“the Bible says homosexuality is a sin” well the Bible also has a lot of sexism, rape, incest, violence and a lot of contradictory messages in general because it was written by people and people have agendas
I don’t really think that God even has the time to care about if people are gay like if he’s got a whole world to run there are more important things anyway
And if God is love, he’s not just loving me if I am what he wants; he’s loving me as the person he made me to be, which is a queer person
You can’t say “I love you, and I made you gay but I’m sending you to hell you awful sinner” my dude that doesn’t make sense it’s not like hell has a low population is it
The god I believe in loves queer people because that’s how he made us
the bible doesn’t condemn homosexuality anyway. It’s content taken out of context and misinterpreted over hundreds of years of translations, re-translations, and mis-translations.
Hell, in Kenneth Davis’s Don’t Know Much About The Bible, there’s a passage that absolutely blows my mind and proves just how much we can misinterpret with simple translation mistakes:
“In researching the world’s oldest city, for instance, I learned that Joshua’s Jericho is one of the oldest human settlements. It also lies on a major earthquake zone. Could that simple fact of geology have had anything to do with those famous walls tumbling down? Then I discovered that Moses and the tribes of Israel never crossed the Red Sea but escaped from Pharaoh and his chariots across the Sea of Reeds, an uncertain designation which might be one of several Egyptian lakes or a marshy section of the Nile Delta. This mistranslation crept into the Greek Septuagint version and was uncovered by modern scholars with access to old Hebrew manuscripts.”
The bible is one long-ass game of telephone, whispered around the world in dozens if not hundreds of languages, for thousands of years. I have a hard time knowing what my grandpa is talking about, when he starts going on about the technology or practices of his youth, and that was only about 80 years ago, in the same country and in the same language as me. So why every Joe on the streets thinks they can take one or two verses, completely out of context and probably mis-translated several times to boot, and use it to spout propaganda and hatred for an entire group of people will forever be beyond me.
You’re all valid, and frankly, if there is a ‘loving God,’ then that God will be happy to see you happy. Seriously.
I needed that. Thank you.
The Bible wasn’t faxed down from the sky, people, it’s been compiled and formulated for hundreds of years until it became what it is today. And yes, misinterpreted by whoever with whatever agenda-of-the-day.
And hypocrites always stick to the word and not the spirit of any religion: to love, to help, to respect, to protect, and to strive to make the world a better place.
Yup, Jesus never said ANYTHING against LGBT people. All he said was don’t be greedy, don’t be lustful and don’t be wrathful. The fact that LGBTphobes took those instructions out of context to justify their LGBTphobia is pretty telling!
Hey, your friendly neighborhood Jew here!
You guys know that verse in Leviticus that homophobes like to trot out? Well, I’m here to tell you:
They don’t read Hebrew and they don’t know shit.
And now here’s something you probably won’t hear from any of those Fine Christian Folks ™ anytime soon, either:
We do read Hebrew and we still don’t know shit.
Here’s the thing. The most “accurate” word-for-word translation of that verse would say “a man shall not lie with another man; it is forbidden.”
Here’s the issue.
The grammar surrounding “men” in that sentence isn’t correct, and the word I’ve translated as “forbidden” is “toevah,” a word so fucking old we literally don’t know what it meant anymore.
The strange sentence construction suggests that “lie with another man” uses a feminine construction you wouldn’t normally find in a sentence that’s entirely about men, and while “toevah” means “forbidden,” it’s not actually clear what is forbidden. Here’s an incomplete list of possibilities:
Pederasty (adult male/adolescent male sex) is full-stop forbidden, a man sleeping with a male prostitute is full-stop forbidden, a man sleeping with a man as part of any kind of sex magic or fertility ritual is forbidden.
And my rabbi’s personal interpretation, based on the sentence construction: a man shouldn’t sleep with another man in a woman’s bed. (So basically: don’t cheat on your wife with a dude, which is probably treated separately from “don’t commit adultery” because adultery would come with the risk of an illegitimate child.)
You’ll notice none of these involve “ew, you disgusting gays.”
Unless you accept a word-for-word literal translation with zero consideration for the social mores and other tribes surrounding Israel contemporary with the writing of Torah, nothing about this commandment has anything to do with our modern understanding of queer people having committed relationships. Once you start taking the rituals and practices of Israel’s contemporaries into account, it suddenly becomes clear why these prohibitions would have been put into place (sex magic was common in the cult of Ba’al, for example, while pederasty was practically a requirement in Greece).
