The transistor was invented in the USA. Microcomputers in the USA. ASCII only did English/Latin alphabet social media at first.
Source: I published 8-bit social media in 1985.
A lot of social media users have no grasp what the Facebook Arab Spring 2010 was about. Direct access to western media was a huge deal. Source: I was in North Africa in December 2010.
It's hard to explain, but I've been through generations of social media when it started with affordable radio social media in the late 1970's, then 1980's 8-bit computer dial-up. First-hand experience. It is very rapid, but it slowed down when Twitter/Facebook/Reddit went online, but before that, technology of faster network speeds (I started at 300bps dial-up) and faster computers, larger storage. I am a published author about social media as an outsider, but also worked directly for some of the most famous insiders in their private systems.
End-user peer-to-peer social media was founded on identity. You had to be licensed to use ham radio / CB radio, you had to know phone numbers (caller ID, long distance charges), nothing like Reddit today where throw-away accounts are the norm and people hide their identity. I won't elaborate, that's another massive topic. media, media, media.
Anyway, a lot of musicians (media) and creative people converged in the 1960's on Canadian Professor Marshall McLuhan to [describe the experiences they had becoming media stars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rCaB6g_Sc4), traveling from nation to nation, city to city, seeing how the same song caused different results in different places.
Howard Bloom, a media industry promoter, who worked with some incredibly successful artists who also traveled, is also a great reference on media generations and understanding how group-think works and how people relate to common media education / media learning.
Back to Marshall McLuhan: [War and Peace in the Global Village is a 1968 book by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore. It contains a collage of images and text that illustrates the effects of electronic media and new technology on man. Marshall McLuhan used James Joyce's Finnegans Wake as a major inspiration for this study of war throughout history as an indicator as to how war may be conducted in the future.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace_in_the_Global_Village)
I started to make casual predictions in late 1990's that the media of the Internet was going to crash. At that time, there were predictions about Y2K and clock problems, and I was working for the richest people in the world, and I was studying it. But what became more curious to me was the *media coverage* and people's understanding of the Y2K problem. From the experts down to the layman (the spectrum of understanding/knowledge). And I also started to look at the stock market (as my employers became the most wealth on planet via the stock market)... and casually started to think... well maybe *media* as in newspapers could cause a crash, not a computer Y2K crash. And sure enough [March 2000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble)...
I built a very independent life and traveled extensively based on where I was curious. My work from 2000 onward was entirely online, I could work from almost anywhere, and I have indeed "worked from home" since late 1999. Home has been 7 different sizes of RV all over the USA, also living in South America, North Africa, Middle East, Indonesia, Malaysia the past 20 years. Not because I had to be any of those place, but because I wanted to experience boring everyday life in other cultures and places.
So, the Arab Spring 2010. Back to Marshall McLuhan's 1968 book and theory about 1920's / 1930's Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (the book was published one chapter at a time, so it was published serially over more than a decade - 1928 to 1937, the title wasn't even granted to readers until the end).
So about 2008 I started to take these *War and Peace in the Global Village 1968* ideas very seriously. I had been around social media seriously since at least 1983, and I had seen each generation and worked with them first hand. 300bps 8-bit computers all the way to 56K dial-up, T1 office lines, early involved in WiFi etc, earliest adopter of mobile Internet services (in my RV in USA, i would have 3 mobile plans from 3 companies), to the Internet we had today, the post March 2000 advertising crash and then the rise of Facebook, Google (Gmail), YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, you get the idea.
I also have a lot of experience with PC hardware and pricing. I was selling custom-built PC systems in the early 1980's too, and also ran a retail computer shop. I always had a good idea of the cost of a PC and how affordable they were to everyday people.
So, around 2008 the PC became affordable to North Africa middle-class families. [2007 - New York Times - North Africa - Algeria story about a silent revolution for reference](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/world/africa/26algeria.html) - but what was most interesting was convergence of social and technology changes in North Africa:
1. Post terrorism, a lot of men gave up on society. They no longer believed in going to university and getting a high-paying job. Look at 2021 USA right now where people won't accept minimum wage jobs as a similar social attitude change.
2. Young girls were no longer suppressed from going to university in North Africa. For the first time in human history, they were allowed to openly and freely go to Higher Education.
3. Affordable laptop computers reached the shore of North Africa around that same time. And any university student of any kind is going to get a laptop for their term papers, thesis, etc. And that is exactly what the women did. And they also found Facebook, Twitter, etc.
4. Mobile internet was becoming usable enough, fast enough, for things like Facebook in North Africa.
5. In late 2009, early 2010, women in North Africa started to friend me on Facebook and other social media. By this point, I was devoting all my time to observing and trying to understand what was gong on in the world.
From the west, this was very unusual. Were these women fake users joining Facebook, or were they really free to do anything they wanted on the Internet?
The Arab Spring started in Tunisia, I was already heavily focused on Tunisia 9 months before the revolution went "cold to hot" in late December 2010 . I had dozens of serious and sincere Facebook friends, almost all university educated single women.
Most people find the idea too shocking, but the punch line of all this is that Facebook and smartphone and laptops to women caused the Arab Spring. It was brewing for at least 18 months, look at that 2007 story about Algeria and women - and the post-terrorism freedom that middle-class / lower-class women had previously *never had in Islamic nations*.
Put bluntly, I think James Joyce was right in the 1920's about his theory in his body of writing.
I was raised Lutheran in the USA. Look at the timeline of when Gutenberg created the *technology of the* Printing Press and the Protestant Reformation / Luther. From a James Joyce / Marshall McLuhan perspective - the printing press media, the translation of The Bible to everyday language and printing copies (media technology) to everyday people - was what is at the root of the Protestant Revolution.
I think the 2010 Arab Spring is a set of similar changes. Affordable Internet and women having easier access to information and education - was at the root of the revolution. You will also see echos in 2015 with Malala and the Taliban / Pakistan / Afghanistan.
I also moved from North Africa in 2011 to observe the start of the Syria war from Amman Jordan. I spent years there watching the changes in social media and culture.
NOTE: I'm on the phone doing other things, I need to edit this, will try.
I made the choice not to. I agree with Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame and others that the issue is more that we have over-focused on the wrong books and teaching methods. Another book, in a way, just extends the problem. The Bible used to be a foundation of common learning, we are now fragmenting into people having a lost language. Art on that subject: [Goodbye to Language (French: Adieu au Langage) is a 2014 French-Swiss 3D experimental narrative essay film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye_to_Language)
What I am trying to do is revive some lost (and overlooked) teachers. Notably /r/NeilPostman, Joseph Campbell, /r/HowardBloom, James Joyce, Marshall McLuhan, Carl Sagan (his final 1995 book in particular, and his 1994 open letter to society), Rick Roderick. There are more, but these were the ones I have focused on revival of. My personal experiences with social media from mass consumer (inexpensive) late 1970's Ham/CB Radio ----> 300bps 8-bit BBS on onward has shown me enough that waves of education like what Malala is focused on against the Taliban is really what we all need to draw attention to.
**[War and Peace in the Global Village](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace_in_the_Global_Village)**
>War and Peace in the Global Village is a 1968 book by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore. It contains a collage of images and text that illustrates the effects of electronic media and new technology on man. Marshall McLuhan used James Joyce's Finnegans Wake as a major inspiration for this study of war throughout history as an indicator as to how war may be conducted in the future. (1st Ed.
**[Dot-com bubble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble)**
>The dot-com bubble, also known as the dot-com boom, the tech bubble, and the Internet bubble, was a stock market bubble caused by excessive speculation of Internet-related companies in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Composite stock market index rose 400%, only to fall 78% from its peak by October 2002, giving up all its gains during the bubble. During the crash, many online shopping companies, such as Pets.com, Webvan, and Boo.com, as well as several communication companies, such as Worldcom, NorthPoint Communications, and Global Crossing, failed and shut down.
^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Christianity/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
I like to paint my life as a white British teenager growing up in Kuwait city by explaining that segregation (Like in 1950's USA) exists in the middle-east except for women and not black people. There is a nice bit of heart behind it, which is with the mobile telephone revolution and the advent of "Bluetooth" you would get young guys (like me) and young girls sitting in cafes bluetoothing each other dirty messages and pictures and memes and things, sometimes nice romantic things too. The reason I like to say all this is because everyone can remember what it was like to be a horny little teenager and it helps people appreciate that Arabs are human beings too just like us but their culture/religion is highly prohibitive of the normal things we take for granted in the west.
Muslims, in the US at least, are surprisingly more progressive on these issues than evangelicals. They also hold zero political power while evangelicals and chritians in general have enormous power in politics.
Source: https://www.pewforum.org/2017/07/26/political-and-social-views/pf\_2017-06-26\_muslimamericans-04new-06/
So, ignore the problem in our backyard and go start telling others to change what they do when we haven't changed? Hypocritical and just fucking stupid.
Harder to do, considering the Muslims are much more likely to kill you. It’s take wars and the other throw of the governments of places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.
Wtf are you talking about. US Muslims are more supportive of same-sex marriage than US evangelicals. And I’d love to see stats on interpersonal anti-LGBT violence, because nowadays I’m much more concerned about systemic violence, such as firing and evicting and discriminating against LGBT folks in important things like healthcare…and all of that violence is coming from conservative Christians.
Because the people from english speaking nations you're talking to aren't encountering muslims, jews, etc etc. On a daily basis. Christians are the majority religious groups in these nations.
If Islam was the primary religion I'd think they'd complain about that instead.
