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apihtawikosisan:

sincerelysarita:

Nineteen-year-old Tarikuwa Lemma is a survivor, of an international adoption scandal. When she was 13, she was effectively sold from her native Ethiopia to an American family. The corrupt “adoption agency” convinced her father, who was a widow, that Tarikuwa and her younger sisters were headed to the U.S. as part of an educational exchange program, and that they would return home every summer and on holiday breaks. Little did he know, his daughters had been placed with adoptive couples in the U.S., never to return. Tarikuwa’s name was changed against her will, and she was forbidden by her American “family” from speaking her native language. The issue of transnational adoption, its evangelical Christian component, and the exploitation of communities that sometimes results, is the subject of the book, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption by Kathryn Joyce, who appeared, along with Tarikuwa, on last Sunday’s “Melissa Harris Perry” show on MSNBC. Below is Tarikuwa’s satirical look at the “rescue” of children from her home country, to “better lives” in America.

clutchmag:

Stop ‘Rescuing’ African Children Through Corrupt Adoptions

Tarikuwa Lemma appearing on Melissa Harris Perry Show April 28, 2013.

From The Grio — Nineteen-year…

View Post

Doesn’t seem to matter the background of the child, the methods of colonialism and assimilation haven’t changed.

BUT MISSIONARIES ARE HELPING AFRICA!!!11

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Reasons to say 'fuck you' to the Salvation Army.

kiriamaya:

strawberryfaerie:

“The Salvation Army has refused assistance to gay couples unless they break up and “go straight”, Muslim families who refuse to attend “Christian Bible classes”, kids who can’t prove their immigration status, and more.”

Admittedly, i only skimmed the article, but this quote alone should give you a pretty good idea of how awful they are.

EDIT: I also just learned of this:

Of course, the bigotry of the Salvation Army proved to be deadly towards a transgender woman in Austin, Texas just before Christmas in 2008.

Two years ago today trans woman Jennifer Gale was found dead sleeping on an Austin sidewalk outside a homeless shelter run by the Salvation Army. 
because they refused to take her in.

…

Wow.

I want everybody to understand what happened here. They refused to take in a trans woman, and she died as a result. They killed a trans woman. Killed. Because they “disagreed with her lifestyle”.

You wanna know why I can’t just be all “oh well, it’s their opinion, they’re entitled to it” when it comes to bigotry? This. This is fucking why.

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Anonymous asked: Dame, the other day I got into a fight with a Christian on homosexuality. It was quite heated, but their argument made no sense (they kept quoting verses from the Bible and ignored any scientific evidence to support my claim). I'm wondering if you know of anything in the Bible that may help me counteract their point? (I think I remember reading somewhere that Jesus' crucifixion established a new covenant, thus casting out the Old Testament, but I'm not sure.)

I actually do! I’m going to copy-paste an old speech I made about homosexuality in Christianity. I’ve looked it back over and I think for the most part I still agree with my deductions. Of course, that being said, the Bible contradicts itself and condemns many silly things, so you can use these sources to find a lot of places to trip them up. Additionally, Equality Illinois has this initiative they’ve made about LGBT-inclusive religion. Here’s another link that discusses transliterations, and here’s a link to a speech someone about Sodom and Gomorrah in response to what I wrote. Additionally, the Bible didn’t condemn many sexual practices.

Anyway, the speech:

So a lot of times, the reason people are against homosexuality (or bisexuality, etc), it has to do with religious beliefs, namely the Abrahamic trio (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), and, most vocally in the West, Christianity.

I would like to do some exploration of that.

First, let’s talk about what is said in the Old Testament.
A student essay I’ve read revealed that a verse in Levitcus, one most often cited, was mistransliterated to mean to be against homosexuality, when it was originally against sleeping with your partner for reasons other than sex;

The National Gay Pentecostal Alliance (NGPA) has analyzed the Leviticus verse in great detail to produce a word-for-word translation of the original Hebrew. In English, with minimal punctuation added, they rendered it as: “And with a male thou shalt not lie down in beds of a woman; it is an abomination.” That is, rather than forbidding homosexuality, it simply restricts where it can happen. This may seem like a strange prohibition to us today, but it was consistent with other laws in Leviticus which involve improper mixing of things that should be kept separate.

