IRC-Galleria

GAYS AND RELIGIOUS CONCERNS

In reply to the some one whose assertions appear as bolded below:

As I opened my in-box this morning and this anonymous post caught my eye for a moment. I thought that someone had posted an outrageous joke; had possibly downloaded it from the Vatican website. But no, he or she characterises himself or herself as "a Urantia Book reader" (Urantia Book even in bold font), also there were more posts from this same anonymous person and replies to him or her. So this must be someone%u2019s very serious thinking or parroting of ecclesiastical pronouncements.

"As a Urantia Book reader, the current controversy surrounding same-sex marriage is extremely significant to me and will be potentially pivotal in the development of our society."

It is pivotal. It will reveal the degree of societal tolerance of variation, whether the heterosexual majority will continue to mistreat the gay and lesbian minority, who after all are their brothers and sisters.

"If our secular governments extend the sanctity of marriage to include homosexuals, this would be catastrophic toward the advancement of society as portrayed in the Urantia Book."

Marriage is not sacred. No catastrophe would happen to the advancement of society if gay and lesbian couples were granted the same societal rights and responsibilities as are currently enjoyed by heterosexual couples.
If a catastrophe were to happen, it had become true already under the guise of heterosexual marriages between sterile spouses and old couples who are beyond the child-bearing age or spouses that live together just for the sake of sex-life, without any intention of procreation.

"The family is given such prominence in the entirety of the Urantia teachings, the role of God as the Father, and the brotherhood of the children of God, and including the teachings that the family unit is the basis of all human society."

Gays and lesbians have never fought the family institution; they are in agreement with the prominence of the family. To claim the opposite, viz. that gays and lesbians would be anti-family shows faulty logic. Gays and lesbians constitute no danger what so ever to the heterosexual marriage institution. Many, I would guess the overwhelming majority of, gays and lesbians wish to live married, in a recognised and sanctioned relationship, yet the heterosexual majority seems to be strongly opposed to this arrangement; and then the majority accuses those whom they deny this right of their being anti-marriage, anti-family. This makes no sense.
Gays and lesbians are born out of heterosexual unions and in most cases live in families which may be happy, acceptable, catastrophic, unhappy, dysfunctional, or what not; also in families that break up in a divorce. Families where the gay and / or lesbian children are loved and accepted, or hardly tolerated; or, all too often, hated and forced out. Families where the adolescent children commit suicide because they feel that they are not loved. Sixty percent of all adolescent suicides are committed by gay and lesbian youth.

"So there can be no doubt that homosexual unions are against the will of God."

The assertion above has no relevance or connection with what the author of the post said in the preceding sentences. There for sure and certainly can be much doubt that homosexual unions were against the will of God. In my interpretation of the revealed teachings our sex-lives are irrelevant in God%u2019s view. The above assertion is judgmental to the extremes; it is a very personal interpretation because there is no such statement in the revealed teachings.
It would be equally justified to interpret that homosexual unions are much in agreement with the Fatherly will.
The Life Carriers, who planned life for our planet in accordance with their divine mandates and assignments they had received, must have foreseen that one day there will be homosexuals on this planet (and possibly on all inhabited planets). I tend to think that it was their wilful act that the life plasm that they implanted contained those genetic factors which would sometime result in two or three variations of sexual orientation: 1) Heterosexual majority to take care of the continued existence of the human race. 2) Homosexual variation to provide that difference that we humans need to relate to (consider the almost endless variety of beings that we are to meet and work with starting from the mansion worlds) and to provide a mediating element between the two, male and female, sexes. 3) Bisexual to provide a mediating element between the two orientations, heterosexual and homosexual. It needs to be emphasised that homosexual behaviour is observable also in the animal kingdom, not just among humans.
Homosexuality is not a choice, it is the natural state of a minority. Homosexuality is not contagious. Nobody can catch (they way you catch a flu) or be contaminated with homosexuality because of one%u2019s association with gays or lesbians. A homosexual cannot be converted into being a heterosexual. A heterosexual cannot be converted into being a homosexual. It would be evil of a gay to marry a woman if the woman didn%u2019t know about her spouse%u2019s homosexuality. It would be evil of a lesbian to marry a man if the man didn%u2019t know about his spouse%u2019s homosexuality. Yet, for two thousand years, the ecclesiastical advice to gays and lesbians has been and continues to be: Get married or abstain from sex altogether.
I personally have never had any choice, I have, since my earliest childhood, been who I am and also been conscious of my being different, my being gay. I have never chosen to be gay; I was created this way. Just like any gay or lesbian, I have gone through all the struggles of coping with heterosexist intolerance, non-acceptance, prejudice, malice, ridicule, ignorance, and cruelty, until I stopped caring about what other people might think about me. Now I could hardly care less. I am who I am and I am proud of it. I am not a bit less human than my heterosexual brothers or sisters, many of whom seem to be extremely ignorant. The good fruits of all this include the fact that the necessity to cope with the heterosexual pressure has contributed towards my thinking being very independent. It is God%u2019s will that I am who I am. It is God%u2019s will that I try to make the best of it. I am proud of being one of God%u2019s gay sons; my Father doesn%u2019t force me out, he hasn%u2019t created me the way I am just to send me to damnation. He hasn%u2019t had gay people created for our heterosexual brothers and sisters to persecute, maim and even exterminate.
We will be always around, the some 2% minority. We will not disappear even if my heterosexist brothers and sisters seem so to wish. We have not disappeared even if for 2000 years the Christian Church through its Inquisitions, its influence on the secular governments, its authority among rank-and-file Christians, has denied us any consolation, has doomed us to hell, imprisoned us, tortured us, maimed us, burnt us live at stakes (the burning took several hours to complete; the firewood had to be fresh, newly cut), dismembered us, committed us to mental institutions and seclusion, simply been extremely cruel and barbaric towards us. And nobody knows the number of the victims of this ecclesiastical %u201Cmercifulness.%u201D It could be millions. The Church has asked the Jews to forgive the cruelties committed against their race that the Church bears responsibility for. The Church has apologised for the crimes it committed against scientists. The Church (be it Catholic or Protestant) hasn%u2019t in one word apologised the cruelties it has either directly or indirectly committed and is committing against gays.
We have always been around and continue to be around. Without gays the world culture would be without an enormous number of its masterpieces. There would be no Mona Lisa, no Saint Peter%u2019s in the Vatican (think about it, the main shrine of the Catholics was designed by a gay architect, yet the Vatican despises and persecutes gays), no Tchaikovsky%u2019s music; world culture would be devoid of a huge number of masterful paintings, pieces of sculpture, a high number of the greatest novels, movies, tv programmes, pieces of ballet, opera, great music, great many scientific discoveries (like computers, just to quote one example) etc.
I have lived happily with my husband over 40 years (in year 2009). He was 19 when we formed a couple, I am five years older than him. In the view of the Law of my country, we were criminals at that time, 40 years ago. To be a homosexual was a crime. A few years later the criminal code was revised, and our criminal status came to an end, but thereupon we were considered insane, crazy, sick. Homosexuality was regarded as a pathological mental disorder. Then finally in the early 1980s this insanity came to an end, %u201Chomosexuality%u201D was deleted and removed from the classification of mental illnesses. Until the 8 of March 2002 we were, in the view of the law, two strangers living together or %u201Ccohabiting,%u201D even if we have had our family finances pooled since 1969, even if we have bought and furnished our home together, even if we share everything %u2013 even the UB teachings %u2013 nonetheless, in terms of law we were %u201Cstrangers.%u201D But then on 8 March 2002 the law that granted civil recognition to gay and lesbian couples became finally enforceable, and I and my husband were the first couple in our country to be registered (with certain rights and responsibilities) by the authorities and the first who exchanged wedding rings before the city magistrate. We surely hope that our American gay brothers and lesbian sisters would enjoy this same opportunity soonest possible.