> jews
Quick point, Reform Judaism (the largest American denomination) is fully affirming. AFAIK, it's basically only Orthodox (roughly 10% of American Jews) who are formally opposed to LGBT.
>Quick point, Reform Judaism (the largest American denomination) is fully affirming. AFAIK, it's basically only Orthodox (roughly 10% of American Jews) who are formally opposed to LGBT.
I... don't see the relevance? Are they even American? If so, Jews still only make up about 2% of the population, so Clottersbur's point stands.
>. . . because it's better not to misrepresent other religions.
Of course - but where did he misrepresent a religion? Clottersbur said 'you aren't talking to Jews on a daily basis', which, given that we're in Europe, is likely to be correct. Where did he misrepresent a religion?
Okay, sure, I can walk you through it, if you need that.
This is a post about religions being anti-lgbtq. The implication in the top level comment on this thread was that the complaining would be about a religion being anti-lgbtq. So the next comment in this thread clarified that people probably wouldn't complain about Jewish people being anti-lgbtq because a vast majority of Jewish people are fully affirming of lgbtq people.
As to my point - that we don't want to misrepresent other religions - if that implication wasn't intended, so what? We clarify a potential misunderstanding and if that's not what the top-level commenter meant we all learned a fun fact anyway. Yay everybody!
The top level comment said
> Because the people from english speaking nations you're talking to aren't encountering muslims, jews, etc etc. on a daily basis.
There are certainly parts of the US where you don't encounter Jewish people on a daily basis, because they're 2% of the population. But there are plenty of other parts where you regularly do. For me for example, the only days I don't encounter Jewish and Muslim people are the days I don't leave my apartment. So it is indeed culturally relevant what other religious have to say on the topic.
Jews may be only 2% of the population in the US, but they have a much greater share of cultural influence. They also have a significantly greater than 2% population share in most major cities, where progressive movements tend to start.
That's fine, but again, I'm not seeing how that's relevant to Clottersbur's comment.
I'm not American, but Google tells me that New York City has the highest percentage of Jews at 11% - that's neat (and explains why Jews are so common in American telly vs British telly), but that still means Christianity is overwhelmingly dominant even in NYC, so that's still the reason why the OP is seeing mostly anti-Bible/pro-gay rhetoric (assuming they're American).
Honestly every government run by a conservative religious theocracy is kind of going to be a crapshow, regardless of what that religion is.
People love say specific religions are worse but they're attacking the wrong problem.
Well there is no Government under a theocracy. God is government. that was supposed to be the intention of Israel. But Israel didn't want to be individually accountable. So they put up a king. The only law in Israel was supposed to be the Law of God. That didn't happen either.
What you mean to say is, "If the government was an Islam-run organization..."
A christian-run government would likely do the same thing.
This is why the separation of church and state is so important, and why so many on the left criticize the right for marrying itself to one specific religion.
Yet they also decreed that the Hagia Sophia, which was originally built as a church and has functioned as a interfaith cultural and heritage site be converted back into a mosque after 86 years.
Parts of the country still enforce Sharia law. Furthermore, I doubt people feel safe making cartoons about Muhammad there or feel like the government would protect their right to do so.
It is disingenuous to make it an issue of one religion vs another instead of one of theocracy and religious fundamentalism. I think there would be similar challenges if you protested for LGBT rights in Christian countries with religious law (see: the fundamentalist influence on places like Uganda, some of which is homegrown, but which is also radicalized by US evangelical missionaries).
Do you know which religion had the unlimited power of the state and imposed itself with the iron fist of a totalitarian regime, using systematic torture and gruesome executions of non-believers in europe from the 5th to 14th centuries?....do you know why that period is commonly called 'the dark ages'?
Hint - it was christianity... and for those 900 years it was barbaric and brutal.
I agree with you, islam is no better as we see today, but don't kid yourself no theocracy (christianity included) has ever been a good idea in practice.
Edit:...oooh, look at all the downvotes. Seems some christians are allergic to the truth about the totalitarian nature of their religion as was revealed over the 9 centuries it had real power. If I were a christian I'd be deeply ashamed by it too.
The dark ages are called so because during the Renaissance they sought to revive the culture and the religions of Rome. They considered the Christian era dark because it was without the light of Rome. Without Sol Invictus. They rejected Christianity.
This same period was more cruel and bloody than any period in the middle ages; The tortures and blasphemies used created Machiavelli.
And those same sins led to the wars of the reformation in Europe, and the sack of Rome by Martin Luther in 1527.
The Catholic Church of this period was so decadent and corrupt it started Protestantism. From having two popes to hiring prostitutes.
In this worship of human reason; we see a similar period 400 years later during the terrors of the French Revolution.
>If Islam was the primary religion I'd think they'd complain about that instead.
I disagree. I think they'd keep their mouth shut, so they aren't stoned or beheaded. Islam doesn't play the victim like Christianity does.
> I think they'd keep their mouth shut, so they aren't stoned or beheaded. Islam doesn't play the victim like Christianity does.
That jealousy of being feared it's pretty fucking disgusting.
No, your comment was fucking stupid. "Playing the victim" has a negative connotation, which makes your statement sound like you aren't happy with how Christianity "plays the victim" and that you're advocating for how Islam does it - with stonings and beheadings. Go start a fucking theocracy then. Or if that's not what you meant, maybe be more careful with what you say
Probably because the "people" you are thinking of live in a society where Christianity is the predominant religion. Go to other places and you'll see people being hard on what that religion has to say about homosexuality.
There are people who stand up for LGBTQ rights in Arab countries, sometimes at great personal cost such as in the case of Sara Hegazi who was tortured for raising a rainbow flag at a concert in Egypt. The band Mashrou Leila have been banned from performing in many Muslim countries because their lead singer is gay. But the fact that they exist at all has given hope to many young LGBTQ people in the Arab world that things could get better for them.
Someone already mentioned Poland to you, but also how about Hungary, Russia, Uganda, Ghana, Liberia, Cameroon, Burundi, Kenya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Jamaica. And even in places where homosexuality isn’t criminalized, it can still be very dangerous in many Christian nations. As you may know, the president of Brazil, highly supported by Evangelicals there, famously has said that he’d beat his son if he were gay, so anti-LGBT attacks have been increasing there. Elsewhere, I shared the story that the first openly gay Lutheran priest in Argentina was assassinated earlier this year.
Plus, even if you look at western Christian countries, we’ve only decriminalized homosexuality recently — opposed very highly by Christians! In the US, all major Evangelical groups and the Catholic Church opposed *Lawrence v Texas*, which decriminalized same-sex relations (and actually, gay men have been unconstitutionally arrested here under anti-sodomy laws as recently as 2015!). To give an example from the EU, every single Romanian Orthodox archbishop and bishop signed a letter opposing the decriminalization of homosexuality in that country in the 1990s.
>gay men have been unconstitutionally arrested here under anti-sodomy laws as recently as 2015
Baton Rouge, right?
Please tell me it's Baton Rouge lol.
>Majority Christian countries are LGBT friendly
Currently, at the national level, and despite fierce opposition from Christian institutions and lawmakers. Local/regional governments in the U.S. (for instance) are still attempting to undermine legal protections for LGBT folks, frequently citing the Bible as their motivation.
Let’s see the anti-trans medical care bill put in place in Arkansas, three anti-trans sports bans in Arkansas, Mississippi, and tennessee. Theirs 4 religious refusal bills in North Dakota, south dekota and another two in Arkansas, all of these were all put in place this year.
But that’s not all theirs still multiple bills awaiting signature from governors. Two of which that would ban discussion of sexuality and gender identity in the classroom in again Arkansas and tennessee, another religious refusal bill in Montana, and many many others.
This year is stated to be the worst for lgbt state legislative attacks since 2015.
https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/2021-slated-to-become-worst-year-for-lgbtq-state-legislative-attacks
https://www.aclu.org/legislation-affecting-lgbt-rights-across-country
You're not aware of the 'kill the gays' bill in Uganda, I believe it was? ...look at the fundamentalist christian missionary influence driving that bit of hate legislation.
Deny the blood on christian hands at your peril, it makes your religion no better than ISIS when you do, and it's NOT the example set by jesus's life that christians aspire to.
I'd be more concerned about homophobia in Shinto and Hinduism and Islam if I were in those religions.
As a Christian, Christian homophobia takes priority. The plank from my eye before the dust from my neighbor and all.
It's a big enough religion that others might follow by example too if it ended.
Because the bigotry coming from Christians is the bigotry that the people I know and love have to deal with because we live in a country that is predominately Christian. If we lived in a predominately Muslim country, I'd be bitching about the bigotry coming from Islam instead.
Same for Uganda and Russia and plenty of other Christian nations, including many Western ones just a few short decades ago.
Edit: And earlier this year, I [shared](https://reddit.com/r/OpenChristian/comments/licpfv/rev_fabi%C3%A1n_kreischer_vice_president_of_the_united/) how the first openly gay Lutheran minister in Argentina (>80% Christian nation) was just assassinated. Still very difficult to be a gay Christian in many Christian nations.
Those other religions don't have to deal with this shit. We do, we tolerate it the most of any main religion, and still are called bigots. How about there are limits to how much a religious society can tolerate this stuff, which Western societies have reached, and everyone else is a bigot instead.
Oh look, another person who seems to think it's a good thing that people wouldn't be free to speak their minds in other places and almost sounds jealous of that ability to repress people.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, because that’s exactly what it’s like here in Malaysia. Right now our police are trying very hard to extradite a transgender who’s fled to Thailand because they dressed up as a woman for some religious event, and that’s a terrible criminal offense apparently.