[….]

Since women were thought to be unclean during certain times of month, they had beds of their own. Only her husband was permitted there, and then only for the purpose of having sex with her. Any other use of her bed would have been a defilement.

(It’s an interesting read if you care to take a look.)

Now, I’ve been in many religious debates, and it seems that this is not the only mistransliterated verse out there. As I’ve heard it, many verses from the Old and New Testaments (most specifically the NT) have been purposely lost in translation, especially so as to slight current Greek and Roman culture (which is setting in which the New Testament takes). Also, as is pointed out in this essay, plenty of things are intentionally mistranslated, so this isn’t so much a stretch of imagination.

Now, let’s move off the OT, and onto the NT.

In the New Testament, there are clearly quite a few verses against homosexuality. However, with the shenanigans of the Church, one has to wonder if that’s what they really said, or if it was even said at all.
I think we are all aware that the Bible has been prone to many editings and renderings and the like.

However, through research, I’ve realized something that should be quite obvious: Christianity didn’t start out as a unified religion. Thanks to persecution, Christians were divided into various underground sects, who actually believed different things and even had different gospels. I wonder how many supported homosexuality?
When Constantine decided it must be the religion of the Roman Empire, he brought together the leaders of the sects. Why? Well you can’t have such confusion if it’s to be the religion of the greatest empire in the world, so he needed everything straightened (so he could utilize it properly as a conquering tool). And so the leaders debated upon several things and gospels, made compromises, and sometimes completely stomped out and forgot people and their ideas.
Such things known to have been debated on were whether Jesus was God, God’s Son, or even a man (where we get the Holy Trinity from — one or two of his disciples (I forgot which, sorry) said Jesus was a holy spirit that came to him/them, rather than actually being a person) and whether Mary was actually a virgin or not (the Greek word for “virgin” was synonymous with “young girl”).
As such, homosexuality is clearly something they could have debated on.

Now that we’ve got uncertainty out of the way, let’s move onto Jesus.

Jesus never actually said anything directly about homosexuality. Jesus was a very accepting man who sat with society’s “rejects,” such as mentioned as lepers and homosexuals. Some have claimed Jesus was even the first champion for equal rights, as he stated that all people were equal before God, and are judged on who they are, not what they are.
See here;
(Luke 17:33-37 New King James Version)
33 Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.
34 I tell you, in that night there will be two men in one bed: the one will be taken and the other will be left.
35 Two women will be grinding together: the one will be taken and the other left.
36 Two men will be in the field: the one will be taken and the other left.

Context: Jesus is speaking of salvation/the Rapture.

The bolded verse is the closest Jesus has ever said anything directly about homosexuality.
Even then, this bolded verse is sometimes translated to just “two,” sometimes “two people,” and even sometimes it has been excluded completely. Does that not ring as suspicious?
(Before anyone thinks anything, in this context, “two women grinding” is referring to foodmaking.)
Jesus KNEW it didn’t matter if you were gay or straight, hardworking or not, rich or poor, male or female, it was the judge of your character that mattered. You have a chance to be a good person regardless of what you are! Such is also supported by other statements he’s made about people and their positions in society.

There is a strong belief that Jesus was a liberal (as we describe them today). Here’s a nifty site about it, even.
Consider some of the verses they cite:
(Matthew 22:17-21 New King James)
17 Tell us, therefore, what do You think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”
18 But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, “Why do you test Me, you hypocrites? 19 Show Me the tax money.”
So they brought Him a denarius.
20 And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?”
21 They said to Him, “Caesar’s.”
And He said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Context: Speaking about taxation; as if all things are God’s, why should people pay taxes? Jesus tells why.
The site uses this as the idea of separation of church and state.

(Luke 14:13-14 NKJ)
13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind.
14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just.

Context is elf explanatory, and this is very much about equal rights.

Now I want to point out some special verses they mention:
Matthew 7:12 NKJ;
“Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
Be kind to others, this includes homosexuals.

