The Bible and Homosexuality - Adam and Eve

In my post "The Christmas Season and My Quest for Answers" I wrote about making it my New Years Resolution to read the Bible and learn first hand what it says about homosexuality.  Though I will be reading the entire Bible I will be highlighting the key points here in my blog.  Basically, I will write about every story or quote that has ever been used to condemn homosexuality and I will be exploring it as it was originally meant to be understood as well as giving you my own interpretations.

Of course, the creation story is the first we come across and one of the most widely used.  I'm sure we've all heard the quote "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."  And that's exactly how they tell the story, God made Adam and Eve, as if that's all there is to it but the Bible says that at first God just made Adam.  It was only after Adam got lonely that God decided to find Adam "an help meet."  It was at that point that God told Adam to pick his help meet from all the animals, but Adam said that none of them were right.  Later, when Adam was sleeping God took one of Adam's ribs to form Eve, a being that was the same as him, to be his help meet.

There are a few key points that I'd like to make.

First, God didn't create Eve because it's what he wanted.  He did it because it's what Adam wanted.  Eve was a blessing from God to make Adam happy.

Second, we need to analyze what is "an help meet?"  It can roughly be translated to mean a helper, but a helper of what?  My Bible has a section at the beginning of Genesis that gives special notes to the reader to help them in understanding be meaning of the stories.  One of them says that life is a love relationship with God.  If that's true then our helper would be someone who brings us closer to God and helps us love him better.

Third, God never set any boundaries on who could be Adam's helper.  God gave him his choice of everything that was currently available.  It just so happens that there were no other humans at the time and animals can't be our helpers because they don't think on the same level as us.  I believe that while Adam was asleep God took that opportunity to look into his heart and find out who he wanted.  It just happened to be Eve.  I believe God does the same for us.  He looks into our hearts and finds out what our needs and wants are and leads us to the person that is our perfect helper.  Just as God didn't set boundaries on Adam he also doesn't set boundaries on us.

We just need to keep three guidelines in mind to help us find that perfect helper.  First, we need to find a human.  That means no beastiality.  Obviously, animals can't be good helpers on our life's mission.  Second, that person needs to make us happy.  Third, through that happiness that person should bring us closer to peace and love and therefore closer to God.

The bottom line is, if we do not allow ourselves to find out true helpers then we are denying God's greatest gift and our lives and our worship will suffer as a result.  I don't see how any of this has to do with sex or gender or sexuality.

Next:  Sodom and Gomorrah 

Lesbians in Film

I think the most disappointing thing for me when I was first starting my road to self discovery was how hard it was to find LGBT movies and lesbian movies in particular.  I couldn't find them in my home town Blockbuster or at the movie theatre.  My friends weren't raving about the new hit lesbian romance and trying to do a search for it on Netflix yielded just two results, both the worst movies I've never finished!  It was depressing and frustrating that as a young person trying to gather as much information as I could about a new community I would soon try to infiltrate that society was suppressing this information.  Lesbian themes were taboo and even the term lesbian film sparked shock and disgust in others.  There minds instantly jumped to pornography and intense Sapphic scenes meant for male masturbation.  It only adds to your embarrassment as a young person trying to find films that reflect your life if when you ask someone where the lesbian section is they give you a dirty look and try to point you to the dark curtained room at the back of the store.
So, for many years I was forced to scour through blogs to find other people's lists of their favorite lesbian movies and then search Youtube to find and watch them.  This was not easy and I soon exhausted my resources, leaving me to feel as though I would never have a proper method of finding these elusive movies that intrigued me.  As time went on I decided that lesbian movies didn't interest me anymore anyway because I wasn't really a lesbian, I'm transgender.  So for years the search dogs were called off and the lesbian films were put to rest.
However, I recently started a new Netflix account which allowed me to hit the reset button on my preferences.  It just so happened that I had heard about a lesbian film that was supposed to be very good and could be found on Netflix and that was the first thing I watched.  When it was over, Netflix gave a me a list of suggestions and when I saw that one of them was another lesbian film I figured why not, I was kind of in the mood for it, and I watched that one as well.  Next thing I know, Netflix thinks I'm a lesbian woman out for Sapphic romance and that's all it seems to suggest for me.  I was blown away.  I never knew how many lesbian films were on Netflix and they are no longer hiding in dark corners.  They even have a whole section for Gay and Lesbian under the Watch Instantly tab and once Netflix knows your inclination for these movies they start popping up everywhere.  I've now worked my way through about 20 lesbian movies and I realized, I need to let other LGBT teens in on the secret so that they don't have to suffer as I did, watching yet another straight movie about stereotypical sex roles because it's all you can find.  Therefore, I will start reviewing LGBT films as I come across them because, let's face it, a lot of them suck and you don't want to have to sit through four duds to get to one stud!
Review coming soon on:  "But I'm a Cheerleader"