Bruce Jenner comes out as a transgender conservative Republican

[flowers]

Geesh....what was I thinking?  You're probably right.

It explains Diane Sawyer's visible 'shock' at the statement.  It was probably known by ABC all the while.

It had to been known by ABC. I never knew much about Jenner. I watched KUWTK a couple years back. You could tell by watching that show he had to be conservative.

[Luis Gonzalez]

I wish him well. I on the other hand don't think he is well. He thinks he is solving a problem?  What if it doesn't solve a thing for him mentally? Will he now date men?  Women?  I guess one has to watch the new TV show to find out?

Most of those questions were answered during the interview. He's never been even slightly attracted to men. He made the point, several times in fact, that sexuality has very little to do with this.

Jenner is 65, "dating" may not be something that he sees going on in his future. He says that simply living life as he's always felt that he should have been living his life will be sufficient for him. Money's not an issue either.

I don't think this is a publicity stunt.

[Luis Gonzalez]

[flowers]

Most of those questions were answered during the interview. He's never been even slightly attracted to men. He made the point, several times in fact, that sexuality has very little to do with this.

Jenner is 65, "dating" may not be something that he sees going on in his future. He says that simply living life as he's always felt that he should have been living his life will be sufficient for him. Money's not an issue either.

I don't think this is a publicity stunt.

Thank you for that info.

[evadR]

Who gives a sh*t? With all that's going on in the world, whether or not Bruce Jenner gets chopped and channeled is important? God save us from low info voters, the slug media that feeds them and anything Kardashian.

That crude, but accurate...and exactly how I feel.

[evadR]

I'm a social conservative who is neither embarrassed or mad at Jenner for saying anything! I WILL pray for him!

Agreed. I'm just fed up that the "slug" media, as it was called, continues to harp on it as a newsworthy item.
It's a freak show.

[Luis Gonzalez]

That's a good question, which is part of the reason I cited Paul and 1 Corinthians in conjunction with it.

The fulfillment of the Laws of Moses was a fairly complicated thing. On certain issues, such as eating non-kosher meat and performing works on the Sabbath, Jesus was very liberal. Yet, on the sexual sins, Jesus's stand is just as much against it, if not moreso, than the laws of Moses (see Matthew 5:28, for one example). Where he differs is punishment: he does not condone stoning as punishment, but offers a chance to repent (John 7:53-8:11). It's interesting here that Leviticus gives two options for the punishment of sexual sins: getting “cut off from his people” (in chapter 18) or death by stoning (chapter 20). It's the former that Paul suggests for the sexual sinner in Corinth; he tells the Corinthians to not even eat with the sinner. The Apostles also agree that sexual immorailty is to be forbidden in the church (Acts 15:19). To be cut off and thrown out of the church still allows for the sinner to turn away from his (or her) misdeeds and seek reconciliation. But the underlying sin is, throughout the Old and New Testament, still considered sin, just as it was in Leviticus. That isn't the case with a lot of other sins, which were expressly targeted at those who had made the covenant with the Jewish people.

So the double standard goes all the way back to Christ Himself.

Thanks for the thorough response.

I have a good friend who I consider my ultimate resource on all things Christianity, he and I had a related conversation years ago on the subject of the old law (dietary on that instance) and one thing a said stuck to me (I'm paraphrasing): Jesus either fulfilled the law, all of the law, or He failed, since He said that His purpose here was to fulfill the law.

So, and gathering from your post and the idea of the law's fulfillment by His death, compulsory punishments for those behaviors prohibited by the Old Law, whether dietary or sexual (interestingly, Deuteronomy condemns cross-dressing, which tells me that there was cross-dressing happening at the time the Book of Deuteronomy was written), whether death by stoning or shunning, are no longer in effect, and the new law is. The new law affords sinners the opportunity to repent for their sins, right up until the moment of their death.

That being the case, how do Christian conservatives justify seeking to somehow control the behavior of sinners (homosexuals) via secular laws, which constitutes in punishment (shunning) in the name of their Christian beliefs?

Jesus already lifted that weight from humanity, and gave us all the option to repent for sins (any and all sins) we commit and be rewarded with a life eternal in His Father's house.

To wit, Jesus basically said "we are all sinners, but I lift all punishments executed by man for committing sins", so how do (some) Christians come to believe it their Christian obligation to stop sinners from sinning by using the force of government (man)?

It seems inconsistent.

[Luis Gonzalez]

That crude, but accurate...and exactly how I feel.

That's exactly why there are hundreds of TV channels to tune in.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Thank you for that info.

I actually watched that last night. My wife wanted to and you know the old saying.

It was compelling, I don't think this is contrived in any way, and I actually laughed out loud and cheered when he gave "that look" and said he didn't like Obama.

I found this on the Internet:

ABC News host Diane Sawyer seemed more surprised that former Olympic champion Bruce Jenner identified himself as a Republican than announcing he was a trans woman on Friday, the Huffington Post reported.

The revelation came when Sawyer asked Jenner for his reaction to President Barack Obama identifying trans Americans during this year’s State of the Union address.

“He actually was the first one to say the actual word transgender, I will certainly give him credit for that,” Jenner said of Obama. “But not to get political, I’ve just never been a big fan — I’m kind of more on the conservative side.”

“Are you a Republican?” Sawyer asked.

“Yeah, is that a bad thing?” Jenner replied. “I believe in the Constitution.”

Sawyer, who noted during her report that 32 states lack laws protecting LGBT workers from job-related discrimination based on their gender and sexuality, then asked him if he thought it would be “an unsettling thing” for some conservatives. According to her, Jenner said neither major political party has “a monopoly on understanding.”

She then asked if he would ask GOP House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to “champion” LGBT rights.

“I would do that, yeah, in a heartbeat,” Jenner replied. “Why not? And I think they’d be very receptive to it.”

[mountaineer]

What should the church say to Bruce Jenner? by Russell Moore.

Excerpt:

... Bruce Jenner, of course, is a symbol, a celebrity spokesperson for an entire mentality that sees gender as separate from biological identity. So is there a word from God to the transgender community? How should the church address the Bruce Jenner in your neighborhood, who doesn’t have the star power or the Malibu mansions but who has the same alienation of self?

First of all, we should avoid the temptation to laugh at these suffering souls. We do not see our transgendered neighbors as freaks to be despised. They feel alienated from their identities as men or women and are seeking a solution to that in self-display or in surgery or in pumping their bodies with the other sex’s hormones. In a fallen universe, all of us are alienated, in some way, from who were designed to be. That alienation manifests itself in different ways in different people.

But neither should we fall for the cultural narrative behind the transgender turn. This narrative is rooted in the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, with the idea that the “real” self is separate from who one is as an embodied, material being. Body parts and chromosomal patterns are dispensable since the self is radically disconnected from the body, the psychic from the material.

The old Gnostic heresy is joined with contemporary expressive individualism—the idea that I must be true to whomever I perceive my “real me” to be on the inside in order to be “authentic.”  ...

[ABX]

Finally, a woman in that family with some common sense. 

[massadvj]

I guess the first clue was that his first name is "Bruce."

[Luis Gonzalez]

Finally, a woman in that family with some common sense. 

Now, that there is some funny shit.