Homosexuality

[MarcusOfLycia]

@ MarcusOfLycia

Some christian gays truley do believe it to be wrongand try to stop but they cannot.... So now how is that just and fair if they cannot actually choose.

Would you consider it more fair if their weakness was pornography? What if the weakness was lying? If someone "couldn't stop" doing either of those things, would it be fair for God to judge their actions as sin?

[Danieltwotwenty]

Hi guys
I remember when i became a teenager i had some homosexual thoughts, and if i wished i could have acted on those feelings.
i easily could have become a homosexual if i had decided to act on those feelings but i resisted and i am now happily married.
i guess what i am trying to say for me it was a choice when i was a teenager, i feel i was tempted by satan to follow through with these feelings.

your friend in Christ
Daniel

[Murray]

^

This sounds like either you were bisexual, or bicurious.

Did you have any thoughts of women at the time, or was it men alone you were attracted to?

[Danieltwotwenty]

Hi
at the time it was both, i should have elaborated.
my reasoning for belief that it is choice was not only this incident, i got addicted to drugs as a teen and smoking etc....
you could say i was "hardwired" to be more suseptible to becoming an addict or my upbringing played a part but in the end it was my choice to rebel against God.
when i was a smoker i felt like it was a part of me in the same way i guess a homosexual felt like that it is a part of them, i had to brainwash myself to stop smoking it was hard but i did it also the same with drugs.
wether i was "Hardwired" or i was a by-product of my upbringing it does not change the fact i made the choice.
i have made many poor choices in my life that i now cannot change, i thank the lord everyday for Christ.

[Murray]

Hi
at the time it was both, i should have elaborated.
my reasoning for belief that it is choice was not only this incident, i got addicted to drugs as a teen and smoking etc....
you could say i was "hardwired" to be more suseptible to becoming an addict or my upbringing played a part but in the end it was my choice to rebel against God.
when i was a smoker i felt like it was a part of me in the same way i guess a homosexual felt like that it is a part of them, i had to brainwash myself to stop smoking it was hard but i did it also the same with drugs.
wether i was "Hardwired" or i was a by-product of my upbringing it does not change the fact i made the choice.
i have made many poor choices in my life that i now cannot change, i thank the lord everyday for Christ.

Im 17 right now and before I became christian you could say I was "dependantly addicted to marijuana" and it was pretty hard for me to quit, however, never did I see this as a hardwired action or emotion, but always as a poor choice. Now, Generally I refer to homosexuality as a addiction to a lifestyle, kind of like my old "addiction" to pot culture which can be cured, but , people with addictions can only stop if they put their mind to it, like you did successfully with your bisexuality .

But the thing that troubles me the most is that, how ever much I would love to accept my addiction theory, it does not seem to be the case with "hard core" gays, some of which who became christian, learned their life style was wrong, tried to change, could not and then killed themselves because they felt as abominations of god. Most of the "ex-gays" or "cured gays" I meet were either never "hard core" but were bisexual or bicurious, and that is what splits me in two. In once sence I realize that god has spoken against homosexuality, but in another I realize that some people may actually lack the ability to change, and that is what troubles me about the matter so much.

[Danieltwotwenty]

There are some places in the Bible where it talks about people who are born unichs, people who were made unichs by man and people who were not meant for marriage, but were meant to live lives without partners.
i will look these up when i get home from work and post them.

Daniel

[Danieltwotwenty]

Hi Murray
i have arrived home safe and sound from work
that Bible passage was Matthew 19:11-12
But i think the crux of the problem is original sin, we are born into an imperfect world and weather they are born gay or it is a learned behavior it is a product of original sin. God ( IMHO ) didn't create people to be gay, they are gay because of original sin.
Everyone has their crosses to bear, like myself i have an addictive personality and must maintain control at all times so i dont slip back to my old ways ( God plays a big factor in that ).
I don't want to diminish how hard it would be for someone who has these feelings, their walk with Christ will be a hard one as are all of ours ( the Christain life was never meant to be easy ).
I feel great love for these people as i do for all sinners and i hope someday they may repent and receive Jesus into their lives.

Your Friend
Daniel

[CeT-To]

I agree with Daniel, Murray. The Christian life is not easy, everyone has their own cross to bear but it is definitely well worth it for the glory that will be shown to us once we we will see God - face to face.
Romans 8:18

[Murray]

Hi Murray
i have arrived home safe and sound from work
that Bible passage was Matthew 19:11-12
But i think the crux of the problem is original sin, we are born into an imperfect world and weather they are born gay or it is a learned behavior it is a product of original sin. God ( IMHO ) didn't create people to be gay, they are gay because of original sin.
Everyone has their crosses to bear, like myself i have an addictive personality and must maintain control at all times so i dont slip back to my old ways ( God plays a big factor in that ).
I don't want to diminish how hard it would be for someone who has these feelings, their walk with Christ will be a hard one as are all of ours ( the Christain life was never meant to be easy ).
I feel great love for these people as i do for all sinners and i hope someday they may repent and receive Jesus into their lives.

