I'm going to disagree with you there bABA, mostly because physical habits are not moral or imoral per se, just the situation around them assigns that. an example...lets say man grow facial hair, and it marks a person reaching a certain stage of development. Now in one culture there are great "rights of passage" and cermonies associated with facial hair first growing in. I dunno, boys are now officially men, so need to chop a tree down or something. But what does it mean to have facial hair in a culture that disdains all hair, and uses depilatory creams from day one? It means something completely different, in fact, it might not even be noticeable when it happens, because every morning everyone (man and woman) use depilatory creams on their face. This culture can no longer look to facial hair to seperate the men from the boys, or the boys from the girls. No doubt they'll place their "rights of passage" on a different physical characteristic or habit.

Looking at documents both visual and written, and knowing oral histories, homosexuality has always existed. That means nothing in itself just like facial hair doesn't. Its what we assign to it. In earlier cultures it was not looked down upon, and the monotheistic religions did the opposite in order to develop habits that distinguished themselves from other people. That is it. They did it with so many things, all of Leviticus and Dueteromny have codes of habit that speak to my aboce facial hair scenario. Its just time we get over it and realize if we have found ways to justify breaking every freaking one of the ten commandments by now, I'm sure we can find ways to handle this in a more respectful and mature way as well. Its in our hands, its not difinitive.

Well I'll be!!

thats all well and good but i only made mention of unnaturalness or abnormality of cetain actions or traits .. i never once mentioned anything related to morality at all. if you think that was the implication, it wasn't ... i had this conversation with dar once ... something not being normal does not make it moral or immoral .. it just makes it ... not normal .. and thats just how it is .... if its bad, good, a problem, a disease, super human traits, sexy, boring or whatever is an entirely different matter

Normalcy is a contruction like anything else. Inter-family marriages used to be normal when culture needed to maintain family wealth. 13 year old women marrying 40 year old men used to be normal too, jst ask Jeanne d'Evraux. Sorry, I miss understood you, but most discussions around "normalcy" have moral implications and some pretty bad repercussions...just ask the Nazis. And if we are going to remove moral word play from this, then its not normal to marry for life. Barring the trumpeter swan, no other animal does that so how is it normal? and homosexual tendencies have been found in almost everyother animal (and some would even argue plant) lifeforms, so how is that unnatural?

That still doesn't hold water...you need to give me a reason why you would consider it unnatural or not normal. Chances are those arguements are the above mentioned culturally assigned markers for normalcy, just like facial hair indiciating maturation.

tehn i guess we're using different definations ...

what you're describing is normal in terms of culture and stuff which i dont wish to concentrate on at all as people defined "normal" events are subjective and hence, can never be absolute.....

for me, normality is how nature might be expected to work ...... i guess thats a terrible way of putting it but sigh ...
nature leans towards making us right handeded, giving us 2 eyes, having our legs approximately the same size, or making us look chinese if we ancestry is chinese and we DO live in china ..... there are exceptions to each rule ... sometimes, lots of exceptions but dwarved in the presence of how things in some ways are "meant" (but again, the word meant is a wrong choice for a word). Theres nothing wrong with being left handed .... again, its just how something is .. in some cases, there is a problem with nature screwing up (twins born joined at the hips) ....... but none of it in anyway defines whats morally right or morally wrong.

So thats my defination of something being natural or something being normal .. hope that helps ..... i guess in some ways, it could also be applied to culture and society but again, there are no morals attached to them. popularly, people i know calculate the time to pakistan (the ones i'm around) by calculating 10 hours back .... i just add 2 hours more and cange the am to pm if required ... my method is not normal but meh .. its better ... ofcourse, because culture and societies change, all this is subjective and my method might become what everyone conforms to ...

but for the sake of this argument, i wish to deal with things that aren't defined by society or culture or people.

