A Big Gay Rant

I'm about to rant again, and if you've followed my recent flip-flopping about gay marriage, you might be surprised by what I say.

It started with a tweet - someone expressing the view that being homosexual is not a sin, as long as you are not having sex. This, I think, is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the Biblical instruction on the matter, so I took issue with someone making the blanket statement that 'homosexuals shall not enter the kingdom of heaven'. That is not what the Bible means. It shows no love or grace. It condemns the person, not the act. That isn't the God I know.

I won't get too far into the right or wrong of being a practicing homosexual today - although I do have a view on that - because I need, above all else, to vent this question:

What is the difference between a homosexual person choosing to be celibate and a straight person doing so?

One is not having sex with members of the same gender? It makes no sense, it is a stupid, irrelevant and just plain wrong argument. I had a period of celibacy, I didn't sleep with men or women. Who I chose to have sex with before then had no bearing on the fact that I chose to be celibate. That would be stupid.

(On a side note, I find it slightly amusing that anti-gay Chistians quote the same verses from Leviticus to make their point that anti-Christian atheists use to make Christianity look hopelessly irrelevant.)

And don't get me started on stupid judgmental statements like 'you can't be a Christian and a homosexual at the same time'. (Oh look, somebody just did. Oh well...) That's fifty shades of ridiculous. I mean, why can't you? Because it's a sin? You can't be a sinner and a Christian at the same time? Well, that's, let's see, roughly 100% of the world's Christians screwed then.

Even if we agree that homosexuality is a sin, that's all it is - a sin like any other. God has no scale of sins; gay sex, unmarried sex, prostitution, extortion, bullying, rampant judgmentalism.... They're all just as naughty in His sight.

So, get over yourselves, stop acting so high and mighty, let Christ decide who can or can't be a Christian, and get on with showing some love to the people you come into contact with.

God knows, some of you people are almost enough to put me off Christianity.

(For the interested, clicking the sexuality tag below will bring up my thought process on the subject of gay marriage.)

Gay Marriage: For better or for worse?

I've been hearing and reading a lot just lately, on the internet and in real life, about gay marriage and whether or not it's evil. And that sort of follows nicely from my rant the other week about intolerance.

So I figured it would be timely to set out my stand on such matters, and my stand is this:
I don't care. I don't give a dingo's kidney who is sleeping with who and in what position. It's none of my business, and I'd like to keep it that way, and I'm sure most of my friends would be fairly happy with me keeping my nose out of their bedrooms.

That said, I do know some people who identify as gay or bisexual (we don't have many in these rural parts, but I know them both) and they're perfectly nice people. They don't 'identify' by wearing rainbows or gay pride t-shirts; they don't force their sexuality on innocent bystanders, they are merely true to themselves. I don't think they would want to be primarily identified for who they have sex with anyway, they would rather be identified as funny or kind or good at her job or whatever else it might be. Except by virtue of being married, I don't identify myself as 'straight', and to me making a point of the fact that you're not 'straight' is to highlight the difference and scupper the equality you probably claim to want. Just shut up about which gender you find attractive and get back to the business of being a well-rounded human being, then maybe you'll be treated the way you would like.

Which brings me back to the start, and gay marriage. Now, I can see the argument that whether or not same-sex marriage is allowed doesn't affect my marriage, but I have to admit that I'm coming round to the view that actually, it kinda does.

That's not because I'm anti-gay; far from it. You want to be gay, knock yourself out. I do believe that homosexual sex is biblically wrong, but if you don't subscribe to my religious values, it would be unfair of me to judge you by them. If you are claiming to be a gay Christian, then maybe that's a different matter, but I'll leave that between you and God unless you ask my opinion.

No, I'm not anti-gay, but I am pro-marriage. Gay couples can already get the bit of paper; they can enter a civil partnership which gives at least some of the legal benefits of marriage. Why do you need more? I needed more because I wanted my union with Animal to be blessed by God; for me, the bit of paper, the legal stuff, wasn't as important as the Christian ceremony. Similarly I know straight, non-religious couples who would be just as happy with a civil partnership as with a marriage.

Anyway, I came across this blog post recently which sums up the way I am thinking much more eloquently than I ever could. Here are the highlights, as far as my view on gay marriage is concerned:

The fact that we need the qualifer, “same-sex,” shows that in the minds of those discussing marriage, there’s a distinction between marriage and same-sex marriage.

If a societal institution like marriage can be redefined once, why not twice, three times, or as many times as we want? So in five years (or sooner), someone will want marriage to include a man and multiple wives or a woman and multiple husbands. Why not a man and his dog? Or how about a man or woman and a consenting child? Who is to say that these can’t also be considered marriage if marriage becomes a fluid term?

I hadn't actually thought of that argument, but it's an interesting point! Looked at that way, same-sex marriage, polygamous marriage, or any other variation of marriage, devalues the model that God intended for us, of one man and one woman.

If I've offended or angered anyone in the process of writing this, go ahead and tell me why, that's what the comments are for. There's much more I could say to defend my point of view, but I'm sure I've said enough by now!

Intolerance and judgmentalism

I sometimes whether some people I meet have actually met a Christian before. I've always had at least one or two Christian friends, and I've never found them to be judgmental even when they knew I was leading a far from 'Christian' lifestyle.

Sure, there are Christians who lean more towards the views of my cartoon friends here; there are those in my church I would withhold certain details of my story from, but thankfully not many, and I may indeed be doing them a disservice - judging them, even - in assuming that because they are from a different generation and background to me, they would look at me differently if they knew the whole truth.

Judgmental, intolerant Christians - specifically those who are quite vocal about their opinions - are, in my admittedly limited experience, vastly in the minority.

And yet, now I come to look at things from their side of the fence, as it were, it seems that certain people expect a degree of judgmentalism from me. Some even try to provoke it; ironically, the subject of these conversations is often (though not exclusively) some aspect of sexuality. Some know that I used to be quite flirty and seem to want me to feel bad about that. Others seem intent on starting me gay-bashing, whether to catch me out as a bad Christian or to justify their own homophobia I may never know.

Well, you're all wasting your time. I know I'm not perfect, but I do know that if my oldest Christian friends had judged me instead of loving me, they wouldn't be my friends, and I wouldn't be the person I am now. And I happen rather to like me.

And if, by any chance, you are one of those people who expect Christians to be intolerant and judgmental: isn't that a little judgmental of you?

(Illustration from asbojesus.wordpress.com)