quote:

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Originally posted by RuthW:
So are you painting all heterosexuals with the same brush or not?

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Erm, no. What a curious idea. I apologise unreservedly to the sane among the heterosexual community.

Angels & genitalia...

Surely you jest?

They would be entirely superfluous and redundant. God is not known for creating things with pointless parts to them (apart from the male part of humankind that is) Why one earth would they have them, having no need to reproduce? Are you arguing from not having specific references to them NOT having them?

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Originally posted by St Rumwald:
Erm, no. What a curious idea. I apologise unreservedly to the sane among the heterosexual community.

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In your extensive (and very helpful) list of biblical Homosexuality references, you missed Judges 19.

Judges 19: It's Sodom revisited! Visitor in a town, whose people want to rape him. Visitor's host offers his concubine, they accept and rape her until morning and then killed her. Nice.

See comments on the Sodom story, it's the same thing again.

Some rape is about sex. It's about sexual gratification from sadism.

Some is about power, as you say.

Some is almost political...like when soliders go raping and pillaging in wars.

Just when I thought the thread was getting fun again... St Sebastian. That's who I was thinking of. Last time he posted he was thinking of joining the Orthodox. Well there'll be no Mardi Gras there, let me tell you.

How resplendently butchy you look with the bowtie, JtD - just the thing to catch the Canon's eye.

Why thankyou my dear Coot, I'm glad you like the tie *gives a distinctly unbutch blush* - do you really think she'll like it? And I must say your lipstick is looking perfectly wonderful today.

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Originally posted by Lizzabee:
where does he fit into Christ's church? Either he hides who he is and lives a closet life while in church or he just does not go to church. Should homosexuality and Christianity be that mutually exclusive?

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I don't know what church you go to, but none of the services I've been to have required every member of the congregation to make public their sexual preferences.

"I shouldn't have to hide" isn't an excuse for shouting from the rooftops.

Not sure if this is on Joan's list of standard attitudes (?platitudes?) or not, but it seems to me not impossible to hold simultaneously the belief that God loves us all individually with the belief that homo and hetero are not equally valid "lifestyle choices".

Suppose I have sexual feelings for my sister. It doesn't mean that I'm bad, doesn't mean that I'm less moral than anybody else, doesn't mean that God rejects me, but also doesn't necessarily mean that I should try to force everybody else to accept that a sexual relationship between the two of us would necessarily be moral just because I want it.

If you're still not convinced, try substituting for "sister" any other inappropriate object of sexual feelings.

"Hate the sin and love the sinner" is an excellent maxim, and I do indeed believe that this is what our attitude ought to be.

But I don't identify with your attitude #5, because it labels all homosexual acts as sinful, and this seems to me too simplistic.

I struggle with this, and don't have a fully-thought-out view, but it seems to me that it is choices rather than acts which are morally good or bad. It does not seem impossible that in some cases the best achievable outcome might be two people of the same gender setting up house together. Exactly what acts they get up to in the privacy of their own home is their business.

We're all broken people in our different ways. But let us not set up our brokenness as an ideal to which others should aspire.

It is the shouting about sexuality, the demands for equal status, the militancy which seems to me wrong, unloving, putting one's own feelings before the feelings of others. The Christian answer to persecution is not a counter-persecution. People with "old-fashioned" views are also to be loved and tolerated.

Babybear was right to say that "people need to find a way of living with themselves", but not at the expense of others. Becoming completely defined by some aspect of ourselves is something to be resisted.

Don't know if this answers Lizzabee's question...

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What liberating words! NOTHING separates us from God. Not homosexuality, not disbelief in certain creeds, Bible passages, litanies or opinions of other believers. Not sin, not death, not anything. My fundamentalist friends, do you realize the freeing beauty of those words??? Nothing!! NOTHING! Will you take those words to heart? Will you believe the Holy Word Of God when it says NOTHING separates you from God??? Or will you continue to thump your Bible and point out all those who *you* believe have been separated from God?

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The above is taken from the website whosoever.org that you linked to Joan, thanks for that.

A very good website it is too. Rational and balanced.

However, the above quote (which is her comment on the famous passage in Romans 8)seems to me to be performing a bit of slight of hand with the wording of the scripture.

Romans 8v39 says nothing can separate us from the love of God. This is a dramatically different thing to saying "nothing can separate us from God".

