Inspired by Funky’s recent exchange with Amba, I’ve decided to share my opinions regarding Christian acceptance of gays.
At the University of Pittsburgh (aka Pitt), in the fall semester of 1999, I attended a bible study series sponsored by the Pitt Rainbow Alliance and lead by Dr. Michael Penn-Strah, a protestant minister from Pittsburgh’s Northside. They used the study book Claiming the Promise by Mary Jo Osterman. I would like to share some reflections of that Bible study that stuck in my mind along with some other intermingled comments. (As a matter of disclosure, I am a Catholic Christian who before and after the Bible study believed that a homosexual tendency is not a sin but that engaging in homosexual sex, even in same-sex “marriage”, is sinful.)
I attended the study for personal as well as “professional” reasons. I was an opinions writer for The Pitt News. There was another writer, Michael Mazza, who always wrote pro-gay columns. I thought that I should balance out his columns with at least one from the other side.