Growing up in the Church

I ask because I grew up in a traditional Southern Baptist church. I love the old hymns we sung and many of the people I met, but I am having issues coming to terms with who I genuinely love.

Please don't use this against me in a "witty" comment.

Did the church provide your family housing because you were needy?

We went to church on Xmas and Easter like most people. Mother liked to show off her new Easter dress every year. Everyone always commented on it. She was so stylish.

I have no idea what the church taught. We weren’t fanatics.

R2 No, growing up my family was upper middle class. I'm needy because my parents were too self involved to care about their kids.

R3 that must be nice. My parents were every Sunday morning people but got drunk every other night of the week like most people.

Me and my little brother were both raped by our Anglican parish priest when we were altar boys. It made it rather more difficult for me to accept being gay, especially because the priest convinced me that my essential wickedness as a young gay kid is what caused him to stray.

We eventually ended up testifying against him in court and sending him to prison, but nobody in the family goes to church anymore. And I’ll probably never stop feeling guilty for just existing in the world, but I work on it every day.

My sister insisted on dressing like a gym teacher once she reached the age of 12 or 13, so Mother stopped taking her out of sheer embarrassment. She also turned into quite a little porker around that time and resisted all attempts to put her on a diet.

Mother sent her to a fat farm the summer that she turned 16. Not even that worked. My sister still bitches about it.

I grew up Catholic and got a lot out of the church growing up. For years I tried to reconcile their various views on gay issues with myself. Two things were the final straw. First was realizing how many gay priests there were. Second was members of my parish and priests from the pulpit saying things that weren't along the lines of damn the sinners but if you were gay it didn't make you feel welcome. This was at several different parishes.

I'm sorry both R5, R6, and R7 had to go through such terrible things, Religious zealots are the most broken people

I didn’t go through anything terrible. Unless you count my sister bitching about how mean our wonderful, beautiful mother was.

r9 sounds terrible to me lol

My mother forced us to go. Presbyterian.

At first it was fun in Sunday school, but by the time I was about 9 my sis and I were sitting in the pews with mom. Bored shitless. I was in the choir for a while, bored again, when one Sunday I decided to mouth swear words along with the music. Mom noticed that my mouth did not match the words. She was mad but she didn't get what I was singing. That was about the time I quit the choir and at about 12, refused to go to church altogether. I innocently believed up to that point but when I started thinking about what I was learning it didn't ring true. Mary was a virgin? Jesus died and came alive again? It just seemed ridiculous to me.

Mom grew up in the Baptist church in a small town in the Midwest. The way it was in her childhood as told by her sounded like abuse to me. I think she was afraid to not go because of what people would think if she didn't. She grew up timid fearing the wrath of neighbors and her mean fundamentalist grandma. Later, when she finally relaxed at about age 40, church filled a social need, lady's circles, lunches, stuff like that. She came to enjoy it. Dad went sometimes to please her but he was a man who thought for himself, no preacher was going to tell him how to live. Dad was our example of what a decent person should be. Accepting, generous, always willing to lend a hand.

What I liked best about church were the hymns. Sometimes I go to the Christmas Eve choral services to sing Christmas hymns. And in spite of my blasphemous self, the experience is spiritually fulfilling.

R3 / R6

Did your fat sister eventually give birth to a bunch of ungrateful nieces who don’t appreciate the finer things?

R11, why did your mother make you go to a Presbyterian church if she was raised Baptist?

[quote]How did you come to terms with you homosexuality vs what the Church taught? Versus what your parents taught?

[quote]OP / R1: but I am having issues coming to terms with who I genuinely love.

Is that because you persist in believing what you think the bible teaches about homosexuality, or perhaps because you give credence to what family/church friends have told you it teaches?

It would be healthier for you if you gave up religion/belief in God altogether, but you may not be ready to do that. If that is the case, you should know that there are other interpretations of those passages besides those promoted by conservative Christianity in general and the Southern Baptists in particular.

How old are you, OP?

R13, It was the closest Protestant church to our house. The Baptist was farther way and she was over it, thank God.

our temple was tiny, considered dated by the larger community, and on the verge of collapse, they couldn't secure a rabbi that reflected our community after ours passed, and most of the members were elderly, too. . . which quite frankly were a lot more tolerant than people half their age but it's not like they were lining up for pride parades either.

