The following is the second part of an exchange on Facebook between myself and my 28 year old nephew, a college professor at the University of Washington. It is posted with his permission. The exchange began with the posting of an anti-prop 8 video. I don't think I am succeeding in changing his mind, but this illustrates well the mindset of the culture our children are growing up in. Feel free (again) to comment at the end.
Dan Jensen:
The reason I continue to compare homosexuality with pedophilia (thakns :) for corecting the sppelling..) is that pedophilia is now where homosexuality was a couple decades ago. You and I can currently agree that it is wrong, but without an unchanging framework (i.e. the Bible) to anchor us, you may be debating with YOUR nephew in 30 years as to why it is wrong for a "consenting" 12 year old boy to have sex with a 35 year old man.
NAMBLA exists to: "end the oppression of men and boys who have freely chosen mutually consenting relationships."
There is nothing new or different in this generation that hasn't been argued or experienced in the past. An admittedly extreme example can be found in the first century where Nero "married" a young boy after having his masculinity surgically removed. He served as an example to many men at the time who simply wanted to go where their urges lead them after becoming bored with the normal.
"...the men also abandoned natural relations with women..."
Andy Ko:
The two are hardly comparable. Homosexual relationships don't harm anyone, no one's will is being subverted, there are no issues of consent, there is no unwanted control. It was normal behavior since the dawn of humanity until the rise of Christianity deemed it immoral.
Pedophilia is different. Any time there is a power dynamic between two people in a relationship, there is the risk (but not guarantee) of abuse. Between a 35 year old and a 6 year old, it's all but guaranteed; between and 35 year old and a 12 year old, it's almost certain; between a 35 year old and a 17 year old, it's less certain. The same problems can occur between a 50 year old boss and a 20 year old intern, or a 20 year old boss and a 50 year old subordinate. The same basic ethics apply to all of these situations and always will.
Gay marriage is not a slippery slope to anarchy, it is a step toward equal rights and peace.
Dan Jensen:
When you say "Homosexual relationships don't harm anyone," I assume you are not talking about the homosexuals themselves?
* 83% gay men have more than 50 partners lifetime.
* Drug use during sex = 50 times hetero.
* 33% loose normal bowel function.
* 1 in 14 die from bacteria and viral disease.
* 70% are STD carriers.
* 30% are HIV pos.
*10% have AIDS.
No big deal because they are consenting adults, right?
Wrong. Actually, 40% of HIV pos. men have had sex in the last two months..."unprotected." I wonder if their partners know?
Safe sex is a cruel joke.
This is an activity that is guaranteed to cause death and disease to those who participate in it.
If we really love these people, we will not accept, facilitate, encourage, enable, or ignore it. We should warn, inform, and encourage acceptance of self-restraint as a lifestyle.
God warns from His nature of Love. But He created us to choose.
Andy Ko:
Ug. Back to correlation and causation. Okay.
Most people in prison are black. Therefore blacks are more violent and immoral. (Wrong. Most people commit crime because they feel they have nothing to lose; most inner-city black kids think they'll be dead by 20, because they're surrounded by death).
Children who go to private schools do better in school and get into better colleges, therefore, private schools are better than public . (Wrong, private schools accept the ones that test well; public schools accept everyone).
Homosexual men have higher rates of unprotected sex and drugs, therefore, homosexuality causes harm. (Wrong. Homosexual men, like black men, engage in riskier behavior because they feel they have nothing to lose after losing everything).
If only the world were so simple. Homosexuality doesn't cause the harm; self-loathing, caused by homophobia, causes the harm. We know this because gay men with loving, accepting parents and friends do not engage in risky behavior.
Dan Jensen:
Homosexual sex requires unnatural use of various body parts for activities for which they were not designed for, therefore, rectums tear, the anal sphincter muscle is gradually destroyed, the absorbing layer of cells in the rectum absorb bacteria rather than repelling it, therefore disease levels in homosexuals are elevated significantly in comparison to exclusive heterosexual participants.
We haven't discussed the pathologies associated with oral sex yet, but the correlation of disease to activity is undeniable.
"Safe Sex" is a nightmare policy that has only emboldened people to discount the warnings being shouted by their consciences, which I think by your definition would be referred to as "self-loathing."
Well-adjusted homosexuals in healthy environments with loving parents are still going to die early from medical complications from their activity. Somebody valuable enough for Jesus Christ to die for, is certainly "being harmed."
Andy Ko:
Wow, you need a sex ed refresher course; or maybe you never had one. Anal and oral sex are in no way riskier or unhealthier than vaginal sex; oral sex is the least risky. Anyone who's told you otherwise is spreading lies. Do your research, even if from a biblical view (www.sexinchrist.com).
Moreover, not all gay men have anal sex, many straight men have anal sex with women, and women of all orientations do it. Maybe you should deny marriage to straight couples who do anal to protect them from themselves.
The worst part about these myths is how many young Christians have unprotected sex because they believe the only ones at risk are gay couples.
To sum up your argument: gay couples shouldn't have equal rights because they harm children (false), they harm themselves (false), it would create an immoral society (false), and god hates gay men (sure, why not?). All you have left is a single line in the bible about murdering men who lie with other men.
You do little to convince.
Dan Jensen:
A plethora of dogmatic assertions does not a defensible argument make.
You have made statements about God with little concern about the reality that He is in fact watching you. It is likely to me that you either do not believe in God or that if you do, you don't believe He is interested in you or what you do.
You have misrepresented and misinterpreted the Holy Scriptures in which God has chosen to reveal Himself to you, suggesting that you believe there are no consequences to ignoring Him.
