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Originally posted by Merseymike:
Depends if you're a scriptural conservative or not.
There's plenty of things in the bible which are the product of the views of the men who wrote it. This is one of them.

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Depends if you're a scriptural conservative or not.
There's plenty of things in the bible which are the product of the views of the men who wrote it. This is one of them.

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I agree the bible is written by men..and I have found it to be fallible and contradictory (especially Peter's transition from 'Lord..have mercy on me ..a sinner' to Jesus' face..and later becoming Mr. Lay-down-the-law to sinners in his letters.) Homosexual attraction ..feels deeper and more natural to me than any other thing I experience in my life. But I find when I've had gay sex...it somehow wasn't what I was really after. I always feel better after I've prayed together with a guy (that's a REAL buzz...dunno why..)...than when I've had sex with a guy. Now..this may be just me...but because of my pretty depraved mind..(I was raised from 6 years old on the finest porn Scandanavia had to offer)......I tend to use guys as 'live porn' or as Germaine Greer said in the paper yesterday...'is there anything lonelier than being a man's masturbation aid?' I'm not saying that applies to every gay person ..but it certainly applies to me....I very much see myself in the scriptural writings...have watched my spiritual life die away....... And the longer I've gone on...the more I've found ..yes..sin does eat away at you..and yes..God's grace and forgiveness for that is very real....even to the point of being in a gay sauna...and hearing the Frankie Goes to Hollywood song "The Power of Love...a force from above...healing my soul". Geez...God's everywhere.

The tricky bit ..is reading the scriptures in their original setting...without the modern spin put on them by church people through the centuries. Take the song 'I will always love you'. Great song..great message. Now have Whitney Houston or Dolly Parton sing it..and put it in 'Titanic'. What does it become?

The whole point of scripture is a message of redemption...not condemnation. It's the modern pharisees who twist it to say anything otherwise. (resists strong urge to savage Phariseefreak...oops.....Jesusfreak's post).

I respect and understand the views of people who don't see scripture as truth...because the way Christianity and scripture is taught and portrayed is generally ......with VERY few exceptions.... bullshit. (now where's that poo-plopping smiley?)

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Ok, I admit it. I fancy women. I am just as sinful as every gay and lesbian person I have ever met, just as in need of God's saving grace, God's mercy, God's forgiveness and, even tbh, I know what it is like, if not to feel the scorn of ignorant hets, to want someone so badly it kills me and know I can't have them.

Any het (at all) who says different is a lying shit.

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As far as my bum-looking soul being as sinful as that of someone who prefers to look at the bums on people of the same sex, I had just assumed that this was obvious. I really don't see what relevance "how sinful" you were has to do with what kind of "redeemed" you are.
(I do, however, understand that having someone admit this blatantly obvious fact would no doubt be emotionaly helpful, as always happens when goody church people for some reason admit to blatantly obvious facts)

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I'm a face man myself....always have been....a 'cute' guy on the train...at work..at church...always gets the adrenalin pumping. BTW....Thankfully now...I've realised those 'cute' guys will ...at best...in 40 years...look like my grandfather....What we're seeing now in others is a mirage....it doesn't last...

And the 'how sinful' thing is vitally important. I have run into many gay people...for whom the concept of 'salvation' doesn't make any sense..because many prominant Christians (gay bishop debate) HAVE made homosexuality into a special sin...and therefore it needs other Christians to 'unspecialise' it. and Christians are not correcting the imbalance. I'm in Australia where it's bad enough with Fred Nile..but you try being a gay person growing up around Christians in the deep south of the USA. Frankly..I think I would have killed myself long ago if I'd grown up there.

You've really hit the nail on the head though with the 'obvious' bit. That's just it. Christians are NOT stating the obvious...which I've had to dig out through severe interrogations of Christians in chat. Never heard the obvious in church. All I heard there was 'don't do it'...(with by implication..you're done for if you have)..... I used to work in Christian media..and saw virtually everything said in the last decade about gay issues from the various churches and church leaders around the world.......and NOT ONCE....have I ever heard them verbalise the obvious about the universality of sin in everyone....

