A popular talking point among gay-friendly Christians arguing that traditional Christian homophobia is un-Christian -- if, that is, they are reality-based enough to admit that traditionally, Christianity has been homophobic -- is:
"Jesus never said a word about homosexuality."
Maybe not. But if he didn't, living and teaching as he did (assuming he existed, which I don't) in a cultural tradition which was decidedly homophobic, the logical conclusion would be that he went along with this homophobic tendency.
Even more logical would be for Christians to decide for themselves that homosexuality is okay, no matter what Jesus said or would have said about it. But of course, insisting that it doesn't matter what Jesus would do is entirely too logical for Christians.
Gay-friendly Christians ARE making up their own minds about homosexuality -- so far, so good. But they still have this completely irrational need to believe that they have Jesus' approval and that they are following Jesus' example. Nevermind that there is no evidence whatsoever that Jesus made any pronouncements which differed with the culture he came from on the subject of homosexuality.
But of course, theology and logic have been oil and water for a least a couple thousand years now. Evidence schmevidence, if there's no evidence we'll make up whatever we need. Of course, it's possible that Jesus was gay-friendly, and that this was edited out of the Gospels by those who may also have edited away that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, or in a gay relationship with one of his male disciples, or that he was married to Mary Magdalene and in a gay relationship with one of his male disciples. There are a few words' worth of evidence that Mary Magdalene's role in the group around Jesus may have been minimized in the New Testament. There's less evidence that Jesus was gay-friendly, and/or gay.
The thing is that there is so very little evidence about Jesus, period, which means that there has always been a great deal of room in which the imaginations of Christians could roam. It's possible that Jesus was gay-friendly, or homophobic, married or single, or that he never existed. It's certain that Christians have made whole libraries' worth of different versions of Jesus to suit what various ones of them have wanted to believe about him, out of the slender volume of dubious, self-contradicting evidence.
Showing posts with label gay rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gay rights. Show all posts
Friday, April 15, 2016
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Homophobia, And Opposition To Homophobia, In Religion
There seems to be a lot of debate within religious institutions these days about non-heterosexuality. Or LGBT, as some people call it, which stands for: Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals. Some people have added a fifth letter to the acronym LBGT, and in some cases, I think, maybe even a sixth or more. Which I find annoying. What we're talking about here is human rights for people who mate in ways other than the traditional hetero way. I'd rather just say "gay" and have it refer to all the LGBT etc etc, but alphabet soup seems to be the way the wind is blowing in this case. And acronyms aren't the main issue, the main issue, again, is human rights. Traditionally, Christians, Jews and Muslims have denied full status to LGBT's, sometimes have punished them severely for being who they are, and now that's changing in many institutions, and it's controversial.
I want LGBT's to have full rights. I want them to be allowed to marry like heteros if they want to, I don't want their career opportunities to be limited because of their sexuality, I don't want them to have to live in fear of violence from their fellow humans, or, worse, from the law enforcement organizations who are supposed to protect us all.
And so if a church or synagogue or mosque declares itself to be LGBT friendly, that's good, because, unfortunately, it's not as if our society is overflowing with institutions which welcome LGBT's unconditionally just yet. And this is where I part company with some of my fellow atheists, who simply refuse to see anything good in any religion. Well, it's part of the parting of company, because there are many other good things I see in religious institutions, from stained glass to charity work.
But in common with those other atheists, I still am critical of religion. Sorry. Even though I completely reject black-and-white, right-and-wrong worldviews which are blind to all the shades of grey everywhere, and those black-and-white attitudes most certainly include a lot of atheists who can't seem to come up with a more sophisticated approach to reality than religion-bad, atheism-good, I'm still an atheist. I still think it's ridiculous to base your life around one book, whether it's the Torah or the Christian Bible or the Quran, or even something really good like JR.
And I think it's perfectly plain that if you're a Christian, Jew or Muslim, you are basing your life around one book, even if you are determined to portray yourself as a sophisticated person who does no such thing. It may well be that you actually are a sophisticated person who claims to be religious but actually is way more sophisticated than that, and is not religious at all. That has been known to happen.
