The Co-op Bank does not want to hold an account for Christian Voice. The Bank is taking this stance because of the organisation’s attitude to homosexuals. It says ‘99% of Christians would not support the level of discrimination against homosexuals urged by Christian Voice’
In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme Simon Williams for the Bank said ‘They are extreme views. They are not mild views… They simply do not fit with our ethical policies… such as… “Homosexual policemen are corrupted by what they do. How can they investigate cases of corruption?”’
Having seen the Christian Voice web site, which has a large section devoted to the participation of police in gay pride marches, it does appear that Christian Voice has an obsession with homosexuality which seems unusual. They do not, for example, suggest that divorced police officers should not investigate matrimonial disputes, or that police officers who commit adultery should not investigate cases of corruption. And whereas they may consider that homosexual activity is a crime against God, it is not, like adultery, also a crime against the spouses of those who engage in adulterous relationships.
It looks as though homosexuals are being singled out for hatred as the Co-op Bank say.
The Archbishop of Canterbury referred to this kind of behaviour in his presidential address to the Anglican Consultative Council on 20 June 2005. He said:
We are always in danger of the easiest religious technique of all, the search for the scapegoat; Paul insists without any shadow of compromise upon our solidarity in rebellion against God, and so tells us that we shall not achieve peace and virtue by creating a community we believe to be pure. And these words are spoken both to the Jew and the Gentile, both to the prophetic radical and the loyal traditionalist. The prophet, says Barth, ‘knows the catastrophe of the Church to be inevitable’ and he knows also that there is no friendly lifeboat into which he can clamber and row clear of the imminent disaster.’
‘We are all butchers pretending to be sacrificers. When we understand this, the skandalon that we had always managed to discharge upon some scapegoat becomes our own responsibility, a stone as unbearably heavy upon our hearts as Jesus himself upon the saint’s shoulders in the Christopher legend’. Not Barth this time, but René Girard, the French philosopher (A Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare, p.341), once again paraphrasing Paul’s central theme.
I’d like to ask why Christian Voice should particularly choose to scapegoat the gay community. In one sense, the question has no rational answer. It is as incomprehensible as the idea which erupted in many parts of Europe in the middle ages that Jews took Christian boys to sacrifice at Passover. Both are just examples of a group finding solidarity in turning their corporate wrath on to a scapegoat. We can possibly appreciate how people in the middle ages might have perceived those of different faith or customs to be a threat. But what threat could a homosexual person possibly pose to heterosexual people? The gay man is not going to steal my wife, and I know that sex with any other person, male or female, breaks the marriage vows which I took before God and in the eyes of the state.
So is the problem for Christian Voice precisely that the gay man does not want my wife? He doesn’t envy me for having an attractive wife, or see me as a rival for someone he desires? Reading the Archbishop’s references to Girard, is the perceived problem about gay people the fact that they seem often so envy free in comparison with those whose role model is the dominant male? Is that why they are victimised?
Or is it particularly for men who see themselves as dominant, a fear of being raped? Often they are the people who maintain that the Church must be led by men, and that women should “submit” to their husbands. Such men enjoy dominance, and see that view supported by scripture. For such a person, homosexual rape is the ultimate humiliation. This is the story of the men of Sodom in Genesis 19 and one can see how repugnant it is. But Lot’s solution ‘Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please.’ is even more horrific: he appears to treat his daughters as property which he can give for anyone to abuse.
Within a Christian context the situation in Uganda where in 1885 King Mwanga had three pages dismembered and burned for rejecting his homosexual advances is almost equally well known. The young men are rightly regarded as martyrs.
Homosexual rape is an extreme example of male domination, with a specific intention of humiliating the victim. Of course, fear of this kind of activity should give men an insight in to the horror which any woman has of being raped, and this danger is much greater than the danger to men. It is at least arguable that throughout the Bible what is condemned about homosexual activity is that it is not seen as an act of love but of repugnant male violence by a dominant person against an unwilling, weaker sexual partner.
But a loving partnership of two people of the same sex is completely different from that. For, just as one would hope that in a marriage the partners should seek each other’s greatest good and happiness in their sexual activity, one would suppose that the same intentions would be present in a homosexual couple. The law provides protection against rape both for homosexual and heterosexual couples, even where the latter are married. It is for the individual to judge whether sexual activity is consensual or abusive.
