| Topic: |
Religions > Bible |
| User: |
"Pastor Dave" |
| Date: |
19 Aug 2006 08:46:59 AM |
| Object: |
Gay Rights Rhetoric |
The disingenuous and anti-Christian nature of
‘gay rights’ rhetoric
Feedback 18 February 2005
I think it is truly disgraceful what you publish on this
website. I know for a fact that homosexuals can not help
their sexual preferences. Do you think that they would
choose to be persecuted and excluded from society if they
had a choice? Most of your “proof” comes from a book
written thousands of years ago when people did not necessarily
understand what scientists have now discovered about gay people.
I’m not saying that I don’t believe the Bible, I just think that
everything in it should be taken with a grain of salt. I would
not be so quick to blindly believe, word for word, in a book
that contradicts itself in many places. I believe that when
Jesus and various other people condemned homosexuality,
they were condemning the type of activity found in places like
Ancient Rome, when the rich male citizens would sometimes
have “little boy companions”. That, I find disgraceful, but I
think that doesn’t mean we should not allow innocent people
to enjoy their full rights as human beings. It is our duty as
good Christians to love our neighbors and spread peace
throughout the world. We cannot do this if we continue
to be prejudiced against about 5% of God’s people.
E.B.
USA
Response:
EB: I think it is truly disgraceful what you publish on
this website.
That’s an interesting revelation about your personal psychology,
but what matters is what the Bible says and what can be logically
deduced from it. In any case, a number of people have
appreciated that my response to a homosexual was not at all
harsh towards him as a person, while firmly against his sin.
You may have heard rumors in certain sectors of the media that
the Creation Museum will have an exhibit blaming homosexuals
for AIDS. This has not the slightest basis in fact, and there is
nothing like that on our website. Indeed, we have affirmed that
AIDS has a mechanistic cause, the HIV. Certainly, if people
obeyed God’s laws restricting sex to within heterosexual
monogamy, the vast majority of AIDS cases in the West would
not have occurred. However, we would also regard it as a medical
and compassionate duty to help sufferers, just as for smokers
with lung cancer, for example. Indeed, some CMI supporters
are involved in cutting-edge research trying to combat HIV.
EB: I know for a fact that homosexuals can not help their
sexual preferences.
How do you know such things? Several points come to mind:
* There is a huge irony here—how come gender differences
are ‘choices’ although the biology is clearly different, while
‘orientation’ is hardwired despite biological sameness? To
explain: feminists have for years declared it an abominable
heresy that ‘gender’ differences are innate. Instead, they
have asserted that the differences are rather the result of
choices and conditioning. This is despite the obvious biological
differences even down to brain wiring (and note we are not
claiming female inferiority—we leave that to Darwin and his
fellow evolutionary pioneers because it contradicts the Bible!).
Yet now, many homosexual activists claim that ‘sexual
orientation’ is innate (‘can’t be helped’), despite the lack of
biological difference (discounting the ‘gay gene’ nonsense
expounded by the self-serving homosexual geneticist).
* All the same, some homosexual activists strongly oppose
the idea that it can’t be helped, on the grounds that it still
imputes aberrance to homosexual behavior; ‘if we weren’t born
this way, we wouldn’t want to be like this’. This was explained
on the website.
* A ‘preference’ doesn’t determine behavior. Some people with
a ‘preference’ for the opposite sex are still forbidden to have
sexual intercourse with just any such person—they are restricted
to their spouses. Since ‘gay marriage’ is an oxymoron, it
follows that those with homosexual ‘preferences’ are forbidden
from having sexual intercourse with those of the same sex, just
as the Bible says.
* Jesus told us that lust is adultery in the heart, and in
general that sinful acts are generated by sinful thoughts.
So heterosexuals must resist such thoughts towards other
people’s wives—after all, not all heterosexual acts are right
either, as explained in the previous point. So surely, since
all homosexual acts are wrong, it is wrong to have homosexual
lusts too. The Bible says a few things about the need to resist
all sinful desires, and the good news that Jesus is the answer:
Galatians 5:24 ‘Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified
the sinful nature with its passions and desires.’
Titus 2:12 ‘It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly
passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in
this present age,’
1 Peter 2:11 ‘Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers
in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against
your soul.’
* This would explain why Ex-gays exist—they show that people
can make a conscious choice to escape the homosexual deathstyle,
especially with Christ’s help. Even Dr Robert Spitzer, once the
great hero of the homosexual movement for persuading the
American Psychiatric Association to remove ‘homosexuality’ as
a ‘disorder’, has now become a pariah for saying, “(S)ome people
can change from gay to straight, and we ought to acknowledge
that.”
EB: Do you think that they would choose to be persecuted
and excluded from society if they had a choice?
