The current crusade against homosexuality by most Christians can be traced back to poor understanding/translation of Bible verses. Check out Whosoever.org an online Christian-LGBT magazine in particular their verse by verse breakdown of Biblical references to homosexuality.

It would take a decade or two for people to forget, but if the Vatican et al accepted this interpretation of the Bible and went public with it, it wouldn't be the first time a course change was made in Christianity.

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… Missing the Point

I believe that the above article is true and helpful on one level and misses the point on another level—a broader and more significant level.

Regulating Sexuality —

Every one of the world’s major religions places significant emphasis on regulating sexuality. That emphasis is, as we all know, very focused and very strong in the penalties for violations and for deviant behavior. I offer that if one wants to understand why homosexuality is so reviled and so threatening to those religions, one has to understand two things: 1) the effects on the homosexuals (the regulated subgroup), and 2) the effects on the rest of the population (the broader group.)

Regulating one form of sexual expression from the pulpit is regulating all sexual expression. Inherent in the emphasis on one group is the implicit right to control the subject itself. Therefore, to regulate all of sexuality, one can focus on a subgroup to do it. Once domination of that subject on that subgroup is established the right to control the entire topic is also established. The effect on heterosexual men and women is devastating as their sexual expression is also suppressed. They have accepted that the subgroup’s behavior as governable by some clergy and in so accepting that they have accepted that their behavior is governable too.

The topic is, therefore, very significant to the various pulpits.

The broader question is this: “Why do religions, all of them, seek to regulate sexual expression at all?” Why is that form of personal expression subject to such attention and most other forms of personal expression (non-violent) ignored by and large?

Sexual deviancy in most Christian religions is so sever a “crime” as to warrant everlasting damnation. So how come?

There are lots of answers to this question. The response that is most basic and fundamental is this: sexuality is divine. It is a very spiritually connected and spiritually based choice and phenomenon. How one chooses to express their sexuality is a divine and spiritually connected choice. The pulpits do not want you to have a direct connection for your spirituality that does not go through the pulpit.

And here is the kicker to this most general of statements: freely expressed and freely chosen sexual expression will lead to a happy and uncontrollable human being. It is not possible to control people who are content with their choices about sexuality and how they express it. That one choice, that one self accepted form of responsibility is one of the key release mechanisms from control from the pulpit no matter whose pulpit it is.

That is why it is the focus of such attention on regulating sexuality.

Whether religion does or does not retain its moral authority is irrelevant. What does matter is whether YOU retain YOUR moral authority. You do not need the church, any church, to deliver this moral authority to you via its rules and regulations. You claim it for yourself. It is yours for you. It is also other’s for them to claim as well. Each person has within them their own moral authority that is not given to them from any church, pulpit, book, and authority figure at all. However, it is not easy to discover this truth on this planet.

One of the most important steps in claiming this self-derived-moral-authority is to learn that your sexual expression and all choices surrounding it belong to you, not to someone else (all non-violent choices.)

No church wants you to know this. Hence, building their wall of shame, guilt, embarrassment, contraction, and the imposition of outside authority as the only authority is their main tool of control.

If you truly do want your freedom you will have to build it on your choice to express your sexuality as you see fit.

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If we get scientific about it, we are all females at one stage before our birth why do you think male's have tits and so on. I think homosexuality will eventually be solved by science and then the Christians will look stupid once again. And besides WWJD? chance are he wouldnt promote discrimination.

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To the contrary, whether sexual orientation arises as a result of the mother's hormones or the child's brain structure or DNA, it is almost certainly an accident of birth.

Well, I hate to sound like a bitchy queen, and I'm really really really happy to see that someone on that side is actually using his brain about this subject...but man, I can't shake how much I hate hearing that we're accidents of nature--the same frustration when a kid hears from his parents "Oh, dear, you were an 'accident', but a really happy one." Yay. Great news.

I think I'll get over it given the rest of his spiel, but I'll keep my applause down.

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Usually those in power are elder men, especially in "judeo-christian" tradition, and they found that they could create silly grim fables and use them to control women, minorities, children, each other, economies, etc. Humanity will make little progress toward a bright future for all until religion fades away and science replaces superstition.

