What is it with gays and religion?

[Brian37]

Iggy, what makes you think gay people abandon their religion when they find out they're gay? All of my irl gay friends are Christians

Not sure that is what they were thinking by asking the question. 

I'd argue that most humans, liberal and conservative are still ultimately not comfortable with the idea of being finite, including your gay Christian friends. So while the bigoted conservatives use one verse to justify condemnation, your gay Christian friends pick up the same book to justify compassion and inclusion.

I would argue though, again, just like my last post, the further back in time you go, the bigger majority were the conservative right and even 100 yrs ago most of society in both parties did not find it acceptable.

Humans have learned to re interpret or simply ignore the nasty things justified in it. And even outside an increase of liberal acceptance that is backed up by the medical and psychiatric community and has done so for almost 40 years. We know more now about human biology.

But to be fair, in most parts of the world LGBT is not widely accepted. It isn't in Saudi Arabia or Iran, but also not in Russia or China for that matter. Japan last year just got around to having it's first city to allow same sex unions.

I think it is all bullshit no matter the nation. I think it is sick to deny a fellow human the opportunity to love whom they love.

[Edwardo Piet]

I'm more confused by gay, lesbian, bisexual and pansexual people who are fundamentalist Christians... meaning they take their Bible literally and yet they still insist that the Bible says absolutely nothing anti-gay in it.

How is that different than all the pious Southern Baptists attending church while wearing mixed fabric clothing and not checking their women folk for menstruation BEFORE allowing them to enter their church building ??

IOW, asserting Literalism is NEVER a reason to ever be personally inconvenienced.

I'm not saying it's different to any other example. I'm just saying it's one more example of cherry-picking that I find confusing. I dunno how anyone can be literalist about the Bible in so many ways and then not notice how hateful it is against themselves.

Obviously not all Christian gay people are literalists who deny that the Bible says anything homophobic in it. That wasn't the point the point was merely to express my own confusion towards anyone who can read that book and deny that there's anything homophobic in it. It applies to everyone regardless of their sexuality... but basically I'm very suprised that there aren't less gay Christians. Iggy seems to suggest that gay people often give up Christianity when they come out as gay... but actually what is surprising is that doesn't happen very often despite all the homophobic hatred in the Bible.

I mean, if they genuinely think there's a God then the hate in the Bible against homosexuals isn't going to change their belief. It's only when anyone, regardless of their sexuality, denies all the homophobia in the Bible that I get really confused.

[Brian37]

How is that different than all the pious Southern Baptists attending church while wearing mixed fabric clothing and not checking their women folk for menstruation BEFORE allowing them to enter their church building ??

IOW, asserting Literalism is NEVER a reason to ever be personally inconvenienced.

I'm not saying it's different to any other example. I'm just saying it's one more example of cherry-picking that I find confusing. I dunno how anyone can be literalist about the Bible in so many ways and then not notice how hateful it is against themselves.

Obviously not all Christian gay people are literalists who deny that the Bible says anything homophobic in it. That wasn't the point the point was merely to express my own confusion towards anyone who can read that book and deny that there's anything homophobic in it. It applies to everyone regardless of their sexuality... but basically I'm very suprised that there aren't less gay Christians. Iggy seems to suggest that gay people often give up Christianity when they come out as gay... but actually what is surprising is that doesn't happen very often despite all the homophobic hatred in the Bible.

I mean, if they genuinely think there's a God then the hate in the Bible against homosexuals isn't going to change their belief. It's only when anyone, regardless of their sexuality, denies all the homophobia in the Bible that I get really confused.

The reason liberal theists can still buy into old tribal books is that they fail to see that the book itself isn't where their empathy is coming from, but their own individual evolutionary empathy.

Other life displays empathy. Odds are if you raise a kitten and puppy together from birth they are far more likely to see each other as family. Elephants mourn their dead and the mothers are notoriously protective of their young.

But our human cruelty is also evolutionary too. We also see in other life acts of extreme cruelty. Male lions and male zebras will seek out and murder any young that is not of their loins if they are the alpha male in that group.

You cannot make life about one religion, all religions have decent non violent individuals who can be empathetic. Every nation has hospitals and prisons. That says to me that our behaviors, both good and bad, are not coming from the artificial labels humans invent, but stemming from our evolution. Humans are simply projecting their natural behaviors into the books and falsely thinking the book itself has magic powers.

But all religions do this.