Do you not know that the unrighteous and the wrongdoers will not inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived (misled): neither the impure and immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who participate in homosexuality... Saint Paul
AN ACE BACK OVER THE NET [1]
ReplyDelete"Are the inborn characteristics and propensities of murderers,
rapists, thieves, etc God-given as well?"
Repeating a fatheaded category error does not make it less fatheaded. Rapists, murderers, paedophiles are NOT born as such. Homosexuals are. And characteristics are inborn, while propensities develop for all sorts of reasons, and lead some people to CHOOSE rape, murder and assault children. Classing homosexuals with rapists, murderers and paedophiles is not only a crude insult and a nasty smear, it is also outrageously false logic.
"Those of homosexual disposition can choose. They can choose whether to act out their depraved desires or not."
Proceeding from a false premise - that homosexuals have a choice about their sexuality and how to act on it - to another smear. As a heterosexual male - albeit, in your case with some unpleasant, indeed nasty sexual peccadilloes on your record - you can have no idea what homosexual desire feels like, much less write it off as depraved, you impertinent sod.
Your calling anal sexual intercourse vile and depraved does not define it as such; rather it offers a rather unsettling insight into your own twisted psyche. It is your opinion, no more, no less. As for St Paul, as well as offering us peerless insights into the nature of belief, he also said some profoundly daft things, and this is one of them - even if what you keep quoting is what he actually said, a matter on which there is much respectable theological doubt.
"Like all who are tainted with Original Sin."
The doctrine of Original Sin was invented in the 6th Century AD and has no scriptural provenance whatsoever - unless you are a fundamentalist who believes in the Creation and Fall myths and we don’t think even a clown like you is dumb enough to accept those legends.
"You will find no theologian of any orthodoxy agreeing with your Pelagian heresy."
So what? Theologians in Germany tied themselves in knots to justify National Socialism, in South Africa to justify apartheid, in Spain to justify General Franco. Theology can offer insight, new ways of thinking about God, new ideas about belief, but none of them is God, nor speaks infallibly on Her behalf. The fact that you agree with them proves nothing but that you prefer other people to do your thinking for you.
[CONTINUED]
AN ACE BACK OVER THE NET [2]
ReplyDelete"So again why did Saint Paul write that sodomites would never enter the Kingdom of God? Well? Okay: let me give you the answer. Saint Paul wrote this because sodomy is grave sin. Something reiterated by the Universal Catholic Church, The Anglican Communion and any Christian Church of repute -- and of course reiterated by the Jewish and Muslim faiths."
That is St Paul's opinion, shared by you, and by substantial numbers of Christians the world over, as well as by other Abrahamic faiths. Numerically what percentage of such theists might agree you can have no idea, but the number of people believing in something is no guide as to whether that belief is correct. Until Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin came along, a majority of Christians and Jews believed in the Creation myths in Genesis, and other Abrahamic faiths had their own creation myths - and they were all wrong.
No, Gene, this is not game, set and match nor anything like it. You are not arguing with Detterling - you are simply trying to shout him down and wear out his patience, in the process using a shameless battery of logical fallacies - begging the question, assuming the answer, post hoc propter hoc, false induction, the bandwagon effect, false dichotomy, straw men, even, for Christ's sake, bragging about your status as a sophisticated theologian.
As we have repeatedly told you, you would better off trying to think of a plausible reason why “Granny Barkes fell in Woolworths - and Marianne pissed her knickers in C & A” will not be published this Thursday. Detterling will never let you hear the last of it - I understand that he has plans to compile all the various drafts and promises to publish over the last three years and send them to the West London Gazette to make a feature story - "The Phantom Novelist of Hillingdon", "The Ghost of Granny Barkes", that kind of a thing. It'll be a hoot!
Sebastian D’Orsai
Mary Winterbourne
Gary Bandall
Antonia del Auto-Grande
Ducky Duckworth
Reply
Anonymous11 December 2023 at 07:31
NPD(II) - 3
GVNPD(II)E - 4
Reply
Anonymous11 December 2023 at 07:49
"Proceeding from a false premise - that homosexuals have a choice about their sexuality and how to act on it - to another smear."
