How can people think homosexuality is a choice?

And you're wrong to bash someone for their religion when they are actually trying to make an effort to encorporate something their religion forbids into their system of beliefs Surely you've got better things to do than whine on about theists all day.......

You think wrong, we most certainly are.

How do you think aids was spread? and please dont tell me you are going to adopt a child? do you have any idea how much having 2 "mothers" would impact and totally ruin his life? stop being so selfish

Aids was spread by a lack of protection, which is why heterosexual people suffer from it as well. Funnily enough, the Catholic Church's stance on issues like contraceptives/condoms probably hasn't done much to help reduce the spread of this disease, or any other STDs for that matter.

I might adopt, yes, or either my future wife or I (I say 'wife' because hopefully by that time gay marriage will have been legalised in the UK) may be the biological mother; there is plenty of technology out there for me to start a family with another woman, the very same technology which helps masses of heterosexual families start families as well.

And if I were to adopt, how is providing a kid with a stable home selfish? And, please enlighten me, how would having two mothers totally ruin his/her life?

End of the day homosexuality is a sin; and it is a choice.

Read the Thread Through;

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1920899&page=2

If you think homosexuality is a sin because it says so in the Bible I would advise you to think again.

End of the day homosexuality is a sin; and it is a choice.

The bible is the word of god, and yes it says homosexuality is a sin so it is

I have no respect for the word sin or for this statement.

It is unnatural

Protestant bible is not the true word of god man changed it ( evil) only true is catholic and yes it says it is a sin we should kill the homosexuals levitcus 20 ( if they engage in homosexual activity)

especially when the US is the largest and most important country in the world.

If you are Catholic you will no doubt be familiar with the words ot the Catechism of the Catholic Church on this matter;

CCC 2358: "The number of men and women who have deep seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible... They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfil God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition."

Protestant bible is not the true word of god man changed it ( evil) only true is catholic and yes it says it is a sin we should kill the homosexuals levitcus 20 ( if they engage in homosexual activity)

What the Bible Actually says about Homosexuality


Taking the New Testament first

1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and that's known to be a wrong translation.

The Good News Bible has it as:
"Surely you know that the wicked will not possess God's Kingdom. Do not fool yourselves; people who are immoral or who worship idols or are adulterers or homosexual perverts or who steal or are greedy or are drunkards or who slander others or are thieves - none of these will possess Gods Kingdom"

But if you go back to the Latin Vulgate text:

"An nescitis quia iniqui regnum Dei non possidebunt nolite errare neque fornicarii neque idolis servientes neque adulteri
neque molles neque masculorum concubitores neque fures neque avari neque ebriosi neque maledici neque rapaces regnum Dei possidebunt"

The above list prohibits; fornicators, those who worship idols, adulterers, "those who are not masculine" (most correctly translated into English as "effeminate" or "androgynous&quot, people who have sex with men, thieves, jealous people, drunks, liars and those who extort others.

Which bears some similarity to the Good News Version Above, but you will agree is not quite the same thing. Especially when it comes to "homosexuality" - being "effeminate" and "having sex with men" are two separate entries in the Latin text.

And when you go further back to the Greek this was written in, if St. Paul had wanted to use the word "homosexual" then the Greek equivalent would have been "Paederast" - a term which was widely used at the time (and is still in use today) to describe the sort of behaviour translators presume St. Paul to have been prescribing.

He didn't. He used the term "Arsenokoitai". The exact meaning has been lost, but "Arse" means "man" - so the word immediately excludes Lesbians. "koitai" means "beds", and nobody is really sure how to translate this accurately.

Martin Luther actually translated it as a warning against masturbation.

It is thought that the Old Greek translation of the Hebrew "quadesh" (The male temple protitutes featured in 1 Kings) was similar to Arsenokoitai, and it is possible that St. Paul was referring to sexual acts in temples. (At least, the early Christian Leadership thought so).

I would also point out that in all the early translations this phrase was taken as "those who abuse themselves with mankind". And various theologians have argued that this is not an argument about homosexuality per se, but only of homosexuals who abuse others with their sexuality (remember at this time it was common practice for older men to take younger boys on the cusp of Adulthood...)

The above is further strengthened when paired with "Malakoi" the greek term for "effeminate" - but also the term for a boy temple prostitute. And Justin Canon(1) has come up with an interesting hypothesis on this; his translation would suggest that the real meaning of the phrase was
"Anybody who is a prostitute, who keeps or uses prostitutes, or who sells prostitutes" and we know that Male temple prostitutes were a reasonably big issue because we are told that King Asa of Judah expelled all the male prostitutes from the Pagan temples of worship.(2)

In a similar vein is Romans 1:24-27, which touches a lot of the same bases as 1 Corinthians (they were both written by Paul of Tarsus, it’s hardly surprising they have a similar view), it does, however, have one important feature that makes it worth mentioning. If you read the entire first chapter you will find that once again this is not an outright chastisement of homosexuality, but a criticism of pagan methods of fertility worship. Chapter 1:18-27 starts off by saying that God is angry because so many people are pagans, and then goes on to blame their disordered sexual conduct upon their paganism.

