On another blog, I have been discussing the biblical perspective on homosexuality, and have gotten some good questions. Here are my answers, familiar to all who read here regularly. But they bear repeating.
1. Why did our lord God create gay and straight people?
As a caveat to those who don’t see the Bible as authoritative, I am not asking you to believe it because the bible says so. I am rather appealing to reason, using scripture as a guide. If you don’t buy the assumptions or logic, fine with me. But I am NOT appealing to religious authority.
Biblically speaking (i.e. I am trying to relate what I believe the scriptures teach, not just my opinion), the short answer is that God created us male and female, and God created mankind with purity, but mankind corrupted himself:
Ecclesiastes 7:29
But I did find this: God created people to be virtuous, but they have each turned to follow their own downward path.
So even if people are BORN with abnormalities, it is not that God created them that way, but that sin and sickness and death have damaged the gene pool. Therefore, not every condition, including homosexuality, can be justified even if it has a genetic component. Just because someone has a tendency towards aggression or promiscuity doesn’t justify such behaviors as “normal” or intended by God.
I would further argue that God did not make homosexuals, but considering that homosexuality is probably largely environmental in nature and not genetic, I would say that it is more likely a developmental dysfunction. So if by the phrase “God made homosexuals,” you mean “God made us this way, therefore he intended it,” I would argue that just because we are all born sinners does not mean that is what is what God desires or intends.
Further, since I believe homosexuality to be largely environmental in origin, God did not make homosexuals, but rather, the sinful environment caused emotional trauma which LED to homosexual identity.
2. If we are such an abomination to god why do we exist?
Homosexuals are not an abomination, homosexuals are people made in the image of God, and like the rest of us, sinful as well. Homosexual *desires and actions* are abominable, as are other sinful actions that heteros engage in. I suggest reading Is man basically good or evil? for the biblical view of man’s nature.
To some extent, it is immature reasoning that equates the moral judgment of an *action* with disapproval of one’s person. When I correct my children, I am quick to let them know that I love THEM, but their actions were displeasing to me. I let them know the difference, because a child can experience correction as an attack on their being and person, not just a corrective action meant to guide them.
With homosexuality, I understand that it is rooted so deeply in the psyche that condemning SSAs as wrong seems like a rejection of your person. However, we affirm that such attractions are NOT the true self, but a defense mechanism that separated you from your gender and the corresponding OSA, and this true self which you are separated from is still waiting for affirmation and development.
3. Why do you hate us so much?
There are two issues here. First, many Christians and anti-gays are insecure, immature people who delight in ridiculing and condemning others due to their insecurity. Can’t justify that at all. But not all gay opposition is of this sort, even if gay advocates like to paint it as such.
Second, as I’ve described in What is hate?, moral disapproval is not hate. To characterize it as such is to dumb down the conversation, abuse the language, and basically be guilty of ad hominem attacks rather than employing reason and civil respect. While you may experience opposition to your legislative and social efforts as hate, most opposition, especially Christian opposition, is not hate.
4. How do we the gay people of the world threaten the welfare of the world?
The short answer is, to some extent, what we all do in our private sexual worlds is our own business, and really affects no one. But when we push our atypical habits and perspectives on others, we must then be ready to defend our legislative efforts as “healthy for society.”
And the fact is, studies show that atypical families, including single parent homes, gay parent homes, and most other non-hetero homes (that have love), are sub-optimal for child development, and by extension, are bad for society.
So, should we make single parent homes illegal? No one is pushing for such. However, we also acknowledge that this is NOT the natural, preferred setup. Not for the individual, not for the child, and not for society.
We say the same about gay parenting. We don’t want to make it illegal, but neither do we want to establish it as a normal variant when it is clearly abnormal – I mean, even nature shows that gays can not produce children under any normal circumstances (please don’t bring up the infertile couple argument – we consider infertility an unnatural problem to be solved anyway, and an exception to the rule, while the rule for gay couples is – nature can NEVER produce children to a gay couple).
There is a second reason why normalizing homosexuality may be bad for society. If it is a dysfunction, with higher associations with other mental illnesses such as depression, suicide, domestic violence, and substance abuse, then calling it a normal healthy variant is a LIE, and lies always damage society and individuals.
I think of my friends who are now ex-gay and living happily – what if they had believed that they were doomed to be victims of their SSA for the rest of their lives? Maybe THAT hopelessness contributes to suicide among gays!
If we promote unhealth as health, people suffer, and so does all of society, because we’ve now established a pattern of conclusions based, not on science, natural and moral reasoning, and relatively trustworthy historical and religious traditions, but upon politics and self-deception that originates in man’s desire to justify sin, which is his nature.
5. I truly want to understand why you think the way you do.
OK, there you go. Again, Christians probably could do better bringing grace and kindness into the equation even if they believe that the TRUTH is that homosexuality is a dysfunction and a sin. But no amount of kindness in delivering such a message can stop the accusations of hate from people bent on disagreeing with such a message.
And science is somewhat inconclusive on the causes and possible associated problems with homosexuality, though it is not silent. In the meantime, I think that government should remain neutral on the subject, neither condoning (through redefining marriage) nor criminalizing (e.g. sodomy laws) homosexuality.
Encouraging kids to explore such sins, or telling them that such unhealthy choices are healthy or normative almost certainly will cause damage, and while the jury is out, it is irresponsible to teach such things.