And, most importantly of all, it seems;
(Matthew 22:39-40 NKJ)
39 And the second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Context: The first was to love God.

So one can ignore all that was said in the Old Testament, as all you really need is to love God and love others. If you love others, you are tolerant of them. You accept them. This includes homosexuals. And homosexuals loving God and you.

One should also see this verse, which comes before:
Matthew 5:17
“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.”
Jesus hasn’t come to completely obliterate, but to complete! To fulfill here means to satisfy them, and as such we no longer need to adhere to the Old Testament, because Jesus has already satisfied it. It is now only something to be remembered (especially in that it tells of God’s power). There’s a reason people usually only hand out New Testament Bibles, after all. So people should stop utilizing the Old Testament as justification to persecute not only homosexuals, but women, other races, other believers, etc. It is moot.
(Something else that is annoying are people who use the OT to justify their hate but don’t do anything else the OT says, such as not eating pork and such.)

And, this is my final point in this, which I think is the most important thing of all. If you do not believe Jesus says the OT is moot, that Jesus said “two men” earlier, that there’s trouble in transliteration, etc, then please, if nothing else, pay attention to these verses:
(Matthew 19:17-19 NKJ)
17 So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”
18 He said to Him, “Which ones?”
Jesus said, “ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’
19 ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

This is what Jesus says we are to follow, if we are to go to Heaven. No where does it say “don’t be gay” or even “persecute others.” In fact, “Love thy neighbour” rather implies again tolerance and understanding. This shoots down any and all arguments against anyone going to Hell for any ridiculous reasons, such as homosexuality, being a woman, being the wrong race, being a nonbeliever, listening to certain music, dancing in church, being a tolerant person, or even sex before marriage. Jesus said it not.

And so I end with this:
If Christianity is about Jesus, and Jesus appears to have no problem with homosexuals, etc, then no other rightful Christian should.
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The time when same-sex marriage was a Christian rite

docezio:

iheartchaos:

One of the most common arguments against same sex marriage is that “one man, one woman is the way it’s always been for thousands and thousands of years.” Yeah, but no. Humanity has and continues to practice almost every arrangement possible in the name of love, politics, religion and economics. While a man and a woman has been the most common due to biological impulse, it’s not everyone’s preference. Hell, between the 10th and 12th centuries, Christian churches had little problem performing same sex marriage.

Read More

The link to the original article is broken, but this is still a really good read.

Highlights:

St. Sergius is openly celebrated as the “sweet companion and lover” of St. Bacchus. Sergius and Bacchus’s close relationship has led many modern scholars to believe they were lovers. But the most compelling evidence for this view is that the oldest text of their martyrology, written in New Testament Greek describes them as “erastai,” or “lovers”. In other words, they were a male homosexual couple. Their orientation and relationship was not only acknowledged, but it was fully accepted and celebrated by the early Christian church, which was far more tolerant than it is today.

[….]

Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the “Office of Same-Sex Union” (10th and 11th century), and the “Order for Uniting Two Men” (11th and 12th century).

[….]

Records of Christian same sex unions have been discovered in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St. Petersburg, in Paris, in Istanbul and in the Sinai, covering a thousand-years from the 8th to the 18th century.

[….]

While homosexuality was technically illegal from late Roman times, homophobic writings didn’t appear in Western Europe until the late 14th century. Even then, church-consecrated same sex unions continued to take place.

I LIKE THE PART WHERE THE FUCKING VATICAN HAS RECORDS OF SAME-SEX MARRIAGE AND STILL IS HOMOPHOBIC AS FUCK.

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Vatican defends excommunication for raped nine-year-old girl's abortion

A senior Vatican cleric has defended the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion in Brazil after allegedly being raped by her stepfather.

[…]

The regional archbishop, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, pronounced excommunication for the mother for authorising the operation and doctors who carried it out for fear that the slim girl would not survive carrying the foetuses to term. [Not that you need a fucking excuse for giving a nine year old girl, a FUCKING NINE YEAR OLD GIRL WHO WAS RAPED, an abortion, because PREGNANCY WILL ALWAYS BE VERY FUCKING UNHEALTHY FOR A CHILD, that’s not even including the fucking psychological issues of being raped and having to give birth to rape babies WHEN YOU ARE STILL A BABY YOURSELF]

[…]

He also said the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the church. Although the man allegedly committed “a heinous crime … the abortion - the elimination of an innocent life - was more serious”. [Saving a girl’s life and health is apparently worse than being a rapist, but then forgiveness of rapists is actually extremely common amongst Christianity, with the Vatican being the prime example itself.]

