GAY TRUTH

In the realm of international human rights law, major conflicts are developing today between freedom of conscience and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) policies. In these conflicts, much more is at stake than the rights of religious people. Everyone who cares about human rights for all—LGBT or not—should be concerned about the resolution of these conflicts, for the continued viability of the entire human rights framework hinges on their outcome. Conscience occupies a place of paramount importance in international human rights law for at least two reasons. First, our endowment with conscience and reason is the foundation of the human rights system. Second, conscience has also been the engine of human rights activism—from the abolition of slavery to the condemnation of genocide. Because the architects of the modern international human rights system had a high view of conscience, both as evidence of human dignity and as a faculty for discerning moral truth, they i...

Bruce Jenner (Photo credit: Wikipedia How could we be sure that our baby’s assigned gender at birth wasn’t more than just a shot in the dark? Maybe our boy would not be a “cis-boy” (a male whose assigned male gender is more or less consistent with their personal sense of self). After all, we have been told “gender cannot be defined by anyone other than the individual” and furthermore “gender roles are socially constructed” and “gender is not a very clearly-defined concept.” And to make matters even more complicated, why would we limit our child’s choice to just male and female? “ Facebook made it official last February when it told the world that limiting binary-gendered options is a thing of the past and added a third option to its standard male and female ones: custom. From a drop-down menu, users can select from 58 different identities, including agender, androgyne, gender fluid, trans female, trans male , trans person, cisgender, and two-spirit. (Each term refers to a subtl...

Bible de Gutenberg Deuteronomy 6:16-7:16 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Prohomosexual interpreters take issue with other places where the translation “sodomy” has traditionally occurred. Boswell and others disapprove of the translation “sodomite” used twice in the KJV ( Deut. 23:17 and 1 Kings 14:24). The Hebrew words refer to temple prostitutes in Deuteronomy, both female (qĕdēšāh) and male (qādēš).  Boswell argues that “sodomite” should not be the translation for the second term (qādēš) because there is “no reason to assume that such prostitutes serviced persons of their own sex,” whether based on the term itself or on history, where evidence is so little that inferences are “moot.”48 The passage of Deuteronomy 23:17–18 reads (NIV): (17) No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute . (18) You must not bring the earnings of a female prostitute or of a male prostitute [Heb. lit.: “the hire of a female prostitute or the price of a dog”] into the house of the L...

King James Version of the Bible (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Mr. Vines says, "In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Paul warns against those who will not inherit the kingdom of God . And then he lists 10 different types of people who will not inherit the kingdom. Because the dispute here is about translation, I’ll start with the King James Version of this passage, which was published more than 400 years ago and so predates this modern controversy. It reads: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.  Our key words for the discussion here are the words translated as “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind.”  . . .  This changed halfway through the last century, when some Bible translators began connecting the...

"For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error." (Rom. 1:26-27, NASB ). Mr. Vines says, "Because of this [referring to their idol worship], God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error . . . How we understand this passage hinges in large part on how we understand the meaning of the terms 'natural' and 'unnatural' . . . First, the passage’s context. In 1:18-32,...

English: Gender symbols, sexual orientation: heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality. Česky: (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) "For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error," (Rom. 1:26-27, NASB ). Some argue that Romans 1:26-27 does not condemn homosexuality per se, but is instead condemning unnatural love.  In other words, the verses condemn the act of going against what a person's natural sexual orientation really is.  So, if it is natural for a person to be attracted to someone of the same sex, then it would be "unnatural" for that person to go against his/her homosexual orientation .  Is this argument sound?  No, it is not.  Let's...