Estiar

Is this in reference to anything specific or more generic?

I have an academic article for you! DOI 10.1177/0142064X05057772

In 2005, J David Hester challenge the more than 1500-year-old assumption that eunuchs did not actually mean eunichs, and instead simply meant celibate priests. In fact, eunuchs were not celibate at all. To make a long article short, ancient gender systems were different than our modern understanding of gender. However, the church revised even their understanding of gender to erase the classical understanding of a eunuch. In the ancient world, the inability to procreate was the idea of the inability to have sex. Therefore, eunuchs could not have sex, and if one became a eunuch, they rejected sex. Of course, people in the ancient world were not quite thrilled to see people have pleasure and not have sex. It undermined social order of the time where men dominated all of discourse. They were reviled for their rejection of marriage and sex. They were able to tie the institutions of public male life and private female life together and were quite powerful. It's quite queer, and Jesus would have known the implications of urging people to be eunuchs. In fact, people would have taunted him and his unmarried disciples and called him a eunuch. This led to an order of Christian eunuchs who did live like these other eunuchs. It was a few centuries later at the council of nicaea where it was actually decided to renegotiate what the word "eunuchs" meant in Matthew 19. They drew upon stoic philosophy and changed it into a male-dominated celibate priesthood. After all, eunuchs were a threat to the male-dominated world and men could claim that title of the most devoted. They were attacked by figures like St. Augustine who said that their nature was contrary to nature.

Regarding homosexuality itself, though, we've renegotiated how sex and gender work throughout the ages. According to Dan McClellan's book The Bible Says So, the term that we commonly see as homosexual in the the new testament, malakoi does not refer to a homosexual, but only refers to those who are the "bottom" in sex. A man could even be 'gay' if he took the bottom role in sex with his own wife. To put it in modern terms, femboys will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. With regards to the Hebrew Bible, (or the Old testament,) it's largely the same dynamic. Within the book Leviticus, they believe that it is an abomination before God and therefore their holy people should not engage in such acts else they will be literally vomited out of the land. It was still worse to be a bottom, but for the land to not reject the people, they wanted to put both parties to death. The punishment is more severe here than rape or incest.

So the thing about lgbtq people in the Bible is that we're trying to apply ancient social constructs to our own social constructs that we have 2,000 years later. They certainly aren't one-to-one. I don't believe that the Bible is always true, especially since it contradicts itself quite a lot. I believe it is primarily a book written by mankind and therefore reflects those same errors and biases. Likewise, the church perpetuates those same biases and even inserts more biases.

Here's the issue about that though. The Bible doesn't have a single syllable condemning slavery. It just wasn't part of the social structure of the millennia to do so. Instead, there are rules and laws governing slavery and how to do slavery better. I don't doubt that Christians contributed to the abolition of slavery, but that's not a very high bar when everybody is a Christian, regardless of their thoughts. How can one be so confident that it wasn't Christianity and the enlightenment or Christianity and gospel music or something else? What specifically in Christianity made abolition more likely? From what I understand, enlightenment principles as well as the slave trade becoming unprofitable ended up stopping the slave trade

Or chattel slavery in Leviticus 25:44-46

Leviticus 25:44-46 NRSVUE [44] As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may acquire male and female slaves. [45] You may also acquire them from among the aliens residing with you and from their families who are with you who have been born in your land; they may be your property. [46] You may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property. These you may treat as slaves, but as for your fellow Israelites, no one shall rule over the other with harshness.

All of these claims could be true, but even so, it does not mean that the Bible rejects slavery or that the church has rejected slavery historically. Many of the churches in the American south explicitly endorse slavery before the civil war. Not only due to biblical scripture but in order to preserve their hierarchical society.

There are a number of lgbtq affirming churches today in America. Some are splitting up over this issue. I can point to verses in the Bible such as when Jesus tells people to become eunuchs or when Paul says "there is is neither Jew nor gentile nor male nor female" and say that the Bible allows lgbtq people to live normally. But if in 50 years, lgbtq people are accepted by the church, and I said that it was always that way, that would be intellectually dishonest. The tradition of eunuchs that people would point out in history was condemned by the council of Nicaea around 500 AD and marginalization would continue and has continued today. I'd be intellectually dishonest if I said that the church had always respected lgbtq people.

Likewise, it's the same with slavery. It wasn't condemned and it was supported by scriptures and the people who practice Christianity. Christian countries would conquer land and take slaves. It's intellectually dishonest to say that the church has always condemned slavery or that it was the majority position until recently.

As we know, the pentagon has a shortage of SCIFs. They just had to take the press office

Ideologically aligned is not quite accurate. I've met a couple of academy grads (and many military officers in general) and they're generally pretty smart. Much smarter than JD Vance is. Some may be aligned ideologically, but I would say that most of them are probably not. It's a 4-year pipeline too like any college, so they would have joined in 2022.

They have been noticing the attacks of the Trump administration on higher academia. They've been noticing the failures of the Trump administration in foreign policy. They've noticed the focus on trying to get rid of the queers and women instead of legitimate Force structure reform.

They've taken civics classes and understand how the government is supposed to work much more than the general population. They might not yell and protest JD Vance, but I don't think many want to endorse him either.

I mean the way I look at it as a veteran, the US is my home. I'm going to go fight for it. I want to be proud to be able to fly the American flag next to the pride flag and for it to feel genuine.

I've been flashed!

They're so cute Oh my gosh!

Fallen morally of course

The civil Rights movement managed to use that crackdown to show the nation those very same issues. I will not say it is a good thing that police crackdown on protestors, but the police can be useful. Just like they were in Birmingham in 1964 when images of police beating and arresting women and children circulated the national media. Indeed, the same sort of thing happened with Alex Pretti and Renee Good during the Minneapolis ICE protests.