^ so, the home 'temple' just wasn't as political as some of the larger synagogues were at the time, and wasn't as much of a conflict.

R14 I am in my mid 20's. how old are you?

I was raised catholic but mass bored me out of my skull. I hated it because of the droning and tedium. I was never conflicted because by the time I realized I was gay I had put it far behind me. I don't even know what it means to be spiritual. Good sex, food and music. For me there's nothing beyond that.

R18, I am 58, to be 59 in a few months. I asked your age for a couple of reasons: one, that if you're relatively young, you may not have had the time or experience to have sorted through what religious upbringing teaches. Two, if you were older, there might be a limit to your receptivity to new ideas about your religion, ideas you'd never before encountered. Often it's the case that older folks lack flexibility, having settled what they think about religious teachings, and are unwilling to re-litigate it.

I am a gay Presbyterian please help

R20 Thank you. I grew up in a small Baptist church. MY hometown was 1,200.

I moved to a very large city and have been attending a Presbyterian church. You go to church because that is "what you do." However, I also am extremely attracted to men. To me, no one is sexier than Gregory Peck. He had intelligence, class, and looks. He knew about Dickens, Thoreau, and Beckett, Plus his good looks. It makes me water every time, LOL

Well, R21, you're gay, and there's no changing that. Don't let anyone mislead you to think that you can. Sorrow lies down that path.

Religion, however, is a choice, one that you can change.

Why do you still believe?

The Presbyterian Church is currently split on the issue of same-sex relationships, and it is likely that it will ultimately divide into two camps. When that happens, stick with the side that is supportive of you. You need to thoroughly familiarize yourself with the pro-gay scriptural arguments, so that you will be at least able to make a go at convincing your religious family and friends.

I don't understand people who need religion or scripture in their lives. What is there in church or the bible that you can't find around you? Is there anything more than one can find in others or in art?

R23 You are smart and right. The Presbyterian church I know is confused on the topic.

The Baptist church I" grew up in is certain- if you are gar you will go to Hell. Honestly, there is plenty of scripture in the New Testament to back if up. I am attrated to both men and women, but I think I am I attracted to men more.

[quote] Honestly, there is plenty of scripture in the New Testament to back if up.

There really isn't.

[quote]R25:The Baptist church I" grew up in is certain- if you are gar you will go to Hell. Honestly, there is plenty of scripture in the New Testament to back if up.

R26 is correct - there really isn't.

But if you're so certain that there is, why are you asking for help, as at R21? You do know that threads crying, "I'm gay and religious - somebody help me!" are a repeating trope here on the DL, right? They ask for help, but then turn, either directly or through socks, to repeat and reinforce the most homophobic interpretations possible. Such threads are not made in good faith, but are for trolling.

It's a bit early on in the thread to give away your support for religious homophobia, isn't it?

Even if it were the case that the New Testament condemned homosexuality, there's not anything forcing you to observe it.

But, assuming you're really asking in good faith, what do you think is an ironclad scriptural example condemning homosexuality?

The Bible is quite clearly anti-homosexual in both Old and New Testaments as are ALL the major religions that it has spawned. Why go through all these textual contortions try to soften this? It's merely a bronze-age book of fables compiled by ignorant men and should be given exactly that much credence.

Throw it out and shrug off the baggage of "church" once and for all. I can tell you from personal experience, it can be tough but It's very liberating.

[quote]R28: It's merely a bronze-age book of fables compiled by ignorant men and should be given exactly that much credence.

True enough, except that there's nothing in it as old as the 'Bronze Age.' Late Iron Age at the oldest; 4th century CE at the latest, a span of some 800 to 900 years in total.

[quote]Why go through all these textual contortions try to soften this?

Because it already took considerable textual contortion to get it to that point. It's only the weight of traditional interpretation holding it down; no one during the times it was written had any idea what a 'homosexual' was, so they cannot have been writing about it. It's just crap that people 𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑒 is in the bible. For instance, on some thread I was reading last week, someone was claiming that the bible says that suicide is a sin. It doesn't. They've simply been told that it does, and believed it.