[…]

The girl, who was not identified because she is a minor, was last week found to be four months pregnant after being taken to hospital suffering stomach pains.

Officials said she told them she had suffered sexual abuse by her stepfather since the age of six.

Police said the 23-year-old stepfather also allegedly sexually abused the girl’s physically handicapped 14-year-old sister.

In case you ever forget it: All anti-choicers are scum to me, without question.

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Florida Passed New Law Allowing Mandated School Prayer

mouthrot:

Or, as the Floridian legislators claim, “inspiration messages”.

http://floridaindependent.com/74203/charles-van-zant-school-prayer

The law allows schools, K-12, to force kids to undergo “inspiration messages” during school events and activities. The legislators want to claim that it isn’t fucking “school prayer”, that it doesn’t say anything in the provisions that claim such.

However, there’s no set provision to begin with. No restriction on what would constitute as a “inspirational message” - meaning it can be anything from spreading a hate speech against homosexuals, to it telling seven-year-olds that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, dinosaurs never existed, and you’re automatically going to Biblical Hell if you’re a girl.

Here’s what the House sponsor tried to say:

“We [changed] that because we thought that wouldn’t go again this year. We got the attorneys in the senate and house together and asked for language that would pass U.S. and Florida Constitutional muster. They came up with the words “inspirational message.”

…

I ran the bill as a First Amendment issue. in our constitutions, we’re guaranteed freedom of speech. We teach children to speak, and this gives them the opportunity to speak out in school. It doesn’t mix church and state. It’s really why we have free speech in this country, so people can bring forth these issues freely.

And the bill has no concern about what they talk about. They can talk about whatever they want. after all the billions and billions of dollars training teachers, and building school and buying buses and the billions we’ve put into classroom education, they should be able to say whatever they want to say.”


He wants to claim that it ISN’T mandated school prayer, except he later claimed that the reason why we have violence, unwed mothers, and overall disobedience is because of the “absence of prayer in school”. Allow me to embolden the parts where he makes it plain as day that he’s saying one thing, but really meaning another:

“All the opposition I got from this bill is from people afraid that someone might use the words Jesus Christ or might actually pray. Many called what we’re doing a euphemism for school prayer. i would make the point that school prayer was abolished by ignorant judges 50 years ago. And that 50 years is a history lesson in what happens to a society that removes prayer.

You can look at the many social ills in our country that have developed in those 50 years. Before we took out school prayer, the biggest problems in school were talking out of turn or chewing gum. Today, the problems are drug abuse, teen pregnancy, rape and assault. School problems speak for themselves. By allowing for inspirational messages, those problems will be addressed.”


Notice that he wants to claim that the problems we have today are not what we had fifty years ago because of his conclusion that schools had MANDATED school prayer … and the he then claims that the only way to fix the problems today is to allow “inspiration messages”.

That means talking about fucking Jesus. How stupid does this douchebag actually take me for?

Ignoring the fact that 50 years ago parents were also raising their kids and not letting videogames babysit for them, schools dealt with bullies much better than today, and we had stricter laws concerning minors possessing weapons and drugs, religious prayer also preached hate against Jews, homosexuals, and fucking BLACKS, and women were still not taken seriously. So, fifty years ago, it was an automatic exile from society and/or a death sentence if you were any of these.

Maybe if we had more than just fucking 3% of our tax dollars going to the ENTIRETY of our educational system, we wouldn’t have the crime and civil disobedience that we do now - just a fucking thought.

Then again, what do I fucking know? I’m just some female busy getting her degree in Web Design; I don’t know shit about law or the Constitution, or common sense and logic for that matter, right?

(Fucking side note: Since when did Florida start making it their goal to steal “The Asshole State” title from Texas?)

