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#Post#: 35325--------------------------------------------------
Re: Homosexuality - Is it a Sin?
By: guest8 Date: October 13, 2021, 10:34 pm
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[quote author=patrick jane link=topic=85.msg35324#msg35324
date=1634171490]
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What Comes After the Ex-Gay Movement? The Same Thing That Came
Before.
Old-school evangelical leaders once knew the value of “care”
over “cure.”
“You know, Mike, I used to be gay,” I said.
Mike stopped moving his paintbrush as the words fell clumsily
from my mouth. He was painting the St. Louis apartment I called
home in the summer of 1997 as I began working toward my PhD in
historical theology.
He’d asked me about my schooling, and we got to talking about
faith. Mike had explained to me how he felt he could never go to
church because he was gay.
“I know they say that’s not supposed to happen,” I went on,
after dropping the bombshell. “But that’s my story.” Mike stared
at me with interest as he set the paint can down, gently
balancing his brush on its edge.
Looking back on this encounter, I can see that it had all the
trappings of what became known as the ex-gay movement, of which
I was once an eager proponent. Most notable is my use of the
ex-gay script: “I used to be gay.” The phrase implied that I
wasn’t gay anymore. I had a testimony, a story to tell about
leaving homosexuality behind.
To be clear, my sexual attractions at that moment were drawn as
exclusively to other men as ever. I was still at the top of the
Kinsey scale that researchers since the 1940s have used to
classify sexual orientation. What made me ex-gay was that I used
the ex-gay script. I was trying to convince myself that I was a
straight man with a disease—a curable one—called homosexuality.
A condition that was being healed.
My terminological maneuver was an integral component of
conversion therapy. Alan Medinger, the first executive director
of Exodus International, described it as “a change in
self-perception in which the individual no longer identifies
him- or herself as homosexual.” It was all about identity. The
testimony made the man. And, within my ex-gay framework, I
wasn’t lying; I was claiming my new reality.
I was an ex-gay.
The emergence of Exodus International in 1976 had set
evangelicals on a hopeful path toward curing homosexuality.
Founder Frank Worthen explained, “When we started Exodus, the
premise was that God could change you from gay to straight.”
What followed was a decades-long experiment on hundreds of
thousands of human test subjects. The movement collapsed after
Exodus president Alan Chambers’s 2012 statement that more than
99 percent of Exodus clients had not experienced a change in
their sexual orientation.
Although the paradigm of cure failed, it still walks undead
among us, as some within major denominations try to
institutionalize its approach. Recent debates among conservative
Anglicans and Presbyterians over whether someone can claim a
“gay identity” are only the latest round of similar disputes
that have echoed in church corridors for years. After all,
renouncing a homosexual self-perception was an essential first
step in conversion therapy.
One effect of this approach was that it mandated that
non-straight believers hide behind a mask, pretending to be
anything but gay. It was part of the reparative process.
But this theological innovation was a relatively recent
development. Before there was an ex-gay paradigm of cure, there
was an older orthodoxy that included a Christian paradigm of
caring for believers who aren’t straight.
I’ve wondered whether Henri Nouwen had his own homosexuality in
mind when he wrote of the difference between care and cure. In
the biography Wounded Prophet, Michael Ford documents how Nouwen
discussed his experience as a celibate gay man with his close
circle of friends. Nouwen had tried psychological and religious
methods of orientation change, but to no avail. He knew that out
of obedience to God, he couldn’t let himself engage in sexual
relationships. But his path was filled with loneliness and
unfulfilled longings and many tears.
In Bread for the Journey, he wrote, “Care is being with, crying
out with, suffering with, feeling with. Care is compassion. It
is claiming the truth that the other person is my brother or
sister, human, mortal, vulnerable, like I am.”
“Often we are not able to cure,” he insisted, “but we are always
able to care.”