As a caveat to those who don't see the Bible as authoritative, I am not asking you to believe it because the bible says so. I am rather appealing to reason, using scripture as a guide. If you don't buy the assumptions or logic, fine with me. But I am NOT appealing to religious authority.
This is just nonsense. You maintain that your argument isn't based of biblical injunctions or "authority," but on reason. Yet, you want to use the Bible as a guide. What is this but seeing the Bible as authoritative? Reason needs no guide but itself. You can't have it both ways, seeker. And, no, I don't buy your "assumptions" here, as I think they are based on nothing but religious superstition, not reason or logic. I see nothing here at all but more religious prejudice, like some old rattled whore given a new dress and some make-up.
Reason needs no guide but itself.
Even reason makes assumptions. I am using some biblical assumptions, and also, since the person asking the questions was asking religious questions about God, I think that biblically based reasoning and arguments is not out of the question.
So, I am distinguishing between appeals to religious authority (it's true because the bible says so), but I am using biblical arguments when I say "nature prevents gays from having natural children, ergo, in light of this and the bible's claim that God created man and woman, I am concluding that it is not natural."
I guess I am saying that I am using both the books of nature and of revelation. When asking religious questions, I think this approach is both reasonable, reasoned, and not an appeal to religious authority.
Maybe I am not doing a good job separating them, but I think that you can be relying on reason while maintaining a biblical world view or set of assumptions, as long as you make those assumptions explicit.
Yes, you can “reason” from those assumptions, but if your target audience doesn’t share your assumptions don’t expect much agreement. One can talk about “God” without reference to the bible.
Nothing in Scripture supports your view of loving, committed same sex relationships being inherently sinful.
Well, we’ll have to disagree. I find your interpretive methods highly suspect, if not strained stretches of logic, and have given what I consider to be good rebuttals to your claims, and logical support for the more straightforward interpretation. Such arguments as “they had no concept of gay orientation” are laughable if they were not so tragic in their consequences.
Exploitative, power based forms of human degradation are clearly proscribed in the Bible, which if you care to use reason is an altogether different conclusion than the one at which you arrive.
How you get such an intrepretation out of Romans 1, which clearly explains what it means, is a travesty of logic and biblical interpretation. Occam would condemn you, and so would Jesus and Paul.
The Bible points Christians away from the kind of spiteful invective of the other that you so regularly visit upon people of a different sexual orientation.
Recognition of sin is not invective, but those who seek to justify sin surely see it as such because it condemns their own sin which they are quick to defend – i.e. they hate the light. If they were adulterers, they would condemn God’s righteous judgment of that too.
Basically, I see your accusations of hate as spurious efforts of self-defense – you see, you HAVE to view me that way because it justifies in your mind that you are morally superior and I am somehow evil.
I would be quite content to let you wallow in the filth of your own hate were it not for the damage you do to the Church by your preaching.
You clearly misunderstand hate, but I have come to see that as a given in those who want to attack those who agree with nature and scripture as to the unnatural and immoral nature of homosexuality.
And I would say the same of you – except I would not be content to let you wallow in your sin, since I think it is damning. And your perspective is a hindrance to holiness and the truth. So back atcha, mr. high and mighty.
However, in the name of truth in labeling you should in all decency stop using the name to which you have forfeited all right: Christian.
You know what, a Christian loves grace and holiness. Not only have I not abandoned grace, I have kept true to God’s love of holiness, without which no one will see God. No one who practices sexual sin is practicing holiness, and no one committed to the unnatural and debased practice of homosexuality can claim to be holy, or walking in God’s ways.
Why did God create homosexuals?
With so much going on with Homosexuals and the Church, questions are always there that if being gay is so wrong, why did God create gay people and why do Christians hate them.
Having attraction to your own sex may or may not be abnormal, but are we not all abnormal to some degree? You seem to imply that abnormality is bad. Abnormal just means different to most, it is neither good nor bad in itself.
Jesus himself was very abnormal. He refused to be one of the crowd.
Have you ever considered that it is the attitude of those who believe homosexuality is a “sin”, that causes the controversy over this subject? It is like a self-fulfilling prophecy… you belive it is bad, so therefore you harass those who do these things, and they become upset, depressed, suicidal – because they cannot understand what they have done wrong, and yet they receive so much negative attention. Therefore the negativity is not brought by them, but by those who oppose them.
Jesus says that we are to love one another, we are not to stop us loving one another, which is essentially what condemnation of homosexuality is. From my way of looking at things, the way Christianity treats these people is the real abomination, not the homosexuality itself.
Giacomo,
Seeker is a closeted gay man, in denial, with mental health issues. Don't waste your time arguing with him – it is useless and only plays into his obsession. If you're religious say a prayer for him instead.
It is for persistent trolling perverts like this commenter that I wrote Think tank estimates evangelical churches 90% closet homosexuals.
I have deleted multiple comments from what I assume is this same commenter, in which he usually mentions my supposed love for young boys. I am leaving this one ad hominem to show you how some gay apologists view those who oppose homosexuality – they think all such opponents are suppressed gays.
I think that while some anti-gay activists have a gay streak that they are straining to suppress (Craig, Haggard), not all fall under that category. seeker may have some issues, but I don’t think he’s toe-tapping in the local men’s room.
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