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NEW: Faith & LGBT Equality

From Equality Illinois:

“Today, Equality Illinois unveiled two new initiatives that emphasize the growing embrace of full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals by leaders of religious institutions.

The first, Marriage Equality Faith Petition, will demonstrate that there are many in the faith community who support full LGBT equality, including the right to marry.  We are asking clergy and lay leaders from across the state to sign the petition to openly support the newly proposed “Illinois Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act” that will grant equal marriage rights. The petition can be found at http://tinyurl.com/SupportILMarriageFaithPetition



Equality Illinois is also publishing “Equality in Your Faith Community: A Guide to LGBT-Inclusive Religious Practices” and a related brochure. In the guide, which can be found at http://www.eqil.org/faithandfreedom.html , faith institutions and organizations across the state share how they include and celebrate the LGBT community in their everyday practices and worship.  

These two new initiatives build on Equality Illinois’ ongoing, nationally-recognized Faith & Freedom Initiative, which aims to identify welcoming congregations, to build stronger relationships with communities of faith who share our interest in issues of justice and fairness, and to emphasize the positive relationship between religion and equality for all versus the persistent misconception that the majority of faith communities oppose equality for LGBT people.

Those efforts include a Faith Resource Guide, with references to numerous articles, books, movies and websites that help reconcile faith and sexuality, and a listing of leaders who perform civil union ceremonies. Both can also be found at http://www.eqil.org/faithandfreedom.html.

We are particularly grateful to Equality Illinois’ multi-denominational Religious Outreach Committee for their work and dedication.

Thank you for your continued support and look for updates from us in the future!

Sincerely,

Bernard Cherkasov
Chief Executive Officer”

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itehsmartie:

mykthegreat:

qurlniqua:

nyulocal:

Read the fine print.

wat

Woooow that’s illegal

Fuck them and their chickens. KFC tastes better anyway.

Yeah actually that IS illegal but they get away with it because ~religious rights~ and ~omg war on christianity~.

I’m not kidding people have TRIED pressing charges but it’s a no-go for various loophole reasons. They are completely allowed to discriminate against you for your sexual orientation, religion, marital status, ethnic background, family type, and so on, whatever they deem as “sinful”, even though it is ILLEGAL TO DO SO… and ask privacy-violating questions, even though, again, it is ILLEGAL TO DO SO.

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petitions:

(via Tell Priests, Don’t Ban LGBT Community from Communion - The Petition Site)

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Need a religious reference?

There are three sites that I go to for the majority of my religious needs. Which is mostly just checking to make sure what I’m saying is something I remembered or assumed correctly. As a very anxious person I tend to quadruple check everything ever all the time before opening my mouth, which is why I’m pretty shitty at arguments at the start because I have a bad memory on top of it so it’s at the point I want to keep a big notebook of my references and citations wherever I go. But I choose the more preferable method of just not even saying anything ever.

Anyway, getting to the point. I usually use three certain sites, which would be the Skeptics Annotated Bible, Bible Gateway, and Religious Tolerance.

> Skeptics Annotated Bible
This site is exactly what it says it is. It’s an online Bible of which has annotations in it. But it’s not just that, it’s actually a lot more useful than just having sidenotes that may explain things more simply, which a couple publications of Bibles have anyway. It also has a reliable categorical system in which you can search for verses pertaining to common hot topics. Select a topic, say, Sex, and it will give you all the verses, organized by book, that have even one iota to do with Sex, even those just loosely associated with it (such as, polygamy quotes). Unlike the same system in actual Bibles, it doesn’t censor (as far as I noticed) anything disagreeing or unpleasant (for example, try and look up homosexuality in such types of Bibles, I’ve never yet found such a category in the back of the books). It also gives you a link in which you can look at the verses in context.

Oh, and the link doesn’t just take you to a miles-long page of mindless text with numbers (identifying verses) randomly spackled about, of which Bibles have a very fucking annoying tendency to do. It only takes you to a, often short, page of that particular chapter, with verses on individual separate lines, along with the option to navigate back and forth between chapters in the book (not sure about between books though as I don’t think I’ve ever had a need to). These pages of course are the ones that contain the annotations, and the annotations not only often include opinion and interpretation of the site owner, but also external links to other sites’ spins, both negative and positive, as well as neutral.