To use the parable of the lost son in Luke 15, the point is that the son was never separated from the father's love even thought he WAS separated from the father by his rebellion.

There is no contradiction at all, in saying "God loves homosexuals" and at the same time saying "homosexuals are in rebellion" than there is in saying "The Father loves his son" and at the same time saying "The son was in rebellion"

The writer ends up saying "Sin cannot separate us from God" but what is sin, but exactly that: "Separation from God"? Sin is the great devide between us and God which He bridges through Love he showed at the cross.

If Sin did not separate us from God then it would not matter. But Sin matters hugely. It matters enough for God to lay down the life of his own Son to defeat it.

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They would be entirely superfluous and redundant. God is not known for creating things with pointless parts to them

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As there is some experience of these things on this board I have a genuine question:

Why do some gay blokes camp it up?

That is a serious question.

My only conclusion is that for the same reason that some lads, for want of a better expression, lad it up. Loudness, competitiveness etc etc.

My only experience of a gay friend was that he was a lad but just had male partners, although he found the 'scene' very destructive on him emmotionally and I think spiritually. But he has moved away from where I live now and I no longer see him, so any questions I may have once been able to ask I can no longer do so.

23) I'd be fine with homosexuals if they would just shut up about being gay. They're doing more harm than good trying to shove it down other peoples' throats, I mean why do people insist on being camp in public, can't they just do it in the privacy of their own homes, rather than in front of ordinary decent people? [I am an ostrich]

I find this perhaps the most depressing view - certainly, that's why I was depressed last night. It's the view that we'd be acceptable so long we kept quiet, so long as people could blank it out of their minds that we were gay and not have to deal with it. That "what you do is your own business", which means: "it's shameful but I'm not going to get into an argument with you". But what if we don't think it's shameful? What if we want to bring the whole of who we are into our Eucharistic community? If we want to celebrate our love and all the ways in our lives in which God works?

Of course we have to treat other people lovingly - that's why I do not advocate Peter Tatchell-style campagning However I do not think that the ideas of stumbling block and loving extend to retreating into silence and shadows and acting ashamed of part of who and what we are, just to pander to other people's prejudices. Personally, I find public displays of heterosexual love (kissing, cuddling etc) disgusting: but I don't try and make them hide because of what I feel, however much I wish they would!

There are the two extremes that we have to be warey of: hiding so that no-one sees us, and getting up on a soapbox all the time. In the middle lies the openness in love that everyone can learn from. That's where the challenges are on both sides: a lot of hets want us to shut up because any degree of visibility means they have to confront these issues and that makes them uncomfortable, so they blame gays for making them feel bad. A lot of the time 23) can be a cover for "if you shut up I won't have to think about it and won't find my world-view threatened". Similarly, gays can react to the threatening nature of the argument by being over-agressive, un-loving and not engaging in dialogue.

These days, I'm not sure where on Joan's list I come. I would have to say that having read and read the Sodom and Gomorrah Story, I would never have realised that it was useable as an argument against homosexuality if I hadn't been told. I thought it was about a City in which there was not one righteous man to be found - this being the final implication of gen Ch 18, v 16-33 - and an illustration of quite how unrighteous it all was, is a particularly nasty gang rape. It never occured to me that the point of the passage was in any way homosexuality.

In terms of the passages in Leviticus, I think Joan is correct to point out some of the other commandments in the same part of Leviticus - which we now ignore as we think them totally irrelevant. A lot of OT laws relate to hygiene - things like the laws about spots and blemishes and nasty skin diseases - and just aren't relevant in our society, although they were very important to keep a nomadic tribe alive. Bear with me - I am not about to say that homosexuality is unhygienic. However, anal sex is a pretty good way of spreading nasty STDs - as is heterosexual sex. I read somewhere, however, that without lubricants etc (which they didn't have then) the more forceful nature of anal sex, makes bleediing and hence the spread of infection more likely. This is not really relevant now, but in a society with no KY jelly (or whatever) and no condoms, an act which has no procreative purpose, but which easily spreads infection, could easily be forbidden on grounds of hygiene. But, we don't keep the Jewish hygiene laws today. So basically, if you want to ban homosexuality on this basis, I reckon we'd also better reinstitute burning mildewed clothes and sending people out of the town if they have particularly bad acne. Any takers?

