It's OK to Be Gay: Straight Talk About Homosexuality for Gay People and Those Who Love Them

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Gays aren’t hurting anybody.” It may make an impression on your friend that they are hurting each other. Does your friend know that the rate of syphilis among women who practice lesbianism is 19 times what it is among other women? Coming out, or telling people in your life about your sexual identity, is a different experience for everyone. It’s not always easy, and you don’t have to come out if you’re not ready. At another level, though, it’s no joking matter. In Iran today, lavat (sodomy) is a capital offence and people are frequently executed for it. In Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and Mauritania, sodomy is also punishable by death – though no executions have been reported for at least a decade. The importance of these rulings today is that they provide an Islamic dispensation for sex reassignment surgery – so long as the purpose of the surgery is to uncover the person’s “hidden” sex. On that basis, operations have been carried out in Sunni Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Christians should neither be pro-gay nor anti-gay, because although God hates sin, He still loves the sinners.

Jesus recognised that they chose to interpret Scripture in a way that prevented it from being understood in non-traditional ways. Thus they limited God’s power to be different from traditional understandings of him. Jesus was saying God refused to be the exclusive property of the Sadducees. The ordinary people who followed Jesus understood that he represented a different understanding of God. These two answers have something in common: With both of them, the science conveniently supports the moral decision. They may ignore what you said or laugh it off as a joke. Some people might try to convince you that you’re straight, or say you’re just confused. And are they willing to say that the Lord Jesus, who literally looked into the hearts and souls of human beings—John 2:25 says that He knew what was in man—didn’t understand that certain people were “gay?” In 1993, a study published in the journal Science showed that families with two homosexual brothers were very likely to have certain genetic markers on a region of the X chromosome known as Xq28. This led to media headlines about the possibility of the existence of a “gay gene” and discussions about the ethics of aborting a “gay” fetus.The Bible makes very few mentions of homosexuality - lesbianism isn't mentioned at all in the Old Testament - and as the examples below show, interpretations of the verses that do exist differ hugely.

In the meantime, let me offer some advice for talking with your friend. Here are the three most important points to bear in mind: The development of social media has also created space for a more informal kind of activism which seems to have proved successful in a couple of instances recently. Sexual preference. This refers to specific qualities in people you are sexually attracted to. For example, tall, blonde, or muscular. There are no wrong preferences. Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. Jesus' words have been distorted through time. Through translations and interpretations no true copy of the Bible exists today.

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Paul later writes: "Make no mistake: no fornicator or idolator, none who are guilty either of adultery or of homosexual perversion, no thieves or grabbers of drunkards of slanderers or swindlers, will possess the kingdom of God." Gender identity is different from sexuality. This refers to how you view yourself in terms of gender. You may see yourself as male or female. This can be the same as the genitalia you were born with or different. Or you may see yourself as both male and female, or neither. We are told today that biblical authors did not understand sexual orientation and that they had no concept of committed, long-term same-sex relationships. What the biblical authors rejected, we are told, was man-boy relationships, or male prostitution, or homosexual promiscuity.

Homosexual behavior should be allowed to take place. Isn’t it fantastic that, by an amazing coincidence, there is no way to stop it?”

Yes. People choose to be gay. They are making an immoral choice, which government should discourage. Gay theologians tell us that the traditional gospel message is a “bad tree,” bringing forth the bad fruit of depression, apostasy, and even suicide among gay men and women.

The case became public when Al-Azhar University refused to readmit her either as a male student or a female student. There were also many who found the concept of gender dysphoria difficult to grasp and some characterised her as a gay man who was trying to game the system. For example, it’s possible to be romantically attracted to men but sexually attracted to men, women, and nonbinary people. This sort of situation is called “mixed orientation” or “cross orientation” — and it’s totally OK. But although the rulings can easily justify surgery in intersex cases, it’s more difficult to apply them to gender dysphoria. A controversy in Egypt during the 1980s involved a 19-year-old student who had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria (or “psychological hermaphroditism” as the doctors called it at the time) and underwent male-to-female reassignment surgery. Those who would exclude homosexuals from God’s kingdom choose to ignore Jesus, turning instead to the Old Testament – most particularly to Genesis 19, the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Their interpretation of the story is that it is about homosexuality. It isn’t. It relates to hospitality. More importantly, Hebrews 4:13 states that “no creature is hidden from [God’s] sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” And it is this God who inspired the writers of the Scriptures. Are gay theologians willing to say that the Lord Himself did not understand modern-day, still-evolving concepts like “sexual orientation?”Being anti-gay based on what the bible says is being irrational. If 'GOD' rejects homosexuality, why wouldn't (couldn't) he write a less ambiguous text so he can save us the trouble? The bible is not a reliable book. It is full of contradictions, inconsistencies and mistakes. Again and again Jesus reaches out to those on the margins of society, like prostitutes and tax collectors, to include them. This study was criticized because it used brain tissue obtained at autopsies, and all of the homosexual subjects in the study were believed to have died of AIDS.