To my mind that should be the limit of the church’s concern about homosexual couples. After all, in Britain today, we have far more unmarried heterosexual couples, and they aren’t the recipients of abuse and hatred all the time from ‘Christian Voice’.
In my view the Co-op Bank was right to draw attention to the bigoted homophobic victimization of the gay community by ‘Christian Voice’. Would that others might adopt a similarly ethical stance.
This is really too much. Why are conservatives so OBSESSED with homosexuality? This question is a patent means of directing the discourse away from the real questions (What acts are licit? What behaviors are normal? Are there other ramifications of abnormality?) and toward the questioner. Your reaction is to observe that a publication “has an obsession with homosexuality which seems unusual.” Unusual. We know what that means. They’re repressed; they’re fascinated with deviance; they’re perverts themselves. As if conservatives were the ones pushing the subject of homosexuality into public policy and public discourse. Thirty years ago, the prevailing claim, at… Read more »
At risk of being accused of being a closet Christian Voice supporter, or a wife-beater, the answer to all of this long argument is that for Evangelicals (and other traditions as well) the very foundational bedrock of society as God has ordained it is Christian marriage, exclusive of all others, between a man and a woman, for life. Marriage is intended to be the means of procreation and rearing of children within God-fearing households. Those who are so stridently pursuing an agenda of gay equality have ensured a response from the Evangelical community, which does not want to see Christian… Read more »
Let me get this straight, DGus. I’m not sure that I understand you. You mean that this barrage that conservatives must defend themselves against is instituted solely by homosexuals and it is all their fault that they want the right to live full lives, to have all the things that the conservatives claim for their own pleasure such as loving relationships, families, freedom from persecution and all that? So, if they would just be good little homosexuals, choose to be heterosexual and shut up and leave y’all alone, despite their own misery and the unfairness of their lives, life would… Read more »
Well, actually, there is something perverted in hating people as much Christian Voice does. I have Stephen Green’s little book on homosexuality somewhere, “The Sexual Dead End”, and it’s nt the product of a particularly healthy or balanced mind.
Dear Annie: Well, I had THREE points, neither of which is fairly characterized in your post: 1. The discussion isn’t helped by exploring (i.e., speculating about) the deep inner motives of, and the probable pathologies of, the other guy. Rather, we should discuss the issues–like, say, how a police officer’s sexual behavior does or doesn’t affect his fitness for and effectiveness at the job. 2. It’s laughably unfair to complain that outspoken opponents of homosexual behavior reflect an “obsession”, since in fact this issue is virtually thrown in one’s face at every turn. One stifles oneself NOT to respond. 3.… Read more »
But, vscoles, why is marriage threatened more by gays that by adulterers?
Given that genesis is a myth in the sense that it never happened, I don’t see how you can argue with some confidence from it. There are problems — well known ones — in deriving “ought” from “is”; but deriving “ought” from “wasn’t” is even more precarious.
>> At risk of being accused of being a closet Christian Voice supporter, or a wife-beater, the answer to all of this long argument is that for Evangelicals (and other traditions as well) the very foundational bedrock of society as God has ordained it is Christian marriage, exclusive of all others, between a man and a woman, for life. Marriage is intended to be the means of procreation and rearing of children within God-fearing households. << OK, so then where *is* the equivalent level of evangelical outspokenness and opposition and outrage when it comes to (heterosexual) divorce or adultery among… Read more »
DGus 1. We should discuss the issues–like, say, how a police officer’s sexual behavior does or doesn’t affect his fitness for and effectiveness at the job. Oh? Well, we’ll have to examine this without prejudice from both angles, as say, myself, a woman, and how I’ve been treated by heterosexual male policemen? Can we do that, then? And make certain that all offenses by both heterosexuals and homosexuals are given equal voice and equal value? Yes, perhaps it would be good to always consider exactly how everyone conducts themselves according to their sexual proclivity. EVERY infraction being equally prosecutable. 2.… Read more »
“OK, so then where *is* the equivalent level of evangelical outspokenness and opposition and outrage when it comes to (heterosexual) divorce or adultery among Christians and within society overall?”
1. I am not aware of any campaign to grant moral approval to divorce or adultery.
2. If there were to be such a campaign then it would be resisted by Evangelicals and many others.
3. New Labour will no doubt soon make it a criminal offence to express disapproval of any form of sexual activity currently engaged in by members of the Cabinet.
