As same-sex marriage continues to be a hot-button issue in Australia with legislative reform on the agenda, former Australia tennis champ and now a Pentecostal minister Margaret Court has stirred up a hornet's nest by expressing her opposition to same-sex marriage in the lead-up to the Australian Open that runs till Jan 28.
The West Australian in December quoted Court as asking Australians to make a stand against gay marriage, saying no human law could ever change God's divine laws.
Court’s words sparked the creation a Facebook group called "Rainbow Flags Over Margaret Court Arena," which is encouraging fans to display gay-pride banners and rainbow-coloured flags during matches although efforts have largely been unsuccesful to date. Since her December interview, some Australians have called for her name to be stripped from 6,000 seat arena at Melbourne Park.
Court, a 24-time Grand Slam singles champion and regarded as the greatest female tennis player in Australia, believes Australia needs to wake up as a nation to protect future generations.
"Politically correct education has masterfully escorted homosexuality out from behind closed doors, into the community openly and now is aggressively demanding marriage rights that are not theirs to take," she said.
"No amount of legislation or political point-scoring can ever take out of the human heart the knowledge that in the beginning God created them male and female and provided each with a unique sexual function to bring forth new life. To dismantle this sole definition of marriage and try to legitimise what God calls abominable sexual practices that include sodomy, reveals our ignorance as to the ills that come when society is forced to accept law that violates their very own God-given nature of what is right and what is wrong."
Currently, some states in Australia permit civil unions, while gay marriage is banned in the country as a whole.
Court was quoted as saying in The Australian that she had never felt hatred towards gay people and in fact helps gay people in her church "overcome" their homosexuality. "We have them in our church. I help them to overcome. We have people who have been homosexual who are now married.
In a December 2010 interview with The West Australian, Court stated her opposition to gay marriage.
"Politically correct education has masterfully escorted homosexuality out from behind closed doors, into the community openly and now is aggressively demanding marriage rights that are not theirs to take," Court said. "The fact that the homosexual cry is, 'We can’t help it, as we were born this way,' as the cause behind their own personal choice is cause for concern."
Court has had a history of anti-gay comments, accusing lesbians of ruining women’s tennis and calling Martina Navratilova a bad example to young players.
Navratilova, along with openly gay tennis great Billie Jean King, have condemned Court’s latest comments. "Seems to me a lot of people have evolved as has the Bible. Unfortunately, Margaret Court has not," Navratilova told TennisChannel.com. "Her myopic view is truly frightening as well as damaging to the thousands of children already living in same-gender families. I have tried to talk to Margaret but to say she’s completely close-minded on the issue is an understatement."
Columnist Andie Noonan, wrote in the Sydney Star Observer, a LGBT newspaper, that Court’s pro-conversion stance more so than her anti-gay-marriage remarks should cause greater concern.
"It is one thing to oppose gay marriage, but quite another to quash the integral part of a person that makes them human – their ability to love.
"Conversion or ‘reparative’ therapy, as it’s known, can be disturbingly damaging. It is the ultimate rejection of a person’s sense of self and usually involves desperately vulnerable people, convinced they’re an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, simply for being who they are. It is an outdated practice whose heart lies in hate."
Earlier this month, Exodus International leader Alan Chambers finally admitted that reparative therapy is 99.9 percent ineffective and that the overwhelming majority of those who had undergone "ex-gay" therapy had not changed their sexual orientation.
He said: "The majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9 percent of them, have not experienced a change in their orientation or have gotten to a place where they could say that they could never be tempted or are not tempted in some way or experience some level of same-sex attraction. I think that there is a gender issue there. There are some women who have challenged me and said, 'Well that – my orientation or my attractions have changed completely.' Those have been few and far between. The vast majority of people that I know do still experience some level of same-sex attraction."
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What concerns me tho, is why Fridade still wastes our time by posting such garbage? Surely there more interesting and/or serious issues to bring to our attention.....
If you are going to hold up the bible as your rule book then you have to abide by ALL of it and not just the selected passages that can fit in your petty narrow mind.
We'd better tell the Muslims and the Bhuddists and others that "Everyone will have to worship Jesus -- whether they want to or not. Philippians 2:10. And they'd bloody well better do it because it also says "...Kill any friends or family that worship a god that is different than your own. Deuteronomy 13:6-10.
