Gotta put those women, prostitues, and non-believers in their place!
I mean, Jesus was always bringing the hammer down on such filth! Them and tax-collectors, lepers, thieves, Centurions, and countless other pieces of scum. He wouldn’t be caught dead on a crucifix interacting with such miscreants and abominations, except to brutally shame and discipline them!
/sarcasm
“Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.”
C.S. Lewis would not have agreed.
Are you asking if gay prostitutes exist, or if the law treats them differently?
Ever read the story about Judah and Tamar?
“It was perfectly innocent! I thought she was a hooker!” -Genesis 38:16 (Paraphrased)
Because they begged for forgiveness from Jesus. And they’re forgiven. And since Jesus thinks they’re fine how dare you hold it against them, you heathen.
(Behold self-serving reasoning in its highest form)
Yep, Jesus sure did hang out with all the types of sinners you mentioned, didn’t he? You know what else he did? He forgave their sins but also said “Go and sin no more.” He may have spent time with them, but he did so in order to get them to turn from their wicked ways, and to reject sin.
Of course, “harlots” have been reclassified as “sex workers” nowadays. And what they do isn’t even a sin anymore. Heck. Hardly anything is a sin, to hear some folks talk. Jesus might as well have not died on the cross for us at all: pretty soon we’ll just redefine each and every “sin” clear out of existence, and make his death totally redundant.
You’d think he (or his old man) would have seen it all coming ahead of time.
/moresarcasm
There ought to at least be a lawsuit in there for having part of their punishment or what they have to do to get out of it being religions indoctrination. At the very least, there should have to be a secular alternative that can be selected after any dealings you have with the courts, so they can’t treat it differently. (I understand that the whole situation is bullshit, and that this really isn’t nearly as drastic as what should change, but it seems like there could be a purely legal rationale for that much.)
Except we’re talking about forcible “morality teachings”, something Jesus would have abhorred.
Your religious compunctions compel you to try and sway others away from behavior you object to? That’s fine, so long as they come to you for help, or you offer it with pure intentions and a willingness to accept “No” for an answer. But the moment you decide you are fit to judge another person, that you know better than them how they should live their lives, you have strayed from the teachings of Jesus.
This is spelled out pretty plainly in the Gospels - the “Son of Man” (a metaphor for humanity itself) has the power to forgive, but no one has the authority to judge. A true follower of Christianity is expected to trust that Yahweh himself will manage things, whether in this life or the next - that it is not the place of presumptuous mortals to claim they know his will or to act in his name.
Yet despite this, your own words make it clear that you think yourself fit to judge others, bandying about terms like “harlots”, and complaining about changing morals.
Yet any fool can realize that morality is not absolute, that what was acceptable two thousand years ago is going to differ in countless ways from what is acceptable today. Slavery is today considered a sin, yet in the time of Jesus it was not. Monarchy was seen as the only legitimate form of governance, yet today we espouse that most Roman of values, the Republic!
Likewise there are many things that were then considered a sin, but which over time we have come to decide really are not. Who among Christians adheres to the dietary laws that Jesus, as a Jew himself, followed? Who among them refuses to wear mixed fibers in their clothing? How many upstanding Christians have sex for purposes other than purely for reproduction, and how many restrict themselves solely to the missionary position?
Of course, Jesus himself in fact said that the restrictions of the Jews only applied to the Jews, and not to other cultures. (Or at least those words were placed in his mouth by the actual authors of the Gospels and other books.) What’s up with that? Well, as Christianity spread outside of Jerusalem, a lot of non-Jewish peoples were interested in converting, but they were put off by a lot of the bizarre restrictions imposed upon believers.
Yet the early church decided, “You know what? It’s okay that you guys don’t follow all these specific rules, all that really matters is that you’re a good person and that your heart is in the right place. If you want to worship Yahweh, but you eat pigs and wear mixed fibers and mix it up in the bedroom? Yeah, that’s cool with us.”
Values change, and even if they didn’t, a proper Christian doesn’t condemn others for things that the faithful see a sins. They may try to convince them to change their ways, but they sure as shit don’t break the law to have the arrested, detained, deprived lawyers, and forcibly “reeducated”. Such people and those who champion them aren’t Christians, they are thugs, bullies, and cowards.
