I mostly wanted to bring up the tribal identification part, not snark at you about bringing a sports metaphor into P&R. Apologies if some of the wide-angle spray from my post got on you ;)
No worries!
The thing is, I’ve heard a particular sentiment expressed by a lot of parents trying to deal with gay kids, and from religious types: That homosexuality is an urge most people get but good people suppress. I’ve seen tons of gay kids who came out to their parents say that one of their parents said something along the lines of “Well I had those feelings in high school too, but I never acted on them, why do you have to?” And clergy going "Yes, we’re all tempted to do that kind of thing, it’s a test Satan gives us (or a test our own inherent sinfulness as humans make us vulnerable to) and if we’re just strong enough or distract ourselves with healthy behaviors homosexual desires will eventually go away.
I’ve always found these sentiments remarkable, bordering on incredible (that people are willing to express them outright like that), but I’ve seen them expressed so many times I have to accept them as a real thing.
It leads me to believe several things.
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The number of people who…lets not say they’re gay, but who feel significant same-sex attraction at some point in their lives is way higher than we generally assume.
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This has become a bit of a joke, but truly: The people who are really, really upset about homosexuality are very likely to be struggling with their own homosexual feelings, either currently or sometime in the past.
But in regard to this particular discussion, it also leads me to believe that for a whole lot of people who believe homosexuality is a sin, homosexuality is a vice, not a group identification. This goes along with all the sentiments you see from conservatives that merely having extended contact with gays will tempt people over into being gay, in schools or in the army.
Isn’t that generally borne out by psych research?
But in regard to this particular discussion, it also leads me to believe that for a whole lot of people homosexuality is a vice, not a group identification. This goes along with all the sentiments you see from conservatives that merely having extended contact with gays will tempt people over into being gay, in schools or in the army.
This is possibly the one thing in this whole “debate” that drives the gay folks I know completely bonkers. Every single gay-identified person I’ve talked to about the subject (yay, anecdata!) has used the strongest language to assure me that being gay is not at all a choice for them; it’s how the sexual attraction bits of their brain are wired.
I just don’t buy it, although you may be right. These folks have convinced themselves that they think homosexuality is a vice, when in reality it’s an excuse to bond together with a common enemy.
I can add to the anecdata by saying that the last thing I ever wanted, coming from the very boring family I come from, was to be “different.” So yeah, not a choice for me at all.
Those wily Christians. They always have a way to drag you into their own game. It feels good to point out all the crazy contradictions of their faith but they’ve been living with those contradictions for a couple millennia now.
Of course it’s not REALLY a choice. Hugin is pointing out that most people who condemn it believe it is a choice. He’s adding that for many the choice is not the attraction itself, but ACTING on that attraction. And surely you would admit that acting on those urges IS a choice, just as acting on heterosexual urges is a choice.
Why? It’s exactly the same logic they use for any other sort of “non-approved” sex. To them same-sex is just an extreme form of the sex-before-marriage sin.
And what is really ironic: the basis of Christianity is that no one is better than anyone else. “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” The entire premise of Christianity is that God doesn’t grade on a curve. If you overeat you are as guilty as if you steal someone’s wife and then conspire to have the husband killed (that was David, BTW) or simply murder someone (that was Moses) or anything else. There is a parable that Jesus taught in which he describes a guy who worked for the king and embezzled millions of dollars. The king caught him and was going to toss him in prison for life, but then decided to forgive him. The forgiven servant of the king then went to someone who owed him something like a couple of bucks and had that poor dude thrown in prison. When the king found out about it, he tossed the ungrateful guy into prison.
Jesus’s point was: God has had the mercy to forgive you of everything when you seek his forgiveness - you thus no longer have the right to hold yourself above anyone else’s actions. Every time Jesus was asked what was important, he stated in one form or another, love your neighbor, love others as yourself, love love love. The only people Jesus every lashed out at were the Pharisees who were telling people they had to follow strict, “Biblical” rules to be in God’s grace. Jesus called them vipers, people with hearts of stones, etc. It’s why they ultimately had to get him killed.
