Hurt/offended by the Church/Christians?

I think this is shows the OP just how many gay people feel about religion and the church. It's a very raw and honest answer, and it should be accepted on that merit.

Whether or not a God has said that it's wrong (which I completely disagree with), it is for him to judge and not Christians, which I feel causes most anger/ upset because you are just a person the same as any gay person,not in a position to judge and condemn others for something you have never experienced.

I have a lot of things to say on Christianity and homosexuality, but as this isn't the right thread for it, I hold it.

Very well said.

What I find strange, if going of the point, is how people can say that no one is born gay, or no one is born 'inbetween', when unless you have experienced it - you'd have no clue.


I have met many Christians who will say that although it is a sin, they accept everyone and won't judge. Whilst I still fins this insulting, I can accept their view and appreciate them seeing gay people as a person too. Then I have met many Christians who won't even talk to a gay person, who refuse to believe that a gay person could be a Christian - and that's my limit. Just because you believe in God, doesn't make you any better than anyone else. It really is hard to see this loving God you claim he is, when people behave in that manner. I used to be interested in Christianity, but this completely put me off the idea. Having to sit through sermons hearing that if anyone is gay, that they have to keep praying and keep trying not to be tempting my the devil. I find it ridiculous, and very narrow minded. The whole mindset needs to change in my opinion.

I used to post on a religious forum, which was moderated by Christians and many posters were fundamentalist, and they changed the rules to say that homosexuality couldn't even be mentioned because the Bible clearly states it's wrong, and you have to choose between God or being true to yourself. I was banned for saying that people were born gay.

If I have anything to say on this subject, it just mirrors what Invisible Soul has said - believe what you want, just don't force your views onto others and claim that they are 'wrong' when you have no experience of it yourself.

I like what you say you're doing, and hope it goes well to change the view of people at your church, but think you should accept all points raised in this thread. You wanted to know about people being hurt/ offended by the church and some of the posts here, although they may seem to be attacking Christianity, just shows how much hurt they have received.

 

Hey everyone. Thank you so much for the posts last night. Doing last minute prep for church this morning. I very much appreciate the open and honest answers.

I think what the difference has been in terms of what I was looking for and what detracted from the goal of this thread and this weekend was the difference between what we as Christians have done to hurt gay individuals, vs. how Christianity itself may offend. We specifically made it our intent to not discuss the "right/wrong" attitude of the bible for the exact reasons that you are all expressing. It is the right/wrong attitude of Christians that offends. Most have said that people are entitled to their beliefs as long as it is not pushed onto others. So we really want to focus on how we can live compassionately to those in our community vs. debating right/wrongs. In this country, if we are allowed to freely believe what we believe and are tolerated, I should hope that our believers would be able to coexist to allow others to live their lives and tolerate them as well. (Please note that I think the word tolerance as highly misused in today's culture - it is not accepting everything as true and valid, but tolerance in its own definition means that while you disagree with something, you don't impede its practices).

So yes, TipsyGypsy - I have definitely been taking note of how hurt people are by my faith. Not all have been attacks on Christianity, BUT, if from the beginning, the church and its believers lived lives like Christ, if we lived up to our call for the last 2,000 years and lived lives of extreme compassion, love and generosity instead of power struggles, greed, and war, don't you think that today's culture would be less angry, hurt, or jaded by Christians? Not saying that more people would believe, but if we did what we were supposed to through all generations (but especially through the last 40 years for this generation) of the church I think the perception would be much different. So our focus today is not on right/wrong as some people will believe in our bible, and many will not. Our focus is on how we as believers can interact and put aside over inflated pride to sit with anyone and everyone in a tolerant free country.

Enk's last post was much more heartfelt and open and much appreciated. Thanks for sticking around through everything Enk.

The invisible soul's "I do find many christians to be extremely hypocritical." - Many churches and believers would agree. Some Christians are very hypocritical by their complete lifestyles, and some of us look hypocritical because we try to hold to a standard, and sometimes we fail. I think the difference between a "good" Christian and a "bad" Christian (for lack of a better term) is that a good Christian will humbly admit his mistakes and faults when he does mess up and seek forgiveness. A bad Christian will ignore it, cover it up or try to justify it through a twisted view of their faith. Long story short, in regards to your comment, we know, many of us are working on it both in ourselves and those that we can encourage around us.

Shale - I have gone on missions that focused on compassion... not ... bacteria. =o) I went twice to work with a group that built and gave away 96 homes and built 2 youth centers in Thailand after the Tsunami. The youth centers were to offer child care for families who lost a parent and needed a place for their kids to go while the surviving parent worked. All 96 houses (in 2 small villages) were paid for and given freely to the community. There was no requirement of church attendance, believing/converting to Christianity, etc. The goal was to provide for the basic needs of a hurt people. If you consider that a terrible bacteria spreading, I apologize. But I have hopes to continue to do work there.

To everyone else that's posted since my last post, thank you all. I'll try to respond in the next day or so if I can.

 

Oh, you caught that!
In defense, I was ministering to a young man who seemed to be in a crisis I too have faced many times. Maybe it would have been better in a PM, but my ref was to Christianity in general and their mandate to go unto the world and preach the good word.

Back in the '70s they would accost you on the sidewalks in New Orleans. Jesus Freaks we called them.

Fact is, my brother-in-law was a Baptist minister years ago and as a young man expressing my anti-religion views on a couple of occasions made him address me as a pissed off brother-in-law instead of as a reverand. But we're older now and get along great with our commonality and family obligations.

 

GLBT, sometimes we come together because we have a common cause. But we dont really get on.

