Secular Elation

On an interesting note, in my entire life the only people I have seen who lambasted homosexuals were Christian in one form or another (Catholic, Baptist, etc.). However, certainly there are a few Christians who are tolerant of them, such as my sister.

seebs

On the other hand, I know a lot of Christians who run outreach programs, education programs, and other things designed to help protect gay people from abuse. The most dangerous group of people who think gays are bad or dysfunctional are gays who have been raised to think these things; they are the ones who take the largest number of lives of gay children every year.

So... I think it's not that Christianity inherently leads to this kind of thing, but rather, that Christianity has the same infestation of people looking for an excuse to feel smug and superior that everyone else does. I have seen reasonable claims that, as late as 1200, the "early" Church was by no means unanimous in its agreement with the anti-gay attitude... certainly, the existance of early writings *arguing* that homosexual sex was a bad thing suggests that not everyone agreed.

I think the #1 group of people who bash gays is people who don't know anything about them, or who know false things about them. (As a kid, I thought "faggot" was an insult, but had *NO* idea what it meant.) I will grant that some branches of Christianity end up teaching false things about gays... but at the same time, there are teachings that tell us to aid people in need. Anyone who's known a gay kid with homophobic parents would, I think, have to grant that the gay kid is in need. It's a bit more subtle, but in fact, the parents are *ALSO* suffering, and *ALSO* in need.

The hardest part of Christianity is learning to feel compassion for the people who are doing the damage - because it's *SO* easy to be mad at them for doing this damage. The fact is, the homophobic parents are *MISERABLE*, and it would be a great kindness to help them realize that their kid is a perfectly acceptable human. Most people who hate and fear are miserable; we are instructed to be compassionate towards them, too.

seebs

There's a moderately vehement atheist over on ChristianForums who says that gays are disgusting and clearly dysfunctional. So... it can happen. Certainly, several other religions have taught similar things. The Chinese government at least used to teach that homosexuality was a perversion caused by exposure to any form of Western media. They had an example of a guy who saw a (non-sexual in content) Japanese film and became homosexual. They assert, firmly, that homosexuality does not occur in Chinese, who are racially pure and healthy.

Oddly, these are the same people who dip a kid's left hand in boiling water every couple of weeks for a few years if he shows signs of mistakenly believing that he should use his left hand for common tasks. Left-handedness is another of those cultural deviations they've never accepted.

Secular Elation

There's a moderately vehement atheist over on ChristianForums who says that gays are disgusting and clearly dysfunctional.

Irrelevant. I wrote that in my life I have only seen Christian anti-homosexuals. Did I say that there was no such thing as an anti-homosexual atheist?

So... I think it's not that Christianity inherently leads to this kind of thing

Oh, really? Explain that to all those Christians who say homosexuality is bad because it is against God and that it tramples his laws. The teachings of Christianity have largely cultivated such intolerance in many of it's followers.

You think that many of the anti-homosexual Christian's reasons for despising it have little to do with Christian teachings? Nonsense. Many of those Christians explicitly use Biblical reasoning against it.

[ June 18, 2002: Message edited by: Secular Elation ]</p>

seebs

No, but the general assumption in IIDB is that, if a person hasn't seen a thing or evidence of it, the person is assuming the thing doesn't exist. (Which is, of course, not a belief, but the mere lack of a belief.)

I don't think that's true, simply because I see similar levels of intolerance in people everywhere.

And yes, I do spend a fair amount of time trying to explain this to "all those Christians".

So? That's their preferred source of vague theories they can use to condemn things they don't like. If they can't find it in the Bible, they'll make up studies, or find new interpretations on old studies, or look at an old list of mental disorders, or... they'll find *SOMETHING*.

The Christians who are "affirming" of gays also use the Bible to support their positions. From this, we see that any anti-gay bias is not *inherent*, because it's possible to draw other conclusions from the Bible. If you want to see a good example of Biblical scholarship leading to affirmation of gay rights:

<a href="http://www.reluctantjourney.co.uk/" target="_blank">http://www.reluctantjourney.co.uk/</a>

Secular Elation

No, but the general assumption in IIDB is that, if a person hasn't seen a thing or evidence of it, the person is assuming the thing doesn't exist. (Which is, of course, not a belief, but the mere lack of a belief.)

That only applies to deities and Invisible Pink Unicorns. Applying the same reasoning to everything that goes on here is not sound.

I don't think that's true, simply because I see similar levels of intolerance in people everywhere.

Guess what? An overwhelming majority of the population (at least in America) is Christian, in one denomination or another.

So? That's their preferred source of vague theories they can use to condemn things they don't like.

But they do not like it because it stems from their religious teachings.

The Christians who are "affirming" of gays also use the Bible to support their positions.

Perhaps so, but they seem few and far between. There are likely many more Christians who are anti-homosexual than there are who approve of it.

seebs

Shouldn't everything be judged by the same standards?

I didn't say "in America", I said "everywhere". e.g., China, which has a very small Christian population.

I don't believe this is true. I believe that people feel the fairly normal vague revulsion at "sex that I wouldn't like", and start looking for excuses. Certainly, the few hundred million Chinese who are mostly atheists and who think homosexuals are horribly damaged are not thinking this because the Bible says so; they're thinking it because it seems "obvious" to them, because someone told them that once.

I don't think the teaching lead to the intolerance; I think the teaching is an interpretation that grew out of the intolerance.

Mageth

Shouldn't everything be judged by the same standards?

No.

For example, if you came back from a trip to Antarctica and told me "I saw a 9000-foot high extinct volcano." If I trust you, I would quite likely believe that such a volcano exists (I know extinct volcanoes exist, and are thus possible in Antarctica), even though I haven't seen corroborating evidence.

However, if you told me, "Inside the crater of the volcano, there is a tropical paradise with dinosaurs thought to be extinct!", I damn sure am going to judge this claim by different standards. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

seebs

I'm not real fond of that particular mantra, because it implies that we have some nice universal scale for measuring the extraordinariness of claims, so we can tell what standard of evidence to hold them to. In practice, I've found that claims not consistent with a preexisting world-view are "extraordinary", and claims consistent with it are "not extraordinary", which makes the whole thing useless.

In the original context, I offered examples of non-Christian people who disliked gays, because I feel that anyone who has *never* met such a person, and is old enough to type coherent English, will probably find the result surprising enough that an example would be useful.

tdekeyser

Seebs,

I understand that you consider yourself a believer (liberal). A Christian right? Just out of curiosity, how is it you can claim a faith that you disagree with it's teachings? Is that possible?

There are lots of bible teachings against it such as Paul's condemnation of all homosexual activity which he first wrote of in 1 Corinthians 6:9.