Homosexuality and Religion

[Quahom1]

Hmmm,

I can dip my wick, as long as I place it in the right candle holder...

Well? Doesn't that make sense? I mean think! The Romans did not call it Penis (shaft/sword), and Vagina (Sheath/receiver), for giggles.

If you want to look at the "natural" world, let us consider the flower. It consists of a pestal and stamin. If the Pestal sprouts pollen at another pestal, what have you? Two dead flowers. (or maybe I reversed them)

You know what? Let's knock off the Homo/hetro BS. People have been loving each other for ever. Just be QUIET about how...you love each other.

That is what I think (and personally abhore), people hate...the loud mouthed "I'm screwing so and so and want the world to know it".

Why are we so concerned about how we are having SEX? Why are we concerned about telling the whole world how we are having SEX? WTF over!?

Leave kids alone (let them be children...they only get to be - once), other than that, and harm no one, do as you will. But please don't tell the whole freakin' world about it.

Now August members of this place, before you go look at my other comments, then come back here and call me a hypocrit...remember, I cling to my Christian faith with my life, but I have nothing to do with Christian RELIGION, or any other religion, except maybe giving to the poor.

On this I am in agreement with the Wiccans..."Harm no one, and do what you will".

Oooh boy, that goes alot deeper than the number of words used to express it.

v/r

Q

[kiwimac]

It is interesting to note that Gathic Zoroastrianism has nothing to say about homosexuality. OTOH the more adulterated later versions of Zoroastrianism do. I wonder then does this imply that the Wise Lord is more concerned with the stateof the worshippers heart than most (if not the great majority) of the followers of religions?

Kiwimac

[PersonaNonGrata]

Originally Posted by kiwimac

It is interesting to note that Gathic Zoroastrianism has nothing to say about homosexuality. OTOH the more adulterated later versions of Zoroastrianism do. I wonder then does this imply that the Wise Lord is more concerned with the stateof the worshippers heart than most (if not the great majority) of the followers of religions?

Kiwimac

the same issue is going on, if any of you had been there, (particularly to thailand) in s.e.asia. there's no gay rights or similar in that country since they dont see that as an issue that has to be bothered. 'I have one daughter and one lady boy' an old man said when i asked how many children he has. strange for our western minds huh?
I dont know, might that be the same reason that Zoroastrianism doesnt say anything about homosexuality? well i have just informed that there's a belief called like that actually...




..... humans you cant live with them you cant live w/o them ... says i

[Erynn]

I'd just like to put in a word from another view.

There are religions/spiritual paths that not only do not reject, but actively embrace gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered. Many indigenous paths believe that people like us have mixed natures, and therefore stand as a bridge between men and women. In many societies, a significant number of religious/spiritual functionaries like shamans and healers were non-heterosexual. There was no condemnation, but a gratefulness for the gifts brought by those who were different.

In most modern NeoPagan religions, people of any gender can be handfast (joined in union/married). In fact, non-monogamous handfastings are also sometimes performed. What is important is not gender or number, but the love and devotion those being handfast have to one another. In many early non-monotheistic religions (and indeed in some monotheistic religions, such as early Christianity), marriage was a civil issue, and not a religious rite at all. It became "religious" within Christianity when the church gained more power, and became a way to consolidate power and wealth and to control the population politically.

Homosexuality and polyamory are not against my religion in any way.

As a bisexual, I don't see how one's plumbing has any relation to one's love and passion. As a woman who has never wanted children, and has none, I see no reason to connect sanctioned sexuality to reproduction -- particularly considering the extreme overpopulation that only continues building.

My personal belief is that it is wrong to have more than one child at this point in time, simply because of the widespread disease and starvation that is caused by overpopulation, and the devastation our sheer numbers cause to the sacred earth we live upon. The more of us living on this planet, particularly with the incredible waste of resources in the west, the more like locusts we become, consuming and destroying everything in our path.

There seems something "immoral" -- or perhaps just genocidally stupid -- in pushing our population to the point of destruction of ourselves and the planet we live on. I say genocide, which I know is a very strong term, because destroying the earth and every species including our own really does boil down to just that.

[Vajradhara]

Namaste all,


in the time of the Buddha, homosexuals were afforded their own gender designation... essentially, they were a third sex. no real big deal at all in that view.

things change... sometimes, they change for the detriment of all involved and sometimes it's beneficial, but change they will.

[BluejayWay]

I grew up in a time when homosexuality had no mainstream cultural acceptance, and certainly little or no religious toleration. I absorbed the prejudices of my culture, and reflected them, until, in the freshman year at a Christian college, I became aware that many of the people I was hanging with were gay.

