If I voted against a Christian lifestyle, if I preached against a Christian lifestyle, or if I said a Christian lifestyle was 'unnatural', people would yell discrimination against Christians from the rooftops, yet you all keep saying you DO NOT discriminate against gays. Just what do you perceive discrimination as?! Talk about putting lipstick on a pig.....
Christians have been discriminated against in the past and have died for their beliefs. In some countries they still are! We as Christians must adhere to God and His Word as we live our life by that Word. Regardless if it's contrary to popular opinion or not. This includes what the Bible calls sin......ANY sin.
If a gay person comes into our assembly, nobody better mistreat them or they have me to answer to. Do I wait until a gay person walks into church, and then "blast" them from the pulpit? Absolutely not. Do I preach against it? Absolutely! In our own gatherings with our own members. Or I'm teaching on it through a Bible Study. Do I go out on the street corner and start gay bashing......no. Even when I'm addressing it in the church, it's done with warning for our own people. Wisdom is always use for the appropriate venue or audience.
I was accused on this thread of not knowing any gay people at all. If you only knew. The man who stayed in my house while I was gone used to be gay, and I knew him then. The only reason I didn't mention him is that someone on this forum knows his name, and his past lifestyle is just that.....past, and I didn't want to reveal anything about him without his consent. It's a Ministerial Confidentiality situation. He has since told me I could reveal the fact he stayed at my home. He's been following this forum pretty closely.
I have people in my life that are still in the gay lifestyle. Are they friends? Well, if I'm in Starbucks, and they walk in, and I ask them to come over to visit with me, and we spend 2 hours talking and laughing....what would you call it? Not just once either. Lunch, dinner, and all kinds of social situations.
Discrimination would be "shunning' them, or treating that they are inferior to us......ubsurd! We don't do that. Being in disagreement to a lifestyle and discrimination are 2 different and separate things.