"After all, the sanctified union of marriage between a man and a woman produces the miracle of children, the production of cosmic citizens. Meanwhile the products of these homosexual unions can only be evil and sin."

Not every marriage produces the miracle of children (see my above comment about sterile spouses). And Divinity is conscious of this circumstance; there is a system in place wherewith this defect will be corrected in the mansion worlds or Jerusem.
I have lived over 40 years with my husband and I don't think that the products of our very happy union are evil and sin. But I don%u2019t care if you take the liberty of describing it so.
The author should study what the revelation has to say about %u201Cevil%u201D and %u201Csin%u201D. See 52:1, 615:4, 754:5, 842:5, 1660:3, 1660:5, 2016:10.


"What is also disgusting is the media campaign shoving homosexuality down our throats which takes place on television sitcoms, MTV, commercials, TV dating shows, etc.. Through this propaganda, homosexuality is being %u201Cnormalized%u201D throughout the media. This is the deliberate effort of powerful political forces who are perpetrating the breakdown of morals in our country. So as I look forward to the promised age of light and life portrayed in the Urantia Book, I am also wary of the deliberate efforts of those iniquitous individuals hellbent on the prevention of such an age of cosmic consciousness on our planet."

We gays and lesbians were persecuted as long as we did not claim our rights and our equality with the heterosexual majority. We were persecuted as long as we let the secular and ecclesiastical powers to persecute us. We had to and we have to assert ourselves. Otherwise the oppression and the persecution just go on. Homosexuality is normal; there is no need to %u201Cnormalise%u201D it. But there certainly is a need to make our existence and our %u201Cnormalcy%u201D part of the heterosexual world and thinking. The valuableness of this %u201Cshoving homosexuality down to your throats%u201D can hardly be overestimated. It is necessary. It is what we need. Otherwise people continue to think that we are iniquitous and hellbent. It is curative and healthy for the morals of your country and any country to show that homosexuality cannot be equated with moral decline, immorality, or spiritual downfall. To let homophobic ignorance go on rampant for sure is detrimental to the morality of any country.
There is a need to show that we gays and lesbians are normal ordinary citizens confronted with the same joys and hardships as any human being. It is necessary to show that we need not be pitied or looked condescendingly upon. We need no commiseration. We are proud of our being gays or lesbians. You don%u2019t look condescendingly upon sterile heterosexual couples either.

"These hollywood media moguls who are brainwashing our society are the spiritual sons and successors of the jewish leaders who crucified Jesus. I am really looking forward to Mel Gibson's movie about Jesus, because it has generated a lot of interest in our Creator. I can only think of positive results of people focussing on Jesus instead of Madonna kissing Brittney spears on jewish-owned-and-operated MTV."

Do I see antisemitism here? Amazing! Maybe reading section 2 on page 1909 (Status of Individual Jews) would help the author of this post out of those notions.

Warmest regards,

Seppo Kanerva