Funny thing, they all seemed pretty much like me, except for that one detail. At that time, since I was rejecting most of the values of organized religion (the Church), it didn't occur to me to frame my acceptance of my friends' sexuality in terms of faith. I just saw it as one more area where Paul got it wrong, and Jesus wouldn't have cared.

On merely a personal level, homosexuality has become a hotbutton issue for me. I lost one good friend to the AIDS epidemic, and he was not as promiscuious in his gay relationships as I was in my straight ones. Another aquaintance killed himself because of his familiy's refusal to accept who he was.

Even before my daughter came out to me as a lesbian, I therefore had a lot of anger and concern over society's treatment of gays. My acceptance of her is total and complete, and the only anguish I have suffered by her revelation is knowing the pain that she will undoubtedly suffer at the prejudice of others. Unfortunately, this includes many members of otherwise loving religious belief systems.

Since that coming out a couple of years ago, I've been struggling with my own coming out--as someone who is now realizing that he needs desperately to return to a faith that he may perhaps never have grasped fully before he rejected it. Any perceived teaching of the Church that denies my daughter's nature (and the natures of so many friends and aquaintances) will be rejected by me. That's just the way it is--my revelation is that God loves all of his Creation, and I'm sticking to it.

I had an extended wait in a public waiting room yesterday, and in the magazine rack, the cover of the Notre Dame Magazine caught my eye: "The love that dare not speak its name"--Oscar Wilde. The magazine is published by the University of Notre Dame, and as the flagship Catholic university in the United States, is not officially accepting of homosexuality (the student body as a whole, though, seems to be much more tolerant), so I was pleased to see thoughtful and senstive articles by gay Notre Dame alumni about their struggles with their sexuality and their faith.

Especially interesting to me was the article "My alternative lifestyle
It's a love that has wings, a countercultural calling that turns restraint into liberation", written by a young man who, in accepting Catholicism, has also embraced celibacy, not merely as a homosexual, but as a sexual being like any other. I'll not try to summarize his eloquence, and let his linked story speak for itself, but I will extract one quote from the article here:

I hesitate to say that God spoke. I heard no words. Yet a thought landed in my mind with all the force of a bomb. "Love," it said, "is not the same as sex." It does not seem so profound in hindsight, but it was a great shock to my teenage self.

In fact, the author's story is echoed in the lives of many early Christians, for whom celibacy was not a burden but a release. In
Elaine Pagels' Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, she says

For many Christains of the first four centuries and ever since, the greatest freedom demanded the greatest renunciation--above all, celibacy. This identification of freedom with celibacy involved a paradox, then as now, for celibacy (to say nothing of fasting and other forms of renunciation) is an extreme form of self-restraint. Yet as Christians saw it, celibacy involved rejection of "the world" of ordinary society and its multitudinous entanglements and was thereby a way to gain control over one's own life.

Now, I'm certainly not trying to promote celibacy as the only acceptable choice for anyone, gay or straight, but it is one way to express one's faith and acceptance that God works through the individual believer's life.
As a heterosexual person, I've come to a point in my life where insisting on seeing myself as a practicing sexual individual would have the potential to inflict emotional harm on myself and others--so, to avoid that potential, I feel I must take the path that seems to offer the greatest good.

And, funny thing, it does feel more like freedom than denial....

So, if I have to come to a point here, I think what I've been learning lately is that sexual orientation is a completely secondary issue. One's practice of sexuality is what's important. I've done greater harm in some of my heterosexual relationships than some gays that I've known have done in their committed, monogamous, loving relationships, because they knew what love was when they begain. That, my dear friends, after a half century of life, is what I'm just beginning to learn.

God bless us all in our various paths.

[Sacredstar]

Dear Bluejayway

Bless you, your post moved me....

Dear All

My two pennies......making love is meant to be a sacred experience and celebration of love and life, not an after dinner mint!

The difference between lust and love.

Behold you are the temple of GOD, our bodies are the temples to be honoured and cherished.

Making love is a wonderful gift from GOD to ALL human beings !

But how many people treat it like a sweet instead of the banquet that it is meant to be?

Making love to GOD's creation is the way it was created to be.

GOD is not the church, GOD is not religion, GOD is part of US, our divinity.

GOD is in our hearts.........and our love can be there too!

Love beyond measure one and all

unconditionally

Sacredstar

[Sacredstar]

Aristophanes, speaking in Plato's Symposium says

"Original human nature was not like the present, but different. The sexes were not two, as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman and a union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which once had a real existence, but is now lost, and the word "Androgynous" is preserved only as a term of reproach".