However, the passages in Paul writings, I struggle more with. Having said that I struggle with a lot of things in Paul. Joan's right in saying that the translation is difficult, and frequently inconsistent. Those of us who are women here have to figure out whether to cover our heads in church and remove oursleves from any positions of authority in the church, before we start casting stones at homosexuals. Cultural context is important, and should be considered before we start leaping into condemnation of people on the grounds of biblical statements.

In the end the 2 greatest commandments are ...

1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength
2) Love your neighbour as yourself.

I can see no way that being gay or performing gay sex acts in the context of a loving relationship can prevent you from keeping the second of these. As for the first - even if we interpret those bible passages conservatively and homosexuals are disobedient to God, they can still be doing the best they can to love him as much as they can. Maybe the rest of us should start loving them more - they are our neighbour as much as the next person.

All the best,

I am no Falwell or Phelps. I don't hate gays. But the Bible says, and life proves, that male/female relationships are the natural thing.

The most simple look at physiology makes it clear that homosexual conduct is not natural to the human design.

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Originally posted by Stephen:
17.Another thread on sexuality.Arrrrrrgh.....[I am Stephen]

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Fortunately, this discussion isn’t about sexuality: it’s about justice. And how we interpret God's love. And how one should be faithful to God when the chips are down. And I don’t see how any thinking Christian can ignore it.

It was partly my response to this issue (along with such old chestnuts as the doctrine of hell) which defines the Christian I now am – the type of church I go to, the way I approach the Bible, the way I think or talk (on the rare occasions I’m brave enough to do so) about my faith.

It is an important issue for me (and I see for others who have posted on this thread) because I am faced with a particularly intense conflict between my ordinary sense of justice and the views which appear to be held by some writers of the Bible.

There is no moral reason (convincing to me) outside the Bible why gay couples cannot have a committed sexual relationship recognised and blessed by the surrounding community in the way that straight couples can. I see great suffering caused to gay Christians by the church’s refusal to accept that a gay relationship can be ‘a valid lifestyle choice’.

So, do I accept the prohibition of homosexual acts because I see it condemned in the Bible, despite every protest of my rebellious conscience?

Erm… well, I’ve never been much of a rebel, but…

No, I jolly well don’t. Am I by doing this following my own conscience rather than what I understand in the Bible? Well, yes. In this instance. And from that point there really is no turning back. In fear and trembling, the whole development of my faith then differs substantially from someone who comes to a different conclusion.

Part of the reason you probably struggle with is that pure reason and conscience tells you that homosexuality is not standard for humanity.

If I were an atheist, I would still have serious philosophical differences with homosexuality. The fact that I am a Christian only provides a definite moral law.

As to celibacy, I'd hold homosexuals to the same standard I do unmarried straight couples. Abstinance. The only thing is, in this case, I can find nothing in the Bible that would accept anything less than total abstinance from homosexual acts.

Oh some try to rationalize it because of what they "feel" or what God supposedly tells them, but God didn't write the Bible to go around and provide exception clauses to everyone that had attractions to goats, relatives,or members of the same sex. Nature is nature, right is right.

I am what some consider a "aberrant" Christian, and I admit there are many misinterpretations of Scripture in the church, but prayer, study, and research have led me to my current and assured position on this issue.

I harbor no hate or fear for the homosexual, any more than I fear or hate those in adultery, abuse, or any other lifestyle contrary to God's standard.

Like I say, I'd love to believe that our behaviour really didn't matter. But God has set things up, and His system is the one we are called as Christians to follow. Homosexuality is simply not in that plan according to any measured and accurate reading of the Scriptures, nor is it scientifically or physiologically correct.

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Matt - your penultimate posting saddened me. While you may be making a reasonable exigetical point, please remember that this is not an abstract issue for many. There are real people involved in all of this who can only be hurt by statements such as "Homosexuals are in rebellion [against God]", however you intended it.

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I stand by my statement. With the additional statement:
"heterosexuals are equally in rebellion".

I am sure I made this point in an earlier post that I am not in anyway marking out homosexuals as "especially bad". Just that they are bad, exactly like the rest of us. Myself included. Including every human being from Mother Teresa to Charles Manson. With the one exception of Jesus Christ.