Dolce, I look at it like this. There are things that are socially acceptable, and things that aren't. It wouldn't be socially acceptable to go to the mall nude. It wouldn't be socially acceptable to smoke in the mall. It wouldn't be socially acceptable to say fuck every other word, regardless of who would be offended. It wouldn't be socially acceptable to start trying to start preaching about Jesus in front of mall shoppers. There are also those who would be offended by homosexual acts being displayed in front of their children. Whether you, I, or anybody else likes it, gay is nowhere near as socially accepted as strait is. If everybody that did things that weren't socially acceptable to many, decided to do them anyway (and yes, gays are well aware of their position in this regard, so ARE proving a point, because it's very much a conscious display, unless they are really stupid about how the world works and thinks), then we'd have a complete breakdown of the social structure.

On to your second point. Bi-sexuals are fake in many cases. It's really doubtful that they tell their sexual partner that they are sexually active with both girls and guys, and that's something I don't respect. Would it be any different from a married guy/girl taking his ring off to pass as a single guy/girl? I see bi-sexuals as personalities that aren't reliable, so they really don't qualify where my comments were concerned .

There is some wisdom in what maverikk said .. difficult to digest or to accept but yes ....

This thread took a drastic turn for the worst. The opinons here are totally absurdly right wing. Bisexual people have it made - they get to enjoy two very different things that appeal to them.

Why cant everyone just accept each others choice of lifestyle? Its so juvenile that so many people are still racist, still homophobic and still anti-semetic. I don't understand why society can't just accept peoples opinons of each other and move on. Unless its personally offensive or intrusive to your own lifestyle - i just think lack of acceptance is a barrier of the mind that makes a person seem backwards.

At the core of it, homosexual men are still men, they are still human beings, jaunts and jives about their choices in life would hurt them more than casual putdowns about their career or way of living, because being a homosexual dosent seem to be an option for most men, its just a compulsion. 40 years ago most homosexual men were closeted, now there are far less homosexuals closeted because society is alot more accepting - but there are probobly still many men who don't want to accept their homosexuality because of the mindsets of some people.

Flamboyantly gay people clearly aren't flaymboyant because they want to be - they are because thats who they are; and no one should have to supress who they are if they dont want to. Especially not a group of people who down other peoples way of living without much reasoning apart from the idea that sexual intercourse between the two is not appealing to them.

Mav - do you have any bisexual friends? If not how can you judge the group as unreliable and fake? Thats like me calling Afghans terrorists and dictators without knowing any....

Hell i think the way that turtles lay eggs is totally gross, but i dont single out turtles for doing it now do i ?

What? The whole point of having these conversations is to try and slowly altar what people do or don't find acceptable behavior in a mall. You know it used to be acceptable behavior to own slaves at one point as well right? Thank God someone who was mildly less concerned with maintaining the staus-quo got around to trying to criticize that ideal around a bit. Just because something has always been doesn't mean it should always be! If you call the Emancipation a complete breakdown of social structure than so be it, I'll take that break down any day.

In regards to your second point, I highly doubt you are paying attention to any of your friends that might be bi-sexual if they are trying to let you know, furthermore, I doubt they'd come out to you with such blanket statements about how fake they are in the first place. How do you know what they do or don't tell their sexual partners? And furthermore, why do you care? That's for them to work out, and hey, almost every freaking couple in the world sleeps outside of their relationship, so lets not restrict the cheating to bi-sexuals when it clearly involves over 50% of married couples today (and even more of dating ones). Youu mean to tell me hetero men and women reveal every affair they have to their partners? That's an excellent joke.

*Sigh* There is so much wrong with that post...including the fact that just because you find somehting annoying people should have to stop doing it? I might find you posting stupid thoughts in here sannoying, but I'm not gonna try to stop you from doing it.


But, what I really want to adress, froma n earlier post which you probably didn't read:


Sexual intercourse during a women's menstrual cycle
Tattoos
Wearing certain types jewelry
Eating rare meat
Wearing clothing made from a blended textiles (cotton-polyester blends)
Cross-breeding livestock
Sowing a field with mixed seed
Eating or touching the dead flesh of pigs, rabbits, & some forms of seafood
Men cutting their hair or shaving their beards
The Holiness Code also endorses polygamy and requires Saturday to be reserved as the Sabbath. Obviously, it is unfair to use these passages to condemn homosexuality, while ignoring the fact that most Christians

Is doing the above a sin too, since you believe everything the Bible says?

In regards to your first paragraph:

but i think thats the point maverikk is trying to make ... society plays an important role in whats right or wrong .. and creating changes could potentially lead to a complete breakdown of any structure whatsoever ....