The G, some stereotypes can ring true, half of them do suffer from vanity and narcisssism more than they should, the other half are the sweetest though and could teach everyone else a thing or two about love

The L, well trained to be defensive anyway from either everyone else attacking them for not being feminine or from all the guys jumping straight to talk of threesomes. Have to deal with sexism first usually before homophobia

The B, have to admit, I dont really even see them as part of the group, a closer relative to the heterosexual, even though I know your average heterosexual would seem them closer to us.

The T, cops it worst than the rest of us. I might whine at times about being part of a minority thats 1 in 50, but for the T its like 1 in 4000 or something, so along with facing everyone elses judgements, even in the big city they can go their whole lives only meeting a handful of others that are actually like them. And I've seen the same kind of judgmental stuff from the G directed to the T as we whine about coping from your garden variety theists


You can never really know someone until you walk a mile in their shoes, the judgements we face, really any different or worse than the judgments between religous denominations; Catholic vs Protestant, Christianity vs Islam, Hindu vs Islam

Even the anger, its a childish type of anger, yes gay people face a certain amount of oppression and even the death penalty in parts of the world, but no one ever started a war just because of us.

 

I left our church at the same time as my sister. My sister is gay.

She chose to have children and used a sperm donor who is involved in the kids lives. She then met her partner of now 12 years. The church baptized the twins but would at the time not recognize the union of her and her partner.

The unfairness of a congregation/church taking the moral responsibility of a child but to then ignore the union of adults is a mockery.

The conclusion we have both drawn is that it is far better to live life and do no harm than to have an illusion of faith and fellowship that are someone else's.

 

I try to be homosexual, I really do.

But then some girl comes around that I don't even need to know her name for her to fuck me and there ya go - disgraced in the Gay community.

 

Well, from the religious point of view, the only way they can legitimise the whole "homosexuality is a sin" thing, is to come from the position that people are gay through choice, not by birth. Its seems far crueller to condemn someone for something for which they have no control over, than for something which they do. As for the "no one is born inbetween" thing, it is beyond dispute that this is something that some people are born with. (though yet, apparently, some still do dispute it) Intersex conditions are simply a cold hard fact of nature, and to deny this is no different than denying that the Earth is round.

I dont see myself as "born inbetween", because Ive always identified as only female, (and indeed, am mostly female genetically) and if my condition had been treated properly by doctors when I was younger, Id be physically indistinguishable from any other female. And could have lived a normal life. But I was born with ambiguous genitalia, and a hormonal defect, so I still wasnt born a "perfect female". Some religious people, claim that god only makes people with a perfect male form, or a perfect female form, and this cannot be deviated from. And although intersex conditions are not hermaphroditism, (which many people wrongly mistake them for) they are irrefutable proof that those statements are totally false.

I do agree transsexuals suffer even worse prejudices than most gay people have to deal with. I think it's actually 1 in 10,000, but it is estimated that the true number of transsexuals are far higher than that estimate, due to the fact that there are many people who feel they were born in the wrong body who do not disclose how they feel openly. For fear of highly negative reactions from others. Although I am not a transsexual, I may as well be, because the prejudices and life hardships I have to endure are very similar to what many trans people have to put up with. Also, most people would not class me as a real woman, just as they wouldnt class a transsexual woman as a real woman either. So just living day to day can be extremely difficult, and chances of finding a loving relationship are just about zero. Which makes me feel less than human, quite frankly. I have actually only spoken to one other person who was born with the same condition I have. But seeing as only 1 in 33,000 people are born with it, its quite a bit rarer than incidences of people who are transsexual.

Finally, coming back to the religious side of things, Ive always wondered why christians use their religion as an excuse to demonise transsexuals, when unlike homosexuality, that is not even mentioned in the bible. I think it may perhaps be because many people consider transsexuals to be just an offshoot of homosexuality, so class the two things as no different. This could be why christians use the bible to attack trans people, even though there is no mention of such people in the bible.

 

I remember once hearing about a school of thought that believes that in a few million years our species will become hermaphroditic.

Invisible soul, don't feel too bad, you're probably just a few millenia ahead of your time ^^

I'm a little guilty of being a little judgmental of trans-sexuality in the past but have learned from my errors.
I like transsexuals, I just used to think it was a little crazy, (but hey aren't we all)
Now I have read about the results of surgery and other therapies and their success so I was wrong.

Things like Cross dressing and the feminisation of males is something I enjoy because I'm such a radical feminist, to the point where I actually believe that males are far inferior to females. (I won't get many agreeing with me but I still think we are)

 

Id be astonished if the human race is still around in a few million years time. lol

I cant help feeling bad. I want more or less the same things that most normal, ordinary people want. Yet it seems impossible for me to aqquire the things that most can get quite naturally. It's very difficult not to feel extremely deflated by that.

Im not really ahead of my time. Im sure intersex conditions have been around for many centuries. Inside, Im no different from any other woman, but I may as well be an alien species, because that's how I feel, living with this condition on this planet.

Even Ive been a bit judgemental of it in the past. Mainly because even before I was aware of the circumstances of my birth, I did not feel any affinity with the depictions of transsexuals I read about or seen in the media. Which just made me feel even more isolated. I didnt feel like I fitted in anywhere. And to a large extent, I still dont feel I fit in anywhere. But once I started doing research into the trans condition, I began to understand it. I think in some cases at least, transsexuals have just as much a birth defect as I was born with.

I dont really know that Id say males are inferior to females. I cant relate to males, so I cant really judge what I dont understand. lol I think in certain ways they are inferior, but I dont think either sex is perfect.

 

I have nothing to add..that hasnt been said.. good thread..