How can you be so obtuse Detterling? I did not say that homosexuals have a choice about their sexuality. I said that they have a choice on whether to act out the vile depravity that their sexuality inclines them to.
My Great Uncle Claude was a good example here. A man of undoubted homosexual inclination but a man who chose, because of his Christian faith, not to act on those inclinations but to live a chaste life.
GENE
Reply
Anonymous11 December 2023 at 09:48
If you agree that homosexuals have no choice about their sexuality, then it follows that their sexuality must be God-given - where else would it come from? Unless you are going to start raving about homosexuals being possessed by the devil? Given the primitive nature of your ratiocination it wouldn’t surprise us. if the expression of this God given sexuality is consensual and emotionally creative, then it is none of your business or mine. The last thing they need is arrogant bigoted bastards like you poking their noses in. And, should they need to make their peace with God then that is their business as well.
We note that you can muster no arguments against anything else Detterling said - no change there then.
Sebastian D’Orsai
Gary Bandall
Mary Winterbourne
Reply
Anonymous11 December 2023 at 09:56
And for fuck’s sake stop bleating about your precious “Uncle Nancy”. So far from being celibate he was one of the most notorious buggers in London. Woe betide the inattentive ephebe who dropped the soap in the shower at the Kensington Gore Turkish Baths and bent down to pick it up. Greased lightning wasn’t in it.
Kiss kiss!!
Julian “Judy” Garland
THE "SCHOLARSHIP" OF GENE VINCENT [2]
ReplyDeleteAs I was talking with my friend I said, “I wonder why not until 1983? Was their influence from America?” So we had our German connection look into it again and it turns out that the company, Biblica, who owns the NIV version, paid for this 1983 German version. Thus it was Americans who paid for it! In 1983 Germany didn’t have enough of a Christian population to warrant the cost of a new Bible translation, because it’s not cheap. So an American company paid for it and influenced the decision, resulting in the word homosexual entering the German Bible for the first time in history. So, I say, I think there is a “gay agenda” after all!
I also have a 1674 Swedish translation and an 1830 Norwegian translation of the Bible. I asked one of my friends, who was attending Fuller seminary and is fluent in both Swedish and Norwegian, to look at these verses for me. So we met at a coffee shop in Pasadena with my old Bibles. (She didn’t really know why I was asking.) Just like reading an old English Bible, it’s not easy to read. The letters are a little bit funky, the spelling is a little bit different. So she’s going through it carefully, and then her face comes up, “Do you know what this says?!” and I said, “No! That’s why you are here!” She said, “It says boy abusers, boy molesters.” It turns out that the ancient world condoned and encouraged a system whereby young boys (8-12 years old) were coupled by older men. Ancient Greek documents show us how even parents utilized this abusive system to help their sons advance in society. So for most of history, most translations thought these verses were obviously referring the pederasty, not homosexuality!
So then I started thinking that of 4 of the 6 passages cited as condemning homosexuality, all these nations and translations were referring to pederasty, and not what we would call homosexuality today.
Q: How did the translation teams work?
Ed: Well, they didn’t operate out of a vacuum when they translated something. They used data available to them from very old libraries. Last week at the Huntington Library I found a Lexicon from 1483. I looked up arsenokoitai and it gave the Latin equivalent, paedico and praedico. If you look those up they means pederasty, or knabenschander, (boy molester, in German.) 1483 is the year Martin Luther was born, so when he was running for his life translating the Bible and carrying his books, he would have used such a Lexicon. It was the Lexicon of his time. This Lexicon would have used information from the previous 1000+ years, including data passed down from the Church Fathers.
Q: So there is historical tradition to show that these verses aren’t relating to homosexuality?
Absolutely! Sometimes I’m frustrated when speak with pastors who say, “Well I believe the historical tradition surrounding these verses” and then proceed with a condemnation of LGBTQ individuals. I challenge them to see what was actually traditionally taught. For most of history, most European Bibles taught the tradition that these 4 verses were dealing with pederasty, not homosexuality. I am saddened when I see pastors and theologians cast aside the previous 2000 years of history. This is why I collect very old Bibles, lexicons, theological books and commentaries - most modern biblical commentaries adjusted to accommodate this mistranslation. It’s time for the truth to come out!
