5 ms·

> because over the years they've had experiences with LGBT people in their life and changed their minds. Two things can be true at once. People who identify as

by _gabe_ 3y ago

> because over the years they've had experiences with LGBT people in their life and changed their minds. Two things can be true at once. People who identify as LGBT can be very pleasant people. Additionally, I can still believe that identifying as LGBT is wrong according to my religious views. In fact, according to my religious views, everybody is a sinner and doing stuff that's wrong, but that doesn't mean they're horrible people. But it also doesn't justify the wrong behavior. And of course, my religious views don't mean I can go and harass people who disagree with me or anything. But it also doesn't mean I have to go praising them for doing something I don't agree with.

nyanpasu64 3y ago
I think it's harmful to society and people's lived well-being (as opposed to adherence to values espoused by millenia-old orthodoxies) to judge people as being sinful for being attracted to and caring for loved ones of the same gender, as opposed to being attracted to and caring for loved ones of a different gender.
- dcow 3y ago
  This is a harmful (to discourse) reduction of the situation. Modern religious authorities/communities, despite some of their uneducated followers all too often not understanding the nuance either and generally being homophobic turds, are against extramarital sexual intercourse not because “God hates the gays” but actually because they believe [religious] marriage is covenant of procreation. Marriage is not needed to have sex, and having sex outside of a situation where you’re willing and able to accept children is not the society these people want to build. There’s nothing inherently homophobic about that at all. Nobody (the bible included) says you can’t love someone of the same sex or even have two people of the same sex cohabitate and raise children. It’s actually quite the opposite if you look at history and the broader context. They’re just not “married” in the eyes of their church because they’re not popping out babies. Believe it or not, in the Catholic Church, even a heterosexual couple married but on birth control is looked down upon and considered to be in a state of sin. Now you can still have a problem with a group of people considering extramarital sex sinful, I have no apropos argument there, but it’s not born of some grand scheme to discriminate against the gays or whatever. And it’s really uncharitable and harmful to thoughtful religious people to reduce their moral doctrine to charged falsehoods.
  - simiones 3y ago
    The definition of marriage in the Church has little to do with the legal definition of marriage - except for the fact that the Church is trying to impose its views on the law where it suits them. Also, different christian denominations have different beliefs about the purpose of marriage. Sex outside of marriage is definitely sinful in all of the mainstream christian churches, though they differ on how sinful sex is in the context of a marriage. I'd also note that, while wedding ceremonies commonly talk of kids, there is no obligation to have kids as part of a marriage. For example, the church is perfectly happy to marry an old woman with a man, even though it is absolutely certain she can't have kids anymore. Overall, the orthodox/fundamentalist christian position seems to be: sex should only be done for the purpose of making children, only married couples should have sex, and anyone capable of having children should strive to have more children. LGBTQ+ people are not exempted - at least if they are physically capable of having children, they shouldn't let their personal preferences get in the way of their duty to God - so they should also seek to enter a heterosexual marriage to have children. The only exception to all of this is choosing to become a monk or priest (depending on denomination) - in which case you owe a duty of faith to God and thus shouldn't love other men or women anyway.
    - dcow 3y ago
      The legal definition of marriage is a topic I didn't want to get into for the scope of my comment, but you're right. I think the bestTM thing for society would be to just separate the language entirely and call all legal arrangements "unions" and handle the economic subsidies in a gender agnostic and results oriented way (e.g. you get a cohabitation tax break and/or filing status, unions of people can enter contracts and own property like a multi-member llc would and division of said property and contractual obligations is handled by the courts if unions are dissolved, and you get tax breaks for number of dependents you have, etc.). Let religions say what they want about religious marriage, but don't let that impact any legal and free (as in "freedom of/from religion") handling of civil economic affairs. I 100% agree that religious bodies have no grounds to impose their beliefs legally on society. In the US religion has no place in law.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