 

Kudos to liberal, Bible contradicting, can I say, Bolshie Christians, such as you, Timmr. At last, a Christian who sees the Bible for what it was meant to be - a Little Golden Book for feeble-minded Hebrew inbreeds. Timmr's laissez faire approach to God's alleged words are a welcome respite from the autocratic "Thou Shalt Nots" of the sister-fucking Fundamentalist Appalachian rattler rasslers who run religion in America.

It appears he is more than willing to debate, maybe even expurgate, bits of the Bible that the overwhelming majority of non Ameri-Proddie humankind find objectionable. In this thread he even includes demonic turd indenting Sodomites in his theocratic discussions!

Obviously Timmr is eager to disassociate himself from America's "Monkey-see-monkey-do" Christo-Muppet Show. I mean those Sola Scriptura banjo strummin' retards that have held the Reich hostage - and, much to my dismay, have even managed to make inroads into the convict offspring society of atheistic Australia!! - since their universally despised Puritan progenitors slimed ashore back in 1620.

So bravo again, Timmr. I'm sure that together we can bowdlerise the Bible of its "I'm-better-than-you" bits that so offend thinking people.

 

I know it comes off sounding like elitism, but its not really about that, its just as much about the types you attract.

Bi guys, there are the ones on the uplow shall we call them, the ones that say they are Gay to everyone out loud but are really at the gay end of Bi. I'm hanging out somewhere with a bunch of gals and theres one like that in the mix, trying a bit to hard to be gay, whilst the gals are a bit stand offish with him or apprehensive, and I'm like "Oh here we go" and end up getting a nudge from one of the girls "Yeah, dont invite him along next time"

The flip side to that are the openly bi ones, and you do have a tendency to attract the more promiscuous / aggressive type girls, the ones I'm not comfortable around, and can see that coming a mile away, so its usually some excuse to make like a tree and leave "Yawn, well I've got to get up early in the morning", so I dont have to endure the next couple hours of giggle, giggle, "Its so cool you're so open about your sexuality" "More guys should be bi" and Finally Snigger snigger "I've never been with two guy before"

So its just as much to do with third party friends, "Pick a side" from us is more about picking which kind of plutonic friends you are going to attract

And same kind of stuff with the subject of this thread. Having a scream queen or a 100 percenter around is often the best way to sort out which guys are going to be dickheads, which gays are actually bi, which girls are actually skanky, and which theists are actually going to care more about the message rather than the rules.

Now some of that may make me sound like a pretentious little so and so, but its just defensive stuff in the end. And in their own way every single person on the planet does it

 

[SIZE=+2]Who We Callin' "Ignorant": A Few Notes on Moral Philosophy, the State, and the Mother Goddess Before and After Muhammad (sas)[/SIZE] by Faris Malik