Glitch 
since you and I seem to be the only ones talking on this thread (and I’m in favor of that: I’m not here to pick a fight, or get dogpiled onto) let me just say that if you had stuck to your first (and shortest) paragraph, I’d have no argument with you and no hope of winning one. Not that either of us (I assume?) is trying to score a victory. Seriously. But bear with me. I’m not trying to bury you under a ton of text. I just tend to babble. And ramble.
Your second paragraph seems, well, pretty dogmatic. Your definition (or categorization) of what is or isn’t “true” Christianity just doesn’t work. When you say “But the moment you decide you are fit to judge another person, that you know better than them how they should live their lives, you have strayed from the teachings of Jesus”, well, I’m just not sure how to address that. Jesus did a fair amount of judging (speaking about what was right and wrong) and Paul did a helluva lot (and not fair throwing Paul out with the holy water: Paul must stay if we’re to talk about Christianity, even if even I think he was often a horse’s ass.) But: judging others. It happens a lot on this very site. People thinking (and telling) others that they know better how that they should live their lives? Our government and politicians are doing that every day. Of course your argument could be “ah, but they’re not doing it under the guise of Christianity”, which would mean that you agree with the spirit of telling others how to live, when you think you’re right and they’re wrong, but not when it’s Christians doing the telling (since there’s so much subjectivity in the idea of sin, right?) There’s no way around that rather side-steppy defense, so there’s not much point in either of us pursuing it.
Your third paragraph isn’t dogma but it is personal interpretation/opinion. And whenever I hear someone using the phrase “A true follower of Christianity is/does/believes (fill in the blank)”, well, I usually take it as an indication that the person I’m talking to isn’t the type of person likely to actually hear anything other than the sound of their own voice. I’m thinking you’re not that way, though, since you spent a remarkable amount of type making almost no personal attacks. For which I’m appreciative.
Saying that I’m “bandying about terms like ‘harlots’” is really pretty uncool, though. I was simply using OT terminology vs. current terminology, for effect and for (I’d hoped?) a little humor or irony or as a satori-inducing flourish. C’mon.
As for me “(being) fit to judge others”, again, clearly there are a lot of people here who think they can do that very thing. The problem usually lies with who is doing the judging: is it someone like Cory?: practically every post of his this weekend has been of a judgmental or at least a “just look at this (insert outrageous injustice here)” type. He’s not the only contributor here that does it either, but he’s arguably the most um frequently outraged. But yes, actually, I do think I"m fit to judge (or reason with, reprove) others, to a degree. I think many of us are, if we’re at all reasonable about it and constructive and are “Men (or Women) of Good Will.”
But there’s a further point: practically (if not precisely, exactly) all of the OT prophets caught grief from “The People” for speaking their minds: “Who do you think you are to tell us this or that?” “How dare you speak up against this or that?” is not a new response when one is being chastened. The fact is that pretty much anyone who says anything on The Internet is going to get argued with, contradicted, pushbacked, etc etc by someone, somewhere, sometime. Especially if the stater takes a Road Less Travelled, discussion-wise.
You bring up two sides of a great coin, though: things “okay” in OT times but not now, and things “not okay” in OT times but fairly minor now. Stuff like the “not mixing of fabrics” and the other (now)-oddball stuff gets brought up a lot, but here’s my “take” on it: the people who argue that this or that weirdo mitzvot from 2000 years ago negates by implication various other mitzvot from 2000 years ago, in a “picking and choosing” kind of way, are using a kind of “slippery slope” bit to make their case. Would you argue that, since “eating shellfish” was verboten 2K years ago but so many of us do it now, that “bearing false witness” or “adultery” is now permissible in polite, civil society too? Actually, those are bad examples, aren’t they? Seeing as how bearing false witness, adultery, coveting this or that, etc etc pretty much makes up the plot lines of the most popular television shows nowadays (more on that in a sec.) But back to my point. The "slippery slope"ness of such an argument is, IMO, rather "Scribes and Pharisees"y. To wit: Jesus wanted, IMO, the Spirit of the Law obeyed, rather than the Letter of it (i.e. “God prefers obedience over sacrifice”) All arguments of “nature vs. nurture”, Tabula Raza, etc., aside, I personally believe two things: “Every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood” (“evil” conceivably being “self-centered”, “hypocritical”, “bellicose” “ego-driven”, etc) but also that (and here’s the seeming contradiction), basically, we know right from wrong. Example: in theory, there could be a wealthy enough junkie that he or she could do smack all day long, never work a day in their life, watch tv and play videogames all day long, eat whatever they want, screw whoever they want, have tons of friends, and have a nurse on duty 24/7 with a crash cart, and that junkie would still know that he or she, though harming no one, was acting wrongly, doing wrong, not living rightly. Not a perfect example, that. But my point is that there are tons of activities nowadays that most of us know are wrong in our heart of hearts, but we’re just…confused about. Ignorant of. We’re self-servingly deluding ourselves, in many cases, into thinking they’re Just Fine, No Problem Here, Go With the Flow. As Socrates said, Wrongdoing is the result of ignorance. We can redefine or rename various sins and remake them as “viable modes of living” and “lifetsyle choices” and “victimless crimes” and what have you, but I think, honestly think that most of us know when we’re not “Living Rightly”, no matter how much we appear to be enjoying ourselves at it.