And I still think it's perfectly obvious that Christianity, Judaism and Islam have been emphatically and unanimously homophobic until recently, when they have undergone a great transformation and become partially emphatically homophobic. I think that it's as plain as can be that most of the stories of past ages of gay-friendly Abrahamic religions are pure myth, and that the few authentic exceptions, such as the partial lessening of strictness of sexual mores in Europe during the 12th century when very many of the most pious types were off in the Middle East fighting the Crusades and giving a great deal of the grief they traditionally give to their fellow Christians to Muslims and Jews and Eastern Christians instead -- I think it's as plain as can be that such episodes of partly-lessened intolerance in Christianity represent a lessening of the observance of Christianity, that they were anti-Christian. Which is exactly what some of those bawdy 12th-century troubadours said about it.
When these religious people these days welcome LGBT's and give them a place to belong, a place to be nurtured, to be unafraid to be themselves, that is thoroughly wonderful. When they claim that their welcoming of LGBT's is true Christianity, it's thoroughly ridiculous. If a Christian theologian who has studied Christian theology and history of all eras says it, then it involves denial of what he or she knows about that history on a scale which boggles my mind. Acceptance of LGBT's is at odds with all of Christian practice and doctrine until the past few decades, that is as clear as anything has ever been.
Once again we see how nothing at all can be clear enough for a religious believer who is determined not to see it, to see it. And so I have profoundly mixed feelings about the recent LGBT-friendly trend in the Abrahamic religions. Acceptance and love are good. Period. But illogic and doublethink are bad, period, and resistance to logic in one thing can and often does lead to resistance to logic in all things. And so if you welcome gays into your congregation I will support you, unconditionally. But if you try to tell me that this welcoming is in the true spirit of your religion and always has been, I will tell you that you are completely full of shit. That's how I roll.
I want LGBT's to have full rights. I want them to be allowed to marry like heteros if they want to, I don't want their career opportunities to be limited because of their sexuality, I don't want them to have to live in fear of violence from their fellow humans, or, worse, from the law enforcement organizations who are supposed to protect us all.
And so if a church or synagogue or mosque declares itself to be LGBT friendly, that's good, because, unfortunately, it's not as if our society is overflowing with institutions which welcome LGBT's unconditionally just yet. And this is where I part company with some of my fellow atheists, who simply refuse to see anything good in any religion. Well, it's part of the parting of company, because there are many other good things I see in religious institutions, from stained glass to charity work.
But in common with those other atheists, I still am critical of religion. Sorry. Even though I completely reject black-and-white, right-and-wrong worldviews which are blind to all the shades of grey everywhere, and those black-and-white attitudes most certainly include a lot of atheists who can't seem to come up with a more sophisticated approach to reality than religion-bad, atheism-good, I'm still an atheist. I still think it's ridiculous to base your life around one book, whether it's the Torah or the Christian Bible or the Quran, or even something really good like JR.
And I think it's perfectly plain that if you're a Christian, Jew or Muslim, you are basing your life around one book, even if you are determined to portray yourself as a sophisticated person who does no such thing. It may well be that you actually are a sophisticated person who claims to be religious but actually is way more sophisticated than that, and is not religious at all. That has been known to happen.
And I still think it's perfectly obvious that Christianity, Judaism and Islam have been emphatically and unanimously homophobic until recently, when they have undergone a great transformation and become partially emphatically homophobic. I think that it's as plain as can be that most of the stories of past ages of gay-friendly Abrahamic religions are pure myth, and that the few authentic exceptions, such as the partial lessening of strictness of sexual mores in Europe during the 12th century when very many of the most pious types were off in the Middle East fighting the Crusades and giving a great deal of the grief they traditionally give to their fellow Christians to Muslims and Jews and Eastern Christians instead -- I think it's as plain as can be that such episodes of partly-lessened intolerance in Christianity represent a lessening of the observance of Christianity, that they were anti-Christian. Which is exactly what some of those bawdy 12th-century troubadours said about it.