My purpose, as always, is to argue the perennial question for LGBT Muslims: What does Islam say about homosexuality and is it punishable under Islamic law? The short answer, which I have presented many times in the past, is that, like many other ancient texts containing moral and legal and/or quasi-legal prescriptions, the Qur'an forbids only the use of a "male" in the passive role in sexual intercourse; meanwhile, the male was defined in ancient times as the one who plays the male role in procreation, a definition that excludes all who do not play the male role in procreation, including women and exclusively homosexual men. For more explanation of this thesis, see my web page "Born Eunuchs: Homosexual Identity in the Ancient World."
This is a simple thesis that requires relatively few words to present. But this time I am going to go further and argue that the entire notion of an Islamic state authority is invalid. I will hint at how it is possible that, on the one hand, God does not condemn homosexuality and yet, on the other hand, all those who pretend to exercise power on God's behalf, do condemn it.
Whenever you get ready to make a giant leap, it is often useful to go back some distance so that you can get a running start. So I am going to go back about 30,000 years, to what archaeologists call the Old Stone Age - to a time when God was worshipped in the form of a Great Mother, who combined within Herself female and male principles and was known as the Creative Source of Life. My source for this information is a wonderful book by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford called The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image, which is available from Penguin Books.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism - and basically anyone else interested in knowing about God. Marshalling evidence from archeology and ancient mythology, the authors present the idea that for most of the past 30,000 years, the Creator has been worshipped as a Great Mother, who appears as the Creative Source of Life, as a Goddess of Vegetation, and as a Goddess of Life, Death and Regeneration, acting in and through a variety of cyclical rhythms perhaps best symbolized by the phases of the moon, but also apparent in the cycle of the seasons, the water cycle, the cycle of life and death, the menstrual cycle, the cycles of the heavens, and all the other many cycles that are observable in nature.
About 7,000 years ago then (based on the evidence of stone-age artifacts), the image of God was divided into separate female and male elements, with the male as the child of the female who then returns to her as a lover in another never-ending cycle. The image of God as Mother carried over from the Old Stone Age to the New Stone Age and the development from nomadic hunter-gatherer cultures to settled agricultural communities. And still the cyclical nature of life reinforced a conception that God gave rise to life in various forms and then accepted that life back into Herself through death and then brought it back again through regeneration. Evidence of this Goddess worship covers a geographical spread from Europe through the Middle East to the Indus Valley, and similar notions of God are found in cultures around the world.
About 4,500 BCE things began to change around the Middle East and Mediterranean with the first waves of invasion by so-called Indo-European nomads. But even into the Bronze Age and the discovery of writing, the mythology of the Mother Goddess and her daughter or son-lover survives and takes on new forms. The names of the Goddess in different cultures are still familiar to us: Inanna, Isis, Cybele, Gaia, Hera, Demeter. One of the many things that the LGBT community may find interesting about ancient mother goddesses is that their priests and officiants included non-procreative men and women who were defined as gender-crossers, the lesbians, gays and transgenders of the ancient world.
However, the advent of writing facilitated developments that eventually diminished the authority of the goddess cults. These included the increased importance of commerce, increased accumulation of wealth in urban centers, and the concentration of populations into larger towns and cities. The differentiation of labor and skills that developed in an urban environment led to a differentiation of deities, and the original Mother Goddess gave birth, according to the new myths, to many more deities who governed the various types of professions. The increasing competition within and between communities helped male gods move increasingly to the center of consciousness. Eventually, the younger gods overthrew and destroyed the older gods. Rivalries between cities led to wars, continued nomadic invasions increased the level of violence, cities began to build walls to protect themselves, and old ideas of life, death, and regeneration as stages within a holistic, cyclical system gave way to terror, and fear of death as the final end to life.
It is at this point in human history that the God of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition begins to reveal Himself. But this time, the Creator absolutely prohibits any images to be made of Himself and refuses to be categorized in terms of gender. (Here I am departing from Baring and Cashford's book, since the authors argue that the use of the masculine pronoun "He" and His origin as a god of patriarchal Semitic nomadic tribes mean that Yahweh-Elohim is a male god. I am not bothered by either of these arguments, since "he" can be, has been, and is used for non-gendered beings and for both males and females when gender is not specified. As to God having revealed Himself to patriarchal nomadic tribes, well, obviously they weren't "getting it" any other way. You can hint and hint all you want, but with some people who are quite thick-headed and unable to intuit the subtle workings of the Creator by the observation of nature, you may eventually have to come out and say what you mean in clear language!)
God is explicitly identified as dual-gendered in the book of Genesis. In an often misinterpreted verse, man is said to be created in the image of God in that he is created male and female. Now it is true that unlike the old Mother Goddess, who gives birth to the world, Yahweh-Elohim speaks the world into existence. But although He does not give birth to the world, and although He is referred to using the masculine pronoun, in many other ways God resembles the old Mother Goddess of prehistoric times. For one thing, He is One, encompassing the entire universe. None of the male gods worshipped prior to and at the same time as Yahweh, such as Marduk, Enki, Zeus, or Osiris, were said to be so all-encompassing. The only equivalents one can find to Yahweh in this respect are old goddesses such as the Syrian goddess Cybele, or the Egyptian Maat, who gave order to the entire universe. Also, Yahweh is exclusive: there is no other God but Him. He controls the cyclical processes of nature. He brings life, death, and rebirth. And like the old Mother Goddess (and unlike many of the male gods) He is never embodied in any ruler or form of government. So Yahweh embodies many of the characteristics of female divinities, but with a male or neutral pronoun in place of the feminine.
Turning to Islam: the name of God in Arabic - Allah - presents an interesting case of gender ambiguity. It ends in a consonant "ha" (sounds like "h") that visually and tonally resembles the consonant in the standard Arabic feminine ending, which is "ta-marbuta". That consonant "ta-marbuta" is usually silent like "h" at the end of a word, although it will sound like "t" before words that start with vowels. The letter "ta-marbuta" is even shaped like a "ha", except it has the two dots of a "ta" over it. However, the convention of writing diacritical marks, like these two dots over "ta" and "ta-marbuta", was instituted several centuries after the Qur'an was revealed. Until diacritical marks were instituted, the last letter in the name of Allah would have been visually indistinguishable from the feminine ending.
The Goddess is mentioned in the Qur'an (Sura 53:19) and, perhaps to avoid the type of inference that I am making here, her name is spelled "ALLAT" using a final letter "ta" that must always be pronounced "t". Speakers of Arabic might understand the point better. There are two words in Arabic, Allah and Allat, that mean God and Goddess, respectively. The final letter of Allat - "ta" - is close in essence to "ta-marbuta", which is the consonant used in the ordinary feminine singular ending. (In fact, "ta" is itself the standard feminine plural ending.) In turn, "ta-marbuta", if written without diacritical marks, is visually identical to the final letter of Allah - "ha" - and, like "ha", is generally not pronounced at the end of a word. Therefore, the name Allah would sound exactly the same, and without diacritical marks, would look exactly the same if it ended in "ta-marbuta" and thus in a feminine ending. Moreover, diacritical marks were not written in Arabic for centuries after Muhammad's death. Could it be that Allat changed Her name to Allah, a name with echoes of femininity but that is not feminine, in order to disabuse people of the false notion that She/He was gendered female?

Allah hypothetical spelling Allat
of "God" with a
feminine singular ending
Support for this hypothesis is provided by another interesting circumstance. Ancient pre-Muhammadan sources written in Greek give the name of the Arabian goddess as "Alilat". The first two letters are obviously the Arabic definite article, and the word ilat designates the goddess. The word does not exist anymore in Arabic. But there is word ilah meaning god (with a small "g"). This word is used in the Muslim declaration of faith: La ilah illa Allah (there is no god but God). In this case we see that a word meaning deity had feminine and masculine forms at one time, but only the masculine form survives.