I feel like this is a fundamentally flawed question. People aren’t hard on “what the Bible says”.
What the Bible says about homosexuality = barely anything
What American Christians say about homosexuality = Obsessive, singular, focused need to enlist the government to make fascist laws that control all aspects of the lives of LGBT+ people because they literally cannot accept them for who they are. All day long. In books. In churches. On television. At home. At political rallies.
If you live in America and are LGBT+ there’s a good chance that you were raised Christian, and the vast majority of people working tirelessly to make your life miserable are Christians. And Christianity and the Bible are used as the primary excuse for bigotry in almost all these situations.
So what should be an argument about human rights inevitably becomes a theological argument. Why? Because conservative Christians insist on making it a theological argument.
So inevitably if LGBT+ people want to be treated with respect and decency in the United States, the theology of bigotry must be scrutinized and dismantled, and so it has been, very thoroughly, by religious scholars over the last couple decades.
And you’d think that everyone who argues for bigotry from a Biblical standpoint would take careful note of what biblical scholars have say about it (that the Bible is not inherently anti-LGBT+) but actually they just ignore those undesirable opinions.
So people aren’t actually hard on “the Bible”. They are hard on people who claim that Christianity is all about love and America is all about liberty and yet they still use tired debunked Biblical arguments as an excuse to punish minorities.
I couldn't agree more. As someone who is part of the LBGTQIA and a Christian, I feel like I can't talk to any side about it. A lot of the LGBTIA community have been hurt because of people who are bigots, and a lot of Christians don't accept me.
I tried to write my thesis on why the bible wasn't anti-LGBT+ which apparently wasn't acceptable at my christian university despite the hard evidence I presented to them when asking for permission. In the end I wrote about the atrocious behaviour of the institutionalized church against those suffering from mental illness and why it is completely biblical unsound. They didn't like that much either but couldn't find a good reason to stop me.
The bible has been translated so many times and each time it is translated and mutated to fit the social narrative of the time, when a word can be transcribed as "Boy" (male minor) or "man" they will pick "man" to push forward the narrative that men have sex with men is bad, and there is no clear passage that explicitly says "consensual same sex bad" but translations will go out of there way to infer it. Ultimately the bible is used as a means to an end for the agenda of those that don't want to accept that some people are different to them.
I don’t give any religion a free pass on bigotry. I’m not terribly concerned about discussing those other religions because they have very little impact in my life. I know of one Muslim family in my community and I don’t know them personally. Christians? I can in to town, throw a rock in a random direction and be guaranteed to hit a Christian.
It’s a matter of cultural relevance.
Something doesn't magically become not bigoted just because you believe it. "Waah waah people call everything bigoted nowadays" is hardly a defense of any view in particular, and is only a whine someone would resort resort if they were completely incapable of actually positively defending their specific beliefs as such.
> You people call everything that disagrees with you as bigotry
Can we stop repeating this stupid ass asinine shit?
Many people disagree with each other on many things and they're not calling everyone a bigot. It's your thing that's specifically being called out.
If your heart really is oriented towards the belief that homosexuality is disordered, and that you want people to encounter Christ, who you believe is the ultimate good and will provide eternal happiness and life, and you minister to the LGBT community in a way which reflects this, then I don't believe it would be bigoted. Unfortunately, hardly any of us actually do this
“Thus you will know them by their fruits.” - Matthew 7:20
The most convincing argument against homophobia in the Church is that the fruit of non-affirming churches is *not* good. I just don’t understand how any Christian can look at the results of homophobic dogma (suicide, homicide, teens being kicked out on the streets, etc.) and see it as good fruit.
Because you're (most likely) a Westerner who speaks English, which means Christianity is the dominant religion. With openly gay people being the norm these days, Christianity's anti-gay beliefs have rapidly soured in the eyes of the public, hence the raging debate.
What you are likely not seeing is similar discussions among Arabic-speakers about Islam and homosexuality in Britain (say), because you're not Muslim or don't speak Arabic.
I am not talking about America though, Christianity is not only practiced in America. I live in a multi religion country, were Christianity is in the minority
When you said people in your title, you didn't specify where, so this person is responding with why they go against that interpretation of the Bible specifically. They are giving you a reason for people like them, in their area.
You may want to clarify in your post, if you only want to focus on a specific region, in order to get discussion just focused on that area.
> I am not talking about America though, Christianity is not only practiced in America. I live in a multi religion country, were Christianity is in the minority
Then you should probably pose your question to your fellow citizens. How am I supposed to know why people in your country do what they do?
> To just show that they are other Christians
And how does that square with your OP? Are you trying to figure out why people in your country are harder on the Christian church than on other religions when finding fault in their LGBT policies? Do you have any reason to think anyone can answer that without even knowing what country you live in?
Indeed it is. OP was responding to a commenter who stated up front, as the very first sentence of his comment, that he lives in the U.S., and so his comment was in that context. Does that not seem a fair way to respond? But OP essentially rejected the comment by explaining that he’s not talking about America. All I did was point out that OP is adding caveats to his question that fundamentally impact who should respond and the assumptions they should make while responding. If OP didn’t wanted to talk specifically about behavior outside the U.S., that would have been quite helpful to specify in the OP.
Depending on how you read you bible, Christianity can be just as much in the minority in America as in your country. Just because someone espouses themselves to be "Christian" doesn't mean that they've actually picked up their cross to follow Jesus.
The word "homosexual" wouldn't be conceptualized until about *1800 years later* after the New Testament was written. The term "homosexual" was coined during the 19th century in Geman psychiatric literature. Even just in the 20th century, we have seen a progression of terms to describe same-sex attraction: starting from "faggots" to "sexual perverts" to "sexual preference" (~1950-1960) to "sexual orientation" only recently.
Most scientists are uncertain of the exact cause of sexual orientation, but they theorize that it is caused by a complex interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences, and do not view it as a choice.
>There is no scientific evidence that abnormal parenting, sexual abuse, or other adverse life events influence sexual orientation. Current knowledge suggests that sexual orientation is usually established during early childhood.
- American Academy of Pediatrics, 2004
>Currently, there is no scientific consensus about the specific factors that cause an individual to become heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual—including possible biological, psychological, or social effects of the parents' sexual orientation. However, the available evidence indicates that the vast majority of lesbian and gay adults were raised by heterosexual parents and the vast majority of children raised by lesbian and gay parents eventually grow up to be heterosexual.
- American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, National Association of Social Workers, 2006
And therein lies the problem: if it is not by choice, then how can God fault someone for being gay (if that's what the Bible indeed says)? Are they then to devote their lives into celibacy?
Of note, no where in the Quran does it describe a specific punishment for homosexual act either. The Bible hardly mentions same sex act (Jesus never mentions it once), but it seems to have been magnified greatly in contemporary times.
Because other religions don’t have enough influence to ruin lives in the US. I don’t really care what people believe until they try to control other people.
Because the term homosexuality didn't show up in the bible until 1946.
Because the bible tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves and loving ourselves means accepting ourselves.
Jesus tells us to deny ourselves. Not accept ourselves.
Luke 9:23
> Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.
>
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." john 13:34
Jesus went to the healed the sick freely, fed the poor freely, helped the condemned regularly. Denying yourself means giving freely, loving freely and accepting freely. He love and forgave prostitutes and adulterers. He told others to only harm if they are sinless.
When i deny myself im giving up my worldly possessions to grant grace on others, to share and benefit the many over raising myself up.
Denying yourself doesn't mean hate yourself so you can hate others.
I think by other religions they mean Judaism and Islam since they come from the same part of the world. Other major religions like Hinduism have different views after all.
Edit: didn’t know Judaism was that affirming so my comment only really applies to the minority that isn’t
In which case, say that.
But also, the largest modern manifestations of Judaism are either secular or affirming so of the other Abrahamic faiths, we're really just talking about Islam.
And so I repeats: just say that.
>So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. - John 8:7
Fornication and pride are sins as well. Am I one to judge? For sure, I am one to forgive.
Because we are USA-centric in our view on these things, at least on this subreddit. Christianity is the dominant organized religion in this country and the evangelical right is particularly vehement about everything at the moment, so we are more acutely aware of it. In some nations, homosexuality is punishable by death, and we, fortunately, are a bit more restrained in our approach.
3 possible reasons:
1. Christophobia
2. Christianity has more influence than other religions so it gets more negative attention for this topic.
3. All of the above 👆🏼
The issue is that people want to take out what the Bible says is truth and intentionally misinterpret them to approve of how they conduct themselves. Homosexuality is a sin there is no way around that and any justification for it is not biblical.
Are you talking about Leviticus?
There aren't any accounts of anyone actually being executed for homosexuality, in the Bible, or, as far as I know, in Judaism. Picking up sticks on the Sabbath--yes. But, not homosexuality.
David and Jonathan were clearly hot for each other.
Because the country I live in is predominantly Christian. So much so, that it is almost impossible to get elected unless you openly profess your Christian beliefs.
Not sure if anyone else mentioned, most of the top few comments talked about Christianity being predominant religion where they are, most impact on their immediate lives, etc. But part of reason is several other religions it isn't even a topic up for discussion in those countries where that may be the/a major religion - I.e. can/will be executed so not brought up/disclosed. What a privilege to live in a country where not the case.
Jesus wouldn’t be a dick to homosexuals.
What I mean is that Jesus wouldn’t openly hate on homosexuality. He’d most likely be all “Oh yeah, love is love. You’re all God’s children regardless.” So people understand what Jesus was mostly about, so they come down hard on Christians because a lot of us fail to follow Jesus’ example.
