Are there any gay people who think they choose to be gay?

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I was saved by Christ not because I reject the gay lifestyle but because I accepted Jesus has my Savior and Lord. It's true that I choose to get out of homosexuality and I found freedom.

Evangelicals christians help me with my struggle with same sex attraction and now they helping me with my new SA diagnostic. A lost some friend, liberal christian. They call themself "progressive" but they reject me because I choose to leave out from a sinful life. They aren't "progressive" at all if you don't beleive the same thing.

I have nothing with gay people but I can help those with "unwanted" same attaction. Therapy are very effective.

Yes, people do have the freedom to have stupid beliefs.

You are not winning any allies by implying that homosexuality is sinful. Also there are plenty of people who are gay and religious. The obviously see that as posing no problem in their relationship with god.


And this is not what we're arguing (or at least not what I'm arguing). I'm arguing that people should not be brought up to believe that homosexuality is evil/wrong/sinful/illegitimate in the first place. Full stop.

This is very important to point out. You are saved not through what you've done but through what God has done.


You've had your own struggles to deal with just like I have.

But this statement is crucial. You've had relevant experience that I haven't. And that is why I think it's important that I leave the discussion for the time being at least. It's easy to talk the talk when I'm not directly affected by the problem myself. This discussion needs someone who can speak about it firsthand.


Good to know there's someone out there who doesn't see us as all evil. Welcome to WP!

Are we both dwelling in the 21 st century? Jesus was killed by the Romans 2000 years ago. You did it yourself.

ruveyn

And, you know, here's the thing I don't get: the prohibition against (male) homosexuality appears in the same OT book that covers eating shellfish (going to hell), the treatment of your slaves, and numerous other practices that have essentially been thrown out the window whole-cloth by the majority of Christians in the world. What's so special about me macking on another gentleman (as I plan to one of these days so I can settle out my bi-curiosity once and for freaking all) that makes it inherently worse than, oh I dunno, wearing clothes that contain more than one kind of fiber?

There are a number of positive things about it. It engenders a peace-of-mind that you can't really get in any other way. I've also been a lot more productive than I've ever been before. I find that I actually like working and sweating all day. I never felt much that way before, but being tied to a guy permanently seems to have pumped jet fuel into my sense of industry. I mean, I never would have thought that I would wake up Sunday morning and think, "I think I'll take a shovel and dig a place to lay down some decorative pebbles we have," and spend three hours cutting through roots and shoveling dirt and then pounding the earth with a landscape timber, and after that was done double the size of my already burgeoning vegetable and herb garden. We might have more produce here than we can use, but that's okay. We have a nice lady next-door we help out financially sometimes (and we're trying to talk her daughter into letting me give her some piano/keyboard lessons), and she cooked us up some grouper and brought it over just a few days ago. I figure it might be possible to work out some kind of barter arrangement there, exchanging whole food for cooked food.

My experience is not unique: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1 ... 6215105903

But, anyway, marriage, whether it's gay or straight, is a blessing. It's really heaven itself.

I think it's very relevant to our present discussion. You are telling us, here, that you think that gay men ought to practice celibacy. I am telling you that it is very well possible if they were to get married...to other men. If you are in an established and healthful marriage, you can redirect a lot of your sexual energy into industry, which you can't really do as easily otherwise. Since my partner and I really settled down, I've gone from having sex six times a day to only two. However, in my previous relationship, that effect was even more dramatic: it got down to monthly! Never missed it! If you think that it is gay sex that is a sin, you can eliminate that from the equation entirely without depriving a single gay person, in any way, shape or form. This is the win-win scenario.



http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2012/01/09/40435

"As further evidence of a possible shift of Exodus International’s focus, Warren Throckmorton pointed the removal of books on reparative therapy from Exodus’s bookstore. When Throckmorton asked Exodus International president Alan Chambers for comment, he responded:

'The reason I removed RT books from Exodus Books is because I don’t agree with using this research as a means to say that “this” is how homosexuality always develops, “this” is the primary means in which to deal with it and this is “the” outcome you can expect. Too, Exodus, as a whole, is not a scientific or psychological organization…we are a discipleship ministry and that is where I think our strength is and energy should be focused.'

This comes two weeks after Chambers told an audience of gay Christians that “the majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them, have not experienced a change in their orientation or have gotten to a place where they could say that they could never be tempted or are not tempted in some way or experience some level of same-sex attraction.”"

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/n ... conference

“This therapy devastates the lives of many who have endured it and can result in lasting psychological harm,” said SPLC attorney Sam Wolfe, who joined representatives of Truth Wins Out and other advocacy groups at a news conference in Atlanta . “It inaccurately assumes that LGBT people are broken and fraudulently claims to fix who they are. We want LGBT people and their allies to be aware of the disastrous effects this therapy can cause and encourage survivors to speak out against it.”

Well, I hope that others understand why I chose not to focus on hard evidence in this discussion and favored personal anecdotes over scientific argument.