Evangelical leaders, including John Stott, helped lay a
foundation for a pastoral paradigm of care. Stott—the theologian
and writer labeled the “Protestant Pope” by the BBC—argued that
sexual orientation remains a part of one’s constitution. As
Stott wrote in Issues Facing Christians Today back in 1982, “In
every discussion about homosexuality we must be rigorous in
differentiating between this ‘being’ and ‘doing,’ that is,
between a person’s identity and activity, sexual preference and
sexual practice, constitution and conduct.”
For Stott, a homosexual orientation was part of the believer’s
identity—a fallen part, but one that the gospel doesn’t erase so
much as it humbles.
This posture runs even further back than Stott. C. S.
Lewis spoke in a 1954 letter to Sheldon Vanauken of a “pious
male homosexual” with no apparent contradiction. Lewis’s
lifelong best friend Arthur Greeves was gay. Lewis called him
his “first friend” and made it clear to him that his sexual
orientation never would be an issue in their friendship. They
vacationed together. The compilation of letters Lewis sent to
Greeves, collected under the title They Stand Together, reaches
592 pages.
In the United States, as the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York
announced the birth of the gay rights movement, orthodox
Protestants were already asking what positive vision Scripture
gives for people who are gay. The 1970 pseudonymous InterVarsity
Press book The Returns of Love: Letters of a Christian
Homosexual mapped out a path of care and was promoted by Stott.
The book’s celibate gay Anglican author explained that he was
still a virgin at the time he wrote it.
Evangelicalism’s leaders knew there was a history of abuse with
which to reckon. In a 1968 letter to a European pastor, Francis
Schaeffer lamented the church’s complicity in marginalizing gay
people. The pastor had seen no fewer than six gay people commit
suicide, and he sought Schaeffer’s counsel. “The homophile tends
to be pushed out of human life (and especially orthodox church
life) even if he does not practice homosexuality,” lamented
Schaeffer. “This, I believe, is both cruel and wrong.” Indeed,
Schaeffer’s ministry became a magnet for gay people wrestling
with Christianity.
Such leaders saved their disgust for abusive religious leaders.
When Jerry Falwell Sr. brought up the challenge of gay people
with Schaeffer in private, Schaeffer commented that the issue
was complicated. As Schaeffer’s son, Frank, recounted in an
interview with NPR and also in his book Crazy for God, Falwell
then shot back a rejoinder: “If I had a dog that did what they
do, I’d shoot it.” There was no humor in Falwell’s voice.
Afterward, Francis Schaeffer said to his son, “That man is
really disgusting.”
“Sexual sins are not the only sins,” Stott wrote in Issues, “nor
even necessarily the most sinful; pride and hypocrisy are surely
worse.”
In 1980, Stott convened a gathering of Anglican evangelicals to
map out a pastoral approach to homosexuality. They led with
public repentance for their own sins against gay people. In a
statement, these leaders declared, “We repent of the crippling
‘homophobia’ … which has coloured the attitudes toward
homosexual people of all too many of us, and call our fellow
Christians to similar repentance.”
It was a staggering confession at a time when popular opinion
was still biased strongly against gay people. This was not the
21st century, when many Christian leaders repent in order to
look relevant and inclusive in a culture that celebrates all
things fabulous. Stott and these evangelical leaders must have
been truly grieved for the ways they had injured their neighbors
and siblings in Christ. The statement called specifically for
qualified nonpracticing gay people to be received as candidates
for ordination to ministry.
Five years earlier, many were shocked by Billy Graham’s similar
comments in a news conference, some of which were reported in
1975 in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Graham had been asked
whether he would support the ordination of gay men to the
Christian ministry. Graham had replied that they “should be
considered on individual merit” based on certain qualifications.
Specifically, the article mentioned “turning away from their
sins, receiving Christ, offering themselves to Christ and the
ministry after repentance, and obtaining the proper training for
the job.”
The gospel of Jesus Christ offers a positive vision for gay
people. “In homosexuality,” Lewis explained to Vanauken, “as in
every other tribulation, [the works of God] can be made
manifest.” He continued: “Every disability conceals a vocation,
if only we can find it, which will ‘turn the necessity to
glorious gain.’ ”
Lewis asked, “What should the positive life of the homosexual
be?” That’s the question any gay person who comes to faith in
Jesus will ask.