When these religious people these days welcome LGBT's and give them a place to belong, a place to be nurtured, to be unafraid to be themselves, that is thoroughly wonderful. When they claim that their welcoming of LGBT's is true Christianity, it's thoroughly ridiculous. If a Christian theologian who has studied Christian theology and history of all eras says it, then it involves denial of what he or she knows about that history on a scale which boggles my mind. Acceptance of LGBT's is at odds with all of Christian practice and doctrine until the past few decades, that is as clear as anything has ever been.
Once again we see how nothing at all can be clear enough for a religious believer who is determined not to see it, to see it. And so I have profoundly mixed feelings about the recent LGBT-friendly trend in the Abrahamic religions. Acceptance and love are good. Period. But illogic and doublethink are bad, period, and resistance to logic in one thing can and often does lead to resistance to logic in all things. And so if you welcome gays into your congregation I will support you, unconditionally. But if you try to tell me that this welcoming is in the true spirit of your religion and always has been, I will tell you that you are completely full of shit. That's how I roll.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Over-Optimistic Tolerant Christians, Today And In Earlier Eras
There was a time in Europe when homosexuality was considered neither a sin nor a crime nor a perversion nor a shame. Top politicians, including some Roman Emperors, indulged in it without feeling any need to hide it for fear of scandal. The most popular philosopher in ancient Europe
even asserted that every man should engage in it, and people didn't condemn him for it, they barely batted an eye. (He's still the most popular philosopher in Europe, and in the Western Hemisphere, too, but back then more people actually read his works, and his views on sexuality were better known and less liable to startle anyone.)
Then all that changed: Christians took over, and among many other sweeping changes made homosexuality a sin and a shame and a perversion. Gay life, along with many other perfectly normal things, went underground.
Then beginning in the 12th century there was a big thaw in European prohibitions of love -- in Europe itself that is, because many of the Europeans who took Christianity most seriously were in the Middle East, giving grief to other people, and the gay -- by gay I mean happy, but they were happy because of the increase in freedom -- the gay courtiers had a heyday, the "shocking" troubadours sang their songs and even dared to write some of them down, so that we today can read them. It must've seemed to some Europeans as if all of that stern intolerant Christianity was over. Not that any of the goyim dared to go so far as to declare that he was no longer a Christian at all. Not on paper, anyway.
But no, of course, the grim sternness was not gone for good. Around the end of the 13th century the Crusades fizzled out, the Crusaders returned home, gay court life and troubadour songs declined and the Inquisition began. Suddenly, many parties were over in a very big way. But the forces of tolerance and freedom -- of LIFE, as Nietzsche nicely puts it --
fought back again in the Renaissance. Not only were some tendencies asserting themselves in culture which were quite un-Christian in their sensuality and openness of philosophical speculation: such tendencies were promoted, even embodied, by many churchmen -- even by some Popes. The Popes who in later eras have commonly been referred to as the "bad" Popes.
Then came the Reformation, a period of great confusion which shows that the confusion of SBNR is nothing new. Luther, the greatest of the Protestants, was protesting against the un-Christian character of Rome and the Vatican in that era, which Nietzsche and I admire so much. But some people thought at the time, and for a long time afterward, and apparently many still do today, that Luther, rather than objecting that certain traditional Christian rules seemed not to be applied any more, was himself overturning all of society's rules. Somehow they mistook, and even now mistake this grim authoritarian fundy who insisted on stricter Bible interpretation -- his own interpretation and not the Vatican's, and that was the whole essence of his conflict with the Vatican -- who saw ghosts and witches and told noblemen to put down rebelling peasants with the greatest possible severity, peasants who thought they'd been following him -- somehow people mistook and mistake this Bible-thumper for Leon Trotsky.
But things happen they way they do and not always in a way which makes sense, and so some freedoms Luther never wanted to say were achieved in his name, while on the other hand we got things which were more his speed, such as Puritanism.
