Gayness and Godliness

[rug]

February 7, 2012 - 7:07AM
Godless Gross
Dick Gross has written and broadcast about living and dying without a god for over a decade

It was the culmination of Midsumma in Melbourne yesterday and the name of this queer community arts festival was mocking me as I wrote this for I was completely saturated.

This year's Pride March was first windblown and then deluged. For those who think this is karma of the weather gods punishing the gay, lesbian and allied communities, think again. It also rained on the one-day cricket match at the MCG.

The timing of Pride is serendipitous for I have just completed a moving and persuasive book on the religiously gay perspective. We atheists look at the array of world faiths, many of which seem to contain bigoted and homophobic tenets, and ask ourselves, ''Why would gay and lesbian people bother with faith?'' Indeed, it is often the anachronistic sexual prohibitions of religions that start many peoples' journeys away from faith.

Stuart Edser, however, has just written an affecting work, Being Gay, Being Christian with the subtitle ''you can be both''. This seems strange given the number of explicit biblical prohibitions of gay behaviour the breach of which is punishable by death.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/blogs/godless-gross/gayness-and-godliness-20120206-1r173.html

[msongs]

1. the kill the gays crap is in the old testament, the jewish part, NOT the xtian part nt

[TygrBright]

2. But even in the OT, gayitude isn't NEARLY as bad as being mean to strangers and travellers.

Seriously, if you count the number of times God smites or threatens smiting because his Chosen folk were assholes to strangers, sojourners, passersby, etc., compared to the smiting for buttsecks or gog, it's clear.

God wants us to BE NICE TO STRANGERS, dammit!

But not to let our daughters marry them.

That's a smitable offense as well.

Religious texts pretty much define the concept of cognitive dissonance.

helpfully,
Bright

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. I take it you're not familiar with the writings of St Paul? N.T.

[dmallind]

5. Ermmm.... Romans 1:26–27, 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 and 1 Timothy 1:8–11?

Admittedly the put to death part is in the book of the Bible concerned with laws and punishments as you would expect, but the abomination and loathing is in the above too.

[MarkCharles]

3. Being gay is difficult enough, why flog oneself with abuse from

millenium-old mythologies which poison the mind with guilt?

Of all the religious mythologies for a gay person to marry oneself to, Christianity and Judaism seem furthest from the most rational choices.