Your Friend
Daniel

Very well written

[The Protector]

I'm a little late in coming to this thread, but I've read through the whole thing and I can't help but notice that some here are bringing several assumptions to the discussion, perhaps without realizing it. There has been a great deal talk about "homosexuals" generally, and some talk about "hard core gays" as distinct from bisexuals or... well, I don't know, really-- soft core gays, I suppose? Regardless, all of this this unconsciously applies the modern cultural construct of one's "sexuality" as being an integrel part of one's identity-- the idea that one is defined by that which causes one's genitals to be aroused. In other words, we simply accept that same-sex attraction is not merely something one might expeience, but what one IS. People on both extremes of this issue are guilty of this-- both those wishing to normalize homosexual behavior and those wishing to condemn people tempted by such. And yet, as some here have already touched on, we don't apply this to any other type of sinful behavior: If I am having an affair, actively committing adultery, I might be said to be an adulterer, and I might rightly say that I am compelled to adultery by my very nature as a man (as many naturalists and evolutionists have posited that men are not naturally monogamous), but nobody would suggest that adultery defines who I am (excepting, perhaps, puritanical cultures). Certainly, we are all sinners, and that is a part of our human frailty, but our individual identities are typically not tied to our individual sins. Indeed, I would say that those who do define themselves by their primary sinful struggles are usually those who are driven to an impossible piety bordering on the obsessive-compulsive; it is like a perpetual emotional self-flagelation that, in my opinion, runs contrary to the hope God's grace affords and the joy the Holy Spirit engenders. So to answer the question about true, believing Christians who kill themselves due to guilt and despair about their same-sex attraction, I would say that those very unfortunate souls were victims of Satan's lies; Satan frequently whispers into our ears that we are scum, that God cannot love us because of our sin-- that we are without hope. While we may be slaves to sin without God setting us free, and while we may yet struggle with it after God does so, a mature faith knows that we are never without hope-- that God loves us without condition, and that, if/when we stray, God will run to embrace us and rejoin us if we only seek to rejoin Him.

(To clarify, I am not married, nor have I commited adultery; I struggle with all sorts of sin, including sexual sin, but adultery has not been one of them. It was only meant as an example.)

The other cultural assumption I think people are blindly accepting is related to the first: the idea that continually simmers just below the surface of our cultural conscious that sexual gratification is the highest ideal in life. From this cultural foundation we get conclusions such as: if one cannot form a monogamous sexual relationship with the person one physically desires, one cannot have love in one's life. As Christians, we should understand better than anyone that this is a perversion of reality, and an inversion of what is true and important. As Ravi Zacharias sometimes notes, Alduous Huxley once remarked that he didn't just not believe in God, he actively HOPED there was no God because he would then be permitted to persue his sexual proclivities. As hard as this is for adolescents and young adults to believe, we really can live very fulfilling, love-filled lives while remaining celebate. Many people have. But our society tells us (as some pagan societies did) that resisting our sexual desires is a betrayal of our natures, our selves, our very identities.

Christ said that if our hand causes us to sin we should cut if off, or if our eye causes us to sin we should pluck it out, for it is better to do so than to burn in hell. I used to take this admonition at face value and think that, at worst, Jesus was quite serious and more than a bit harsh, and at best He was engaging in a bit of hyperbole but nonetheless saying the same thing-- that the consequences of sin are so severe that we are better off plucking out our eyes if they cause us to sin. While I do think Jesus was serious about the severity of the consequences of sin, a few years ago it occured to me that perhaps Jesus was saying this tongue-in-cheek. You see, no matter how seriously we take sin, pretty much none of us cut off limbs to keep ourselves from sinning; even the most pious and true believers among us would consider that a bit nutty. I think Jesus was being a little facetious-- what he was saying was that our bodies, no matter what our desires and inclinations might be, do not "cause" us to sin; regardless of our desires, we ultimately choose whether or not to act on them. In other words, I think Jesus was sarcastically responding to the very argument put forth here-- that we are not culpable for our sins if we feel very strong desires of the flesh to engage in them.