So what's really going on? When discussing homosexuality with Christians in msn...I find they believe the 'obvious' in theory...but struggle to state the obvious because in their own heart and minds..they really believe in phariseeism and the law. Thus...most Christians are paralysed by the internal conflict between the 'grace and love' view they're supposed to have according to the bible....and the pharisee view which is deep in their hearts...or being foisted upon them by their pastor who has the same pharisee issues.

What's been life-changing for me ..has been reading Jesus' interactions with the Pharisees....(too often ..it's your local pastor unfortunately) and particularly the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector...

You know those kids..sitting up the back of the church on a Sunday morning...a bit seedy after going out the night before clubbing...(still with the nightclub stamp on their hand) feeling a bit...'sorry God...can't do this this morning.....been a bad boy/girl'.....can't get into the worship?............well.....THEY'RE the ones who are right with God...not the nice goody goodies who do everything right who...'thank God they're not like those sinful gay people'....

We've created an upside down church that honours and promotes the pharisees. Go figure.


(this horse is not dead..it's only sleeping)

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Love the sinner, hate your own sin.

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Homosexual attraction ..feels deeper and more natural to me than any other thing I experience in my life. But I find when I've had gay sex...it somehow wasn't what I was really after.

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Originally posted by Merseymike:

Sex in itself isn't permanently fulfilling ; within the context of a committed and faithful relationship, though, it can be quite different. Thats irrespective of the sex of the participants.

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Hey I picked up.

My spelling was bad. Really not very awake.

I am sorry that conservatives like Mersey Mike (I have always wanted to say that) disagree with me. I understand where you are coming from. I have just celibrated my 7th wedding aniversary and have been monogomous for 9 years, which means (I think) that I can get away with saying how I see things amongst the people I work with. However most people see the Gay community as rampant; well it is in parts. You should try being Bi-Sexual. As IHS states:

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"... It is clear that bisexual activity must always be wrong for this reason, if for no other, that it inevitably involves being unfaithful. ... In the situation of the bisexual it can also be that counseling will help the person concerned to discover the truth of their personality and achieve a degree of inner healing.'

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Originally posted by Merseymike:
You may disagree, but I see part of the role of gay Christians to bring the ethics of relationships to the gay community ( and I recognise that I'm probably quite conservative with regard to sexual mores other than I think it doesn't matter about the gender of the participants).

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Originally posted by skielight:
We lesbians have the other stereotype to face: falling in love every five minutes, and moving in together on the second date and getting fifteen cats.

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It must also be said that not all lesbians like cats.

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I did know a lesbian who was allergic to them. Her entire identity as a human being was in a state of perpetual crisis

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Our God is an awesome God. Much better than that ridiculous God that Desert Bluffs has. - Welcome to Night Vale

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Originally posted by skielight:
I did know a lesbian who was allergic to them. Her entire identity as a human being was in a state of perpetual crisis

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Originally posted by Cardinal Pole Vault:

Thank-god for ABBA, the Sugarbabes, Blue and Westlife. They'll cheer me up. So where's the nearest Karoke bar?

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Justin all the way. For me.

Hope you don't become a twisted old queen.

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Originally posted by Edward Green:
Justin all the way. For me.

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Hope you don't become a twisted old queen.

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I'm too busy trying to keep up the whole "straight acting" thing to let that happen

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"Make tea, not war"

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I dunno what I'm babbling on about now, but I suppose what worries me most is what the church might turn me into. A bitter old repressed homosexual priest? A sexually fulfilled , yet closet priest? A happily "married" gay lay person (who feels unfulfilled in his vocation)?

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Originally posted by Merseymike:
I thought lesbians liked dogs, and gay men preferred cats.

I love cats.

