They don't think gayness is a physical matter, but an intellectual one. Hence the idea that gayness can be rejected and the gay person can be "set straight."
If you believe that mind, body and soul are all one entity, then it's harder to believe in converting people from gay to straight. Presumably the temptations are always going to be there.
In fact, the whole binary distinction between gay and straight as types of being seems to be a bit Neoplatonic: as if they're Platonic Forms rather than behaviours someone engages in.--"Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise." -- Bertrand Russell[ Parent ]
It seems like we're going out of our way here to explain this. A sort of reverse Occam's Razor.
Then again, I'm just speaking from my experience, I wouldn't know a Neo-Platonists from Adam.[ Parent ]
Paul mentions homosexuality in the epistles, but IIRC there too there are instructions which are not obeyed literally.
I don't see much fulmination against cotton/polyester blend clothing or hats in church.
So, I think there has to be a reason for them choosing to take homosexuality as particularly bad, and particularly worth preaching against. The exceptionality of homosexuality doesn't seem to me to be justified by scripture itself: hence it needs another explanation.
Earlier you gave your own explanation in terms of "gay agenda" as useful bogeyman. But I'm not really convinced: there are plenty of other political or racial bogeymen available. --"Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise." -- Bertrand Russell[ Parent ]
There are numerous political boogey-men - which brings up another issue: is homosexuality really that uniquely important an issue? - including abortion, sexual education, the teaching of evolution, and the separation of church and state issues (school prayer, taking "under God" out of the pledge, what's the reason for the season crap and so on).
Again, all these fit the same profile: it is easy to hold an extreme view on the issue without being asked to make any genuine sacrifice and none of them are particularly deeply scriptural in basis (with maybe the exception of the evolution thing).
The pure/impure duality seems to be a long running trope of Western culture that predates the 3rd century. I would believe a theory that claimed that such archetypal thought could be found in both thought systems. But to claim that No-Plo thought is feeding modern far right evangelicals (a group of people that don't tend to have much truck with academic theology - many of the super-churches these days don't even take readings from the scripture) seems far fetched to me.
Still, guess this is one of those things you can't really prove either way.[ Parent ]
I don't think that the pure/impure concept that pre-dates Neoplatonism is really the same as the spirit/mind/heavens versus body/earth dualism that came later. In the earlier concept something earthly like a place can either be holy or unclean or something in-between. And there's change between the states: the unclean can be purified, the sacred can be defiled. Whereas with the Neoplatonic dualism the two things are innately separated.--"Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise." -- Bertrand Russell[ Parent ]
I wonder if, perhaps, the degree of emphasis that the religious right puts on homosexuality as a particularly grievous sin isn't well correlated to the degree of acceptance of homosexuality as being normal. The same is probably true of abortion. I would not be surprised if there is a trend that the more prevalent acceptance (at least at the public level) these sins become, the greater the vigor with which they're preached against.
