The Death of a Thousand Cuts

Of the many inconsistencies in religion, there were a few that caught my attention early on. I think of them as stepping stones along the path to reason and skepticism. I would like to explore one of them now. During countless sermons, Sunday school lectures, and readings of the Bible, I was taught that homosexuality was a terrible sin. I accepted this without question for a long time. At some point I applied the same dispassionate logic to this idea as I do to any concept. It goes something like this:

Fact:
1. Sexual orientation is not a matter of conscious choice
2. Homosexual orientation is sinful according to the bible

Assume:
1. God is all-knowing (We'll call this the god hypothesis)

Thus one of the following must be true:
1. God exists
1a. The bible doesn't represent god's feelings on the matter, or
1b. God is a real jerk
or, more likely:
2. god does not exist

Now, I wasn't so supremely brainwashed that I imagined anything along the lines of the "all gay people want to convert your young and eat babies" type of nonsense. I am embarrassed to admit that I was a little taken aback that the GLBT folks I met were just like me in pretty much every way. And that embarrassment was instantaneous. Up to that point I thought I was a pretty liberal guy, it was shocking to me that I would have such a ridiculous notion in my mind. Well, maybe I was a little brainwashed.