Another façade is all that crap supposedly from the New Testament about traditional marriage, drawn from passages where words like 'wife' and 'husband' proliferate. But these buzzwords have been placed in those translated passages by tradition; none of it is in the original Greek, which used terms like γυναῖκες ('women') and ἀνδράσιν ('men') in passages like Ephesians 5:22. The context of marriage is something which has been added to the passage by the translators, in support of what has essentially been a Church-engineered institution (the Catholics call it a 'sacrament') over which up until relatively recently the clergy had complete control.

If one objects that a passage like Ephesians 5:22 would make less sense rendered that way - "Women, submit to your men as to the Lord" - that's true; rather than marriage, it speaks to a social order where women, all women, were subordinate to any and all men in a way which is completely unacceptable today, and that's the correct conclusion. Of such was the Iron Age, and we have no business letting it shape our lives today.

[quote]Throw it out and shrug off the baggage of "church" once and for all. I can tell you from personal experience, it can be tough but It's very liberating.

If you can do it. Quite often it means throwing out family and friends who remain captive in religious institutions. If, as gay men, families have thrown us out, it makes it that much easier to do, for no other reason than because one has to. But not everyone has that experience, or is prepared to undergo it. Then there's also the mess of those who find it easy to abandon 'church', but not the beliefs which underlie it, what they believe the bible says, and superstitious fear of the deity they still believe enforces it.

It can take something akin to deprogramming, where one is led around to all of those fearful passages, and shown the truth about them. If you were able to throw it all out and never think about it again (although I think discussion of it makes you nervous; you still think it says what you were brought up to believe), then kudos to you. Others need to know 𝑤ℎ𝑦 they can disregard it, which can give them the strength to stand up to those who tout the traditional views of religion.

R29, don't take my admonition to throw it all out as glib or dismissive. It does mean struggling with the possibility of losing your entire social support structure and has massive implications for your sense of self and purpose. And yet, millions have done so and come out better on the other side.

For anyone dealing with the fallout of indoctrination, I highly recommend the Recovering From Religion website (see link)

When we were little our parents took us to a radically progressive Unitarian church, but we stopped going when they split up. As an adult I’ve visited several UU churches, and though I like the people and still believe in the humanist philosophy they taught us in Sunday school, the actual services are just like bad theater to me. I’d rather just sleep in Sundays and donate the money to good causes.

[quote] The Bible is quite clearly anti-homosexual in both Old and New Testaments

Actually the Bible is anti-many things: divorce, left handedness, men shaving, wearing clothes made of two cloths, non-virgin brides, and on and on.

Modern society has just cherry-picked one of those things, homosexuality, because it realizes the rest are utterly ridiculous.

Thankfully, a more people come out as LGBT and families realize we all have LGBT brothers and sisters and they aren't evil, this last taboo is dying too,

I grew up Catholic and had to go to church every week until I made my confirmation in 8the grade. Then I only went when forced to. I don’t remember any anti-gay propaganda ever. I liked to go to the Saturday afternoon Mass unless it cut into my day off. But Sunday morning Mass usually included a stop at the bakery after church for rolls and donuts and the NYT.

I also had to go to religious instruction (C.C.D.) once a week during the school year. I remember my 8th grade C.C.D. teacher who was my friend’s mom, telling us a story of how she “opened her heart to Jesus” and he now lives in her heart. Somehow 13 year old me got that and thought it was nice.

Now when I go to church on the rare occasion I find the familiarity comforting (although startling when you realize they’ve changed the words in some prayers).

There was never any anti gay propaganda in my Catholic church either but admittedly it was a time where it was never discussed openly at all.

I don't believe the bible bans divorce outright. It is permissible in certain situations.

Well, the Old Testament permits it explicitly, in Deuteronomy r35. This is really about remarriage, but clearly it applies to a situation where divorce itself is permitted, and pretty casual actually:

1 If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, 2 and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, 3 and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, 4 then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the LORD. Do not bring sin upon the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.

The trouble with the Bible is that it’s a huge document, written by many different people of different beliefs, a very, very long time ago, when the world was a very, very different place. I am greatly amused by the mental contortions of those who try to justify some of the more problematic passages in our modern age. For pro or con.

It’s been mentioned on here what the Bible is allegedly against. We haven’t even gotten to what the Bible appears to clearly endorse. Slavery, incest, baby-killing, rape, war, ignorance, misogyny. The Bible can literally be used to justify any atrocity, any crime against humanity, that can be imagined. And historically it has been.

