“the Bible says homosexuality is a sin” well the Bible also has a lot of sexism, rape, incest, violence and a lot of contradictory messages in general because it was written by people and people have agendas
I don’t really think that God even has the time to care about if people are gay like if he’s got a whole world to run there are more important things anyway
And if God is love, he’s not just loving me if I am what he wants; he’s loving me as the person he made me to be, which is a queer person
You can’t say “I love you, and I made you gay but I’m sending you to hell you awful sinner” my dude that doesn’t make sense it’s not like hell has a low population is it
The god I believe in loves queer people because that’s how he made us
the bible doesn’t condemn homosexuality anyway. It’s content taken out of context and misinterpreted over hundreds of years of translations, re-translations, and mis-translations.
Hell, in Kenneth Davis’s Don’t Know Much About The Bible, there’s a passage that absolutely blows my mind and proves just how much we can misinterpret with simple translation mistakes:
“In researching the world’s oldest city, for instance, I learned that Joshua’s Jericho is one of the oldest human settlements. It also lies on a major earthquake zone. Could that simple fact of geology have had anything to do with those famous walls tumbling down? Then I discovered that Moses and the tribes of Israel never crossed the Red Sea but escaped from Pharaoh and his chariots across the Sea of Reeds, an uncertain designation which might be one of several Egyptian lakes or a marshy section of the Nile Delta. This mistranslation crept into the Greek Septuagint version and was uncovered by modern scholars with access to old Hebrew manuscripts.”
The bible is one long-ass game of telephone, whispered around the world in dozens if not hundreds of languages, for thousands of years. I have a hard time knowing what my grandpa is talking about, when he starts going on about the technology or practices of his youth, and that was only about 80 years ago, in the same country and in the same language as me. So why every Joe on the streets thinks they can take one or two verses, completely out of context and probably mis-translated several times to boot, and use it to spout propaganda and hatred for an entire group of people will forever be beyond me.
You’re all valid, and frankly, if there is a ‘loving God,’ then that God will be happy to see you happy. Seriously.
I needed that. Thank you.
The Bible wasn’t faxed down from the sky, people, it’s been compiled and formulated for hundreds of years until it became what it is today. And yes, misinterpreted by whoever with whatever agenda-of-the-day.
And hypocrites always stick to the word and not the spirit of any religion: to love, to help, to respect, to protect, and to strive to make the world a better place.
Yup, Jesus never said ANYTHING against LGBT people. All he said was don’t be greedy, don’t be lustful and don’t be wrathful. The fact that LGBTphobes took those instructions out of context to justify their LGBTphobia is pretty telling!
Hey, your friendly neighborhood Jew here!
You guys know that verse in Leviticus that homophobes like to trot out? Well, I’m here to tell you:
They don’t read Hebrew and they don’t know shit.
And now here’s something you probably won’t hear from any of those Fine Christian Folks ™ anytime soon, either:
We do read Hebrew and we still don’t know shit.
Here’s the thing. The most “accurate” word-for-word translation of that verse would say “a man shall not lie with another man; it is forbidden.”
Here’s the issue.
The grammar surrounding “men” in that sentence isn’t correct, and the word I’ve translated as “forbidden” is “toevah,” a word so fucking old we literally don’t know what it meant anymore.
The strange sentence construction suggests that “lie with another man” uses a feminine construction you wouldn’t normally find in a sentence that’s entirely about men, and while “toevah” means “forbidden,” it’s not actually clear what is forbidden. Here’s an incomplete list of possibilities:
Pederasty (adult male/adolescent male sex) is full-stop forbidden, a man sleeping with a male prostitute is full-stop forbidden, a man sleeping with a man as part of any kind of sex magic or fertility ritual is forbidden.
And my rabbi’s personal interpretation, based on the sentence construction: a man shouldn’t sleep with another man in a woman’s bed. (So basically: don’t cheat on your wife with a dude, which is probably treated separately from “don’t commit adultery” because adultery would come with the risk of an illegitimate child.)
You’ll notice none of these involve “ew, you disgusting gays.”
Unless you accept a word-for-word literal translation with zero consideration for the social mores and other tribes surrounding Israel contemporary with the writing of Torah, nothing about this commandment has anything to do with our modern understanding of queer people having committed relationships. Once you start taking the rituals and practices of Israel’s contemporaries into account, it suddenly becomes clear why these prohibitions would have been put into place (sex magic was common in the cult of Ba’al, for example, while pederasty was practically a requirement in Greece).
If you’re just a person out there loving other people of the same gender as you?The Torah says nothing against you. But do you know what our literary tradition does say?
It puts you in the company of Naomi and Ruth.
Ruth is considered the first convert, and her vow to her mother-in-law Naomi (after Ruth’s husband’s death) forms the basis of our modern marriage vows. “Where you go, I shall go, and where you lodge, I shall lodge; your people shall be my people, and your G-d my G-d; and where you die I shall die, and there shall I be buried.” Ruth remarries as prescribed by law at the time, but even when a child is born of that new union, nobody calls it “Ruth’s and Boaz’s child”–they all say a child has been born to Ruth and Naomi.
