Updated Friday lunchtime
Anglican Journal
People ‘feel they can contribute’
In order to understand the workings of “discernment groups,” Anglican Journal staff writer Marites N. Sison talked to Stephen Lyon, partnership secretary of the Church of England’s Partnership for World Mission.
Ecumenical ‘box of chocolates’ laid out for council
The Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations (IASCER) on May 7 asked the 14th ACC meeting here to endorse a set of resolutions, including one that urges the resumption of the Anglican Communion’s dialogue with the Oriental Orthodox Churches of the Middle East.
Anglican Mainstream
Report from ACC-14 Day 6 -The $1.5 million Indaba
Changing Attitude
What does it mean to be gay?
Friday lunchtime update
Changing Attitude
Gay journalist attacked for writing the truth
Thank you, Colin, for what you have written here and for perservering in what seems to most of us to be a hopeless task of actually having a ‘give and take’ conversation with these people.
Colin Coward writes that if there is no gay gene then why do people try to rid the church of something they do not believe to exist.
While argumentation is on that level, we may truthfully believe that its perpetrators do not wish to listen, only to stick to entrenched opinions.
Anyone who cannot see the flaws in the argument post a comment and we can then point them out.
My list so far: (1) I have never heard of anyone trying to rid the church of the gay gene or any other gene real or unreal. How does one extract a gene? (2) To say that there is hitherto no evidence for a gay gene (and that even if there were, our genes often programme us for worse behaviour than others in any given category of behaviour anyway: e.g. to be predisposed to be overweight can make one more lazy) is to accept that gay behaviour and identity *may*, or may very well in some circumstances, have some other… Read more »
I add my thanks, Colin.
The people you spoke with seem to have last had any instruction about sex in the 1950s.
I don’t suppose it would do any good, but I’d be tempted to suggest to them that an inordinate interest in other peoples’ sexual practices is certainly abnormal. You might offer to find them a good shrink.
Can someone enlighten this Yank about Chatham House Rules? Thanks.
¨I don’t suppose it would do any good, but I’d be tempted to suggest to them that an inordinate interest in other peoples’ sexual practices is certainly abnormal. You might offer to find them a good shrink.¨ CG I´ve always found it downright ASTOUNDING that LGBT Christians/others have very little, if any at all, interest in what heterosexuals ¨do¨ in their bedrooms (or hotels, or wherevers) when they are intimate. On the other hand…well, a need for a ¨shrink¨ does come to mind when listening to the puritans go on and on about SEX (makes me wonder if they have… Read more »
from chathamhouse.org.uk Chatham House Rule The Chatham House Rule reads as follows: “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed”. The world-famous Chatham House Rule may be invoked at meetings to encourage openness and the sharing of information. EXPLANATION of the Rule The Chatham House Rule originated at Chatham House with the aim of providing anonymity to speakers and to encourage openness and the sharing of information. It… Read more »
Blessings on Colin for carrying on through the muck. I would add three points to what he has written: 1) I think that dignifying these lobbyists with Press accreditation with the title “journalist” does a serious disservice to proper journalists who seek actually to gather and report on the news. Any idiot, sadly, can put on a badge that says “Press” on it. It does raise a question about the criteria for granting Press accreditation at these meetings. 2) I wonder if what really upsets these so-called journalists is not that there might be gay bishops or Primates out there,… Read more »
There may, or may not, be a gene(s) for homophobia. But as long as it doesn’t erupt into anti-gay behavior, I’m more than willing to allow it. “Behaviour is always cited as the objectionable thing, genes never”: yes, Christopher S, we agree.
But what to do about all the anti-gay behavior we so readily (and in Jamaica, “flamingly”: let the reader understand) do observe? Suffer from?
Lord have mercy!
