“I look at the small number of gays that I’ve cared about (they try to exaggerate their numbers for political purposes) and I see uniformly good people.”
If we are talking about good governance, the role of government is not to impose standards of morality and personal conscience or religion. However, good governance may coincide with Biblical morality whereby the government must serve to protect the rights of the individual and society as a whole. Prior laws against sodomy (and adultery, pornography, and even things like blasphemy) were based on the detrimental impact of these things on society.
Over time they became associated with religious morality exclusively, and then laws and court rulings abridged these traditional standards as imposing religious morality on others.
From a Biblical perspective, sodomy is against God’s laws. Therefore, any Bible-based Christianity has the duty to call sodomy sin, just as it must for all sin that the Bible clearly identifies. This does not mean Christians are perfect, nor does it mean that non-Christians are expected to live like Christians (or even as Christians are SUPPOSED to live). But it does mean these things are defined already. To redefine them is to abandon the basic message of the Bible. Christ came to save sinners, which all of us are.
“I can’t understand being gay. I haven’t the faintest idea if it’s nurture or nature.”
It is interesting that these are always to the options to explain any human behavior. But there is a third: choice. To the left choice is a right. To conservatives choice is a responsibility. There is a sense in which both are true. Of course nurture and nature influence us. But they do not hold absolute sway over our ability to choose. Growing up in a certain home may predispose us to various proclivities. Likewise “nature” in the sense of things like genetics may predispose certain things. But we find people from all backgrounds who make different choices from one another. So, for example, identical twins may grow up in the same environment, yet they will have distinct personalities, interests, and paths they choose to follow.
“I have to assume that that banner outside the church means they’re proselytizing Gay Pride. I’d stay away from that as fast as I’d stay away from proselytizing Christians or Muslims.”
It is the intrinsic nature of religious and moral views to seek to persuade others. Our first amendment is based on the ability to exercise religion AND free speech because persuasion is an important aspect of freedom and wise choices. However, persuasion does not mean coercion or even the right to demand that everyone listens to our free speech. This is also a choice.
What absolutely beautiful logic and argument. Thank you. Deeply impressive.