Why do Christians like to fixate so much on homosexuality?

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What a hateful and disgusting person he is (or was). He had a personality only Jesus could love.

ruveyn

I hope you mean Jerry Falwell and not Tinky Winky, there.

Jerry F. of course. Tinky Winky is one of the Good Guys.

ruveyn

It's a very difficult issue to address, especially if you have a primitive understanding of the text. They wouldn't get as much s**t as they do if they didn't take the approach that homosexuality is intrinsically immoral. That the gay is bad, evil, worthy of contempt.

The act of gay sex is banned in the text, and that is it.

It is similar to the majority of Jews who think there is something intrinsically immoral with pork, and if something like that or non kosher comes into contact with their kosher meal prep, it is no longer viable to eat. The messages and meanings the text is trying to communicate is lost if that is your view of this symbolic ritual... there is nothing inherently wrong with eating pork, just as there is nothing inherently wrong with a homosexual who is born as such.

Far be it from me to be offensive, but I just wanted to point out the irony of a religion where getting down on your knees and accepting another man's "body" into your mouth is a central event, being against homosexuality. That is unless someone already did that.

believe it or not, he and larry flynt were like pals.

Almost kissing cousins.

Well, there's nothing more or less inherently wrong with it than any other sin.

After reading the Bible a few times and thinking about this, I have to conclude that the Bible never once condemns sexual orientation. It's human nature that we are predisposed to sin, so it should come as no surprise that we grow to become predisposed to a given behavior, be it sexual perversion (of any kind, not just singling out homosexuals) or murderous rage. We CAN choose whether we accept that about ourselves or not, whether to commit acts of sin or not. But there is nothing at all sinful about being on the receiving end of temptation. I think that's where much of the trouble and confusion comes in when it comes to how Christians respond to sin. We often fail to make the distinction between sinful thoughts and temptation. A predisposition only makes you more likely to make certain errant choices, but a predisposition is not the sin itself. It is the choice to indulge personal weakness that crosses the line, and it's something more than a mere passing thought.

There is nothing wrong with having a homosexual orientation, at least not if you're assuming that it's true that it's an inborn condition (which might be debatable, but that's beside the point). It's just at the moment Christians are perplexed by how such a condition can exist and be compatible with scripture. Suppose a straight Christian was talking with another Christian, unaware of his orientation, and asked why the guy never has a girlfriend or goes out with women. The gay Christian says, "Well, it's because I don't like girls in that way." So the straight guy goes, "Wait, you're a f@g? You know you're going to hell, right?" It's quite a conclusion to jump to. The gay guy can admit he's gay (orientation) but lives a Christian lifestyle (doesn't like girls, so practices celibacy), and still lives a fulfilling life compatible with scripture. There's no need to assume that just because a person is gay that he actually expresses his sexual orientation through sexual activity. He can be a believer, which means he isn't going to hell either way, AND be consistent.

Some fundamentalist Christians miss that vital point and just hope that they can just "pray the gay away." Liberal Christians, on the other hand, just ignore what the Bible says and encourage congregants to just do whatever they want to do anyway. In my view, neither approach is appropriate. The first fails at compassion, while the second is outright deceptive and misleading.

So its not sinful to have homosexual urges, but it is sinful to perform homosexual acts.
Besides that-whats your point?

He's saying temptation is not a sin. Giving into temptation is.

I think.

Because the bible say its ok to oust homosexuals like subhumans and most christians are homophobes and think homosexuality is out of choice.[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD5mFQkenqI&feature=related[/youtube]

I partially agree.

The bible has gradations on sin, at least from the perspective of the Jew. The Christian seems to hold that all sin is equal, especially in the eyes of God... the torah(or old testament) holds that there are things worthy of God wiping an entire civilization off of the face of the earth for, and things it would just not prefer you do because its not good for you or other people. The torah also doesn't care about what you think or whats in your heart. It cares only about how you behave. If your thoughts or your heart animate you to do immoral things to others, then that is an obvious case not to engage in immoral thinking or maintain a corrupt heart. Faith is in the heart and crucial to getting into heaven, for the Jew it is purely behavior, the decent will not share the same fate as the indecent, and therefore puts every human being shoulder to shoulder, and the decent pagan, decent christian, decent atheist are on par with even the most pious Jew. That is what God measures from the Jewish perspective.

There isn't anything wrong with a homosexual orientation, and the ban on homosexuality comes from the acknowledgement that it exists. So much so that Judaism introduced the concept of homosexuality to the world, by defining intercourse based on the participants sex, whereas almost every one of the nations surrounding the hebrew nation defined intercourse by who was the giver or the doer, and who was the receiver. Sexuality varied from society to society, but homosexual behavior was normative/acceptable in much of the world, even amongst heterosexual males. Now, there are people who say it was for that specific time only in the holy land of Israel, and the text supports that reading(Jacob Milgrom, UC Berkley), and others who say it was only referring to cultic prostitution amongst the priestly class.

My problem, and I feel God's problem with the scenario you've written above is that the Christian would rather a homosexual live a life alone. I would rather they have a partner to live out life with, and tell them at the onset the torah's prohibition on a man laying with another man the way he would a woman, and let that be a choice that he and his partner makes on their own, and that's between the two of them and God. All the while we value their humanity, we love them every bit as much as we do the heterosexual friends and families in our lives, but every party acknowledges the male-female ideal of the torah, and those who can't live up to it for whatever reason don't, but as long as it is acknowledged and promoted.

I have contempt for both. The fundamentalist Christian literalism causes them to irrationally think of homosexuality as intrinsically evil and the liberal Christian only agrees with the text when it agrees with leftism and does not believe in the divinity of the text. The Fundamentalist causes people to leave the faith, the liberal gives no reason to stay in the faith, because why stay when you can be an atheist, buddhist, or a humanist and still be in good standing with your left wing values. Both have their set of challenges, and do a lot of damage to Christianity.

And look, unless as a straight male, you can imagine yourself waking up one day and choosing which sex you are going to be attracted to for that day, its not fair to think that homosexuals chose their homosexuality.

The fundamentalist makes the same error many homosexuals and homosexual advocates make which is assuming that sexuality is fixed.

"I was born this way" a Gay may say, arguing that sexual rigidity is the normal way of things, and allowing gay marriage will not make others who weren't born Gay become Gay.

"Pray the gay away" also assumes that heterosexuality is not only the norm, but that it is fixed, and the Gay has been corrupted by a Gay Demon or a curse of sorts which can be healed by praying it away, or sending him/her to Gay camp. It is destructive that thinking, and totally forgets the world pre-Torah wherein it was quite normal for men to engage in sexual activity with one another, especially if they've been out too sea or on expeditions/campaigns without much contact with the opposite sex. Men today, heterosexual men, so easily engage in sex while imprisoned... and that is important because people assume that prison sex is between Gay rapists and their homo or heterosexual victims The egyptians had homosexual cultic prostitution, and very often, these weren't gay men involved, there's the greeks, the romans, its a far more colorful history then people realize.

Sexuality is not that rigid as people think... we live in the world the bible made possible wherein we've forgotten human norms, thanks to prohibitions of the text. A large group of people have their sexuality identity intact due to the gender roles and societal constructs we've put in place.