Finally, there is a lot of misinformation out there regarding what we "know" about homosexuality. For over a decade, it was simply assumed that there was a direct genetic cause, and that we would soon identify it. But the human genome project was completed, and the highly anticipated "gay gene" was never found. Moreover, as more twin studies were done (with better sampling practices) it became apparent that biological factors probably have relatively little influence on same-sex attraction. I'm not saying that it is a choice to experience same-sex attraction (although, as I touched on above, having homosexual sex IS a choice); quite the contrary-- I don't think it is a choice. But the bulk of evidence available suggests that it is not inate. This pretty much undercuts the argument that it can't be sinful because it's "natural." As far as "homosexuality" in the animal kingdom goes, you really can't judge what is natural or moral based on what animals do for many of the philosophical and theological reasons mentioned already, but also it is important to keep in mind that animals generally operate on instinct, and often times their intinctual wires get crossed. In some species of mammal, for instance, when a mother with her young feels especially threatened, she will eat her young. Many researchers believe that when animals hump each other, they do so as a display of dominance. As a psychologist in training, I'm not so sure this isn't sometimes true in people as well. Indeed, some of you have no doubt heard someone remark, at some point, that "make-up sex" is the best or something like that, or perhaps you've heard a male character on TV or in a movie say that it's sly to take a date to a scary movie. Well, the reason is likely because the biological pathways for different types of arousal (be it sexual or fight-or-flight) are connected.

Anyway, that's all for now. I hope my muddled thoughts made some sense.

[Danieltwotwenty]

hi the protector
Excellent post, i totally agree with your position.

Daniel

[MarcusOfLycia]

Awesome post dude.

[Murray]

@ the protector

You do not see adultry pride parades when men commit adultry on floats where the whole city can see them do you? In some gays, their sin does make up their entire personality, take a trip to san francisco and you will see what I mean.

As for the hard core gays stuff, yea , hard core and soft core gays do exist. Hard core would be the gay who commits sodomy on a float in public, rides his bike naked in san fransico, and screams at people who disagree with gay marrage. Soft core would be somebody who is gay, put keeps it on the down side, not feeling the need to shove their way of life in peoples faces who may find it offencive, they may get a partner, have a gay sex life, but never attend extreme events. So yes, I firmly believe that hard core gays and soft core gays exist, and that being gay can be a life style.

[The Protector]

@ the protector

You do not see adultry pride parades when men commit adultry on floats where the whole city can see them do you? In some gays, their sin does make up their entire personality, take a trip to san francisco and you will see what I mean.

As for the hard core gays stuff, yea , hard core and soft core gays do exist. Hard core would be the gay who commits sodomy on a float in public, rides his bike naked in san fransico, and screams at people who disagree with gay marrage. Soft core would be somebody who is gay, put keeps it on the down side, not feeling the need to shove their way of life in peoples faces who may find it offencive, they may get a partner, have a gay sex life, but never attend extreme events. So yes, I firmly believe that hard core gays and soft core gays exist, and that being gay can be a life style.

Oh, I don't doubt that some gays allow their sin to define them. Do we really suppose that the "gay gene" may be closely linked to the "effete lisp gene?" Or that the "lesbian gene" is tied to the "affect a deep voice and walk like you've been in the saddle for the last week gene?" Probably not, no. But some homosexuals, for a variety of psychological reasons, join with and are influenced by the myriad of gay sub-cultures that exist. Some of those are very vocal, flamboyant, and deliberately provocative, others are not. My point was not to deny the existence of "gay lifestyles," but to deny the notion that just because they exist that must mean they aren't sinful. There are alcoholic lifestyles, there are gangbanger (does anyone use that word anymore) lifestyles, there are swinger lifestyles, there are BDSM or other paraphilia lifestyles. As scripture indicates, without God in our lives we are slaves to sin, and indeed the natural tendency is for sin to slowly take over and begin to define our lives if we let it. Our tendency, as sinners, is to find all sorts of ways to justify our sin and to justify ourselves in our sin-- in time, we may even come to define ourselves by our sin, especially if our peers, our culture, our songs, our art, and our society all tell us that our sin defines us. Then it is no longer just a "lifestyle," it's an "identity."

My point, then, is not that "gay lifestyles" (of varying cores) and "sexual identities" don't exist, it's that they only exist as social constructs. As such, I think that one is a "homosexual" only inasmuch as one can be an "idolator" or an "adulterer" or a "liar;" that is, someone who engages in same-sex intercourse can be said to be a homosexual, but only in a descriptive, not definitive way. I think it is offensive and damaging, even if meant in a supportive way, to conceptualize homosexuals as something apart or different from the rest of us.

[Murray]

^



After reading my post does the concept of hard core gays seem more plausible though? What I meant by this is that I have never seen a gay who goes to gay pride parades, commits sodomy of floats in public, guys all sorts of disgusting sex toys, and then turns Christian. I have however seen gays that are kind of on the down publicity side, which have a quite gay life with their partner until one day they try to change their sexual orientation and in some cases, as in the exodus program, they succeed.