I abandoned what I was taught when I saw people dying of AIDS, and the church offering condemnation, rather than compassion, and when I saw churches excluding gay people from churches specifically. I left after hearing a priest tell a troubled 15 yr old, who felt troubled by his same sex feelings, that he would be better dead than gay. I left because people like Poly told gay people that they were hated by God, and that is the biggest lie ever told.
I thought they were misled, and still do.
There are many who are now caring for those in hospices, but they seem to have come around after being led by others outside the church who understood how to treat one another.
And I wanted to find out what the leaders of the compassion believed.
And everything pointed to Buddhism. I see it as a stopping point, not a destination. I am to learn what I can from here, and I have learned a lot.
But I think that Christians have a lot of catching up to do with the heathens.
As for the biblical references, I simply state that theologians are split on what the bible says of the 6 or 7 passages, which is examined on
www.whosoever.org.
Christians, in general, are strangely obsessed with homosexuality, and don't speak much of the fact that most heterosexual adults are sexually active.
Homosexuals are just an easier target.
I understand why one considers it a sin, and why one doesn't. Being Buddhist, I see nothing to justify, especially not with the Bible.
I simply look at it from a Buddhist point of view. Whom does it hurt? No one, so I think of it as a non-issue.
The curious thing is that while one will say that it is in the bible, I can point to hundreds of verses on something like drunkenness, and no one is protesting bars, or people drinking at weddings - which are supposed to be holy, or frat houses.
It is a lesser sin. But it makes you do things you regret, drunken driving has killed people.
But it is a sin no one pays attention to.
Nor saying, "Oh, my God, Jenny!! How are you" - taking the name of God in vain.
Yet, somehow, this "sin" of homosexuality - two people simply loving one another - counts.
If the bible is not taken seriously in its entirety by believers, then it is impossible for a non-believer to take any of it seriously.
