or perhaps it should be, "I don’t hate gays I just can’t stand their immoral lifestyle."
Fundamentalists tend to say this because they have a view of themselves as loving, accepting people. Jesus is all about love right? It’s a little bit of mental self delusion that allows you to not think of yourself as a bigot.
If you use this line of reasoning to defend your disapproval/oppression of gay men and women then you are a bigot and probably insecure in your own sexuality.
Now on the matter of intolerance we have story emailed to me by a reader (Hi Sarah – *waves*) about St Joan of Arc church in St Paul , Minneapolis.
The church has been quite liberal in its support of gay congregation members. This has changed with the arrival of a new archbishop who says that support gay lifestyle is not in line with church doctrine and has pulled the annual mass for gay congregation members.
Link here
Funny how the church picks and chooses when to apply doctrine. Now while it does say in the bible that:
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. — Lev.20:13
Note that modern democracies don’t put people to death for homosexuality. Neither do we stone unruly children, does the arch bishop wish a return to the laws espoused in Leviticus? Or is he like the fundamentalist hiding his bigotry behind the bible. If he really followed church teaching he’d be walking into that mass with a gun to deliver the justice of the Lord.
Yeah, it also says that you should give up everything, to follow Jesus, but I haven’t met a catholic priest who didn’t live a rather comfortable life.
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Yeah, we also no longer stone people to death for adultery, or remarriage, which was considered adultery.
I’m always confused about the gay thing and church, especially the Catholic church. I mean they state it’s wrong for a man to lie with a man, yet I that rationale doesn’t seem to apply to alter boys. It must be in the wording, no one said anything about young boys in the Bible. Hypocrisy at its finest!
Yes pedophilia is forgivable if you are a member of the clergy. But if you happen to like an adult of the same sex you are a sinner.
Its all about control.
I’m glad this has been posted because it really does get to the heart of the thinking behind groups (sects) that run Mercy Ministries, Hill$ong..etc
I did some research on why Christians don’t live out the ‘love the sinner’ bit..only to find that in their eyes they do.
What appears to be hypocrisy to everyone else, carries no cognitive dissonance with them.
And this is why.
In America..a ‘thong’ is like a g-string, but in Australia a ‘thong’is a rubber sandal.
Similarly, ‘love’ means different things to different people.
Normal people hear the word ‘love’ and it conjures up notions of care, concern, embracing, forgiveness, acceptance, etc.
But I asked a few conservatives, including Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile) supporters, and to them, ‘love’ means ‘telling people the hard truth’.
The metaphor they often use is that it is the ‘loving’ thing to do..if someone is about to walk over a cliff (in their eyes) to harshly warn the cliff-top walker of the consequences of taking that extra step.
So to them, “I don’t hate gays, I just can’t stand their immoral lifestyle’ makes perfect sense within their definition of ‘love’.
It’s therefore easy to see how that conservative thinking plays out in a Mercy Ministries context, where they believe they are doing the girls a favour, principally because they have no concept of the normal and commonly understood definition of ‘love’.
It’s similar with the concept of ‘grace’.
‘Grace’ in (true) Christianity is understood to mean receiving something that you don’t deserve.
It’s also defined as ‘unmerited favour’. Specifically in Christianity, it is the idea that Christ secured our salvation by being punished in our place; therefore allowing us to go on with life in peace, and not being worried about if we go to hell for masturbating.
I’ve figured out now that the Hill$ong version of ‘grace’ is subtly but importantly different from Christianity.
Their idea is that God gives you ‘grace’…kind of like some kind of rocket fuel, to empower you to be a winner in life, and give you the strength not to want to tug yourself.
The Hill$ong version of ‘grace’ is like being a greyhound on a racetrack, going round and round and never catching the lure.
Again, in the Mercy Ministries version of ‘grace’, I would have thought that once you’d emerged from their dungeon, you’d have a sense that not all is complete..there’s still something you would have to do to keep God happy.
Sorry to get all ‘Christiany’ there, but I think the exploration of the different understandings in church circles of those words ‘love’ and ‘grace’ is the key factor in understanding why some Christians and Christian ministries act so hypocritically, particularly on gay issues.
One way of making some headway with conservative Christians, I’ve found, is not to make reasoned common sense arguments, but to go straight to the bible and Romans 2.
The preceding chapter Romans 1, is a fundy favourite about gays, but Romans 2 makes it clear that the judgemental moraliser is just as sinful as those described in Romans 1.
It really does a fundy’s head in when you point to Romans 2, and ask them if they’re just as sinful as a homosexual and just as much in need of salvation through Christ.
Invariably they’re forced (by the words of the Bible) to answer ‘yes’…they are just as sinful….and it’s fun to watch them answer ‘yes’ through gritted teeth.
The ONLY way to take on fundies..is that you’ve got to know the bible better than they do (and it’s actually not that hard)