Mike Goeke of some pray away the gay outfit called Cross Power Ministries:
The truth is that homosexuality IS different. It is not different as a “sin.” God sees the sin of homosexual expression as He sees all sin. It is different, however, in that no other sin (or, better said, an identity based primarily on sinful behavior) has impacted, or is likely to impact, culture in the dramatic way that homosexuality has done and will do.
Homosexuality is the only sinful behavior that has a cultural identity and movement surrounding it. What other sin is encouraged to be celebrated? What other sin has a “pride” movement attached to it? What other sin are people so quick to identify their lives by and to adopt as the defining characteristic of their lives? There are not greed pride parades, or people proclaiming on magazine covers “Yes, I’m a gossip.” There are not gluttony neighborhoods or bars where liars openly gather. Men and women don’t proudly self-identify as promiscuous. There are many people who are pro-choice and many who admit to having an abortion, but there are few who celebrate the fact that they had abortions. In fact, if you exclude random individuals like Charlie Sheen, few people would want their sin attached to their name and fewer would proudly boast in their sinful activity.
Homosexuality is also the only sinful behavior that has a growing, accepted theology built around it. Sure, there are fringe “religious” movements for odd things, but within the realm of Christianity there is no other revisionist theological movement based on identity primarily defined by sinful behavior. Denominations are crumbling and fracturing over how to deal with the issue of homosexuality and how to integrate people openly identified as gay or openly practicing homosexual behavior.
First off: There are totally gluttony neighborhoods. Wherever two or three chain restaurants gather in suburbs in the shadow of megachurches and shopping malls, we are dealing with gluttony neighborhoods.
But moreover, perhaps dude should take a step back and say “Wait a minute. Homosexuality IS different. There are millions of healthy, happy, wonderful gay and lesbian people who contribute as much or more to society than I do! And all these other sins I’m naming have actual consequences that I and my counterparts can actually verify, rather than just lying or making them up like we usually do for gayness. Maybe everything I believe is not only wrong, but damn wrong, and I should re-examine things.“
But nah. Wingnut too far gone to face reality. Oh well.
[h/t Right Wing Watch]
“There are not greed pride parades”
They have entire Christian “ministries” devoted to greed. All of those “Prosperity Theology” churches are nothing more than greed dressed up as virtue. And how many of the RRRW anti-gays are rolling in money without the least bit of guilt? These are the people who denigrate the poor for a living, while idolizing the rich as the only ones worthy of existing.
“Men and women don’t proudly self-identify as promiscuous.”
“Yes” and “No” actually. Although many do not take “pride” in non-monogomous lifestyles, they still participate in them without shame. Furthermore, I don’t think they self-identify as promiscuous. Rather, they tend to identify as “open” or “kinky” or “monogomish.” However, as articles within the past few years in the Advocate and on Huffingpost within have shown, people in these communities describe their lives matter-of-factly. It’s who they are and do not seek our approval nor our condemnation.
“There are not greed pride parades” have you not watched TBN or Pat Robertson’s high tech greed pride parade, the 700 club?
Goeke starts out with the preconception that being gay is a sin and then works backwards to bolster his arguments, an approach which presents several problems. For starters, the Hebrew Bible really has nothing to say about same-sex relationships; any well-educated rabbi will tell you that the “abomination” (which incidentally is a bad translation of the Hebrew toe’vah) mentioned in Leviticus is clearly forcible rape. And sex between women is not mentioned in the Torah at all; most Talmudic scholars believe that it was not considered an issue at the time since there are no surviving writings on the subject.
As for the NT, it would take too long to discuss Paul on this thread because we would first have to establish which Paul we are dealing with (the Epistles were certainly written by more than one author), so at the end of the day we are left with Jesus, who not only never said anything negative about same-sex relations, but who appears to have encountered a gay couple when he healed the Centurion’s sick “servant.” The word used for servant here is “pais” and translates literally to “boy” and usually bore a sexual connotation. So not only did the Lord not condemn the relationship, He actually praised the Centurion for his faith.
Of course, those who have already made up their minds on these issues tend to be allergic to facts.
People wonder why kids commit suicide? People like this have blood on their hands. The true “sin” is living a lie in a toxic closet pretending that you are something that you are not The closet can kill you. I THANK GOD escaped it 20 years ago and have been in a happy monogamous relationship with a great guy. I hope the poor soul that wrote this article let’s go of the self loathing and finds his way. Life is so short…
Well, greed and gluttony and other things may be a sin. But despite the claims of Mike Goeke and many religious leaders, gay sex is not in itself sinful. Nor is being LGBT a sin. It is a gift.
Is there a difference? Sure… ‘Christians’ don’t hold signs saying GOD HATES GLUTTONS do they? ‘Christians’ don’t try pushing laws against over-eating, or divorce, or promiscuity, do they? Nope. They reserve all their righteous rage and judgmental ‘love’ for the LGBT community.