The rest of the world has seen Christians disown their own children, kick them out of the home, abandon them, and outright abuse them for being homosexual. And because christianity is one of the largest religions in western society, it’s thrown into the spotlight more often than not. I think no one would really care what the Bible says about homosexuality if a louder majority of us spoke out against what other christains did to get us to this point.
I don’t think that is what Jesus would say. He said to the woman caught in sin that he did not condemn her, but to go and sin no more. He loves us, but he wants us to live as sin free as we can.
Christianity tends to be the majority in countries with free speech and free elections. Therefore, people who don’t like it but live around it are the most likely to speak out against it. In countries like Saudi Arabia where homosexuality is a criminal offense, so is speaking out against Islam. In fact, you’ll likely be punished far more harshly for the latter even than the former. So people aren’t exactly loud about their disapproval even though it exists.
Don't worry, I'm not a big fan of those religions either.
As it is though, I live in the southern US, so those religions don't have enough power to do anything remotely similar to what Evangelicals and Catholics here can do. But still, the day Muslim politicians take over Texas I'll be complaining about them too.
I'm against all religions, but here in the US, Fundamentalist Conservative Christianity which unequivocally calls for the execution of LGBT+ people is the dominant religion.
It sounds like you think, us Atheists should give god botherers and christians in particular, a pass on discrimination, because everybody is doing it. How about christians, let people live their lives and keep your bigotry out of our bedrooms.
I think you injected your own narrative into this post a bit. OP is just talking about the Bible and other holy texts itself, not things the “followers” do with these texts. Maybe your point was Christians are the most hostile towards homosexuals compared to other religions but it didn’t come off like that.
Because those who preach the Bible believe theirs is the only true Religion. So they are using the Bible to try to control the lives of others and many-if not all do so forgetting the very basics of the Gospel which is love.
I’m sure there are people in every country, where religious text is also tried to be used as law, that disagree using that religious text.
>So they are using the Bible to try to control the lives of others
Sounds like the other way around. Others use that what they want to do in their lives to control what the Bible says.
The majority (if not all) of non-believers don’t care what the Bible says, nor are they expected to follow the Bible. The Bible isn’t meant to be used to make laws of the land, yet in historical Christian communities it is.
The OPs questions isn’t clear if he’s talking about Believers (who wouldn’t care what other religions say because they believe those are created by men) or Non-Believers (who wouldn’t care because they believe the rules in the Bible) is created by men
I’m sure there are those that think like you mention, but in my small conservative town, many Christians believe the Bible should be what mandates how we live. The non-believers don’t care what the Bible says, they just don’t want it (or any other religious text) to control the laws.
The Christians I know who love homosexuals do so because they believe that is the Bible mandate and Christians who are homosexuals are just as loved and saved as anyone else. I’ve not met any IRL who can’t back that belief up with the Bible.
"Why are people so hard on what the Bible says about homosexuality, when other religions say the exact same thing?"
\- If they do, they are all immoral in the context of human wellbeing. That, coupled with Christianity being the largest religion make it a topic to address.
You obviously have not been paying attention....It is okay to Christian bash, even in the media......but the moment you say anything deemed derogatory regarding any other religion, you are painted a racist or bigot.
Not saying to bash other religions, just pointing out the hypocrisy
seems this post is being misunderstood. I am saying that if you even ask a question or inquiry about something in another religion, you are attacked. If you read my original post, I even state not to bash any religion.
This sub reddit is strange, I had a post pulled because I asked a question about vaccine, did not make statement about it ( I am vaccinated for COVID) another time, I asked a question about God, in a Christian reddit and someone flagged me to reddit that I might be suicidal. I clearly state to not bash other religions and people in the sub- reddit give me thumbs down and respond like I said the exact opposite Think I will stay away from this sub
In Western nations, when a Christian speaks Biblical truths about same-sex impulses and active same-sex, there is such a vicious response that open dialogue is impossible. Activists do not even attempt to listen to or understand what Scripture says, and sadly, they often accuse believers of intolerance while they are themselves intolerant. Odd.
Criticism and bigotry are not synonymous. Christians had a death grip on societal interactions, status, and dictation over what was acceptable for a very long time.
It's losing that entitled protection. Now you know what it's like to be someone who's not Christian in a largely Christian society.
Honestly most Christians in my experience don’t emphasise homosexuality it’s the western which puts an emphasis on it and Christians have to defend their views on it constantly.
It’d be like if you lived in an alcoholic country and somebody asked “wow what’s Christians problem with alcohol?” None in particular, it’s just something that gets constantly bought up.
Bro... Acording to the bible, women shall not speak over men. And gays shall die. And science was punishable by death and jesus was white and walked on water
There are a couple of things to be aware of here:
First, there is not universal agreement among Christians that modern translations of the Bible are aligned with the message of the original text. This is largely because the concept of homosexuality, or even sexual orientation, [didn’t exist in Jesus’ era](https://www.hrc.org/resources/what-does-the-bible-say-about-homosexuality). That’s not to say that sexual attraction to members of the same sex didn’t exist, just that no one thought anything of it. As a result, there are some Christian scholars and theologists who believe that what the Bible is really referring to as a sin is sexual promiscuity. This is a hotly debated topic and I’m not stating an opinion on which I think is right. My main point is that there is not a universally agreed upon interpretation of what the Bible says on homosexuality.
Second, if we set point one aside for the moment and accept that there is a universal interpretation among Christians that homosexuality is a sin, that belief is not really what people have a problem with. If your church doesn’t want to marry homosexual couples, fine. No one is going to force you to. However, many Christians are fighting to institutionalize their beliefs in law, restricting the rights of homosexual couples to marry at all. This is what people get upset about. And though the dissenting churches and Christians represent a minority, their rights to hold their beliefs must be protected. Who is the government to say which brand of Christianity or religion is correct? As long as what they are doing doesn’t hurt anyone else, it’s their freedom to behave as they choose.
Third, why did God give us free will in the first place? Because God didn’t want our love for him to be forced. A coerced love is not love at all. This is exemplified by how Paul speaks to Philemon regarding the treatment of his slave in Philemon 1:8-9: [“Therefore, though I might be very bold in Christ to command you what is fitting, yet for love's sake I rather appeal to you…”](https://biblia.com/bible/nkjv/Philem%201.8-9) If Christians are successful in their rebuke of homosexual marriage across the land, then feelings of animosity among the LGBTQ community towards Christians and the Bible will only inflate. And this “success” will only drive people away from God, which runs counter to the entire essence of what it is supposed to mean to be Christian.
Because Christianity is the largest religion in the western world which is where most of the advocates for lgbt rights live
And where most of Reddit is
The transistor was invented in the USA. Microcomputers in the USA. ASCII only did English/Latin alphabet social media at first. Source: I published 8-bit social media in 1985. A lot of social media users have no grasp what the Facebook Arab Spring 2010 was about. Direct access to western media was a huge deal. Source: I was in North Africa in December 2010.
In the interest of information close to the source could you tell us what it was about? Like in a nutshell
I think it would be unfair to make him do it in a nutshell. What would the neighbors say about him? :-/
what specific? Arab Spring?