I’ve never understood why heterosexuals are excessively interested in the intimate activities of GLBT people? I don’t believe GLBT folk spend much time (any) torturing and/or entertaining themselves by thinking about what heterosexuals are “doing” sexually or trying to monitor *them* as agents/warriors/sorters for GOD. I’m told there are a couple of “Gay” programs on T.V. these days (which I’ve never seen) that are a little overly “colorful” and revealing about GLBT people…they are offensive to some conservatives I understand (as posted above). How similar *they* must be to the NON-STOP creepy/sinful/dirty/virtueless sexual stories/sagas and behavior of HETEROSEXUALS which have… Read more »
“But I *am* deeply troubled by what seem to be profound inconsistencies in emphasis by those who maintain the traditionalist view” Most of what I read in the public media is actually a misrepresentation of what Evangelicals believe. And because of the popular notion that just because one side is mounting a massive pro-gay campaign, so the other side is mounting an opposite and equal reaction: therefore it is easy to portray the “traditional” side as running a campaign of equal size, funding and ferocity. The media like conflict: therefore it suits them to over-emphasise and to distort in order… Read more »
Andrew Brown said: “But, vscoles, why is marriage threatened more by gays that by adulterers? Given that genesis is a myth in the sense that it never happened….” It’s your question, not one that Evangelicals would recognise. The debate here (and the bizarre assertion about “scapegoating”) is about “gays” and the Evangelical response to the liberal Western campaign to render homosexuality entirely legally and morally equivalent to Christian marriage. If you want to ask about adultery, then the same principle applies: all forms of sexual activity outside Christian marriage fall short of the intentions of God for mankind as expressed… Read more »
vscoles writes “the very foundational bedrock of society as God has ordained it is Christian marriage” Adam and Eve weren’t Christians. Many of the Old Testament leaders had concubines as well as a wife; sometimes more than one wife. Jesus Christ wasn’t married and suggested that he had come to break up families, not to make them. St Paul wasn’t married: nor is the Pope or any Catholic priest or Orthodox bishop. Marriage is great, but it’s not the only way, and to say that marriage between one man and one woman is “the very foundational bedrock of society as… Read more »
It’s a staple of conservative rhetoric that allowing same-sex couples to marry will Destroy Marriage. It’s a key talking point. Ontario has had same-sex marriage since 2003 – most Canadian provinces do. It’s clearly here to stay. We went to get a marriage license, at Toronto’s city hall last fall. The lineup in the office was a bit like the lineup for Noah’s Ark, if Noah hadn’t been all that concerned about breeding pairs: boys and boys, girls and girls, boys and girls, all manners, sorts and conditions of people. It was kind of fun – there was a little… Read more »
Here’s the deal, vscoles: do whatever you like in your own Church and in your own life. Nobody will try to stop you, believe me; it’s entirely your own business. That’s what “freedom of religion” is about. If we don’t like your views, we’ll find (or found) a different Church; it’s happened hundreds of times before, after all. But marriage is a civil instrument, whether you like that fact or not. The problem we are having these days is that many religionists can’t seem to separate the two issues, and think that their religious views should prevail in the political… Read more »
jak said: “Adam and Eve weren’t Christians. Many of the Old Testament leaders had concubines as well as a wife; sometimes more than one wife. Jesus Christ wasn’t married and suggested that he had come to break up families, not to make them. St Paul wasn’t married: nor is the Pope or any Catholic priest or Orthodox bishop. Marriage is great, but it’s not the only way, and to say that marriage between one man and one woman is “the very foundational bedrock of society as God has ordained it” is to back project modern evangelical America into the whole… Read more »
When gay and lesbian people have full social and legal equality, then we will stop pressing for change.
I’m afraid the crumbs of being institutionally discriminated against but allowed to exist as long as we are nice, quiet little poofs and sit on our hands at the requisite moments just doesn’t wash anymore.
Thats why we’re not going to shut up, and the more the outside society – as is happening in the UK – finds gay rights issues uncontroversial and unremarkable – the more we shall concentrate on working for change within an institutionally homophobic Church.
bls said: “Here’s the deal, vscoles: do whatever you like in your own Church and in your own life. Nobody will try to stop you, believe me; it’s entirely your own business. That’s what “freedom of religion” is about. If we don’t like your views, we’ll find (or found) a different Church; it’s happened hundreds of times before, after all. But marriage is a civil instrument, whether you like that fact or not. The problem we are having these days is that many religionists can’t seem to separate the two issues, and think that their religious views should prevail in… Read more »
vscoles ; thing is, though you may wish it different, its my Church just as much as yours.
