Ancient Texts and the Question of Being Right, or Helpful

I'd rather be right and helpful all of the time, but I just don't know whether that's possible. On the one hand, there is the vast amount of very important subjects about which I know little or nothing, and about which anything I'd have to say is likely as not to be incorrect.

On the other hand, there is the little amount that I know, which doesn't seem to be of use to any but a small number of people who probably already know most or all of it anyway.

Let's jump right into the example of religion.

Just now, for about the thousandth time, I heard someone point out that Jesus never said anything against lgbt's. Which, as far as I know, is correct: Jesus says nothing in the New Testament about LGBT's, and I don't know of any statements by him on the subject in any apocryphal writings either.

And, not for the first time, I suppressed the urge to point out that he's not recorded as saying anything in favor of LGTBT's either, and that he lived in a society which definitely was homophobic, so that his total silence on the issue could more logically be construed as homophobia than not. I suppressed the urge to say these things because, in the discussion today where someone pointed out Jesus' silence on the issue, my remark about the context of that silence would be more helpful to today's homophobes than to those championing LGBT rights, and I am definitely among the latter.

Some say that Christianity is simply different from Judaism when it comes to gay rights. My honest response to that is that Christianity was almost unanimously homophobic until, a few decades ago, many Christians suddenly made a U-turn on the issue, perhaps a majority of Christians, but not, as far as I can see, before a similar proportion of Jews made a similar U-turn. But, frankly, it seems to me that both most Christians and most Jews would rather that I just shut up about the histories of their various religions. To me, it's history. To them, it's religion. Not the same thing at all.

I think it's great to read texts which are thousands of years old, but when I do, I'm constantly reminded of how progress has been made in various areas in the thousands of years since those texts were written. I feel quite free to point out this progress in reference to pre-Christian Latin texts, but when it comes to speaking openly about the Bible, Old or New Testament, all of a sudden, people get quite touchy.

And the New Atheist approach to this sort of thing, summed up as "Oh, you're offended? So fucking what?" doesn't work for me. I don't go around throwing people's lunch on the floor, and I don't want to go around doing the verbal equivalent of that, either. I would like my remarks to be productive, and not just for two or three people who already think pretty much exactly the same way I do. Lately, the memory of those posters in a couple of classrooms when I was a schoolboy, posters which said: "Be not simply good. Be good for something." -- the memory of those posters has suddenly become much more poignant -- I don't know whether poignant is the right word but it's as close as I can come. It's as if I'm beginning to learn something which is already very widely known.

What this entire post may boil down to is that, at the age of 57, I may finally have stumbled across the reasons for, and the usefulness of, that subject, which is older than the Bible, known as rhetoric, one of the subjects I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Rhetoric, I believe, has to do with having a desired effect with one's words, as opposed to just ruthlessly blathering away with the full and unfocused force of one's erudition.

Who is Jordan Peterson and Why Have 7 of My Previous 8 Posts Been About Him?

(8 out of 9 if you count this one.) I'm so glad you asked!

Jordan Peterson

is a Canadian professor of psychology who is one year younger than I am and specializes in myths and their Jungian interpretation. For example, he points out that in some myths males represent order and females represent chaos. So far so good, that is an accurate description of those myths.

But then, instead of pointing out that such myths (developed and propounded mostly by males, of course, with very little consultation of female viewpoints) are descriptive of the psychology of the myth-tellers, he actually claims that they are literally accurate. He insists that males are ordered and that females are chaotic. All 4 billion or so human males, Peterson says, are ordered, and all 4 billion or so human females are chaotic.

And furthermore, he insists that male and female are the only 2 human genders which exist. (Any real experts in myth who never heard of Peterson before this blog post are already beginning to sense how much myth Peterson has to ignore in order to keep his worldview intact.) And this leads to the way in which Peterson became famous: by objecting, in 2016, to the the 2nd clause of Bill C-16, which reads:

This enactment amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to add gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.

The enactment also amends the Criminal Code to extend the protection against hate propaganda set out in that Act to any section of the public that is distinguished by gender identity or expression and to clearly set out that evidence that an offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on gender identity or expression constitutes an aggravating circumstance that a court must take into consideration when it imposes a sentence.

