I had a run-in with a homophobe today. I felt pure and utter hatred and intolerance in their presence. Of course, spewing "God's word" and intimating that, of course, they were not passing judgment, that God was in his written word. I left. I'm not strong in scripture and, honestly, walked away with a "WOW" and a roll of my eyes. I am writing up a formal complaint and will file it on Monday. BUT, if any of you know which scripture this person may be referencing, please message me -- I think it may be the "go to" scripture that people of the Westboro persuasion reference.
Sorry to hear you had that experience, it is always disturbing, when you find yourself confronted with it, and especially when you cannot change a thing about it.
Here are a few answers from my experience, hope they help a little:
a) You cannot win against them with arguments, because logic is not what got them to where they are.
b) The Bible has many places where these folks read their anti-sodomy stances out of, but the Bible has significantly more places that show that their position or their interpretation is fundamentally un-Christian in nature. The only way they get to their position is by taking literally those few sentences that support their position, and by at the same time taking hundreds others not literally.
That is why logic does not matter and debate does not either.
Anti-sodomy statements can be found in the Bible in about 20 places, to varying degree of emphasis, context and translation/interpretation. Leviticus is often quoted by haters, because it has some seemingly clear and strong statements, but Leviticus has tons of other rules and rituals that are not followed today, and nobody is running into the streets for those. Leviticus is pro-slavery (just assumes it as a fact), allows donation of women as presents, has extreme Sabbath laws and tons of other stuff. As I said, it does not make sense to take one sentence literally, when quite obviously, you are not taking the rest literally.
The other important fact to know, is that Christ himself has nowhere and with not one word ever addressed the topic of homosexuality. And in Acts (a book that talks about how the Apostles lived with each other, mostly after Christ's death), it is stated that there was talk in town about the living arrangement these guys had with each other. Now a lot of this talk may have been about the unmarried women who were accompanying them, and not only about the apostles themselves. But talk existed about it all, and probably also existed earlier, when Jesus was still alive. Jesus ignored it.
In fact, whenever Jesus found himself in situation, where the crowds got a tad over-excited about something related to sexuality, he did the same thing, again and again. He calmed the crowd down, usually by drawing with a stick in the sand, until they would calm down.
It is my interpretation that Jesus knew that we humans tend to get a bit too hot-headed when it comes to matters of sexuality and if anything, right now, all things related to gay relationships is certainly overheated in the US. The lesson learned is to rather calm things down, rather than trying to win a point. In that sense, your walking away, may have been a very good reaction, even though it probably did not feel like a win to you. They will need to also walk away from the situation and process it. Your reaction may have some positive result down the road. So, don't beat yourself up. But also know, that Christ never spoke about the issue, never told anyone that gays go to hell, never told anyone that they were behaving wrong in matters of homosexuality - nothing.
In fact, the only new Testament reference there is, is to be found in two letters by Paul. Yes, the same Paul, who also tells women to be silent in church and a lot of other things, we are not always taking quite so literally. Interestingly, what he writes in one letter is that homosexuality is unnatural, kind of like it is unnatural for a woman to cut off her hair. Yup, that is the gravity of the comparison. The other letter is stronger though, talks about sin and condemnation and does talk about men lying with men in that context. So, they do have that letter from Paul to hang their arguments up on, and so they do.
Just know, on the other hand, the Bible has hundreds of references, that speak to our duty to love thy neighbor, hundred that tell us that God's creation is good, and we should praise it as such, and tons of references that tell us not to judge others. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God looked at what he created and said: It is good, but oops, these 5 % I got wrong.
c) In a confrontation, the best argument is, Christ said: Don't judge, lest you be judged.
You usually then hear something about how they are not judging the person, just the deed...or something similar.
I usually then try to say something like: I am so glad to hear that you are not hating against gay people, then.
And then do what you did...walk away. They will have to deal with the inherent lie they just said, because of course, usually they ARE hating against the person.
d) Please, also remember, that usually the strongest hate comes from two groups. People who are actually homosexual, but have been taught to be self-loathing and hiding their feelings and therefore act out with hate.
And the second group is people who have been victimized and therefore associate what they have experienced as 'gay', instead of as the sexual abuse that it really is.
As with all sexual abuse, it unfortunately is far more common than we assume. We know from long research and many statistics that almost a quarter of all females have experienced at least some sexual violence, but whatever the numbers are, for boys, they are even harder to come by, because the hurdle of shame and the non-existing structures to report it or find help, are even less available. A lot of hatred gets projected on gays, that should really be reserved for those who abuse.
We have learned how all this abuse has been going on in church institutions. What you hear less about, is how much this also is an issue in families, youth camps, sports, schools, neighborhoods and many other places. The problem is to tell these folks, that this has nothing to do with gay or straight, it has to do with abnormal sexual behavior and uncontrolled abuse of power and availability and access to victims.
And as such, we should have conversations about it, because it would help our children, if we all would be more vigilant. But unfortunately, this topic gets mixed up with lgbt issues, when these two really don't belong together.
Hope, all this helps.
