Friends don't let Friends go to Hell

I was all over the internet this evening and came up with this, I thought some of you would find it interesting. The quote you read below is from Butch Hancock and i have had in the recesses of my brain for some time. Oddly enough tonight I found it on Losing my religion.com with the following essay titled Sex.

The site offers up supportive works and information on christianity... "Our issue is not with God, nor the behavior of Christians. God is who he/she/it is, and Christians misbehave just like everyone else. Rather it is evangelical Christian doctrine that we focus on, and its rational and moral implications." - Home page of Losing my religion.com

Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things:

One is that God loves you and
you're going to burn in hell.

The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy
thing on earth and

you should save it for someone you love.

~ Butch Hancock

SEX
by Emery
Losing my religion.com

Christians, like everyone else, are obsessed with sex. This I can understand. What I don't understand is why God should be so obsessed with it too. Few things bring Christians out in greater numbers than a gay rights march, or any group promoting sexual behavior that they do not approve of. And judging by the signs and banners righteously paraded during these rallies, nothing interests God so much as humans having sex.

There was I time I could believe this–before I had sex. As a young college student with raging hormones and a strict religious injunction to abstain from all physical and mental activities pertaining to sex, I was very much aware of how one could be so obsessed with it. Since I wasn't planning on getting married any time soon, sex was completely off-limits to me. So naturally, I could think of little else. It was a daily struggle to fight off thoughts about sex. Yet the more I disallowed them, the more they would come to mind. It really did seem like there were demons in my head, ready to pounce anytime I let my mind wander. So it was easy for me to join in this Christian condemnation of sex. It justified my struggle, and gave me a platform from which to hurl my indignation at the weaknesses of my own will. And that is the reason I do not believe that God’s attitudes toward sex would be the same as Christians’. All the arguments Christians use against sexual practices that they do not approve of are couched in emotion, suppressed desires, and unsound reasoning. I do not believe God's attitudes toward sex would be driven by such human attitudes. Take homosexuality, for example.

Christians believe that your sexual preference is a choice, that somehow you can choose to be gay or straight. This is a necessary assumption, for how can being gay be a sin unless it is something that can be chosen? That is why there is so much Christian opposition against the notion that you can be born gay, or that the choice is somehow out of your control. That would remove the activity from the realm of choice. And sin by definition is a choice to disobey God, so any activity that cannot be chosen loses its ability to be classified as a sin. Since being gay is a sin, then it must be a choice.

Yet it doesn't take much self-awareness to see that this cannot be true. For example, most of the people reading this are probably straight. So to the straight folks, here is a simple question to ask yourself: did you choose to be straight? In other words, was there a time in your life that you said,

"You know, I could go either way. But I think I'll choose to be attracted to the opposite sex?"

Read the rest of the essay here


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Tags: Catholic, Christian, James Dobson, Politics, Evangelical, Creationism, Religion, Gay, Sex