Peterson objects to this because, he claims, it will infringe upon his freedom of speech by forcing him to use pronouns other than "he" and "she" when referring to persons.

As far as I know, Peterson has not yet faced any criminal or civil prosecution because of his use of pronouns. Still, in tried-and-true right-wing fashion, he is claiming to have been victimized when no-one has done anything to him.

That's what made him famous. That, and some very popular YouTube videos in which he spews his right-wing viewpoints which, in tried-and-true right-wing fashion, he claims are not right-wing, but Classical-Liberal (or, as we would say in the United States, libertarian.) And also his book which followed very quickly upon his sudden fame as a martyr against pronoun abuse, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. (Remember: as mentioned above, Peterson says that males are orderly, females are chaotic, and that no further human genders exist.)

Peterson is a far-right-wing nut. He checks all the boxes: He claims that women need (and secretly want) to be dominated and controlled by men. He says that postmodern neo-Marxists have (again, secretly, as the postmodernists deny that they are Marxists and the Marxists deny that they are postmodern) swarmed into the faculties of our universities, where they are trying their best to enslave the minds of our young people in preparation for marching all of us off to the gulag. He is a climate-change skeptic. He says that white privilege doesn't exist. He's against women's right to choose with no if's and's or but's. He's against casual sex and gay marriage.

And he's passing himself off in many -- by no means all -- mainstream media outlets as not being right-wing at all. And he has a huge following among incels and other groups of misogynistic young men. And, annoying to me personally as a real intellectual, very many people, even including some generally-sensible Leftists, keep referring to this doofus as an intellectual. Does this help answer your question about why I've been posting about him?

Trump and the LGBT Community

Today Trump tweeted that he will not allow transgender people to join the US military. In June 2016 he tweeted the following:

Donald J. Trump‏ @realDonaldTrump
"Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs."

Well, first of all, Trump promised he had the backs of a group of people, and he has broken a promise and screwed them over. Whoever thought something like this could possibly happen, that Trump could do that?

Secondly, what was Trump thanking the LGBT community for in June 2016? Did the LGBT community officially name him Person of the Year in June 2016? Or was this another example of Trump pretending that someone was a supporter of his? Hmmm... Maybe Caitlyn Jenner said something nice to Trump, and Trump assumed that Caitlyn was speaking for all LGBT people everywhere.

Now for the part about Hillary bringing in more people who would threaten the freedoms and beliefs of LGBT people if she became President. Hmmm... Well, again, maybe Trump thought that all LGBT people believed in and stood for everything that Caitlyn Jenner and Milo Yiannopoulos believe in and stand for. If Hillary has become President, it would, in fact, have displeased Caitlyn and Milo.

Or maybe his tweet from June 2016 had even less to do with reality than that. I don't know.

Germany is On the Verge of Legalizing LGBT Marriage

Germany is on the verge of legalizing LGBT marriage. One legislative body has approved it, we're waiting for a second to make it official. Although their version of the Supreme Court might overturn the law.

People's reactions show that bigotry is the same wherever you go.

There are the people acting as if the Bible were the law of the land -- but much more when it has to do with homosexuality than when it has to do with shellfish and pork and the Sabbath.

There are people saying that -- although in many cases they assure us that they personally have nothing at all against homosexuals -- allowing gay marriage will be "only the beginning" and will open the gates for people who want to marry small children, animals or their siblings or parents. As if pedophilia, bestiality or incest were more likely to be practiced or favored by homosexuals than by heterosexuals. They're not.

In one land just as in another, about 100% of the people who are vehemently opposed to gay marriage and gay rights in general are, often but not always subconsciously, gay. They are afraid that expansion of gay rights, and the concomitant greater public profile of gay people because they have less reason to be afraid and hide, will make it harder for them to hide their own true nature. From themselves above all, in many but not all cases.

Apart from such neuroses of ancient religion and self-loathing, from a mentally healthy point of view, this change in the laws of Germany is not a beginning, but an end: an end to a discrimination against LGBT's. It's as simple as it can be: it's a refusal, when it comes to the issue of marriage, to make the lives of LGBT's more difficult than they already are.