- _gabe_ 3y ago
  Cool, and people that are religious believe it's harmful to society and people's well-being to engage in several behaviors that are otherwise considered acceptable in the eyes of the law and different social circles (sex outside of marriage, swearing, indecent joking, etc). I don't see how this has any bearing on the point I was making. OP makes it seem like if you disagree with LGBT lifestyle, then it's because you must hate the people. All I'm pointing out is that you can disagree with the lifestyle and the movement while still loving the people. That's a core tenet of Christianity: God hates the sin while loving the sinner. Once again, the OP's ultimate point was: > if anything, it is comendable to at the very least be able to change your position if enough (real) evidence is provided. And the claim was that LGBT people are actually quite pleasant, hence you should change your mind. And my counterclaim is that according to Christianity, people can be pleasant while sinning (after all everyone is a sinner[0]), and sin can still be wrong. They are not mutually exclusive. So realizing that someone is pleasant while also not following the tenets of my religion is not counter-evidence that would make me change my mind. [0]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%203%3A23&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%203%3A23...
dahart 3y ago
> it also doesn’t mean I have to go praising them for doing something I don’t agree with. Nobody’s asking for “praise”, the LGBT movement is about attaining the same civil rights that you enjoy.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  Statements of the form "nobody is doing X" are almost universally incorrect. There are 8 billion people on this planet, you can almost certainly find an entire organization dedicated to whatever X you please.
  - dahart 3y ago
    Statements of the form “nobody is doing X” are almost always talking about a very small percentage, and not intended to be a claim about exactly zero people. My statement wasn’t a claim about whether someone exists who wants praise, it was a summary of the purpose of the LGBT issue to counter the parent’s straw-man that summarized LGBT as being a binary harassment vs praise issue. Sure my statement above can technically be interpreted as incorrect if you take the words of my broad generalization extremely literally, but if you want to be that pedantic, why didn’t you call out the parent comment for being much much more wrong? Do you think relative magnitude doesn’t matter? > you can almost certainly find an entire organization dedicated to whatever X you please. This is fairly meaningless when you strip it of all magnitude and comparison. Sure you can find some weirdos in numbers that are statistically insignificant. You can’t even make your point without also acknowledging that an organization of ten people is 0.000000125% of the population, which is, statistically speaking, for all intents and purposes, nobody.
    - _gabe_ 3y ago
      > it was a summary of the purpose of the LGBT issue to counter the parent’s straw-man that summarized LGBT as being a binary harassment vs praise issue. ? You may want to reread what I wrote because the last thing I was trying to do was argue a "strawman that summarized LGBT as being harassment vs praise". In fact, I was arguing exactly the same thing you seem to be arguing here: that this is a false dichotomy being preached by the loud minority, and that taking a balanced middle ground is a fine idea. However, I do find it funny that you're offended about someone being pedantic with your argument when it seems like that's the exact same thing you did with my original comment.
riwsky 3y ago
You can still believe the Earth is flat, too—don’t let those ships disappearing over the horizon bully you into thinking otherwise
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  Not the OP, but the concept "sin" is nowhere nearly as physical as the shape of the Earth. I would even argue that for non-religious people, the concept is entirely irrelevant, with some exceptions, and religious people shouldn't try to legislate anti-sin policies into law. [Exceptions:] If you live in a heavily Jewish neighbourhood and sell sandwiches, it is a good idea to have kosher ones as well, even though you personally don't care about mixing of cheese and ham.