Also all the people who commit adultery will have to be put to death (Deut. 22:22),
The stupid ignorant narrow minded preachers also believe that :::::
- A Christian can not be accused of any wrongdoing. Romans 8:33
- Kill all the inhabitants of any city where you find people that worship differently than you. Deuteronomy 13:12-16
- Kill everyone who has religious views that are different than your own. Deuteronomy 17:2-7
- Kill anyone who refuses to listen to a priest. Deuteronomy 17:12-13
- Kill any false prophets. Deuteronomy 18:20
- Any city that doesn’t receive the followers of Jesus will be destroyed in a manner even more savage than that of Sodom and Gomorrah. Mark 6:11
- Jude reminds us that God destroys those who don’t believe in him. Jude 5
10: I agree...christianity is evil. Lets just say it: CHRISTIANITY IS EVIL. There...Im going out for a drink :)
Fans of the TV show 'West Wing' will know the characters... but the script is priceless..President Bartlet is talking to a radio host Dr Jenna Jacobs about the Bible and homosexuality....
Bartlet: I'm asking because on your show, people call in for advice and you go by the name Dr. Jacobs on your show, and I didn't know if maybe your listeners were confused by that and assumed you had advanced training in psychology, theology or health care.
Jacobs: I don't believe they are confused, no, sir.
Bartlet: Good. I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an abomination.
Jacobs: I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President, the Bible does.
Bartlet: Yes, it does. Leviticus.
Jacobs: 18:22.
Bartlet: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be?
While thinking about that, can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or is it okay to call the police?
Here's one that's really important because we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point?
Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side-by-side?
Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads?
Think about those questions, would you? One last thing, while you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the Ignorant Tight-Ass Club, in this building, when the President stands, nobody sits.
17: If you dont want to, then YOU dont have to. But to be *TOLD* by someone esle you *CANT* is different then you choosing for yourself. Some gays would like to be married. Dont you think its their choice, and none others? I did not contradict myself at all. Christianity does suck. Marriage need not be christian or religious at all. My athiest Dad married an Athiest woman...in a CIVIL ceramony. Civil marriage has many rights/resposibilities/LAWS that are simply not available anywhere but marriage. Marriage/christianity most certainly do not "iclude" another, thats a quite stupd statement. People all over the world who are not christian, or not religious at all, are married. Some by common law without ceremony at all! Those who want it should be able to have it. Those who dont, like you, no one would be forcing you.
hmm, unless she was he
id like to know her answer about that, also all the other anti-gay religions that includes Catholic. Muslim etc. etc.
can any anti-gay religious person answer me about that?
"The fact that the homosexual cry is, 'We can’t help it, as we were born this way,' as the cause behind their own personal choice is cause for concern."
Why would a young person going through puberty make a "personal choice" to be gay?! How is it even possible to "choose" your sexuality? You wake up one day and think "Hmm, I want to be laughed at and mocked, teased and harassed, rejected by my family and friends, beaten up and killed. I wonder what I could do to achieve all that? Ooh ooh, I know! I'll become gay!!"
Don't be afraid, poor women.
And they'd bloody well better do it because it also says "...Kill any friends or family that worship a god that is different than your own. Deuteronomy 13:6-10.6. Well in detail it says, "...If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery." So that is the Old Testament. Christ came with the New Testament. "I came not to perpetuate the Law but to fulfill it." Galatians 3:13 Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. No one needs stone anyone. Or do you not recall, “Let them among you be the first to cast the first stone.’ John 8:7”. So I believe what He meant of that was to not worry about them, but worry about those who don’t know yet. But what does it mean to be redeemed from the curse of the law? I say it is with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He paid the price for you and for me. He became the sacrifice for our sins. He died so that we could live. He bore our sicknesses so we could have health. He redeemed us from the curse of the law of sin and death.
The Bible tells us about these curses, saying, "It shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you." Deuteronomy 28:15.
So, not keeping the law was disastrous. But even worse, it was nearly impossible to keep the law. So, poverty, sickness, and spiritual death were virtually assured.
But today, there is good news. When it seemed like there was no hope, God made a way. And that's just like God. He always makes a way of escape for those who seek Him.