“Any idiot, sadly, can put on a badge that says “Press” on it. It does raise a question about the criteria for granting Press accreditation at these meetings.” Yes.. How does David Virtue claim to be a journalist? Because he runs Virtueonline? Then it follows that Fred Phelps is a “journalist” too. Then can I set up a blog and credential myself as a journalist? I was an editor of my high school newspaper and had a weekly column. At least dear Ruth G. works for an actual newspaper. Even the people who write for the Moonie rag [Wash Times]… Read more »
Goodness sakes, is basic biology and genetics no longer part of the general education studies students must survey in college? There is no single gay gene, nor single straight gene. There are emerging candidates for those pieces of the Human Genome Now Decoded, which we are carefully investigating to get empirical clues to what the genetic influences are, especially those genetic pieces that may later tilt a person towards some point or partial range on the Kinsey Scale Adapated For Sexual Orientation. Meanwhile, along side the genetics, developmental biology studies have highlighted a second area, fetal development, wherein newly discovered… Read more »
I doubt the existence of a gay gene. Homosexuality seems more likely to result from development in the womb. We all start out with a basically female model. Those with XY chromosomes get a course of hormones that customize their bodies in a masculine direction. (Some XXers get masculinizing hormones as well.) The hormones are crucial to development but depend on the mother’s diet and physical state. There’s no Platonic ideal of masculine perfection — development produces viable individuals with different adaptations. A few are born with genitals somewhere between standard female and male; more are born programmed to respond… Read more »
Thanks to Colin Coward for his watching brief at ACC14 on behalf of the LGBT community. Despite Christopher’s protestations, most living humans would by now have understood the need for a more Christian approach to the homosexuality question. It seems though that the conservatives agenda is to constantly question the need for a more up-to-date hermeneutic process to deal with those who compound biblical fundamentalists who still view the Bible as not in any way deficient in the provision of answers to modern modern research into the matters of sexuality and gender issues. Ignorance, though, is no excuse for dogmatic… Read more »
“According to the Satcher Institute’s website, the Center for Excellence in Sexual Health, the program which is supporting the Indaba project, is funded by the Ford Foundation” – Mainstream – Robert Lundy’s assertion here, that the Satcher Institute’s ‘program which is supporting the Inmdaba project’ is funded by the Ford Foundation’ has been publicly denied by Canon Phil Groves, and should therefore be discounted by ‘Mainstream’ officially on it’s web-site. This sort of untruth, though, is typical of the anti-gay lobby advocates – like Mainstream – who will do all they can to discredit those who wish to initiate the… Read more »
I’m a bit confused, Fr. Coward. I’ve gone back to see what it was that you were attacked for writing, and I can’t find it. Did you suggest that a primate is gay?
Sadly, it does not surprise me to find that there are people who think that being gay is about having sex, or that “celibate gay man” is an oxymoron.
How about a moratorium on moratoria?
Hi Fr Ron- That being the case, why cite me as an example? I never apeal to biblical authority, not believing in it per se. The biblical documents will often say things that are true – but those same things were all true before the bibliocal documents were even written, so their appearing within the covers of the Bible is not the feature that makes them true. Correspondence to real-world reality is what makes them true; lack of correspondence would make them false. People say that one has always to examine the primary documents to understand something properly. That is… Read more »
Anglican Mainstream is neither.
Correspondence approaches to truth are shot through with holes, and indeed unavailable in areas like the arts and religion. I thought most had realised this, beyond a fringe.
Hi Pluralist- The situation is not as you say. There is a true yet trivial ‘semantic’ approach to truth: ‘”snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white’. But this is subsumed under the correspondence approach: what is said must correspond to reality. Beyond this, there is a coherence approach to truth, which obviously cannot tell the whole story as fictional accounts can be simultaneously totally coherent and totally untrue. Which all brings one back to the correspondence approach, unless there are any alternatives. Truth is undeniably a property of some but not all statements that are… Read more »
“who read the Bible to a greater extent than others’ What an amazingly pompous, holier than Thou, and untrue statement! What book do you think we read, Christopher, three passages at every Mass, two at every office, and in innumerable Bible studies, Ignatian exercises, private Bible studies, and what all? Seriously. Some Evangelicals certainly indulge in Bible mining more than the rest of us, by what right do you claim they actually READ it more than anyone else? “I appeal only to logic, natural law (such as it is) and real-world statistics.” For “appeal” read “twist”. Christopher, you cite poorly… Read more »