Too often the answer we hear is simply “No.”
No sex. No dating. No relationships. Often, no leadership roles.
That leaves people like me hearing that we have, as Eve Tushnet
explained in a 2012 piece in The American Conservative, a
“vocation of No.”
What is a calling of “Yes”? What is the positive Christian
vision the gospel gives for gay people?
When I look at the lives and ministries of Lewis, Schaeffer,
Graham, and Stott, what stands out most clearly is that they
bring a vision of Jesus: Jesus, in his saving power. Jesus, who
washes us and makes us clean. Jesus, who brings us into God’s
family. Jesus, who covers shame and forgives sin. Jesus, who
calls us by name. Jesus, who sees us all the way down and still
wants to be in relationship with us. Jesus, who suffers with and
for us. Jesus, who challenges us to live for his kingdom. Jesus,
who gives new life with all its joy. Jesus, who is that treasure
in a field for which we sold everything. Jesus, who is that
treasure that can never be taken from us.
This is Jesus, whose inbreaking kingdom sweeps us up into
something he is doing in the cosmos, something larger than
ourselves. In Christ, we find ourselves in a larger narrative.
This is not Jesus as a means to an end of heterosexual
functioning and comfortable family life. This is God himself as
the end for which we were made. With this real God, the locus of
hope is found not in this life with heterosexuality, but in the
coming age, when we shall stand before our Savior.
Without that relationship with a Savior, there is no point in
speaking of a biblical sexual ethic, either to straight or gay
people. No gay people are going to embrace such an ethic unless
they fall in love with Jesus. A heart smitten by grace is not
only willing but also eager to follow the one who died for us.
Schaeffer, Stott, and Graham all stated on occasion their shared
belief that some people are born gay. All of these Christian
leaders also held to the historical understanding of the
biblical sexual ethic. This certainly meant committing to a life
in line with God’s creational pattern—his design. Not one of
them supported sexual unions for believers outside of a
monogamous marriage between two people of different sexes. But
they approached gay people from a posture of humility.
Their vision did not flatten people into our unwanted sexual
urges. Instead, they recognized that a same-sex-oriented
believer’s biggest struggle may be not with sexual sin but with
the ability to give and receive love. So they emphasized the
need for the community of the church; for deep, long-term
friendships; for brotherhood, to be known even in celibacy.
Stott, himself celibate, explained: “At the heart of the
homosexual condition is a deep and natural hunger for mutual
love, a search for identity and a longing for completeness. If
gay people cannot find these things in the local ‘church
family,’ we have no business to go on using that expression.”
Lewis, Schaeffer, Graham, and Stott also viewed the homosexual
condition as an unchosen orientation with no reliable
expectation of a change in this life. They showed great concern
for the emotional and relational needs of gay people. Schaeffer
insisted in his 1968 letter that the church needed to be the
church and help “the individual in every way possible.”
In his NPR interview, Frank Schaeffer described his father’s
Swiss ministry, L’Abri, as a place “where homosexuals—both
lesbians and gay men—are welcomed.” He added: “No one’s telling
them they’ve got to change or that they’re horrible people. And
they go away, you know, having found my father wonderfully
compassionate and Christlike to them.”
Schaeffer foresaw significant cultural changes when, in 1978, an
Orthodox Presbyterian Church congregation in San Francisco found
itself sued for releasing a gay employee who had violated the
church’s code of conduct. In The Great Evangelical Disaster,
Schaeffer said it would be silly for other churches to think
they might not face the same challenge.
Still, Schaeffer and Graham didn’t recommend us-verses-them
approaches. Just weeks before the 1964 presidential election, a
gay sex scandal rocked the nation. President Lyndon Johnson’s
top adviser, Walter Jenkins, was arrested a second time for
having gay sex in a YMCA restroom. Graham called the White House
to intercede for Jenkins.
In the recorded phone call, Graham charged Johnson to show
compassion to Jenkins.