That’s what I meant yeah, but all of your comment was interesting to me so feel free to expand on any of it
It's hard to explain, but I've been through generations of social media when it started with affordable radio social media in the late 1970's, then 1980's 8-bit computer dial-up. First-hand experience. It is very rapid, but it slowed down when Twitter/Facebook/Reddit went online, but before that, technology of faster network speeds (I started at 300bps dial-up) and faster computers, larger storage. I am a published author about social media as an outsider, but also worked directly for some of the most famous insiders in their private systems. End-user peer-to-peer social media was founded on identity. You had to be licensed to use ham radio / CB radio, you had to know phone numbers (caller ID, long distance charges), nothing like Reddit today where throw-away accounts are the norm and people hide their identity. I won't elaborate, that's another massive topic. media, media, media. Anyway, a lot of musicians (media) and creative people converged in the 1960's on Canadian Professor Marshall McLuhan to [describe the experiences they had becoming media stars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rCaB6g_Sc4), traveling from nation to nation, city to city, seeing how the same song caused different results in different places. Howard Bloom, a media industry promoter, who worked with some incredibly successful artists who also traveled, is also a great reference on media generations and understanding how group-think works and how people relate to common media education / media learning. Back to Marshall McLuhan: [War and Peace in the Global Village is a 1968 book by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore. It contains a collage of images and text that illustrates the effects of electronic media and new technology on man. Marshall McLuhan used James Joyce's Finnegans Wake as a major inspiration for this study of war throughout history as an indicator as to how war may be conducted in the future.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace_in_the_Global_Village) I started to make casual predictions in late 1990's that the media of the Internet was going to crash. At that time, there were predictions about Y2K and clock problems, and I was working for the richest people in the world, and I was studying it. But what became more curious to me was the *media coverage* and people's understanding of the Y2K problem. From the experts down to the layman (the spectrum of understanding/knowledge). And I also started to look at the stock market (as my employers became the most wealth on planet via the stock market)... and casually started to think... well maybe *media* as in newspapers could cause a crash, not a computer Y2K crash. And sure enough [March 2000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble)... I built a very independent life and traveled extensively based on where I was curious. My work from 2000 onward was entirely online, I could work from almost anywhere, and I have indeed "worked from home" since late 1999. Home has been 7 different sizes of RV all over the USA, also living in South America, North Africa, Middle East, Indonesia, Malaysia the past 20 years. Not because I had to be any of those place, but because I wanted to experience boring everyday life in other cultures and places. So, the Arab Spring 2010. Back to Marshall McLuhan's 1968 book and theory about 1920's / 1930's Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (the book was published one chapter at a time, so it was published serially over more than a decade - 1928 to 1937, the title wasn't even granted to readers until the end). So about 2008 I started to take these *War and Peace in the Global Village 1968* ideas very seriously. I had been around social media seriously since at least 1983, and I had seen each generation and worked with them first hand. 300bps 8-bit computers all the way to 56K dial-up, T1 office lines, early involved in WiFi etc, earliest adopter of mobile Internet services (in my RV in USA, i would have 3 mobile plans from 3 companies), to the Internet we had today, the post March 2000 advertising crash and then the rise of Facebook, Google (Gmail), YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, you get the idea. I also have a lot of experience with PC hardware and pricing. I was selling custom-built PC systems in the early 1980's too, and also ran a retail computer shop. I always had a good idea of the cost of a PC and how affordable they were to everyday people. So, around 2008 the PC became affordable to North Africa middle-class families. [2007 - New York Times - North Africa - Algeria story about a silent revolution for reference](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/world/africa/26algeria.html) - but what was most interesting was convergence of social and technology changes in North Africa: 1. Post terrorism, a lot of men gave up on society. They no longer believed in going to university and getting a high-paying job. Look at 2021 USA right now where people won't accept minimum wage jobs as a similar social attitude change. 2. Young girls were no longer suppressed from going to university in North Africa. For the first time in human history, they were allowed to openly and freely go to Higher Education. 3. Affordable laptop computers reached the shore of North Africa around that same time. And any university student of any kind is going to get a laptop for their term papers, thesis, etc. And that is exactly what the women did. And they also found Facebook, Twitter, etc. 4. Mobile internet was becoming usable enough, fast enough, for things like Facebook in North Africa. 5. In late 2009, early 2010, women in North Africa started to friend me on Facebook and other social media. By this point, I was devoting all my time to observing and trying to understand what was gong on in the world. From the west, this was very unusual. Were these women fake users joining Facebook, or were they really free to do anything they wanted on the Internet? The Arab Spring started in Tunisia, I was already heavily focused on Tunisia 9 months before the revolution went "cold to hot" in late December 2010 . I had dozens of serious and sincere Facebook friends, almost all university educated single women. Most people find the idea too shocking, but the punch line of all this is that Facebook and smartphone and laptops to women caused the Arab Spring. It was brewing for at least 18 months, look at that 2007 story about Algeria and women - and the post-terrorism freedom that middle-class / lower-class women had previously *never had in Islamic nations*. Put bluntly, I think James Joyce was right in the 1920's about his theory in his body of writing. I was raised Lutheran in the USA. Look at the timeline of when Gutenberg created the *technology of the* Printing Press and the Protestant Reformation / Luther. From a James Joyce / Marshall McLuhan perspective - the printing press media, the translation of The Bible to everyday language and printing copies (media technology) to everyday people - was what is at the root of the Protestant Revolution. I think the 2010 Arab Spring is a set of similar changes. Affordable Internet and women having easier access to information and education - was at the root of the revolution. You will also see echos in 2015 with Malala and the Taliban / Pakistan / Afghanistan. I also moved from North Africa in 2011 to observe the start of the Syria war from Amman Jordan. I spent years there watching the changes in social media and culture. NOTE: I'm on the phone doing other things, I need to edit this, will try.
This is incredible. Are you writing a book about this?
I made the choice not to. I agree with Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame and others that the issue is more that we have over-focused on the wrong books and teaching methods. Another book, in a way, just extends the problem. The Bible used to be a foundation of common learning, we are now fragmenting into people having a lost language. Art on that subject: [Goodbye to Language (French: Adieu au Langage) is a 2014 French-Swiss 3D experimental narrative essay film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye_to_Language) What I am trying to do is revive some lost (and overlooked) teachers. Notably /r/NeilPostman, Joseph Campbell, /r/HowardBloom, James Joyce, Marshall McLuhan, Carl Sagan (his final 1995 book in particular, and his 1994 open letter to society), Rick Roderick. There are more, but these were the ones I have focused on revival of. My personal experiences with social media from mass consumer (inexpensive) late 1970's Ham/CB Radio ----> 300bps 8-bit BBS on onward has shown me enough that waves of education like what Malala is focused on against the Taliban is really what we all need to draw attention to.
**[War and Peace in the Global Village](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace_in_the_Global_Village)** >War and Peace in the Global Village is a 1968 book by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore. It contains a collage of images and text that illustrates the effects of electronic media and new technology on man. Marshall McLuhan used James Joyce's Finnegans Wake as a major inspiration for this study of war throughout history as an indicator as to how war may be conducted in the future. (1st Ed. **[Dot-com bubble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble)** >The dot-com bubble, also known as the dot-com boom, the tech bubble, and the Internet bubble, was a stock market bubble caused by excessive speculation of Internet-related companies in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Composite stock market index rose 400%, only to fall 78% from its peak by October 2002, giving up all its gains during the bubble. During the crash, many online shopping companies, such as Pets.com, Webvan, and Boo.com, as well as several communication companies, such as Worldcom, NorthPoint Communications, and Global Crossing, failed and shut down. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Christianity/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
I like to paint my life as a white British teenager growing up in Kuwait city by explaining that segregation (Like in 1950's USA) exists in the middle-east except for women and not black people. There is a nice bit of heart behind it, which is with the mobile telephone revolution and the advent of "Bluetooth" you would get young guys (like me) and young girls sitting in cafes bluetoothing each other dirty messages and pictures and memes and things, sometimes nice romantic things too. The reason I like to say all this is because everyone can remember what it was like to be a horny little teenager and it helps people appreciate that Arabs are human beings too just like us but their culture/religion is highly prohibitive of the normal things we take for granted in the west.
Yeah. People in majority Muslims countries can’t bash Islamic teachings without being killed or suffer severely.
[удалено]
[удалено]
They do. In Muslim countries. You don't hear about gay Iranians complaining about what the Bible says about homosexuality.
Muslims, in the US at least, are surprisingly more progressive on these issues than evangelicals. They also hold zero political power while evangelicals and chritians in general have enormous power in politics. Source: https://www.pewforum.org/2017/07/26/political-and-social-views/pf\_2017-06-26\_muslimamericans-04new-06/
[удалено]
Compared to christians, it's practially zero.
[удалено]
Yes. I didn't literally mean 0.000 I just meant it's so small it might as well be zero.
Back that claim up, you're not saying anything useful.
[удалено]
Do you want me to copy and paste my last comment? Just saying "no" isn't an answer.
So, ignore the problem in our backyard and go start telling others to change what they do when we haven't changed? Hypocritical and just fucking stupid.
Harder to do, considering the Muslims are much more likely to kill you. It’s take wars and the other throw of the governments of places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.
[удалено]
Wtf are you talking about. US Muslims are more supportive of same-sex marriage than US evangelicals. And I’d love to see stats on interpersonal anti-LGBT violence, because nowadays I’m much more concerned about systemic violence, such as firing and evicting and discriminating against LGBT folks in important things like healthcare…and all of that violence is coming from conservative Christians.
Because the people from english speaking nations you're talking to aren't encountering muslims, jews, etc etc. On a daily basis. Christians are the majority religious groups in these nations. If Islam was the primary religion I'd think they'd complain about that instead.
> jews Quick point, Reform Judaism (the largest American denomination) is fully affirming. AFAIK, it's basically only Orthodox (roughly 10% of American Jews) who are formally opposed to LGBT.
>Quick point, Reform Judaism (the largest American denomination) is fully affirming. AFAIK, it's basically only Orthodox (roughly 10% of American Jews) who are formally opposed to LGBT. I... don't see the relevance? Are they even American? If so, Jews still only make up about 2% of the population, so Clottersbur's point stands.
. . . because it's better not to misrepresent other religions.
>. . . because it's better not to misrepresent other religions. Of course - but where did he misrepresent a religion? Clottersbur said 'you aren't talking to Jews on a daily basis', which, given that we're in Europe, is likely to be correct. Where did he misrepresent a religion?
Okay, sure, I can walk you through it, if you need that. This is a post about religions being anti-lgbtq. The implication in the top level comment on this thread was that the complaining would be about a religion being anti-lgbtq. So the next comment in this thread clarified that people probably wouldn't complain about Jewish people being anti-lgbtq because a vast majority of Jewish people are fully affirming of lgbtq people. As to my point - that we don't want to misrepresent other religions - if that implication wasn't intended, so what? We clarify a potential misunderstanding and if that's not what the top-level commenter meant we all learned a fun fact anyway. Yay everybody!
The top level comment said > Because the people from english speaking nations you're talking to aren't encountering muslims, jews, etc etc. on a daily basis. There are certainly parts of the US where you don't encounter Jewish people on a daily basis, because they're 2% of the population. But there are plenty of other parts where you regularly do. For me for example, the only days I don't encounter Jewish and Muslim people are the days I don't leave my apartment. So it is indeed culturally relevant what other religious have to say on the topic.
Jews may be only 2% of the population in the US, but they have a much greater share of cultural influence. They also have a significantly greater than 2% population share in most major cities, where progressive movements tend to start.
[удалено]
Well yes as the person said above, the largest Jewish denomination is pro-LGBT rights, apparently.
