Posted on 06/07/2021 12:57:35 PM PDT by ealgeone
The first one was a co-worker friend. The other is a friend from childhood. He is the one who seems to have reformed.
I am about as red-blooded, skirt-chasin’ man as you can get. . . except that after being divorced for 18 1/2 years, I married again in January 2020. So I quit my skirt chasing and the world is finally better after a long, long nightmare. She is awesome.
The first was a member of my church friend, the other a co-worker friend.
Many of us are born with a propensity to adultery and fornication. ACTING on those propensities is sin. Having them is not.
Same with obesity actually (typically a symptom of gluttony). And alcohol abuse. I doubt I’m the only one who either is genetically disposed to anger, or who was taught it at a very early ago....but it is still sin.
This post is from Corinthians, written by Paul, who never knew Christ. It’s totally in error. Waste of time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8VSWqekpCY&ab_channel=ASKDrBrown
This is one logical fallacy after another, akin to "meat-eating vegetarians." There simply is no "LGBTQIA+ Christian community," or "Christian Conservative LGBTQIA+ activist," but which untenable marriage is driven by the quest to negate the Biblical injunctions against homosexual marriage and even assert sanction of the same.
Religion is the bedrock of homophobia and transphobia across the world and fundamentalist Christianity is one of the most deadly.
Meaning misusing the word homophobia* to stigmatize and intimidate" anyone who opposes what God does and supports Biblical morality.
God made man and women distinctively different yet uniquely compatible and complementary, and only joined them together in marriage - as the Lord Jesus Himself specified (Mt. 19:4–6) - and Scripture only condemns homosexual relations wherever they are manifestly dealt with. Yet there is still room at the cross for all who will come to God in repentance and faith, and trust in the Divine Son of God sent by the Father, the risen Lord Jesus, to save them on His account, by His sinless shed blood, and thus be baptized and live for Him. Acts 10:36-47
* The term “homophobia” does not accurately define any and all persons who do not approve of homosexual relationships or homosexuals any more than a person is necessarily ombrophobia if he/she does not like going out in the rain, or anthophobic if he does not like flowers, places outdoors, and to label all who like to stay inside as agoraphobia would be wrong.
Nor are all those listed in endless but extensive lists of phobias necessarily a bad thing, but a "phobia is a type of anxiety disorder defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation...Those affected will go to great lengths to avoid the situation or object, to a degree greater than the actual danger posed. If the object or situation cannot be avoided, they experience significant distress." (Phobia - Wikipedia) "A phobia is an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal." (Overview - Phobias) "A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder that causes an individual to experience extreme, irrational fear about a situation, living creature, place, or object." (Phobias: Symptoms, types, causes, and treatment)
“an intense, persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, situation, or person that manifests in physical symptoms such as sweating, trembling, rapid heartbeat, or shortness of breath, and that motivates avoidance behavior." - Definition of phobia | Dictionary.com; "Phobia, an extreme, irrational fear of a specific object or situation." - Phobia | psychology; A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder. It is a strong, irrational fear of something that poses little or no real danger...People with phobias try to avoid what they are afraid of. If they cannot, they may experience Panic and fear Rapid heartbeat Shortness of breath Trembling A strong desire to get away. - Phobias | MentalHealth.gov; "phobia - an anxiety disorder characterized by extreme and irrational fear of simple things or social situations." - phobia.
And while it has come to be used more broadly, it actually means fear, not mere dislike. Etymologically,
"irrational fear, horror, or aversion; fear of an imaginary evil or undue fear of a real one," 1786, perhaps based on a similar use in French, abstracted from compounds in -phobia, the word-forming element from Greek phobos "fear, panic fear, terror, outward show of fear; object of fear or terror," originally "flight" (still the only sense in Homer), but it became the common word for "fear" via the notion of "panic flight" (compare phobein "put to flight; frighten"), from PIE root *bhegw- "to run" (source also of Lithuanian bėgu, bėgti "to flee;" Old Church Slavonic begu "flight," bezati "to flee, run;" Old Norse bekkr "a stream"). The psychological sense of "an abnormal or irrational fear" is attested by 1895. Hence also Phobos as the name of the inner satellite of Mars (discovered 1877) and named for Phobos, the personification of fear, in mythology a companion of Ares. - Origin and meaning of phobia by Online Etymology Dictionary
In contrast, by God's grace - and as a sinner saved by grace - I (as with many other evangelicals) for years I have sought to outreach and help all sorts of people, from Hell's Angels to homosexuals, and give a gospel tract (and sometimes food) but the latter tend to want to avoid me once they understand I implicitly represent a threat to their lifestyle.
