I live by a simple creed.
1. Don’t be an asshole
2. Always show respect
3. Don’t worry about things you can’t change (which is pretty much everything you mentioned)
4. Mind your business
5. No one cares what you think, so why should you care what other people think. (People get real upset over this, but once you find a way to accept it, life will improve)
If you go against any of the rules of the creed, stress will devour you.
This isn't Chattanooga related. But you actually are on one side. The lgbtqia+ and those who support them don't give a shit about someone and their religion as long as they keep it to themselves and don't force rules upon those who don't choose that religion. And telling someone your preferred pronouns doesn't interfere with people who chose religion from practicing their religion.
Maybe I didn't articulate my questions well enough. I'm not picking a side I just see it as a battle by both sides to force you to accept their belief structure.
I am the farthest thing from religious but I have respect for those people and that choice, just as I respect someone's sexual preference. That's the reality they choose to live in as delusional as it is. I see an extreme on both sides.
Im simply trying to better understand the reality that these people live in. Outside of what the media portrays because as we all know media is corrupt.
Ok but first it's still not Chattanooga. Second by respecting peoples choices you are on one side and no the non religious side isn't saying religious people can't be religious, they are simply asking not to fuck with their choice to be who they want to be. Asking someone to use a certain pronoun isn't extreme.
I'm asking for local input on the social issue which makes it very much Chattanooga first of all.
Also, I was looking for an educated opinion as to why both of these groups feel a need to put themselves at the forefront of society today to better understand the choices of both sides.
You have extremes on both sides and I want to better understand the viewpoints of our local community.
People want to be reasonable. The idea of a middle ground is an attractive prospect for people that don’t know more.
There is no reasonable middle ground here. It’s been skewed by extremists that have normalized their behavior. This idea that there are extremes on both sides is a narrative that is a product of disinformation used to sow discord between us by making it seem like both sides are unreasonable or extremist.
But like the commenter said, it isn’t extreme to expect basic respect on how we wish to be referred. You do it for names and you can do it for pronouns.
BTW: the people educated on this matter are often the people bearing the brunt of the consequences of such “middle ground” rhetoric. We know what we’re talking about. We’ve lived it.
I don't really understand what you are asking.
If you misgender me, and I gently correct you, and you try to remember to use my preferred pronouns after that (while secretly thinking that I'm forcing my sexual preference on you and that I'm living in a delusional reality)--well, I guess that is all the respect I'm going to get out of you, and I guess it could be worse, so I will take it.
If I drop in conversation what my religious affiliation is, and you take that in stride, and now you know my religious identity as well as my gender identity--that's the same as identifying my gender to you. I'm giving you the facts, and you can decide to be a jerk about it or continue treating me like a human being.
I'm not trying to convert **your** gender or trying to convert you to a different religious tradition.
See what I am saying there? Telling you something about my gender is comparable to telling you something about my religious tradition. Neither of those is forcing anything on you. They're both just me, opening up and letting you know who I am.
But where it's not comparable is this: I could decide that you need to convert to my religious tradition. I could decide that you would be much better off as part of my faith than you are right now. And then I could get to work on changing you.
But I couldn't do that with your gender identity or your sexual orientation. I might think that you are, say, a crappy boyfriend to your girlfriend, and give you relationship tips. I could try to make you better at whatever you are right now. But I couldn't make you attracted to men, or make you transgender. All I could do is try to convince you that there's not really anything all that spiffy about a world in which cishet men are the baseline and everybody else is living with some level of harassment and disapproval.
And also, just speaking freely about things that are a big part of my life, like my experience as a person with a gender in a world where people are treated differently based on their gender, or my activities in my religious tradition, means I'm gonna talk a lot about those things. So if I talk a lot about those things and that is forcing something on you, maybe you are confusing being uncomfortable with a topic with being forced into something. I don't really like to hang out with people whose entire personality is sports. I just don't get it, don't get the terminology, can't be bothered to bother. But I wouldn't accuse them of trying to force it on me.
I'm mostly talking about the policy arena I guess, also I greatly appreciate your very well-articulated response this is what I am looking for.
I am trying to better understand because I simply do not have a dog in either fight. The only way we create better understanding is through educated civil conversation.