Well, all that is a whole different discussion. Homosexuality is wrong for two reasons from the Christian perspective. First of all, God created us male and female. Oh, and btw...the Bible does not say being attracted to something evil or being tempted by something evil is a sin. SSA is not a sin. It is believing that acting on it is acceptable behavior and actually engaging in it that is harmful. If someone gives up on the natural order of male-female relationships for cohabiting, pleasure, procreation, etc., then he's expressing dissatisfaction with God's created order. The second reason is that in the ancient world, homosexuality was a feature of paganism and continues to represent a worship of false gods. No matter how you try to get around it, it is never appropriate behavior for a Christian believer. Paul's writings indicate same in the NT, so it's not JUST an OT thing.

Now, as to the other things you mentioned:

Eating shellfish makes Jews ritually unclean, not to mention dietary laws are otherwise observed ONLY to make a distinction between Jews and Gentiles. It sets them apart from other people. And if a non-Jew or non-Israelite were to ask a Hebrew why he doesn't eat shellfish, it opens a discussion about Yahweh worship. The intended effect is for the Hebrews to be the "light of the world" and invite the rest of the world to join them in seeking a relationship with Yahweh. In reality, Israel and Judah allowed themselves to be influenced too much by pagan civilizations, but the point of dietary laws is one of distinction, not "do this or you're going to hell." Jesus abolished dietary laws for his followers to pave the way for the Great Commission, and it still took some time before Jewish Christians figured out what they were supposed to do.

Treatment of slaves: It's the wickedness of the human heart that causes people to trade each other like property, not the will of God. Laws concerning slaves exist partly to make an evil institution livable, not to promote it. Both Jews and Christians value freedom, and where ever we've been prevalent in the world, slavery has been eliminated as an institution and driven underground.

Mixing fibers: These laws are actually still in effect for most of western society. There is some evidence in the OT that mixtures are reserved strictly for holy items such as those used in the Tent of Meeting or Temple worship. But, also, the OT places high importance on honest weights and measures. So probably what is intended by those laws is that people trading cloth are to accurately describe what it is they are selling. In other words, don't mix a superior product with an inferior product and try to sell it at a more expensive price. If you were to, say, sell material that is 50% silk and 50% cotton, you should tell someone that and lower the price rather than lie about it and say that it's 100% silk. And we haven't really abandoned this law in modern times, either. Clothing comes with labels describing what it is--not just for the sake of care and cleaning, but to let the customer know what he's buying and decide whether the listed price is a fair one. We have the right to litigation if we find out we're buying a counterfeit product.

And of course you try to justify slavery in the Bible just like any good fundamentalist would. At least fundamentalism is dying out.

Aside from Paul being perhaps the biggest buzzkill in the NT (you know you're depressing when the dude that got nailed to a stick is more fun than you), I have only this to say: quotes please.



Also quotes on this reasoning please. I'd love to hear about how you arrived to these theological conclusions based on your holy book.



This one I'll give you, with this addition: what cloth it's made out of also informs the consumer of what kind of safety measures must be taken with aforementioned article of clothing, as some are more flammable or likely to stain than others.

I agree

The Fourth Commandment: Exodus 20:8, Deuteronomy 5:12
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor,
and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to Yahveh your
God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your
daughter, or your male slave, or your female slave, or your
livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days
Yahveh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and
rested the seventh day; therefore Yahveh blessed the seventh day and
hallowed it.

Funny, I've read through the uncensored ten commandments and I don't see any mention of keeping slaves being against the will of God. The 4th commandment mentions how slaves have not to work on the sabbath, but there's no mention of it being wrong to keep a slave in the first place. Hmmm. Every sane and good person knows slavery is immoral or wrong. So, why is there no mention of it in the 10 commandments? I'm very suspicious of a book, which is supposedly telling us how to live a good life, but has omitted something as fundamental as that, in it's list of basic rules. But it does remind slave owners to give their slaves a day off - isn't that nice of them.

There you go. AngelRho is like someone back when black people were kept as slaves saying that, instead of America abolishing slavery, black people ought to stop having the desire to be free. And, if they can't, they ought to learn to suppress this desire. When the religion is bad, not the people, it is the religion that ought to change, not the people.

Nonsensical. It is not a law against selling material, it is a law against wearing material. If it were intended to prevent the sort of cheating you're talking about, then it couldn't work as anyone can readily see. Either the person who intends to wear it knows the fiber is mixed, in which case he isn't being cheated. Or he doesn't, in which case a law against not wearing mixed fibers can't help him because he doesn't know they are mixed.

Good.

Also, the Law (in the OT) are divided in 3: Cultual, Politic and Moral

The cultual and politic aspects of Law end in 70 after Jesus when the Temple was destroy (and Israel end as a theocracy). The moral law of OT are effective today. It's why homosexuality is wrong (sinful) but christians don't want the death penalty apply to gay people (we love them).

Pat can, it is because of people like you that some of us believe that Christianity ought to be outlawed.

Do you have the actual scriptural reference at hand? I'd like to take a close look at it. If it really is about wearing mixed fibers, then it just has to do with spiritual purity symbolism, or it has to do with holy things being reserved strictly for worship purposes. Also, how many times is it mentioned in Torah? Sometimes laws have multiple facets, or they appear to be the same when they really aren't. Same goes for not boiling a calf in its mother's milk. It seems to be more of language feature that has gotten lost, but observant Jews still won't mix cheese and meat.