Asked about homosexuality at a 1997 San Francisco crusade,
Graham remarked to reporters, “There are other sins. Why do we
jump on that sin as though it’s the greatest sin?” He added, “I
have so many gay friends, and we remain friends.” Speaking to a
crowd of 10,000 that night in the Cow Palace, Graham declared,
“Whatever your background, whatever your sexual orientation, we
welcome you tonight.”
As Stott emphasized so passionately in Issues, the gay person
who follows Jesus must live by faith, hope, and love: Faith in
both God’s grace and in his standards. Hope to look beyond this
present life of struggle to our future glory. But the love by
which we must live, he explained, is the love we must receive
from Christ’s spiritual family, the church. We must depend upon
love from the very churches that have historically failed to
give it to people like us.
Church historian Richard Lovelace’s 1978 book Homosexuality and
the Church garnered hearty endorsements from evangelical
luminaries Ken Kantzer (a former CT editor), Elisabeth Elliot,
Chuck Colson, Harold Ockenga, and Carl F. H. Henry. The
book might seem radical in today’s climate, but in the 1970s it
represented a transatlantic neoevangelical vision. In contrast
to homophobia on the right and sexual compromise on the left,
Lovelace laid out the gospel challenge:
There is another approach to homosexuality which would be
healthier both for the church and for gay believers, and which
could be a very significant witness to the world. This approach
requires a double repentance, a repentance both for the church
and for its gay membership. First, it would require professing
Christians who are gay to have the courage both to avow
[acknowledge] their orientation openly and to obey the Bible’s
clear injunction to turn away from the active homosexual
life-style. … Second, it would require the church to accept,
honor, and nurture nonpracticing gay believers in its
membership, and ordain these to positions of leadership for
ministry.
The church’s sponsorship of openly avowed but repentant
homosexuals in leadership positions would be a profound witness
to the world concerning the power of the Gospel to free the
church from homophobia and the homosexual from guilt and
bondage.
Only the gospel can open up the humility for such a dual
repentance. Yet this was the Christian vision of Lovelace and
Henry, Ockenga and Elliot, Kantzer and Colson, Lewis and Graham,
Schaeffer and Stott, and a young gay evangelical Anglican who
felt too afraid to use his own name, even though he was still a
virgin.
Christian fathers and mothers like these had it right.
Tragically, I write this as a lament for a road not traveled on
this side of the Atlantic.
Already by the late 1970s, a hard shift had begun. As ex-gay
ministries in North America multiplied with their expectation of
orientation change, they shifted the locus of hope to this life.
As the AIDS crisis devastated gay communities in the 1980s,
evangelicals embraced the promise of heterosexuality. The
secular reparative therapists added a semblance of clinical
respectability. The new path to cure pushed out the older path
to care.
And then the conservative side in a culture war discovered that
we ex-gays were useful. We were proof that gay people could
choose to become straight if they really wanted to. And if we
could become straight, then there really wasn’t so much need for
the church to repent of its homophobia. It just required people
like me to maintain the illusion that we had changed.
In the aftermath of that lost culture war that radically
transformed the sexual mores of the West, there is much for
Christians to grieve. Transactional relationships. Disposable
marriages. Vastly changed assumptions about sexuality and
gender.
But the conservative church’s hesitancy to repent has not
dissipated. As I watch evangelical churches and denominations
fumble their way through discussions of sexual orientation and
identity, often enforcing the language and categories of a
failed ex-gay movement, we’re missing the real battle: The
surrounding culture has convinced the world that Christians hate
gay people.
Our calling is to prove them wrong.
The world is watching. Our children and grandchildren are
watching. They are already second-guessing their faith because
they hear all around them that Christians hate gay people, and
they can’t point to anyone in their congregation who is gay, is
faithful, and is loved and accepted as such. Maybe they can
point to someone who uses the language of same-sex attraction.
But even that is rare. It’s still not safe to do so.
I am not saying we are at risk of losing Christians who are
attracted to members of the same sex; that’s a given.
I am saying we are at risk of losing the next generation.
For those who are listening, an older generation of Christians
is still willing and able to help us understand.