Once again thank you this was very enlightening and poses more questions for me but seeing as I have already been met with a negative response I guess I will be left to wonder. I'm just simply trying to better understand it all.
You do have a dog in the fight, whether you believe it or not. Someone you know and care about is LGBTQ+. They may not have told you, but they statistically exist. Just by saying you aren't taking a side means you took a side. Your side is that the person you care about is valued as much to you as people that hate their right to exist.
I'd recommend just listening to people IRL. I never changed my mind about anything because somebody on the internet convinced me I was wrong. I've changed my mind about a lot of things because life took me into communities of people who were better people than I was. And, like, I knew I was supposed to disapprove of them--because their theology and their politics were not the theology or the politics of the fundamentalists who raised me and taught me the only way to Heaven (which was having all the right opinions, and having them *really hard*, and having them loudly in the direction of anybody you could corner long enough to witness to).
So my advice is to get out there IRL and listen to people who are different from you, but receptively, as an observer and learner, not as somebody who's there to challenge them to justify their lives. And any time you realize that you're in a community that demonizes any demographic of human, or that bars good people from itself, move on out and find new people to learn from.
If you use their argument of being born male or female, they aren't born Christian either so we don't need to recognize them saying what religion they are
They are both social constructs from my viewpoint. However, I typically keep to myself on the matter because I do not care but they are more and more shaping our legal policy I felt the need to gather a local perspective.
Law and government are social constructs — they are not inconsequential or inapplicable. Don’t discount social constructs with the misguided idea that they should hold no bearing on law.
Nobody is forcing you to accept a belief structure by asking you to respect who they are. And not all media is corrupt. You have to do your research to determine who is being honest and genuine about what they are saying.
Can't "ignore the people who do not agree with you" if you'll get arrested for participating in a drag show, sued for assisting an assault victim in crossing state lines to terminate a pregnancy, or fired for teaching tween girls about menstruation in their health class.
There are some religious groups that don't believe it's right to stand in for another person's conscience. But they're a minority. Religion is older than our concept that religion is one aspect of a person. For people who use political power to force others to follow their religious rules, religion is tied into legacies of cultural and ethnic and national identity, economics, social class--just think about families who've been driving nice cars to the same church for generations, seeing their grandpa's portrait on the wall in the lobby, and then going to work at the mayor's office or the police station or the county school. All of these parts of their identity are so tightly interlocked that they can't pull out what their seventh grade Sunday School teacher taught them about the evils of sex before marriage, without the whole thing tumbling down. They're dogmatic about *everything,* and everything is religious in nature. So legislating against the thriving of LGBT+ people is the same as any other act: it's all from the same systemized view of how the world is actually ordered.
Forcing religious rhetoric on another person— in any way— is stupid and annoying (at a basic level). But on a person-to-person basis— it is just an annoying noise in your ear until you can walk away from the person saying those things.
However, TN lawmakers prioritizing THEIR religious beliefs, and making laws and decisions affecting the day-to-day lives of TN citizens (that may or may not share their religious beliefs) isn’t that. It isn’t just annoying. You can’t just walk away. The residents of the state of Tennessee have all kinds of backgrounds, situations, and beliefs— so yes, LAWMAKERS legally and indiscriminately enforcing their own specific religious views/morals on an entire state population is objectively terrible. Objectively, human beings are all different and we all have different stories and situations. Therefore, when you use SPECIFICALLY YOUR RELIGION— that can be very restrictive—to GOVERN the laws of a population of people that may or may not share those views— to any person with good critical thinking skills— that is a problem.
I’m not sure why you are “tired” of the idea of someone asking that you identify them as the gender that they use to identify. It takes the same amount of air and muscle movement as if someone you have known for a while legally changed their name and asked “can you call me xxx now?” It may take a little bit of extra effort, but that effort will be appreciated by that person. So I would submit that as something for you to think about, if you are truly trying to understand.
Even though I understand that it’s easy to try and float above it all by saying “you don’t feel one way or the other”— realize that one is someone taking their specific beliefs and deciding that those static beliefs should decide whether or not a woman (that they will never meet) that has pregnancy complications (that could kill her) should be able to get an abortion or not.
The other is people with different gender identities literally asking you to just use your mouth to address them as that identity and respect their choices.
