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comment by o11c

    "Christian" is now synonymous with "anti-gay bigot."

I can't wait for this to go away, but I'm not sure it will. (How's the Muslim/terrorist association going?)

While pointing out hypocrisy is interesting, remember that there are only two consistent resolutions. Either Christianity forbids both homosexuality and divorce, or it allows both. So if you're trying to make an argument that Christianity accepts homosexuality, you should be very careful about using Christianity to argue that there's something wrong with divorce.

Of course, this is orthogonal to whether there are other reasons that something's wrong.

A simple non-religion-based rule about relationships that most people would probably agree with is: "when in an intimate relationship with one person, do not have any intimate contact with anyone else". (Polyamory, swinging, and open relationships are statistically insignificant so I will ignore them). By this rule, we can still judge the woman, but note that the divorces are irrelevant except to help position the other events relative to each other.

In conjunction with this rule, I can find some small sympathy for homophobes. If they cannot imagine ever not being involved in a heterosexual relationship, then it would (seem to) follow (to them) that any homosexual relationship would be cheating. This impression is not helped by the existence of "cover marriages".

But personally my favorite argument against trying to enforce an interpretation of Christianity via law is "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." Talking about the separation of church and state as described by America's founders is futile.





user-inactivated  ·  3371 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    But personally my favorite argument against trying to enforce an interpretation of Christianity via law is "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." Talking about the separation of church and state as described by America's founders is futile.

In my opinion, Romans 13 would probably be more appropriate as the whole interpretation of "Render unto Ceaser" could really go either way. Whereas Romans 13 is more specific, cut, and dry.

Though, I guess she could point to the second half of Romans 13 and say "See? They're in the wrong." Which goes to show how hard it can be to use the Bible as a guiding source. Still though, the first part does put obedience to authority in plain, simple English. According to that passage, it is a must.

Edit: Unless you're using the passage as a way of saying Church and State are two separate things? I dunno. I'm tired and full of dumb at the moment.

o11c  ·  3371 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Seeing how disparate the interpretations were was certainly enlightening. But then:

    I think we'd be hard pressed to find any religious concept that isn't disputed by someone.

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Romans 13 might be more applicable for the specific case of obedience, but the underlying problem is that these people can't acknowledge a government that is separated from the church.

Besides, giving someone a whole chapter as reference means TL;DR. The Caesar quote stands alone. Regardless of how much people can argue about where the separation needs to be set, it must be there somewhere.

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As for using the Bible as a guiding source ... someone asked Jesus that and his answer seems pretty clear.