However, "homophobic" falls under "Non-medical, deterrent and political use" as the word is abused in assigning that label to any and all who oppose of even will not affirm homosexual relations and hold that the condition behind such is disordered.
And thus its typical use is indeed a psychological tactic designed to intimidate and silence opposition to the same - however conscientious - by placing them the defensive via charging them with being possessed by an irrational fear. Which plays off of a social phobia phobia, that of katagelophobia = fear of ridicule, being maligned by the prohomosexual lobby as being irrational, backwards, etc, and thus those who are intimidated by such could be the ones called homophobic.
And it is not simply some poster as me that objects to the use of homophobia, but scholars*
And which tactic follows (knowingly or not) the strategy set for in the book "After the Ball" years ago by two homosexual Harvard-trained graduates, Marshall Kirk (1957–2005), a researcher in neuropsychiatry, and Hunter Madsen (pen name Erastes Pill) whose social marketing advocated avoiding portraying gays as aggressive challengers, but as victims instead, while making all those who opposed them to be evil persecutors.
Associate all who oppose homosexuality with images of Klansmen demanding that gays be slaughtered, hysterical backwoods preachers, menacing punks, and a tour of Nazi concentration camps where homosexuals were tortured and gassed. Thus, "propagandistic advertisement can depict homophobic and homohating bigots as crude loudmouths..."[58] " It can show them being criticized, hated, shunned. It can depict gays experiencing horrific suffering as the direct result of homohatred-suffering of which even most bigots would be ashamed to be the cause. It can, in short, link homohating bigotry with all sorts of attributes the bigot would be ashamed to possess, and with social consequences he would find unpleasant and scary... our effect is achieved without reference to facts, logic, or proof."
Moreover, as for fear, there should be a healthy fear of the unhealthy effects of sodomy. For
according to the CDC (chart), in 2017 male to male sexual contact was the mode of transmission in 93% of new HIV cases among male youth aged 13 to 24, and MSM accounted for 82% of diagnoses among males and 70% of all new HIV diagnoses, and 2 out of every 3 diagnoses in the United States. Which is despite only representing approximately 4% of the male population). . Also, "transgender women [worldwide] are 49 times more likely to have HIV than other adults of reproductive age." (Transgender people)
And which practice is primarily responsible for more than 700,000 people with AIDS having died since the beginning of the epidemic - despite decades of attempting to tame it into being "safe." (Worldwide, 77.3 million people have contracted HIV and 35.4 million have died of AIDS-related illnesses since the beginning of the pandemic in 1981: https://health.usnews.com/conditions/hiv-aids/articles/hiv-statistics.)
Also "STIs and their complications amount to about $16 billion annually in direct medical costs. HIV imposes the largest financial burden, costing $12.6 billion in direct medical costs, followed by HPV at $1.7 billion, chlamydia at $156.7 million, gonorrhea at $162.1 million, and syphilis at $39.9 million." (https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/STI-brief.pdf)
More.
*scholars such as Beverly A. Greene and Gregory M Herek in Lesbian and Gay Psychology (pp. 27,28) who stated:
...as Herek (1986a) notes, the term itself is unfortunate. Technically, homophobia means fear of sameness, yet its usage implies a fear of homosexuals. Although negativity toward gay men and lesbians is no doubt based on fear to some extent, the –phobia suffix implies a specific kind of fear—one that is irrational and characterized by a desire to remove oneself from the object of the fear. Because some people labeled homophobic not only fail to avoid homosexuals but also seek them out to harass and physically assault them, this term does not accurately rep-resent negativity toward gay persons (cf. Herek, 1986a). In addition, because such fear-based reactions to homosexuals appear to be more common among males than females (Herek, 1986b; Morin & Garfinkle, 1978), the term may be more applicable to heterosexual men than to heterosexual women. Another problem is that attitudes toward gay men and lesbians are likely to be multifaceted and complex (e.g., Millham, San Miguel, & Kel-logg, 1976; Plasek & Allard, 1984; Weinberger & Millham, 1979), and holding negative attitudes toward homosexuality likely serves different functions for different people (Herek, 1986a). Hence fear or aversion may comprise one component of beliefs about homosexuality, but other fac-tors are unquestionably important.