I have been to many fundamental churches, and I am a Christian, and when I ask someone going on about homosexuality why, even if one did accept it as a sin, it was any worse than, say, gluttony which is mentioned as many times (and believe me, go to a Baptist pot luck dinner if you want to see gluttony!) or lying, which is mentioned many more times than just about any other sin, they have no answer.
It is, I think, far more fun for a Christian to call another Christian’s poorly conceived ideas because when a non-Christian does it, they can simply dismiss it as being from a poor heathen. LOL!
I should stress, because that was a poorly worded sentence on my part: For people who think homosexuality is a sin, homosexuality is seen as a vice. This is not my personal point of view.
Because I had a hard time believing that so many hardcore homophobes would admit they ever had anything like same-sex attractions.
Yeah, but even higher than that, going well into populations of people who would normally never identify as having same sex attractions in a survey.
Again, to be crystal clear, I do not believe this. I believe a lot of religious homophobes believe this.
Imo, that’s the most funny thing about fundamentalist christians. Not only they are crazy, they are crazy AND they are bad christians, so bad they don’t even comply with the basic tenements of christianism. Hell, basically christianity after the first few hundreds years is a joke, every society and nation who has called itself “christian” was doing it forgetting/skipping the parts of christianity they didn’t like it and twisting the meaning of some others, so it’s not like USA is the only one doing it, most european countries already did it hundreds of years ago, and for the same reasons.
Oh, I don’t think they do; they just think of all sex using the exact same approach. Resisting the temptation to have sex with a dog is just a more risque version of resisting having sex before marriage.
This is also why they focus so much on having society “officially disapprove” of everything they don’t like, and their ideal end state is some sort of unofficial theocracy where everyone just happens to refuse to hire people who have “bad” sex. They think the only things holding back the tide on street orgies are self-control and society shunning you.
Don’t forget it’s an awesome “go-to” sin for condemnation and judging.
What’s more evil and depraved than the sin you know you’ll never commit? NOTHING!!
It’s how you get obese preachers talking about not smoking or drinking because our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Apparently the Holy Spirit has no modern-day prohibitions against extra bacon.
And of course, everyone in the congregation feels happy and comfortable while the pastor rants and raves about a sin when they don’t even know anyone who has committed it. Or so they think, anyway.
I just had the distinct displeasure of de-friending my cousin on Facebook last month because she decided that my Facebook status was the appropriate place to launch into a lecture about my violation of God’s law. I’m totally out, so they knew all that and didn’t say anything out of place at family functions over the last few months. But I made one comment about the hypocrisy of the “traditional marriage defenders” and she and her husband just exploded into a whirlwind of condemnation. End result: I mailed back their Christmas card and will no longer attend any family function at which they are present. Clearly they were fine with being fake (insert joke about how it comes naturally to the average regular church-goer) but I’m not.
While this view is better than rampant homophobia and hate mongering, I’d still argue that considering homosexuality a sin among many others is both problematic and inconsistent with the spirit, if not the letter, of the gospel.
True, and many european countries are still doing it. That being said I think there is a difference, at least cosmetic, in the way homophobia is handled by the european chatolic church: gays are considered sinners but vocal bashing and fiery sermons aren’t as frequent. The official stance is more along the lines of “those poor souls, slaved to sin and/or mental illness, they don’t know what’s good for them”. Of course when you get down to things like marriage or civil unions they are vehemently opposed, on the grounds that it would corrupt our society, so they are as bad as the more vocal evangelicals, just more slimy and hypocrite, with possibly the small bonus of not going out of their ways to promote hate as long as gays don’t make preposterous demands like equal rights.
Here’s a letter I wrote on the subject. I post it here because it seems pertinent to our conversation and because some of you might have good feedback for me. I submitted the letter to a faith-based college I used to teach at.