Greg Johnson is lead pastor of Memorial Presbyterian Church in
St. Louis and author of Still Time to Care: What We Can Learn
from the Church’s Failed Attempt to Cure Homosexuality.
[/quote]
Nobody uses the word "Homosexual" anymore....Now days its the
Alphabet people.
Blade
#Post#: 35792--------------------------------------------------
Re: Homosexuality - Is it a Sin?
By: patrick jane Date: November 19, 2021, 9:45 pm
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HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/november/christian-florist-settles-legal-battle-with-same-sex-couple.html
Christian Florist Settles Legal Battle With Same-Sex Couple
After eight years, the 77-year-old Washington state grandmother
is retiring from her business and her religious liberty fight.
A florist in Washington state who was in an eight-year legal
battle that reached the US Supreme Court will retire after
settling with the same-sex couple whose wedding job she refused.
Barronelle Stutzman of Richland, Washington, announced the
settlement Thursday, saying she has paid $5,000 to Robert
Ingersoll, The Tri-City Herald reported.
She said Jesus “walked with me every step of the way” through
her legal journey and also wished Ingersoll, who had been her
customer at Arlene’s Flowers for almost a decade, “the very
best.”
Ingersoll and his husband, Curt Freed, plan to donate the
settlement payment to a local PFLAG chapter, and personally
match the $5,000.
The agreement allows Stutzman to “preserve her conscience” by
not forcing her to act against her Southern Baptist religious
beliefs, according to a news release from her attorneys with
Alliance Defending Freedom. They reached the settlement with the
American Civil Liberties Union.
It also prevents Stutzman from having “to pay potentially
ruinous attorneys’ fees,” the release said.
“I am willing to turn the legal struggle for freedom over to
others. At age 77, it’s time to retire and give my business to
someone else,” Stutzman said.
“I wish the culmination of all that I’ve been through could
result in a new respect, culturally and legally, for freedom of
conscience in our country,” Stutzman said. “From the beginning,
I have asked no more than the freedom to act in accordance with
my religious beliefs and personal convictions. I have treated
those who persecuted me with respect, and with the assurance
that I want for them the same freedom that I ask for myself.”
Alliance Defending Freedom has also defended fellow Christian
wedding vendors who have cited their conscience in turning down
business for same-sex ceremonies. The team represented a
Christian baker in his 2018 Supreme Court victory and is
continuing to argue on behalf of a Christian web designer, both
challenging Colorado’s application of its anti-discrimination
law.
The settlement by Stutzman leaves in place two unanimous
decisions by the Washington state Supreme Court that the
Constitution does not grant a license to discriminate against
LGBTQ people, the ACLU of Washington said.
“We took on this case because we were worried about the harm
being turned away would cause LGBTQ people,” Freed and Ingersoll
said Thursday in a statement. “We are glad the Washington
Supreme Court rulings will stay in place to ensure that same-sex
couples are protected from discrimination and should be served
by businesses like anyone else.”
The ACLU brought the anti-discrimination lawsuit against
Stutzman in 2013 on behalf of Ingersoll and Freed.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued separately, saying
the floral artist violated the state’s Consumer Protection Act
by declining to provide services based on sexual orientation.
A Benton County Superior Court judge in 2015 ruled that Stutzman
must pay $1 in attorneys’ fees and costs to the state, along
with a $1,000 civil penalty, for discriminating against the
couple. That judgment still stands.
“We are pleased to hear that Arlene’s Flowers and Barronelle
Stutzman have reached a settlement agreement with the couple
they refused to serve,” Ferguson said in an email to the
Tri-City Herald.
The two cases through appeals by Stutzman wen to the state
Supreme Court, and then to the US Supreme Court.
The country’s highest court vacated Washington state’s previous
ruling and sent it back to the lower court in 2018 for another
review. The Washington Supreme Court in 2019 ruled unanimously
that state courts did not act with animosity toward religion
when they ruled Stutzman broke the state’s anti-discrimination
laws by refusing on religious grounds to provide wedding
flowers.