How precious can you get? Homosexuals are now a politically
protected victim group, about which it is verboten to say
anything negative. And certain homonazis want Christians
punished if they quote from the Bible against homosexual
behavior. Indeed, 63-year-old Pastor Ĺke Green was jailed in
Sweden for just that, because they have such a sodomofascist
law restricting Christian freedom. Never mind that he offered
the biblical encouragement that ‘[e]verybody can be set free
and delivered’. Moreover, he concluded his sermon with:
"We cannot condemn these people — Jesus never did that either.
He showed everyone He met deep respect for the person they
were (…) Jesus never belittled anyone."
Fortunately his conviction was overturned on appeal, to the ire
of homosexual activists, by a higher court because it was such
an egregious violation of Sweden’s free speech laws.
Further evidence that homosexuals have special protection comes
from media double standards. E.g. the vile murder of the
homosexual Matthew Shepard by young thugs he had propositioned
was front page news, and blamed on conservative Christians
(although the thugs weren’t in the least bit motivated by
conservative Christian concerns, especially as the latter almost
always preached love towards the sinner). And of course,
this was used as an excuse to push for ‘hate crime’ legislation
(as opposed to ‘love crimes’, no doubt), although existing laws
were sufficient to sentence the murderers to life. Yet there was
a virtual media blackout on the vile rape and murder of the
teenage boy Jesse Dirkhising by a homosexual couple. Even the
homosexual columnist Andrew Sullivan admitted (New Republic
Online, 2 April 2001):
"What we are seeing, I fear, is a logical consequence of the
culture that hate-crimes rhetoric promotes. Some deaths—
if they affect a politically protected class—are worth more
than others. Other deaths, those that do not fit a politically
correct profile, are left to oblivion. The leading gay rights
organization, the Human Rights Campaign—which has raised
oodles of cash exploiting the horror of Shepard’s murder—
has said nothing whatsoever about the Dirkhising case."
And consider the crime of Nicholas Gutierrez, a 19-year-old
homosexual, who bashed the devoutly Catholic 51-year-old
wife and mother-of-four Mary Stachowicz to death after she
questioned his lifestyle and explained Christian forgiveness.
Once again, there was a virtual media blackout, and of course
no push for laws to protect Christians from hate crimes—some
liberals even justified or, even worse, applauded the murder.
The former CBS journalist Bernard Goldberg pointed out in
his book Arrogance: Rescuing America from the Media Elite
yet another example of the liberal protection of the gay agenda.
This is the way they describe certain wayward Catholic priests
(a tiny minority) as ‘pedophile priests’. However, they would
be far better described as ‘gay priests’, since their usual
targets were adolescent boys rather than little girls.
Actually, homosexuals have virtually no worries about violence
from Christians, but plenty of worries from other homosexuals!
Even the homosexual activists David Island and Patrick Letellier
noted in their book Men Who Beat The Men Who Love Them:
"The probability of violence occurring in a gay couple is
mathematically double the probability of that in a heterosexual
couple … we believe as many as 650,000 gay men may be
victims of domestic violence each year in the United States."
Also, the Leader Messenger (South Australia), 4 June 1997, p. 1,
gave figures indicating that a massive 28 out of 168 reports of
domestic violence involved homosexual couples, while only around
1 in 1,000 of all couples were homosexual.
EB: Most of your “proof” comes from a book written thousands
of years ago when people did not necessarily understand
what scientists have now discovered about gay people.
All Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16), and it is absurd
to think that God knew less about sexuality than certain self
serving scientists today.
EB: I’m not saying that I don’t believe the Bible,
Yes you are, by logical implication. You clearly do not believe
its many claims of divine inspiration, including by Jesus
Himself, who said ‘Scripture cannot be broken’ (John 10:35)
and many other things affirming biblical inerrancy.
EB: I just think that everything in it should be taken with
a grain of salt.
Then that must logically apply to the passages you invoke in
support of your liberal views.
EB: I would not be so quick to blindly believe, word for word,
Please find out what we really teach about biblical hermeneutics
rather than knocking down this straw man of hyperliteralism.
We actually should take the Bible as the original authors
intended, so we read poetry as poetry, history as history, laws
as laws, etc..
EB: … in a book that contradicts itself in many places.
So why don’t you name even one of these places? But
before wasting our time again, please check our page,
Bible ‘contradictions’ and ‘errors’.
EB: I believe that when Jesus and various other people condemned
homosexuality, they were condeming the type of activity
found in places like Ancient Rome, when the rich male
citizens would sometimes have “little boy companions.’
Once again, this has already been refuted on our website,
by showing that the condemnation did not use such words,
but general terms forbidding any homosexual intercourse.
In any case, this is disingenuous on your part to attempt this
amateurish eisegesis, since you don’t believe the Bible anyway.
EB: That, I find disgraceful,
On what grounds? Since when is right and wrong decided
by your personal preferences? Pedophiles might accuse you
of ‘pedophobia’. After all, there are the likes of philosopher
Peter Singer who sees nothing wrong in infanticide or bestiality,
yet the academic establishment rewarded these morally perverted
views with a personal chair at Princeton.
EB: … but I think that doesn’t mean we should not allow
innocent people to enjoy their full rights as human
beings.