I’m not denying that there are loving and pro-humanity passages in there as well. Hey “Love thy neighbour as thy self” is great! But who’s to say that has any more weight than the passage that talks about smiting the babies of thine enemies by bashing their heads on the rocks? Lovely! Or let’s take the misogyny. I’ve had religious women quote certain passages about Ruth or Rachel or some Biblical women as “proof” that God doesn’t mean for women to be seen as second-class citizens. I just usually politely say something about the 50 or so passages that they’ve ignored that clearly say women are to be subservient to men.

The Bible, by its very existence, forces EVERYBODY to be a cherry-picker. It has to be put in its historical context. By anyone not insane anyway.

True all that r37, and that's before you get to the editing, the redacting, the compiling, the lying, the changing, the throwing out inconvenient details, the translating, and all the little horseshit that goes into preserving the Sacred and Unchanging Word of God (or maybe gods, that varies too).

R38 Preach!

When I was a teenager, I asked my pastor privately if it was okay for me to masturbate. He pointed out that God made my arms perfectly long enough to reach my penis. I also asked him if he masturbated and he said he did. I used to jack off to the memory of that conversation.

As for Christianity, I’ve given it up. For a year, I lived with a man who was anti-religion and he finally got through to me. The musical THE BOOK OF MORMON helped me there too. Even though I was never Mormon, it pointed out that religion is just made up. My thoughts on the subject:

1) Prayer is just talking to yourself and it doesn’t work. It really irks me when someone says their prayer worked. What about the 4 year old girl who died of cancer despite prayers for her? Why did God save one and not the other? It’s bullshit and it’s mean.

2) I don’t need the Bible. I’m a good person. I know not to kill, steal, etc. I don’t need a rule book.

3) About hell, wouldn’t you ultimately get used to it?

4) As for heaven, wouldn’t it get boring?

5) Why do we work so hard to justify the Bible? Just throw it out altogether and you’ll be much happier.

OP / R25 / et al, it seems you ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 played these games before, and have already clashed with me, on the 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞? thread, from 2021.

[quote]Reply 29: I disagree with you. I think The Bible is a very written book. Genesis, The Psalms, Proverbs, The Book of Job, the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John), and Revelation are all extremely poetic texts that have been proven historically... I grew up Presbyterian and have seen firsthand both the good and the bad of the church. Remember the church is full of imperfect sinners who are people just like you and me... This is also the United States where you are entitled to your belief (or unbelief), so carpe diem!

I asked you 𝐈𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 "𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲"? and you broke into pieces.

Amen.

Gen X. Raised attending a family-run church (Universal Church / Swedenborgian). A sexually inappropriate relative was the pastor and had a child molester in the ranks. I rejected everything about that place as soon as I came into my own consciousness. Witnessing the harm and hypocrisy at that church, then hearing anti-gay politicising from the pulpit when visiting other kids' churches, I concluded it's all a passel of lies used to judge and control others for gain and gratification. In my late teens I started attending an open, accepting, nondenominational Christian church where the fellowship really tried to walk the walk ("'people' are the church," "love one another, " etc.) That aligned more with my values at the time. I have since rejected religious dogma, and just keep imperfectly striving to be good toward others.

I do not regularly attend church, just on the occasional holiday and I listen sometimes to church #2 on the web.

Hello OP, I grew up Southern Baptist as well. There was no real compromise or finding a balance for me. The breaking point with me is when I came out to my mother and it was extremely difficult for her. My mother was the closest person to me and it really broke my heart. I had to create distance between us to protect myself. It was through this distance that I slowly began to change my views on the church. I stopped trying to find a happy medium where I could be gay AND part of the church. It always came back to the feeling that I wasn't acceptable just as I am. Which in the end ended up being OK. I began to see religion for what it is. It is not the truth but something certain people need to deal with the uncertainties of the world. Oddly enough Bill Mahers Religulous really opened my eyes to the fact that Biblical stories are just myths like any other ancient religion. The stories of Mary, a virgin Birth, a saviour rising from the dead were stories that were told over and over again way before Jesus was on the scene, they were just applied to him by his followers.

