10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked

[MacTheWolf (imported)]

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization for decades, has debunked 10 myths about gays/lesbians.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/i ... n-20101130#

[butterflyjack (imported)]

Man..ya gotta hate religion...The cause of most of the world's problems...including over-population, the number one problem...dragonfly

[bobover3 (imported)]

Funny that all those hate-mongers missed the truth about us gays: we turn into wolves in the light of the full moon, and seek to violate the rectums of church-going teen boys. I'd have told them, but no one asked.

[madepeel (imported)]

and all this time I thought we slept in coffins during the day, could turn into bats at will, and drank blood when we couldn't get young cock!

Oh, well..... there goes MY lifestyle down the drain!

[turtle12 (imported)]

Thanks for posting this link and info. It's good to have this legitimate source of information to share. Really appreciate your thoughtfulness in sharing this.

[bobover3 (imported)]

Hmmm. Church-going teen boys. Young cock. That DOES sound like a life style. I'm signing up.

[morganster (imported)]

The SPLC article left out an important myth: That the Christian (Protestant) Bible condemns and/or prohibits homosexuality.

Not true. Those interested in the details can find them at http://www.soulforce.org/article/homose ... -christian.

Some members here have simply written off religion as a negative influence, period. But the reality is that a lot of people are religious and as long as they continue to think that God, or the Bible, or whatever, condemns homosexuality, then there will be lots of devout Christians (not to mention Jews and Muslims) standing in the way of gay liberation.

For example, a lot of the resistance to ending DADT in the military came from those who recognize the injustice of it but can't relinquish their core belief that homosexuality is a sin - a belief grounded in misreadings of the Bible.

The misconceptions about homosexuality and the Bible come largely from cultural bias. The Bible wasn't written in English, it was written in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and (to a lessor extent) Latin. The Bible was first translated to English in the 16th Century under commission of King James of England (the King James version). It has since been translated into 'modern' or 'contemporary' English in several different versions or editions. All of these translations, including the King James version introduced cultural bias, unavoidable cultural bias, of their times.

For example, the term 'homosexual' now appears in the new standard Bible, but was not actually coined as an English word until the 19th Century. Homosexuality as a distinct 'orientation' was not recognized by the establishment (except for those 'suffering' from it) until then. It has been acknowledged that some men screwed around with men, and some women with women, from the dawn of history, but it was not well understood until the 19th Century that some people simply can't 'do it' with the opposite sex.

The supposed 'prohibitions' in the Bible refer to promiscuous behaviors, including, but not limited to, same sex promiscuity. The stuff about Sodom and Gomorrah was about sexual assault not gay love. The stuff in Leviticus was guidelines for Jewish Priests not lay persons (no more than chastity for Catholic Priests applies to lay Catholics). The stuff in the New Testament (Romans, Corinthians, Timothy, etc.), as indicated above, was about promiscuity in general not homosexuality in particular.

So the idea that homosexuality is a 'sin' and is declared as such in the Bible is pure bunkum. That's the 11th myth that should be added to the other 10.

[gareth19 (imported)]

The Bible wasn't written in English, it was written in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and (to a lessor extent) Latin. The

majority of the Old testament was written in Hebrew, with some of the later books and Apocrypha written in Aramaic. It was subsequently translated at Alexandria into Greek (the Septuagint, which differs in some respects from the Masoretic text we now know and often appears to translate a Hebrew text resembling that of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The New Testament was written in Greek except for a single passage in Aramaic. St. Jerome (and the Holy Ghost) translated the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts (including the obvious forgery of the Apocalypse) into Latin, but Jerome's text, however inerrant because of the help of the Holy Ghost, was never the original text. The Bible was not in any degree originally in Latin, a language of the western, not eastern Mediterranean world.

The Bible was first translated to English in the 16th Century under commission of King James of England (the King James version).

