• Steven Saus@midwest.social
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    5 months ago

    You are making a false equivalency between “being Christian” and “being a bigot”. While there is a high correlation, particularly with some denominations of Christianity, they are not synonymous. (Heck, I’ve seen some religious groups at my local Pride celebrations for years.)

    Presumably you’re aware of this.

    • John Richard@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Ask them if they believe the Bible and even the New Testament to be the word of God. If they say yes, then they are either liars or not true followers of their religion.

      • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        When your ‘proof’ for them hating queer folk only applies to politicians who dont lie to their constituents, im gonna have to call that out. You find me one politician that doesn’t lie and we’ll test your hypothesis on them.

      • teft@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Where in the bible does it say homosexuality is a sin? It doesn’t which is why some religious folk are cool with LGBT.

        • John Richard@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Are you serious? These are just two verses in the New Testament. However, those are just as it relates to homosexuality. The Bible is also anti-trans, anti-abortion, against women’s rights, and against sex outside of marriage. There is a reason many Republicans are the way they are.

          Romans 1:26–27:

          For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

          And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

          1 Corinthians 6:9-10:

          Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

          • teft@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Neither of those verses reference homosexuality. Try again.

            I’ll give you a hint: you’ll never find an anti homosexual verse in the bible because they don’t exist. Misreadings and incorrect translations have given rise to that belief.

            • chaonaut@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Sorry, but it’s actually pretty hard to dismiss the Romans passage, but it is something that can be chalked up to Paul being sex negative, going so far as to exhort people to be chaste or get married if they can’t control their passion if, as he noted, they were not free from such passion as he claimed to be. The other passages commonly cited don’t reference homosexuality nearly as directly, but it would not be a difficult argument to make that the word choices were specifically defaming homosexuality (especially given how common it is for people to use the same sort of defamation). Which isn’t to say that every denomination adheres to the same interpretation of these passages, but they aren’t on as theologically shaky ground as we might hope.

      • chaonaut@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Expecting Christians to follow a given text to the letter will always be setting yourself up for failure. Not only do people pick and choose the doctrine they follow (or more often have it picked and chosen for them by their spiritual leader), different traditions have different emphasis and even different texts they’re operating off of. Expecting an legalistic following of a specific interpretation will leave you expecting far different behavior that most of your observations will show.

        • John Richard@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          People bend over backwards to try to argue that the Bible doesn’t say what it does. If you want to argue that a book that is the basis for christian’s overwhelming homophobic views was just misinterpreted, then nothing in the book has any meaning. You could say the correct interpretation of the Bible is Jesus was really a talking rat born out of inbred to his 13 year old sister mom.

          • chaonaut@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Not my point. You absolutely can point to homophobic passages of the Bible. You can also point to passages of the Bible that are not talking about homosexuality in specific, but that are commonly interpreted as such. My point is that expecting even Christians to agree with other Christians about what texta constitute the Bible let alone what those specific texts actually say is an exercise in futility.

            This is the why of the existence of all the various sects and denominations of Christianity. There are theologians who have done lots of academic work to show how the Bible does not need to be homophobic. There are others who have worked just as hard to justify doing grievous harm to homosexuals. Trying to explain both of those with the One True Reading of the Bible is committing the same error they do.

            For my queer ass, if Christians all spontaneously decided to follow the theology of Rev. Fred Rodgers tomorrow, I’m gonna breathe a sigh of relief and leave them alone to be just the nicest people and hope they stay that way.