From: mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: I Am Not Judging Homosexuals!!
Summary: oh, YES you are!
Date: 9 Apr 92 03:52:22 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T

In article <1992Apr8.190224.17172@ncsu.edu>, cmgrawbu@eos.ncsu.edu
(CHRISTOPHER M GRAWBURG) writes:

> So many people (pro-homosexual or whatever) keep telling me and 
> others that we are judging homosexuals.

yep; we call 'em like we see 'em.

> To judge someone means to form an opinion based on my own set
> of beleifs and values--a value system that I have devised.

What a peculiar "definition" of judging!  And utterly indefensible.

Are you claiming that persons who go to law school and train in
the legal profession, in order to apply a law they did not make,
and which may in fact diverge from their own "value systems", and
to constrain, so far as possible, a jury to make *its* judgments
of fact within the same bounds of a law that neither of them are
free to remake at will, are THEREFORE not judging?  Bizarre.

Or that the bigot who mindlessly mouths off about (or worse acts
on a valuation) that is merely the repetition of parental or peer
bigotry (operating on a mind apparently unable to HAVE an opinion
or value system of its own devising) is NOT judging?

A judgment is an expression of an evaluation.  You cannot escape
the charge that you are doing this by claiming that you found the
expression (or the valuation) elsewhere.

This is a VASTLY more extreme revision of simple language than
ANYTHING I have seen by way of "creative" interpretations of Paul
in Corinthians and Romans about (what is presumed, with scanty
evidence of a few obscure words, to be) homosexual actions.

And WHY are you twisting the word so violently?  Is it not to escape
the DIRECT commandment NOT to judge that we find repeatedly in Jesus
and in Paul?  There is absolutely NOTHING from either one (or anyone
else outside a limited covenant in Leviticus, that may not even be
properly -- before the Pharisees got hold of it -- applied wholesale
to Jews, let alone to gentiles like me) that forbids the (sexual)
love of man for man or woman for woman, without some form of reworking
or inference from texts that are NOT themselves commandments.  (Which
means that whatever YOU do about such inferences, they HAVE to be part
of some quasi-legal system of "deducing" commandments -- and I reject
ALL such systems as a betrayal of the gospel.  The Pharisaism that is
expressly condemned by Jesus.  The use of "traditions of men" to bind
burdens on me that are of no relevance or consequence to you.)

There ARE, however, direct commands by Jesus to HIS listeners, and
by Paul to the Roman church, to avoid the (evidently very tempting)
sin of judging others.  Since you clearly -- and persistenly after
being requested NOT to -- insist on judging anyway, you have to turn
Jesus' clear words (and his veiled but equally insistent parables)
into something that you can turn aside, by pretending you are not
doing what he expressibly forbids.  It is a lame attempt (I judge.)

> The Bible is relevant to all. To say that some action is evil
> because the Bible says it is evil is not "passing judgement."

It sure as Hell is (and the expletive here is deliberate, not mere
cussing.)  Read the parable of the wheat and the tares.  Read the
Sermon on the Mount.  Read Romans (and try to get past chapter 1 to
Chapter 2, where the rhetorical myth ends and the argument begins).

Whatever God's judgment is, YOU DON'T KNOW IT and are incompetent to
deliver it.  Even if you are quite "correct" and I will burn in Hell
for all eternity for not repenting of homosexual sex, while you are
eternally gloating in your "I told you so", you are STILL condemned
in Hell with me for your judgmentalism.  I hope you have great joy
in gloating over me while YOU burn, as you seem as unrepentant in
YOUR sin as I am in (what you think is) mine.

I am certain that you are convinced that your reading of scripture
condemns me.  That this opinion derives more from the bigots you have
heard preach than from a "value system of your own devising" does not
make you less culpable when you presume to utter YOUR expressions of
such a "value system."   It is, in fact, rather sleazy to try to take
your own personal involvement (which seems to have forced you to post
your "expression of valuation" without having been invited to do so)
and hide behind a torn Temple veil, disclaiming your utterance as any
responsibility of your own and pretending that YOUR utterance on the
net is "really" a forgery by God.

If God condemns me, then I am lost.  If *you* condemn me, then YOU are.

If you are approaching me as a brother who has something against me,
then OUT with it, what DO you have against me?  YOUR misreading of an
old text is no responsibility of mine.  If I have harmed you or anyone
SAY so, and we can resolve it.  I recognize ONE standard of valuation
that you or anyone may call me on at any time -- love of God and love
of neighbor.  I can be convicted by that standard, in many different
aspects of my life, some of them sexual.  But you have to present me
with a case, and you must abide the assistance of my Advocate against
your case, and whatever the case and whatever its results YOU ARE NOT
the Judge; my Lord is.  And therefore, acting like a judge, or like
the sleazy prosecutor who tries to insinuate to the jury that he *is*
(for all practical purposes, like let's GET this guy) the judge, is
forbidden in the only courtroom that has jurisdiction.
-- 
Michael L. Siemon		   "Oh, stand, stand at the window,
					As the tears scald and start;
mls@usl.com			   You shall love your crooked neighbor
standard disclaimer			With your crooked heart."
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc