Debate Over Gay Reparative Therapy Heats Up

Concerned »

Fri Aug 10, 2007 9:21 am Agree: 2   Disagree: 2

Sadly, people do not always attend of their own free will and many that do are not given information about the track record of the "treatment". Exodus International's oldest and largest ministry "Love in Action", for example, has regularly accepted teenagers sent against their will. Moreover, they have even accepted a client brought to their campus in handcuffs who was administered Prozac without prescription.

Court Grants Asylum Over Forced Abortion

Concerned »

Fri Jul 20, 2007 7:04 am Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

The official exceeded his or her authority. There is no law which allows forced abortions in China. It is misleading to say that woman are forced to terminate their pregnancies by the Chinese government.

The human rights activists are correct to the extent that policy and population outcome incentives may influence poorly trained or over zealous officials to persuade or (illegally) force someone to have an abortion.

The "one child policy" does not operate as most people think. It is linked to social support for the child. Parents who choose to have more than one chile, which is their right under law, are expected to pay a "social levy" for their support. The rural population and minority nationalities are allowed two or more children respectively.

Man Set to Be Euthanized Regains Consciousness

Concerned »

Fri Jul 20, 2007 6:23 am Agree: 1   Disagree: 0

Euthenasia, as I understand the term, involves killing someone. This article is really about whether or not life medical treatment should be stopped and the patient allowed to die naturally. Apparently the accident occured when the wife attmpted to out of the car. She says that she was afraid of him after he accused her of marital infidelity. This raises the issue of whteher she was the appropriate person to make the decisionon whether or not to continue the life support systems.

Gay Library with Hard-Core Porn to Move to Public Property Despite Objections

Concerned »

Fri Jul 20, 2007 5:50 am Agree: 1   Disagree: 1

This is not a gay issue. It is a pornography issue. The library should apply the same standard for the collection as it does to non-gay collections. After all, there is a lot more heterosexual porn and flaunting of sexuality in public than there is gay and lesbian.

Ex-Gay Defends Relationship with the Lord

Concerned »

Fri Jul 20, 2007 5:40 am Agree: 2   Disagree: 0

Dear Forgiven,

The writers lf those twetieth centtury versions and paraphrases which you selected have done exactly what you did to the King James text - added to it make it an attack on homosexuals.

Debate Over Gay Reparative Therapy Heats Up

Concerned »

Fri Jul 20, 2007 5:25 am Agree: 5   Disagree: 6

The issue is not one of religious belief. Whether or not homosexuality is a sin is an issue of religious belief. However, these organisations are not simply claiming this. They say that homosexuality is a disorder which requires therapy and resort to pseudo-science and carefully distorted statistics to support their claim. This takes them out of the religious realm and into the field of Health. As such, RT should be held accountable for any dishonest and misleading claims. Moreover, the effectiveness of the "treatment" and any risks involved should be made known to the counselee at the outset.

Ex-Gay Defends Relationship with the Lord

Concerned »

Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:40 am Agree: 1   Disagree: 1

Dear DannyPoo,

You didn't make it clear just what I said that is "heavily disputed by scholars". Do you mean that some people actually do believe that a term which didn't exist until the nineteenth century, somehow, miraculuously appeared in the Scriptures in the first century?

That makes as much sense as the idea that because somebody tried to rape andangel in Sodom, somehow all loving homosexual relationships are sinful.

With regard to the two sentences you isolated out of Romans 1, I suggest you go back and read them in the context of Paul's preceeding arguments. If you read the whole chapter, it is clear that Paul is writing on the topic of idolatory and ritual practices associated with idolatory. The sin which existed here is a practice of engaging in ritual sex, which clearly included same gender sex, in order to worship the creature instead of the Creator. This is hardly the same as a loving and committed homosexual relationship between two adults.

The simple fact is that there is no passage in Scripture which deals chiefly with homosexual love or behaviour as a topic. The attempts to read a meaning into four or five passages to make an ethical attack against homosexuals is no different to the Phariseeism which dealt with in Biblical times.

Ex-Gay Defends Relationship with the Lord

Concerned »

Fri Jul 13, 2007 3:37 pm Agree: 1   Disagree: 0

The word "homosexual" was put into the Bible in the middle of the twentieth century. The term did not exist until 1869 when Karl-Maria Kertbeny coined the German word to describe same gender romantic and sexual attraction as an ORIENTATION. If we accept the word's inclusion inn the Bible, then we are also accepting the existence of homosexuality as innate.

In fact, the term used by Paul in the first letter to the Corinthions is it's first recorded usage in history and the varied translations show that transaltor can, at best, guess its meaning. The limited extra-Biblical usage includes John the Faster, who wrote "In fact, many men even commit the sin of arsenokoitia with their wives." Now how does a man commit homosexuality with his wife?

Clearly, the contemporary inclusion of "homosexual" in the Bible is inspired by dogma rather than respect for Scipture, which may also account for the attempt in this article to bring the experience or a confessed Mormon into the Evangelical fold.