Stutzman and Alliance Defending Freedom—in their second attempt
to get the case before the US Supreme Court—filed a petition for
review in September 2019.
The Supreme Court in July declined to take up the case. Stutzman
responded with a petition for rehearing, but she will withdraw
it as part of her settlement.
#Post#: 35951--------------------------------------------------
Re: Homosexuality - Is it a Sin?
By: patrick jane Date: December 1, 2021, 9:56 am
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HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjnF6luy-VY
#Post#: 35952--------------------------------------------------
Re: Homosexuality - Is it a Sin?
By: patrick jane Date: December 1, 2021, 9:57 am
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1 hour 27 minutes
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv8DvdlDYss&t=39s
#Post#: 36697--------------------------------------------------
Re: Homosexuality - Is it a Sin?
By: patrick jane Date: January 14, 2022, 6:27 pm
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HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/january-web-only/complementarians-egalitarians-gender-compromise-culture.html
Gender Questions Should Send Us to Scripture
When it comes to the topic of gender roles, it all comes down to
biblical interpretation.
Many questions have recently been raised about
complementarianism. We are keenly aware of the many stories of
pastoral and spousal abuse—some of whom are noted
complementarians. Such stories make many people wonder if
complementarianism is simply a form of power grab, an attempt to
hold onto male authority in order to exercise their selfish
will.
Cultural questions have been raised as well. Is the
complementarian vision merely a product of white western
culture—deriving from a patriarchal ethos and an American vision
of the good life, entirely sundered from biblical witness?
Or others have suggested the complementarian view solely
represents the worldview of the Republican party, constituting a
backlash to societal changes in the 1960’s. Or as one historian
initially proposed, perhaps we have been more influenced by John
Wayne than Jesus of Nazareth?
All of the questions posed above are excellent, and we need to
be open to critique and revision. I hope none of us would claim
that we are perfect in our interpretation or implementation of
what the scriptures teach on the relationship between men and
women.
There is always a danger that we have reacted to or imitated the
society around us. We are all influenced by culture and should
receive any critique that returns us to scriptural witness in
good faith. We should listen charitably to brothers and sisters
who view things differently—and none of us should be above
reforming and nuancing our views.
The matter is complex, however, and egalitarians must also be
able to answer the questions that are posed to them. They are
not immune to cultural forces either.
The feminism of the 1960’s has shaped society in profound and
enduring ways—both for good and for ill. The sexual revolution
has transformed our culture’s conception of what it means to be
a man and a woman. This shows up in the acceptance of same-sex
marriage and transgender identity, among other things.
Nor can we discount the influence of the mainstream media and
major universities, many of which are guided chiefly by leftist
ideology. Those who relax the complementarian norm are often
celebrated in these spaces as open-minded by a social elite.
In other words, there are social and cultural forces operating
on both sides. No one is exempt, and no one inhabits a neutral
space when it comes to gender dynamics.
Every argument for every perspective should send us back to the
biblical witness. The word of God still pierces our darkness and
can reshape how we think and live. The Bible can and should
still be heard, believed, and followed—even though we are all
fallible and culturally situated.
Of course, every reading of the biblical text on male-female
issues represents an interpretation and is subject to critique.
But since there are cultural arguments, forces and pressures on
every side, we must always return to the scriptures to decipher
their meaning—and I believe that meaning can be retrieved.
At the end of the day, it should come down to whoever offers the
most plausible and persuasive reading of the biblical texts in
question. The complementarian view isn’t nullified by saying
Trump and Republicanism and the egalitarian reading isn’t
contradicted by crying out feminism and liberalism.
Yet I worry that in some circles, cultural arguments receive
precedence over scriptural ones—as if they alone have the final
say on the truth or falsity of a particular biblical
interpretation.
Thomas Schreiner is the James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New
Testament Interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary.
Speaking Out is Christianity Today’s guest opinion column and
(unlike an editorial) does not necessarily represent the opinion
of the publication.
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Re: Homosexuality - Is it a Sin?
By: patrick jane Date: June 11, 2022, 6:50 pm
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