Who is stopping them? ‘Gays’ have the same right of marriage
as secular people—a ‘gay’ man has exactly the same right to
marry a woman as a straight man does, and vice versa! In any
case, this is another example of disingenuity from gay activists:
when they first pushed for ‘rights’, it was ‘what consenting
adults do in the privacy of their own bedroom is no one else’s
business’. But now they demand public approval for these
very things! And if approval for this behavior is a ‘right’,
then it logically follows that Christians no longer have the
freedom of opinion to disapprove. Therefore so-called ‘tolerance’
becomes a tyranny of intolerance.
EB: It is our duty as good Christians to love our neighbors
and spread peace throughout the world.
Where do you get this idea of Christian duty from? Surely not
from the biblical records of Christ’s actual statements? But if
the Bible can’t be trusted where you disagree with it, then on
what grounds do you use it when you agree with it (or rather,
distort it to support your liberal mores)? Actually, Jesus told
his followers to teach obedience in everything He commanded,
which includes his statements about marriage between one man
and one woman, and against lust.
EB: We cannot do this if we continue to be prejudiced against
about 5% of God’s people.
Where do you get this figure from? Sounds as suspect as the
oft-quoted 10% from that gall wasp specialist with pedophile
researchers, Kinsey, as explained elsewhere.
Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D.
Brisbane, Australia
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/2624
--
"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass,
till all these things be fulfilled." - Matthew 24:34
O
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O
"For the word of God is sharper than any two edged sword."
In a company of literary gentlemen, Daniel Webster
was asked if he could comprehend how Jesus Christ
could be both God and man. "No, sir," he replied,
and added, "I should be ashamed to acknowledge Him
as my Savior if I could comprehend Him. If I could
comprehend Him, He could be no greater than myself.
Such is my sense of sin, and consciousness of my
inability to save myself, that I feel I need a
superhuman Savior, one so great and glorious that
I cannot comprehend Him."
.
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| User: "Pies de Arcilla" |
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| Title: Re: Gay Rights Rhetoric |
19 Aug 2006 03:38:36 PM |
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Pastor Dave wrote:
EB: I know for a fact that homosexuals can not help their
sexual preferences.
How do you know such things? Several points come to mind:
You cannot imagine the workings of a mind different from your own. So
you deny that anyone can _be_ different from you. You are not God, and
you don't understand what it is like to be other people. This isn't
your fault; it's just a defect that we're all born with. Is your
shortfall of compassion a sin? Can you help it?
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| User: "Gene Poole" |
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| Title: Re: Gay Rights Rhetoric |
20 Aug 2006 11:26:39 AM |
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t is a 'cri de coeur' from the hearts of persons we have first accepted as
baptized fellow Christians, members together with us all in the body of
this Jesus Christ, wherein as a result of that baptism there is neither
Jew nor Greek, male nor female, free nor slave - there is a radical
equality.
And then we spurn them, we shun them, because we are all caught up in an
acknowledged or a tacit homophobia and heterosexism. We reject them, treat
them as pariahs, and push them outside the confines of our church
communities, and thereby we negate the consequences of their baptism and
ours.
We make them doubt that they are the children of God, and this must be
nearly the ultimate blasphemy. We blame them for something that it is
becoming increasingly clear they can do little about. Someone has said
that if this particular sexual orientation were indeed a matter of
personal choice, then gay and lesbian persons must be the craziest coots
around to choose a way of life that exposes them to so much hostility,
discrimination, loss, and suffering. To say this is akin to saying that a
black person voluntarily chooses a complexion and race that exposes him -
or herself - to all the hatred, suffering, and disadvantages to be found
in a racist society. Such a person would be stark raving mad.
....
It is only of homosexual persons that we require universal celibacy,
whereas for others we teach that celibacy is a special vocation. We say
that sexual orientation is morally a matter of indifference, but what is
culpable are homosexual acts. But then we claim that sexuality is a divine
gift, which used properly, helps us to become more fully human and akin
really to God, as it is this part of our humanity that makes us more
gentle and caring, more self-giving and concerned for others than we would
be without that gift. Why should we want all homosexual persons not to
give expression to their sexuality in loving acts? Why don't we use the
same criteria to judge same-sex relationships that we use to judge whether
heterosexual relationships are wholesome or not?
I was left deeply disturbed by these inconsistencies and knew that the
Lord of the Church would not be where his church is in this matter. Can we
act quickly to let the gospel imperatives prevail as we remember our
baptism and theirs, and be thankful?"
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
Archbishop of Capetown, Ret.
and Nobel Peace Laureate
--
Faithfully,
Gene Poole
http://grace.break.at
God is still speaking
http://www.stillspeaking.com
=============
Remove your hat to e-mail me.
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| User: "Pies de Arcilla" |
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| Title: Re: Gay Rights Rhetoric |
20 Aug 2006 12:01:23 PM |
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Gene Poole wrote:
It is only of homosexual persons that we require universal celibacy,
Of course, this is not true.
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