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Originally posted by Merseymike:
Oh , straight acting. Well, I have a season ticket for the football. Butch or what?

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Originally posted by Cardinal Pole Vault:
[QUOTE]I've never been into football (footballers, however, are a different matter. And then there's rugby...) I make up for it by drinking beer and staying away from alco-pops.

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Originally posted by SeraphimSarov:
A dear friend sticks to the notion that ONLY gay men own cats

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Originally posted by Merseymike:
I thought lesbians liked dogs, and gay men preferred cats.

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Originally posted by Edward Green:
Sorry I don't but this committed and faithful crap. Sex is fun. Most people enjoy it and need it. It is most fun when the two people involved share some intimacy such as friendship, and honesty about their own sexuality in particular.

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So that's what they're teaching in some seminaries in the fens these days
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People emjoy all sorts of things, and feel that they need all sorts of things. I'm not convinced that Christians (or indeed anyone who wants to adopt a critical stance towards society) need to accept this at face value. You do not need to be a fundamentalist to hold that part of what we mean by 'sin' entails the distortion of peoples' perceived needs and wants, and that part of a Christian response should be a gentle and patient invitation to re-orientate our desires towards love. And you don't need to be

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Originally posted by Ariel:
I once had a female gay friend who commented that there did seem to be a trend for cats. In fact she was always very wary of women whose interests were "cats, chocolate and astrology".

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May I refer you to my previous post and my name? Although admittedly I'm not into astrology.


[ 24. August 2003, 13:20: Message edited by: Chocoholic ]

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw-Dwarf:
So that's what they're teaching in some seminaries in the fens these days
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Absolutely not. The tendancy in liberal catholic circles is to have a more conservative morality and not live up to it and be all 'broken'. I think this is bollocks.

I however am theologically, morally and liturgically liberal, yet conservative in practice. It makes me a whole lot less judgemental.

I am luckilly in a nice Het monogomous relationship so nobody seems to really care about what I think about sex.

Still they might choose not to ordain me.

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Originally posted by Edward Green:

Still they might choose not to ordain me.

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Originally posted by Ariel:
A gay man I once knew used to judge potential partners by whether they had their books lined up right at the front of their bookshelves, instead of pushed to the back. "It says something about them," he used to say, but I never found out quite what.

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Originally posted by Ariel:
A gay man I once knew used to judge potential partners by whether they had their books lined up right at the front of their bookshelves, instead of pushed to the back. "It says something about them," he used to say, but I never found out quite what.

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Originally posted by The Wanderer:
Mine are arranged by author, then chronologically, and pushed well back. How else could you possible arrange books?

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As my bookcase is generally in my line of vision I alter the way I arrange them from time to time, otherwise I get so used to seeing them in the same order that I just take them for granted and don't read them. In the past I have had them arranged by size, by author, by colour, by subject, once by publisher, and sometimes purely at random. However, they are always at the front of the shelf and lined up neatly ("get fell in, you 'orrible little books!"

One point to bear in mind. If you have your books pushed well back, the dust on the shelves is more noticeable and you are obliged to clean them regularly.

Btw I think the point my ex was making was that if you have them lined up at the front, you're anally retentive. Probably the only reason he said that was because he had his own books shoved to the back of the shelves. He was both anally retentive and in the process of coming out, so I don't think you can tell anything much about someone by this means.

(I still haven't forgiven him for telling me I couldn't borrow the third novel of Dune to read again, because I had to re-read the entire trilogy (as it then was) in sequence. Bastard.)

[ 25. August 2003, 07:56: Message edited by: Ariel ]

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Originally posted by dorcas:
I like cats...and chocolate...prefer faith to astrology...so what does that say about my sexuality??

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Two out of three? You are obviously only 2/3rds gay, or you may be straight or bisexual. Liking astrology is kind of definitive.

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If you want your books on the front of the shelves, make the shelves shallower.

Besides how else can you put stuffed animals and small photographs in front of the books if they're all the way to the edge?

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