When we use a coupon at the store, it is replacing money. That is, we *redeem the coupon*. It takes the place of your money. We had a debt. That debt was the curse of the law. But although we could not pay the debt, it required a perfect sacrifice. It required a sacrifice that was pure before God. We were not pure. Our debt was impossible to pay. But, that's what Jesus Christ did, He repaid the debt in full, in our behalf.
I know self control is a big problem for many. We can’t always get what we want. (Mick Jagger). It is necessary however. Why do machines have governors? A standing generator, an aircraft propeller, a nuclear plant with control rods, all have them. I once had an old Ford Galaxie wagon,with a big V-8, working on the carburetor, and I accidentally disengaged the throttle return spring. That device resisted the gas pedal so if you let your foot off, it would return to idle. Well I started the engine for testing and it spun up really fast, and almost punched a connecting rod through the block. I stopped the engine in time to re-hang the return spring with no damage. Well, I think people are like machines, often. Without self control we rob convenience stores, kill our kids, murder them with whom we are bored, or don’t we read the newspapers? Even the atmosphere, if left to its own devices, could cause horrific destruction that make supertyphoons and the tornadoes of 27 April 2011 look like summer showers.
I do not enjoy any attention here. And I personally feel a great empathy for atheists. They see the world only in its physical sense, and none of what Christians, Muslims, Jews , Buddhists, Hindus nor Confucianists, nor others see. I cannot see my existence here in my life, as random collisions of baryons, neutrinos, nor other subatomic particles, coming together as my consciousness of myself. Nor can I ever advocate forced religion, but when someone comes out and says our belief is EVIL, well what in the blue Pacific do they know about EVIL, for crying out loud?. There is no good nor evil in atheism, since it has no standard by which this is measured. They say they do, but they DON'T, any more than a lion killing a cheetah's cubs.
You want the law of the jungle?? OK, but just be careful of what you wish for...
and if you can see no meaning in your life without having to boot lick some sadist sky fairy....too bad for you.
Halleluja - jump up for Jesus! Jesus would be embarassed.
34. "unholy" books would make more sense. Relace "good/pure/holy/god/ ect ect " with "bad/evil/devil/ect ect" and the book makes perfect sense
35. Nooooooo I dont think Ill go to that service, not a good idea haha
I learned something interesting from Wiki the other day. 377A only came into force in 1938, yes, 1938, not 1860s, and criminalised sexual activity between men other than anal sex, which was covered by 377…377A does not cover sodomy. The Victorian English law on which it's based has never covered sodomy. When 377 was repealed in 2007, it repealed criminalisation of sodomy for everyone. Leaving 377A to cover purely gay sex other than sodomy. So technically, so long as you do nothing except anal sex, it must be legal.
So all the talk of straws up noses in the parliamentary debate - totally irrelevant.
Recommendations to amend the Criminal Code have been made after a petition by a Catholic priest garnered more than 25,000 signatures and international support.
Come on news desk, what's wrong with you?
So presumably anyone (male or female) engaged in any sexual activity that does not "bring forth new life" is also damned in her eyes....
Such simplistic and primitive readings of ancient texts are a feature of blinkered Christians - and nearly all pentecostals and evangelicals...
BUT
Those who seek the Divine and seek the essence of God.. readily appreciate that God is love.. incarnated not in "man"(christ) but in the fullness of humanity (Christ) male+Female ALIKE.
Every expression of Love is an expression of the Divine....
And don't get me started on the personals!!! Chock-full of hetero "swingers" couples looking for "submissive lesbian femmes" and similar sleaze; i might as well just join mass-market hetero sites like OKCupid or AdultFriendFinder???!!
So that is someone we can all respect, right? Yet this blog is seething with vitrolic hatred of religious people, not just of Christians, but of Jews and Muslims and others, as well as of God.
I seek not seething, but soothing. I get this from the presence of Christ in my life, as many other gay people do, not only in Metropolitan Community Churches, but Methodist, Catholic, and even one SOUTHERN Baptist church I knew of in Kansas City, American Heartland, the Bible Belt! Those pastors, like God, don't care where we have been, only about where we're going!