In any discussion on anything to do with sin...including homosexuality, I always approach it with the assumption that we are all sinners and there are NO "better sinners" or "worse sinners". (although you'd have to go a long way to be better at sinning than me!)

It seems to me not that we are SINNERS because we SIN, but in fact the other way around: We SIN because we are SINNERS!

The manifestation of actual Sin...of any type...is a symptom of the disease.

When I say that homosexuality is sinful what I mean is that for that particular individual, the disease which we ALL suffer from (Sin) has chosen to mainfest itself in that particular behavioural symptom.

For me, I have the same disease, but different symptoms. Greed, pride, arrogance, lust. They are all on my list of symptoms.

The truth is, that regardless of the symptoms, the consequence of the disease is always the same if left untreated...death.

Fortunately, God has provided a medicine that cures the disease, in Jesus Christ. But just like a medical disease may leave a permenant scar, in the same way, even though we are healed, we are (for the present moment in this life) still suffering residual symptoms of the disease of Sin.

It is like the chickenpox scar I have on my neck. Harmless to me, but a reminder of what I was before I was healed.

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I know I keep on getting it wrong, being too soap-boxy, and for a variety of reasons tend to get over-angry in these discussions.

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No, no, no. It's only soap boxy and over-angry for people for whom ANY display or open acknowledgement of homosexuality is 'ramming it down our throats'. Some people will never be satisfied.

DrakeDetective...
I'd be interested to know why a

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The most simple look at physiology makes it clear that homosexual conduct is not natural to the human design.

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rachel_o

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I read somewhere, however, that without lubricants etc (which they didn't have then)

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In my years as a priest, I have not yet been able to find an answer to this dilema. My advice to everyone is to come and participate in Church, no matter what else might be happening in their lives.

Lets not kid ourselves. My heterosexuality is corrupt and sinful anyway. Everything I do is corrupt and sinful. Even when I'm being nice, I'm usually doing it for my own ends ultimately.

Regardless of whether homosexuality is intrinsically sinful or not, it seems to me a slightly irrelevant question. Your homosexuality is as corrupt as my heterosexuality.

Vehmently trying to resist this seems to me to be trying to argue out a little corner of our lives which we can say "this is NOT sinful! Jesus, I don't need YOU in THIS bit of my life, I've already got THIS little bit of my house in order by myself thankyou! I don't need your forgiveness for this bit."

It strikes me as being the last vestiages of our pride taking their stand. This isn't about homsexuality. It's about human nature.

Saying homosexuality (or anything else)isn't sinful
For example, it's like me trying to argue that my giving money to a homeless person yesterday was not sinful. I could show you a thousand bible verses which show how rightous it is.

It doesn't change the fact that the reason I did it was because I was with a girl who I was trying to impress with what a nice guy I am.....

Nicole, I have been browsing these boards at random as a new member. I happen to have some beliefs on this issue, so those were the threads I've responded to thusfar. I'm sure you'll see me in many other threads over the course of my time here. It's just the odds. And yes, I will reply to "dead" threads if I feel I have something to say. Who when first coming to a message board doesn't??

St--Please, read some biology and then try to tell me that the human body was designed to be sexually interchangeable..far from even the morality of it, homosexual acts are obviously not "in the flow" of natural actions.

All, I cannot believe that I am the only one here who understands what I'm saying in my posts. What a welcome. *sigh* It's as if I offered someone wine at an anti-drinking league. At any rate, if you're tired of this subject but just want to lend a little *gasp* agreement or something, feel free to email.

And REALLY, I'm not hateful and I DON'T BITE.

I refer you to my earlier exchange with Freddy for an answer to your particular expression of your number 2 views.

Also, people don't struggle with this because they know in their hearts that fundamentalist teaching is right and they're trying to escape it. People struggle with it because extreme and simplistic views are rarely correct, however emotionally tempting they are.

Oh, and your 'biology' argument deserves its own number, thankyou, I forgot about it:

Moreover I have (woe unto me!) taken unnatural medicines to curb my natural illness. Indeed I verily repent.

As for those spawns of Satan, tampons, I have inserted them where only a manly member should go, ah ah ah I put on dust and ashes.

