From: heath@athena.cs.uga.edu (Terrance Heath)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Lee: Skip work to attend Malcolm X
Date: 5 Sep 92 15:42:09 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <stovall.715638813@ficus.cs.ucla.edu> stovall@ficus.cs.ucla.edu (Steven Stovall) writes:
>heath@athena.cs.uga.edu (Terrance Heath) writes:
>
>>In article <stovall.715550501@ficus.cs.ucla.edu> stovall@ficus.cs.ucla.edu (Steven Stovall) writes:

>>What does homosexuality have to do with denying the existance of God?
>>This black, gay, christian would like to know. (Oh well, now I've said
>>it. I can smell smoke rising from those keyboards now.)
>
>Belief that homosexuality is not evil denies Judeo-Christian and Islamic
>scripture and hence denies the Judeo-Christian and Islamic God.

	Well, I'm not a Muslim (and from the looks of it, never will
be. Oh well.), so I wont go into islamic scriptures.
	Belief that homosexuality is not evil has nothing to do with
denying scriptures. It has more to do with the fact that I am a
thinking and questioning individual  and that I apply those qualities
to my approach to my religion, rather than turning of my ability to
question. I believe that blind acceptance, belief without question or
thought is a disservice both to myself and to my religion.
	Some people choose to interpret scripture literally. I do not.
Some people choose to ignore the social and historical context in
which the books of the Bible were written. I do not. When Paul talks
about homosexuality, I want to understand what HE means by
homosexuality, so I go and read up on Greek male-male relationships
(Paul was dealing with ancient Greek culture, y'know. What I find is
that what Paul calls homosexuality bears no resemblance to my life or
that of any other gay person I know. Hmmmm.  Maybe then Paul had no
concept of homosexuality, but only of same-sex relations in the
context of Greek culture.
	Some people act as if God leaned down from heaven sometime
during the 16th century, with quill in hand, and penned the bible from
the beginning of Genesis right down the last 'Amen' in  Revalation. I
know that the books of the bible were written by people, yes people
inspired by God, but still people who were apt to write their own
agenda's etc. into what they were writing. I know that the original
texts were translated into King James English, by fallible human
beings, and I know that the translation was not always perfect (the
word used by Paul, which ancient scholars tranlsated to mean
homosexual or effeminate, actually had several different meaning which
could apply to the original text).
	I also know that the interpretations that have become common,
such as the interpretation of the Sodom and Gommorah story, are based
on erroneus assumptions concerning the culture of the time, or the
translation of the original works.
	Believe me, I have a vested interest here, and where I have a
vested interest I make sure I do my homework. The one thing I've
learned to do in my life is to think critically, and not just blindly
accept what is handed to me.  I apply that principle to everything in
my life.  My religion is not exempt.

>>	It is funny how simply mentioning that a man had a homosexual
>>experience or two suddenly makes his admirers nervous that someone is
>>trying to say that the man was gay (because this is, of course,
>>interpreted as a negative attack on his character), as if one or two
>>experiences could label a person gay. Would it make youf eel better if
>>he were simply bisexual? 
>
>I don't care about his early homosexual experiences, even if they
>in fact happened (again, I am very sceptical of this assertion; for one
>thing it does not seem to appear in Hoover's FBI files). What I objected
>to was a suggestion that Malcolm may have eventually validated homosexuality,
>had he lived. He could never have validated homosexuality without becoming
>an apostate. This is therefore using an unproven assertion to promote a
>political agenda at the expense of a man's name.

	How is stating that Malcom little may have had homosexual
encounters before converting to Islam costing the man's name anything?
It seems to me that you are saying that if the man had ANY homosexual
experiences at ANY time, then his name is diminished.
	As far as whether Malcom would have validated
homosexuality.......WHO CARES? If the man were alive today, given the
rise of the gay and lesbian rights movement since his death, he would
probably be as active a homophobe as Pat Buchanan.  I'm not interested
in what the man might have thought today.
	I know this : that his ideas belong to everyone, and that I
can examine them and take from them what I can use. That is what I
intend to do.


-- 
"Black men loving black men is THE revolutionary act!"
			-Joseph Beam_
Terrance Heath 
heath@athena.cs.uga.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american