A friend of mine and semi-frequent comment poster has asked me numerous times to stop posting "anti-gay stuff". This Sed Contra post might interest him. The blogger at SC is David Morrison, author of Beyond Gay. He lives with same-sex attraction, but does not accept or advocate the gay lifestyle. His most recent post, about the proper Christian response to homosexuals, relates to Sunday's Gospel reading.
I care about this so much because I wouldn't be Christ's today if it were not for the friendship and love of the Christians in my first Anglican parish, people who knew I was a gay activist, didn't agree with me about gay sex, and loved me anyway. They knew I had homosexual sex and that I believed it was fine - and they disagreed with me. But they nevertheless invited me to their cookouts, car washes, sporting events, school plays, pot lucks - the whole joyful, chaotic mess of parish and family life and as our friendships deepened they showed me they loved me.
And they told me their stories too. They told me about their own past drug use, their own previous abortions, their own prior womanizing, and their own previous struggles with the Faith and its demands. In short, they made it clear to me that the church universal is a hospital for sinners far more than it is a penthouse for saints.
Funky Dung
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How quaint, that we are supposed to imitate the Man who sat with tax collectors and prostitutes, yet who still spoke out for the straight and narrow.
I recalled hearing about a Mass specifically for homosexuals that happens weekly somewhere in Pittsburgh; some people thought it was a bad idea, but I remember thinking that it could be a powerful ministry. Of course, it could also just be a way for a PC priest to confirm people in their lifestyles in defiance of the Church, but I'm glad that more people are talking about how we are to LOVINGLY minister to homosexuals, however uncomfortable and messy it may be.
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Posted 15 Sep 2004 at 1:17 pm ¶Thank you for this post. I'll have to study it some more.
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Posted 15 Sep 2004 at 1:18 pm ¶Interestingly, the Sed Contra page is blocked (due to "adult content") from within the Lucent Technologies firewall. Makes me all the more interested to see what's happening over there!
In other news, only about 4 days til National Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day.
cheers
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Posted 15 Sep 2004 at 1:57 pm ¶Went over to Sed Contra (on my unrestricted machine @ home). I guess the idea that a gay guy would see same sex attraction as a disorder, and promote chastity and obedience to Scripture and his faith, is simply too "adult" for Lucent's (ticker: LU) site blocker. Please note this is not content filtering, but purely based on sites disallowed. Let's call this a case of Political Correctness Bigotry.
But to the topic at hand, this gent over at Sed Contra makes a great point: I.e., that all Christians (and all people) live with various disorders (i.e., "besetting sins") and that same sex attraction is just another one of them. The fact that many Christians single this particular temptation out as deserving special (i.e., un-Christ-like) treatment is an embarrassment to me as a Christian.
Thanks, Funky, for the good link… and for being just a little bit less "anti-gay."
Cheers
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Posted 16 Sep 2004 at 4:41 am ¶Post a Comment