proscribed by God because they 'do not recognize the Laws of God.' However, as to the codes which constitute ceremony vs. those which constitute tenets of the faih, i again refer to the intial argument in this post: It's after the fact tailoring. A simple review of the month/year long arguments at the Council of Nicea et al shows that the early church made no such distinction, and in fact some of the reasoning behind the Schisms was a different interpretation on the nature, role, and specifics of ceremony in the Church doctrine. But more than that, it's too simple and convenient to say years later that some of the aspects of a code which have fallenhopelessly out of date were not as significant as those which remain, especially when A) We are unsure that our forebearers agreed at the time, therefore making it rationlization, and B) How do we then know that 500 years from now people won't dismiss aspects we currently disagree with as only ceremonial, or archaicly applied?
YOUR perception of god is not god. YOUR interpretation of the bible is not the bible. So please quit talking for god. You are making me sick. God's word is everywhere.
MacBeth, There is a distinction between the interpretation and the authority of God's word. I do not agree with the RC that there is an absolutely authoritative interpretation of the Bible. But that is very different from saying that the Bible itself is not absolutely authoritative so that we can just ignore it. It is like the Constitution of the US. It is the absolute authority of the nation. Yet we can argue all we want about the interpretation of it. (Maybe not "we" but, you know. . . the "experts". . . ) But that is far from saying that since there is no absolute interpretation, we can just ignore it and make our own laws. As you have observed, there have been debates on all sorts of things throughout Church History (and Jewish History). But as long as the Church respect the absolute authority of the Bible, the core beliefs (not forms) of the faith has not deviated very much even with vast changes of cultures. I don't think saying that some codes are symbolic, some are substantive is just some kind of "after the fact" argument. Nor are the interpretations arbitrary. While they certainly are influenced by historical context, they are not JUST historical products.