Not much commentary is made on a good chunk of the Bible, only on specific striking lines, with an eye for context (although sometimes I think they are thinking too negatively or positively despite declaring themselves a skeptic), so you’re not digging through an asston of annotations and links. They are typically concise notes, however, more elaboration IS available. Several times the links are internal and are links to pages that DISCUSS a certain topic - sometimes the same as the topics listed to search by or different from them - as it pertains to the Bible. These are typically concise as well and when they are they are usually what the site owner drew from considering the entirety of the Bible. But not always. For example, the page about who gets to go to Heaven and how one goes to Heaven is a rather long and exhausting read, in which it lists and puts in plainspeak various passages to exhibit how inconsistent and uncertain the answer to the question actually is, which a lot of people are completely unaware of, atheists and Christians alike.

You’ll also notice that the site has two other extensions - one for the Book of Mormon and one for the Quran. It provides mostly the same sort of attention as paid to the Christian Bible.

External links and links to these “secret pages” that discuss and elaborate certain issues are sprinkled throughout the site and not always readily displayed on the front page or even in the categorical pages. You have to hunt sometimes to find the answer or verse you’re after. Although viewing the Bible in a mostly negative light, and linking to mostly negatives sites, it does stay relatively on the course of a skeptic in that it, as I said, censors nothing - if it’s related to a topic it goes in whether the person wants to hear good news or not, and there is nothing preventing people from checking out where they pulled the quote from. In fact they have a category for passages that they found to be entirely good and well-meaning.

My criticisms I have for the site are as follows: It uses only one translation/version of each religious text, and doesn’t specify which as far as I know. Also, as I said, sometimes I think it diverges too far from skeptic and looks at things too positively or negatively. And certainly everyone’s going to have a different interpretation of some things.

Another issue is that it seems the site hasn’t been updated in… forever. It seems to be a one-shot wonder; someone wrote everything down and then forgot about it. No chances of new information being brought up or more elaboration of still-confusing items or reinterpretations or additional fun facts or anything of that sort. In fact some of the external links I think are broken. I certainly have to complain in that the pages pertaining to the Quran and Book of Mormon aren’t nearly as numerous as the Christian Bible pages.

And another problem I have is that it seems so useful in that it has the additional sections for these other religious texts BUT it doesn’t have the Hebrew Bible or any other additional Abrahamic literature. This is probably just a problem for me because I want to know FUCKING EVERYTHING but can’t be assed to go throw my time and money in a pit for a theology degree, and certainly reading religious texts in their normal settings really hurts my brain and eyes (see my earlier remark about a fucking annoying tendency), and I don’t trust American Christian publishers to put the Bible truly into plainspeak (and even if I did they also hurt my brain and eyes with how much like “grandpa trying to ride a skateboard and wearing bling” they are). But anyway, so I typically end up getting my fill of the extra as best I can from random various sites that I wouldn’t recommend under normal circumstances because although they provided me with information about a certain thing they’re also filled with a bunch of otherwise useless or redundant crap.

Continuing on.

> Bible Gateway
I think this site is best used in conjunction with SAB so that you can get a broader perspective and better context. After all, there’s always something lost in translation and interpretation.

What this site is, is a site in which you can search for specific verses or groups of verses, or an entire chapter, per translation (including many non-English ones). It also claims you can search via keywords and topics but that’s about as reliable and helpful as putting “the” in Google in my experience. Which is why I say you should use SAB and BG together, so you can know exactly where to check instead of digging through a bunch of random shit because of a hit-and-miss search of a word.

It also claims to have a topical index buuuut I haven’t used them much and as a start-off they don’t appear very reliable necessarily. Again, I used the homosexuality-test and found that it was not there, only lots of biased topics. However “Nate’s” index appears to be possibly useful if you are searching for specific names and titles and places, or even words that are a little confusing in definition; in fact it seems this index is a lot about definition which COULD be useful, but I haven’t tested its reliability to not exclude disagreeing passages from its lists, so again it’s about a 50/50 usefulness. 

