Christianity: A Gay Religion?
This topic contains 49 replies, has 9 voices, and was last updated by TheEncogitationer 1 year, 11 months ago.
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February 22, 2023 at 6:53 pm #47040
I saw a man in drag wearing a t-shirt that read, “Jesus Hates Me.” I was a Christian at the time, so naturally I said “No, he doesn’t.” Yet, how could I say that with any conviction when the Church was doing everything in its power to convince gay people that Jesus does hate them?
The crazy truth is that this inimical attitude is actually in spite of or perhaps because of the fact that Christianity is at its core a gay religion?
It blew my mind when I learned of the Egyptian trinity. In the Egyptian pantheon there is a triune family named Ausar, Auset, and Heru. The Greeks liked the idea and renamed them Osiris, ISIS, and Horus. The Christians apparently liked the idea as well. They borrowed it but got rid of the mother and replaced her with a male spirit despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that the Hebrew word for spirit (ruach) is feminine. So, there you have the quintessential
gay family, two male parents and a son.
So, why are Christians so harsh on gay men? It is said that closet homosexuals are the first and the loudest to lash out against homosexuality. It’s part of their disguise. It’s why they marry women and use them as beards.
The Church has a history of cutting off its roots. To move beyond their Jewish roots, they vilified the Jews. When Paul began to convert the Greeks, they separated themselves from their Greek roots by demonizing the demons who, in Greek mythology were not evil. According to Plato’s The Symposium, Demons were the messengers between god and man. In the Greek language, the word “demon” means knowledge. just like the Latin word “science” means knowledge. People who sought after knowledge were called philosophers. Is it a coincidence that man’s first and most pervasive sin was eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge? It’s certainly more than a coincidence that the apostle Paul derides Greek philosophy.
With a history like that, it’s no wonder that the Church as an institution is at its core organized homophobia.
February 22, 2023 at 8:41 pm #47041Homosexuality is one of those “harmless wrongs” – people think it’s wrong, but they don’t know why. To rationalise it, they say that teaching kids about being gay is actually teaching them to be gay, or at least, it might turn them gay, which would, it’s true, wreck society.
However, that’s plainly ridiculous, unless you believe that people choose to be gay (up yours, God!).
I still can’t fully work it out. The male-female, Adam and Eve exclusive pair-bond has been sacralised by religion because it leads to reproduction, and religion has a society-building function. As such, family units are a good thing and anything else is an abomination. Also, there is a patriarchal hatred and contempt of women, and gay men are seen as a betrayal of manliness because they are like women. However, as @autumn has pointed out, ancient Greece was like that. But, ancient Greece didn’t have Abrahamic religions. That might be the crucial factor in the Western and Islamic prohibitions on homosexuality.
I believe that before the 19th century, Islam was very tolerant of homosexuality. They only became intolerant of it after bumping up against Western imperialism, and wanted to appear more manly and masculine, so started persecuting their gay people just like we did/do.
February 22, 2023 at 9:01 pm #47042In other words, there is harm to a sacred value (reproduction via the male-female pair-bond) and this is manifested as fear of actual damage to people’s moral character and to society. The Theory of Dyadic Morality states that anything we see as immoral we automatically see as harmful, and of course, vice versa.
February 22, 2023 at 9:46 pm #47043What if Paul was a gay man? It would not be the first time it was debated. Same with Jesus himself but who cares?
February 22, 2023 at 10:25 pm #47044I think Jesus was on his particular trip but he did have girlfriends and not boyfriends (Mary Magdalene).
Presumably there would have been a time before gay people were persecuted; in the Roman world it was normal I believe. Why did people start? Jesus didn’t say anything about it to my knowledge. On the other hand, it was condemned in the Old Testament. The Romans didn’t have organised monotheistic religion, they were polytheists.
February 22, 2023 at 10:42 pm #47047Simon, how was it condemned in the OT?
February 23, 2023 at 3:38 am #47048Paul never met Jesus, except in dreams. He claims that much of his writing was “revealed” to him. Very few details about the actual man named Jesus. It is also known that some of his writing was forged by later xtians.
The Gospels were written during and after the time when the Jews revolted (66 CE ). In 70 CE the Romans reclaimed Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple for a second time. No wonder Jews converted, as their all-powerful god left them nowhere to do their all-important sacrificing. They invented a new scapegoat that doesn’t require a temple but is otherwise a total rehash of the OT. Look at all the copying from OT, many times word for word.
https://www.blueletterbible.org/study/misc/quotes01.cfm
Jesus is a bullshit story so downtrodden ex Jews could feel like they had a winning god again.
February 23, 2023 at 6:50 am #47050I’m most certainly not a scriptural expert, and I’ve no inclination to become one. I think that interpretations of any kind of scripture have been given credibility based on whoever happens to have the power to bestow authority to those interpreters or to theirself. So, I don’t feel too short on wisdom by being ignorant of this kind of history. While almost all history is a record of male dominance, Christian or not. I’d first look at male dominance as being the common thread in homophobia or rejection of gay men. And/or it may even just come from another form of prejudice against atypical members of society?
February 23, 2023 at 8:03 am #47053@strega – it seems that there are seven passages in the Bible condemning homosexuality. This article proposes that they don’t mean that, but other kinds of non-standard sexual activity. Looks like intellectual gymnastics to me.
February 23, 2023 at 2:18 pm #47054@strega – it seems that there are seven passages in the Bible condemning homosexuality. This article proposes that they don’t mean that, but other kinds of non-standard sexual activity. Looks like intellectual gymnastics to me. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146107915577097
It’s conjecture, but I think the two main reasons may be because the Greeks and Roman didn’t have a problem with it and the old “go forth and populate” logic, as in we need more soldiers on our team and homosexuality doesn’t breed well.
February 23, 2023 at 3:25 pm #47055The closest relatives of humans: chimpanzees and bonobos, are OK with it too. I would think that during most of the human history we were OK with it. Maybe it only comes into play when large groups need to be organised and mobilised for action – that’s when religion gets involved in running society.
February 24, 2023 at 1:28 am #47058February 24, 2023 at 1:36 am #47059One argument you will hear people in the Abrahamic religions say is that homosexuality is wrong because God obviously gave us sex for the purpose of procreation.
So…I guess these people refrain from sex until or unless they are going about making babies(?). You can’t do it for purposes of bonding or just having some fun?
I feel sorry for those folks.
February 24, 2023 at 1:38 am #47060Matthew Vines gave an incredible speech about this very subject. The link below is a transcript which is well worth a read.
February 24, 2023 at 11:20 am #47061I guess these people refrain from sex until or unless they are going about making babies(?). You can’t do it for purposes of bonding or just having some fun?
Purity rings.
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