“But they are sinners,” I can hear the preachers and politicians say. “They are choosing a life of sin for which they must be punished.” My scientist and medical friends have shared with me a reality that so many gay people have confirmed, I now know it in my heart to be true. No one chooses to be gay. Sexual orientation, like skin color, is another feature of our diversity as a human family.
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I am afraid that even words from Tutu will make little difference. I hope I am wrong.
If more Christians were like this, I’d have significantly less problem with people being religious – I’d still think they’d be wrong, of course, but I’d be less concerned their beliefs would do harm.
But he seems to be a bit dishonest when he suggests that Jesus didn’t instruct to love everyone but the gays. Jesus himself may not have mentioned homosexuality, but the Bible definitely does.
The bible definitely mentions that being gay is bad- somewhere around the same time where it outlines the rules for selling your daughter into slavery and where it damns everyone who eats shellfish.
So an old dog can learn new tricks – sometimes. It’s kind of creepy how so many people seem to be so bent on denying reality that they can’t see there have always been homosexuals – it’s just the way things are.
@Chris Evo: there’s also some condemnation of homosexuality from Paul in the New Testament.
As been said by many discerning readers of any reported teaching by Jesus, he had NO COMMENTS or CONCERN about homosexuality or the concept in that time.
IMHO, The idea of modern homosexuality as being evil was constructed out of OLD TESTAMENT Jewish religious documents mostly for tribal directives like food and clothing to separate tribe’s identification from surrounding arab tribes and to keep the tribe’s population insular and strong. God commanding or declaring anything gay=evil is fantasy fabrications. Sodom and Gomorrah of townspeople attacking Lot wanting ‘to KNOW’ his visitors or who they were, my interpretation, had more to do with perversion represented by social gossip and paranoia into other people’s business. The normal opening of one’s house or tent to travelers in hospitality taken to nearly kidnapping like non-consentual levels. The ‘knowing of strangers’ wasn’t homosexuality but if it was licentiousness sexual akin to forced non-consensual sex was being the required for travelers/visitors to accept to be polite.
If they were destroyed by natural disasters we all know God would have nothing to do with it. If anything like Rome and many ancient towns. people were unsafe with fire, bedding, inflammable and such and probably a mass fire or some outside group purposely caused the fires and then chalked it up to God.
As to saying Paul is any veracity on the meaning of Jesus’ teaching calling homosexuals evil just read the book “The Mythmaker – Paul and the invention of Christianity” by Hyam Maccoby. Paul was steeped in Romman/Greek idolatry and raised in a culture that did accept all sexuality, thus in converting Paul automatically found ways to denounce his old beliefs using Jesus’ and old testament sayings, when Jesus humself flatout said if you were tofollowhim you had to abandon the ‘old ways’ of Judaic laws to find heaven/salvation. Worrying about sexual orientation was not included, in fact one could argue for ALL human sexual abstinence from gleaned New Testament teaching.
Ever since I reading that book, I have realized the so self-defined apostle Paul was a johnny come lately glorifying himself using the burgeoning groups of Jesus’ followers. It was Paul who introduced the Greek, Roman and Zoroastrian messianic iconery onto Jesus’ life and teachings to get the ‘Christianity’ of today which the early followers of Jesus rejected and is the reason for all the letters of Paul trying to persuade and force his views into the groups. Once the Roman government adopted it then the different councils went about purging and rooting out groups having alternative understanding of Jesus’ teachings.
@megan: I’m sure many Christians would be surprised that the Ten Commandments are no longer in effect. It also seems the Bible may not be very clear on whether the OT laws should be followed or not. Most of the references that support your assertion appear to be from Paul, by the way, which you’ve just argued we should ignore.
Makes you wonder why people still bother to include the OT and Paul’s epistles in the Bible. Probably because they’d end up with a rather unimpressive booklet that would no longer support many cherished beliefs.
Another reason I respect Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu is his willingness to be part of research on south African genomes. A recent article in “Nature” about the genetic variance in the oldest known modern human lineage includes Tutu’s sequence.
Tutu is Bantu and is one of five individuals from Khoisan and Bantus lineages to have their complete genomes sequenced. This is relevant for African Americans as well as all population groups to better understand variance that may lead to disease.
What is unusual about Tutu is his willingness to be public (not anonymous)about their part in the study. It is very interesting research that correlates language and location of origin in the Y chromosome.
Take a look at the article titled “Complete Khoisan and Bantu genomes from southern Africa” at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7283/full/nature08795.html
The fact that it is not a choice is irrelevant. That more liberal Christians argue in favour of homosexuality from the fact that it is not a choice shows them and their religion for what it really is: totalitarian. For the implication is that they would feel quite obliged to be homophobic if it was a choice.
Greater people than me have said this better, but if it doesn’t cause any harm, then what’s the problem?
Alex, you beat me to it. Even if homosexuality were a choice, it would be an acceptable choice to make.
Echoing Alex and catgirl, it doesn’t matter whether or not there is a predisposition to straightness, gayness, bisexuality when it comes to morals and rights. Only an imposed morality based on inscripturation and religious authority claims to have the right to decide whether homosexuality is “right” or “wrong.” In a secular society, such thing hold no moral sway (or they shouldn’t,) except in matters of consent. Among adult humans.
The “It’s not a choice” thing is clearly problematic. The reason it works is because a bad thing that is a choice is bad, a bad thing that is not a choice is not as bad. Therefore …. Also, if it is not a choice it still may be curable. And so on.
But this is the rhetoric that is working within the churches these days. Supporting the “it’s not a choice” perspective from the outside might be inappropriate “appeasement” while sort of letting it happen and not going off on it when it happens inside (i.e., not derailing a relatively positive argument because we don’t like some important details) is probably not a bad thing.
This is an excellent area to explore the whole appeasement and framing discussion.
Oh dear, he said the F-word…