Several alternative terms have been offered to better reflect the ante-cedents of prejudicial attitudes toward gay men and lesbians and to sidestep the problems inherent with the term homophobia. These include homonegativism (Hudson & Ricketts, 1980), homosexism (Hansen, 1982), and heterosexism (Herek, 1986a). Unfortunately, none has gained wide-spread acceptance.
Then in in the Journal of applied Psychology, Gary Colwell wrote,
The charge of homophobia, indiscriminately made in a large part of our Western culture today, is ill conceived, illogical and false. This sweeping charge may be pictured as a triangle of informal logical fallacies. The more prominent side, the one which the general public encounters first, is what I shall call the fallacy of turning the tables: the rhetorical device of making the source of criticism the object of criticism. The other side of the charge is the fallacy of equivocation. The boundary of the term 'homophobia' is made so elastic that it can stretch around, not just phobias, but every kind of rational fear as well; and not just around every kind of fear, but also around every critical posture or idea that anyone may have about the practice of homosexuality. At the base of the charge, and undergirding the other two fallacies, is the fallacy of begging the question. A commitment to the complete acceptability of the practice of homosexuality enables its proponents to 'know' beforehand that all criticisms against it must originate in the defective psychology of the critic. (Journal of applied Psychology, Vol. 16, No. 3, 1999; Turning the Tables with 'Homophobia' on JSTOR)
You may want to take a second look at my posts, your careful explanation suggests you think somewhere on this thread I argued it is universally not a sin.
I am confident, however, that our creator will not charge those who are born with the inability to chose. Imagine a government charging and jailing a 6 year old with reckless driving.
I am confident the issue is most certainly, "some people are indeed born "homo/lesbian" and how do we responsibly regard that segment of our society?
No problem, they just need to live a chaste life. It is the sin of homosexual sex that God condemns, not specifically people who feel a same-sex attraction. While disordered, it is not a sin in and of itself.
I guess they missed the part where God burned two cities to death for practicing homosexuality.
I guess they missed the part where all the tribes of Israel slew every man in the city of Benjamin because they had engaged in homosexuality.
I guess they missed the part where it specifically says that homosexuals should be killed. (Leviticus, I think.)
And so they are wondering why people who actually read the bible have animosity towards the sodomites?
Yeah, it's a big mystery all right.
Minimal impact would be desirable. However many uneducated will cite this as fact.
I don’t believe ANYONE is born with an uncontrollable homosexual urge. Just as none of us is born with an uncontrollable heterosexual urge.
Just as very strong heterosexual urges can be wrong to act on, so would homosexual urges. ALL of us are expected to control ourselves sexually. The difference is that a homosexual - IF, IF they only can have homosexual urges - is required to NEVER act on those urges.
Not really different from what God expects of unmarried heterosexuals.
That is certainly one of the answers on the table, but my question that you recited concerns society's behavior not the individuals.
So, let me rephrase the question with a broader context.
How should society react to a male who perhaps as the result of pre-natal abuse or just a quirk of nature, has had every reason during his thinking life to thoroughly believe he is a female?
With that I am supposing his sin, if any, is his concern and not that of society.
I noted above that I believe modern medicine can effectively address the condition. Further, if society is going to provide medical benefits that should be included.
Austin Powers quote comes to mind.....
This might have been edited/excised out of interests that would leave more explicit understandings out of what is rarely discussed in polite company and which many parents would perhaps like not to see discussed.
μαλακοὶ (malakoi) soft ones/"catchers," dominated
catamites
ἀρσενοκοῖται (arsenokoitai) "pitchers," dominators
sodomites
Both refer to males in their first order understanding, though a more generalized second order sin of desire to dominate or be dominated sexually by a same sex person is perhaps somewhat implied.
Sodomites keeping young boys as sex slaves is probably much more a purview of bloodline Satan worshipers (read: Deep State initiates) than what polite company presently discusses. In bible times, such things were perhaps more openly known and less private. These things are now also more well-known among muslim peoples.
In any event, no LGBTQIA+ activist has any reason at all to complain, as if more complete explanation or translation would at all be a vindication for such a "life style." Our Maker God has revealed that He is against it (period).
