The Good Book and Gay Marriage

I'm a Christian with a relationship with Jesus Christ, and I don't believe that having homosexual feelings is a choice. What is a choice is to engage in homosexual behavior, and that is what the Biblical Scriptures clearly speak about.
I believe it is akin to having heterosexual sex before marriage: while your body may have the sexual desire naturally, it is committing the act that the Bible says is a sin.

However, none of this gives Christians a right to treat someone who has homosexual feelings with anything less than the love of Christ Jesus. It is not a different "level" of temptation than any of my struggles, or the struggles of any Christian. Everyone has sinned, none of us are perfect, and nobody measures up to the level of perfection God requires.

Just my two cents on the subject.

I'm tired of hearing people say it's a choice! When i hear a person say this, i wish i could express how naive or uneducated they sound. Do they believe the Earth is flat too? Ask any gay person if they chose it. Why don't you go up to a child with Down syndrome and ask if he chose to be that way. To me there is no difference between the two situations. This is why it makes me so angry. I wish it was a choice, cause i would not be gay. My life would have been so much easier.

So, shiloh, you could choose to love a woman if necessary? GIVE ME A BREAK PEOPLE. You are born GAY or STRAIGHT.

People who oppose this already have their minds made up.: like you bobbyny and 14% and 86% did you pull thoes # out of the north end of a south bound cow?

"People who oppose made up their minds, but by a lot slimer margin then that." and at that, only because of fear-mongering a mis-information. Let these articles and discussions go on: the percent against gay marage is dropping like a stone.

Wow Gary!!! You know a lot about "the American civil code." our Constitution actually guaranteed the right to own a slave! And, it was illegal for black to marry whites until the landmark Supreme Court decision of Loving v. Virginia! The comparision is quite apt. To say "this isn't the way it is" is idiotic! A civil rights movement had to happen and people had to realize discrimination was wrong and while that movement was happening, stupid people like you were saying "I don't see the problem!

shiloh8 wrote: "I believe someone can have tendencies toward the same sex, however that is dealing with feelings and choices not FACTS". Shiloh, you believe that, because that's what you WANT to believe. You're not gay, so how the hell would you KNOW!! ?? LOL give me a friggin break. Oh, here, I know.. let ME (white male) tell YOU about black people. Uh, yeah, that's it!

Last time I read the Constitution this was supposed to be a secular nation. Why should what the Bibles says have any bearing to laws we create? I thought the 1st Amemdment was pretty explicit.

Garey1967 writes: "Having a discussion about this is pointless." You know what, Garey, it is pointless but not for the reason you suggest. You say that the reason it's pointless is because it is written in Romans that homosexuality is sinful. That is not the reason discussing it is pointless. the reason discussing it is pointless is that snakes on't talk, virgins don't give birth, water cannot be turned into wine, epilepsy is not caused by demonic posession, and burning bushes cannot hlp but be consumed. THAT is why it is pointless; because anyone who believes these things which cannot be, has lost his credibility before the discussion starts. THAT is why it is pointless.

Thank God for the United Methodist Church and its motto, "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors." My father grew up in the south during the Depression and was raised Southern Baptist. I know first hand how hurtful bigotry can be because I had friends of color who would not visit my house when my father was home. I don't claim to know a lot about the Bible but I am addicted to the History/Discovery/National Geographic channels shows about Biblical history. My question is: Have we forgotten that the Bible was written for the people of the time? Homosexuality was probably considered a sin to the people of the first century, but does it need to be a sin 21 centuries later? We evolve (oh my gosh, there is that evolution word!) and times change. Do people who take the Bible so literally reallly know anything about the history of the world at that time? Read Marcus Borg's books, "Reading the Bible Again for the First Time," and "The Heart of Christianity." At what point do we accept and love all people for WHO they are and not condemn them for WHAT they are? Again, Thank God for churches that love and accept all -- just like Jesus. I believe that my Jesus, if he were walking the streets of America in 2008, would spread the message of loving all and accepting their differences. Same sex marriage is about civil rights and a loving couple being allowed to legally commit to one another.

Being gay or lesbian is not a choice for the overwhelming majority of LBGT people; that has been studied and proved repeatedly . . . and in fact there is some evidence to show that there is a biological predisposition to sexual orientation as researched by several leading geneticists who have done extensive studies with twins (see Dean Hamer, PhD, The Science of Desire). As for equating being gay or lesbian with being black, while there are some similarities in terms of civil rights -- no two civil rights struggles are the same. There are many similarities with regard to the use of the Bible to justify denying people their civil rights. The Bible was used to deny African-Americans their civil rights as well. And I would very respectfully argue that just because someone could "pass" for something or someone else, does not mean that it is an honorable and honest way to live one???s life. Respectfully, I believe there are some people who are technically African-American who have "passed" as white -- one notable example is Sally Hemmings??? son Eston I believe who after being freed as a slave moved north to live as a white man because he could ???pass??? as white. I believe his children lived as white people, never knowing of their African-American heritage until the Sally Hemmings relationship to Thomas Jefferson was later proven through DNA testing. How sad that this man (Eston) was born a slave yet fathered by a white man who was the President of the United States, but had to move away from his mother and siblings and deny his heritage and live what many would consider to be lie just to have a decent life. Does that sound like The United States of America to you? If not, imagine that many gays and lesbians feel forced to do the very same thing because some people don't want to accept them for who they are and afford them their Constitutional rights.

Wow, I do not have the audacity to lower the words of Jesus to the authoritative level of a human (and thus fallible) such as Paul. Deity should trump human every time.

To abide by my own rules and be perfectly "factual" as it relates to the Bible, I should have said that Lot's wife was turned to salt, not stone. My apologies, yet my over-arching point remains the same: today we condemn many behaviors that were apparently acceptable at certain times in Biblical teachings, so can we really use the Bible as the source for determining who has what rights today?

JERRY IN CINCY,THE NEW MESSIAH!!

A MAN STICKING HIS PENIS IN THE RECTUM OF ANOTHER MAN,NO WAY THATS NORMAL? ITS DEVIANT!