www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality: A New Clinical Approach (Paperback)

Bob,

When someone with another opinion of what constitutes hate crimes gets their hands on power I will come and visit you in prison. Ok?

CDL

Where exactly in the Bible is the prohibition on homosexuality? I've never been clear on that.

You're kidding, right?

Genesis, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (sodomy?) God destroyed the cities because of the perversions committed within them. No, it wasn't because of inhospitality.

The Mosaic law proscribes the penalty of DEATH for those who commit those acts.

And in the passage from 1 Corinthians that Lawrence quoted. Effeminate is the Biblical word for men who lie with men, because they were emasculated by what happens during the act.

Also, the Fathers of the Chruch were VERY opposed to homosexual acts. Especially, due to the fact that the pagan cults used them in their worship.

All power in all societies revolves around class and which class is in power and the social, productive and distributive systems in place which put and keep them there.

All justice, therefore, is class justice but reflects the ebb and flow of struggles for civil rights.

It is extremely naive of people to believe in justice abstractly or in an abstract sense.

I don't expect kindness or understanding from the system. I would like to believe that if I or my side were in power we would show more mercy, but I doubt it.

One thing I greatly admire about the right is its ability or willingness to exercise control and power in both subtle and direct ways, enforcing agreement and silence when needed. Prison is not only the last resort, it is also the first or second resort. And the right is not at all hypocritical about this, either; they're very clear that the issue is power and control.

(Examples: be "insubordinate" at work and you lose your job with no hope of further employment. Refuse registration or the draft during war and you go to jail. Actively opposing imperialism outside of the boundaries set up by imperialism gets you sent to prison.)

And one thing that makes me despair of the left is our shared naivete about the nature of power and our expectations of justice under this system.

I would not have said this one year ago, and certainly not before reading the postings here and thinking about them.

Its unlikely that hate speech will become more or less of a crime in the near future in the US, but I do wish that it would indeed be considered a real crime and that the penalties for it would be enforced. I would like to see haste speech defined as attacks on civil society and the positive gains of the Enlightenment and the mediating institutions and social contracts which flowed from the Enlightenment; attack that and off you go to jail. This is only wishful and naive thinking on my part.

One poster asks if this does not remind me of nazism. No, it doesn't--not at all.

Conservatives have a valid point in claiming that civil society must collectively defend itself from those who would destroy it.

I believe that hate speech is aimed at destroying civil society.

What we disagree on here is who is attacking civil society and what civil society actually is.

I do not believe that we disagree on principles, however.

The ebb and flow at the ballot box is important, but these are issues which ultimately get settled elsewhere. I expect that, in my life time, the tide will turn for awhile and people like me will indeed end up in prisons or worse. It happened 70 years ago, after all. Anyone on my side of the political divide who does not get this is indeed naive--and the left is home to some of the most naive people on the planet.

So this is a long and rather complicaed response about hate speech and the question of nazism. I'm sorry if this took us off topic.

One Love.

bob r.

Dear Eric,

So can you post the actual quotations with the chapter and verse numbers? (you know give me the "citation")?

Thanks
Nonna

That's a beautiful statement about civil society and hate speech, Caro Roberto.
Keep up the spirit!
Nonna

I have a personal friend who was greatly helped by Dr. Nicolosi. Was he 'cured'? No. Is his life better now? Yes. I don't think (it's possible that i'm wrong) that Dr. Nicolosi claims to be able to cure homosexuals from their orientation so that all vestages of it are gone. What he does do is teach men how to be masculine.

Please explain to me how this kind of therapy is 'hate speech?" That's about the most absurd thing I've ever heard.

Jason

Oh, I bet you have indeed heard more ridiculous things in your life.

I was responding to what was written above.

I think that if you talk about "curing" someone of homosexuality you are saying that that person has a disease. That sounds like hate peech to me.

I think that if you talk about calling or forcing someone to repent for the "sin" of homosexuality that sounds like hate speech.

I think that if you engage in loose talk about Biblical injunctions of stoning people to death for homosexual acts you are engaging in hate speech.

I am NOT saying that people who do this in this forum are haters. I am ONLY commenting on the speech.

I don't know what "masculine" means or if any two people can agree on a definition of it. Therefore, I don't think that it can be taught or learned or forced upon someone. And today's "masculinity" can mean something else tomorrow or in another culture. Frankly, much "masculine" behavior seems offensive to me.