I’ve already found such a Church, vscoles, and won’t need your links, thanks. It’s called The Episcopal Church in the United States of America. You know: the one that has discerned holiness in same-sex unions, and believes that same-sex partnered clergy may lead Christ’s flock? There are increasing numbers of people elswhere – this is your major problem, of course – who agree with ECUSA about this, as well. Perhaps, then, it’s actually you who ought to find a place where you’ll be safe? I can provide you some links, if you’d like. And please don’t play the martyr. I… Read more »
BTW, here are some of Jesus’ thoughts on marriage and family: Matthew 8:21-22: “Another of the disciples said to Jesus, Sovereign, let me first go and bury my father. But Jesus said to him, Follow me; and let the dead bury the dead.” Matthew 10:34-39 34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 36 and a man’s foes will be those… Read more »
“barrage,” “thrown in one’s face,” etc. etc. ad nauseam: why do simple requests for equality—which is the RIGHT to be “let alone”—get violently mischaracterized?
a *twisted fear of rape*: Tom Ambrose is right on!
[But why? Why, oh Lord, why?]
bls, I am afraid that the indications this week are that ECUSA is in a small minority within the Anglican Communion, and even within ECUSA the debate continues, so that the views expressed by its current establishment may not continue to be held by future generations. Many are also leaving ECUSA for new churches or existing denominations which do not accept its current stance. I predict that 20 years from now there will be a very different Anglican Communion Church in the USA. You still insist that people conform to your views, although you say people are free to believe… Read more »
Fear, J.C. Simple as that.
You’d think that some of this post and debate would consider the question of whether it’s correct for the Co-Op to choose its customers according to their views on homosexuality (or anything else). Instead it’s all about whether CV are good eggs or not. You can agree or diasgree with them, but what does the Co-Ops ‘diversity’ mean when people are penalised for what they think ? I keep reading posts about Chritian unity and getting on with each other when mainstream Anglicans are dismayed by homosexual bishops, but I get a distinct sense of ‘cast themn into the darkness’… Read more »
You would like people to think so, to judge from your insistence on fear, merseymike. But you need to insist on it in order to justify the sort of claims made in Ambrose’s article, and indeed to provide some basis for that rather weak term, homophobia. Why insist upon a bogus psychological explanation for people who disagree with you? That’s what the old Soviet Union used to do to people when it couldn’t win arguments by rational methods. They were ‘diagnosed’ and then sent to the Gulags. Do you fear people who disagree with you on issues other than this… Read more »
VSCOLES, answering Andrew Brown, said > The debate here (and the bizarre assertion about “scapegoating”) > is about “gays” and the Evangelical response to the liberal Western campaign > to render homosexuality entirely legally and morally equivalent > to Christian marriage. Clearly, you don’t understand the Archbishop of Canterbury’s reference, which requires a thorough study of Rene Girard. He mentioned the name on purpose. VSCOLES also told Andrew Brown > You are not a theologian, > or you would know that “myth” in a religious context….. Andrew Brown has written books containing very well argued theology – Don’t dismiss him… Read more »
vscoles is quite right. In 20 years there will be a very different Anglican Communion Church in the USA. One without right-wing, “evangelical” fundamentalists! Can you say “Amen!”?
“Verbal abuse”? You mean, “argument”? Sorry – I thought that’s what the boards are for. BTW, I thought you guys had contempt for people who object to “verbal abuse,” didn’t you? Isn’t that exactly your point in all the posts above? And “small minority”? You mean, a “vote” of 30-to-28? Yeah: that’s certainly a giant landslide. And Oh, joy! Another “vote” in the Anglican Communion on the status of gay people! What a wonderful way to do things, eh? In any case, I’m not worried about people who are already IN the Anglican Communion; I’m worried about people who are… Read more »
“As Mike says, we’re just not going anywhere. Sorry.”
Nope! We ain’t gunna haul anchor vscoles.
