Choices

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Bad example. A man who is attracted to the wife of another can wait his condition out. It's temporal.

You want that gay people do not respond to the attraction to another person their whole lifes. You want them to act against their nature, which can be harmful to them.

 

That's not entirely true. What if one of these people was your wife, and she wanted to have sex with someone besides you? That would be none of your business? Or what if you have a teenaged daugter (who is say, 16 and therefore can consent) who wants to date and have sex with a 40 year old? That's none of your business?

Not a great comparison, because in the case of a gay person, you are saying ALL of their potential partners are forbidden. Yes, you are expected not to chase another man's wife, but there are other, unmarried women who you could court. A more correct analogy would be comparing someone who is gay to someone who lives in an area where all the women are already married, so there would be no potential partners available.

 

And both of you are still assuming that homosexuality is natural and not an issue of choice.

 

NOG, have you read anything I wrote? I specifically stated that it definitely is a choice who you invite into your bed. I only said that the initial stage of attraction is not a choice. Please, tell me what married couple you know that "decided" to fall in love with each other.

 

@NOG: Homosexual attraction is not an issue of choice. Homosexual behaviour is an issue of choice. Growing up as the son of a Catholic music minister, I knew several priests a lot better than most people do. I know of two who considered themselves Gay. They were both virgins. Nevertheless, they were attracted to men. They were not attracted to women. That they never acted on it is a reflection of their choice. That they never acted on their impulses, however, doesn't change the fact that those men were gay. In fact, one of them became a priest because he was gay. Hiding behind the cloth is commonly done by those of extremely devout faith but "deviant" sexuality. My (long winded) point is that you don't need to have gay sex to be gay. You just have to be sexually attracted to members of your own gender instead of members of the opposite gender.

 

Which I think sums it up nicely.

And as the creator of this thread I must say that I think we are now going in circles and just beating or

No agreement will be reached.

 

You are assuming that the nextr person that they will be attracted to will also be of the same gender. Can they not find themselves attracted to someone of the opposite gender? The bottom line is that if a person can suppress one attraction then why can't they suppress another?

But I have always advocated that. From the premise that homosexual relations are the same sin as adultery, just as I would be expected to resist the temptation to sleep with another man's wife, I would also be required to resist the temptation to have sex with another guy.

That's the point. Two guys could be expected pursue one of several unmarried women as opposed to pairingf off with each other.

Yes, but it only gets lip service in this thread. I am arguing that they can still choose to seek partners of the opposite gender.

Hiding behind the cloth or seeking God's help to deal with a seemingly unbearable temptation?

As long as some perspectives are automatically discarded, then no.

 

Hokay, I refuse to beat my head against a wall so the following is primarily for my own clarification of thinking.

1) If who we are attracted to is a matter of choice and not something innate then we are bi-sexual. To put it another way we are sexual beings who decide at some point in our lives who or what we wish to have sex with.

I have a problem with that simply based on purely personal experience. I know that I am attracted to a certain physical type of person. I am not aware of any choice. I am simply not attracted to blue-eyed, pale skinned, blonds. I may like them. They may be friends but that is it.

2) I know of a few cases of homosexuals who married someone of the opposite gender and the marriage ended in rather a bit of a disaster for the whole family. Repression is not healthy.

3) If on one day someone can be attracted to a woman and the next to a man I believe that is called bi-sexuality. But here again I feel that love is getting lost in all this sex.

4)Yes, the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin. I do not disagree that it says that and if one believes the Bible to be the unadulterated Word Of God that is that. No argument there.

However, if one does not believe that then there are other options and other valid points of view.

5)Further more even if one accepts the Bible as the Alpha and Omega I still see no reason why Gays should be discriminated against. That I freely admit is not comprehensible to me. The impression I get is that people are afraid of them.

6)Reminds me of the good old days of black discrimination. "If we give them equal rights they will seduce and even marry our daughters." In this case it was always the daughters that people worried about.

With Gays it is primarily the sons people worry about. Makes me wonder why. Too many random, babbling thoughts going through my mind now.

 

No. This is what I'm trying to explain to you.
Homosexuals are no bisexuals, who have both genders to choose from.

Unwanted life-long abstinence? That's inhuman.

 

Evidently, I failed miserably to make my point. I'll try again. I have been in romantic relationships with many women prior to getting married. At no point did I "decide" to be attracted to any of them. That part of it is spontaneous. So, I do not think someone who is gay would ever be attracted to someone of the opposite gender, just like I don't think I would ever be attracted someone of the same gender. If you could decide who you were attracted to, then no one would be gay, simply because no one would ever decide to select a lifestyle that was stagmatized by a large segment of society.

Now the decision to act upon an attraction is definitely your choice. It's one thing if based upon your religious beliefs you are against people having gay sex. It is entirely another thing to be opposed to the existence of gays, becasue they didn't decide to become gay in the first place. It seems like if you just say that a gay man "should just find a woman", it seems you are going exactly opposite of the cliche of "hate the sin love the sinner". It seems like you actually just dislike gays.

 

Exactly, we decide. It is a choice.

It's a matter of taste. Some people are more tempting than others, but the decision to have sex is still a decision. That's been my point.

I've always been taught that marriage took work. If one partner didn't want to put the effort into it, then that's the problem, not the temptations faced by a particular member of the union...

I remember a part in a psychology class that said that we may already be partly bi-sexual by your definition. It is just who we choose to pursue relations with that defines our sexuality.

No matter the version, I believe that you will always find homosexuality forbidden.

Most points of view hold some merit, but the problem comes in the parts rejected or seen as lacking.

First off, Marriage is taught as sacred. It is as much of an offence to us as wiping your backside with a nation's flag would be to the residents who are happy as members of said nation. It invokes similar rage as expressed over the cartoons depicting Mohammed in a comprimisingf position.