Someone I work with recently mentioned that her brother is gay and has a partner. “The family loves him,” she said, “although we disagree with his lifestyle.” I felt like she added the caveat in order to put my mind at ease, but it had the opposite effect. So I asked how this disagreement shows itself. Is he not invited home for holidays? Is he welcome, but not his partner? If they both come home, do they have to sleep in separate rooms? “Oh, no,” she said, “we just love them. They just know that we disagree with their choices.”
I asked why the family doesn’t let go of the disagreement; she said because scripture prohibits same-sex romance, so it is a sin. It is okay that they are attracted to each other, but it is unacceptable for them to act on their attraction. Consequently, they and their church officially disagree with their choices.
So, in this family of Christians, the brother (and his partner) have opted out of that church, and any church, for now. In the same way, many people with a “deviant” sexual identity are also alienated from the church. I believe they are driven by the church straight into the arms of Jesus, who showers them with the warm, passionate care that he reserves for the outcast and oppressed.
Do you picture Jesus saying, when life is done, “Well done, faithful servant. You identified and condemned sin from a safe, comfortable distance, surrounded by people of like mind.” Or do you picture Jesus saying, “Thank you for loving your neighbor with your whole heart, especially those who were strangers among you.”
But while Jesus taught and lived radical love, Jesus also expressed very strong judgment. Hear his judgment in this story from Luke 7: A Pharisee named Simon invited Jesus to dine. During the meal, a prostitute brought a jar of myrrh and, weeping, she cleaned and anointed his feet. By entering the room and touching Jesus, she violated not only the social situation but Jesus’ body. Women, let alone prostitutes, were prohibited from entering men’s dining rooms. Her touch made Jesus ritually unclean. She used her whole body – dripping her tears on his skin, mopping the dampened dust with her hair – in a graphic display that prompted Simon to judge her as a sinner and Jesus as a false prophet. “If this one were a prophet,” he thought, “he would have known who and what kind of woman is touching him, since she is a sinner.”
Jesus sensed his thought, and rebuked him, saying, “Her many sins are forgiven, for she loved much.” And to her, he said, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” The prostitute had not spoken, but had only wept. She had not asked Jesus to come into her heart. She was not baptized, but instead she baptized Jesus’ feet. Jesus did not tell her to change her behavior. Yet he forgave her sins and told her she was saved.
My hope is that some of you reading this letter will deeply consider who you want to align with: Simon, who judged the woman for her clear violations of religious teaching, or the woman, who, knowing she was a sinner, loved him wordlessly and wholeheartedly and, by her faith, was saved.
Oh, I get ya. I’m just talking about talking with someone who is making those attacks. It is simpler to challenge them on one hypocrisy at a time. Rather than argue about whether it is (and then you can get into the whole thing about cherry picking) you can start with, OK, even if we assume it is not “right”, so what? You have sins in your life, we all do, when do we go on TV and start campaigns against overeating and tell overweight people they are not welcome in our church? Etc.
My personal journey on one aspect of this, gay marriage, took a sharp turn from “eh, civil unions accomplish all of the rights, etc. - the rest is just a name and not worth getting all up in arms over” to being a strong advocate (and guess how many of the people in my church take that! LOL! Actually many disagree with me but see my point and are nice about it, call them the “Obama group”, LOL, and more than you might expect are on my side) when I became good friends with a gay guy who has known my wife for many years - she was his baby sitter when he was small and their families are close. I got to know him through her, and we stay connected with emails and FB, and I saw the struggle his and his partner went through. And I saw the little daily things in their life, how they were just like most couples I know in their squabbles, in their joys, in their shared smiles and tears, and I thought they are just like my wife and I. And who in the hell should be able to deprive them of the same marriage, in every way, that we have? I could type an essay on it, but I guess the bottom line is that I wish more people who think being gay is “bad” (and let’s not forget, it goes beyond just fundamental Christians) could develop a relationship with some gay folks and just realize how it just doesn’t matter.
I’ll stop. ;)