Gracias a Dios
vscoles: Is homosexuality really such a big threat to Christian marriage? Not in my parish or diocese. The big threat is heterosexual couples living together without the benefit of marriage. At least two-thirds of my baptisms are bastards. My parish register even includes the baptism of the bastard grandchild of one of my predecessors. Of roughly 20 marriages over the past 3 years, only one couple had not lived together before marriage (and that groom was a 70-year-old widower who belongs to the fundamentalist church down the road). The joke around here is that couples wait to get married until… Read more »
(I would like to hear, though, just once, what “evangelicals” and “orthodox” have to say about Jesus’ statements on family, as given above.
By all means, please fill in the meaning. I’ve never heard anyone from the “family values” side discuss this question – not a big surprise there – so please. I’m all ears.)
If Andrew Brown does understand theology then he ought to use language more carefully. As should Tom Ambrose: dismissing the scriptures as “fairy tales” and with them the great weight of 2,000 years of Christian doctrinal and moral formulation, indicates as well as anything I have seen that the bible no longer really has any significance for those who are pursuing secular rights in this way. It will be made to conform to their agenda. The evidence of recent history suggests that the Bible is right about marriage. The growing disorder in western societies which have discarded the biblical model,… Read more »
You argue that transient relationships and unsafe sex are destroying society, vscoles – yet you actively work to deny the stability of marriage to homosexual people and their families. Hmmm. There’s a contradiction everywhere you look, isn’t there? An indication that the arguments are based on false premises. And I’m still interested in DGus’ point about “acts,” wherein lies still ANOTHER contradiction. He seems to argue that “acts” themselves are by definition either good or evil. IOW, a rape by a man of a woman is justified – since the heterosexual “act” is defined as the standard of good. (And… Read more »
Dear BLS: You say, “If conservatives would stop referring to gay people as merely the perpetrators of a series of ‘homosexual acts,’ I think people would stop assuming you’re obsessed with sex. We’re human beings, you know, with lives, loves, hopes, and dreams, like all others….” In the first place, I can’t believe that anyone really thinks, in his heart, that conservative critics of homosexuality are “obsessed with sex”, in any statistically important sense; rather, this is a cynical attempt at distraction. One used to hear, from the opposite direction, that conservatives hate sex, hate the body, etc.; but this… Read more »
Dear Annie: Your post includes some statements I agree with, but in a few instances I feel I can’t tell what your point is, so I won’t try to reply. I do want, however, to respond to the closing paragraph of your comment: “It is even more regrettable that by justifying hatred in the name of God all these homophobic people are in fact living in a sinful state, that of breaking of the first and second commandments…. Do you hate people who commit adultery, get divorced or break copyrights? ??? No, hate is not justified by scripture. It is… Read more »
Occasionally I visit this site to ‘take the temperature’ of Episcopalianiam/Anglicanism. It seems to me the patient is now very ill. Some of you seem very bitter that Ecusa and the Canadians have been slammed by the rest of the Communion. Don’t you believe in the catholicity of Anglicanism and mutual accountability and submission within the Body of Christ? Or is it just another Protestant sect that will split if one part doesn’t get its way? Some of you talk about ‘MY’ church as if it was your own possession. Don’t you believe it belongs to Christ and Him alone?
Some of you talk about ‘MY’ church as if it was your own possession. Don’t you believe it belongs to Christ and Him alone.
I’m a member of the “Body of Christ” and no amount of feardriven discrimination or exclusion from “communion” by hate mongers is going to change that fact…thanks be to God!
“In the first place, I can’t believe that anyone really thinks, in his heart, that conservative critics of homosexuality are “obsessed with sex”, in any statistically important sense; rather, this is a cynical attempt at distraction.” I think if we had seen anything LIKE this sort of reaction when ECUSA ordained women, for instance, we might agree with you. I don’t think it’s a distraction; I actually think it’s true – although I think it’s mostly based in simple prejudice against gay people, and distaste for homosexual sex, rather than “hatred of the body.” To me, this is really about… Read more »
Dear BLS: You say that I “seem[] to argue that ‘acts’ themselves are by definition either good or evil. IOW, a rape by a man of a woman is justified – since the heterosexual ‘act’ is defined as the standard of good. (And in fact, the Bible weighs in on the issue, too! According to Deuteronomy, a virgin who is raped must marry her rapist.) Yet I doubt he will argue this – which indicates that he can indeed make distinctions between good and evil based on some criteria other than “acts” per se. Let’s try to work from there,… Read more »
Martin Hambrook, the Truth is not determined in “votes” by men (apparently only half the human race is allowed a voice) in purple shirts. The Church is a human institution, as can easily be seen by the many errors and persecutions of its past. It has caused suffering and death to many innocent people it deemed “unworthy”; John Paul II finally got around to an apology to Jews only a few years ago. St. John of the Cross – now a saint – was beaten and starved by his fellow “Christians.” If the “unity” of the Anglican Communion depends on… Read more »
I find it faintly amusing the way conservatives talk about God as some sort of headmaster in the sky,with views and opinions.