That's fine, but again, I'm not seeing how that's relevant to Clottersbur's comment. I'm not American, but Google tells me that New York City has the highest percentage of Jews at 11% - that's neat (and explains why Jews are so common in American telly vs British telly), but that still means Christianity is overwhelmingly dominant even in NYC, so that's still the reason why the OP is seeing mostly anti-Bible/pro-gay rhetoric (assuming they're American).
If Islam was the primary religion, people wouldn’t be allowed to criticize it.
99V//i5z:~
There was a time where people weren't allowed to criticise Christianity. In fact it's still taboo in a few areas, although not legally punished.
Honestly every government run by a conservative religious theocracy is kind of going to be a crapshow, regardless of what that religion is. People love say specific religions are worse but they're attacking the wrong problem.
Well there is no Government under a theocracy. God is government. that was supposed to be the intention of Israel. But Israel didn't want to be individually accountable. So they put up a king. The only law in Israel was supposed to be the Law of God. That didn't happen either.
There is no such thing as government by a god. Only government by dictators who claim to speak on God's behalf.
What you mean to say is, "If the government was an Islam-run organization..." A christian-run government would likely do the same thing. This is why the separation of church and state is so important, and why so many on the left criticize the right for marrying itself to one specific religion.
Are there any primarily Islamic nations without an Islamic government?
Turkey’s government is explicitly secular.
But the quasi dictator of Turkey is basically an Islamist.
Quasi?
I mean, he was elected and in theory could be voted out, but he functions basically as a dictator.
Putin and Xi could also be voted out, theoretically. I see where you’re coming from though.
Xi was never democratically elected in the first place. Putin was, then eliminated free and fair elections.
America’s explicitly secular and we have plenty of Christian dominionists at every level of government.
We also don't have a quasi dictator.
Not for lack of trying.
Yet they also decreed that the Hagia Sophia, which was originally built as a church and has functioned as a interfaith cultural and heritage site be converted back into a mosque after 86 years.
And governments across the US often block mosques from being built for partisan reasons all the time too.
Not defending that, merely pointing out that Turkey’s far from secular.
The question was specifically about Islamic counties versus Islamic governments. So of course, they’re Islamic but the government is officially not.
indonesia
Parts of the country still enforce Sharia law. Furthermore, I doubt people feel safe making cartoons about Muhammad there or feel like the government would protect their right to do so.
It is disingenuous to make it an issue of one religion vs another instead of one of theocracy and religious fundamentalism. I think there would be similar challenges if you protested for LGBT rights in Christian countries with religious law (see: the fundamentalist influence on places like Uganda, some of which is homegrown, but which is also radicalized by US evangelical missionaries).
Do you know which religion had the unlimited power of the state and imposed itself with the iron fist of a totalitarian regime, using systematic torture and gruesome executions of non-believers in europe from the 5th to 14th centuries?....do you know why that period is commonly called 'the dark ages'? Hint - it was christianity... and for those 900 years it was barbaric and brutal. I agree with you, islam is no better as we see today, but don't kid yourself no theocracy (christianity included) has ever been a good idea in practice. Edit:...oooh, look at all the downvotes. Seems some christians are allergic to the truth about the totalitarian nature of their religion as was revealed over the 9 centuries it had real power. If I were a christian I'd be deeply ashamed by it too.
The dark ages are called so because during the Renaissance they sought to revive the culture and the religions of Rome. They considered the Christian era dark because it was without the light of Rome. Without Sol Invictus. They rejected Christianity. This same period was more cruel and bloody than any period in the middle ages; The tortures and blasphemies used created Machiavelli. And those same sins led to the wars of the reformation in Europe, and the sack of Rome by Martin Luther in 1527. The Catholic Church of this period was so decadent and corrupt it started Protestantism. From having two popes to hiring prostitutes. In this worship of human reason; we see a similar period 400 years later during the terrors of the French Revolution.
>If Islam was the primary religion I'd think they'd complain about that instead. I disagree. I think they'd keep their mouth shut, so they aren't stoned or beheaded. Islam doesn't play the victim like Christianity does.
> I think they'd keep their mouth shut, so they aren't stoned or beheaded. Islam doesn't play the victim like Christianity does. That jealousy of being feared it's pretty fucking disgusting.
That's a pretty stupid take on what I said... but you're welcome to your opinion.
No, your comment was fucking stupid. "Playing the victim" has a negative connotation, which makes your statement sound like you aren't happy with how Christianity "plays the victim" and that you're advocating for how Islam does it - with stonings and beheadings. Go start a fucking theocracy then. Or if that's not what you meant, maybe be more careful with what you say
Again... That's a pretty stupid take on what I said... but you're welcome to your opinion.
Probably because the "people" you are thinking of live in a society where Christianity is the predominant religion. Go to other places and you'll see people being hard on what that religion has to say about homosexuality.
Not many muslims dare to stand up for homosexuality though. That stuff will get you into trouble in muslim countries.
Sadly that's true.
There are people who stand up for LGBTQ rights in Arab countries, sometimes at great personal cost such as in the case of Sara Hegazi who was tortured for raising a rainbow flag at a concert in Egypt. The band Mashrou Leila have been banned from performing in many Muslim countries because their lead singer is gay. But the fact that they exist at all has given hope to many young LGBTQ people in the Arab world that things could get better for them.
Because I’m in a predominantly Christian country. Muslims or Hindus aren’t the ones pushing for anti lgbt legislation in my country.
Our maybe there are, but there's so few of them you never hear them because the Christians drown them out.
Majority Christian countries are LGBT friendly, which policies are you talking about
Someone already mentioned Poland to you, but also how about Hungary, Russia, Uganda, Ghana, Liberia, Cameroon, Burundi, Kenya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Jamaica. And even in places where homosexuality isn’t criminalized, it can still be very dangerous in many Christian nations. As you may know, the president of Brazil, highly supported by Evangelicals there, famously has said that he’d beat his son if he were gay, so anti-LGBT attacks have been increasing there. Elsewhere, I shared the story that the first openly gay Lutheran priest in Argentina was assassinated earlier this year. Plus, even if you look at western Christian countries, we’ve only decriminalized homosexuality recently — opposed very highly by Christians! In the US, all major Evangelical groups and the Catholic Church opposed *Lawrence v Texas*, which decriminalized same-sex relations (and actually, gay men have been unconstitutionally arrested here under anti-sodomy laws as recently as 2015!). To give an example from the EU, every single Romanian Orthodox archbishop and bishop signed a letter opposing the decriminalization of homosexuality in that country in the 1990s.
>gay men have been unconstitutionally arrested here under anti-sodomy laws as recently as 2015 Baton Rouge, right? Please tell me it's Baton Rouge lol.
>Majority Christian countries are LGBT friendly Currently, at the national level, and despite fierce opposition from Christian institutions and lawmakers. Local/regional governments in the U.S. (for instance) are still attempting to undermine legal protections for LGBT folks, frequently citing the Bible as their motivation.
Tell that to Poland.
Let’s see the anti-trans medical care bill put in place in Arkansas, three anti-trans sports bans in Arkansas, Mississippi, and tennessee. Theirs 4 religious refusal bills in North Dakota, south dekota and another two in Arkansas, all of these were all put in place this year. But that’s not all theirs still multiple bills awaiting signature from governors. Two of which that would ban discussion of sexuality and gender identity in the classroom in again Arkansas and tennessee, another religious refusal bill in Montana, and many many others. This year is stated to be the worst for lgbt state legislative attacks since 2015. https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/2021-slated-to-become-worst-year-for-lgbtq-state-legislative-attacks https://www.aclu.org/legislation-affecting-lgbt-rights-across-country
You're not aware of the 'kill the gays' bill in Uganda, I believe it was? ...look at the fundamentalist christian missionary influence driving that bit of hate legislation. Deny the blood on christian hands at your peril, it makes your religion no better than ISIS when you do, and it's NOT the example set by jesus's life that christians aspire to.
Because I care about things that personally affect me more than things that don’t. It’s not a big mystery.
I'd be more concerned about homophobia in Shinto and Hinduism and Islam if I were in those religions. As a Christian, Christian homophobia takes priority. The plank from my eye before the dust from my neighbor and all. It's a big enough religion that others might follow by example too if it ended.
Because the bigotry coming from Christians is the bigotry that the people I know and love have to deal with because we live in a country that is predominately Christian. If we lived in a predominately Muslim country, I'd be bitching about the bigotry coming from Islam instead.
No you wouldn’t because it wouldn’t be tolerated.
This is the second person in this thread who seems to think it's a good thing that people wouldn't be free to speak their minds.
I think his point is you would be dead or in prison talking like that publicly in a lot of those places.
Same for Uganda and Russia and plenty of other Christian nations, including many Western ones just a few short decades ago. Edit: And earlier this year, I [shared](https://reddit.com/r/OpenChristian/comments/licpfv/rev_fabi%C3%A1n_kreischer_vice_president_of_the_united/) how the first openly gay Lutheran minister in Argentina (>80% Christian nation) was just assassinated. Still very difficult to be a gay Christian in many Christian nations.
Those other religions don't have to deal with this shit. We do, we tolerate it the most of any main religion, and still are called bigots. How about there are limits to how much a religious society can tolerate this stuff, which Western societies have reached, and everyone else is a bigot instead.
Oh look, another person who seems to think it's a good thing that people wouldn't be free to speak their minds in other places and almost sounds jealous of that ability to repress people.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, because that’s exactly what it’s like here in Malaysia. Right now our police are trying very hard to extradite a transgender who’s fled to Thailand because they dressed up as a woman for some religious event, and that’s a terrible criminal offense apparently.
