Did Christian homophobia come from a mistranslation of the Bible?
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Anonymous
Jesus was the first person to give women rights. In His day, women were literally property. The Jewish people in His community, their culture allowed this treatment of women. In fact, Jesus stopped a group of Jewish men, leaders, community members, from stoning a prostitute to death. He told the prostitute to go and sin no more. He loved her, and wanted her to live her life without being sexually sinful. Women were completely separate from men, Jewish men and women lived almost completely separately, the only time they were together was in bed. Jewish culture and the cultures of people at the time, their customs were that young women and girls were married to older men. Jesus didn’t make that happen, nor did Christianity. If you can think of a group of people or culture that didn’t marry young girls off to older men, let us know. They all did it. Jewish culture in the first century was decidedly patriarchal. The daily prayers of Jewish men included this prayer of thanksgiving: “Praised be God that he has not created me a woman.” A woman’s place was in the home. Women were responsible for bearing the children, rearing them and maintaining a hospitable home. Men were not to greet women in public. Some Jewish writers of Jesus’ time, such as Philo, taught that women should never leave the home except to go to the synagogue. So yeah, blame the Jewish people of the time. Their men were so misogynistic they woke up everyday and thanked God they weren’t women. Women were under the domination of their fathers, then husbands. Totally. Rabbi Eliezer, a first-century teacher, is noted for saying, “Rather should the word of the Torah be burned than entrusted to a woman.” Jesus was radical because He simply spoke publicly to women. Jewish people taught that women were “unclean” during their period- Jesus rejected that and said that was not true. Jesus treated Martha and Mary as if they were valuable and worthy of attention and respect, something that the Jewish people during that time would not do. Women were present at His death, and Jesus revealed Himself after His resurrection to women. No other man before Jesus treated women with respect and as if they were worthy of being listened to and included in any facet of life. Jesus was amazing in his role as a Jewish man, teacher, and leader. The Jewish people of Jesus’ time were prochild rape. They subjugated girls and women to the extreme and Jesus was the lone voice to proclaim there was a better way to treat women and girls. How can you be so ignorant of the customs of Jesus’ time? He definitely was not abusing women and girls or treating them like chattel and disparaging them as their own fathers, husbands, and community did. Crack a book occasionally. It’s borderline embarrassing and exactly why listening to people posting here about what Jesus really meant or what the Bible “really” says should be avoided. People with no knowledge or understanding are speaking about things they know nothing about. Don’t do it, and don’t listen to tik tok, or read crap that is made up by people advocating for political parties or political agendas. Jesus came to save us from our sin, not to applaud wildly while we sin and praise each other for our sin. Going to church to be told how great you are is just another way to serve your own desires and earthly purpose. You can live your life based on your sexual desires for a limited time, hope you all find something beyond sex to occasionally think about or to do in your lives. There should be things that are as important as your sex life to you, but I sense people posting here in this thread center their life around who they have sex with instead of God. |
Anonymous
So then why do many religious people want to treat women poorly today? And shouldn’t people center their life around their families? |
Anonymous
+1 Why are people using jesus name to strip women of their rights? Why aren’t more Christian’s standing up for women’s rights and claiming jesus as a feminist? |
Anonymous
Jesus was not a feminist. Jesus’ pro-woman stance had nothing to do with a cultural, secular worldview, racism, eugenics, socialism, Marxism, misandry, and murder. Jesus exalted women long before the feminist movement came into existence. Jesus advocated for women in a culture where women were denied their most basic rights. Jesus doesn’t get on board with human ideas, humans get on board with Jesus’ ideas. Jesus exalted women based on their divine design and purpose – not because He held to a worldview of equality. |
Anonymous
Being gay or straight doesn’t have anything to do with families. It’s who you have sex with. Homophobia implies that Christians hate people who have sex with same sex people. Gay people cannot have children through the natural biological process straight people have children by. They can adopt children, or use a medical procedure to become pregnant. The people posting on this thread center their entire lives around sex. It’s not healthy for gay or straight people to center their lives around their sex life. Sex is not the meaning of life. Sex is a part of life, but not the most important thing in life by a long shot. Defining the entirety of who you are as a human being by who you have sex with, that’s how you want to live? That’s your most important issue in life, making sure everyone knows who you have sex with, and making sure everyone approves of the people you have sex with? |
