Ahem, uhh, where'd a certain thread go to?

I think damnant quod non intelligunt applies to more then just this thread. At least it does in my life.

 

this will be the hot topic for the election!
you know this will come up in the debates!
you know my views and we can't change eachothers!

hopefully we wont get a ban that says we cant talk about this on anymore threads.

 

I never get tired of saying this

LOVE THE SINNER, BUT NEVER THE SIN!

that includes gay people also
that means EVERYONE

 

Hey Mike, how ya doin?

 

The psychological trauma caused by archaic methods of treating homosexuals has had severe consequences for many people including suicide. Laws that criminalized same sex behavior were outlawed a long time ago as society started to mature on this issue. We're still making progress. Whenever humanity decides to become human, then this world will be a much better place.

 

This is one of my pet peeves. "Love the sinner, not the sin" never actually happens. What happens when a homosexual actually goes to a fundamentalist Christian church is that everyone immediate concentrates with laser-like focus on that person's homosexuality, as though the person were 99% homosexual "sin" and 1% everything else. I don't know any gay person who's gone into such a church and been befriended as "John Doe, who is a gifted carpenter and likes football and helps his friends move and happens to be gay, which we're working on". No no, it's always "John Doe, the gay guy... what? he likes football? a gay man likes football?"

Sow now imagine someone who has sex before marriage... is he "Jim Jones, the fornicator"? No, he's "Jim Jones, the guy I play poker with on Tuesday nights, the one who owns the mechanic shop on Elm Street, and he happens to have sex before marriage which I don't agree with." It's downright hypocritical.

I would be much more inclined to be charitable to fundamentalist Christians if they would honour every part of the Bible they cherish so much as faithfully as they honour their chosen parts and if they wouldn't try to disguise their hatred for certain people behind the mask of "loving attempts to change".

So let's say you are a fundamentalist Christian and you have a next-door neighbour who is gay. You talk to your neighbour and try and turn him from the sin (for the sake of this example only, let's accept homosexuality as a sin). You are rebuffed and he resists your attempts to change him. The more you try to persuade him to change his ways, the more violently he resists. What have you accomplished? Now, you have no chance of talking to him about other contentious topics, such as urging him to come to church with you, politics, and whether the Yankees are a front for the mob.

At what point do you throw in the towel and say, "Well, I firmly believe it's a sin, but obviously I'm not able to change you so you will have to take your soul into your own hands at the Judgment Day."? At what point do you stop trying to turn your neighbour from sin and start to think toward "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" and "judge not lest ye be judged"?

Just from sheer expedience, I would think that you'd want to write the sin off as hopeless after one or two attempts so that at least there's a little bit of a chance there that you could have other conversations regarding other important matters, rather than being branded "meddler".

I promise you that if the extremely religious are, in fact, correct, and homosexuals and their supporters are destined to the eternal fire, you may laugh at us all you want from your seat in cloudy Heaven. But until then, please just realise that no one is going to deny his sexual orientation on the basis of a book that was committed to paper by a group of men in the desert listening to voices in their heads.

 

I do agree ZaphodB
that many people say this and do the opposite.
I have a cusin who lives this the alternative lifestyle for many years. We do things together talk, read, go to lunch (when I am in Des Moines, IA). He knows my point of view, and I know his. He condsiders me a friend and I condsider him a friend. Does it bother me when I am around him. NO! not at all! same the other way around. I see the good in them and potentional, I try not to see the bad. The subject on what he does after hours we don't bring up. He probably does somethings better than I, so who I am I to judge. I know, I might not always be 100% in following the statement of loving the sinner; however, I do feel that I am following that statement better than alot of people see when they say it. Then another day, they will say some evil comments about other groups or people doing things wrong (like killing all the gays ect.). I want no harm to anyone. I want people to live, and have happy lives. Wickedness was never happiness, and most find that out; but they have to find that out for themselves. I don't want anyone to get burned, but it happens.