Saints LB Scott Fujita endorses gay marriage(*MERGED*) (1 Viewer)

[Geldo]

Calling gay people 'disgusting' and claiming they are the evil heralds of the end of the world is ok. Its religion. Its different.

I have a frank confession to make here. I used to be a Christian and I'm ashamed to say for many years I thought gay people were 'disgusting'. My views were reinforced in bible classes where fellow Christians would condemn gays - and often with a lot of judgmental anger.

Even though I knew a few gay people and liked them personally, I was prejudiced against them and considered them unrepentant sinners. But one day one of my colleagues died of a brain haemorrhage. He was gay and he died while having sex with his boyfriend, so there was clearly no last minute conversion.

This man loved the human race. He cared for everyone he worked with. When we were down he lifted our spirits. He knew everyone's life story, problems, issues and prejudices and he never let anyone's beliefs or opinions of him or his lifestyle stop him being a friend. I was devastated, in all my life I have met few people as kind, inspiring, or fun to be around.

So what could I think? I was told the bible made it clear my friend Dave was bound for Hell...some tried to say well we don't know the mind of God, and we shouldn't judge etc.

It made me reexamine my homophobia, and I abandoned it. Life is tough enough for gay people without bigots like me making it harder for them.

I no longer judge anyone on their sexuality. I try to see all people for what they are not what they look like, what gender or lifestyle they lead.

I am happier for it.

 

[Utah Saints]

To take a more academic tangent on the whole thing, it is obvious that abrahamic religion evolved with the new testament. The old testament did not serve them well, it was incompatible with their current societies. So they took it into the chop shop and made an addition.

This has to happen again if christians want to see their religion survive the coming centuries. Their religion is clearly outdated, at least parts of it, and it needs to evolve again to be compatible with modern, open, tolerant, peaceful societies.

This vitriol and hatred (hate the sin not the sinner is just semantics, spare me) towards homosexuality is a great example of the incompatibility of current christianity with the modern world. The inferior place women are relegated to in their religion is another point of huge imcompatability. These things must be phased out. Whether its by creating a more tolerant, peaceful, intellectual religion, or by it going extinct. Either way.

 

[Galbreath34]

Are you suggesting they need something for the Latter Days?

 

[Utah Saints]

Are you suggesting they need something for the Latter Days?

I really should change this user name. I spent a grand total of two years in utah. Smart move on my part

 

[Sandman]

Don't really want to wallow in a mire where there is nothing more than sabre rattling to be done (the true believers will never be convinced anyway, so it's just venting), but did want to say that while I can see Sandman's point about "set the bar a little higher" or not attacking the Bible itself, it would be nice to see a similar suggestion made the 10,000 times that a sect of one uses the Bible on EE (or SSF Breesus threads) to emphatically claim that someone's soul is in peril or damned to Hell. There's no reason to attack the soul of a fellow poster, whatever you might say to yourself there's no need to type that out.

I agree that anyone that starts resorting to direct proclamations that another poster is "damned to Hell" should set the bar higher themselves. That adds nothing to the discussion in my book.

Religion can be discussed without taking shots at the other posters.

 

[Utah Saints]

At the risk of turning this into Vacation Bible School, Sandman is actually right in that this particular verse is not an attack against homosexuality.

There are a couple of different translations of it but the gist of it is that the Antichrist holds himself above all. Gods, people, chicks...he doesn't give a **** about any of 'em.

Ah ok.

But it clearly states women. Not anything else. Just suspicious to me, an outside observer

edit: Ok Ill concede this point after re-reading the verse.