I'm Glad Republicans Are Denouncing Trump

I'm glad that Republicans are denouncing Trump, because I want the biggest possible Democratic landslide in November. But the denunciations are hypocritical, because the only thing Trump is doing wrong from a Republican perspective is saying and doing things publicly which they say and do behind closed doors, away from live cameras and microphones -- usually, hello, 47 percent Mitt! Hey, by the way, when are we going to see your tax returns?

It's nice to see Republicans distancing themselves from Trump, but it's too bad that non-Republicans are giving them too much credit for doing so, saying what swell people they are. Do you see any Republicans anywhere denouncing the systematic Republican interference with the attempts of ethnic minorities to vote? Has there suddenly been a huge drop in Republican support for oil companies? No, because, of course, that would mean a big drop in financial support by oil companies for Republican political campaigns, and, just in case you hadn't noticed, Republican politicians are for sale.

Is there a big wave of Republicans suddenly acknowledging the findings of climatology and supporting wind, solar or other clean energy? Are Republicans suddenly in favor of affordable health care care for everyone? Women's right to choose? LGBT rights? Spending on education and infrastructure? No, no, no, no and no.

In fact, in a way it's not so great to see Republican politicians distancing themselves from Trump, because they're doing so out of a desire to be elected or re-elected in November, which doesn't fit in at all with the aforementioned Democratic landslide.

Don't suddenly forget who these people were their whole careers long, right up until they spoke out against Trump, and who they continue to be.

Biblical Schmiblical!

Jay Michaelson claims that Jesus had 'advice' for homophobes. What?! you're saying. Yeah, that's what I said: What did this joker just make up and put into Jesus' mouth? Turns out Michaelson is referring to Matthew 22:21 : "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." What?! you're saying. How does does that have anything to do with homophobia? It doesn't, of course, but in Christian theology, just as in punk rock, there are no rules. If you've sat through very many Christian sermons, and actually stayed awake and paid attention, you know that it's standard procedure to pick a topic from current politics, pick a Bible verse, and then invent a connection between the two. Such was the traditional authority of Christianity that it was seldom that a member of the congregation dared to say something so shameless, so wicked and surly as, "But Reverend, that doesn't make any sense," no matter how senseless the supposed connection between the Bible verse and the current political topic may have been. Sorry, Reverends, but those days are gone.

Nevermind the way you put a statement on gay rights into Jesus' mouth, Dr Michaelson -- as someone with a a PhD in religion from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, you ought to know how high the chances are that the author of Matthew put those words, about what to give to Caesar and what to give to God, into Jesus' mouth: Matthew was probably the last of the 4 canonical Gospels to be written, and many of the possible reasons for differences between Matthew and the other 3 Gospels, besides pure accuracy on the part of Matthew, are among the things taught to freshmen pursuing Bachelor's degrees in Biblical studies or Christian theology. They're also taught things such as how many changes were made to the New Testament over the course of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and many of the reasons, besides a pure concern for accuracy, why these changes may have been made.

Maybe it's time for me to stop taking umbrage at people like you for things like that, and finally accept how widespread "lying for the Lord" is, including the lie that the Mormons are more guilty of it than others.

But nevermind the complete non-sequitor of claiming that "give Caesar the things that are Caesar and give God the things that are God's" has some relevance to the, it now appears unsuccessful, thank goodness and common sense, attempt on the part of the Arizona state legislature to give legal backing to discrimination against gays on religious grounds. And nevermind the high probability that you know damn well that Jesus very likely never said anything like Matthew 22:21, and that you probably already know much better than I do why that verse is in the Bible, and nevermind the possibility that Jesus never existed at all -- yes, ?I can picture very well the sneer you would give me for saying that, I'm very much used to getting that sneer. Don't worry, Reverend: we're sneering right back. And we in fact are not climate-change skeptics or Holocaust deniers, we're neither scientifically-illiterate nor bigoted, and we can see quite plainly the difference between when an authority provides copious data, as meterologists do when asked about climate change, and the quite curious case of authorities appealing to authority, as Biblical scholars do when asked why they're so sure that Jesus existed -- nevermind all that.

