all Christians pick and choose what to take at face value, and what to take in context from the Bible. The Bible permits and arguably advocates for slavery in several places. Mosaic law forbids wearing blended fabric.

Also there is both a reference to an abortifacient and an explanation that an induced abortion is required to be performed by a priest in the case of Adultery (Numbers, lots of English translations obfuscate this detail)

Lots of leftist Catholics i’ve met consider the words of Jesus to trump all other passages, similar to how Muslims give different credence to different Hadith depending on the purported witness. In this reading it’s pretty easy to come to a mostly left-leaning worldview.

I would also add that Catholics in general do not consider the Bible to be literally true descriptions of events that actually happened. Most Catholics, including most Catholic theologians, see the Bible as the word of God, but consider the stories contained within to range from entirely allegorical to semi-historical (but even then still largely allegorical).

My go to response for the anti gay Christians is: Do you eat shellfish? Have you ever worn a shirt with blended fabrics? Those are listed right beside the laying with a man, but nobody’s trying to ban blended fabrics or boycott seafood restaurants.

Anyone can look the other way on rules they don’t want to follow.

If you can find community in a church that shares your values and beliefs, then I highly recommend it!

The bible doesn’t say being gay is a sin. At worst, there’s an old testament law against bisexuality (that may just be about not cheating on your wife with a man), and a new testament story about God making some homophobic Romans gay to punish them.

More importantly than the ambiguity of either the old testament laws or the post-gospel epistles however are the actual techings attributed to Jesus. Each of the four gospels tells the story slightly differently, but two stories are applicable here.

The first is the story of the Mary who was neither Jesus’s mother nor bestie, but just a random Jewish girl who was caught cheating with a married man and was about to be gang-murdered by an angry mob chucking stones at her until she died. Obvious sexual sin, and apparently the customary punishment. But God essentially says “I tell you what, SURE she’s a sinner, how about y’all get someone who isn’t to start this execution right.”

( Which, when coupled with a few later passages about leaving judgement for God, honestly let’s any Christian ignore anyone else’s sin entirely.)

The second story is a bit more on point, and is contained in all four gospels as essentially the thesis of the new religion. Jesus was asked what the most important part of the law was, and he essentially said “love” twice. To love God with all that you are, and love everyone else as you love yourself. And then went on to imply that one could derive all of celestial law from just those two. Which means any Christian can and should ignore any hateful old testament law if they honestly feel it is wrong.

(Which can sound like a cop out until you get back to the “we are all sinners” point. It doesn’t matter if homosexuality or premarital sex are sins, because being a hateful jerk or judgemental ass are also sins and the only way anyone gets to avoid hell is if God decides to not give us the horrible fate we deserve.)

The Christianity I practice is a religion based around the idea that God created everything, loves us all, and really just wants us to not be dicks to each other.

There isn’t enough room in a life concerned with the “new” commandment to love everyone as we love ourselves to be a dick about anyone else’s sex life. As long as you’re honest with your lovers and do your best to not spread STDs, whether or not your seventy-five member atheistic informal polycule is sinful or not is between you and God.

The Bible starts to fall apart very quickly if you interpret everything as universal and literal. Generally, people trying to understand the Bible will view it as a collection of historical documents, written by different people, to different people, at different times. For example, its pretty much universally understood that rules against eating pork were specifically for Jews, and possibly even for that time period only. In terms of the “pro-life” stuff, the Bible doesn’t really even say anything about it apart from a song that references conception poetically, although it does notably include instructions on how to perform an abortion so… and for the homophobia, its much more intensely debated because of both the historical context, and the wishy-washy language within the Bible itself.