After that everything about the belief system began to crumble for me to the point that I no longer believe in it at all. I looked at the Christians around me and they were some of the most worry-filled, scared and exclusionary people I knew. Everything is a battle for the truth. It is always US against THEM. None of them really exhibit Christian-like behavior. I acted more Christianly in my disbelief than a lot of them do in their truth. Good and bad things happen to believers and non believers at the same rate. There is no protective saving grace for Christians that keeps them from the tragedies of the world - just faith as a coping mechanism to get through it.

So getting out of the Church and it's stronghold over me is one of my greatest accomplishments in life. I didn't replace it with anything other than a more introspective look at my life and trying to become a better version of myself in this world. My relationship with my Mom is better. She accepts me 90% more than she did before - she loves spending time with me and my husband, on vacation, in our home - even though I know what her beliefs are. And I learned to be gracious enough to realize her beliefs serve a purpose for her, keep her grounded, but they are not for me. And I am strong enough now to remind her of that and strong enough to have found a space where we can have a real loving relationship absent of religion.

I actually started a clothing line a while ago that embraced the exact questions you have surrounding this. It was a way for me to reconcile the parts of the community I grew up in - the songs, the hymns, the culture, the parts that I enjoyed with my complete rejection of religion itself. I am not sure if you ever had to attend it growing up in the church, but the name of the line is Baptist Training Union - an after church sort of Sunday school for Baptists.

[quote] There was never any anti gay propaganda in my Catholic church either but admittedly it was a time where it was never discussed openly at all.

I'm a lesbian and I was raised Catholic. There was never any anti-gay propaganda at the parish my family attended and I can't ever recall the priests who served there ever giving any anti-gay sermons. But, I have known others who attended some Catholic parishes where they encountered vocal anti-gay priests and/or parishioners.

I was involved in a Southern Baptist cult at an easy age. My parents kept preparing us for a Rapture that never happened. It wipes me out to talk about it. Me parents are Ultra MAGA. As much as I hate their politics and religion, I love them. I'm really glad that my folks aren't anti-vaccine. As demented as they might seem, they are my parents.

R44 I'm really impressed with your mother, accepting you yet being from a Southern Baptist church.

I went to a Unitarian church for a while and there was a Lesbian couple - one of them cried as she told of having to be lectured that she was bad and was going to hell every time she went home to visit her aging parents. She loved them but they could never even let her have peace when she'd go for Thanksgiving or Christmas - they felt duty-bound to remind her that if she didn't change she was going to hell.

I'm still mystified as to why she kept going home at all. She had a good marriage with her wife, dogs, a career - who needs creepy old parents who totally reject you?

I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools for 11 years. I didn't hear anti-gay sermons from the pulpit. The Catholic church, until the last 30 years, was not explicitly anti-gay. The Catholic church was ANTI-SEX - in any form except for sex within a marriage for the purpose of procreation. That message was communicated loud and clear. The message we all received was that our bodies were bad and the source of temptation. Masturbation- fuggetaboutit. But societal disapproval of homosexuality was still strong when I was young, and anyone of my age was aware of that. Starting with Pope John Paul II, the church, under attack because of child abuse revelations suddenly became more explicitly anti-gay, so I can't speak to what children being raised in the Catholic church in the past 20 years hear and absorb. I stopped going to church in the mid-1980s, more because I saw that some priests and bishops were starting to align themselves with the Republican Party, but also because I realized after meeting many people of different faiths and atheists, that there was no proof that Catholicism or indeed Christianity was the "real" religion of the planet and all others were false.

Catholic but my parents were not believers and my grandparents who had been beaten (literally) into submission growing up in Ireland were terrified of all authority but also well growing more a la carte by the time I was born. Long before I even knew what it meant to be gay my parents and grandparents would shake their heads and express disgust that the church was using abortion and gay marriage as the “big issue” while turning a blind eye to everything else. They were also disgusted by the child sex abuse, the laundries and sale of babies, the hyper focus on women’s dress and huge wealth disparity between leadership and the flock. It was easy to come out and my grandparents all accepted me without a moments hesitation. They were also all buried clutching rosary beads and a medal of Our Lady. They believed that the version of God who judges salvation on how much you hate gays and abortion and men in pants was man made and they were certain of a kinder God above.