god goddess
This offers an exact parallel to what I am suggesting happened to Allat/Allah's name. It is as if the new name would inform us: "That which you were identifying as a female Mother Goddess is actually a Transcendent Being without gender." (Another interesting curiosity about the Arabic language is that all non-human plurals take the form of the feminine singular. In other words, the entire universe, with all of its contents, consists of a single feminine entity.)
Next, the black meteorite stone that marks the start of each circumambulation around the Ka'aba is reminiscent of Mother Goddess worship. The Black Stone of Mecca "was worshipped as an image of the goddess until the rise of Islam" (Baring and Cashford, p. 396).
Coincidentally, the Great Mother Cybele, center of one of the greatest popular cults of the Roman Empire, was symbolized by a black meteorite stone that was famously transferred from Asia Minor to Rome at the behest of the oracle, when Rome was threatened by invasion from Hannibal. Not that Cybele was a Roman goddess - far from it. She was originally and she remained a foreign Eastern goddess. Most upstanding Roman citizens found the ecstatic rites of Cybele's far-out gender-crossing priests appalling. Roman citizens were prohibited from serving as her priests. Rome was a society concerned with state order and manly virtue, and dominated by the stern father god Jupiter. But Cybele found a following nonetheless among the lower classes and those Romans with less strict moral and philosophical pretensions. The temple of the Magna Mater was built on the Palatine Hill, where its remains still stand.
Besides her being symbolized by the Black Stone, another weird coincidence raises the possibility of a linkage between the Great Mother and the God of Islam. According to Baring and Cashford, Cybele may be a later name of a Babylonian goddess Kumbaba. Both names, like the word Ka'aba itself, are thought to mean "cube," which is the shape of the Ka'aba and a symbol of the pedestal or throne of the Goddess. (In the statue of the Great Mother on the Palatine Hill in Rome, she appears to be sitting on a cube-shaped block.)
"The priests who tended the [Ka'aba] even after the rise of Islam were known as 'the sons of the Old Woman'" (Baring and Cashford, p. 396). In fact, gender-variant guardians, like the gender-variant priests of many Mother Goddess figures including Cybele, tended the Ka'aba as well as the tomb of the Prophet until well into the twentieth century. Among their privileges/duties were to stay overnight in the shrines and to light the lamps around the Prophet's tomb. The latter of these duties was discontinued under the rule of the Saudis, who installed electric lights.
The parallels between the ways of Allah and the old reputed ways of the Mother Goddess are fascinating. And yet among mainstream Muslims, all that has to do with the Mother Goddess is dismissed under the heading of idolatry and polytheism, aspects of the Age of Ignorance (al-Jahiliya). The suggestion that I am making here, that there may be an identification worth investigating between what we worship as Allah and what Old Stone Age man worshipped as the Goddess, will be considered blasphemous by many. That is certainly not how it is in tended - quite the contrary! But why should it be considered blasphemous? Belief in God as Mother is not in itself polytheism. In Her day, the Mother Goddess was seen as the One and Only Creator. Might it not be that, having been driven from people's consciousness by the violence of the later Bronze and Iron Ages, She simply began to reveal Herself to in Her true nature - above and beyond gender - while forbidding images to be made of Her/Him because they lead to misconceptions about Her/His nature? After all, an axe- or sword-brandishing mounted warrior was less likely to be intimidated and chastened by a Mother, than by a stern Transcendent Being who passed as male.
The two adjectives most often used to describe God in Muslim discourse, Ar-Rahman and Ar-Raheem, are absolute and superlative forms of the root R-H-M, which means "womb." So God is the "wombiest" of all wombs. These words are often translated as "Beneficent and Merciful", calling up images of male monarchs or judges, but they can be just as well translated "Kind and Compassionate", a more nurturing, motherly image.
Finally, God is portrayed throughout the Qur'an acting in ways reminiscent of the old Mother Goddess and her power over the cycle of birth, life, death, and regeneration (e.g. Qur'an 2:22, 2:255, 2:267, 3:27, 6:6, 6:95-99, 6:133, 6:141, 6:147, 7:25, 7:57, 7:58, 10:4, 10:24, 10:31, 10:34, 13:3, 14:32, 15:19, 16:11, 16:65-70, 18:37, 18:45, 20:53, 20:55, 21:104, 22:5, 23:14, 23:19, 23:31, 23:42, 26:7, 27:25, 27:60-67, 28:57, 29:19, 29:20, 29:56, 30:11, 30:19-30, 31:10, 32:27, 34:2, 35:11, 35:27, 36:33-40, 36:77-81, 39:21, 40:7, 40:67, 41:47, 43:11, 45:15, 50:7-11, 50:43, 53:32, 53:47, 57:4, 67:23, 71:17, 71:18, 76:28, 78:6-16, 80:24-32, 85:13, 87:4-5). For example:
Do you not see how Allah has created the seven heavens one above the other,
And made the moon therein a light, and made the sun a lamp?
And Allah has made you grow out of the earth as a growth:
Then He returns you to it, then he will bring you forth a (new) bringing forth:
And Allah has made for you the earth a wide expanse,
That you may go along therein in wide paths.
Sura 71:15-20
And the earth, We have made it plain and cast in it mountains and We have made to grow therein of all beautiful kinds,
To give sight and as a reminder to every servant who turns frequently (to Allah).
And We send down from the cloud water abounding in good, then We cause to grow thereby gardens and the grain that is reaped,
And the tall palm trees having spadices closely set one above another,
A sustenance for the servants, and We give life thereby to a dead land; thus is the rising.
Sura 50:7-11.
[Translation by M.H. Shakir]
As fascinating as Qur'anic theology is, it has not captured the imagination of the agents of Islam, the "'ulama'" (scholars), who from the days of the earliest caliphs seem to have been mainly focused on issues of religious law and authority to rule. The question of who had the authority to rule the Muslim community began to divide the Muslims almost from the moment of Muhammad's death and still nominally divides Muslims into Shi'a and Sunni.
Amazingly, given the history of Islam, the Qur'an does not provide a basis for anyone at all to claim authority to rule, that is, other than God alone. Although, in the Revelation, Muslims are commanded to obey Allah and His messenger, there is no instruction about how to proceed after the messenger is no longer around. There is no mention of the messenger having a "successor" (khalifa). Once he was dead, that was it. He is gone from our midst. The division of the Muslims into Shi'a and Sunni stems from the fact that, apparently, Muhammad himself did not appoint a successor in any public, indisputable manner, if at all, and the early Muslims were left to join camps behind one claimant or another.