How many Biblical ‘sins’ (as that is a word which is born solely out of a religions mandates as presumably issued by ‘god’) are not even given a glance at in our society?
There are HUNDREDS of such ‘sins’. Like the eating of shellfish.
Can you imagine if eating shrimp was socially scorned and regularly attacked by fundamentalist Christians for no other reason than the Bible says it’s a no-no and society had been inculcated in that belief for generations?
There WOULD be shrimp-eaters-pride parades and organized groups of shrimp-eaters and their supporters pushing for the legalization of eating shrimp and demands for respect, protection, and equality for those who eat shrimp.
As would be the case for SO many other unsubstantiated by science or reality ‘sins’ the Bible speaks of.
I still don’t understand how LOVE can be a sin, while HATE can be a virtue.
Usury was consider horrifically sinful for millennia until feudal society evolved into capitalism. How many churches preach against lending money at interest today? Though some Quakers started preaching equality of nonwhites in the 17th century, it took 300 years for that idea to become considered a christian virtue in the churches. Women’s equality to men is still controversial in the greatest part of christianity today if you lump the romans, the “orthodox” and the fundagelical protestants together. The church survives (for good or for ill) because it adapts to whatever the culture dictates, eventually. The churches always follow the money trail and are willing to accommodate the mores of the community they are located in. Survival of the most adaptable. Kinda Darwinian, ironically.
Being gay is not a sin in the first place. But our culture routinely celebrates and promotes greed and gluttony.
This fellow really needs to come out of his cave more often and actually SEE what is going on around him. His blinders are too thick if he believes even half of what he says. As my gramma always said, ‘some people are so heavenly minded, it renders them of no earthly good!’ This is just another example of how right that woman always was! Like Mr T said PITY THE FOOL. That’s all that keeps me from wanting to smack them upside the head with a 2×4 to see if it is even possible to knock some sense into them. I think I’d die of exhaustion long before I ever found sense in their heads though.
Sin means missing god’s mark and is an invention of ancient men like Biblegod himself.
I can’t understand how followers of any god have such a hold on society in a progress forward thinking democratic place like the states. Over here in the UK, anyone making a statement like that would be laughed at and called a nutter, and if someone wanted to be elected to parliament they would keep their religious affiliation quiet and certainly would not campaign on bringing Biblical laws into government, and WE have an established church headed by a hereditary head of state.
How does the saying go?
“Britain and America, two nations divided by a common language.”
Evan:
What is going on with the PFOX lawsuit? Has Wayne chickened out?
William:
We are suing PFOX and in process of filing our lawsuit. It will be announced very soon.
Thank you for checking in on this.
Jessica, First you have to understand that, in its own sweet, way America is a religiously nutty country. Fundamentalist Christians are, for the most part, no better than their radical Muslim counterparts. It’s OUR religion that is right, not YOURS! And like any religion, you can stir them up (like swatting a hornets nest) by suggesting that some great enemy is about to destroy all that they hold dear (which, by the way, is total command of their society). So, yes, America is nuts with religion. It has never seemed, in my whole life, to be so ridiculous. They always have ALL the answers, even if they have to make them up. It’s a basic requirement of religion: Don’t let facts or truth stand in the way.
Gianni is correct Jessica. American is like the rest of the world, not Europe, where religion is a private issue, not publicly discussed in politics. Of course, we dont have your history of war based ON religion, so we don’t have the fear of it Europeans so understandably do.
At least in the UK your state church is not utterly insane, and the and head of state who heads it has been very careful not to puch it on people in an unpleasnt way, and to be very respectful of British subjects who follow other or no faith. It speaks well of the UK that then the Queen visits a mosque on tour, or a hindu temple, most Britains of all faiths see this as just part of her job. Here, I know people who had church services to pray for “aMurKuh” just because Bush (whom I am no fan of) invited Muslims to the White House for Ramadan.
I like my country, and I am religious myself (like most Americans, straight or gay) but the religious nuts here have WAY, WAY to much influence, and I don’t see it getting better any time soon.
Well, I’d agree with Goeke on one point: homosexuality IS very different from “other” sins. Why? Because it isn’t a sin. In that respect it’s very similar to heterosexuality.
(not the same William as in #14)
@#7 Ozimandias — they will never say ‘God Hates Gluttons’ because the Bible belt is the ‘obesity belt’ as well as the ‘diabetes belt’. After baabel study y’all can have some Little Debbies and another bottle of Mountain Dew. Belch.
GOD DOES NOT HATE. People who protest with signs “God Hates Gays”. Proposes that god is commiting a deadly sin.
The deadly sin of greed has cultural movement far bigger then homosexuality. Greed is worshiped unlike homosexuality is scrutinized.
There are no more gay people then there was 2000 years ago. Its just people had to hide this mortal sin in fear of there life.
Someone who is gay and tries to fight there true feelings could cause them to commit deadly sins.
Gay rallies are more about the virtues of love and oppose hate.
As a Christian, Jesus tells us not to follow most the Old Testament.