Ever so slightly more seriously, if you want to go down the line of the 'natural' argument, you're going to have to do it a bit more rigorously. 'Natural' is a very slippery word, as is acknowledged in the literature on the subject; most authors start by defining what they mean by it. 'Natural' as normally used in theological discourse is to do with God's ordained purpose in making something the way it is. So what's God's ordained purpose for sex? Looking at biology, we see its purpose there is for reproduction - penis fits in vagina for the purpose of producing babies. However we are not just biological creatures: as humans we are also emotional and spiritual beings. The Anglican Church at least has long recognised these aspects to sexual relations: intimacy and bonding, personal and spiritual (see eg the 1662 marriage service for couples who can't have children, and the 1958(?) pronouncements on contraception). The 1991 House of Bishops report states that "The potential blessing of this bonding are such that a theology of creation will very properly see them as also 'natural', that is, within the purposes of God."

I cannot see the end of the 'what fits where' argument as anything other than: all sex must be for the purposes of procreation. This is because it ignores the emotional and spiritual side of sex.

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Originally posted by St Rumwald:

Without wishing to elaborate too much, lubricants of animal, plant or human origin would have been then available. But more to the point, the assumption is that sexual relations between two men are usually of a particular kind which, statistically, in fact, comes a poor third.

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Please remember I'm a GLE, and therefore don't necessarily have the knowledge about sex to figure out things people don't elaborate on.

Having siad that...

In reference to lubricants..... these people were wandering in the desert, and being fed manna and quail from heaven, they probably didn't have much around by way of animal or vegetable anything.

With reference to your 2nd point - I'm not sure I understand, but I'm assuming you mean anal sex is not the prevalent form of sexual activity between gay men? If so, then the verse we are talking about in Leviticus strikes me as irelevant anyway.

All the best,

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Originally posted by Joan the Dwarf:
PS Dear Sibling Drake, it is biologically unnatural to put a headphone earpiece in my ear. I have sinned against the natural flow of my body, I repent before thee, in the absence of Rev Gez.

Moreover I have (woe unto me!) taken unnatural medicines to curb my natural illness. Indeed I verily repent.

As for those spawns of Satan, tampons, I have inserted them where only a manly member should go, ah ah ah I put on dust and ashes.

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Hurrah for Joan. I was just in the middle of composing an angry post when I read yours.

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All, I cannot believe that I am the only one here who understands what I'm saying in my posts.

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Dear Drake's Detective,
I think most of us here understand your posts very well.

They seem to indicate that there is only one right view - yours - and that you are not very open to the views of others (on the Falwell thread in Hell, you actually said that you found the differing views of others on this issue 'disturbing')

You also seem to be pushing a simplistic natural law argument which is, literally, medieval and which probably qualifies by now as a PRATT - point refuted a thousand times.
Yet you seem to think it offers some kind of irrefutable insight.

In fact this argument has been around in its developed form since the days of St Thomas Aquinas, and its flaws have been pointed out ad nauseam long before now. I'll give just one example.

If I walk on my hands then I am using a part of my body for something it wasn't 'designed' for and which 'naturally' I should be doing with my feet.

So let's ban gymnastics - totally unnatural if you ask me.

Also you seem to think there's only one possible way of interpreting scripture - yours again.

I'm sure you are not hateful, but your posts come across as, well, somewhat lacking in charity and respect for others, to put it mildly.

This issue has been discussed many times on these boards, but here you come, barging in, spouting off a commonplace argument as though none of us will ever have heard it before and we'll all go 'Duh! why didn't we ever think of THAT before?'

Try pondering the concept that it's a good bet that many of us here have heard that sort of argument before and rejected it.

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The most simple look at physiology makes it clear that homosexual conduct is not natural to the human design.

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I don't wish to make this board X-rated with too many details, but as a medical student, I can tell you research shows that the type of conduct you are referring to is suprisingly common among at least a fair percentage of heterosexual couples on at least one encounter.

Surveys also suggest that a fair number of those who havn't had a heterosexual encounter of this nature would like to at some point in the future.

Did I put that delicately enough everyone?

But I also respect what God says about sex and the boundaries He placed on it.

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Originally posted by DrakeDetective:
For the record, I'm far from anti-sex. I think a good Christian marriage, (egalitarian no less) should be a lovely, very vibrant sexual relationship.

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Medic, thank you for your reasoned responses. Though not directly for me, I appreciate your feedback here.

