This sounds like terrible legislation. Even at the superficial level discussed here, it’s easy to see that it is designed to enable continued discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community - specifically by those who are misguided enough to think their personal belief system excuses such an affront to other humans.
It appears to be to be driven by the same sort of arrogant thinking that allows church leaders to castigate those in interracial marriages, second marriages, and couples not legally married in the eyes of the state (as if that matters.)
Yes, and rightly so. There is no need fore such so-called “protections”.
Absolutely correct, and then though the article goes on to describe many ways the proposed Fairness for All Act would do just that.
This one is particularly terrible:
The statements by the church, if you read them, are severely lacking. They show an abject disregard for established medical facts. One, in the Fundamental 28, starts with the ridiculous statement that we are all either male or female. After reading that, there is no need to proceed to read the rest of the statement, but if you do it is equally nonsensical and uninformed.
The church’s obsessive fascination with what people do with their genitals is misplaced. The mission should be elsewhere.
Yes. There is a disadvantage. Although many, gay and hetero, have difficulties that they feel must be suffered in silence. Evil isn’t a word that I use very much. I reserve it for Hitler and his ilk. When dealing with the social realities that cause a hardship it is too easy to vilify and dwell so much on the reality of the hardship that one sees himself in a self-pitying way.
Can’t believe you couldn’t recognize the distain that the Pharisees had for Jesus associating with people they felt were impure. But, so be it.
As for intrude…they are not intruding. You want to push them back in the closet. They have just as much right to be here as you do. They were born this way. Only misinformed think otherwise.
And no, I am not gay. I just dislike people who marginalize others.
Yes, purity above all. So pure, in fact, that we bind ourselves into bundles to be burned just like the priests, scribes, and pharisees of old. Above all we must keep those lines of demarcation between our purity and those heathens out there in the world who might contaminate us with their evil lusts and perverse ways.
It’s rather like Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
If our faith is so shaky we need fear sinners, then we ourselves are guilty of that same sin and our wall of purity is little more than our own fear of the same things within us that we see in them. That’s not faith, it’s debauchery. In short, we demand the sinners on the other side of our little wall of purity adhere to a state of absolute perfection to the letter of the law for the sins we believe they are or want to commit, whilst granting to ourselves a state of absolute grace for the sins we continue to commit.
"Evil isn’t a word that I use very much. I reserve it for Hitler and his ilk."
We are all welcome to decide for ourselves what “evil” means…and this is yours.
What I have seen happen to many Adventist LGB I would typify as “evil” and disgusting for a supposedly “Christian” denomination. I have no other words to describe it adequately but this.
I understand your feelings, I think. However if a conversation is to be had with individuals who have adopted hurtful interpretations of the Bible (about homosexuality or anything else), calling a person “evil” or one of Satan’s minions seems like a conversation stopper.
Point taken. On the other hand, pulling punches is not always the way to inspire thought. Sometimes a person needs to encounter the ugliness of their stance in stark and real ways that won’t necessarily bear fruit in the short term but will grind away in the back of their mind over the long term until that final and sometimes terrible moment when the lightbulb switches on.
I can truthfully say that such was the case for me. I’d never have entertained the concept that my stance was evil, let alone tolerated a more moderated discussion of my stance on the LGBT+ issue, but I can guarantee you the words spoken by a friend that my stance was pharisaical grated over and over and over in my mind till one day I had a road-to-Damascus moment.
I am not advocating that conversational “style” but am also saying that one doesn’t actually have to say the words to communicate their disgust/fear/hatred towards others.
Well I’m not self-pitying in regards to this topic, as I’m neither gay nor a church employee. But I know men who were forced to remain in the closet by their employer - the church - for many years. Forced to live a double life in order to serve and either to teach or preach due to a calling they felt. So, forced by the system to live a lie regarding who they are. I can see nothing good that came from that. It hurts them and those around them. It helps nothing and no one.
The 3 - 5% of the children born into the SDA church who are LGBTQ+ - born of of SDA parents - are not intruding in the church.
On the contrary, they are as much a part of the church as the other 95%.
They are, that is, until prejudicial and piously arrogant church members mistreat them and attempt to force them out, or “love” them but then ask them to remain alone their entire lives because those they love are unacceptable to the church. Some remain in the church and likely live double lives. Others may be guilted into living alone. Others commit suicide at a much higher rate than LGBTQ+ children who are raised in accepting families and communities.
When your stated belief system and subsequent treatment of people you don’t approve of commit suicide at higher rates than those outside of your belief system, it really behooves you to take a second look at that belief system.
Who do you think those lifelong confirmed bachelors and those “old maids” who moved in together as “roommates” are? Tell me I don’t have to spell it out.
BTW, you keep using LGBTQBPR, which I have never heard of. When I google it I get this: LGBTQBPR, which leads me to think you’re using the term incorrectly.
My understanding is that the church would still be filled with all those Last Generation Theology (LGT) sinners busy “perfectly reproducing the character of Christ!”
Until people get properly educated on the difference between “being” and “doing,” “nature” and “nurture,” there will always be that wide brush painting on the LGBT issue.
issue, but I can guarantee you the words spoken by a friend that my stance was pharisaical grated over and over and over in my mind till one day I had a road-to-Damascus moment.