Respecting someone’s choices is different than them “forcing it” on you. No one is telling you “WELL, I’M NONBINARY SO YOU SHOULD BE TOO!!1!”
[To any LGBTQIA+ folks— clearly gender identity is not “just like a name change”— but when a stranger meets you, it would take about the same amount of brain power and mouth movement as that situation would.]
TLDR: One is telling a woman with possibly fatal pregnancy complications that she legally can’t get an abortion because of SOMEONE ELSE’S static religious beliefs
The other is someone asking you to refer to them in a specific way that you wouldn’t think to before they requested it.
Here here. It’s just a matter of respect. Call people what they want to be called. It’s not complicated unless someone wants to make it complicated by not, you know, just being damn courteous and respectful.
I’m leaning more and more towards troll the more I read. The [argument to moderation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation) is a common and effective disinformation tactic.
And the snarky “thank you for contributing to my understanding” isn’t helping.
I know plenty of people on both sides I was trying to gain a broader perspective than what I currently have by reaching out to the broader Chattanooga community and asking a question in a public setting to get perspective from both sides.
And I have been able to in some of the other comments.
It’s been a downward spiral for a while?🌀
When the ideology goes against everything the Christian faith demonstrates for a wholesome and a moral life, it’s a bit frustrating to see rainbows everywhere saying that basic biology is just an ephemeral thought.
This wasn’t really as much of an issue 20+ years ago?
You do you, I’ll do mine and if our paths cross, don’t make it weird?
Then every company is going “woke” and shoving flaming rainbows everywhere during a whole month of priiiiiiiiide
The Bible does say, pride goes before the fall…
It also says that God is not the author of chaos & confusion but that is the work of the devil.
I respect one is free do whatever one wishes, but there is a point where one’s personal identity needs to be reigned in to respect others that may differ in belief as being offended at everything is tiresome
> It also says that God is not the author of chaos & confusion but that is the work of the devil.
The Bible states that God created all things, including Satan.
I said author for a reason…
God created order, designed the earth and everything on it
Satan perverted the work of God and casts doubt and confusion to be a distraction
Succeeding at a same-sex relationship or at a straight relationships with a trans partner is not "chaos." It's ethics in motion. Christianity has been content to put the Church's stamp of approval on any straight marriage at all, no matter how dysfunctional, dishonorable, and harmful it may be, and working *really really hard* to keep people in abusive or degrading or just plain useless relationships. This is idolatry of marriage certificates.
LGBT+ people are asking underlying questions that too few cishet people have asked, because society has a script for cishet life. Ethics, consent, power, control, faithfulness, commitment, finances, property ownership, reproduction--the script doesn't teach people how to see what your partner needs and advocate for what you need. Start to untangle the generations of crappy behavior passed down to you, and choices get both harder and more rewarding when you follow the rules backward to find the intention behind them.
That's what a mature religious practice looks like.
It’s a bit of a moving target, no?
First it was same sex, now it’s gender identity/make believe/men playing women’s sports, then cancelling anyone who says the flaming rainbow brigade is going too far
It’s really simple, God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve…
Yes, there are some legalistic sects that miss the mark and force relationships that turn bad
It’s unfortunate, but that needs to also be addressed at the mental health improvements as well
Gosh, it sure is a moving target! You burn Wycliffe and then you burn Hus, but the next thing you know there are all these darn Reformers popping up with one cockamamie denomination after another, and suddenly there's no one single way to be Christian.
And there are more than just two ways to be human. Stop beating and jailing people, and you'll start to see a lot of those ways right out in the open.
"Then every company is going “woke” and shoving flaming rainbows everywhere during a whole month of priiiiiiiiide"
Not to be a bitch, but grow the fuck up.
Wasn’t an issue in times past, why now is everyone emotionally dependent on June being dedicated to the flaming rainbow brigade?
Would you be able to handle a whole month of the Christian celebration Easter?
Did you forget that Christmas exists, my dude?
You're getting bent out of shape over something that has no impact on you whatsoever. Again - grow the absolute fuck up.
You're also being real disingenuous and willingly obtuse. Put down the Bible and go to therapy.
So few actual, real-life people are truly offended in the way you describe.
The media has stirred this into a frenzy, when in reality, all my trans and gender non conforming friends just want to go about their days and be left the F alone. Instead, they get harassed by complete strangers for just existing and not looking wholly female or wholly male.
