God is not a homophobe and neither am I

This blog is in response to Andy Gipson’s disturbingly ignorant, hateful and bigoted Facebook post yesterday you can read about here: Read his remarks here. Whether you want to read it or not, this stands on it’s on as these are my beliefs about homosexuals and marriage equality.

Oh and two points: 1) yes, I was pissed when I wrote this. I’ve read back through it after I calmed down and it all still stands. Even Jesus got angry. Some of it is tongue-in-cheek and sarcastic. If you don’t have a sense of humor, I don’t know why you’re even reading my blog. 2) Before I even get comments saying that I’m going to hell for furthering the gay agenda or that I’m a closet case for even standing up for “the gays” or that I probably am spreading diseases like they are (Andy Gipson’s comment, not mine), please know that your comments will have to be APPROVED by moi in order to show up on here. Unless you’re spreading peace, love and happiness, it ain’t getting approved and will be deleted. But you can think I’m a closet case if you want. That only makes me more interesting. Neener.

If you like the photo above, it’s a wallpaper: Git it.

This is amazingly simple to me. Jesus ate with sinners, publicans, prostitutes, tax collectors, outcasts… the people the Jews and Pharisees shunned. He did this to practice what he was preaching. The “love your neighbor as yourself” part.

There is a mention or two in the old testament about homosexuals but I’m not even going there because if we were still following old testament law, we would be all be writing a scroll of the Torah for ourselves (Duet 31:19), putting tzitzit on the corners of clothing (Num 15:38), stoning only the female adulterers (what about the men??) (Num 5:30), marrying our husband’s brothers if our husband dies without giving us children (Deut 25:5), not castrating the male of any species (Lev 22:24), not eating things that swim in water (Lev 11:43 and 46), not boiling meat with milk (Ex 23:19) or eating flesh with milk (Ex 34:26), not borrowing anything on interest (Duet 23:30), not getting any tattoos (Lev 19:28), not sowing different kinds of seeds in one field (Lev 19:19), not wearing clothes with wool and linen mixed ( Deut 22:11), sacrificing lambs and cattle and every other sort of thing as burnt offerings (basically the entire book of Leviticus) and I’m not even going to mention all of the things we’re supposed to be doing and not doing on the Sabbath or the pillaging and burning of cities if we want to.

Let’s boil it down to the three verses everybody always mentions since every one can mostly agree that we are not bound by old testament law anymore. The ones attributed to Paul.

Side note: The fact that James, Peter, John or Jude never mentions anything about homosexuals in the new testament doesn’t seem to matter to those who like to use Paul’s verses to condemn their neighbors to hell. Jesus never mentions homosexuals. Seems like if they were going to muck up the works and make everybody “stumble” in their “Christian paths”, he would’ve said SOMETHING, right? Yet, not one word. Anyway.

Romans 1:26-27 – Idolatry, folks. Temple prostitution and pagan worship in the temple. These are unnatural acts which Paul mentions over and over again. Warns early Christians about it in his letters. Idolatry. Temple prostitution. Pagan worship.

Corinthians 1 6:9-10 and Timothy 1 1:9-10 – he uses the Greek word Arsenokoitēs. I’m gonna tell you right now straight up that nobody knows what the crap this word means. Exact translation is impossible because Paul is the ONLY person in the bible who uses this word. The people who are making a case for hating gay people say that he is drawing from the Greek translation of an old testament scripture (we’re back to the old testament again, notice a theme?) kai meta arsenos ou koimēthēsē koitēn gunaikos. bdelugma gar estin "And you shall not have sexual intercourse with a male as with a female. For it is unclean." (Lev. 18:22) Some people are saying those two words rammed together like that means homosexual prostitution or homosexual rape. Again with the idolatry, temple prostitution and pagan worship. Some people who are making a case that Paul is a homophobe seems pretty legit since he’s making up new words about sex that nobody even knows what they mean when everybody else was content to use the old words. The people that are looking at the big picture are saying, “Who knows?” Because we don’t. We have no idea what arsenokoites means and we have no idea exactly what Paul meant when he used it. I choose to err on the side of love which is what I’m supposed to be doing as a Christian.

Oh, and don’t give me that “love the sinner, hate the sin” mess, either. Stripping people of civil rights because you’re uncomfortable with who they live with isn’t loving the sinner. That’s trying to cram your beliefs down somebody else’s throat when religion has no business in the government in the first place. Period. Our constitution says all men are created equal. If you don’t have equal rights, you certainly don’t feel equal, do you?

What we do know is that, whether you’re up on your science research or not, sexual orientation is not a choice. Believe me, if all of the gay people of the world could choose not to like who they like, they’d choose it to not be bullied, stripped of their rights, hated, scorned and sometimes even killed. I am bland, ordinary and straight but I’ve got news for you folks, sexual orientation is biological. I don’t remember ever thinking, “Hmmmm… I think I will be straight when I grow up. I think I’m going to like boys!”, and I know none of you straight bigots out there did that either. Research has proven biology makes the choice for you just like with everybody else. It has nothing to do with who you grew up with and everything to do with things you can’t control. I’m not citing research sources because there are too many to name and you can Google them your own lazy self. Do some research. Get educated (I seem to be saying this a lot… is it because I live in Mississippi??). Stop being sheep and using the bible to hate people with whom you are uncomfortable.

Some form of the word love appears 1,139 times in the bible. That kinda makes me think it’s the central theme. The majority of us ain’t doing it.