LemonMelon said:
What would really help you to change my mind is if you gave me even the slightest bit of scripture to prove your point, rather than just your opinion. That's really what bothers me. It's what bothered me yesterday, and it's what bothers me today. I want the truth, so give it to me.
i am responding because i have not heard from Ormus/Melon, and i think he would add a great deal to this thread, both addressing the above, as well as being incredibly fluent in the kind of langue that the OP might need with her parents. it is my great hope that this post doesn't get this thread closed, becaue i'm trying to post mateiral that is relevant to a gay teenager struggling to deal with her Christian parents. i know Melon's posts have helped Memphis a great deal, so it is my hope that they will do the same for the OP.
so, i'll link to
this old thread.
one highlight (among many):
[q]The Bible's vague references to same-sex acts are in the context of temple orgies, which was a common pagan practice that stretched back thousands of years, and pederasty, the Greco-Roman practice where adult men would have sex with teenage boys until the latter reached the age of marriage, whereupon he would get married to a woman. If the destruction of Gibeah is not a condemnation of all heterosexual acts, then these stories of idolatry, orgies, and pedophilia are not a condemnation of all homosexual acts.
And this was more than evident through the first 1000 years of Christianity. It is known that early Christians looked at the Bible and focused mainly on idolatry, much in the same way that today's Christians look at the Bible and focus mainly on sex. Have you ever asked yourself where this focus shift came from? For that, we can blame the medieval Christian stoic movement, who finds its ideological father in St. Augustine. While he claims to have converted from Manicheanism to Christianity, the evidence is overwhelming that, much of the time, he used his influence to put Manichean theology into Christianity. Manicheans had two main obsessions:
1) Dualism--"good versus evil," a concept they took from the Persian religion, Zoroastrianism.
2) Purity, where they avoided the material, passionate, and emotional, along with all meat and sex, which they believed polluted the body, condemning them to an eternity of rebirth cycles.
Now just imagine what a disaster it is combining these two extreme philosophies. As a result, the post-Augustine Christian church developed a hatred of sex of all kinds. Sex for pleasure, even between married couples, was a mortal sin worthy of eternal hell. For a married couple to see each other naked would have been "lust," which was a mortal sin. This meant that a married couple was to only have pleasureless sex (probably through a hole in a sheet or something) only when they were ready to conceive a child.
This went further, as well. This philosophy is also the originator of the concept of "original sin." While today we believe that it is the sin of Adam and Eve, it was originally a belief that we were all tainted with sin, because we all came out of women. There was a particular disdain for women in these days, and, in fact, this was why female priests, who existed from the beginnings of the Christian church (so much for excuses claiming that they were forbidden because of the Bible) up to the 4th century A.D., were banned. It was their belief that the mere existence of women was from the result of Satan. Men were the lifebringers, while women merely held the incubating waters. Because men were the bearers of life, it was then believed that all fetuses were inherently male, and that female fetuses were a result of Satan's interference in the womb.
Proper behavior for men were to be strong and emotionless in every instance (hence today's adjective, "stoic," meaning "one who is seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure, or pain"). Feelings of happiness and sadness were equally condemned. Women were allowed to cry, merely because they were already "fallen," and, as such, "weakness" was expected.
Homosexuality, as such, was reserved for their deepest vitriol. It violated every tenet of Christian stoicism. It was pleasureful! It was lustful! It treated a man like a (*gasp*) woman! And because they believed that men were the lifebearers, they had a genuine fear that a man would get pregnant. This is where Christianity gets its anti-gay prejudices, not through the Bible. The Christian stoics did not even use the Bible to justify these prejudices. It was just obvious through their understanding of "natural law." Indeed, even today, the Catholic Church has quietly acknowledged that the Bible has nothing to do with their anti-gay sentiments, and a good many Catholic Bibles actually have contextual footnotes on the supposed anti-gay passages that echo exactly what I've stated in regards to idolatry, temple orgies, and pederasty! This homophobia, instead, has everything to do with medieval "natural law" tradition.
Christian stoicism, obviously, has changed over the centuries. Manicheanism became forgotten, so nobody would ever have known its influence on Christianity. "Original sin" was later redefined as being the equal sin we bear from being descendent of Adam and Eve, rather than being a result of childbirth through a woman's sinful vagina. 19th century Protestantism came up with the revolutionary concept that men and women should get married for love. Prior to that, it was about business and property alliances. Many kingdoms, after all, were created through such alliances.
"Homosexuality," as we know it today, was not even theorized until 1874 Germany. It was a revolutionary concept to believe that homosexuals were not merely heterosexuals who slip up once in a while. In the 132 years since then, it has been more than confirmed that homosexuals are a distinct part of nature. They are not merely heterosexuals that decide to fool around with the same sex here and there. It is not a mental illness, as determined by all credible psychologists and psychiatrists.
[/q]
" Get in the face of the one who wrote the book, not the one quoting it.
Very, very interesting. It didn't answer my request, but it does give me something to ponder.
I had no hatred toward the original poster, and I just wanted them to be comfortable with themselves (sexually, spiritually, etc...) If I came across as hate-filled in any way I sincerely apologize. 
