No, you see, all this "gay is evil" stuff is not even an official part of Christianity to begin - Leviticus was annulled.
Really? I must have missed the memo from God withdrawing his incontrovertible word...
OK, it's not true that Jesus is supposed to have "cancelled" the law. First of all, the law was never supposed to apply to non-Jews. At first, Christianity was a Jewish sect, but they decided pretty quickly that non-Jews who became Christians didn't have to follow the Law, and this was hammered home by some revelation somebody had where all food was declared clean.
But Jesus didn't "annul" the laws. Read your bible (and preferably, know your history) before you just throw stuff out there. He even says at one point "I came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it" (not the correct words, but that's the gist). Of course, he does this by apparently flouting the law (violating Shabbat, hanging out with unclean people and Samaritans and social rejects, proclaiming himself to be God, etc). But at no point does he "annul" the Jewish laws.
Also, on Jewish laws: the rationalizations about them being things that made sense at the time are all flimsy. Basically, they're just traditions to enforce in-group mentality and, according to some, keep Jews from associating with other cultures over food, which is one of the most universal forms of human bonding. If it served the people in charge of the Israelites to keep them as separate as possible from "the nations" then food and purity restrictions, which made them unclean by even associating with outsiders, would serve the purpose very well. Also, given people's tendency to conflate morality with contamination and moral condemnation with disgust, you have a ready made way for religious commands and food practices to intertwine.
Well, homosexuality is mentioned in the New Testament as being bad too.
This is true, but keep in mind the guy writing wasn't Jesus. Jesus never mentions homosexuality and barely touches on sexual matters, other than to protect an adulteress from being stoned by pointing out that everyone accusing her was also a sinner, and one instance where he talked to a woman who, it's implied, has loose morals (she's had 5 husbands and is living with a man she's not married to) and he just tells her to "go and sin no more" or whatever, but doesn't specifically mention any sexual rules.
IMO everything Paul (and the other writers of the NT letters, all of which are of uncertain authorship) should be taken with a grain of salt, as they don't necessarily represent the teachings of Jesus, rather, they represent the views of that writer in regards to the situation of the person or group they were writing to. Sometimes they even directly contradict the sayings or example of Jesus in the gospels; for example when Paul tells the Roman church to submit to earthly authorities because they are ordained by God, and there's similar advice in another letter...this is, of course, directly contradictory to what Jesus taught.
Of course, when you get to that, the gospels are the same. They were all written by people with agendas too, and in a time when historical accuracy as we know it was second fiddle to building a narrative that proved the points you wanted it to prove. They contradict each other both in terms of narration and chronology, and the nature of Jesus' message (John is most radically different from the others, but all of them vary somewhat) And that's not even to mention the apocryphal gospels that didn't make the cut because the orthodox deciding what to canonize didn't like them...
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Topic: Religious/Catholic influence on politics (In US) (Read 15532 times)