Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack.Kerr
Maybe there was a time, maybe 50 or even as recently as 30 years ago, when gays and lesbians were forced to live more out of sight, that it would be more understandable (not excusable) for a person who didn’t know any gays or lesbians (or didn’t KNOW that they knew them) to continue to hold negative views about them, particularly if the person holding the views were religious and had been exposed to religious teachings characterizing homosexuality as ‘sinful’. But today? In 2013?
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Holding on to archaic, unjustified, irrational religiously-based tropes in the face of so much evidence about the normalcy and decency of homosexuals is, at best, holding onto a bigoted belief.
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I think the day will eventually come when condemning homosexuals as sinners will carry about as much social weight/stigma as condemning people who divorce as sinners, or condemning single parents as sinners, or condemning people who consume alcohol as sinners. The condemnation will say more about the person doing the condemning than it will about the target.
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Do you propose rewriting the Bible or censoring the Church? Does the government get to dictate what religious teachings are now acceptable and which are forbidden? Or are you hoping everyone outgrows the need for Christ entirely? (There is also the extension into other religions, but I won't speculate on their texts.)
It seems like you pine for a world in which pretty much everyone agrees with your viewpoint. Yet you also acknowledge that, not too long ago, pretty much everyone disagreed with your viewpoint. The past world you view as bigoted and needing to be abandoned; yet, your proposed future is portrayed as somehow idyllic.
Why wouldn't it just be a differently-bigoted world? Perhaps you're okay with that, as I suspect quite a few secretly (or not so secretly) would be. But then it seems odd to complain that those you wish to discriminate against aren't excited to help you build your new world order.
Tolerance is simply a flawed foundation for harmony. You either have to tolerate intolerance (and thus never reach harmony), or you fall short of pure tolerance. And trying to force harmony (even under the guise of tolerance) will inevitably risk authoritarianism; if you want everyone singing the same song, you have to mandate the music sheet or silence the ones who differ.
A final point, which I doubt will go over well based on the previous posts, there used to be a PSA on TV where a person watches from a dock as their friend drowns in the lake. The message was something like true friends don't let their friends suffer without saying/doing something. I think it was about smoking or drugs. True Christians believe that the choices we make in life affect our immortal souls. If we love our neighbors as Christ loves us, we can't silently let them ruin their immortal souls out of what we see as a short-sighted desire to enjoy life; death is a certainty and eternity outlasts 120 years of self-fulfillment. Now the proper language isn't Westboro-ish; that is not loving and likely risks the speaker's soul just as much. But it is also not silence or acceptance of the choice.