King James ascended the throne in 1603, the seventeenth century, so commissioning a translation in the sixteenth century (which ended in 1600) would have required the help of Dr. Who. The Gospels and the Heptateuch (first seven books of the Old Testament) were translated into English in the eleventh century by Aelfric of Eynsham, and there are other versions (the Lindisfarne and Rushworth) which are interlinear glosses to an ornate Latin text which are among the glories of Anglo-Saxon book making. Wyclif, a slightly older contemporary of Chaucer's began a translation of the Bible in the fourteenth century, but he was considered a heretic and the texts were dispersed so the individual authorship of the Lollard or Wycliffite texts is the subject of scholarly dispute. In the sixteenth century, Tyndale translated the text into English. He was burned at the stake for this heretical act, but his text survived (thanks to the printing press) and it formed the basis of the King James Bible, the first edition of which contained a typographical error, reading "thou shalt commit adultery." This version, the "Wicked Bible" was suppressed and replaced by a corrected edition, the first product recall in history. Meanwhile, not to be outdone and despite the wickedness of corrupting the text by human translation, exiled Roman Catholics translated the divinely inspired and inherently inerrant Latin translation of St. Jerome into English, as a result of which in the 22nd Psalm (which is misnumbered 23in the KJV) Begins "The Lord rules me (Dominus me regnit) rather than the overly literal and grammatically suspicious translation of KJV "The Lord is my shepherd," and the bad table manners of KJV's "my cup runneth over" appears as "my chalice that inebriateth, how goodly it is!"

[bobover3 (imported)]

Morganster, I don't know the bible well enough to say if you're right, but you make a persuasive case.

However, I've got to point out that all religions are essentially biased, because they each claim to possess a divine revelation which is uniquely true and which is greater than any other truth. No one who dissents from this "spiritual" arrogance can sincerely claim to be among the devout of a religion.

Respect for other faiths is part of contemporary humanism, and runs counter to the creed of all religions. That many religious professionals now profess tolerance only shows that humanism outranks religion among their values.

The faithful may, at best, pity others for their alienation from god(s) and for their coming damnation. It would be nice if Christians, Jews, and Muslims accepted those of their faith who are gay. It would be nicer still if they accepted the majority of the human race who are not of their faith. But that would mean giving up the "spiritual" certainty which is among the chief consolations of religion.

[morganster (imported)]

The

majority of the Old testament was written in Hebrew, with some of the later books and Apocrypha written in Aramaic. It was subsequently translated at Alexandria into Greek (the Septuagint, which differs in some respects from the Masoretic text we now know and often appears to translate a Hebrew text resembling that of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The New Testament was written in Greek except for a single passage in Aramaic. St. Jerome (and the Holy Ghost) translated the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts (including the obvious forgery of the Apocalypse) into Latin, but Jerome's text, however inerrant because of the help of the Holy Ghost, was never the original text. The Bible was not in any degree originally in Latin, a language of the western, not eastern Mediterranean world.

King James ascended the throne in 1603, the seventeenth century, so commissioning a translation in the sixteenth century (which ended in 1600) would have required the help of Dr. Who. The Gospels and the Heptateuch (first seven books of the Old Testament) were translated into English in the eleventh century by Aelfric of Eynsham, and there are other versions (the Lindisfarne and Rushworth) which are interlinear glosses to an ornate Latin text which are among the glories of Anglo-Saxon book making. Wyclif, a slightly older contemporary of Chaucer's began a translation of the Bible in the fourteenth century, but he was considered a heretic and the texts were dispersed so the individual authorship of the Lollard or Wycliffite texts is the subject of scholarly dispute. In the sixteenth century, Tyndale translated the text into English. He was burned at the stake for this heretical act, but his text survived (thanks to the printing press) and it formed the basis of the King James Bible, the first edition of which contained a typographical error, reading "thou shalt commit adultery." This version, the "Wicked Bible" was suppressed and replaced by a corrected edition, the first product recall in history. Meanwhile, not to be outdone and despite the wickedness of corrupting the text by human translation, exiled Roman Catholics translated the divinely inspired and inherently inerrant Latin translation of St. Jerome into English, as a result of which in the 22nd Psalm (which is misnumbered 23in the KJV) Begins "The Lord rules me (Dominus me regnit) rather than the overly literal and grammatically suspicious translation of KJV "The Lord is my shepherd," and the bad table manners of KJV's "my cup runneth over" appears as "my chalice that inebriateth, how goodly it is!"

Thank you gareth19 for your thorough and informative corrigendum - I appreciate it. My facts may have been sloppy but my point remains.