There is no Qur'anic basis for the creation of an Islamic state, a set of judges, or a school of law. And yet establishing a code of laws and the authority for a state seems to have been the single overriding focus of the early Muslims. How can this be explained?
For the past year and a half, I have been reading a lot of the Greek philosopher Plato, and I am struck by how well his "State" lines up with the medieval religious states of Christianity and Islam. This, and the fact that Plato would have liked to prohibit, for example, the consumption of alcohol and the possession of gold and silver, made me suspect that his thought had some influence on the development of Islamic law.
So as I began to prepare this presentation, I was expecting to find that Islamic law exhibited all kinds of parallels to Platonic "laws". After all, by the time these Islamic laws began to be written down and codified, almost the entire Muslim empire consisted of territory once conquered by Alexander, the student of Aristotle, who in turn was the student of Plato. Half of the Muslim empire had been once part of the Roman empire. Since the work of Plato and his student Aristotle had been so influential for so many centuries in the territories that had fallen under the domination of Alexander the Great and his successors, and then under the rule of the Roman emperors, it was natural to suspect some legacy from Greek political philosophy in the developing Muslim state. However, I discovered that there were no clear parallels between Plato's recommended set of laws and the set of laws known as the shari'a. Except for the rules about wine-drinking and some restrictions on gold and silver ownership, the bulk of Islamic laws do not echo any specific legal statutes suggested by Plato.
It was not individual laws that matched up - but there was nonetheless a great parallel. The structure of Muslim society contained a major element of Plato's ideal republic. It was the theory that a small educated class, trained in an obscure body of knowledge that would make them morally superior to everyone else, ought to administer a set of laws that govern the state. The 'ulama', or scholar class, aspired to a role analogous to the guardians or rulers of Plato's polis. Admittedly, the correspondence between the Platonic republic and the Islamic state was nowhere close to perfect, for the 'ulama' never actually ruled the state. Rather, most of the Muslim states that existed throughout history were ruled by political autocrats who did not have the scholars' training in Islamic law. But the 'ulama' served as advisors and moral arbiters within the state, sometimes empowered like the priests of the ancient kingdoms of Judah or Israel, at other times on the outside like the Biblical prophets, calling an immoral leadership to account.
In fact, it is more accurate to say that for most of Islamic history, the various Muslim states represented a combination of Plato's Republic and a traditional Eastern empire such as the Persian empires of Cyrus and Darius. What was traditional was the supreme authority of the caliph or sultan (analogous to that of an ancient emperor), and the surrounding of the monarch with a large palace staff of eunuchs and the monarch's harem. What was republican was the preservation of an elaborate body of written laws, alleged to be of divine and/or prophetic origin, handed down from teacher to student, which was intended to form the basis for an ideal reform of political life. The four schools of Sunni Islamic law functioned like the schools of philosophy of the classical world. The formula repeated throughout the hadith collections - "it is reported that the Messenger of God said" - recalls the formula of the Pythagorean school of philosphy - "ipse dixit." Proficiency in a school of laws qualified a scholar to a position of authority in the community, and as a collective group, within the state.
But while the 'ulama' collectively formed a power group that could influence state policy, they could never determine it absolutely. Different caliphs took different attitudes toward the 'ulama'. The early Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs often asserted their authority in the face of opposition from prominent 'ulama' representatives. Ibn Hanbal, the name-sake of the Hanbali school of law, was imprisoned by the Abbasid caliph for refusing to adhere to the caliph's doctrine that the Qur'an was a created, as opposed to uncreated, thing. On the other hand, when Turks and Mongols ran the Islamic empires, they attempted to legitimize their authority by following the lead of the 'ulama' in matters of doctrine, the same way the Byzantine emperors deferred to the Christian church hierarchy in matters of religion.
But now in the modern world, the republican world view has completely prevailed over the traditional imperial world view. The caliphate has disappeared, and the competition in Muslim societies is now between secular republicans (such as the Egyptian government) and religious republicans (such as the Iranian government). All present-day Muslim governments have their heritage in Plato's republic, and it is no coincidence that many of the prominent Muslim states are now called "republics".
And yet, the idea of an Islamic republic, or any kind of Islamic state at all, finds no basis in the Qur'an. There is no religious hierarchy in Islam. Each person stands alone before God, and is solely obligated to God (although God may demand certain behavior toward others). Not to say that Islam forbids the establishment of a state - just that no state can claim Islam as a basis for its legitimacy. "There is no compulsion in religion." Yet states are coercive by nature.
We can see the danger of declaring an Islamic state in the modern treatment of homosexuals in Muslim countries. The Qur'an carefully avoids any condemnation of homosexuals, although it condemns the sexual penetration of non-homosexual men and boys. Not even the hadith justify the condemnation of homosexuals, since they condemn only the practice of the "people of Lot", who were non-homosexuals. But the structure of what is erroneously called the Islamic state makes it possible to condemn homosexuals, nonetheless, and the theory of republican morality makes such condemnation likely. The spread of republicanism throughout the world has gone hand in hand with the oppression of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders. Plato advocated a prohibition of non-marital sexuality, and down to the last century all advocates of republican government have followed him in that. They have claimed that "natural law" supports such a prohibition. Yet it is a very limited concept of nature that republicans use to define "natural law." Instead of passively observing the "signs" of God, and recognizing that God alone is the Knower, they use logic to derive an incomplete understanding of what is natural. They substitute their own limited rationalism for the humble affirmation that God knows best. They rely on their reason to justify aggression toward others.