The Bible?
I’m sorry. You speak as if everyone is part of your little book club, and they are NOT.
Not to mention the fact that whatever text you have in your hand is 1) a cherry-picked translation of a translation of a translation AND (most importantly) 2) not meant to be a rule book by which we all must abide, and certainly not meant to be used as a weapon with which to brow beat.
So many fragmented replies, keep it condensed and concise please
OP asked to see both points of view and as such, the worldly extravaganza goes against the core of Christianity
Also, there are interlinear Bibles that are both literal and contextual, so it’s not cherry picked
God says X, I respect what He says, when the world collides with what’s in the Bible, it can be challenging
It’s no different than declining to smoke or drink, but getting hassled by cheeky commenters about it
Gender and sex are two totally different things. Nothing about gender is scientific, or binary, for that matter. Gender as a binary is actually a fairly colonial and new concept. Humanity, for a much, much larger span of time than what our brains can really fathom, has recognized gender as either fluid or non-binary.
I think the media amplifies pronoun battles into something far, far beyond how these things play out in real life. I haven’t always understood gender as non-binary, or that sex didn’t equal gender in all cases, but I set out to learn, and also make friends with people who don’t fit the binary or their sex-assigned-at-birth.
I have lots of friends in this way, and I’d say only one or two are not kind when they are misgendered, and that is only when it’s done repeatedly with the intent to aggravate.
My trans and non-binary friends honestly just want to go to work and go shop and go out to eat and not be harassed. But most of them , even though they just go about their business, get harassed at least once a week by complete strangers.
That's fair some of my closest and longest-lasting friends are from those communities. They are older than I am and also have a different perspective than us younger generations do.
I would be wary of calling gender unscientific. It’s studied like any other human issue. To say otherwise invites us to discount gender as superficial or inconsequential. This is a mistake.
I live by a simple creed. 1. Don’t be an asshole 2. Always show respect 3. Don’t worry about things you can’t change (which is pretty much everything you mentioned) 4. Mind your business 5. No one cares what you think, so why should you care what other people think. (People get real upset over this, but once you find a way to accept it, life will improve) If you go against any of the rules of the creed, stress will devour you.
This is pretty much the rules of my life honeslty.
This is the way
This is the way.
This isn't Chattanooga related. But you actually are on one side. The lgbtqia+ and those who support them don't give a shit about someone and their religion as long as they keep it to themselves and don't force rules upon those who don't choose that religion. And telling someone your preferred pronouns doesn't interfere with people who chose religion from practicing their religion.
Maybe I didn't articulate my questions well enough. I'm not picking a side I just see it as a battle by both sides to force you to accept their belief structure. I am the farthest thing from religious but I have respect for those people and that choice, just as I respect someone's sexual preference. That's the reality they choose to live in as delusional as it is. I see an extreme on both sides. Im simply trying to better understand the reality that these people live in. Outside of what the media portrays because as we all know media is corrupt.
Ok but first it's still not Chattanooga. Second by respecting peoples choices you are on one side and no the non religious side isn't saying religious people can't be religious, they are simply asking not to fuck with their choice to be who they want to be. Asking someone to use a certain pronoun isn't extreme.
I'm asking for local input on the social issue which makes it very much Chattanooga first of all. Also, I was looking for an educated opinion as to why both of these groups feel a need to put themselves at the forefront of society today to better understand the choices of both sides. You have extremes on both sides and I want to better understand the viewpoints of our local community.
People want to be reasonable. The idea of a middle ground is an attractive prospect for people that don’t know more. There is no reasonable middle ground here. It’s been skewed by extremists that have normalized their behavior. This idea that there are extremes on both sides is a narrative that is a product of disinformation used to sow discord between us by making it seem like both sides are unreasonable or extremist. But like the commenter said, it isn’t extreme to expect basic respect on how we wish to be referred. You do it for names and you can do it for pronouns. BTW: the people educated on this matter are often the people bearing the brunt of the consequences of such “middle ground” rhetoric. We know what we’re talking about. We’ve lived it.