I put up a comment some time ago about incestua relationships .. forget direct blood but cousins ... many here had an issue with it and wouldn't even consider allowing it .... and a major argument was that there are certain things in society that shouldn't be changed ... point being .. who decides whats allowed and whats not ....

This whole thread is, well...you know what I mean.

As a matter of fact, it is a sin in Christian views. Since, however, most homosexuals are not religious I don't think they should be offended by that considering this is not a sin in their mind. I think you can't prove the homosexuality being wrong to anyone by refering to the Bible because you can't prove something to someone if that person doesn't even believe in the basis of your arguments (the Bible, that is) As for the personal level, well, I do think it is a sin. Then again, lying is a sin too and who of us has never lied before? I doubt anyone will say a honest "yes" to that one. So would it prevent me, a Christian, from being friends with someone who lies because it is a sin? No, it wouldn't. Since all sins are equal in God's eyes why would I be a friend with a liar, but not with a homosexual? No reason for me not to be. I'll be honest, the society I come from and the environment is, well, not exactly gay-friendly. I must say that BOM has immensly helped me to becaome more tolerant toward homosexuals and I am glad it did. I think it was the first time ever that I was at a place with so many homosexual people (actually probably the first time I was at a place with more than one homosexual admitting to being one) I am glad to be friends with posters like Zach or Rod or the very missed Timmie and I certainly do not regret knowing them. I think they are cool guys and while I may disagree with some things they do, I certainly tolerate it because it is their choice and none of my business. I don't think that sexual tendencies of a person would make me be friends with this person any less (I'd make an exception for child molesters, though...). If the guys I've mentioned above were straight I would not like them any more or less than I already do now and I do like them quite a bit So to sum it up, no matter if one considers it a sin or not, I see no reason why you should not be good friends with those people considering that we all are sinners.

Just my 2 cents...

hear hear ...

for krem
here here.

I have no friends that are bi-sexual. Have a gay friend. My friends and I talk, believe it or not. I have the same friends that I've had since I was a freshman in high school. We are very open with eachother.

Why do I care? I only care when it involves men who sleep with men, sleeping with women that I might sleep with, that's why.

Clearly involves 50% of married couples? What internet poll did you get your "facts" from?

I think common sense would definitely be on my side, that a much larger percentage of bi-sexuals, especially the men, don't tell their strait female partners that they take it in the ass and suck other men off willingly. I would think that this never comes up during any pillow talk sessions. I didn't restrict anything to bi-sexuals, as I clearly made the married guy/girl taking off their ring and pretending they are single comparison. Statistically speaking, though, I'll guarantee the bi-sexuals are very much in the lead in misleading their sexual partners who probably wouldn't have sex with them if they knew the truth. A wedding ring doesn't matter to a whore, but a sexual preference very well could.

Definitely, there are some things that society needs to dictate. If gays should be free and liberal to do what they please, no matter who is offended, then what's to stop the harmless masturbaters from displaying their own public fondling, and so on...

There are some things that should be done in private, just to avoid offending people. Preaching about Jesus is another thing.

even if its 50%, i'm sure the 50% does not hold true across all countries and societies ....

Sorry to come to this discussion late, but since no one here seems to have CORRECTLY presented what is the REAL fundamentalist Christian view on the subject, I will address it now:

1. The Christian view that homosexuality is a sin comes from multiple references in the bible - not just one. Genesis 19 does refer to homosexual acts AS WELL AS others. While the terms may be translated in many ways, the context makes clear that among the proposed acts of the citizens of Sodom IS sex between men, to read other wise is wishful thinking. The Levictical rules (ALL OF THEM) were designed specifically for the nation of Israel (not just the priests, but all Hebrews). The rules were established as interpreted by Moses upon hearing from God (at the request of the people BTW, who did not want to speak directly with God - an early representative government as it were). The rules were for a specific people in a specific time in their history - specifically following more than 400 years of living as slaves. The rules were strict and instituted among a people to establish a pattern of responsible behavior for persons who had no clue what self-rule was. These rules were harsh because for the nation of Israel to survive in its new land, strict and narrow parameters of lifestyle were necessary (kind of like frontier living in early America) to keep everyone together.