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We are all so used to republican government that it is worthwhile to think about what other forms of government are possible.
Prior to any government there is anarchy. Each family takes care of its own needs and the needs of its friends, and those members of the family who are most apt at decision-making naturally take on that role. Under such an arrangement, the gay members of the family usually play a special role as peace-keepers and spiritual advisers. When families accumulate into a larger community, the gay members of each family form friendships with members of other families, but because these gay folks do not have children, they devote their full energies to the community rather than to raising offspring of their own. So the gay members of the community begin to form a priesthood to which every family contributes its members who are designated for that role by their special sexual orientation and gender status. So long as there is peace in the community, this system works well. These are true theocracies. They are generally free but are guided by a small number of unwritten rules administered by a group of people whom the Deity has designated for this purpose by making them non-procreative and spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally sensitive. The great civilizations developed as these communities grew larger and larger and accumulated wealth. Eventually, though, the wealth of certain communities attracted raiders from outside the community. It became necessary to create a military defense, and at this point the males began to assume leadership roles, although still advised by the gay members of the community.
Among the outside raiders, gay people were not allowed to play a mediating role. Life consisted of continual warfare for these folks. The social structure was entirely military, and the men who were strong in battle assumed leadership. The rest of the community was basically under these men's control. For the sake of military efficiency, a single member of the military group might be chosen as a "first among equals", so that decisions could be made that would be binding on all. This is the basis of feudalism.
In some cases, these two forms of social organization were combined. Perhaps raiding groups invaded settled civilized groups and ended up staying. Then the infrastructure of civilization, including the gay priesthood, came under the control of a military organization. Perhaps the "first among equals" from the old raiding party begins to aspire to the absolute rule and divine status of the kings of the civilizations they have conquered. Then he will want to be protected from other possible aspirants to such status by having a bodyguard of persons who cannot compete with him for that position. The king surrounds himself with a buffer of gay men, none of whom can be king themselves. The other members of the military group are kept at a safe distance from the king. They form the class of nobles. The nobles continually aim to assert their own power as opposed to the king's power, and they see the gay palace bureaucrats as an obstacle in their path.
Thus we have the various forms of government that have existed up until the development of republicanism. Anarchy, gay theocracy, absolute monarchy with gay palace bureacrats, feudal monarchy where the king is simply "the first among equals", and a combination of absolute and feudal monarchy, in which nobles compete with gay palace bureacrats for control of the throne. The only other form of government that had existed prior to the republic was elective democracy, which existed for a short time in Athens and can only work in small communities where it is possible for everyone to vote on every issue that confronts the group.
With the Republic, Plato was basically designing a society that was supposed to be better than Athenian democracy because it would be controled by persons who were more qualified to rule than the common crowd. And it would be better than what he called tyranny (absolute monarchy) and oligarchy or timarchy (feudalism), because the members of the society would be free. The government he envisioned was similar in many ways to the old theocracy in which a gay priesthood ruled the state for the benefit of the people. The difference was, though, that the ruling group would not be made up of gays. As long as being gay was the qualification for membership in the priesthood, it was truly God who decided who the priests should be, since it is God who makes certain people gay. In Plato's Republic, the members of the ruling group would be chosen by the previous members of the group, and homosexual sex was a disqualification. Plato's intention was to create a group of rulers who would serve the community peacefully at home, while being fierce in fighting external enemies.
For most of the history of Christianity and Islam, we have seen the combination of absolute and feudal monarchy, with Islam tending more toward the absolute model and Christianity more toward the feudal model. But in both cases, there has also been a group of republicans trying to exert control over the state. In Islam, these were the 'ulama', in Christianity the Christian church. The Christian church succeeded in gaining control of government where the 'ulama' failed. But the eventual failure of the church to rule effectively and fairly led to the overthrow of the church, and eventually to the overthrow of monarchy, and to a secular republicanism. Then, with the help of the Christian West, the absolute monarchy of the Muslim world collapsed, and since then secular and religious republicans have competed for control. The religious republicans claim to be acting on God's behalf, trying to institute God's law, but they are not chosen by God to rule, and there is no foundation for their claim to establishing an Islamic government. They end up only being oppressive. The only Islamic form of government would be, if anything, a government without coercion, namely the anarchy that naturally leads to a gay theocracy.
Secular republicanism has now degenerated into capitalism without any kind of moral constraint, because it is still being run by straight folks trying to enrich their own families at the expense of the community and the environment. But secular elective republicanism can also lead to a version of gay theocracy. Until the last couple of decades, it has been impossible for an openly gay person to get elected. But as the old Platonic prejudice against gays fades away, more and more gays will be chosen to serve. With their inherent sense of truth, justice, and beauty, gays may be able to do a better job than straights in terms of balancing the interests of society, and taking care of the planet. Gays can be almost exasperating in their determination to do things the right way. As long as gays, the priests of the Great Mother, are given the opportunity to serve, the world will be a lot better off.

