Openly Gay Man Called To Serve in Key LDS Position
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I recall at least one decently sized passage on cities of sanctuary for murderers. So, there's a little more there than just a smattering of references.
Human sexuality is a weird and twisted web with a spectrum of desires. To piggyback a little bit on AthiestPreacher's point though even when there was a concept of men sleeping with other young men the Greeks had a word for that "paiderasste." That's not the word used by Paul in 1 Corinthians (the actual word is a nonsense compound that appears nowhere else prior to Paul's usage) but it gets translated as being about homosexuals in some standard texts anyway and is used (including in this very thread) as an example of biblical prohibition.
So there's really two prongs here:
1) conceptions of acceptable human sexuality, and even what constituted sexual activity, were very likely different to the people who actually lived in Bilblical times than they were to the 17th Century translators of the KJV, and
2) even when more "modern" notions of sexuality had developed to the extent that there were distinct names for homosexual activity in existence, those were not the names used in the original text.
Two questions of clarification here:
1) Does this mean that being gay might be ok if only oral intercourse is engaged in? This may mean a big difference in treatment between gay dudes and gay ladies.
2) Does this mean that the faith also prohibits anal intercourse involving a man and a woman? Has anyone been run out of church for that?
Think about that. Why does the word originate over a thousand years after the story of Sodom and Gomorrah? It's not like the people who originated the word were there. There's an interpretation in the naming. This argument is a bit of circular logic in which the name dictates the action and the action dictates the name.
A) It's purportedly written by Paul, to my knowledge the Mormon treatment of Paul as a font of the direct word of God is a little hazy. Obviously we know from reading the gospels that accounts from the 12 Apostles can lead to conflicting accounts of what happened and different emphasis. In other passages in the Bible Paul supports slavery and the outright oppression of women. In sum, Paul aint a perfect guy and hitching your horse to his words can take you down some other paths I suspect you don't want to defend.
B) A significant portion of the text is about a group of Christians who left the faith and began practicing pagan and Greek practices in temple worship. One of those practices is sexual activity. This makes it hard to distinguish whether he's talking about sexual activity generally, homosexual activity specifically, or Greek worship practices generally as being sinful and wrong.
In this instance the word know is "yadda" in the original Hebrew. This means there are a significant amount of dispute as to what those passages could mean because "yadda" has dozens of meanings. There's also real dispute about whether or not the issue is that the crowd wanted to have homosexual sex with the angels or that they wanted to forcibly have sex with the angels against their will. The latter seems worse to me, but the former gets all the attention from those who want to spin this as an anti-gay screed.
Keep in mind that in this same story Lot offers up his daughters to be raped by a crowd. But apparently God is cool with that part. Not sure this reflects well on the "christian ethic" if the story of Soddom and Gomorrah would have been entirely avoided if the crowd would have just taken Lot up on his offer of gang raping some innocent young ladies.
Do you eat shrimp or wear shirts that have two different kinds of fabric? Those are biblical "abominations" too. If homosexuality is at the same level of sin as those then you're making a big to do about nothing.
Interpretation and translation. The Hebrew word here is "Qadesh." In fact in the original text the word "Qadesh" is used in both places where you see the words "whore" and "sodomite" in the KJV. So in fact, there is literally NO DIFFERENCE here where you're trying to make one. That is a distinction entirely born of the KJV which was written after sodomite was given its contemporary meaning. This is the reason other translations of this passage make no distinction between the noun used for men and women. For example:
New International Version: "No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute."
New Living Translation: "No Israelite man or woman may ever become a temple prostitute."
Revised Standard Version: "There shall be no cult prostitutes of the daughters of Israel, neither shall there be a cult prostitute of the sons of Israel."
English Standard Version: "None of the daughters of Israel shall be a cult prostitute, and none of the sons of Israel shall be a cult prostitute."
So your "thought that you know the answer" is actually an importation of the biases of 17th Century translators. Congrats on the basis of your faith.
Note that the "Qadesh" problem also appears in 1 Kings and 2 Kings.
Again this is Paul. And these are the examples I mentioned to colton earlier. The word used by Paul in Greek here is "arsenokoitai." It is literally a nonsense compound word that there is no record of any prior usage of in any source material. There were words that meant homosexuality available and Paul chose not to use those.
You can look at a full discussion of arsenokoitai here: https://www.religioustolerance.org/homarsen.htm
Derivative or the entire Sodom and Gomorrha discussion above.
And that's before we even get started on figuring out which of Paul's epistles are real and which are forgeries. Or even before we start discussing other interpretations as to why Sodom was destroyed (the Sodomites weren't exactly kind to their neighbors). And well before we get into translations of the word "cleave" and what that implies about Ruth's relationship with Naomi.
Stifle Tower
Punch Bowl Re-Filler
Some good points.
I think the guy is a bit disingenuous. His original statements seem to indicate, as you pointed out, that he's not acting on his gay feelings because he's recovering from his last relationship, not because he agrees with the LDS poilcy of celibacy. Would it be right for a hetero man to say, well, I fully intend to start having sex again once I find the "right" woman, but for now, since I am not engaging in that behavior, I'm "worthy" to hold this particular church calling? How about a person who has confessed to stealing, but only has remorse for being caught, not for what he did. I think intent is also important, not just commission of a particular act.
I don't understand "Gay Mormon," either. If that is your particular belief, why torture yourself and try to remain a member of a particulr faith, whether that be Mormon, Catholic, Baptist, etc. If a person does not believe the president of the LDS Church is literally a prophet of God and the doctrines are not inspired, why remain in that faith? There are many Christian denominations that teach you can be openly gay and still be a Christian.