But, you know, my point about hate speech was off topic and I apologized for that. The left, the gays, the Roma, the Jews and many real believers and faithful got stars and triangles handed to them 70 years ago. I expect that this will happen again, in one social form or another and along the same lines as before. Hate speech inevitably leads there, but that isn't the point of this thread.

One Love.

bob r.

(rant)
Please don't leave out the Slavs! They're always being left out. Hitler would have "liquidated" the Slavs as efficiently as his own citizens, if they didn't own guns and have armies and such. In any case many Slavs were swept up by the SS and sent to concentration camps. We had two people in our church who were children in the concentration camps -- Christian Slavs.

The Holocaust took the lives of 11 million people -- not just 6 million.

History is not what happened -- its what we remember!
(which is why the Berlin Holocaust memorial is such a travesty to *all* the victims of the Nazis. It only bothers to commemorate a subset.
(rant over)

Bob

Do you believe that homosexuality is a sin ?

Being, as I am, fond of peaches, I could never approve of a "hate peech".

"Masculine", I believe, is used to refer to some characteristic or set of characteristics commonly associated with male members of the human race. As such, it is often associated with stereotypes.

"Masculine" is also a grammatical term referring to the gender of nouns and adjectives. A table, for example, is masculine in Russian and Ukrainian but feminine in Latin and French. The average table has no sexual characteristics at all.

A beard, however, is grammatically feminine in Russian, Ukrainian and French, yet is only worn by males. Go figure!

Incognitus

Dear Nonna,

I am not being right or left, Republican or Democrat, just a struggling Orthodox Christian and a friend of Roman Catholic teaching, when I say that the Church, East and West, believes homosexuality along with some heterosexual acts as well, are sinful.

Does that mean that we hate or are judgementally intolerant of those who engage in premarital, extramarital, and other acts of heterosexual sexuality...NO, and neither do I think that anyone on this forum has intended or displayed intolerant judgmentalism or hatred towards those of the homosexual inclination.

We live in difficult and confusing times and we all contend to some degree or another, with what our holy Church Fathers have called 'the passions', whether we are single, married, male, female, homo or heterosexual. We are all in the boat of spiritual struggles together. For some these passions are more easily conquered than others. It is not for any of us to cast the first stone. That is why our holy Orthodox and Roman Catholic confessors help us with the struggles--struggles that they too, as human beings and men, married and celibate, know of.

With all due love and respect to you and others, does everything here, including matters of Church teaching, really need to be reduced to divisive politics?

Blessings and love in Christ,
Alice

I'm not sure what the point of singling me out and asking me publicly about my conception of sin is.

Excuse me if I look a bit like a deer in headlights just now.

I don't think I know what all sins are and I try not to judge individuals. I also don't think I know how to weigh sins, or if they can be weighed at all.

And I don't think you know either.

Before I cast a stone--and this kind of therapy and the rhetoric surrounding this does indeed seem like a stone--I need to be more certain of myself and others.

I can name many sins I'm in a rush to condemn. Some of these may be valid, others may not be. If the sins I'm choosing to condemn have a Biblical basis but do not match your list, which may also have a Biblical basis, how do we decide who is right and who is wrong? How do we move forward?

I submit that compassion should guide us in those cases. And this therapy and the rhetoric surrounding it do not seem compassionate to me.

I also submit--and this is in response to Alice--that this is essentially a series of political questions, political steps and political results. It is not that anyone, left or right, is injecting divisive politics into a religious discussion. IOt is very much that the Kingdom of God includes all things. Boff's book on the Our Father and Hail Mary prayers makes this quite clear, and especially so when he rfernces existing Church documents.

One Love.

bob r.

NO Bob, my opinion is not what makes it a sin. It's God's clear commandment and the church's clear teaching on the subject that makes homosexuality a grievous sin.

You state that you don't know what all sins are, and that you do not want to judge individuals, yet at the same time you think that those who ask homosexuals to repent of there sins may be guilty of hate speech and as such should be punished. What you are advocating is the persecution of those who obey God's word.

So can no one really provide the Biblical references that prohibit homosexuality?

I'm serious here. Some one must have the knowledge...

N