The reason why they did not show hospitality was because they were too consumed with their lusts; when people are consumed by lust they no longer care about others and only see others as a means with which to gratify their lusts
Interesting.
In any event, no LGBTQIA+ activist has any reason at all to complain...
I think that is true and we have seen the activism in recent decades become more hip and aggressive. In my lay opinion it is probably a function of self-pity.
My money says if you were to offer a magic pill that would render them a happy male or female within a week, the vast majority would grab it.
If only there was a tradition, then we would know.
I used to live as and identify as a lesbian in my younger years, when I was a liberal Christian who was pretty much only acquainted with the thinking of the world, so I’ll comment on that question.
Probably in other times and places, far fewer people with this temptation either pursued it in the past or pursue it today because life outside of modern, wealthy countries is much more difficult.
A couple years back, an article from a secular scholar was posted here in which the scholar said, IIRC, that he wasn’t opposed to homosexuality, yet had to report nevertheless that it’s not true that it was simply accepted by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Male homosexuality was acceptable only for the man taking the “male” position, while the “female” role was often typically forced on a slave since it was considered a humiliation. You have to wonder if that inequality might be due to the fact that the “female” position was and still is far more dangerous to take health-wise.
In the same way, in the days when almost everything had to be made literally from scratch, and parents would need their children to take care of them later in life, men and women generally needed each other much more from a practical standpoint just to get by.
Now in this time and place, worldliness, with all of its idols, is flourishing in every part of society. But still there are many people tempted by homosexuality who either reject it in the first place, or later leave it, because they accept that God says it’s a sin.
It’s not going to be the majority. But then again, it’s not going to be the majority of a population that accepts Christ, and it doesn’t seem to be the majority that seeks to avoid today’s worldliness, either.
I do have to say that something very troubling I see in today’s church in America is that there are many Christians who condemn homosexual acts, as they should, but at the same time have no trouble embracing virtually any and all other sin besides it due to the same worldliness.
Let me be clear, too, I’m not accusing anyone on this thread of that. I haven’t read through the posts in this thread very closely, and even if I did, I don’t know if I could judge one way or another about any particular person from just a few posts. The Lord will be the judge.
But all told, it is a definite attitude among a considerable number of Christians today.
And so it leads to, for example, when a Miss California, Carrie Prejean, was held up as a model for Biblical Christianity when she said that she believed, personally, that marriage was only between a man and a woman:
“We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”
Yet, not surprisingly, few Christians also said that Prejean was doing wrong by taking part in the contest in the first place, as it involved her wearing very immodest dress. Modesty for women is becoming largely rejected now by the church in America, and provocative dress even gets strenuously defended.
Of course, unbelievers seize on the hypocrisy of so many Christians embracing every form of worldliness while just rejecting homosexuality when it’s not their temptation, but justifying the others. They’re of course pleased with that hypocrisy, and have worked hard to bring it about, to ensnare Christians in every form of worldliness that they can, but many Christians have also worked right along with them. It’s been like, as Jesus taught, the blind leading the blind.
(continued)
It’s sometimes also argued that Romans 1 demonstrates that homosexual sin is in a special class, and the worst of all. But even if that would be so, that doesn’t mean that “modern life” in wealthy nations has made God reconsider what sexual sin is, and after further consideration, He’s decided just to retain homosexuality.
I have to take Romans 1 as not only exposing those who commit homosexual sin, but also exposing societies and nations that reject God, one sign of which then becomes the acceptability of homosexual sin, but it also takes on the character of the other sins listed in Romans 1.
All Christians today would simply do well to make sure that they humbly and in fear of Him consider EVERY WORD OF GOD, especially every word in the New Testament. In the end, we are all individually responsible to Him. And I say, consider every word of His “in fear,” because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and it certainly seems that many Christians in the modern, wealthy world have yet to come to Christ through that beginning, but instead seem to take for granted His grace and make hard, mocking, and even condemning speeches, not against those they call “dour” Christians, but against God Himself. These same Christians often condemn the sin of homosexuality, yet are offended when God’s Word clearly doesn’t allow what they want to do.
No matter what temptations we individually face, we have to be willing to “take a loss” of the sin and believe in God’s promise of something better, partly in this world, and fully in the next.
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