God was a homophobe

Hello Pro, I am going to argue that your statement "God was a homophobe" is false. Since you are making the claim that He was, you need to provide evidence and I will respond to that. From the beginning I was not entirely clear what we are arguing but as I understand it its basically that the God as described in the Bible is a homophobe. That is the specific claim. Given that the Bible is used by most Christians I think its reasonable to extend that to the God of most Christians is a homophobe. From your opening statement you make a few points that I want to respond to. "If God wasn't homophobe then why would it be a sin to be gay" --> What does it mean to "be gay"? Is it the natural inclination or desire for romantic and sexually intimacy with someone of the same sex? Then there is no evidence in the Bible that God sees this as a sin and therefore your argument would fall apart. --> If it means why is it a sin to be gay as in live the lifestyle that involves a romantic and sexual relationship with partners of the same sex, then that is a different story. Okay this is the main argument which I will take on. Just because God does not approve of certain acts does not mean He does not love the people who commit them. This should be clear because many parents love their children even though their children turn out to do bad things. Secondly, just because God forbids certain acts as immoral, it does not follow that God hates those people who are tempted to commit those sins or somehow unjustly discriminates against them. From a Christian standpoint, there are many temptations around us. Some of these we are born with, others we acquire. Some through our own fault, others because of factors outside of our control. In any case however, these temptations do not add up to a justification of an act. If God forbids certain acts as sinful, it simply does not follow that God is discriminating against or directly harming or does not love those who desire to do these sinful acts. Let's assume that it did follow for the sake of argument. This would lead us to believe that God is not only homophobic, but actually phobic towards every human and would hate all people. This is because it is clear that every human being has a tendency to sin. It would also be the case because we all have pretty much at some point violated one of the laws of the O.T. So if this is going to be our standard (for the sake of argument), it follows that God is not only anti-gay, but anti-everyone either because of our temptations or because we in fact have yielded to those temptations. Further, even if God demands punishment for certain sins, it does not follow that God hates the people he punishes. This is for a number of reasons: (1) demanding justice does not mean hate (2) justice can be corrective (3) many times we think of punishment in terms of God inflicting but it is at least theoretically possible that God does not inflict but simply allows the harm of sins to come upon someone and thus it is a kind of self-punishment. The last argument you can make is that since God forbids people with same sex attraction from acting on this, and since God deems it a sin in the O.T. to have sex with someone of the same sex, then God must necessarily not desire the happiness of those with S.S.A. and he hates them. The flaw in this argument is that it assumes in order for God to love us he must want us to have our every wish and pursue our every desire. The flaw can be seen if we place same sex attraction with an inherent tendency towards alcoholism. If someone was born with a tendency to desire alcohol and get drunk, would it follow that God should allow this? See, just because someone has a natural desire for something does not mean that God is obliged to agree and approve of this desire. You may respond that "alcoholism is bad but gay sex is not" but this begs the question because it is all based on who's standards? Stating this does not actually prove your point. The only way that this rebuttal could work is that if you prove that gay sex is not bad from God's standpoint. This would be hard to do. If gay sex is bad from God's standpoint, then it is entirely reasonable and not homophobic to forbid gay sexual activity. You say "surely God would want people to be happy." but this argument fails because it would entail God grant our every desire and call nothing a sin. You may argue that this is the only way there could be a loving God. Yet this would not make sense since we know from experience that not everything that makes us immediately happy is best for us. In order for God to be truly homophobic (according to Scripture) you would have to prove the following false: "There are at least theoretical possible reasons that sexual activity between two people of the same sex is wrong morally/and or harmful to those engaged or society at large" Two points: 1) This is difficult because we are short sighted humans. Notice too how in order to prove that statement false you do not succeed if you show all current arguments against this type of behavior fail. You have to prove that there are no possible reasons in theory because it is at least theoretically possible that God knows something we don't (again from O.T. standards). It is also more difficult than arguing that homosexual behavior is morally justifiable because that is a broad argument from what we know as humans. However, it does not take into account God's plan for us which for all we know hypothetically every time someone has homosexual sex their soul gets trapped in some realm that involves suffering. (I just thought of this example off the top of my head. I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS TO BE THE CASE. nor does the Bible advocate such a thing. I don't even think such a thing is philosophically sound. The point is just to offer something off of the top of my head to show that it is theoretically possible that God knows something that we don't know about this. Hence the statement above is near impossible to prove false) 2) The reason you must prove this statement false is because IF the statement is true, you cannot argue that God is a homophobe. Here is why: Premise 1) A loving God would desire what is best for us morally, spiritually, physically, etc. and want us to not do what is harmful or immoral Premise 2) "There are at least theoretical possible reasons that sexual activity between two people of the same sex is wrong morally/and or harmful to those engaged or society at large" Conclusion) There are at least theoretically possible reasons that a loving God would not want us to engage in sexual acts w/ someone of the same sex. Since a loving God by definition is not homophobic... Anyway, the point is that it is theoretically possible to admit both a loving and non-homophobic God and a God that forbids homosexual acts. since this is at least possible, you cannot show that God is homophobic. That is my argument, you may now respond. *P.S. we cannot let this turn into a debate over the morality of homosexual acts or gay marriage etc. This has to be a debate over whether or not God is homophobic.