The sexual conduct being criticised is once again in it’s role as part of pagan worship, from which St. Paul claims it stems. Hardly a resounding critique of homosexuality in itself. (doubly underwhelming when you are familiar with the work of Foucault and set this in its historical context)

Quite substantially different from "Homosexuality" - I'm sure you'll agree. This can be done with most of the supposed references to homosexuality in the Bible.


Old Testament

Possibly the most famous (Leviticus 18:22 - "it is an abomination for a man to lie with a man as he lies with a woman&quot can be exposed to ridicle fairly easily.

Partially because Leviticus also prohobits trimming your facial hair, (Lev 19:27) planting wheat and barley in the same furrow, wearing polyester (Lev 19:19) or buying a Labradoodle. But also because this is classic selective quoting.

The key to understanding the context of this phrase lies in 18:21-22, not 18:22 alone. "Thou shalt not give of thy seed to worship the god MLK, for it is an abomination..."

You will find referenced there the Ammonite God "Moloch" (sometimes also known as Molech, Milek, Melek, Miloch, Milcom, and Molk - the Hebrew helps here becuase they don't do vowels, which means we have to flesh out MLK into different languages. Incidentally this process is the same place from whence comes Yawe and Jehovah - both from the Hebrew JHVH)

He occurs later in Leviticus 20:2, 1 Kings 11:7 & 33, Jeremiah 32:35, Acts 7:43 and probably loads of bits in between that I've missed.

We don't know an awful lot about Moloch, or how he was worshipped. Some people think he was a God of fertility; in which case it would have been normal practise for the Temples to have temple prostitutes, and in 18:21 we are expressly forbidden in giving any of our "seed" to the worship of the God Moloch. If this is the case (and it's mostly born out by cultural depictions and a few shreds of archeological evidence) then one should also understand verse 18:22 as akin to:

"And don't think you can get out of this by not getting anybody pregnant. It's still wrong - ok?"

On the other hand, some people would interpret "seed" in 18:21 as "offspring", because Greek and Roman authors used to talk of children being burned alive as sacrifices to the God Moloch. The evidence to support this is even thinner than the idea that Moloch was a God of fertility, and the handful of human sacrifices to Moloch we know happened seem to be confined to a particular geography and timescale. It's possible that the Classical writers used a bit of hyperbole for political reasons.


Specific to Gen 19:1-11, where the men of Sodom are asking Lot to bring out the angels so that they can "know" them, this cannot be interpreted as a chastisement of homosexuality for three reasons;

1 - The context is a highly dubious one on which to base infallible moral teaching

2 - The scenario is not essentially one of sexual morality, but of "fear of the Lord" (a term which I always feel would be much better translated as "respect", but this does lack the necessary connotations of awe and wonder)

3 - Homosexuality had not been 'invented' when this was written (see the earlier argument about sexual identity vs. sexual actors/desire)


As you will no doubt be aware, the context for this encounter was one of threatened sexual violence. (The eventual aftermath of which was that Lot was drugged by his daughters so that they might "lie" with him). This is a long post, so I shan't go too into what I feel is a self evidently dubious basis for moral teaching.

Theologically speaking, the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah was because they lacked reverence, not because they were sexually sinful. Sodomy was an act of ritual humiliation rather than sexual gratification, and there are suggestions that it was employed in the ancient world as a symbolic act for a conquering army to demonstrate their superiority over the vanquished. The shame of Sodomy in the Genesis reference would be better understood in this context - that of the deliberate wish to shame messengers of the Lord by subjecting them to ritual humiliation - rather than in the sexual context we have since attached to it. (It says rather a lot about the prism through which our society views the past that it is the sex strand rather than the power relations or theological strands which have been brought out in the popular psyche. Perhaps it is more than a little anachronistic and biased to read our current victorian obsession with all things sexual back into 4th millenia B.C. Jewish religious texts?)

Surely it makes sense for anybody who wishes to exert power over the messengers of God to be brought under His power?


Lastly - I should point something out as a heads up. Most Protestants (or at least the ones I have encountered) will argue that the Bible cannot be interpreted, as that would be altering it. Despite the evidence already presented above - which should be fair proof that not only can it be interpreted, but that it has been - many of them will still hold fast to ths dogmatic belief. If that should be the case then your best line of argument is to refer to Father Edmund Campions "Decem Rationes". [See ref (3) for link] And demonstrate that at the founding of the Protestant Faith, in fact in order to maintain that very dogma, the Bible had to be interpreted and altered.




That was a lot to read through - so thank you if you did take the time, and I hope some of it was helpful.



Refefrences.

(1) - Justin Canon, "The Bible, Christianity & Homosexuality" (2005)

(2) - 1 Kings 15:12

(3) Fr. Edmund Campion's
Decem Rationes
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13133/13133.txt

Also - just to point out that what Leviticus talks about is not actually to do with homosexuals. The word used is the Hebrew word "Quadesh" - a term which refers to prostitutes.

they are still sinners and i must not associate myself with those who willingly sin

I know - it's not like Jesus would hang around with sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes; and He was the Son of God!

Oh... wait...

maybe prostitutes because he was gona die anyway