Then the sovereignty, power and greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be handed over to the holy ones, the people of the Most High. Daniel 7:27
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Did you actually read all that shit?....is there a Cliff notes version or Complete Idiots guide available? My brain fell off after awhile...what are they really saying?

 

LOL. I did my best to read between the lines.

QP

 

bottom line I think it was..
As long as gays, the priests of the Great Mother, are given the opportunity to serve, the world will be a lot better off.
there are some interesting reads here, and most the links work on the pages..
http://www.well.com/user/queerjhd/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/al-fatiha-news/message/45

 

WELL! I'm back. Sorry for the delay from my promised return to posting (haha, probably not that anyone here really cared about my return) - Just wanted to give a quick update on how things went and also want to give a short reply to a post (as most of the discussion about individual groups of LGBT has strayed away from my experience/understanding)

The panel discussion on relationships with the LGBT's and the church for the most part went really well. As previously posted, the focus was on the greatest commandments (to love God, and to love your neighbor). One pastor talked about judgment and how it is not our place to judge, but our purpose is to love. He shared about his very recent thanksgiving when his openly gay cousin was going to attend without his partner. The family urged him to bring his partner and they all had a great night together. At the end of the night, when leaving, his cousin's boyfriend thanked my pastor for hosting to which he replied, "You are always welcome in my house." They may not agree on the bible, God, or sexuality, but tolerance and love were there.

I had a chance to talk about my gay friends as well as a lot of what went on in this thread. I had a chance to share Yarapario's last statements about just treating him like a father, traveler, etc. and what came up in the panel was that much of the Christian reaction is based on fear. The only way to get over that fear based reaction is to step out of their comfort zones to meet, understand and see the humanity in LGBTs. 1 John 4 was shared - That we are called to love and that there is no fear in love, but a perfect love drives out fear.

For the most part, there was a very positive reaction from the congregation. Many did not know how the should react or what they should think because they've heard so much from "Christians" in the media. I think for some it was a sigh of relief to know that they didn't have to be that type of Christian.

Of course there were those who had disagreed not on the biblical principles that we shared but on the movement of culture and society. The concern was that society was moving in a way that he felt Christians were "being silenced" and were "losing their voice." He brought up the idea of schools having segments on "alternative lifestyles" (is that term itself offensive to LGBT?) and that as a parent he would not be able to opt his children out of that segment of study. My question to you all is, would you be offended if someone did remove their child from a segment of class that studied LGBT life? But all in all, he did not deny or argue that he was called to love all people, his concern was just much more on how society is moving/changing against his faith (and he very clearly stated that this was not due completely to the gay rights movement, but was an overall concern).

Hopefully this is a step in the positive direction for a small church of 200 in the bay area to extend an unconditional love to the community around us. Thank you all for posting and replying.

I did want to reply to Geriatric Delinquent - I do not think that I have contradicted the bible in any way. I do know that I am definitely on the liberal end of Christianity, but I believe that the Bible is relevant to today's culture and completely God's word. I also do not think that I have "bowdlerise[d] the Bible of its "I'm-better-than-you" bits that so offend thinking people." I believe that Christ preached humility, opposite that of the prideful attitude you describe. I do, however, agree that this attempt at church this past Sunday was to negate the idea of "I'm-better-than-you" personality that much of the greater Christian church has taken on.

Jesus (either as God in what we believe, or at the very least as a humanitarian if you don't believe that he was God) spent much of his time teaching AGAINST the mainstream current religion. The Pharisees held a "we're-better-than-you" mentality against anyone who was impure, not Jewish, not healthy, even not male. They used a law that had many components of love and compassion to the poor, the weak, and people outside of their community to give an excuse to remove themselves from people they thought were less than themselves. Jesus' actions of sitting and sharing holy scripture with a Samaritan woman (an outcast from a group of religious outcasts) and touching a leper (who had to live away from the pure community because of their disease, which any contact with would make someone "ceremonially unclean") gives today's Christians an example that we should not be removing ourself from greater society to avoid sin and 'sinners' but that we should in fact be sitting with, loving, and meeting the needs of anyone that we come in contact with.

For those that welcomed the thread and posted, much appreciated. For those that didn't welcome this thread and posted, much appreciated as well. =o)

 

Thanks for the update Timmr...sounds like a good interaction for folks. As you noticed some here have been deeply wounded by the effects of people using religion as a weapon. Others reject religion outright for a variety of reasons. Thats cool...such is life. The important thing I saw was one human being, You Timmr, approaching people you knew or suspected might be hostile. I appreciate that. It felt more like an exchange among equals as opposed to a missionary come to save the ignorant savages. The missionary approach is guaranteed to fail at all levels. The chance to interact with an equal is always appreciated. Thank You

 

Hey, I'm a conscientious Ameri-Christian too, ya know. atriot: Wherever Jesus' opinions and beliefs agree with mine, I'm four-square behind him! Same goes for the Old Testament, or whatever Papist-hatin' patriotic pap Pastor Flagon preaches up at the piney woods Serpentarium. :love:

 

Yarapario - I definitely appreciate this. Thank you. The purpose of me being on here was definitely for us to take an opportunity to learn from you all, but I DO hope that in some way we were able to show that not all Christians/Churches are the angry, judgmental types. If at any point a Christian tries to use religion or the bible "as a weapon" and not treating someone else as an equal, they are contradicting their own scriptures and faith. (Matthew 7:1-5) Thanks for not shutting us down too! The posts after your warning were very moving. In terms of the exchange as equals - thats what it should be. Religious and non religious relations would be exponentially greater if everyone could just take that approach. I even think we'd be able to talk about religion, faith, politics, etc. if people could just sit down and do it cordially and respectfully. Thank YOU for all your sharing and openness.

Geriatric Delinquent - haha. Honestly, keep writing whatever you want to write. I'm just entertained by the way you write and with your vocabulary. Double bonus for finding a smiley with an american flag posed in a solute. =o)

Thanks again everyone. If folks want to continue to post their hurts/experiences, I would definitely love to read them and learn from them.

At the cost of sounding too religious in this forum, I really do thank God for the opportunity to have interacted with you all. It was an eye opening blessing for me.