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Medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, people of science of every stripe, are telling them they're wrong. Tolerant religious people are telling them they're wrong. Parents of gay children and friends of gay people are telling them they're wrong. The LGBT community is telling them they're wrong. At what point will they listen? At what cost will they continue to insist they are right?

This is my whole problem with the discussion that takes place over sexuality in this country (which may be a similar sort of conversation that takes place in other countries but I don't live in those places so I cannot say), namely that just because this person or that person says something is this, or something is that, it must be true.

As far as I am concerned, this argument is almost nonsensical as the religious one, and is easily proven--in my opinion--by other examples of the same behavior.

For example, for the longest period of time women were considered to be 'lesser' individuals than men, and blacks, American Indians, and for a time the Irish, if I recall, were considered to be less than human.

Look at the science of those times. I would be willing to be apples to oranges that scientists of many stripes supported those conclusions. The same thing happened in Nazi Germany for that matter.

This is because scientists, psychiatrists, etc are generally just as partial--and as human--as anyone else. It is their humanity (which is the one thing, ironically enough, that should bind us together) that can twist the conclusions of the best intended science to a particular point of view, be it political or otherwise.

After all, why is global warming, as a 'living' and very real event, still up for discussion in this country? Creationism versus evolution? Intelligent Design versus evolution (and common sense)?

What scientists, psychologists, and people of that ilk have is an authority of a moral sort surrounding their conclusions that make them not unlike proclamations handed down from the Church.

How about instead of creating a new god, in this case the god of Genetics that proclaims upon strands of helix-shaped code that every behavior is genetic and there is little that we can do about anything, that we instead start respecting people and their choices (as long as such behaviors don't involve the sexual exploitation of children and do involve consenting adults) and allow them the right to make those choices.

Because isn't that what America is susposed to be about?

Rhetorically speaking, that is.

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Millions of years, struggles, prosperity, wars, famine, changes, interactions come together and a child, each child is born. The child has no control over all the things that came before and how those things form, create, become his or her physical, emotional, spiritual self. While upbringing and environment have a role in our final person...it is the "accident of birth" that forms the core of who we are. The phrase means an event over which we personally have no control whatsoever. It is neither positive or negative. A particular characteristic may be more or less predictable, but it is no more or less accidental. In this article, the "accident" is not a horrible failure of biology, it is the collision of circumstance by which a being is become. The being may be gay (like me) or not gay (like my brother) or smart (like me) or a complete idiot (like George Bush).

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I am the parent of a gay son who is now in his 40s. I asked him one time if he thought his sexual orientation was genetic, or the result of outside influences. He thought it was some of both.

By the time my child was two years old, I knew he was less aggressive than other boys. As he grew up, he had no interest in kicking a football or roughhousing with other boys. He was a prolific reader (and still is), highly intelligent, articulate, funny, and a lover of music. In highschool, he won awards for his writing and skills in debate, was voted into the National Honor Society, spent his summers volunteering at nursing homes where he read to elderly people, took them for walks in their wheelchairs and often brought one or two of them home with him to spend holidays with us. To the best of my knowledge, he has never smoked a cigarette, he does not drink, and would be horrified at putting illegal drugs in his body. In college, he made the Dean's list, graduated with honors, and went on to get both his master's degree and his Ph.d. Since completing his education he has held a responsible position in the business world in a major city.

Yet, with all of these good qualities, his sexuality sets him apart, and with millions of people on this planet he is the object of scorn and hatred, not because he has ever done anything to hurt them....he doesn't even know them, and they don't know him...but simply because he is who he is.

As a parent, I could not possibly love him less than I love my "straight" children.

To those whose need to torment and revile persons who are different from the majority, I would say...take heed. It is very possible that someone you love dearly is gay, and is simply in that well-known closet. It could be your sister or brother, your nephews or nieces, your own children, or even your parents. I wonder how you'll feel when YOUR six or seven year old child comes home from school, confused and in tears because some other kid has called him names like queer, or pussy, or fairy, and he has no understanding at all of what that even means? I've been there, and it takes more courage to face being different and remain positive and productive than it takes to hate.