If you’re just a person out there loving other people of the same gender as you?The Torah says nothing against you. But do you know what our literary tradition does say?
It puts you in the company of Naomi and Ruth.
Ruth is considered the first convert, and her vow to her mother-in-law Naomi (after Ruth’s husband’s death) forms the basis of our modern marriage vows. “Where you go, I shall go, and where you lodge, I shall lodge; your people shall be my people, and your G-d my G-d; and where you die I shall die, and there shall I be buried.” Ruth remarries as prescribed by law at the time, but even when a child is born of that new union, nobody calls it “Ruth’s and Boaz’s child”–they all say a child has been born to Ruth and Naomi.
You are in the company of a woman whose name we invoke in our prayers and whose life we celebrate. I wear her words around my shoulders on my tallit, my sacred prayer shawl. Since we consider that everything in the Tanakh is intended for learning and study, what might we take from this story, but that a queer person can be virtuous and beloved of G-d?
Isn’t it nice how people twist their religious scripture to suit their weds but when it’s used against them it’s suddenly not okay
I talked to a monk about this quote once (we have mutual friends, and he came to a New Year’s Eve party at my shared art studio). He said this isn’t even talking about homosexuality. That the bible never actually says homosexuality is wrong. What that passage means is this:
Women were treated as subservient and it that you shouldn’t treat other men as subservient, like they are beneath you. It is not talking about homosexuality. If it was, it would say it outright since the bible lists other things outright.
I take the word of a monk who have studied the bible extensively more than a self proclaimed Christian.
The above text, I would like to point out is from the point of view of this translation of the original Hebrew. I spoke with my cousin’s rabbi on the matter and his response was different, saying that it was a mistranslation. See, the true translation says that a man shall not lie with another in the bed of a woman, which is to say, the Hebrews had a shit ton of rules about when a man was or was not allowed in a woman’s bed and private quarters (including, if she didn’t want you there, you weren’t allowed there. Hebrew women were also allowed to divorce their husbands and the image of the ‘oppressive Hebrew people’ is an image that was propogated by Christianity which, historically speaking, doesn’t treat the Jewish people too well and liked to paint them as being rather barbaric and backwards and cultish with their traditions, which, another piece of fun info, their traditions were one of the main reasons why the Jewish people were less likely, in medieval times, to die of the plague. Because washing your hands and avoiding the dead and vermin and the like was a lot of help. Of course the Christians persecuted them for not dying but that’s another matter. I’m sidetracked). So the verse is literally saying ‘Don’t fuck in some lady’s bed because that’s just goddamn rude’
Also, whenever a Christian brings the book of Leviticus up, you should feel free to point out that these are rules that were given to make the Hebrew people prepared for when the son of God came to earth. In Christianity, it’s believed the son of God was Jesus. So by following the rules set in Leviticus or pushing them as things we should follow, they’re saying that Jesus was not the son of God, and that Jesus did not, in fact, die for our sins. Jewish people believe, in their faith, that the son of God hasn’t yet been born, so many choose to follow these rules.
Most people of course roll their eyes when I explain the translation of the verse (full breakdown found here) but it’s always fun to point out the nature of the rules in Leviticus and the implications of following them.
I’m a theology student and I am on the verge of crying because of how accurate this commentary is. Historical context is simultaneously the most interesting and most important part of interpreting any texts.
Most religious people seem to base their beliefs on things that are severely mistranslated. I wish they would do their research before using the bible for hate.
I studied theology extensively and was going to become a theologist until I switched majors. The above commentary is 100% accurate and what I try to stress in a lot if conversations with Bible Thumpers.
Jesus also affirms the homosexual relationship between the Roman Centurion and his “slave”. The particular Greek word used to refer to this special slave was “pais”. Greek language studies and contexts show that a “pais” was a male love slave. Regular slaves were called “dolos”. The Centurion makes this distinction clearly when he asks Jesus to heal his slave (pais), and then to prove his status he tells Jesus that his slaves (dolos) go when he tells them to. But this slave (pais) was special. He was the Centurion’s lover.
Hearing this, Jesus was so amazed he says he had not found ANYONE ELSE who had such great faith. He then blesses the Centurion and heals his male lover.
Matthew 8:5-13
THIS IS WHAT THE BIBLE REALLY TEACHES ABOUT SAME SEX COUPLES.
In short, the English adaptation is a mistranslated farce.