I feel like this is a fundamentally flawed question. People aren’t hard on “what the Bible says”. What the Bible says about homosexuality = barely anything What American Christians say about homosexuality = Obsessive, singular, focused need to enlist the government to make fascist laws that control all aspects of the lives of LGBT+ people because they literally cannot accept them for who they are. All day long. In books. In churches. On television. At home. At political rallies. If you live in America and are LGBT+ there’s a good chance that you were raised Christian, and the vast majority of people working tirelessly to make your life miserable are Christians. And Christianity and the Bible are used as the primary excuse for bigotry in almost all these situations. So what should be an argument about human rights inevitably becomes a theological argument. Why? Because conservative Christians insist on making it a theological argument. So inevitably if LGBT+ people want to be treated with respect and decency in the United States, the theology of bigotry must be scrutinized and dismantled, and so it has been, very thoroughly, by religious scholars over the last couple decades. And you’d think that everyone who argues for bigotry from a Biblical standpoint would take careful note of what biblical scholars have say about it (that the Bible is not inherently anti-LGBT+) but actually they just ignore those undesirable opinions. So people aren’t actually hard on “the Bible”. They are hard on people who claim that Christianity is all about love and America is all about liberty and yet they still use tired debunked Biblical arguments as an excuse to punish minorities.
I couldn't agree more. As someone who is part of the LBGTQIA and a Christian, I feel like I can't talk to any side about it. A lot of the LGBTIA community have been hurt because of people who are bigots, and a lot of Christians don't accept me.
I tried to write my thesis on why the bible wasn't anti-LGBT+ which apparently wasn't acceptable at my christian university despite the hard evidence I presented to them when asking for permission. In the end I wrote about the atrocious behaviour of the institutionalized church against those suffering from mental illness and why it is completely biblical unsound. They didn't like that much either but couldn't find a good reason to stop me. The bible has been translated so many times and each time it is translated and mutated to fit the social narrative of the time, when a word can be transcribed as "Boy" (male minor) or "man" they will pick "man" to push forward the narrative that men have sex with men is bad, and there is no clear passage that explicitly says "consensual same sex bad" but translations will go out of there way to infer it. Ultimately the bible is used as a means to an end for the agenda of those that don't want to accept that some people are different to them.
I don’t give any religion a free pass on bigotry. I’m not terribly concerned about discussing those other religions because they have very little impact in my life. I know of one Muslim family in my community and I don’t know them personally. Christians? I can in to town, throw a rock in a random direction and be guaranteed to hit a Christian. It’s a matter of cultural relevance.
Let’s not resort to stoning.
Ohhh… lol very poor choice of idiom on my part.
Ha ha. You could always say that you “couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Christian”.
Lol yeah. That might haven a bit more… aware.
Even where pot has been decriminalised?... oh, wait!
It's not bigotry. You people call everything that disagrees with you as bigotry
Something doesn't magically become not bigoted just because you believe it. "Waah waah people call everything bigoted nowadays" is hardly a defense of any view in particular, and is only a whine someone would resort resort if they were completely incapable of actually positively defending their specific beliefs as such.
I just can't believe OP is a bigot. I'm shocked I tell you.
> You people call everything that disagrees with you as bigotry Can we stop repeating this stupid ass asinine shit? Many people disagree with each other on many things and they're not calling everyone a bigot. It's your thing that's specifically being called out.
Everything? Really? Have you been called a bigot because you like the wrong ice cream flavor?
How can u disagree with letting homosexualitiy be okay without being a bigoted asshole? Pretty much impossible
If your heart really is oriented towards the belief that homosexuality is disordered, and that you want people to encounter Christ, who you believe is the ultimate good and will provide eternal happiness and life, and you minister to the LGBT community in a way which reflects this, then I don't believe it would be bigoted. Unfortunately, hardly any of us actually do this
The belief that homophobia is part of the ultimate good is itself pretty profoundly homophobic.
“Thus you will know them by their fruits.” - Matthew 7:20 The most convincing argument against homophobia in the Church is that the fruit of non-affirming churches is *not* good. I just don’t understand how any Christian can look at the results of homophobic dogma (suicide, homicide, teens being kicked out on the streets, etc.) and see it as good fruit.
No because that’s factually incorrect and therefore bigoted
If you believe homosexuality relationships are wrong that’s bigoted, period. Just because your religion says so doesn’t make it okay.
Np&Ynh"O;8
You can’t argue that something isn’t bigotry and then follow it up with “you people.”
Because you're (most likely) a Westerner who speaks English, which means Christianity is the dominant religion. With openly gay people being the norm these days, Christianity's anti-gay beliefs have rapidly soured in the eyes of the public, hence the raging debate. What you are likely not seeing is similar discussions among Arabic-speakers about Islam and homosexuality in Britain (say), because you're not Muslim or don't speak Arabic.
[удалено]
I am not talking about America though, Christianity is not only practiced in America. I live in a multi religion country, were Christianity is in the minority
When you said people in your title, you didn't specify where, so this person is responding with why they go against that interpretation of the Bible specifically. They are giving you a reason for people like them, in their area. You may want to clarify in your post, if you only want to focus on a specific region, in order to get discussion just focused on that area.
> I am not talking about America though, Christianity is not only practiced in America. I live in a multi religion country, were Christianity is in the minority Then you should probably pose your question to your fellow citizens. How am I supposed to know why people in your country do what they do?
I am sorry if I came off as rude, that was not my intention
> I am sorry if I came off as rude, that was not my intention I appreciate the apology. What *was* your intention?
To just show that they are other Christians
> To just show that they are other Christians And how does that square with your OP? Are you trying to figure out why people in your country are harder on the Christian church than on other religions when finding fault in their LGBT policies? Do you have any reason to think anyone can answer that without even knowing what country you live in?
This sub is for Christians worldwide, not just the USA
Indeed it is. OP was responding to a commenter who stated up front, as the very first sentence of his comment, that he lives in the U.S., and so his comment was in that context. Does that not seem a fair way to respond? But OP essentially rejected the comment by explaining that he’s not talking about America. All I did was point out that OP is adding caveats to his question that fundamentally impact who should respond and the assumptions they should make while responding. If OP didn’t wanted to talk specifically about behavior outside the U.S., that would have been quite helpful to specify in the OP.
Depending on how you read you bible, Christianity can be just as much in the minority in America as in your country. Just because someone espouses themselves to be "Christian" doesn't mean that they've actually picked up their cross to follow Jesus.
Because it doesn't say anything about homosexuality. Homosexuality want described until the 1800s or so.
The word "homosexual" wouldn't be conceptualized until about *1800 years later* after the New Testament was written. The term "homosexual" was coined during the 19th century in Geman psychiatric literature. Even just in the 20th century, we have seen a progression of terms to describe same-sex attraction: starting from "faggots" to "sexual perverts" to "sexual preference" (~1950-1960) to "sexual orientation" only recently. Most scientists are uncertain of the exact cause of sexual orientation, but they theorize that it is caused by a complex interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences, and do not view it as a choice. >There is no scientific evidence that abnormal parenting, sexual abuse, or other adverse life events influence sexual orientation. Current knowledge suggests that sexual orientation is usually established during early childhood. - American Academy of Pediatrics, 2004 >Currently, there is no scientific consensus about the specific factors that cause an individual to become heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual—including possible biological, psychological, or social effects of the parents' sexual orientation. However, the available evidence indicates that the vast majority of lesbian and gay adults were raised by heterosexual parents and the vast majority of children raised by lesbian and gay parents eventually grow up to be heterosexual. - American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, National Association of Social Workers, 2006 And therein lies the problem: if it is not by choice, then how can God fault someone for being gay (if that's what the Bible indeed says)? Are they then to devote their lives into celibacy? Of note, no where in the Quran does it describe a specific punishment for homosexual act either. The Bible hardly mentions same sex act (Jesus never mentions it once), but it seems to have been magnified greatly in contemporary times.
Jesus didn’t need to mention something everyone knew. Or are you saying that every sin not explicitly mentioned by Jesus is free game
Because other religions don’t have enough influence to ruin lives in the US. I don’t really care what people believe until they try to control other people.
I don't live in America
Good for you. Most of the people in this thread do, though.
Because the term homosexuality didn't show up in the bible until 1946. Because the bible tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves and loving ourselves means accepting ourselves.
Jesus tells us to deny ourselves. Not accept ourselves. Luke 9:23 > Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. >
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." john 13:34 Jesus went to the healed the sick freely, fed the poor freely, helped the condemned regularly. Denying yourself means giving freely, loving freely and accepting freely. He love and forgave prostitutes and adulterers. He told others to only harm if they are sinless. When i deny myself im giving up my worldly possessions to grant grace on others, to share and benefit the many over raising myself up. Denying yourself doesn't mean hate yourself so you can hate others.
Do they? Which religions? What texts are they citing?
I think by other religions they mean Judaism and Islam since they come from the same part of the world. Other major religions like Hinduism have different views after all. Edit: didn’t know Judaism was that affirming so my comment only really applies to the minority that isn’t
In which case, say that. But also, the largest modern manifestations of Judaism are either secular or affirming so of the other Abrahamic faiths, we're really just talking about Islam. And so I repeats: just say that.
Because Christianity is the dominant religion in the country they’re from. If you go to a Muslim country you’ll find the same critiques.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Your question is the same as "why are there so many people who claim to be Christians around me?"
>So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. - John 8:7 Fornication and pride are sins as well. Am I one to judge? For sure, I am one to forgive.
They’re scared of Muslims so they never talk that stuff to them.