^^ Should add that as Irish Catholics my parents and grandparents were raised with a huge focus on Our Lady of Fatima and they were told that her message to the world was about women’s dress and particularly no trousers. She had allegedly appeared in Fatima during WW1 and my great grandmother started to question her religion because she could not believe that the mother of God would be interested in who wore what as the world burned. She died the year before I was born but my grandfather said her favourite saying back in the 40s (as she said her rosary every night) was “sonny boy ‘tis the lord that’s in the image of men’ When my grandfather would come home from school with strap marks across his butt and legs she’d say “the good lord knows” It’s interesting that a country that was on paper completely in the back pocket of the church has a lot of people doubting including my uneducated family. Never surprised me when Ireland became so secular so fast in the 00s. ‘

[quote] Never surprised me when Ireland became so secular so fast in the 00s.

Nor me. I was happy/ecstatic, but not surprised. Just as I wasn’t/am not surprised that ultra-Catholic Spain became so progressive and “de-Catholicized” so quickly and so thoroughly after the collapse of Francoist fascism following Franco’s death.

Never went to church besides a week at Bible camp and that primarily was more of an overnight camp experience. Makes me indifferent to affirmation, since I never really felt oppressed at home.

The Bible is very clearly against anal sex with temple (make and female) prostitutes (which was considered at the time a form of child sacrifice) as a method of worshipping fertility gods and (primarily) goddesses.

The irony of course is that those passages that condemn fertility cults are now used to condemn gay folks by people who have made an idol of heterosexual procreation.

I grew up in the Episcopal Church. Was an acolyte from the age of 11 until I graduated high school. Once I started college I began to learn most of what I'd been taught by the church were either exaggerations or outright lies. By my junior year in college I had become an agnostic. By graduation I was a full fledged atheist. That was 49 years ago and nothing has changed my mind since.

I grew up Catholic. No anti gay preaching, no lectures about masturbation, but lots of tedium. I remember when I was little I got it into my head that the “adultery” condemned in the Commandments meant that children shouldn’t act like adults. I asked the nun and she told me to ask my parents, which to me meant don’t ask anyone! After decades of pretty much ignoring the whole thing, I went back to Mass, which now has meaning and comfort for me. I recognize that the Church as an institution prohibits homosexual behavior but I think the Church is wrong. I would have feared hellfire for my heresy fifty years ago but no longer.

[quote]o getting out of the Church and it's stronghold over me is one of my greatest accomplishments in life.

I love this, R44.

[quote]R53 / ElderLez: The Bible is very clearly against anal sex with temple (make and female) prostitutes (which was considered at the time a form of child sacrifice) as a method of worshipping fertility gods and (primarily) goddesses.

Mmm, it's a theory. But have you ever done a deeper dive into its 'prooftexts'? For instance, where does it specifically talk about "anal sex"? Have you looked into the so-called 'temple prostitutes'? Who's a "fertility god"? Which "goddesses"? And 𝑤ℎ𝑜 exactly was demanding and receiving child sacrifices?

Yes actually Poisoned Dragon I have. I can post a series of links later if you’d like, assuming you and OP don’t think it would derail the thread.

[quote]Yes actually Poisoned Dragon I have. I can post a series of links later if you’d like, assuming you and OP don’t think it would derail the thread.

It might. Perhaps we can take this discussion over to the '𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐚 𝐬𝐢𝐧?' thread, which is more on-topic, and isn't currently in use.

OK - it will take me a while to read all that and now I need to get back to work so forgive my delay in posting, I will post eventually.

I’ll just add here though that in the biological understanding of the Old Testament era it was believed that every seminal emission included a fetus so every ejaculation that could not result in pregnancy was wasted. The sin of Onanism wasn’t male masturbation, but good old Pope approved withdrawal.

Can we use a different thread R59? I am trying to read the posts before adding anything and the idiocy is making my head hurt. I can create one if necessary.

Can't you just skip to the end, without suffering through the rest of the thread?

But if you would prefer to create a clean thread, by all means, do so. ;)

I had never been to church a day in my life until I was sent to a Southern Baptist boarding school in the middle of nowhere when I was a young teen. There we went to services daily and twice on Sunday. It was quite a culture shock. Some of their nonsense soaked into me temporarily, but for the most part I felt a bit like an anthropologist studying their strange ways and language.