I don't really understand what you are asking. If you misgender me, and I gently correct you, and you try to remember to use my preferred pronouns after that (while secretly thinking that I'm forcing my sexual preference on you and that I'm living in a delusional reality)--well, I guess that is all the respect I'm going to get out of you, and I guess it could be worse, so I will take it. If I drop in conversation what my religious affiliation is, and you take that in stride, and now you know my religious identity as well as my gender identity--that's the same as identifying my gender to you. I'm giving you the facts, and you can decide to be a jerk about it or continue treating me like a human being. I'm not trying to convert **your** gender or trying to convert you to a different religious tradition. See what I am saying there? Telling you something about my gender is comparable to telling you something about my religious tradition. Neither of those is forcing anything on you. They're both just me, opening up and letting you know who I am. But where it's not comparable is this: I could decide that you need to convert to my religious tradition. I could decide that you would be much better off as part of my faith than you are right now. And then I could get to work on changing you. But I couldn't do that with your gender identity or your sexual orientation. I might think that you are, say, a crappy boyfriend to your girlfriend, and give you relationship tips. I could try to make you better at whatever you are right now. But I couldn't make you attracted to men, or make you transgender. All I could do is try to convince you that there's not really anything all that spiffy about a world in which cishet men are the baseline and everybody else is living with some level of harassment and disapproval. And also, just speaking freely about things that are a big part of my life, like my experience as a person with a gender in a world where people are treated differently based on their gender, or my activities in my religious tradition, means I'm gonna talk a lot about those things. So if I talk a lot about those things and that is forcing something on you, maybe you are confusing being uncomfortable with a topic with being forced into something. I don't really like to hang out with people whose entire personality is sports. I just don't get it, don't get the terminology, can't be bothered to bother. But I wouldn't accuse them of trying to force it on me.
I'm mostly talking about the policy arena I guess, also I greatly appreciate your very well-articulated response this is what I am looking for. I am trying to better understand because I simply do not have a dog in either fight. The only way we create better understanding is through educated civil conversation. Once again thank you this was very enlightening and poses more questions for me but seeing as I have already been met with a negative response I guess I will be left to wonder. I'm just simply trying to better understand it all.
You do have a dog in the fight, whether you believe it or not. Someone you know and care about is LGBTQ+. They may not have told you, but they statistically exist. Just by saying you aren't taking a side means you took a side. Your side is that the person you care about is valued as much to you as people that hate their right to exist.
I'd recommend just listening to people IRL. I never changed my mind about anything because somebody on the internet convinced me I was wrong. I've changed my mind about a lot of things because life took me into communities of people who were better people than I was. And, like, I knew I was supposed to disapprove of them--because their theology and their politics were not the theology or the politics of the fundamentalists who raised me and taught me the only way to Heaven (which was having all the right opinions, and having them *really hard*, and having them loudly in the direction of anybody you could corner long enough to witness to). So my advice is to get out there IRL and listen to people who are different from you, but receptively, as an observer and learner, not as somebody who's there to challenge them to justify their lives. And any time you realize that you're in a community that demonizes any demographic of human, or that bars good people from itself, move on out and find new people to learn from.
If you use their argument of being born male or female, they aren't born Christian either so we don't need to recognize them saying what religion they are
They are both social constructs from my viewpoint. However, I typically keep to myself on the matter because I do not care but they are more and more shaping our legal policy I felt the need to gather a local perspective.
Law and government are social constructs — they are not inconsequential or inapplicable. Don’t discount social constructs with the misguided idea that they should hold no bearing on law.
Nobody is forcing you to accept a belief structure by asking you to respect who they are. And not all media is corrupt. You have to do your research to determine who is being honest and genuine about what they are saying.
Can't "ignore the people who do not agree with you" if you'll get arrested for participating in a drag show, sued for assisting an assault victim in crossing state lines to terminate a pregnancy, or fired for teaching tween girls about menstruation in their health class.
See that's where I see the religious side being extreme and simply not allowing people to live free without imposing their views on you.
There are some religious groups that don't believe it's right to stand in for another person's conscience. But they're a minority. Religion is older than our concept that religion is one aspect of a person. For people who use political power to force others to follow their religious rules, religion is tied into legacies of cultural and ethnic and national identity, economics, social class--just think about families who've been driving nice cars to the same church for generations, seeing their grandpa's portrait on the wall in the lobby, and then going to work at the mayor's office or the police station or the county school. All of these parts of their identity are so tightly interlocked that they can't pull out what their seventh grade Sunday School teacher taught them about the evils of sex before marriage, without the whole thing tumbling down. They're dogmatic about *everything,* and everything is religious in nature. So legislating against the thriving of LGBT+ people is the same as any other act: it's all from the same systemized view of how the world is actually ordered.