Anonymous
What they do in their bedroom doesn’t affect me. Most people have no problems with it as long as they keep their immorality within their own walls. But they are taking their immorality outside of their private space. They are pushing society to redefine family, marriage, and many aspects of our life. Teaching our children in school that these immoral behaviors are normal, cool, and even encouraging them to explore these relationships. This is no longer about two men or two women doing their things in the privacy of their home. This is about transforming our society. So, yes it affects us, it affects our children’s education. |
Anonymous
Of course it is immoral. |
Anonymous
Under Jewish law and cultural tradition during the time Jesus walked the earth, it was considered moral. It was the way Jewish people traditionally treated 12 year old girls- they could be married and bear their husband’s child/children. That was how it was then. |
Anonymous
No, not ok with child abuse. I was showing where we would be if we followed your perverse thinking about allowing everything just because 2 people love each other. No matter how much a minor loves an adult, how much they want to have sex with them, if they have sex, we consider it immoral and WE have (Our society) decided that this is crime. They can be in love as much as they like. It doesn’t matter. You would have allowed that in your world because they love each others. Understand that we aren’t just going to condone homosexuality because the two people love each others. We care about morality. |
Anonymous
What religious people are ok with child rape? During biblical times, under Jewish law and tradition, girls married men. The Torah says a Jewish father had the right to marry off his daughter from her day of birth until what was considered the age of majority – “12 years, six months and a day.” Only if a daughter became widowed or divorced did a father lose the right to marry her to another man. Are you under the impression Jewish people still do this? I really don’t think they do. |
Anonymous
How does people having sex in a public place affects you? Same for indecent exposure? Why do you think we don’t allow it? We could just ignore them? Right? Or maybe you would allow it? Open and flagrant immorality isn’t good for society. It negatively affects people. |
Anonymous
Prohibited Marriages and Illegitimate Children The minimum age for marriage under Jewish law is 13 for boys, 12 for girls; however, the kiddushin can take place before that, and often did in medieval times. The Talmud recommends that a man marry at age 18, or somewhere between 16 and 24. The Torah allowed for a father to marry off his young daughter, yet the Talmud states that as a matter of recommended practice, "it is prohibited to marry off a young daughter until she is old enough and she says 'I like him'." https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/legal-religious-status-of-married-woman The first major written collection of the Jewish oral traditions, the Mishnah, also known as the "Oral Torah", tells us: 
The basis for this tradition comes directly from Moshe and the Torah itself, with Numbers 31:17-18 stating: 17 Now kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has ever slept with a man. 18 But the young girls who have never slept with a man, keep alive for yourselves. Jewish people could keep their enemies, specifically the young girls, as sex slaves. The Mishnah, however, attempts to moderate this activity through the imposition of a moral/legal obligation upon the man - in having sexual intercourse with "a girl [aged] three years and one day" she becomes his wife and is owed all the legal rights of a wife. |
Anonymous
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Among the sexual perversions proscribed as criminal offenses in the moral code of the Torah are homosexual relations between males (Lev. 18:22). Both offending parties are threatened with capital punishment (Lev. 20:13), though minors under 13 years of age are exempt from this as from any other penalty (Sanh. 54a). Talmudic law extends the prohibition, but not the penalty, which is limited to flagellation, also to lesbianism, i.e., homosexual intimacies between women, based on the general warning not to indulge in the abhorrent practices of the Egyptians and the Canaanites (Sifra 9:8). While the laws on both offenses are codified by Maimonides (Yad, Issurei Bi’ah, 1:14; and 21:8), the prohibition of homosexuality proper is omitted from R. Joseph Caro’s Shulhan Arukh. This omission reflects the perceived absence of homosexuality among Jews rather than any difference of views on the criminality of these acts.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/homosexuality |
Anonymous
So morality can change over time. Today in 2023, a gay couple can be married and have a family. And even have sex (just as straight couples do). Nothing immoral about that. |
Anonymous
As long as people - gay or straight - aren’t having sex out in public then we are all good. |