DutchJazzer
Banned
the jewish fate supports anal intercourse between man and a woman
Quite the fate.
DutchJazzer
Banned
crap i think i meant faith? or whatever
LogGrad98
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Freudian slip.
There's a joke about "showers" in here somewhere...
Questions like these indicate why modern revelation is important. Two people relying solely on the Bible, and on historical Biblical interpretation, could very well come out with different answers to those questions.
I'm not sure if you were As far as current LDS teachings go, (1) it's pretty clear that the prophets/apostles in recent years have taught that oral sex is sex, so gay oral intercourse is obviously out. (2) I don't know of a church policy one way or another on that one. But almost certainly if the man/woman were married, the church would "stay out of their bedroom", so to speak.
I think that's the whole point. To my understanding AP was talking about the Bible specifically rather than "The Bible as interpreted by the present LDS church." I know that I was responding to the assertion that the Bible unequivocally condemns homosexual behavior.
I've pushed you on this before but you don't seem to be willing to go there: Modern revelation is changeable. Later revelation overrides prior revelation. That's the story behind the church's position on African-Americans holding the priesthood. It was outlawed until later revelation indicated that it was now ok. There seems to be some dispute as to whether this means that it was always ok for African Americans to be priesthood holders and it was only until a vessel interpreted the signs correctly (a position I believe you have taken before colton) or whether something had changed in heaven or on earth that now made it acceptable for African Americans to hold the priesthood. If you subscribe to the former and believe that people of color were always equal then there's space for modern revelation to be incorrect and influenced by the biases of the individual whom is communing with God. Given that, I think it's very difficult to have a hard line on this issue without also questioning whether your position would have supported Church discrimination in 1977.
Gyp Rosetti
Banned
Would +10 if possible.
Gyp Rosetti
Banned
More like Fraudian...we're talking Dutch here.
After reading some of your posts I'll agree with your argument defending BYU in the studies. I just don't like how people in the gay community are treated by the Mormon community. Whether or not it is church doctrine or not, gay people are treated poorly and it is sad. Not all of them, but a lot of Mormons preach acceptance and being kind to everyone then spew so much hate and it ruins good people's lives. This is not limited to Mormons or even religious people but it's more prevalent in conservative Utah where Mormons dominate the culture.
The fact that people feel the desire to be "cured" or are instructed to be "cured" because of who they are makes me cringe. I know people have different beliefs about being gay but I believe people are born that way. If some people are born males, some are born females, some are born both, and some are born neither, I don't think it is hard to make the leap to what sex they find attractive. The Mormon doctrine may or may not say these people are curable but large numbers of people inside the Mormon church attempt to cure people, or feel so bad about who they are they try to cure themselves and that bothers me.
I understand this is not all Mormons but the Mormon culture breeds these thoughts and actions for some reason.
AtheistPreacher
Well-Known Member
Yes, I certainly wasn't talking about LDS Bible interpretation... frankly I don't know enough. I've made one pilgrimage to Utah to see a Stockton-Malone era Jazz home game, and I toured temple square and all, but that's about all the LDS exposure I've gotten. On the other hand, I was raised Catholic and had 13 years of Jesuit schooling. So when I'm making arguments like these, I have the Catholic view in mind, not the LDS view. They do seem pretty similar in their views on homosexuality anyway, at least from what I can tell.
As to the point about modern revelation... this is why I personally cannot subscribe to any religion that has a huge corpus of "revealed truths" and dogmatic assertions. The Bible describes a large number of ethical rules and standards that we now find appalling: subjugation of women, selling of women and children into slavery, killing your enemies with impunity, capital punishment for minor crimes. But people who identify themselves as believers in all of the Bible's revealed truths don't seem to have a problem ignoring these aforementioned troubling ethical guidelines. Once people all agree that such obviously unethical ideas are wrong, then those passages are simply ignored or written off as ancient cultural remnants. It just goes to show that nothing can ever really be written in stone. Even if it could be demonstrated that the Bible really strongly and definitively condemns homosexuality, it seems likely that, given enough time, it will likely become another of those things that gets written off as the ignorance of an ancient culture, much like the idea that men are fundamentally superior to women.
So while I find such Bible talk interesting and entertaining on some level, I really think it's quite irrelevant. Ethical outlooks are going to develop and change... and what exactly is wrong with that? Nothing at all. If you want to start with a holy book like the Bible as a baseline, then fine, but the reality is that there are many such holy books and faiths with competing claims. In a pluralistic world, you need criteria external to such different faiths in order to distinguish which one is right. So why bother carrying around the ancient cultural baggage in the first place? I'd rather stay religiously neutral, listen to all sides of any given religious issue as best I can, and then decide for myself.
I spoke of criteria external to religious faiths to evaluate moral questions. For people who claim homosexuality is wrong, I have one basic and fundamental question that must be answered: exactly why and how are homosexual sex and homosexual relationships harmful to other individuals or to society? If there is no answer to this basic question, no actual criteria posed as to how gays are harmful, then there can be no debate at all, because there can be no common ground. It simply becomes Person A quoting his scriptures and Person B quoting her (different) scriptures. "Because God says so" or "because the Bible says so" isn't an argument, just a dogmatic assertion that shuts the door on further discussion.
freakazoid
Well-Known Member
Does anyone know how one might go about converting? Where the hell is JPR when you need him?
Beantown
Well-Known Member
Gyp Rosetti
Banned
Wish gay person isn't open about it? Seriously, listen to one for about three seconds and it's pretty obvious.