But primarily, Christians (New Testament believers) still believe homosexuality is a sin because of New Testament writings, not Old Testament ones. Romans 1:26-27 read as follows: "For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet." Also 1 Timothy 1: 9-10 "Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;. And finally, 1 Corinthians 6:9 "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

So when people here start dissecting the story of Sodom and Gomarrah or the Levitical lies, they are either ignorant of the rest of the Bible and just spewing gay propaganda without checking it out or they are part of that misinformation network.

2. Homosexuality is a sin according to the bible: Old Testament AND New Testaments. Christian don't follow all the Levitical laws because Christians are NOT under the law. Jesus came to FULFILL the law, so that believers (Jews and Gentiles) would no longer be subject to the condemnation of the law (see Jesus and about a fourth of the New Testament in which Paul explains this over AND over again, but people still don't get it). People get hung up on homosexuality. Why? I'll explain later. But clearly it is simple one sin among many others, including adultery and idolatry, fornicators (that's sex outside of marriage in ANY form), murderers (duh!), liars (whoops, just bunched a large group of folks with homosexuals didn't I? There are a lot of sins out there that can lead people away from "sound doctrine" and homosexuality is just one of them. Paul mentioned it in Romans because homosexuality was a fairly pervasive cultural phenomenon in Rome at the time he was writing to Christians there. It is written about in Timothy because Paul is instructing the young church builder Timothy in making sure that churches have good solid basis for belief, that they have the fundamentals. And Corinthians, well, it seemed that church was always going astray and needing correcting. He had to write to them twice that we know of.

3. So why the emphasis on homosexuality? The reason is that the Christian fundamentalist are REACTING to what the homosexual movement has done. Christians are acting defensively - not offensively. The danger for Christians in the acceptance, approval and endorsement of homosexuality into normal everday culture is NOT about hating homosexuals ... it is about the rejection of Biblical truth in society and as a dangerous step by society in turning away from a fundamental belief in the Judeo-Christian ethic. It represents a fundamental shift in cultural norms and the basis for morality in Western culture. Some people have become fixated on the "homosexual problem" BECAUSE the homosexuals have made it the issue it is - by identifying themselves as homosexual above everything else. That being homosexual is the end all and be all of their existence, and "that's not enough but the rest of the world has to accept us and like us and say 'Its great that you're gay!' " Well, a Christian is not going to turn away from the beliefs they have and accept something they believe to be destructive to the family, harmful to the individual and dishonors the God of the Universe whom they profess to love and worship. A Christian sees people saying "Hooray for gay people," and hear something akin to "Hooray for alcoholics, let's have a parade celebrating alcoholics!" For most fundamental Christians see homosexuality as a sin habit and addiction, like alcoholism.

4. True Christians don't hate homosexuals. They hate homosexuality. They don't see homosexuals as ESPECIALLY deserving of Hell. True Christians understand that the bible teaches that "ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." If not for the redemption of Jesus Christ at the cross and His subsequent resurrection, ALL of us have some kind of sin in our lives that would keep us from reaching the perfection that God's Holiness requires. THAT was the whole point of the law - to show Israel that they needed God's mercy. They couldn't keep the law, that was the point. Is homosexuality worse than another sin? How bad does a sin have to be to send you to Hell? Well, they all will. But the point of emphasis is made on homosexuality (and other sins that are mentioned specifically and often) in the Bible - I think - because societies throughout history have attempted to "normalize" or "justify" certain acts as not sin, when God has clearly said they are. Things like idolotry, drunkedness, lying, adultery, fornication, (basically any sex outside marriage) and, yes, homosexuality are mentioned often because so many cultures over the centuries have normalized things that God has strictly said are outside His will for our lives.

Well, that's all I have to say about that. I now return you to the disinformation of the rest of participants in this forum.

](*,)

haha ... gay propaganda .... priceless ...

It's a fucking book! A book!

Doesn't anyone else find that a little ridiculous?! Who gives a shit, honestly?

Damn. Can't believe I missed this one. Very, very interesting read.....

. . . . .

I give a shit because i believe in that fucking book.

Good night.

he was talking about Harry Potter man