Let's say for the sake of argument that Jesus existed, and that he made that remark about giving Caesar his and giving God his, and just for the sake of argument that there really is a perfectly clear statement in there about the the legal status of LGBT's -- so what? It was Christianity which introduced homophobia into Christian lands to begin with. Homophobia was foreign to most of them before they were converted. We don't need theological arguments to undo this damage which theology has wrought.

A Bill May Become Law Soon In Arizona Which Would Allow Businesses To Refuse Service To Gay People If Their "Sincerely Held Religious Beliefs" Tell Them They Should

Who could possibly have foreseen it? Who could have foreseen that such intolerant homophobia would spring from a religion which stamped out so many other religions out of concern that everyone with different beliefs was going to face eternal torment after death, which for nearly 2000 years had a strong tendency to equate all forms of sexuality with sin, grudgingly making exceptions only for some very narrowly-defined sorts of sex (Does the phrase "missionary position" ring a bell?), and in which only over the course of the past several decades only a part of its membership has publicly, officially taken the position that homosexuality is natural and not a problem? Who on Earth could have seen something like this coming? And as if these extremists in Arizona weren't enough, on top of that, a few unspeakably snarky individuals are suggesting, for unfathomable reasons, that the religion itself is the problem! What's THEIR problem?!

"Jesus Wasn't A H8er!"

You'll notice, please, that I put the title in quotation marks. That's because I'm not saying that Jesus wasn't a hater. Some "progressive" Christians are saying it, as they argue that the Christian thing to do is to be nice to people. Even to the point of granting gay people the same rights as anyone else. And it's great that they're arguing for human rights. Even though Christian policy was consistently homophobic until a few decades ago, and it's still homophobic to a great degree. But these "progressive' Christians don't like it when you point out things about the history of Christianity when they're trying to tell you what Christianity is all about.

But let's not quibble about that, and really make an effort to understand where these good people are coming from. And obviously, they've got a point: the New Testament does not depict Jesus as a hater.

Except, of course, for the passages which do: the ones depicting him beating up on the moneychangers in the Temple, and saying that he hadn't come to bring peace, but a sword, and to set son against father and so forth -- but FOR THE MOST PART, the New Testament tends to show Jesus preaching love and compassion.

Well, but then again, most of the current scholarship says that we don't really know much at all about what Jesus actually said or did BUT LET'S ASSUME FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT that the passages depicting a meek and loving, gentle and forgiving Jesus are accurate, and that the stuff about bringing not piece but a sword and so forth got into the Bible by accident somehow -- What?! you may be asking. Do I still have some sort of cotton-pickin' problem here?

Well, yes, I do. About 40 years ago, Bob Dylan wrote a really great line in one of his songs:

I try my best to be just like I am

And I try to do that too. And I don't mean that I try my best to act just like Bob Dylan. I can't speak for Bob Dylan, but I suspect that he might say that people who point to that line he wrote and try to be like him, are missing the point. I try my best to be just like The Wrong Monkey. I'm not claiming that I actually always succeed in being just like me, but I try to. It's not always easy, but I try.

And I'm not trying to tell any one of you to be like me. Or like Bob Dylan.

And I'm not trying to tell anybody to be like Jesus -- I'd advise against that, actually, but that's a different sermon -- and I'm not trying to tell anybody NOT to be like Bob Dylan, or to be just like themselves, if they'd rather not be like themselves.

I'd like people to be for human rights, including LGBT rights, and I'm glad when they are, no matter what the reason.

But if they're for LGBT rights because they actually made up their own minds and decided to be, I admire that even more than if they're pro-LGBT rights because they think Jesus would be, or Buddha, or Karl Marx, or Groucho Marx, or Ashurbanipal.

People actually making up their own minds about what they believe is right! Well, clearly, I'm insane and must be stopped.

Or am I? Who's going to stand up more tenaciously for those beliefs -- a follower? Or someone who actually made up his or her own mind, and is going to hold up that picket sign and march whether Jesus would've or not?

Christians, And Homophobia, And Solutions

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush writes: Christians Are a Cause of LGBT Oppression So We Have to Be a Part of the Liberation! And it's great when anyone stands up for the human rights of any oppressed group. It's good when anyone speaks up against the homophobic policies of Uganda and Kansas and Russia and Nigeria, as Raushenbush is doing. He even admits that Christians are involved with the homophobia, which is almost enough to make you fall down in shock, a leading "progressive" Christian admitting such a link.

