Cold-stone, please do me a favour; please read:-
http://groups.msn.com/GayChristiansofWestTexas/fromthebible.msnw
The Bible and GLBT People
It is unfortunate that a democratic society should base its civil legislation on the Bible or any other sacred writing. And it is unfortunate that well-meaning people of faith think that the Bible justifies making sexual minority people second class citizens. Since both are realities, it is important to know what the Bible does and does not say on this subject. It is only when all of scripture is understood in its literary and historical context that its power and truth are revealed. A few examples:
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13
These are the most often quoted verses by those who insist that the Bible condemns homosexuality. One principle of biblical interpretation is consistency. The verses immediately before and after these prohibit eating rabbit, lobster, shrimp and pork. They forbid women from wearing red dresses, and declare abomination for all who wear clothing made of mixed fabrics. They bar from ministry anyone with any physical defect. Shouldn't we question the motives and integrity of those who insist these two verses are the eternal word of God, but ignore everything else in the same document?
Genesis 19:4-11 and Judges 19:22
The best Hebrew scholars are in unanimous agreement that what happened at Sodom was about the violation of the ancient code of hospitality toward strangers involving a threatened homosexual rape. A parallel story in Judges tells the exact same core story except that the rape is heterosexual and actually did happen, resulting in the woman's death. Yet, no one suggests that is a condemnation of heterosexuality. Another principle of biblical interpretation is: let the Bible interpret itself. The books of the prophets Ezekiel, Isaiah and Jeremiah list the specific sins for which Sodom was destroyed. They list arrogance, adultery, oppression of the poor, insincere religion and political corruption. Homosexuality is not mentioned. In Luke 10:10-13, Jesus clearly states that the sin of Sodom was inhospitality.
Romans 1:26-32
St. Paul was suspicious, fearful and disapproving of all sexual acts. Homosexual acts were no exception. He clearly believed that all people were heterosexual and that those engaged in homosexual acts were doing so as conscious acts of rebellion against God­an idea totally alien to homosexual people. The exact words he uses to declare homosexual acts as "against nature," he also uses to describe men with long hair (even though Jesus, as a first century Jew, would certainly have had long hair). People who take the Bible seriously (as opposed to literally) have long since realized that many of Paul's comments on socio-cultural issues are not meant to be binding on twenty-first century Christians. Who today argues for a return to slavery, or that women are forbidden to speak in church?
I Corinthians 6:9-10 and I Timothy 1:5-10
These two passages include the Greek words "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai." The best Greek scholars now admit that they are not sure what these words meant to the original writers. The word "malakoi" is now considered to have absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality. The word "arsenokoitai" has now been found in extra-biblical literature of the same period and apparantly referred to cultic temple prostitutes, not homosexuals. The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, translated by the world's greatest Hebrew and Greek scholars, contains a footnote to these two words which reads, "These Greek terms...do not refer to 'homosexuals,' as in inappropriate older translations."
The Gospels
If homosexuality were as critically important an issue as many seem to think, surely Jesus would have said something about it. He didn't.
Conclusion
Contrary to what you might think from listening to much of the current dialogue on this issue, the Bible is not about homosexuality. It is about a 5,000 year love affair between God and humankind.....a relationship in which God is always faithful, and we sometimes are and sometimes aren't...but in which God still chooses us to participate in bringing about a reign of peace, justice, compassion, love and salvation on the earth, and sent Christ to show us how to do that.
People must realize that to continue to insist that the Bible condemns homosexuality is to participate in the escalating spiritual and physical violence against sexual minority people. When people could not see, Jesus healed them. When they would not see, he condemned .......to see the full article, please see the source web page at the head of this reply.
Also, please read:-
http://www.detnews.com/2005/editorial/0504/25/A09-160784.htm
By Deb Price / The Detroit News
At 12 years old, John Shelby Spong received a Christmas gift that would shape the rest of his life: a Bible.
During the next six decades, he read the Bible cover-to-cover at least 20 times, tackled it with fellow Episcopalians as a priest and then, as a bishop, lectured about it at Harvard and other prominent universities, and became a progressive Christian force to be reckoned with after his books, including "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism," brought him acclaim.
But as the white, heterosexual Southerner worked for full inclusion of African-Americans, women and gays in the church community, opponents hurled snippet after snippet from the Bible at him and claimed God thought he was wrong.
At first, Spong told himself his foes were merely misusing the Bible, just as earlier verse-citers did in trying to justify such horrors as torturing "heretics" with stretching machines and spike collars during the Inquisition, enslaving blacks in early America, killing Jews in the Holocaust, permitting child beating and marital rape, and imprisoning and lobotomizing gay people.
"That, however, was a defensive and ultimately dishonest response," Spong concludes in his latest controversial book, "The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love."
"Much as I wanted to think otherwise," he says, "...sometimes (the Bible's) texts are terrible. It was not a comfortable insight, but it grew into a crusade to lift the Bible above its own destructiveness and to force the Christian church to face its own terrifying history that so often has been justified by quotations from 'the Scriptures.' "
The retired bishop challenges fellow Christians to have a mindful, not mindless relationship with the Bible, written over as much as a 1,200-year period by mortal men with human limitations.
God should not be saddled with passages endorsing oppression and violence, Spong argues. By rejecting these "dark" passages, he continues, the Christian community can liberate itself to focus on the essentials of being a faithful follower of Jesus.
That, he says, means working "to build a world in which every person can ... be all that God intends ... (and to) oppose everything that diminishes the life of a single human being."
Spong probes the human roots of verses cited to try to put God's stamp of approval on harming women, Jews, people of color, children and even the environment. When he turns his attention to dissecting the, at most, nine paltry passages -- sprinkled among the Bible's 66 books -- used as weapons against those of us who're gay, he sees human prejudice and ignorance.
What he doesn't see there -- in Leviticus, Genesis' Sodom story, and the writings of the Apostle Paul -- is anything that makes him think God is anti-gay or that gays should be denied full membership in modern society.
The Leviticus sex rules, he notes, were a tiny part of the complicated laws designed to help Jews maintain a group identity in exile by, for example, wearing their hair the same way, shunning fabric of two fibers, and never touching pigskin--hardly dictates followed today. The condemnation of male homosexual acts, he adds, reflected the ignorance of the times--the failure to grasp that being gay is a natural variation, like being left-handed.
And anyone who thinks the Sodom story is a tale of God's wiping out a wicked town for homosexuality might want to reread the bizarre account that seems to endorse offering up one's daughters for gang rape by men. Obviously, rape is wrong. Just as obviously, Spong stresses, rape has nothing to do with loving relationships, gay or heterosexual.
As for Paul, Spong's view is that his words show him to be a "deeply repressed, self-loathing" man ill at ease with sexuality.
Surely, our minds are a gift from God. Bishop Spong encourages us to use them to judge what's truly in keeping with Jesus' message of inclusive love.
http://www.truluck.com/html/six_bible_passages.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/dvera/CoEvan/minorities/GLBT.html
Once you have read the above, if you are not convinced that you are mistaken in your beliefs, and have a way of looking at this whole subject from a view point that would be contrary to God's dictates, I will have to find more.