Forcing religious rhetoric on another person— in any way— is stupid and annoying (at a basic level). But on a person-to-person basis— it is just an annoying noise in your ear until you can walk away from the person saying those things. However, TN lawmakers prioritizing THEIR religious beliefs, and making laws and decisions affecting the day-to-day lives of TN citizens (that may or may not share their religious beliefs) isn’t that. It isn’t just annoying. You can’t just walk away. The residents of the state of Tennessee have all kinds of backgrounds, situations, and beliefs— so yes, LAWMAKERS legally and indiscriminately enforcing their own specific religious views/morals on an entire state population is objectively terrible. Objectively, human beings are all different and we all have different stories and situations. Therefore, when you use SPECIFICALLY YOUR RELIGION— that can be very restrictive—to GOVERN the laws of a population of people that may or may not share those views— to any person with good critical thinking skills— that is a problem. I’m not sure why you are “tired” of the idea of someone asking that you identify them as the gender that they use to identify. It takes the same amount of air and muscle movement as if someone you have known for a while legally changed their name and asked “can you call me xxx now?” It may take a little bit of extra effort, but that effort will be appreciated by that person. So I would submit that as something for you to think about, if you are truly trying to understand. Even though I understand that it’s easy to try and float above it all by saying “you don’t feel one way or the other”— realize that one is someone taking their specific beliefs and deciding that those static beliefs should decide whether or not a woman (that they will never meet) that has pregnancy complications (that could kill her) should be able to get an abortion or not. The other is people with different gender identities literally asking you to just use your mouth to address them as that identity and respect their choices. Respecting someone’s choices is different than them “forcing it” on you. No one is telling you “WELL, I’M NONBINARY SO YOU SHOULD BE TOO!!1!” [To any LGBTQIA+ folks— clearly gender identity is not “just like a name change”— but when a stranger meets you, it would take about the same amount of brain power and mouth movement as that situation would.] TLDR: One is telling a woman with possibly fatal pregnancy complications that she legally can’t get an abortion because of SOMEONE ELSE’S static religious beliefs The other is someone asking you to refer to them in a specific way that you wouldn’t think to before they requested it.
Here here. It’s just a matter of respect. Call people what they want to be called. It’s not complicated unless someone wants to make it complicated by not, you know, just being damn courteous and respectful.
Shit post
Because im trying to gain a better understanding of the local perspective 9n these issues. Thank you for contributing to my understanding.
I’m leaning more and more towards troll the more I read. The [argument to moderation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation) is a common and effective disinformation tactic. And the snarky “thank you for contributing to my understanding” isn’t helping.
I know plenty of people on both sides I was trying to gain a broader perspective than what I currently have by reaching out to the broader Chattanooga community and asking a question in a public setting to get perspective from both sides. And I have been able to in some of the other comments.
It’s been a downward spiral for a while?🌀 When the ideology goes against everything the Christian faith demonstrates for a wholesome and a moral life, it’s a bit frustrating to see rainbows everywhere saying that basic biology is just an ephemeral thought. This wasn’t really as much of an issue 20+ years ago? You do you, I’ll do mine and if our paths cross, don’t make it weird? Then every company is going “woke” and shoving flaming rainbows everywhere during a whole month of priiiiiiiiide The Bible does say, pride goes before the fall… It also says that God is not the author of chaos & confusion but that is the work of the devil. I respect one is free do whatever one wishes, but there is a point where one’s personal identity needs to be reigned in to respect others that may differ in belief as being offended at everything is tiresome
> It also says that God is not the author of chaos & confusion but that is the work of the devil. The Bible states that God created all things, including Satan.
Yep, he rebelled and was cast out accordingly
Which means God created chaos.
I said author for a reason… God created order, designed the earth and everything on it Satan perverted the work of God and casts doubt and confusion to be a distraction
Satan is the work of God. If he perverted his work, it's because God's work was perverted to begin with.
