May 30 2007
Gay Tolerance Reaching Record Marks in America
[From Christian Post]
Pro-gay rights attitudes have reached high points this year, according to a new poll, with more Americans expressing tolerance. Today, 57 percent of the American public believes homosexuality should be sanctioned as an acceptable alternative lifestyle â the highest the Gallup Poll has recorded since 1982. Also indicating higher tolerance, 59 percent of Americans believe homosexual relations should be legal.
At the same time, the majority of Americans say sex between an unmarried man and woman (59 percent), divorce (65 percent), and having a baby outside or marriage (54 percent) is morally acceptable.
Read about it here.
[From me]
Did Jesus check opinion polls?
What do you think?
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17 responses so far
Yes, all of the above should be legal in a secular society that emphasizes personal freedoms over any single view of morality based on religious principles. Are they moral? I don’t think so. But, do I want to live in a theocratic society (even one that is based on my particular view of morality)? No.
I read some years ago that, along with decline in the enforcement of laws (a-k-a breakdown of law and order), public acceptance of immorality is one of the great hallmarks of every society that has ever fallen.
Nothing surprising about this latest, at all.
No surprises here. But we must remember that legal does not always equal moral. We wouldn’t want everything immoral to be illegal, for lots of reasons.
However, laws are a recognition of what we consider immoral.
Moral laws are like gravity, in that they are unchanging. As James MacDonald says, “Choose to sin, choose to suffer.” Sadly, out of wedlock sex brings suffering on the participants and others as well. I grieve for the millions of kids growing up without two loving parents. Selfishness and pride aren’t new, but they do seem to be at an all time high.
P.S. It doesn’t surprise me that non-Christians would make these assessments. What is tragic is that much of the church is virtually indistinguishable from the world.
Neil,
Exactly! We shouldn’t be surprised by non-believers but I would expect a more Biblical view from Believers.
According to Pew research’s poll (supporting this data) the biggest change comes when someone knows some one personally.
That makes people twice as likely to support civil rights for those not so fortunate to be straight.
MIT is right. When you have a close friend or family member who comes out of the closet, it greatly changes your perspective on these matters.
Whatâs interesting about the study is that younger Americans are much more accepting than older Americans. In a sense, it appears that the battle over this is already over.
MIT & TIA,
I don’t doubt what you say is true. I’m not trying to be judgmental but does that make it less a sin? I’m talking about sex outside of a marriage relationship. In Genesis 2:24 it says:
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
I don’t think Jesus changed His perspective based upon people He met. His perspective was based upon “Holiness.”
Sex truly doesn’t have any value anymore. It is fine outside of the marriage relationship because it is about making each other feel better. Sex is more of a recreation than something to express connection and love. I’ve heard in way too many conferences about the connections needed for making a lifetime commitment. People truly believe that having sex or coming close to having sex before marriage will give a signal of the relationship lasting or not.
When talking with some of the teenage female friends of my cousin, they said that it is ok to have a physical relationship with another female because they weren’t really having sex and weren’t cheating on someone else.
I guess I’m in that negative view of your’s Kevin because I do have more tolerance now. Mainly for the reasons that MIT and TIA stated. I don’t think that having tolerance and allowing for it to be legal makes me feel that it is less of a sin. It is legal for me to have 2 Toaster Sandwiches and a Route44 every day, but it would be sinning because I’d be continuing a gluttonous habit. Somedays I wonder if it was sanctioned, if my half-sister would feel safe when they travel. Sadly, sanctioning it will not change the hatred many homosexuals, unwed parents, and divorced couples do receive from churches. With the concept of tolerance, I believe that would include Jesus because he loved those shunned and still called sin sin.
Kevin,
Some years ago I gave my heart to Jesus. As the years have gone by, I have found a place in my Order, serving others as we serve Him. My vocation is to bring the experience of the love of God into this world.
Yes there are moral issues!
I am not tasked to solve them, but to live in a world that hasthem.
As I understand it, my Master has told me quite clearly to tend to the log in my eye before the speck in others.
What cannot be cured must be endured. People are the same today as they’ve always been - sexual creatures who can mate indefinitely.
Although happily and monogamously married, I support divorce. The OT permitted it, and rightly so. If my mother had been able to divorce my father, we would have been a lot happier and healthier for it. Why stay with someone who makes your life a living hell? If you can escape a brutal partner, you’d be mad not to take the chance- unless, of course, you have masochistic tendencies.
Would you oppose divorce for a wife who had found that her husband was a rapist and/or a paedophile? Would you insist that the wife should stay married to such a person? If you have a spark of common sense and humanity, you’d say “No.”
I have no problem with gays- they had no say in the way their brains were wired- and sexuality IS dependent on the brain! I have stacks of gay friends and love them all. What they do in their own bedrooms is no concern of mine.
Unwed mothers (and fathers) have always been with us and always will be. You cannot legislate the human sexual urge to fit into a narrow framework of morality.
Personally speaking, I am thankful that I was not a virgin when I married. Had I married my original fiance, my life would have been that of a bullied slave, yoked to a sexual sadist. I found out the hard way, through direct experience, and broke off the engagement. I have no regrets whatsoever. it was entirely beneficial. Hence, having tried it out before I married, I’m in no position to preach sexual morality at anyone. My only criteria is that it’s consensual and lawful.
One man and one woman for life is an ideal- someone should have whispered that into the ears of King Solomon!
MIT,
Good point. What do we do when we see a sin in a person’s life? If you see a fire would you not warn them? Just trying to understand another’s view.
Kevin,
I don’t know that what ever I say to some one would really change them. Unless they see the sin in their own lives, and ask for guidance, how can I help them?
I see my job as loving them and pointing them toward Jesus. The Holy Spirit will convict them as needed in the right time, I have that faith. I see conversion as a process not a one time event.
MIT, you are a very wise and compassionate person.
Thank you, Francoise, but this is hardly a position I developed or even found pleasant at first! However, after learning how to lose myself in God’s work, I see this idea in various parts of the Scriptures. For example part of this morning’s Prayers included this selection from 2 Corinthians 3:1-18 and I think it sums it up quite nicely.
Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? 2You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; 3and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 4Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, 6 who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 7Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses¹ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, 8how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? 9For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! 10Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; 11for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory! 12 Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, 13not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. 14But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. 15Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; 16but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
See? it isn’t about me, or my control but the Spirit’s and I can relax in faith that God knows what He is about.
I hardly understand a word of it, but thanks for the trouble you went to. Hope you email me again!
True enough! I’m bisexual myself so it’s uplifting when I hear that other’s don’t think homosexuality is “being homo” or “being gay” but just a different lifestyle.
As for God? I hope he keeps looking down on us, Amen.