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Oh my, another bashing religion blog in which moral permissiveness, tolerance, and brilliant minds are set against Christianity, intolerance, and superstition. I believe we are speaking of two world views. It may be that ultimate moral truth rests with the individual self, its puny little "scientific" mind, and those world authorities of its own choosing. That is a faith perspective. "Science" is hardly a neutral observer. I start with my own prejudices and build a world view. The alternative is the world view of those who believe that there is a revealed Truth and a moral code bigger than me and that purposeful living, to say nothing of ultimate salvation, comes from a relationship with the giver of the code. Celebacy in singleness and faithfulness in marriage is a principle held by peoples of all cultures, of all religions, and by probably 90% of the people of the world today. There is a certain arrogance in saying everyone in the world and that peoples of all ages and all cultures are wrong and I, and the "science" of my choosing, am right. We live in a broken world. We hurt. We need healing. None of us wants to believe that our prejudices, our compulsions, and our temptations are the result of choice. The origins of our brokenness are often hidden in mystery. But there is grace.

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I have talked with my several gay friends, both men and women, and am absolutely sure that their sexuality was not a choice made by them, but one they were born with. Most of them realized this at a very early age and all suffered accordingly in differing degrees. Thankfully, they are all comfortable with themselves in the present and we who are their friends love them for their many wonderful qualities.
Brought up in a moderately religious family, I have since realized the damage caused by religion and have discarded it as we do all childish things.

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I followed the link and read the Pastor's essay. Some of it I agree with, but some of it I find to be a bit of a reach.

Almost any Pastor or Priest of any mainstream denomination does not drag out the Levitical Law. A common understanding of the ministry of Jesus is that He fulfilled the Levitical Law and has set people free from it. So dragging out the old posit about not playing football without gloves or stoning people is not a part of any teaching of any serious and informed Bible student.

Otherwise, the guy is constructing a straw man to make his point stand out in greater contrast. If someone who has been a Pastor, who should know better, to do such a thing gives me serious doubts about their handling of any truth regarding the matter. Any good argument or posit should be able to stand on it's own merits without selective editing or taking information out of context.

Most Christians, of whatever denomination or persuasion, understand that the Bible is a collection of writings that are to be considered as part of a whole, as part of an ongoing narrative (from Pre-Mosiac times through the early Church), and any passage needs to be checked against the rest for proper contextual understanding. You do not have to be a Christian or a theist of any kind to understand that point and concept.

The ministry of Jesus can be most simply summed in the following:
When asked about what commandment of God was the most important, He replied that we are to love God with all of your heart, mind and soul. He continued to say that the next was like it- to love your neighbor as yourself. He wrapped it up by saying that in these two concepts were all of the Law and Prophets (the Old Testament- including the Law of Moses).

Elsewhere in the Bible, Jesus stated that the world would know who His followers are by the fact that they exhibited love for one another. Note that He did not preach hatred or division- He preached forgiveness, grace, mercy and peace.

Finally, the Bible teaches clearly that God is the final arbiter and judge of these matters- not any human(s). We are to welcome anyone and everyone who seeks God and the grace and love of God. It's God's business- not ours- who people sleep with and why they do.

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the whole point of the Western religions is about denial. Some take it to more extremes than others but that's the whole deal. Because a person is sinful by nature they must strive to deny their base instincts: these could be violence, wanton sex, pride, rape, theft, avarice, gluttony, etc. So just add homosexual sex (sodomy) to the list. Religion still stays the same. Using Christianity as an example, the only reason Leviticus existed was because people WERE already doing those things: homosexuality, rape, witchcraft, bestiality, incest, murder, usury, etc. There is nothing new under the sun. People are people.

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The widespread knowledge that homosexuality is biologically based will do nothing to deter the sheeple from attending his church. After all, the Catholic church once insisted that the sun revolves around the earth, yet people are still attending mass even though this claim has been refuted. I'm sure the religious will either ignore it (after all, fundamentalists of all creeds discriminate against women too and nobody says people chose to be a certain sex) or else they'll find themselves another scapegoat to get the crowds riled up, and carry on with business as usual.

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Many people think, that it is alright to be religious, as long as your not political. Others say that there dealings ' Are only faith based ' they do everything according to scripture, or at lease try too. I, say for my part ' Truth is not subject too man, rather man is known by the truth. ' Either you belive or you don't. Day and night are clear. So too ' truth and falsehood. ' As for the clarity, then it is the fact that the God created all thing's. He sent messenger's to speak on his behalve. Poor one followed wealthy stay away in most genereations. But when religion comes..., it's not like a car is subject too change .

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