Thanks for weighing in.

You could easily condemn same-sex eroticism without condemning gays and lesbians as individuals. But why? What is your motivation? Why get strict around enforcing the Bible’s sexual mandates when it comes to homosexuality, but not when it comes to the Bible’s weird and sometimes offensive dictates on what it means to be straight?

Regarding how we read Biblical passages that describe oddball (to us) sexual behavior, I think you are letting the Bible off too easily. I don’t know how hard of heart a person has to be to make it OK to require a raped woman to marry her attacker, for example, and remember God killed Onan for not consummating his relationship with his dead brother’s widow, which is weird no matter how you exegete it. God told Hosea to enter into a loveless marriage with a prostitute. Abraham and Sarah where half-siblings whose marriage was entirely blessed by God. Cue the dueling banjos.

I you still have to struggle with what the Bible says about being straight. For me it doesn’t explain away as easily as it seems to for you. In my struggle, I’ve found plenty of room for my GLBT friends.

We might wish the Bible inserted a condemnation here or there but the narrative continues and we assume God is unperturbed. Regarding weird laws, Jesus said, sometimes God gave laws which were sub-moral because the people were sub-moral (hard of heart) but that cannot be conflated with His approval.

Is it not possible to condemn homosexuality as sub-moral without condemning homosexuals as sub-human? I condemn many sins in myself without condemning myself. The world tells us we must accept or reject a person based on their behaviour. Is it not our vocation as Christians to teach the world that one need not love a person’s behaviour to love the person.

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The computer revolution is over. The computers won.
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Another two points.

1. I haven’t given it much thought, but I’m inclined to agree that people should use bathrooms that correspond to their anatomy rather than their sexual identity. But that has nothing to do with my friends getting married. I assure you that the brides at the wedding I attended use the women’s restroom. I find it unhelpful to make broad moral judgments based upon isolated weirdness.

2. It’s true that in my homily I didn’t use a Biblical text. That actually was a first for me, and I felt able to write and deliver the homily as I did because it wasn’t a service of Christian worship. I did use the world around me for inspiration, and by so doing I was engaging in a tradition called “Natural Theology.” Jesus, Paul, St. Francis, and John Calvin, all rely upon natural theology so I felt like I was on fairly solid ground.

Regards,

Ben

Jim, in response to your post, let me begin with the end. Part of why I write is to seek balance in the ways I express myself as a Christian. Every Sunday I preach sermons that are rooted in scripture. I teach weekly Bible studies. I use the Bible daily in my work. As a social and political commentator, I try to think morally and theologically about the issues of the day. Sometimes that means quoting scripture, and sometimes it means mentioning God, but not always.

Don’t be too shocked about this. I’m doing exactly what all of us do when we use the tools of our faith to examine a world unimagined by the Bible.

Regarding my acceptance of Homosexuality, I realize that there are three or four passages of scripture that condemn same sex eroticism, but the Bible isn’t a sex manual. If we read the Bible literally looking for directions on how to order our sexual relationships we’d find ourselves in a mess. First, the Bible is contradictory. In Levitcus sex between half-siblings in condemned, yet Abraham and Sarah were half siblings, and God blesses their union more than any other in the Bible. Paul speaks against pre-marital sex in 1 Corinthinas, yet Ruth “uncovers Boaz’ feet” on the threshing floor.

Secondly, the Bible endorses sexuality we find repulsive today. The Bible condones polygamy and it assumes that men will sleep with the women servants in his house. In Genesis God kills Onan because he won’t impregnant his dead brother’s wife, and then, when the wife dresses like a prostitue and seduces her father-in-law, that’s seen as a good thing.

So I find myself looking for Biblical principles such as love and fidelity to guide me when I’m trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong in the world of human coupling. It’s easier than trying to figure out all of the Bible’s direct statements about sex.

By the way. Is it your relationship with Christ that causes you to find homosexuality to be a sin, or is it your reading of scripture?

Ben