Honestly, when are you going to get to grips with the fact that science has shown Christian orthodoxy to be a fairy tale?
Come on Bls, JCF et al. You’re writing as if homosexuality were the only consensual sexuality that is banned by the bible and christian tradition… What about incest, polyamoury, bisexualism, transexualism etc etc ? Am I “oppressing and hating” people when I state that I uphold christian teaching on those too ? Neither you nor I are the centre of the universe; not even of our own universes. We must become transformed into His glorious Likeness. Dying to self, becoming a new person. Our calling is to express Him in everything we do, as well as how we do it.… Read more »
One of the late Archbishops of Canterbury, A Michael Ramsey, used to say that “grace is always refracted by human matter.” How do we know that scriptural prohibitions of homosexual relations in Leviticus, Romans 1, and 1 Corinthians 6 were really inspired by God? The biblical writers, as human beings, were very much people of their own times and cultures, which they often saw as divinely ordained. We are all called, as was St. Paul in his days, to live empowered by the resurrection: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who… Read more »
David aka DGus, You said: I don’t know of anyone in this discussion who (to use your phrase) “justif[ies] hatred in the name of God”. You seem to assume that anyone who believes that homosexual acts are sinful is guilty of “homophobia”, which seems to mean hatred. It’s not true. –David With all due respect, I was under the impression that we were speaking of the right of Christian Voice to publish their prejudicial slant as was discussed in the blog entry. Therefore, I assumed that you were in agreement with Christian Voice and everything I have seen you post… Read more »
DGus: “When two homosexuals are in a relationship with each other, I can approve of much that is between them–their love for each other, their affection, their courtesy, their honesty, their loyalty, their generosity, their care, their good humor, their patience. Of course I have no criticism of these things.” Then why would these good things *evaporate* if they LOVINGLY TOUCH one another??? This makes NO sense! (and it ain’t in the Bible) Dave: “Come on Bls, JCF et al. You’re writing as if homosexuality were the only consensual sexuality that is banned by the bible and christian tradition… What… Read more »
A nugget from bls: “THIS, BTW, is hilarious: “I am sure we are all well aware here of the biblical quotations you have provided. But you have selected them in a literalistic, even fundamentalist fashion, out of context, depriving them of their meaning.” Particularly in this context!” Precisely the problem with much of the Ambrose article and that of his supporters here is that they either imagine, rather than understand Evangelical theology; or worse they seek to caricature it, as a prelude to rubbishing their own caricature. Fortunately it’s not that simple. You need to shake off the unexamined prejudices… Read more »
Dear Merseymike: You say, “I find it faintly amusing the way conservatives talk about God as some sort of headmaster in the sky, with views and opinions. Honestly, when are you going to get to grips with the fact that science has shown Christian orthodoxy to be a fairy tale?” Aren’t you droll–“faintly amusing”, indeed! You don’t know the half of it. We actually believe that this one man could walk on water, even though science has proved this impossible–a fact that those stupid ancients who wrote the Bible missed out on, being pre-scientific. (So what’s OUR excuse?) We also… Read more »
DGus: wise and compassionate words. Faithfulness to Christ means living within His Word and dying to ourselves. Those who seek to normalize the many paraphilias the human race is heir to (under the banner of ‘diversity’) are inspired by politics and not by faith in Christ. Merseymike’s fatuous comments make that clear.
JCF wrote: “I, for one, am not afraid to listen to a *case* for polyamoury . . . BUT IT’S NOT *MY* CASE (or that of LGBT Anglicans)” DGus wrote: “..let’s be quite clear: Monogamous, committed, life-long homosexual unions are NOT the final sexual frontier that the Church will face. If the ECUSA were to include, in the BCP, public rites blessing such unions, does anyone suppose that that would be the end..” David, Quite! You make the point very well.. I thought the ECUSA presentation at ACC-13, when they said that this is just about life-long homosexual partnerships, was… Read more »