what strikes me as odd is why on the topic of homosexuality, people try to justify it.
i've heard many more attempts to justify homosexual lifestyles than fornication or idolatry ect..
why can't you people accept the truth?
I can guarantee you that there is a ton of premarital sex that goes on between straight unmarried couples who say they believe in God, also.
Why? Because our carnal nature is like an addict that craves things. If you want to describe lust in modern terms, there it is.
Even our prisons now recognize that the reason they have so many repeat offenders is that these individuals get caught up in an addictive cycle.
The scriptures refer to this as the deceptive power of sin: Hebrews 3:13 "But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin."
Many of us read that and we conclude that what it is saying is that when we sin, we are being deceitful. But it is not. It is telling us what it is about sin that hardens us, that is, locks us into the cycle of sin.
It is an awareness that sin is a trap which causes many to want to see God's grace as excusing us almost completely from sin. But if we carry the reasoning on through it fails the test of logic. And then we can also see the rest of what the scriptures tell us so as to clearly know God's grace does not cover our sin to that extent. But those who merely sense this through their faculty of awareness do not yet understand it enough to be able to reason it through, though they try to make decisions concerning its implications and how God must approach it if he is really loving and merciful by their personal estimation.
And God is indeed very patient with us and He dose continue his love and mercy toward us quite some way, so long as we demonstrate a desire to listen to His instruction of us. That is what His commandments are; His instructions to us for our own benefit.
And this is why He often will dump us in and pull us out of the fire many times during our lifetime, not just simply cutting us off the first time we sin.
Homosexuals are no different in their sin that we are in ours. They like as we like to do what makes them feel good. And telling them that they have no scriptural right to feel good through same sex, affects them the same way we would be affected if someone told us that we were no longer allowed to marry and enjoy sexual relations with a mate.
Much of this is caused in that they have believed the world's lie that they were born that way. Even the scriptures say there are eunuchs that were born that way but a eunuch does not engage in sex. And the hard truth that most homosexuals having been affected by the world's popularized belief that they were born that way will not consider that the real reason is what they were taught and the way they let their experiences influence them. If they had not had that lie in their head about being born that way then the vast majority would never have even thought through their experiences that they were homosexual, let alone engage in such activity.
God will have plenty of mercy on them but he will not excuse them if they show that they just do not desire to hear Him.
As for us, it ours to remember that we are not judges in this life. We all have one that will judge us.
So we are wrong when we treat them any differently beyond keeping the things that God has said are unclean out of His holy temple, which is the church. That does not mean showing them disrespect or barring them from coming in to listen. It means not baptizing them and calling them a member. It means marking them in a way as to be aware that their thinking might infect our children. But it does not mean treating them disrespectfully.
Sure, they will claim that this that I described is disrespecting them, but you have the right to say who comes in your house as a member. God is the one who says who enters His as a member. And non-members must respect the rules in the house in which they are a visitor or it is only right that they be kept totally out.
That is a summation of what the Bible describes God as expecting of us.
1 Corinthians 3:16 "Know ye (ye=plural) not that ye (as in, you people) are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you (again plural, as in, the goup of you)?
17 If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.
18 ¶Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.
Ephesians 2:19 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;
20 And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;
21 In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:
22 In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.
The temple of God is the light of God in this world and it must be kept shining His holiness to remain that light.