You are in the company of a woman whose name we invoke in our prayers and whose life we celebrate. I wear her words around my shoulders on my tallit, my sacred prayer shawl. Since we consider that everything in the Tanakh is intended for learning and study, what might we take from this story, but that a queer person can be virtuous and beloved of G-d?
Plans to fly a giant inflatable figure depicting Donald Trump as a baby over London during the US president’s visit have been approved.
Mr Trump is due to meet Theresa May at 10 Downing Street next Friday.
Campaigners raised almost £18,000 for the helium-filled six-metre high figure, which they said reflects Mr Trump’s character as an “angry baby with a fragile ego and tiny hands”.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan gave permission for the balloon to fly.
The White House has been approached for comment.
On Twitter former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said the plan was “the biggest insult to a sitting US President ever”.
Leo Murray, who is behind the crowdfunded idea, said: “[Mr Trump] really seems to hate it when people make fun of him.
“So when he visits the UK on Friday, we want to make sure he knows that all of Britain is looking down on him and laughing at him.
“That’s why a group of us have chipped in and raised enough money to have a six-metre high blimp made by a professional inflatables company, to be flown in the skies over Parliament Square during Trump’s visit.”
A statement on behalf of the London mayor said he “supports the right to peaceful protest and understands that this can take many different forms”.
After meeting with the organisers of the Trump Baby, Mr Khan’s city operations team gave them permission to “use Parliament Square Garden as a grounding point for the blimp”.
Mr Khan and Mr Trump have repeatedly clashed on Twitter, including in the aftermath of the London Bridge attack.
Before the figure can take off, campaigners will also need permission from the National Air Traffic Service (NATS) as the project constitutes a “non-standard flight in controlled airspace”, a spokesperson said.
Because Parliament Square sits within restricted airspace, additional approvals are also needed from the Metropolitan Police.
Max Wakefield, who is one of the people working on the project, said the group is “confident it will obtain all necessary permits”.
He said the initial crowdfunding target was just £1,000, but this was reached within 24 hours.
The extra cash will now be used to send the balloon on a “world tour” and “haunt” Mr Trump wherever he goes, he added.
The Met has been approached for a comment.
Well, Himself is the biggest insult to the Presidency in living memory, so stuff it, Nigel Farage.
“The extra cash will now be used to send the balloon on a “world tour” and “haunt” Mr Trump wherever he goes, he added.”
But don’t worry, most writers are and I’m here to help because reading them is making me cRAzY.
I’m writing this because I’ve read three otherwise great romance novels back to back featuring characters dealing with PTSD (or PTSD symptoms) and each one of them made the same dream mistakes. I honestly can’t think of a fiction book I’ve read that didn’t make these mistakes, so I thought I’d compile a handy dandy list of mistakes and how to fix them.
Lucky for you, I have PTSD and a ton of fellow veteran friends who deal with these symptoms.
*This is based on my experience and things told to me by friends. This is not to say that the below doesn’t happen in real life, only that it’s not as common as you might think.
The issue with these dreams is twofold: on one side is the psychological accuracy of the dream and on the other side is how you’re using the dream within the narrative.
Oh an Black Sails spoilers-ish ahead.
1) Stop writing the dream as a shot-by-shot accurate retelling of Traumatic Event.
Listen, not only do dreams seldom follow reality, but our own memories are tricky at best. I don’t remember getting beaten up because a) it was horrifying and we block stuff like that out and b) I was going in and out of consciousness. It would be pretty strange for me to dream something I don’t even fully remember. Our brains are simply not wired to do these vivid factually-accurate cinematic retellings.
My friend dreams things that did happen, but in his own words those dreams are always wrong in some noticeable or bizarre way. For instance, he’s getting chased through the streets of Iraq by a werewolf.
2) Dreams are informed by reality, not direct reflections of it.
It’s entirely likely my friend dreamt of a werewolf in Iraq because I got him binge watching Supernatural and the two ideas merged in his dreamstate. But see, that’s how dreams work.
The trauma event exists as a constant in his subconscious, but he has all this other information right there in his conscious mind all day, every day. In dreams, there isn’t a clear delineation between that information.
My dreams are often dependent on whatever I’ve fallen asleep watching on television. The themes are consistent, but not the content.
In Black Sails, Captain Flint’s trauma dreams feature his dead partner and friend following him around his empty ship. You have an element of the trauma (the animated corpse of his friend) + his daily existence (his ship). The two things intersect to form these unsettling nightmares as expressions of his fears and grief. He never once relives the event itself in his dreams as shown on screen.
Speaking of…
3) Trauma dreams often revolve around feelings, not necessarily the events themselves.