There was a similar site to this that I found that would compare the verses per translation, side by side. You’d look up a verse or group of verses and it’d bring it/them up in a table grouping them per translation. It was a rather crafty way of seeing which texts were censored and where and by who, and I quite delighted in it for this use. However, I can’t seem to find it now, sadly. So, now, instead I would have to search over and over again flipping through each translation one at a time.
[edit] Hoohoo, I found it. Check out Bible.cc!

It is clearly biased to a Christian point of view however as far as I’ve seen it doesn’t seem to outright censor passages or books entirely. You’re completely free to see it if you wish, they just won’t point the way for you. So it’s not that bad and again used with something relatively neutral to tell you where to work from, like SAB, it can be great. It’s also a lot more helpful than turning to your own Bible copies because again really to hell with looking at those bastards, this takes you right where you want to be.

Which brings me to the only complaint I have about Bible Gateway. You have to constantly jump back and forth through translations instead of having the option to see them all.

> Religious Tolerance
Again this site works best in conjunction with cross references - remember this in all aspects of life: cross reference like a motherfucker.

Well anyway this site basically is kind of a lot like SAB except in that it does censor - but I hate using that word because they don’t do it because of disagreement but to be straight to the point. Regardless it still doesn’t give you proper context or all things pertaining to certain topics, HOWEVER its saving grace is that it only does this so it has the room to discuss. Where SAB falls short on elaboration and explanation and opinion-touting, this site picks up the reigns. It’s true-blue neutral in that it doesn’t directly advocate or condemn anything, as far as I’ve seen. It simply points things out, and then goes on to talk about various interpretations and points of view, although it doesn’t make it unclear when things are contradictory or confusing. If I remember correctly too it also has many external links to refer to and even many of its pages contain citations to theological articles.

Another useful thing about this is that it travels beyond the realm of Christianity and its brothers and gives a quick going over of various religions. Though, how deeply it delves I’m not sure as I’ve never had a need to venture deeper in other religions. Although I should at least do so with Satanism since I’m interested in it. Oh well.

The only complaint I have about it is one I have about pretty much all Bible-related sites: Missing books. All sites I’ve come across seem to never reference, address, or have available books that have been deleted from the Christian canon, with exception of Revelations but I think that’s more because people still use it and publish even though most don’t put any serious stake into its validity, as far as I know. The more rarely used books and the books completely removed from all strains of Christianity, I have yet to find online. I’ve seen maybe scant references in some places that upon double checking do have validity, but it’s really, really good to have you know the literal thing in front of you to link to and read for yourself. And lord knows the gospels from before the formation of the first Christian unitings* are pretty much fucking impossible to get to if you don’t have a lot of money to put into a theology degree and research most typically in a more secular country.

(*While Christianity was still emerging, gospels were literally a group-by-group thing, since they all had scant contact with each other due to hiding from persecution. When Christians first really clumped together, unified as a legitimate religion, many gospels were lost, though some not entirely as of course splinter groups did still exist.)

So yeah, those are the two main sites I use. Obviously sometimes I use other sites, like the notorious and old as fuck Evil Bible (even if I disagree with some of its interpretations) and the most lovely Google search, which can lend its hand in some technical aspects of the transliterations and history, and Wikipedia for quick glossings and certifications. Then I’ve got friends who are well versed in Abrahamic mythology and news regarding such, though I haven’t really spoken with them in a long as time I guess. Then of course the ever-useful nonreligious atheist community and pagan community of dA and Tumblr who have this rather amusing habit of making just the most delightful compilation images comparing and contrasting various religions, dark and moody though their observations can be. You also can’t forget reasonable Christians, rare though they are, who always have an interesting new way to think about something most people overlooked. Like for example the Jesus is a Liberal site, I have glanced at it a few times and have pretty much always been surprised at some of its opinions about things I had previously never given a second thought to, never thought were of any importance or worth noting.

(Although I wouldn’t recommend it, ever, sidelining in religious debates can also be enlightening but I’ve personally pretty much always found it exhausting and irritating.)