The bible on homosexuality

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While myself an atheist (having been brought up a catholic)...i do take a passing interest in the churchs views on the LGBT scene and how these have modernised to fit with the times. A religion that doesnt evolve would never survive. Christianity has shaped the view of many americans, english, russians, on homosexuality so this link is quite interesting to me, having been brought up in an old school catholic environment...

BBC article on the bible and homosexuality

God does not hate anyone as is said in John 3:16. The bottom line is: God wants us to choose Him as the One and Only God. In the old testament, there were follower of false gods.
I do hope you find the following site interesting.

https://www.westarinstitute.org/resourc ... h-a-woman/

1 John 4:7-21

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
15 God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
19 We love because he first loved us.
20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

When it comes to the Old Testament on homosexuality, a lot of it was to do with their social position at the time.
The Jewish people of that time were in living in an environment that was not lead or controlled by them, so they were susceptible to certain dangers. One of these dangers were the sexual sacrifices that people used to make to a Goddess that was worshipped in the Southern region of Canaan. These sexual sacrifices were sometimes done out of free will by followers off the deity, but it was said that many jewish men and women were kidnapped and raped by the same and opposite gender as a sacrifice to this goddess.

A lot of what is in the Bible is often taken out of historical context and if historical context was applied there would be a lot more nuance in terms of how people interpreted what they read.

To hate is to dislike immensely, begrudge, loath, hold a grudge.
To Love is to accept what is beyond our control.
That is what Jesus was explaining.
My own experience is: my brother hates me because I am gay.
My own experience to my brothers issue is: 'Ok, so he hates me, sadly I have no control over his thoughts.'

How nice to see such progressive people, sadly i was brought up to take the bible literally in parts, no doubt a product of my irish catholics fathers influence...

He once described gout as "satan trying to enter my body" and had negative views on the LGBT community. He would come up with lots of demeaning jokes about the protestants which did not endear him to me as a religious example...hence my eventual rejection of his belief system and of catholicism.

Nice to know there are more progressive and loving denominations out there who are inclusive. You grow up with a screaming father who drives dangerously when late for church, says you go to church or "arent part of this familly" and you make seriously skeewed views on the church which do not seem representative of modern christians at all.

Glad to see positive views on the LGBT community within christianity!

Here is a link you might find interesting:

http://inclusiveorthodoxy.yolasite.com/ ... uality.php

There is a free PDF of a book by Rev. Justin R. Cannon on the topic.

Yes! This is absolutely right! As someone who is an atheist I do see the value of religion. People tend to apply their current sociopolitical climate to biblical texts, choosing to ignore the fact that these texts came out of a very different kind of sociopolitical climate. Back then there really was no such thing as homosexuality as we view it today. What's important though is that as the times change religion should change with it instead of holding onto obsolete values. There is such a thing as LGBT/queer theology in Christianity now that envisions the Bible through a "queer" lens so to speak. This kind of theology is very helpful for people who identify as LGBT Christians because they can see themselves in the biblical story and it becomes a part of their understanding of what it means to be a part of the community of faith. My particular favorite biblical passage example about this is from the book of Acts with the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. From a queer lens the Ethiopian eunuch represents LGBT persons and the moral of the story is that God accepts all people now and no one can be excluded or discriminated against. For further reading I would recommend "Homophobia" by Byrne Fone for a somewhat complete history of homophobia. For further reading on queer theology I recommend "Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology" by Patrick S. Cheng.

I came from Catholicism to some kind of both-sides-open agnosticism but I still value Christianity.
My parents show obvious contempt to any homosexuals. But I think it comes from the fact that they mostly saw LGBT activists on the TV and, frankly, they are often disgusting. On the other hand, I have a few LGBT friends and based on them i decided homosexuallity is just a tendency in intimate life – nothing more, nothing less. All the rest of one's personality is independent on it.
The canonical law is, homosexual act is a sin. But, frankly, if I had to despise gays based on this, i should equally despise all the unmarried or not-in-church married heterosexual couples.
I choose not to despise honest people. Their sexuality doesn't mind as long as they don't harm others. I can't speak for the God but as He is said to exactly know what is in one's heart, I believe He doesn't judge people on such supersticious criteria.

I'm not a christian, but I've always found the idea that a supposedly loving God who thinks of us all as his children would make some of us gay just so he could hate and judge us and send us to hell for being sinners to be ridiculous and it makes no sense.

I think if there is a God and he is anything like christians say he is (loving, fatherly, kind and good) then he's probably just happy for us to love each other and hoping we'll learn to get along and stop with the wars and the killing and stuff and share with each other more. I don't think he would care if some of us love people with the same bits that we have, rather than the ones with different bits, that he would have more important things to be concerned about in regards to humans.

Throw out the bible, it is perfectly fine and in nature gay couplings exist widely as a reproductive strategy to get a third parent to aid in raising the young, common among birds, but otherwise it feels good and it's great stress relief for many other species since nothing else seems to fit the bill for gay sex among mammals. Humans invented god by ripping off other religions and wrote the rules to defy Roman culture. Now the Romans are long gone, but their ways still exist in the Catholic Church in priests doing the nasty with children. Just be yourself and what works for you. There is no need to tell anyone, do your parents brag in huge parades about being straight, no they don't, just live life as they would, at least the exposure part, they don't need to know what you do in the bedroom. The problem with the world I have with gays, is that they brag about it. I'm not going to go brag about my sexuality in public. It's fine here, because we're exploring that part of ourselves, but openly joining parades or festivals and yelling it off the rooftops would offend most gays if unscheduled, that's why old people seldom frequent those places. I'm only 35 and I avoid SF Pride every year despite having a music stage backed up on my block. My dad found out I'm gay, because I found a nice sweet sugar daddy. He was mad for a short time, but I never really spoke about it and the anger wore off since my real dad knew it didn;t change anything between my real family.

I am a Christian, pretty stainch one at that, and I am also LGBTQ. I dislike the term bisexual although if there was a box to put me in that would be the closest fit. My partner of 19 years is transitionin M to F . Which suits me perfectly as I love both genders. I have no conflict within me about a loving God who accepts me as I am, nay has in fact made me- my sexuality, my non binary gender identity, my AS. Mind you I am speaking from a good place today. Not every day is like this.

I just thought i would throw this into the discussion for anyone interested.