You have been so immersed in the lies of your social education, you repeat what you have been told by rote as if that will make it true... (i.e. "10% of the population is gay etc,... taken from the embarrassingly discredited Kinsey study of 1948)
If I have not convinced you, I apologize for my inability to do so, because this is about much more than prop 8. It is about the Christian Worldview and the questions it answers for Time and for Eternity. "Seek and you shall find" is referring to Truth.
Andy Ko:
I'll happily cite evidence for every claim I make. I've read the scientific source of every claim I make with a skeptical and objective eye: some were valid, some were not. Many who share my positions *do* accept these things as fact, because few people know how to do or read such research. But I do. I've been doing it for 10 years. I do it now as a professor.
For an even-handed discussion of the Kinsey results, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_Reports]. It's missing more recent int'l surveys of homosexuality, which, depending on the sample, lead to statistics between 2 and 15% over respondents' lifetimes.
As for me, I have no need for a god loves some and not all, no need for a god who uses fear, consequence, and retribution to instill good. I have no need for a god that leads people to abandon their reason and individuality for faith and conformance. I can be good consistently and happy persistently by loving myself and those around me. As can billions of others.
Dan Jensen:
Another professor I know considered himself the most reluctant of all Christians. He accepted the authority and Lordship of Jesus as a result of his careful investigation into the claims of Jesus and the claims of the bible. But he had significant misconceptions, irrational fears if you will, about what serving God should be like. But he simply accepted Truth, and through long relationship with God he discovered the forms that love from God would take, and what forms his obedience to the Master would take.
C.S. Lewis would later go on to write about this in The Chronicles of Narnia. In reference to Aslan the lion, a metaphorical substitute for Jesus, when a child asked, "Is he safe?" the reply was a hasty: "Safe? Of course He's not safe! But He is good."
God is not the god you fear he is. But God IS the God that deserves your fear, respect, and obedience. Because of his desire for honest relationship, He lets you be the one to choose.
Andy Ko:
I've read multiple versions of the bible, the Qur'an, the Tanakh, the Tao Te Ching, the Vedas, the Five Classics, the Book of Mormon, Theravada, and several other texts. I've gone regularly to the religious services of several faiths. I've had long and deliberative conversations with people of all kinds of faiths about why I should believe.
Whether God exists or not, whether he is dead or not, does not concern me. What concerns me is how people use and abuse religious beliefs to war and murder. The beliefs about homosexuality and generally any sort of harmless deviance that Christianity and other religions propound leads the less objective of humanity to do horrible things.
Today, for example, is the day we remember people killed in the name of God:
http://www.transgenderdor.org/?page_id=58
I have no problem with religion; I take issue with organized religion's propensity for murder, hate and division. I care far more about suffering here and now than afterlife or judgement day.
Dan Jensen:
"Ug. Back to correlation and causation. Okay."
Christianity teaches that homosexuality is wrong, so when a man tries to bed his new female friend and discovers she lied to him and is actually male and he kills her/him, he is killing in the name of God. Ug.
You simply don't take it far enough. God teaches us what proper behavior is not because he flipped a coin and decided which behaviors are evil and which are good. His character determines what is right and wrong, and the violations which we freely choose create avoidable consequence.
Far more people have suffered and died in the name of atheism than have ever suffered at the hands of those who abuse religious beliefs. Russia, China, Viet Nam, Germany...
Murder is evil regardless of the excuse used to perpetrate it.
Sexual sin is a sin against one's own body. The depression, anxiety, anger, exposure to disease... all personal choice with avoidable consequences. One Man, One Woman, monogamous for life, God's design.
Andy Ko:
*I* know that God doesn't condone murder. It's sheep who read the bible literally who leap from "God hates homosexuality" to "I should spill homosexual blood." As unfortunate as it is, people often interpret religious texts in a way that condones bigoted violence. Most transgender murders are in the name of god; abortion doctor murders are in the name of god; the crusades & inquisitions were in the name of god; 9/11 was in the name of god. People of nearly all religions (or lack thereof) use religion, and in general, believe in absolute truth, as an excuse for violence.
Of course, humanity's gods never meant for this to happen. They just didn't communicate their morality well through writing. This is all the more reason for people to learn ethics explicitly instead of relying on texts that *imply* morals through fables. Say "love your neighbor" and people understand; say "God wants you to love your neighbor or else," and people use God as an excuse for any number of heinous crimes.
Dan Jensen:
People doing what people want to do is called sin. People doing what God wants them to do is called obedience. What you refer to as self-loathing is, I believe, little more than the natural consequence of suppressing conscience.... the act of disobedience to God. That feeling of self-loathing also occurs when Christians hate homosexuals instead of loving them, or when otherwise good dads make dumb decisions with their kids on occasion. The cure for self-loathing is compliance with Truth, or compliance with the design and standards of God. You don't have to be a Christian to experience a measure of success from simply following design, just as the abuse of design in the world of mechanical devices often leads to failure and/or injury.
I respect that you do not yet have the level of confidence in the reliability or divine inspiration of the Bible required to buy in to what I have stated. Part of my confidence comes from study, part from faith, but most comes from my redemption.
Andy Ko:
This is the sad thing about so many religions. People use them as an excuse to judge. You impose your worldview on strangers who do no to harm you, and yet cause real, tangible harm to them, denying them equality, reinforcing stigma and hate--all to preserve a fractured doctrine that you take on faith.
I suppose if I believed that the bible was God's word, I'd sacrifice others' happiness and freedom in his name too. But I don't. It seems silly to place words written and translated by men two millennia ago before the lives of the living.
The irreducible fact here is that I prioritize people and their God-given individuality, while you prioritize their judgement after death. That's too bad; you could bring a of joy to people if you weren't standing in their way calling them sinners. But I suppose God only intended certain kinds of joy, for certain kinds of people, didn't he? How loving of him.
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