Yes! My brother, who is a pastor, also told me the same thing: that every sector of the church has seen same-sex relationships as sinful for 2,000 years. But the more i read and study though, the more i just don’t see this being true.
Q: What was used before homosexual showed up in the RSV version?
Ed: King James Version triumphed the land and they used the phrase, “Abusers of themselves with mankind” for arsenokoitai. If you asked people during that time no one really wanted to tackle it. So that’s why I’m collecting Bibles, Biblical commentaries and lexicons, in order to show how theologians dealt with these passages.
THE "SCHOLARSHIP" OF GENE VINCENT [3]
ReplyDeleteQ: In your opinion, how would the church be different if the RSV didn’t change aresenkoitai and malakoi to homosexual in 1946 ?
Ed: In my opinion, if the RSV did not use the word homosexual in first Corinthians 6:9, and instead would have spent years in proper research to understand homosexuality and to really dig into the historical contextualization, I think translators would have ended up with a more accurate translation of the abusive nature intended by this word. I think we could have avoided the horrible damage that was done from pulpits all across America, and ultimately other parts of the world. But let’s don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater — the RSV team did a great job on most everything else. It was an honest mistake.
Q: And do you think your life would have gone differently as a result?
Ed: Yes, absolutely! I think my life would have been starkly different if the translation would have been translated with the accurate historical contextualization - especially within my own family, since they rely so heavily on the English translation and put a lot of faith in the translators for the final product in English. Since most people haven’t studied Greek or Hebrew, they have no concept of challenging a translation, and any potential errors that may have occurred during translation. Therefore, many people are unable to consider the implications of the text beyond the English translation in front of them.
Q: Based on your research, what advice would you have for LGBTQ Christians today?
My advice to LGBTQ Christians today would be three things:
1.) As difficult as it may be, try to extend grace and patience to the Church. The vast majority of pastors in America have not done their due diligence on this topic, so we can’t expect them to be any further along than they are currently. In the same way that God has extended grace and patience with us when we sin, we need to extend grace and patience toward others regarding their error on this topic. Bitterness will only manage to create further damage.
2.) Seek out other LGBTQ Christians who have already done their due diligence on this topic and reached a point of peace between their sexuality and God. We can learn a lot from others who are a little further up the trail.
3.) Often remind yourself that this mess is not caused by God, but instead is the result of people who have been entrusted with free will.
Ed Oxford is a theologian and scholar attached to the United Methodist Church in Long Beach California.
NPD(II) - 3
ReplyDeleteGVNPD(II)E - 4
This time you have gone too far with your insult to the memory of Great-uncle Claude. You effing bastard. Condign revenge will be mine.
ReplyDeleteGENE
Stop whiffling and piffling, you blowhard arsehole. There was no such person as "Great Uncle Nancy" - he was a character you invented to give your nasty bigotry a veneer of tolerance in that appalling gallimaufry of bullshit "Gene Vincent, Close-up on a Phenomenon" that caused all eleven of your readers to piss themselves laughing ten years ago. "Libby Purvis", for Christ's sake!
DeleteDetterling's entertaining thumbnail sketch of your Uncle Nancy - one of the most notorious buggers in London in his day - is, like the time you wrote and published a despicable account of your sodomising Detterling's wife, merely rollicking banter exchanged in a spirit of good-humoured to and fro. If you can't take it, you shouldn't hand it out. What a canting, hypocritical prick you are.
Still, you must be upset after Edward Oxford has so conclusively proved that your bleating reiteration of the mistranslations of St Paul that bolster your arrogant bigotry is a pile of steaming horseshit.
Your desperate attempts to find scriptural foundations for your psychotic bigotry - in themselves a reflection of your long-suppressed homosexuality - remind us of Samuel Pepys on a sorry wretch of his acquaintance. This man got a girl pregnant and, after the child was born, married her. Said Pepys: "it is as if a man should shit in his hat and afterwards clap it upon his head".
It describes Gene's defence of his least convincing creation, the nonsensical Uncle Nancy, to a T.
Sebastian D'Orsai
Mary Winterbourne
Gary Bandall
Antonio del Auto-Grande
Ducky Duckworth