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I would just like to take this opportunity to distance myself from anything drakedetective says. My "fundaMENTAList" alarm bells are ringing where our new friend is concerned.....

I hope he reads my posts...about us all being equally sinners. He says homosexuality is "unnatural", but hey...get this...God thinks we are ALL unnatural! imagine that! Any sin is completely alien to God's nature and therefore unnatural to him. drake, every time you are angry, or hurt someone you are being as "unnatural" to God as those "repulsive faggots" imagine that drake!!! Uncomfortable thought huh? Good job we've all got Grace then isn't it?.

(DISCLAIMER: previous "foggot"phrase was deliberate sarcasm use of language...quote marks do not represent quote by specific individual)

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Personally, I think this is one of the most beautiful things about homosexual sex: it points to an understanding of sexuality that is unavoidably spiritual, because we cannot pretend that it is about biology and procreation.

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Joan, you've come up with some good stuff on this thread, then you go and spoil it with this...errmmm...ok. Sorry, I've offended you before but I won't again.

Coz there is no procreation involved, the sex is automatically superspirtual?! ha!

Well, if I go out to euston station pick up half a dozen rent boys and stick my big end *ahem* "where the sun don't shine" to each one in turn would that be spiritual just coz they aren't gonna get pregnant?

No, it would be sordid and repulsive to God. Homosexual sex can be every bit as sordid too, and you know it. It doesn't strike me as "unavoidably spiritual" in the least. (sorry...that was extremely crude...had to be to make the point methinks)

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Ultimately, for me, this is incarnational: Christ became fully human and fully divine, each part in harmony, to help us reclaim every part of who we are.

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We don't reclaim anything. Christ reclaims us...all of us. God reclaims us for himself.

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They seem to indicate that there is only one right view - yours - and that you are not very open to the views of others

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Louise, I kind of know what you are getting at here, but you state it like it's an intrinsically bad thing.

I believe that 1+1=2. I think that is right, I think it is the only right view. I an not very open to the views of others on this issue. So if you think 1+1=3, I am very sorry, but I do not accord your view any weight.

Clearly, drake believes (possibly incorrectly) that this issue is an issue of this type. Given that he thinks that, it is not suprising he responds in this way. It doesn't neccessarily mean he is wishing to be opinionated and judgemental. He just happens to see this issue in a black and white way. Critisising the manner in which this makes him respond is a pointless exersise.

You should address the assumptions he is making which lead him to stop considering the issue in the same light you or I would consider "1+1=2".

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If I walk on my hands then I am using a part of my body for something it wasn't 'designed' for and which 'naturally' I should be doing with my feet.

So let's ban gymnastics - totally unnatural if you ask me.

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If you are going to use analogies you should use them in a consistent way.

The consistent application of the analogy for someone who lives a lifetime of homosexual activity would be if someone tried to walk on their hands their whole life and never used their feet.

Gymnastics in the analogy would be the equivilent of having a few homosexual encounters, as opposed to being a homosexual.

Also, no one is suggesting that homosexuality be "banned" (as in your analogy gymnastics is). They are simply saying it is not what God intended and harmful to us.

And we all know that gymnastics can be extremely harmful and result in an increased risk of injuries, precisely because we are using our bodies in unnatural ways.

Oh dear daisymay you are naughty - LOL!

Instead of constantly telling us "what God says", as if you are a prophet with a direct line to the Almighty and the only possibly correct interpetation, how about if you tried saying

"What I think God says is..."

or

"What I think the Bible says is..."

or even

"My interpretation of x verse in scripture is y" (whatever that might be).

Then you might not sound as if you believed you were the only person in the world who had a valid opinion on this matter.

I said:

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Personally, I think this is one of the most beautiful things about homosexual sex: it points to an understanding of sexuality that is unavoidably spiritual, because we cannot pretend that it is about biology and procreation.

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Matt replied:

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Joan, you've come up with some good stuff on this thread, then you go and spoil it with this...errmmm...ok. Sorry, I've offended you before but I won't again.

Coz there is no procreation involved, the sex is automatically superspirtual?! ha!

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I echo your 'ha' a hundred times. However that wasn't what I said I said homosexuality points to an intrinsically spiritual understanding of sexuality (that is, gay or straight). The difference is, for example as Christians we have a spiritual understanding of life. That doesn't mean that every event in life is experienced as spiritual!