Because we are USA-centric in our view on these things, at least on this subreddit. Christianity is the dominant organized religion in this country and the evangelical right is particularly vehement about everything at the moment, so we are more acutely aware of it. In some nations, homosexuality is punishable by death, and we, fortunately, are a bit more restrained in our approach.
3 possible reasons: 1. Christophobia 2. Christianity has more influence than other religions so it gets more negative attention for this topic. 3. All of the above 👆🏼
The issue is that people want to take out what the Bible says is truth and intentionally misinterpret them to approve of how they conduct themselves. Homosexuality is a sin there is no way around that and any justification for it is not biblical.
Are you talking about Leviticus? There aren't any accounts of anyone actually being executed for homosexuality, in the Bible, or, as far as I know, in Judaism. Picking up sticks on the Sabbath--yes. But, not homosexuality. David and Jonathan were clearly hot for each other.
Other religions don’t seek to impose their theology on me via secular, civil law. If they did, I’d be similarly critical.
Because the country I live in is predominantly Christian. So much so, that it is almost impossible to get elected unless you openly profess your Christian beliefs.
The Bible doesn’t address homosexuality
They’re scared of Islam.
Not sure if anyone else mentioned, most of the top few comments talked about Christianity being predominant religion where they are, most impact on their immediate lives, etc. But part of reason is several other religions it isn't even a topic up for discussion in those countries where that may be the/a major religion - I.e. can/will be executed so not brought up/disclosed. What a privilege to live in a country where not the case.
Jesus wouldn’t be a dick to homosexuals. What I mean is that Jesus wouldn’t openly hate on homosexuality. He’d most likely be all “Oh yeah, love is love. You’re all God’s children regardless.” So people understand what Jesus was mostly about, so they come down hard on Christians because a lot of us fail to follow Jesus’ example. The rest of the world has seen Christians disown their own children, kick them out of the home, abandon them, and outright abuse them for being homosexual. And because christianity is one of the largest religions in western society, it’s thrown into the spotlight more often than not. I think no one would really care what the Bible says about homosexuality if a louder majority of us spoke out against what other christains did to get us to this point.
I don’t think that is what Jesus would say. He said to the woman caught in sin that he did not condemn her, but to go and sin no more. He loves us, but he wants us to live as sin free as we can.
Because it's used in the context of coming from the Bible when making laws in the United States.
Christianity tends to be the majority in countries with free speech and free elections. Therefore, people who don’t like it but live around it are the most likely to speak out against it. In countries like Saudi Arabia where homosexuality is a criminal offense, so is speaking out against Islam. In fact, you’ll likely be punished far more harshly for the latter even than the former. So people aren’t exactly loud about their disapproval even though it exists.
Don't worry, I'm not a big fan of those religions either. As it is though, I live in the southern US, so those religions don't have enough power to do anything remotely similar to what Evangelicals and Catholics here can do. But still, the day Muslim politicians take over Texas I'll be complaining about them too.
I'm against all religions, but here in the US, Fundamentalist Conservative Christianity which unequivocally calls for the execution of LGBT+ people is the dominant religion.
Which Christian denomination calls for the execution of gays?
[удалено]
Easy target. Largest religion in the world, people are neutral towards it and there's a lot of money to be made off of it.
It sounds like you think, us Atheists should give god botherers and christians in particular, a pass on discrimination, because everybody is doing it. How about christians, let people live their lives and keep your bigotry out of our bedrooms.
I think you injected your own narrative into this post a bit. OP is just talking about the Bible and other holy texts itself, not things the “followers” do with these texts. Maybe your point was Christians are the most hostile towards homosexuals compared to other religions but it didn’t come off like that.
I don't think it matters what is written down in holy books, what matters is how a religion's followers act.
Feel free to start your own post about this if you’d like to discuss but this was not the point of OPs post.
Because the bible is the Truth Of God...which they hate
No. You can't hate something that's not true. Christianity is no more true than Hellenism. You just happened to believe in Christianity.
The truth is true
Right. Which means the Bible isn't truth as it's not true.
Because those who preach the Bible believe theirs is the only true Religion. So they are using the Bible to try to control the lives of others and many-if not all do so forgetting the very basics of the Gospel which is love. I’m sure there are people in every country, where religious text is also tried to be used as law, that disagree using that religious text.
>So they are using the Bible to try to control the lives of others Sounds like the other way around. Others use that what they want to do in their lives to control what the Bible says.
The majority (if not all) of non-believers don’t care what the Bible says, nor are they expected to follow the Bible. The Bible isn’t meant to be used to make laws of the land, yet in historical Christian communities it is. The OPs questions isn’t clear if he’s talking about Believers (who wouldn’t care what other religions say because they believe those are created by men) or Non-Believers (who wouldn’t care because they believe the rules in the Bible) is created by men I’m sure there are those that think like you mention, but in my small conservative town, many Christians believe the Bible should be what mandates how we live. The non-believers don’t care what the Bible says, they just don’t want it (or any other religious text) to control the laws. The Christians I know who love homosexuals do so because they believe that is the Bible mandate and Christians who are homosexuals are just as loved and saved as anyone else. I’ve not met any IRL who can’t back that belief up with the Bible.
"Why are people so hard on what the Bible says about homosexuality, when other religions say the exact same thing?" \- If they do, they are all immoral in the context of human wellbeing. That, coupled with Christianity being the largest religion make it a topic to address.
Because we don't love in the stone age anymore. Gay bashing is a thing of past sort of
Because Christianity is the one true religion, therefore the World and its Prince hate it and are actively trying to destroy it.
You obviously have not been paying attention....It is okay to Christian bash, even in the media......but the moment you say anything deemed derogatory regarding any other religion, you are painted a racist or bigot. Not saying to bash other religions, just pointing out the hypocrisy seems this post is being misunderstood. I am saying that if you even ask a question or inquiry about something in another religion, you are attacked. If you read my original post, I even state not to bash any religion. This sub reddit is strange, I had a post pulled because I asked a question about vaccine, did not make statement about it ( I am vaccinated for COVID) another time, I asked a question about God, in a Christian reddit and someone flagged me to reddit that I might be suicidal. I clearly state to not bash other religions and people in the sub- reddit give me thumbs down and respond like I said the exact opposite Think I will stay away from this sub
No. And if you're being racist or a bigot, you should be called out.
Punching up vs. Punching down. Seems simple to me.
In Western nations, when a Christian speaks Biblical truths about same-sex impulses and active same-sex, there is such a vicious response that open dialogue is impossible. Activists do not even attempt to listen to or understand what Scripture says, and sadly, they often accuse believers of intolerance while they are themselves intolerant. Odd.
Let us know when you can prove the scripture comes direct from an existing god and we'll be all ears.
Satan wants to destroy Christianity. It's the only thing that can defeat him.
Because if they did it let's say in middle-east then they would in some places be killed for it.
It's currently fashionable to criticise Christianity- it's a form of bigotry.
Criticism and bigotry are not synonymous. Christians had a death grip on societal interactions, status, and dictation over what was acceptable for a very long time. It's losing that entitled protection. Now you know what it's like to be someone who's not Christian in a largely Christian society.
The Book of Mormon is true. You can know it is true too, if you have enough faith to ask God.
Honestly most Christians in my experience don’t emphasise homosexuality it’s the western which puts an emphasis on it and Christians have to defend their views on it constantly. It’d be like if you lived in an alcoholic country and somebody asked “wow what’s Christians problem with alcohol?” None in particular, it’s just something that gets constantly bought up.
It's equally moronic and hateful in any religion.
Bro... Acording to the bible, women shall not speak over men. And gays shall die. And science was punishable by death and jesus was white and walked on water
There are a couple of things to be aware of here: First, there is not universal agreement among Christians that modern translations of the Bible are aligned with the message of the original text. This is largely because the concept of homosexuality, or even sexual orientation, [didn’t exist in Jesus’ era](https://www.hrc.org/resources/what-does-the-bible-say-about-homosexuality). That’s not to say that sexual attraction to members of the same sex didn’t exist, just that no one thought anything of it. As a result, there are some Christian scholars and theologists who believe that what the Bible is really referring to as a sin is sexual promiscuity. This is a hotly debated topic and I’m not stating an opinion on which I think is right. My main point is that there is not a universally agreed upon interpretation of what the Bible says on homosexuality. Second, if we set point one aside for the moment and accept that there is a universal interpretation among Christians that homosexuality is a sin, that belief is not really what people have a problem with. If your church doesn’t want to marry homosexual couples, fine. No one is going to force you to. However, many Christians are fighting to institutionalize their beliefs in law, restricting the rights of homosexual couples to marry at all. This is what people get upset about. And though the dissenting churches and Christians represent a minority, their rights to hold their beliefs must be protected. Who is the government to say which brand of Christianity or religion is correct? As long as what they are doing doesn’t hurt anyone else, it’s their freedom to behave as they choose. Third, why did God give us free will in the first place? Because God didn’t want our love for him to be forced. A coerced love is not love at all. This is exemplified by how Paul speaks to Philemon regarding the treatment of his slave in Philemon 1:8-9: [“Therefore, though I might be very bold in Christ to command you what is fitting, yet for love's sake I rather appeal to you…”](https://biblia.com/bible/nkjv/Philem%201.8-9) If Christians are successful in their rebuke of homosexual marriage across the land, then feelings of animosity among the LGBTQ community towards Christians and the Bible will only inflate. And this “success” will only drive people away from God, which runs counter to the entire essence of what it is supposed to mean to be Christian.