by _gabe_ 3y ago

nyanpasu64 3y ago

I think it's harmful to society and people's lived well-being (as opposed to adherence to values espoused by millenia-old orthodoxies) to judge people as being sinful for being attracted to and caring for loved ones of the same gender, as opposed to being attracted to and caring for loved ones of a different gender.

dcow 3y ago
This is a harmful (to discourse) reduction of the situation. Modern religious authorities/communities, despite some of their uneducated followers all too often not understanding the nuance either and generally being homophobic turds, are against extramarital sexual intercourse not because “God hates the gays” but actually because they believe [religious] marriage is covenant of procreation. Marriage is not needed to have sex, and having sex outside of a situation where you’re willing and able to accept children is not the society these people want to build. There’s nothing inherently homophobic about that at all. Nobody (the bible included) says you can’t love someone of the same sex or even have two people of the same sex cohabitate and raise children. It’s actually quite the opposite if you look at history and the broader context. They’re just not “married” in the eyes of their church because they’re not popping out babies. Believe it or not, in the Catholic Church, even a heterosexual couple married but on birth control is looked down upon and considered to be in a state of sin. Now you can still have a problem with a group of people considering extramarital sex sinful, I have no apropos argument there, but it’s not born of some grand scheme to discriminate against the gays or whatever. And it’s really uncharitable and harmful to thoughtful religious people to reduce their moral doctrine to charged falsehoods.
- simiones 3y ago
  The definition of marriage in the Church has little to do with the legal definition of marriage - except for the fact that the Church is trying to impose its views on the law where it suits them. Also, different christian denominations have different beliefs about the purpose of marriage. Sex outside of marriage is definitely sinful in all of the mainstream christian churches, though they differ on how sinful sex is in the context of a marriage. I'd also note that, while wedding ceremonies commonly talk of kids, there is no obligation to have kids as part of a marriage. For example, the church is perfectly happy to marry an old woman with a man, even though it is absolutely certain she can't have kids anymore. Overall, the orthodox/fundamentalist christian position seems to be: sex should only be done for the purpose of making children, only married couples should have sex, and anyone capable of having children should strive to have more children. LGBTQ+ people are not exempted - at least if they are physically capable of having children, they shouldn't let their personal preferences get in the way of their duty to God - so they should also seek to enter a heterosexual marriage to have children. The only exception to all of this is choosing to become a monk or priest (depending on denomination) - in which case you owe a duty of faith to God and thus shouldn't love other men or women anyway.
  - dcow 3y ago
    The legal definition of marriage is a topic I didn't want to get into for the scope of my comment, but you're right. I think the bestTM thing for society would be to just separate the language entirely and call all legal arrangements "unions" and handle the economic subsidies in a gender agnostic and results oriented way (e.g. you get a cohabitation tax break and/or filing status, unions of people can enter contracts and own property like a multi-member llc would and division of said property and contractual obligations is handled by the courts if unions are dissolved, and you get tax breaks for number of dependents you have, etc.). Let religions say what they want about religious marriage, but don't let that impact any legal and free (as in "freedom of/from religion") handling of civil economic affairs. I 100% agree that religious bodies have no grounds to impose their beliefs legally on society. In the US religion has no place in law.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
_gabe_ 3y ago
Cool, and people that are religious believe it's harmful to society and people's well-being to engage in several behaviors that are otherwise considered acceptable in the eyes of the law and different social circles (sex outside of marriage, swearing, indecent joking, etc). I don't see how this has any bearing on the point I was making. OP makes it seem like if you disagree with LGBT lifestyle, then it's because you must hate the people. All I'm pointing out is that you can disagree with the lifestyle and the movement while still loving the people. That's a core tenet of Christianity: God hates the sin while loving the sinner. Once again, the OP's ultimate point was: > if anything, it is comendable to at the very least be able to change your position if enough (real) evidence is provided. And the claim was that LGBT people are actually quite pleasant, hence you should change your mind. And my counterclaim is that according to Christianity, people can be pleasant while sinning (after all everyone is a sinner[0]), and sin can still be wrong. They are not mutually exclusive. So realizing that someone is pleasant while also not following the tenets of my religion is not counter-evidence that would make me change my mind. [0]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%203%3A23&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%203%3A23...

dahart 3y ago

> it also doesn’t mean I have to go praising them for doing something I don’t agree with. Nobody’s asking for “praise”, the LGBT movement is about attaining the same civil rights that you enjoy.

Georgelemental 3y ago
Statements of the form "nobody is doing X" are almost universally incorrect. There are 8 billion people on this planet, you can almost certainly find an entire organization dedicated to whatever X you please.
- dahart 3y ago
  Statements of the form “nobody is doing X” are almost always talking about a very small percentage, and not intended to be a claim about exactly zero people. My statement wasn’t a claim about whether someone exists who wants praise, it was a summary of the purpose of the LGBT issue to counter the parent’s straw-man that summarized LGBT as being a binary harassment vs praise issue. Sure my statement above can technically be interpreted as incorrect if you take the words of my broad generalization extremely literally, but if you want to be that pedantic, why didn’t you call out the parent comment for being much much more wrong? Do you think relative magnitude doesn’t matter? > you can almost certainly find an entire organization dedicated to whatever X you please. This is fairly meaningless when you strip it of all magnitude and comparison. Sure you can find some weirdos in numbers that are statistically insignificant. You can’t even make your point without also acknowledging that an organization of ten people is 0.000000125% of the population, which is, statistically speaking, for all intents and purposes, nobody.
  - _gabe_ 3y ago
    > it was a summary of the purpose of the LGBT issue to counter the parent’s straw-man that summarized LGBT as being a binary harassment vs praise issue. ? You may want to reread what I wrote because the last thing I was trying to do was argue a "strawman that summarized LGBT as being harassment vs praise". In fact, I was arguing exactly the same thing you seem to be arguing here: that this is a false dichotomy being preached by the loud minority, and that taking a balanced middle ground is a fine idea. However, I do find it funny that you're offended about someone being pedantic with your argument when it seems like that's the exact same thing you did with my original comment.

riwsky 3y ago

You can still believe the Earth is flat, too—don’t let those ships disappearing over the horizon bully you into thinking otherwise

inglor_cz 3y ago
Not the OP, but the concept "sin" is nowhere nearly as physical as the shape of the Earth. I would even argue that for non-religious people, the concept is entirely irrelevant, with some exceptions, and religious people shouldn't try to legislate anti-sin policies into law. [Exceptions:] If you live in a heavily Jewish neighbourhood and sell sandwiches, it is a good idea to have kosher ones as well, even though you personally don't care about mixing of cheese and ham.