longweekend58 wrote on Sep 4^th, 2013 at 11:19pm:

what does DSM 5 state about homosexuality?

ian wrote on Sep 4^th, 2013 at 11:21pm:


It hasn't been released so I don't know but it has been a long time since homosexuality was deemed a paraphilia or mental illness.

Real people do not matter to people like Longy.....He would rather worry about what someone thought over 2000 years ago and not concern himself with how it affects real people.....If following God means I must fill myself with hate I would rather not follow any doctrine based on faith not reality!!!



Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn't be religious people.
Doris Egan, House M.D., The Right Stuff, 2007

longweekend58 wrote on Sep 4^th, 2013 at 11:23pm:

Yes it has been released and is available, (since May this year). You are right, DSM 5 doesnt  recognise homosexuality as a paraphilia or mental illness. I find it odd that you have previously defended pedophiles as only having a paraphilia and yet you condemn homosexuals who arent recognised as having any disorder at all. Dont you feel this is a double standard?

stryder wrote on Sep 4^th, 2013 at 9:50pm:



That is what the question was that he answered ? You can play the clip and find out if you are really interested.

Quantum wrote on Sep 4^th, 2013 at 10:43pm:


If people weren't so interested in whether Kevin was a Christian, they wouldn't make such a big deal out of it.

It seems to be common among so-called "evangelicals" to scrutinise and evaluate a person's Christian-ness, to observe and compare them to some established notion of "Christian-ness." That's despite Paul warning against such behaviour, that people shouldn't be asking whether they follow Paul, Peter or Apollos. If Kevin is Christian, that's his business and it doesn't matter if I'm Christian or not. Kevin's beliefs are still none of my business.

I think people should make up their own minds what kind of "Christian" they want to be rather than always trying to copy someone else. It seems like Christianity needs its own version of free-market capitalism. Christianity needs a little more "innovation." There needs to be less conformity and more "thinking outside the box." There needs to be more variety of thought. It's like what Paul said in Romans 14:2 about vegetarians and people who eat any kind of food. You're obviously a Christian of the "vegetarian" kind. You're on a theological diet.

Quantum wrote on Sep 4^th, 2013 at 10:43pm:


I can understand why you think that because you were never convinced that homosexuals were born that way. You don't know what it's like to rethink your beliefs. You don't believe any well-meaning Christian could genuinely start believing what homosexuals have been saying for years: that you don't choose your sexuality, you are born with it. You can't relate to or identify with the idea because you have never experienced it yourself.

I believe what Kevin is saying is personal because I went through a similar process of rethinking my beliefs about homosexuality.

Quantum wrote on Sep 4^th, 2013 at 10:43pm:


I had a feeling, right from the very beginning of Kevin's rise in 2007, that his policies and views were too good to be true. Either he was naive, inexperienced and hadn't thought things through properly, or like you're saying, it was all a ploy. Actually I was thinking the former most of the time. Kevin's proposals were just too pie-in-the-sky to be that of an experienced and careful politician. His background in diplomacy and poor behind-the-scenes management skills explains it all. He was thrown into a role with a huge learning curve and that was too big for him to handle. He lost control and like Humpty Dumpty, he had a great fall.

If he is starting to "manipulate" and say things just to get people to vote for him, and break promises later, it's because he is learning how to be a real politician. Manipulating, spinning and breaking promises is something every good politician has done at some point in their career. There is still some sign of the "old Kevin" showing -- the idealistic, pipe dreaming, optimistic, naive, inexperienced and unrealistic Kevin. But there is also the "new Kevin" emerging, the realist Kevin that spins and breaks promises just like every other politician out there.

The Kevin that opposed gay marriage was the naive Kevin, the immature Kevin, the Kevin that was out of touch with reality, the Kevin who didn't understand that people don't choose homosexuality, that they are born with it.

longweekend58 wrote on Sep 4^th, 2013 at 10:54pm:


I get it! You're one of those Protestants who believe in the Five Solas of the Reformation!

Well here's some good news. I'm not a Catholic either.

Whether it's the Old Testament/Tanakh or the New Testament, all written tradition has a history and if it has a history, it has a context. For example, Jews and Catholics don't follow their Bible(s) directly. Jews have rabbis. Catholics have priests and bishops.

Before the written tradition, there was an oral tradition. It doesn't matter if it is Judaism, Christianity or Islam. They all began with an oral tradition. After centuries of the Torah being passed from teacher to student, the Old Testament was put together from various sources by so-called "redactors." Christianity started with Jesus' verbal (and oral) teachings, which were later written down and became the "New Testament" we have today. This means that a lot of what Jesus taught has been lost because the original oral tradition has been lost. Without the oral tradition, you can't establish the original context and therefore the original meaning.

Most Christians know nothing about the original context because the oral tradition was lost and was never taught to them. The good news is that there is a group of people out there who can help Christians recover the original context: the Jewish people. The oral tradition that was lost was the oral tradition of Judaism, which has been preserved in Rabbinical Judaism.

Paul's mission to the Gentiles has to be seen in the context of Jewish tradition. Why did he do what he did? It's because of what was happening in Second Temple Judaism. A major issue was Jewish-Gentile relations and Pharisaic Judaism actually explored that in parallel with early Christianity. Actually it was Pharisaic Judaism which provided the basis for that mission.

So why did I say that Paul's words are secondary and not equal to that of Jesus? Firstly it's because Jesus gave him that mission. Secondly, Jewish tradition provided the context for that mission, so Paul wasn't just following orders. There were both earthly and divine influences at play. It wasn't just a matter of what God wanted, but also what Jews were motivated to do sociologically.

Remember the Jewish teaching, "the Torah is not in heaven" (Deuteronomy 30:12-14). There were both divine and earthly precedents for what Paul did. It wasn't just a divine command. It was something inspired by Jewish tradition (the earthly aspect). The Pharisees may not have been keen on what Paul did, but that doesn't make it impossible for Paul's mission to make sense to a Jew.

So again, why do I not regard Paul's words as equal to those of Jesus? It's because Paul drew inspiration from both Jesus and the Torah, the Torah which was given at Mt Sinai. What Paul did was divinely inspired for sure, but the foundation had already been laid centuries in advance. It was just a matter of time.

What I am talking about here is the kind of thing people like E. P. Sanders, Geza Vermes and N. T. Wright have been studying during the last few decades: the Jewish context of Jesus and early Christianity.