The PTSD package generally includes heaps of shame, guilt, anger and fear. As someone who survived a beating when I should have had control of the situation, my dreams tend to revolve around fear that people will know I’m a fraud or being unable to act in a dangerous situation.
Again, it’s entirely common for trauma victims to not remember large chunks (or the whole thing) of the trauma event. So why should their dreams be stunningly accurate? What we remember are feelings. Real strong feelings.
You cannot go wrong if you write your trauma dream around feelings, not a specific event.
4) If you present trauma dreams as expressions of themes, you can let go of the trauma dream as an exposition dump/way overused suspense trope.
You know you’ve read this: MC has dreams that are a shot-by-shot retelling of Traumatic Event that always cut off right before Traumatic Event, so that the Big Reveal must happen by a discovery later in the novel.
If I were the MC in a book, the easy and common thing would be to use the “dream sequence” as an expository retelling of Traumatic Event as a way to give some backstory to why I might be surly, mistrustful, afraid to try something new, whatever, and to clumsily shoehorn in suspense where there doesn’t need to be.
The much more interesting thing might be if my dreams were inconsistent in content but consistent in theme. In one I’m on an alien planet (because I fell asleep watching the Science Channel again) and the ground opens up and I fall into a pit from which I can’t escape because I am helpless. In another a man is watching me while I sleep where I am again frozen and helpless. This would force the reader to think: what is the recurring issue in these dreams? Why is it important? What is this telling me about this character and what happened to her?
It could be a personal preference, but I’d rather see the Traumatic Event either told in narrative flashbacks (not dreams) or verbally retold by the character in question. Let the dreams tell me something deeper about the character. It’s not that I was beat up, it’s that I feel like a failure because of it. One of these things is a shallow factual detail, the other tells you something about me as a person that I’m sharing with you, gentle reader, because talking about this stuff is healthy.
5) The Traumatic Event doesn’t have to be a big secret.
In Black Sails, we know what happened to Captain Flint’s partner. It happened in real time in the show. That didn’t make his uber disturbing dreams less disturbing or mysterious. Fans still debate exactly what the symbolism was and what they were telling us about James Flint in those moments. We do know from the dreams that he was disturbed, obsessed, and also monumentally guilty and blaming himself for what happened.
The mystery was perhaps more heightened by the fact that the dreams weren’t direct reflections of reality. We know who this person was, what she believed, and why she died. That Flint is imagining her screaming silently in his ear is horrifying and discordant with what we know to be factual. This adds emotional complexity to his character and the decisions he’s making while suffering these dreams.
^^^this didn’t happen. It was a dream. A real unsettling dream.
Once you let go of the concept of the trauma dream as a literal retelling and exposition dump, you have the entire dreamscape to work in other narrative elements, like symbolism, metaphor, foreshadowing, etc.
This seems like something everyone should know if they’re in the sciences and/or interested in reading scientific papers.
Also, many academic articles are available on http://sci-hub.tw. If you enter the DOI or the URL of the article on the publisher’s page, it will usually take you right to a PDF.
let me tell you guys something that ACTUALLY happened in my screenwriting class last week
one of the female writers in our class is writing a feature about this gang of teenage girls who sort of become vigilantes and murder men who harass women (that’s a shitty logline of it but it’s actually fucking awesome and highly stylized and over-exaggerated like tarantino in a good way bc i fucking hate tarantino). ANYWAY their first kill is this guy named taylor. taylor is one of the girl’s boyfriends. it is heavily implied and the writer confirmed that he abuses and rapes her. not explicitly seen, but she has bruises, there are scenes implying it etc.
so. she wrote the part where they kill taylor. and one of my professor’s comments was about how he felt like he didn’t hate taylor enough.
to which me and my female friend were like um what?? we hate him. he fucking raped and abused her. wE HATE HIM. HE IS A HORRIBLE PERSON.
and my prof was like well yeah i hate him but i don’t HATE hate him. and we argued about it. so he took a poll of who hated taylor. ALL of the girls in the class raised their hands. none of the boys did. when he asked who didn’t hate taylor all of the men raised their hands. and me and my friend started laughing because of COURSE they did.
and my prof was like why are you laughing and the writer was like “i think they’re laughing at the gender difference in that answer” and my prof was like “well, from my male perspective, i don’t think i’m being sexist”
WHAT.
first of all did you hear that sentence at ALL do you understand how paradoxical it is?????
second of all, no. just no.
and then my prof went on to say “i feel like we need to see taylor be horrible. like bad solution, he kicks a dog”
evidently a man can abuse and rape a girl and not be hated, but if he kicks a dog then he’s PURE EVIL
Hey if you’re schizophrenic/psychotic I just want you to know that you’re a wonderful person and that you deserve so much better than the demonization, marginalization and stigmatization you face in this society.
Please consider reblogging this/other positivity posts for schizophrenic/psychotic people every once in a while. If you have more than 100 followers, odds are that a couple of them experiences psychosis and that they rarely see positivity posts for people with their symptoms.
The Chaos Bitches 