The thing is, Raushenbush doesn't trace the origins of this Christian homophobia back for more than a few years, when the plain fact is that until a few decades ago, homophobia was the UNANIMOUS official policy of ALL Christian groups. One reader actually responded to this story by bragging about how his Christian group, the Unitarians, had been pro-gay for "an especially long time." All the way back to 1970! Wowser. Around 1900 years of homophobia, and then, for the last 40-odd years, some Christians have begun to roll back their hostility to LGBT's in certain respects. Sorry, Unitarians, but once again, jazz musicians and gangsters have trounced you in the tolerance race, having accepted gays for decades before any Christians did.

As long as well-meaning, pro-rights Christians continue to deny that their religion was 100% homophobic in its official statements for around 97% of its existence, I don't see how they can expect their present tolerance to be anything more than a Band-Aid compared to the deep wound of the full extent of Christian homophobia. The plain fact is that the pre-Christian Roman Empire, as well as many other cultures taken over by Christianity, completely lacked homophobia as we know it.

But Christians never have been so much with the facts, have they. Well -- except for those of us who have become ex-Christian atheists. Raushenbush makes no mention whatsoever of the homophobia which characterized the vast majority of Christian history. Instead, he and the other pro-LGBT-rights Christians accuse the homophobic Christians of not being true Christians, of misinterpreting the Bible and thoroughly missing Jesus' message. Exactly the same things of which the homophobic Christians accuse them. Exactly as many, perhaps most Christians have always denounced other Christians. Some of the pro-rights Christians declare that the homophobes are not really Christians; conversely, some pro-rights Christians say that they are not Christians, but rather followers of Christ. "Followers of Christ," of course, is precisely what the term "Christians" means.

It's all just so very depressingly stupid. The ignorance of certain statements is just appalling -- and I'm talking about the pro-rights Christians, who are by far the more intelligent of the two Christian groups in conflict here. The utter lack of historical knowledge. One reader, a pro-rights guy, one of the good guys, claimed that before 1971, no-one ever referred to him- or herself as a Christian. I'm not making that up. And furthermore, that comment was posted for days before anyone thought to challenge it. Well -- unless the Huffingtom Post didn't publish any of the replies challenging it. (Surprisingly, they published my reply. I don't expect an intelligent answer, but at least someone is on record as saying something to the effect of, "WTF?! You don't realize that people called themselves Christians before 1971?!") The majority of the comments on Raushenbush' story and stories like it are from pro-rights Christians and homophobic Christians arguing over WWJD? -- What Would Jesus Do? -- and what did Jesus mean? and how are we to interpret this or that Bible verse. And very little discussion of what Christians have actually tended to do over the course of the past 2000 years. Well, again -- perhaps the majority of people who are not homophobic and who have looked into the history of Christianity are in fact no longer Christians. If they had, how could they still want to belong to such an outfit? And by looking into the history of Christianity, I mean looking at primary sources, and not relying solely on the piping-hot ahistorical bullshit served up in the sermons they hear and in the writing of popular "progressive" Christian theologians, in which they hear that Christians of earlier eras were basically identical to 21st-century progressives.

"Joel Osteen looks more and more like the Joker every day..."

"... but I don't want to make fun of his looks."

You can't have it both ways, Joel. You can't be homophobic and love gay people at the same time, any more than I can make fun of your looks and at the same time not make fun of your looks. Don't worry about the mockery too much, I only did it to make a rhetorical point, and the truth is that we're both in our 50's, and I look it, and you don't. I should be half as handsome as you.

You said that homosexuality is a sin, but that you didn't want to preach about it. Well, that was preaching about it. Saying that you want to be nice isn't enough to make you nice. That big smile of yours lights up the room, but it doesn't take any of the sting out of your words. You want to accept the GLBT community? Then you're going to have to give the conservative evangelical community a big jolt, and reverse your position about homosexuality being a sin. You can't please both communities. You have to pick one.