And the Catholics, unfortunately, instead of strengthening the un-Christian tendencies to which Luther objected, and which many overly-optimistic Renaissance artists and philosophers must've thought were here to stay, went 180 degrees the other way and attempted to out-Christian him with the Counter-Reformation.
And now many progressive Christians are celebrating their recent turn toward tolerance and pro-gay-rights positions and are acting as if they think these changes are somehow guaranteed to be permanent, and that there's no cognitive dissonance involved in being a progressive Christian. They've been so pleased with themselves and the way that they've pruned a few branches of intolerance off of some of Christianity that they're giving no thought to the roots from which that intolerance grows, again and again. If the core intolerance is not dealt with -- and ignoring or denying the history of Christian intolerance is not dealing with it -- then it has not been eradicated.
even asserted that every man should engage in it, and people didn't condemn him for it, they barely batted an eye. (He's still the most popular philosopher in Europe, and in the Western Hemisphere, too, but back then more people actually read his works, and his views on sexuality were better known and less liable to startle anyone.)Then all that changed: Christians took over, and among many other sweeping changes made homosexuality a sin and a shame and a perversion. Gay life, along with many other perfectly normal things, went underground.
Then beginning in the 12th century there was a big thaw in European prohibitions of love -- in Europe itself that is, because many of the Europeans who took Christianity most seriously were in the Middle East, giving grief to other people, and the gay -- by gay I mean happy, but they were happy because of the increase in freedom -- the gay courtiers had a heyday, the "shocking" troubadours sang their songs and even dared to write some of them down, so that we today can read them. It must've seemed to some Europeans as if all of that stern intolerant Christianity was over. Not that any of the goyim dared to go so far as to declare that he was no longer a Christian at all. Not on paper, anyway.
But no, of course, the grim sternness was not gone for good. Around the end of the 13th century the Crusades fizzled out, the Crusaders returned home, gay court life and troubadour songs declined and the Inquisition began. Suddenly, many parties were over in a very big way. But the forces of tolerance and freedom -- of LIFE, as Nietzsche nicely puts it --
fought back again in the Renaissance. Not only were some tendencies asserting themselves in culture which were quite un-Christian in their sensuality and openness of philosophical speculation: such tendencies were promoted, even embodied, by many churchmen -- even by some Popes. The Popes who in later eras have commonly been referred to as the "bad" Popes. Then came the Reformation, a period of great confusion which shows that the confusion of SBNR is nothing new. Luther, the greatest of the Protestants, was protesting against the un-Christian character of Rome and the Vatican in that era, which Nietzsche and I admire so much. But some people thought at the time, and for a long time afterward, and apparently many still do today, that Luther, rather than objecting that certain traditional Christian rules seemed not to be applied any more, was himself overturning all of society's rules. Somehow they mistook, and even now mistake this grim authoritarian fundy who insisted on stricter Bible interpretation -- his own interpretation and not the Vatican's, and that was the whole essence of his conflict with the Vatican -- who saw ghosts and witches and told noblemen to put down rebelling peasants with the greatest possible severity, peasants who thought they'd been following him -- somehow people mistook and mistake this Bible-thumper for Leon Trotsky.
But things happen they way they do and not always in a way which makes sense, and so some freedoms Luther never wanted to say were achieved in his name, while on the other hand we got things which were more his speed, such as Puritanism.
And the Catholics, unfortunately, instead of strengthening the un-Christian tendencies to which Luther objected, and which many overly-optimistic Renaissance artists and philosophers must've thought were here to stay, went 180 degrees the other way and attempted to out-Christian him with the Counter-Reformation.
And now many progressive Christians are celebrating their recent turn toward tolerance and pro-gay-rights positions and are acting as if they think these changes are somehow guaranteed to be permanent, and that there's no cognitive dissonance involved in being a progressive Christian. They've been so pleased with themselves and the way that they've pruned a few branches of intolerance off of some of Christianity that they're giving no thought to the roots from which that intolerance grows, again and again. If the core intolerance is not dealt with -- and ignoring or denying the history of Christian intolerance is not dealing with it -- then it has not been eradicated.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)