^^^^this
reblogging for the comments ^^^^^^
EXCUSE ME WHILE I REBLOG THIS FIFTY MILLION TIMES
This gets to go on my main blog because this is the most concise explanation of the mistranslation I have ever read and ALL OF YOU SHOULD READ ALL OF IT.
I think people really underestimate how fucking evil a large chunk of American Christianity is, when they try to say to antichoicers “well if you’re against abortion, at least you should support things like WIC and SNAP, so that women facing an unplanned pregnancy can still feed their future kid”
I’ll be blunt, to American Christians like this, “but single mothers and their kids will starve!” is the entire fucking point. Being ostracized by your family and community and left for you and your bastard child to starve alone in abject misery and deprivation is what they believe the Godly punishment should be for being “unchaste,” and that things like food benefits and contraception are destroying moral society because they let women have unapproved sex without being as controlled by the fear of being cast out to starve with an unwanted kid (this also heavily ties into misogynist racism against woc, especially black women, who are accused of being “welfare queens,” draining good, properly chaste white Christians with kids born from their supposedly mindlessly lustful and irresponsible behavior, that can only be kept in check with threats of starvation or violence).
“Women (especially woc) cannot overcome their base urges and live virtuous lives without being heavily trained and coerced by threats of deprivation, isolation, and violence” is one of the most important unspoken ground rules of reactionary movements, both religious and secular
Evangelicals have no long-standing theological problem with abortion. My parents have been married for longer than evangelicals have been against abortion. Evangelicals in the 1970s didn’t care about abortion. Being against abortion was a Catholic thing. Evangelicals thought abortion is unfortunate, but not evil.
What changed?
Bob Jones v. US (1983).
Bob Jones University, an evangelical school, had a segregationist dating policy. It means what you think it does – they wouldn’t allow white students to date black students. They also wouldn’t admit black students who supported interracial marriage. This was in the mid-70s. Loving v Virginia was nearly a decade in the rearview mirror. The government threatened to revoke their tax-exempt status as a university unless this Jim Crow shit stopped. The school sued, and this eventually went to the Supreme Court. The Court, unsurprisingly, agreed with the government.
What was clear to evangelical leaders, then, in 1983, was that out-and-out racism was no longer going to be tolerated. What could they focus on that would have the same effect? What could rally the base without openly espousing racist views?
Reagan, with his “welfare queens” dog-whistle politicking gave them a like-minded politician glad of their support. And Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was only to happy to tell people what he thought of abortion.
So here we are, thirty-five years later, with every evangelical doing their damnedest to pretend that evangelicals have always been against abortion. They’ve lied themselves into believing it, and now they claim they’re against birth control too. That’s even more spurious – If they actually thought life begins at conception, then birth control would be a necessity, because fertilized eggs being rejected is the norm. Most of what they want to call human life never even gets implanted in the womb, or lasts very long if it does. And if they cared about life, welfare programs ought to be the most important, to ensure everyone has a good standard of living worthy of human beings.
But they don’t care about those things, so the only conclusion is that they are not pro-life. They just don’t want to see family planning and health care go to women, people of color, LGBTQ folks, etc.
It was never about being pro-life.
(and incidentally – Bob Jones v US was an 8-1 decision. Who was the dissenting voice? None other than William Rehnquist. Who was elevated to Chief Justice by Reagan when Warren Burger retired a few years later. None of what has happened has happened by accident)
And it’s worth noting that Bob Jones University defended their policy exclusively on religious freedom grounds, but Rehnquist’s dissent was based entirely on procedural grounds. Even the one justice who was “on their side” didn’t buy their argument and had to justify it on other grounds. It’s been a long road from BJU v. US to the Hobby Lobby case.
I have a similar theory about why evangelicals fight so hard against believing climate change when supposedly humans are stewards of the earth. It’s all about evolution. Climate change is a proxy war. It’s all the same rhetoric about scientists being corrupt and only looking out for their own interests and trying to shove their research down other people’s throats.
For a group of people who supposedly believe that God charged them with taking care of the Earth, they really seem to have bought into the whole “I can do whatever I want to the planet because God put us in charge of it” mindset really hard. Of course, maybe this is just the 21st century version of manifest destiny.
