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$50 says God doesn't care. Why would an all powerful, all knowing, omnipresent power care about the uninformed, very limited thoughts of a single mortal creature in a Universe of untold Trillions of such creatures?
Homosexuality is a fact of nature. If you don't know that, then perhaps you should read a few books on the subject or attend a few classes on it.
I'm not sure I quite agree with this. We really don't know a lot about the matter, but people certainly do "choose" whether to live as a homosexual or not. It is incredibly damaging to live in the closet your whole life, and it is in my opinion a great moral injustice to ask them to, but you're painting things as more black-and-white than they really are. Most of us sit somewhere along a general spectrum of sexual and gender expression that one way or another doesn't match up to the behavioral expectations of others in our society. The question is really what to do about those whose behavior is "deviant" enough to warrant notice. In my opinion, the clear answer that the Gospels suggest to that question is "invite them over for dinner and treat them with kindness", no matter what judgements you might be tempted to make about their different choices. For you yourself will one day be judged by the same measure and come up short. Lead with mercy, if mercy is what you would plead for yourself at that time.
Maybe. Some complications here, as porneia (fornication) doesn't really mean quite the same thing as sin. But okay, let's accept this as provisionally valid. It still doesn't open the door to unchecked abuse of those who commit sins.
Wouldn't it make sense, then, to allow gays to marry for the exact same reason that men and women are permitted to marry? There was no such institution in Paul's time, and the State would have violently put it down if so; homosexual unions were commonplace in 1st c. Greco-Roman society, but always extramarital and often involuntary in character, conditions upon which Paul has elsewhere made his opinion quite clear. Paul is not my God and I wouldn't necessarily follow his moral instructions anyway, but in this case we don't even know what he would think of gay marriages were he to be transported to our time, and asked. Culture shock, no doubt. But it may be that upon reflection our current social practices would solve what in his mind is the real problem: sexual immorality, not sexual orientation, a concept that would have been quite foreign to someone in whose time nearly all men of a certain social class both married women (considered property, and sex with them a civic duty) and had occasional sex with other men (considered a matter of social bonding and strengthening of the polis).
I don't take anyone seriously if they pick and choose which Levitical laws to follow; anyone who condemns gays but eats shrimp is a hypocrite. If you want to be logically consistent, we're either bound to the Torah and its precepts or not. And Paul, on whose writings you have based the rest of your argument, certainly rejects this view. When he opines on moral matters, he never cites the Law, and he condemns those who try to place others under it. Rather, he seems to see morality as a question of conscience and purity.
Just as well Adam and Eve didn't choose not to have sex I guess.
Here we go, again.
Really, you think so ? When your time to be judged comes, will God do it or a jury of your peers ? You will be judged.
Because He does care.
This is such a ludicrous post. Necrophiliacs want to be happy, they do no harm to dead people. Bodies are sold to be cut to pieces, why can´t a necrophiliac buy one too, to cherish and love ?
You already have been. God found you wanting.
And @shmogie once again demonstrates that he does not understand the concept of scientific evidence:
Social mores had nothing to do with it. The DSM doesn’t pander to social convention.
A winner....and the first correct response.
Necrophilia is a mental disorder. Homosexuality is not.
I spent the majority of my life being judged by other people, and even allowing significantly lesser people to have their say and hold contempt over me for any number of things that they felt gave them superiority over myself. Thankfully, I finally grew up and realized that people do this specifically because they do feel less than. Peoples judgement over others is a negative reflection of their own inner-self. And as long as we’re on the subject, what ever happened to “Judge not lest ye be judged”?
You are wrong about so many things, but oddly, the only thing in this screed that I care that you're wrong about is this: "We all are sinners, and my sins are no better than the sin of homosexuality. However, no one can be in the Church who does not repent of their sin..." Those are your words. And while you might be a sinner (and seem to relish saying so over and over and over), I am not. I make the usual human mistakes, but I regret them when I need to, try to repair the damage as I may, but refuse to wallow in what Christians seem to love conceiving as their inherent awfulness.
Homosexuality is a fact of nature.
"Judge not lest ye be judged" is pure jargon to the regular Christian. Nice cadence, but no idea what it means.
Then one is going to have to choose when god is speaking and when the literati among sheep herders is speaking.
The examples are all actions, not identities and orientations.
But you don’t choose which sex you’re attracted to.
Why not?