I’d said I would get back to television plotlines, so I’ll do it quickly: make a list of the top ten or twenty most popular television shows of the last decade. Now go back and consider how many of them are about people keeping secrets, doing bad things, living “secret” lives and trying to get away with their bad and/or criminal behaviors either right out in the open (less popular) or in secret and under everyone’s noses (more popular.) Here’s a list off the top of my head: Nurse Jackie, Hung, Dirty Little Liars, The Sopranos, The Shield, Dexter, House of Cards, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Bates Motel, Weeds. We’ve become a society that Roots for the Bad Guy. Or (worse?) Doesn’t See that the Bad Guy is the Bad Guy. The last episode of Seinfeld drove this point home rather well: for a decade (?) or so we’d been watching a show about Really Shitty People. It was like the ending of The Getaway (the book, not the movie): the reader is jolted awake with the realization that Doc McCoy and his wife weren’t cool: they were shit; murderers and criminals who wound up in the cannibal hell of El Rey. “Naked Lunch” time, folks. And it’s a relatively new circumstance, actually. Think of the “I’m Living a Secret Life”-type tv shows from the 60s: I’m married to a witch. I have a talking horse. I have a Genie. My mom is a car. I can waltz in and out of a Concentration Camp. Etc etc. Harmless, goofy, innocuous secret lives. No longer. Now we’ve got junkie nurses, porn actor H.S. teachers, dope-growing soccer moms, murderous politicians and cops. And we’re not hoping to see them get caught: we’re hoping they keep getting away with it…
This wholesale “embracing of the Dark Side” for ironic, humorous, entertainment/diversionary intent, does not negate the fact that we are, collectively, still embracing it. I’ll get into serious discussions with people talking to me about the absurdity of believing the fairy-tales and myths of the bible, and they’re…into vampires or zombies or the paranormal, as a way of life. None of us want to see our own interests as being absurd; it’s always the other person’s interests that are whacko, right?
The funny thing is, I"m not a Christian. I have a tremendous amount of sympathy and support for it, of course, mainly because of the types of people I see arguing against it. My reasoning has fairly recently been that if I have to choose between Atheist Assholes and Christian Assholes, I’d rather stick with the latter.
I guess I really shouldn’t have started trying to rebut you, because discussions such as these become such a tar-baby. Case in point: one of your points (already mentioned) is that “true” Christians shouldn’t judge others. I didn’t and do not agree, but okay. Let’s instead say that Christians should only “judge” (help to correct, instruct, reprove, improve) fellow Christians. Okay, what about gay Christians? Homosexuality, in the OT and NT, is prohibited. So um maybe Christians shouldn’t judge their fellow Christians, either? So…Christians can’t speak up or out at all then, basically. Following that logic, via a “Death of a Thousand Cuts”, Christianity is effectively silenced in our country. Mission Accomplished, 21st Century. Jesus Wept.
You could answer both
Your right this issue isn’t what christians believe. And, it certainly isn’t about what’s a sin… ( Are we really talking about sin when talking about law? There’s a whole lot more laws than 10, so I sure hope not! )
It’s about whether it’s okay to arrest a bunch of women, and not give them the due process the constitution affords. Seems pretty clear cut.
Presumed innocent until proven guilty. People invented that because people are fallible. We have to hold people to that process for the same reason.
I always assumed, though without tons of evidence, that AZ has a huge proportion of older, well-monied white people (most of whom are conservative) who vote in higher proportions than other populations, and who often wield their money in politically powerful ways.
Start with kidnapping, move on to unlawful detention, add in extrajudicial punishment and seal the deal with State sanctioned religious indoctrination. Can anyone find just what tiny bit is legal about this Project ROSE program?
Jeebus.
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