They mostly let the non-religious kids be, but I once had a bit of friction during a revival week when I prayed (sincerely) with one of the popular "saved" kids to let Jesus into my heart, and nothing happened. I did it several times with the more experienced Christian students, and even some faculty, and yet Jesus never showed up. This caused quite a bit of consternation among the faculty. Though I didn't share this with any of them, I knew why Jesus had forsaken me. My father was a cruel and abusive creep, so much so that some of my siblings and I truly believed he had some sort of supernatural power and may have been in league with Satan. All my life he told me that I wasn't an actual person, only an extension of him that he created, so I figured his evil was fending off the lord by proxy. Being gay probably caused a double-strength barrier from goodness.

Not long after that incident I was sexually assaulted by the president of the school. It was pretty much an open secret he was a chicken hawk, so when it happened to me (once I'd processed the ickiness of it) I was fired up to turn him in and make him pay for his fuckery. But when I told anyone; student, teacher, or administrator; they all laughed at me. When I refused to drop it, they changed tactics and explained to me that I just didn't understand what affection was because I came from that horrible family where no one loved me. When I still refused to drop it, I was mocked and sneered at for being a slutty little faggot. When they sent my best friend to bitch me out for being so selfish by trying to hurt the school, I finally gave up and shut my mouth. This pretty much dissuaded any notions I might have formed about the kindness of Christian hearts. I've been a happy heathen ever since.

PD my first link keeps not linking, but I’ve created a thread.

This again. I was raised as son and grandson of fundamentalist Methodist ministers/bishop. "Scripture" says so much more on diet and fabric of clothes than it does on "same sex" attraction. It says, explicitly, if a child talks smack to his parents he should be taken to the edge of the town to be stoned to death. It describes how best to sell your daughter into slavery. In one of the most quoted "gay is a sin" passages, it shows how if men come to your door to try to rape your male guest, throw out your daughter so they can fuck her and be satisfied that way.

In short, "scripture" is contradictory, culture-bound, not definitive. I do think there is something interesting in the "four Gospels" giving the same story four times: some credibility to that, at least as far as intent.

So, yeah, scripture is a mess. I mean all of Christianity split right down the middle in 1000AD because of disagreement about a preposition.

And Poisoned Dragon can take over from here to make sure the thread focuses on what's true.. ish.

[quote]R65: This again. I was raised as son and grandson of fundamentalist Methodist ministers/bishop. "Scripture" says so much more on diet and fabric of clothes than it does on "same sex" attraction. It says, explicitly, if a child talks smack to his parents he should be taken to the edge of the town to be stoned to death. It describes how best to sell your daughter into slavery. In one of the most quoted "gay is a sin" passages, it shows how if men come to your door to try to rape your male guest, throw out your daughter so they can fuck her and be satisfied that way. In short, "scripture" is contradictory, culture-bound, not definitive... And Poisoned Dragon can take over from here to make sure the thread focuses on what's true.. ish.

I have no quibbles.

[quote]I do think there is something interesting in the "four Gospels" giving the same story four times: some credibility to that, at least as far as intent.

Well, it was never intended that there should be four of them, much less the dozens more non-canonical ones that existed. Of the four canonical ones, each was successively written as a polemical answer to the one previous, "Mark" first, then "Matthew," followed by "Luke," and finally "John." Each was intended to supplant the one previous, and the differences between them were not the products of different eyewitness accounts, but different theological statements of opinion (no one among them were eyewitnesses). None of them were intended to serve side-by-side with the others.

It's a bit like the cases of the books of Samuel and Kings in the Jewish Testament, and Chronicles. Chronicles was the revision of the earlier material, and had the Chronicler finished their work, it's likely we would never have seen the earlier books at all; they would have been erased, with only Chronicles surviving as the 'official' account.

What permitted the four gospels to survive is that they were all the products of different communities of believers, and as such each represented the foundational document of said communities. Irenaeus in the late 2nd century made mention of "four," though whether our four surviving canonical gospels are the ones to which he referred, is uncertain. Once the nascent Catholic Church had reconciled itself to possessing four separate gospels, each of them was altered in various ways, in order to make them better agree with each other, and with the Church at the time.