The Great Debate Over What Jesus Said About Homosexuality Is Underway

No, I don't actually find it particularly great, but I'm just one snarky person. Many thousands of Huffington Post Readers' Comments have been posted in response to one article entitled What Jesus Says About Homosexuality. (Yep: "says." Present tense.) The official HP position: Jesus said nothing about homosexuality and many things about acceptance and non-judgmentality. Conservatives counter: Jesus did say things about upholding the old law, and Jewish society was quite homophobic at the time. So far, both sides are right. (Except that Jesus also said things about tearing down the old order.) Both sides are right, that is, if we stipulate that "What Jesus says" = "What Jesus is portrayed as saying in the Gospels." Homophobic positions are taken in the New Testament outside of the Gospels. The progressives, the pro-LGBT-rights side, say that it doesn't matter what the rest of the New Testament says, the conservatives say Uh-huh it does too matter.

And then there are those who insist that it's "obvious" that Jesus and the Apostle John were a gay couple, and also that it is obvious that the centurion and his servant whom Jesus healed were a gay couple. They say this based entirely on the text of the Bible. If anyone has even attempted yet to explain how this could both be obvious and escape the attention of ridiculous numbers of people studying the Bible with ridiculous diligence for a ridiculously long time, I haven't noticed it. But of course this is theology. There's absolutely no requirement to make sense, whether you're perpetrating progressive, human-friendly theology or reactionary misanthropic theology.

And then there are those -- razor-sharp minds, these ones -- who insist that the word "homosexual" was not coined until the 19th century and that this is relevant. I suspect that there is significant overlap between this group and the group who insist on referring to Jesus as Jeshua or Yoshua or Joshua or something else other than Jesus, and consider themselves to be deep.

I don't know how any of the last group are Mainline Protestants. Not many, perhaps. But progressive Mainline Protestants tend to be very impressed with themselves in this discussion of Jesus' LGBT policies, as they generally are impressed with themselves. As far as I've noticed so far the progressive Mainline Protestants don't talk a lot about how it was their church who killed all of those people in Salem in the 1690's for witchcraft. There once again we have the tendency among progressive Christians, which I've pointed out so often, to ignore, distort, excuse away and misinterpret, in short, to lie* their smug ugly asses off about the history of their religion. And that, of course, is good traditional Christianity, as thoroughly Christian as constantly pointing out that other Christians are doin' it wrong. (*Of course, "to lie" implies conscious and deliberate deception, and so the term does not apply at all to many of these jokers, because they actually believe their own malarkey, or so it surely seems, head-spinning as it is.)

This Christian tendency to just straight-up make stuff up goes all the way back to the era of the martyrs, if Candida Moss and others are correct in their assertion that the martyrs never were, and, of course, thoroughly obviously, but we've become so thoroughly used to it that it bears repeating, further back, to the very beginning of Christianity, to the basic Christian story: an Omnipotent Creator of Everything sends His Son to Earth to be a human sacrifice (even 2000 years ago human sacrifice was an outmoded, primitive, rejected concept in Greek and Roman and also in Jewish culture), a sacrifice which the Omnipotent One, in His infinite mercy, provided in order to save mankind from -- the awful wrath of... uh... the Omnipotent Creator. Offhand I can't think of any myth which is so far from possessing internal logic.

Theologians, Christians and others but especially Christians, attempt to prevent themselves and others from even addressing the ridiculousnesses of it all by referring to them as "mysteries." The only thing which strikes me as mysterious here is how successful the theologians continue to be in preventing people from thinking clearly about the whole fooferah. The success with which they pose questions like "What did [or, more often than "did," "does"] Jesus say about homosexuality?" and deflect sensible counter-questions such as:

"Who gives a rat's ass?"

"Why are you pretending that what Jesus said [says] is equivalent to what the New Testament says he said, and ignoring the evidence of the non-canonical Gospels and of the extensive polemical re-writes of the entire New Testament in the second and third centuries?"

Or, my favorite:

"Why do you all still insist upon insisting that the question of the Historical Jesus has been thoroughly examined and was answered conclusively: Yep, he existed, decades ago, or centuries ago, depending on what sort of exaggerating full-of-shit mood you're in on a particular day?"

Actually, that's my co-favorite. The actually more pertinent and pithy question is "Who gives a shit?" Why do we keep pretending that what Jesus said is so damn important one way or another, even if we could figure out what exactly he said, which clearly we can't?

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.