I think another problem is that with a large chunk of US evangelicalism, the world ending is what they want. The apocalypse means that the chosen few get carried off to heaven as a reward for beating the shit out of their gay kid or whatever, while the rest of us who failed to give the true believers the obedience respect that they feel entitled to are left behind to die in slow agony before being cast into eternal hell. It’s really hard to get people to give a shit about the planet dying when they view literally would have the world end to own the libs
It’s ABSOLUTELY what they want. During the Bush years, they were pretty up front about it, too. The entirety of the Evangelicals’ support of Israel is explicitly so that the Jewish People rebuild the Solomon’s Temple; which is a prerequisite for the events of Revelations to happen. The sooner it’s built, the sooner the Rapture can sweep them up into Heaven so they can laugh as all the “sinners” suffer the End Times. They don’t ACTUALLY care about Israelis or the long lasting sociopolitical factors of the area; they’re literally just pawns for the most death cult aspect of American Evangelical Christianity. It’s legitimately terrifying that people like this run large sections of a nation already capable of destroying all life on the planet.
It’s a fatal but common liberal mistake to assume that evangelicals are motivated by (misguided) compassion. They’re not. They will watch you die and be pleased about it because youve gone to hell faster.
I think some people will read this and think it’s really dramatic, but I was raised in a mega church in the Bible Belt. This all spot on.
Jeff Sessions was interrupted by a priest who just directly quoted Jesus at him. Jeff Sessions was speaking about not allowing refugees and immigrants into this country.
The priest was removed. Another religious leader stood up and defended the priest, and they were also removed.
Powerful video. Jesus loves that priest, and that priest knows Jesus.
The other minister is a Baptist pastor, Rev. Darrell Hamilton, who I went to school with at Wake Forest Divinity.
These two? This is true Christianity. This is how you practice your faith.
Poor Jeff Sessions. It really sucks to have people express their religious freedom by using religion to tell you what a horrible hypocrite you are, doesn’t it?
Americans, this is why it is SO IMPORTANT that you vote in the upcoming November election.
“Sorry lil Jimmy we can’t let you be fostered by this loving family because they’re Jewish. Stay put and keep attending our mandatory Bible study while we rake in more money until we can find a proper Christian family.”
Does this mean that Jewish kids who end up in foster care couldn’t be placed in Jewish homes? (Or Muslim or Catholic kids in Muslim or Catholic homes, etc.)
If the private foster agency in question takes them from the public system and places them in a group home, yes. And for all we know, those are exactly the kids they’re after, the young non-Protestant ones who they want to convert.
The first “religious freedom” lawsuits were never about baking cakes, they were about laying a foundation.
Christianity and conservatism are not compatible ideologies. Conservatives, socially, are against refugees, against equality, and fiscally are against social programs and financial aid to those in need.
Jesus demanded they help refugees, demanded equality, and demanded aid to the poor.
To be conservative means to not be Christian, and to claim you are both is to be a hypocrite.
Something Jesus also condemned.
I don’t think you know much about either ideology
Sincerely, a conservative Christian
I’ve read the bible six times, I know what it says.
I’m also a polisci student, and pay attention to what conservatives do. In fact I’ve studied conservatism, in addition to the other political ideologies that exist in our world.
Jesus said:
When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat
them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your
native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.
(Leviticus 19:33-34)
When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very
edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go
over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen.
Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. (Leviticus 19:9-10)
He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the
foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are
to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in
Egypt.(Deuteronomy 10:18-19)
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and
you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I
needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I
was in prison and you came to visit me. (Matthew 25:25-36)
Just to quote a very, very few.
Conservatives repeatedly repeal and cut back programs that feed the poor ,including poor children, cut back education, and cut back healthcare, all things vital to the poor. Conservatives repeatedly want no refugees, want no immigrants (travelers), including children. In fact, many conservatives want to throw the existing immagrants (travelers) out of the country (and need I remind you, Jesus was not a “legal” immagrant, so to claim ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ immigrants are any different is still to ignore what the bible has commanded of you.
I know exactly what each ideology is about. You are a hypocrite, and not a Christian. You only call yourself one while flaunting what was commanded of you.
in the field of religious studies, we often call jesus one of the first radical leftists. he was a social anarchist with communist leanings, and that’s why his draw was such a threat to the imperial system—because he was calling for the dismantling of oppressive power structures. the conservative romans were the ones who killed jesus, and conservatives after are the ones continuing to kill his message thousands of years after his death.
Don’t forget he fought against slut-shaming, embraced alcoholics and the homeless, and straight up said you can’t get into heaven if you die rich.
When I say conservative Christians would deport Jesus if they actually saw him or blacklist him if they heard him…this is why.
And it’s funny because those fools are the Pharisees and can’t even see that.
The greatest commandment of Christianity is to love your neighbor like yourself and that’s not what conservatives do.