Secondly, the raising of Children in righteousness is a sacred responsibility. By this, we expect to hold those that we would give children to would hold up a good moral example. Greivous sins such as this would, on spiritual grounds, disqualify them.

Not fear, but distaste. I do not watch pornography, nor do I inquire about the sex lives others, therefore I don't want to know about their sex life either. Where people insist on putting that in my face, it offends me. With TV, I can change the channel. In real life, there is no magic remote.

But blacks didn't choose to be blacks. If they chose to pursue a white woman, that was their decision. But having black skin was not a sin. Neither is being tempted to sexual relations with someone of your own gender. The sin comes from acting on that sin...

But what you are forgetting about the religious perspective is the grace of God. We are given priesthood leaders, versed in the wisdom that the Lord offers us, and the Spirit of God ready to those who faithfully seek him out to overcome temptation in their lives. The Lord intends man to marry woman. The Lord will help those who come to Him for help.

It is that hatred of the sin that I am addressing. The sinner needs help to overcome the temptation. It is the act of the sin that I hate. I am advocating resisting that sin.

I don't like the prevailing attitude that same sex relations (the sexual actions themselves) are acceptable. They are greivous sins. It is the sin itself that I don't like.

I long for the old days where that was the case, but now, it seems that people's sexual activities are deemed to be important public information...

 

Oh but it was a sin. Prejudice against Blacks was justified by the Bible. See Genesis and Ham.

Please remember that I was alive in the 40's & 50's. I remember it well. I was stonewalled when I question the righteousness of the prejudice and mistreatment of Blacks. Given flimsy reasons and told that the Bible said so!

Ask a Black who was alive then what it was like.

 

Maybe the fact that I'm not that old may have something to dop with that. I thought that we are judged by our own sins, not anyone else's. If Ham sinned and his skin was made dark, that was his own sin, and his decendents should not be punished for it. What his decendants would be punished for would be carrying on any sins that they were taught to carry on...

 

That, my friend, is not what the bible said. Ham's decendents were punished for the sins of Ham. Read the section where Noah cursed him and his descendants for the "sin" of covering him up when he was passed out drunk and naked.

 

That does not change the fact that unwanted life-long sexual abstinence is inhuman.

 

My point is that discrimination against the Blacks was justified by the Bible. It bothered me greatly when I was young and I brought it up to so called religious experts, ministers and priests. The best I got was waffling, the worst support of the discrimination.

To be fair God did not curse Ham and his descendants and what Noah said was that Hams children would be servants to his brothers children. The majority of Christian Churches (including the Later Day Saints) accepted this as justifying the mistreatment of Blacks.

I realize that there is a difference here from what you are saying about homosexual acts but; and it is to me a big but; we should take care in how we interpret things.

Homosexuals have been beaten, killed, refused employment or advancement simply because of their sexual orientation and did not matter whether they were sexually active or not. If it was known or even suspected they suffered. In fact people who were not homosexual but perceived to be suffered.

It is my belief that Jesus would tell us to walk softly and not be judgemental.

What a church chooses to do in proven cases is that church's business but what society does is mine. Rhetoric which encourages people in general to mistreat others gets no sympathy from me. I have seen too much of the damage it can do.

I am quite serious when I say that I have had friends and relatives suffer physically, mentally and economically because people feel they are justified by things such as quoting the Bible.

I am convinced that homosexual orientation is not a choice. To me suggesting or demanding that they marry someone of the opposite gender is mind boggling. Expecting someone to remain celibate for their entire life not out of choice but because they are sinners is ridiculous. If a homosexual is a Mormon, Jehovah Witness or any other religion which forbids the act then they have to learn to deal with it. Someone who is not a member of one of those groups is not bound by their moral code and should be free to choose what is right for them as long as it does no harm to others. Nor should they have to hide in some closet because someone finds them offensive. Nor should they have to lie about it pretending to be something they are not.

I am not asking anyone to accept them into their houses, their life or their church. Just give them the right to live their own life. I do not wish to get off onto the question of marriage. That has been discussed elsewhere.

We are, as far as I am concerned, at an impasse. People have different opinions and viewpoints and they have been stated. Personally I think it is time to drop the subject and move on to other things but I can continue as long as anyone wants to beat the subject.

 

Nakia, I have to say that I admire you. Not only are you very eloquent in saying what you mean, but in a time (i.e. 40's 50's) where blacks were discriminated against, you questioned that and fought (not necessarily physically, I don't know, but you fought the norm) against that prejudice.

Now, onto my horse beating:

Erm... Marriage does take work. Being homosexual does not mean that you work any less in a relationship that a heterosexual would. In fact, they would probably work harder if they wanted to cover it up...

 

Not to mention that marriages in which one spouse is not sexually attracted to the other tend to break up......people need to feel wanted as well as loved.

 

Saber, I thank you. Unfortunately I was not in a position to do as much as I would have liked; having joined an Episcopal Teaching Order in 1960 that was not as questioning as I was.

Back on topic; which is whether Homosexuality is a choice or not a choice.

I believe that there is some confusion between attraction and the actual physical act. Now the following may sound a bit flip but I am serious.
I think Tom Selleck has (or least had) the most gorgeous, attractive, turn-me-on legs I have ever seen on a man. Even without the pheromones I am attracted to those legs but that doesn't mean that if I could I would have sex with Tom Selleck because of his legs.

Being attracted to someone does not mean that you will or have to act on it. I have no argument with that line of thought. Were I draw the line is at saying that someone has to do it my way or else. This is what breeds hatred and discrimination.

After all I know I am right...er I believe I am right.

(bit of humor meant there).

[ April 22, 2006, 01:48: Message edited by: Nakia ]