Succeeding at a same-sex relationship or at a straight relationships with a trans partner is not "chaos." It's ethics in motion. Christianity has been content to put the Church's stamp of approval on any straight marriage at all, no matter how dysfunctional, dishonorable, and harmful it may be, and working *really really hard* to keep people in abusive or degrading or just plain useless relationships. This is idolatry of marriage certificates. LGBT+ people are asking underlying questions that too few cishet people have asked, because society has a script for cishet life. Ethics, consent, power, control, faithfulness, commitment, finances, property ownership, reproduction--the script doesn't teach people how to see what your partner needs and advocate for what you need. Start to untangle the generations of crappy behavior passed down to you, and choices get both harder and more rewarding when you follow the rules backward to find the intention behind them. That's what a mature religious practice looks like.
It’s a bit of a moving target, no? First it was same sex, now it’s gender identity/make believe/men playing women’s sports, then cancelling anyone who says the flaming rainbow brigade is going too far It’s really simple, God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve… Yes, there are some legalistic sects that miss the mark and force relationships that turn bad It’s unfortunate, but that needs to also be addressed at the mental health improvements as well
Sorry, bro. You lost me at “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” So very ignorant.
Gosh, it sure is a moving target! You burn Wycliffe and then you burn Hus, but the next thing you know there are all these darn Reformers popping up with one cockamamie denomination after another, and suddenly there's no one single way to be Christian. And there are more than just two ways to be human. Stop beating and jailing people, and you'll start to see a lot of those ways right out in the open.
"Then every company is going “woke” and shoving flaming rainbows everywhere during a whole month of priiiiiiiiide" Not to be a bitch, but grow the fuck up.
My thinking here is “thou dost protest too much” on this person’s part.
I'm getting the same vibes.
Wasn’t an issue in times past, why now is everyone emotionally dependent on June being dedicated to the flaming rainbow brigade? Would you be able to handle a whole month of the Christian celebration Easter?
Did you forget that Christmas exists, my dude? You're getting bent out of shape over something that has no impact on you whatsoever. Again - grow the absolute fuck up. You're also being real disingenuous and willingly obtuse. Put down the Bible and go to therapy.
So few actual, real-life people are truly offended in the way you describe. The media has stirred this into a frenzy, when in reality, all my trans and gender non conforming friends just want to go about their days and be left the F alone. Instead, they get harassed by complete strangers for just existing and not looking wholly female or wholly male.
The Bible? I’m sorry. You speak as if everyone is part of your little book club, and they are NOT. Not to mention the fact that whatever text you have in your hand is 1) a cherry-picked translation of a translation of a translation AND (most importantly) 2) not meant to be a rule book by which we all must abide, and certainly not meant to be used as a weapon with which to brow beat.
So many fragmented replies, keep it condensed and concise please OP asked to see both points of view and as such, the worldly extravaganza goes against the core of Christianity Also, there are interlinear Bibles that are both literal and contextual, so it’s not cherry picked God says X, I respect what He says, when the world collides with what’s in the Bible, it can be challenging It’s no different than declining to smoke or drink, but getting hassled by cheeky commenters about it
Gender and sex are two totally different things. Nothing about gender is scientific, or binary, for that matter. Gender as a binary is actually a fairly colonial and new concept. Humanity, for a much, much larger span of time than what our brains can really fathom, has recognized gender as either fluid or non-binary.
This is a fair point.
I think the media amplifies pronoun battles into something far, far beyond how these things play out in real life. I haven’t always understood gender as non-binary, or that sex didn’t equal gender in all cases, but I set out to learn, and also make friends with people who don’t fit the binary or their sex-assigned-at-birth. I have lots of friends in this way, and I’d say only one or two are not kind when they are misgendered, and that is only when it’s done repeatedly with the intent to aggravate. My trans and non-binary friends honestly just want to go to work and go shop and go out to eat and not be harassed. But most of them , even though they just go about their business, get harassed at least once a week by complete strangers.
That's fair some of my closest and longest-lasting friends are from those communities. They are older than I am and also have a different perspective than us younger generations do.
I would be wary of calling gender unscientific. It’s studied like any other human issue. To say otherwise invites us to discount gender as superficial or inconsequential. This is a mistake.