I totally understand the indignation, such as that shown here, toward "evangelists" in pursuit of power and money, by spreading fear. Often they are as nasty to people who work for them as they are to 60 Minutes reporters. (We can be really nasty to others, also, or haven't we noticed?) US Senator Charles Grassley has one of them in his sights. "Evangelist"is a Greek word meaning "bearer of good news", and except for only a few, most of these guys (and gals) are anything but good news for any decent purpose they purport to represent, again by spreading fear. But fear also pervades this stormy discussion. People won't comment because they fear getting labled as "scum". Having seen the start of the gay rights movement, that was the one thing we wanted to see end: labeling people because they choose to think.
When I accepted Christ, everything else in the world became unimportant. I no longer worried about having an important title, the big car or house, a fleet of corporate jets, or a swimming pool full of gorgeous bods. I have no pool, I drive an 11 year old truck, and my house is among the smallest of the 'hood. I want to share this faith of mine becasue it brough me peace, not sorrow. And I won't bend to those who want to cut me off at the knees. However I will not refer to anyone as "scum" or other names because they believe differntly than I do. I let the Holy Spirit do all the teaching and talking to me. It's much better that way for me.
OK, referring back to the blogger with many biblical quotes, are the biblical translations infallible? I believe not, especially having gone from Hebrew to Greek to Latin and then various modern languages, so that is why I think the Bible should be read with the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. And paraphasing it, to a few words that one thinks it means, is certainly not infallible either.
The risk with religion is that it encourages blind unthinking following. The whole "because god says so..." business is scary. People who hear god tell them to kill their own children or other people and so on. People who vote for crazy leaders who belong to a party with the word "christian" in it. The sheep mentality is frightening and retards civilisation and progrss.
It is all to easy and tempting to tarnish all believers with the despicable works and actions of the few rotten ones.It is important that the non crazy believers stand up and criticize the crazies who are the real threats to their religions and to society in general.
I believe God Almighty would deliver the blind followers from the religious crazies. In my belief though, God gave us a free will, to choose our own way, or His. Some religions (that is, churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.) DO encourage blind, unthinking "followship" (vice fellowship). I also believe that God will send convincing evidence to such lost people BEFORE they drink the Kool-Aid. For that to happen, they need open hearts and minds. If not, God, being the Perfect Gentleman, will leave them to their own devices, sad as that would be.
As for political movements using "Christian" in their titles, or religious dating services advertising on TV using God's name to promote their wares, I take on the attitude of Christ Himself, who threw the vendors out of the temple. That is, I think it is blasphemous to use the name of God to justify schemes to gather money or power. That is why we have the "televangelists" who can't figure out whether to help poor families in the Philippines, or buy another Gulfstream II.
And thanks also for defending us "non crazy believers".
Many would disagree with your interpretation. Telling someone that they are free to disregard what you say, but that they will be punished for eternity if they do, is not really granting free will in any shape or form, is it.
And telling your followers to kill people who worship other gods isn't really granting those others free will either, is it.
Many would disagree with my interpretation, true, but that happens a lot in life so it really does not concern me, except when reasoning with another. I am not out to win a popularity contest with my opinions. They are mine and I just expressed them.
To choose one path over another is not necessarily an outright punishment, just a decision with consequences. Everyone on earth has to live with that. Examples: choosing to cross the street without looking, you take a risk of being hit by a bus. Or, instead of being an airline pilot, for example, a person may have chosen to be a CIA field agent. Normally a dangerous job. Exciting for some, it may get you killed at an early age but you knew what you signed up for in the beginning. Consequences. Free will. You choose, eternal connection, or eternal separation? Take one or the other.
I know of no organized church that recently advocated killing people who worship other gods. Perhaps some stand alone churches or individuals, like that nutjob in Florida who wanted to burn Qurans, but not anything like the big organized ones, like Lutheran, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, etc. Can't recall Joel Olsteen or any of the other big non-denoms saying so either. Doesn't mean such a thing doesn't exist, so if you know of such a hierarchy or mega church, that issued an edict to kill people who worship other gods, then by all means, please specify.
Especially those religious who use God as a pretext to do some conspiracy, To deceive some people, To fool some people.
Any mother fxxker stupid sxxtys can spit something on us. Why the fxxk we should care those tartars what they farts!
But there are indeed Christians around the world that still are killing eachother and those of other religions, because they believe the Bible tells them to. Many more oppress people in other ways, e.g. 377A, or the Kill-the-gays Bill in Uganda, because they believe the Bible tells them to.
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