You are afraid of truth.
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You cannot argue for free will to affirm your
heterosexuality without also allowing me free will to affirm
my homosexuality.
One person has no right to judge another.
You do not apply even-handedly the questions you put to
gays: is heterosexuality a social construct? (Greenberg) is it the result of family
dynamics? is it genetically transmitted?
The American Psychiatric Association (APA), and more
recently the American Psychological Association and the
American Medical Association, have removed homosexuality
from the list of disorders: homosexuality is normal.
Gays are in the position of Galileo, of freers of slaves,
of liberators of women. Those who oppose that position are
anti-scientific, anti-justice, and are wearing cultural
blinders. Paul was just "a fallible and historically
conditioned human being" who was wrong on women and slavery.
It shouldn't be surprising that he was wrong on
homosexuality. (Nelson 188)
Gay marriages are a Constitutional right. To deny them is
to discriminate on the basis of gender.
Eventually everyone will accept homosexuality as normal.
Even if none of these arguments in and of itself is
convincing, the weight of argument is growing. Taking all of
the arguments together, your objections are a mere blip on
the cultural scene. In a few decades this discussion will
just be a matter of the history books. Why not just accept
homosexuality as OK now, so as to be prepared for that
cultural shift? (Ontario Centre for
Religious Tolerance)
You are out to convert me to heterosexuality. (Ontario Centre for Religious Tolerance; Goss)
"Homosexual orientation as we understand it today, in
light of the complex psychological, biological, and
sociological givens, was unknown by Christians of the early
church." (Johnston 110)
Homosexuality is not per se idolatry.
Scriptural bans against fornication do not include
"all homosexual activity" because "modern
psychological insights into the nature of sexual inversion"
give us more light. (Johnston 25, emph.
Johnston's)
We have received "more light." We have God's explicit
word that some things hidden in the OT were revealed in the
NT. (I Corinthians 2:7) God is again changing His plan. You
quote Revelation 22:18 out of context. It says that no one
is to add to "this book," the Book of Revelation itself.
Look at God's larger pattern of acting in history, not just
the OT and NT. God continues to reveal new truths.
Exactly! Jesus warned the Pharisees not to strain at
gnats while letting camels in. (Matthew 23:24) The
weightier issues are love and justice. We show love by
supporting love relationships among gays; we do justice by
supporting the rights of gays to marry, to be ordained, and
to teach that gay is good.
Progressive revelation from OT to NT continues from NT
times to today, through the Holy Spirit's "common grace,
operative through the behavioral sciences." (Johnston 47)
The gnostic heresy was refuted by letters from both St.
Paul and St. John. Jesus came in the flesh. Thus the flesh
is not in itself evil. (Johnston 11)
Legalism as a system was rejected by the NT.
I reject the Roman Catholic view that sex to be lawful
must have a procreational aspect.
Gays are not demonized. (Johnston
13)
You make it sound as though sex is dirty. Sex is a
sacrament!
One must structure a male-male relationship in an
ethically responsible way, given that the alternatives may
be ethically worse because of the Fall. (Thielicke 285)
Even if homosexuality is a disorder in some sense, we are
all sinners under pain of the Fall. Jesus kept company with
sinners. So don't shun homosexuals.
Yes, if you were consistent you would require the death
penalty for homosexuals.
Exactly! So the law does not apply.
God creates the darkness of sin (Rom. 8:19-21; Isaiah
45:7). The blind, deaf, and dumb are so for God's purposes
(Exodus 4:11), not humanity's choices. Only rarely and
miraculously is there a healing for these things. If I
concede -- and "I do not concede" (Johnston 99) -- that homosexuality is
in need of healing, there is no promise that there will be
healing. So at least offer compassion instead of
condemnation.
God wouldn't create people with a drive and then say that
they couldn't satisfy it.
But homosexuality feels so right for me.
Homosexuality is a "deep-rooted natural urge" across
primates. (West as cited by Churchill 67-69 as in turn cited
by Johnston 95) This is a "manifest truth of the present
created order." (Johnston 95)
We object to finding biological causes, because then you
will treat us as diseased in need of a cure, like
alcoholics. We therefore resist biological determinism.
We demand further study of the biological determinants of
homosexuality in order to show that we are gay because of
forces beyond our control.
Biological corrections, whether by hormonal treatment
or -- worse -- aversion therapy, have been cruel and don't work.
Anal sex is only hard on the anal sphincter when there is
no gentleness and concern. (Miles as cited by Evans)
AIDS on a worldwide scale is not a gay disease.
Freud's theory of homosexuality as arrested development
has no basis. The stereotypical emotionally absent father
and dominant mother could just as well be "the product" of
homosexuality as its cause. (Johnston
23, quoting approvingly Tripp 73 n73-74). Has the cause
for heterosexuality been discovered?
The homosexuality that you distrust is not characteristic
of the gay-positive life I'm talking about. Your stereotype
is of an effeminate, promiscuous person, from a
dysfunctional family. I am none of those. Ego-dystonic
(self-dissatisfied) homosexuality exists, but it could be
eliminated by social approval.
But gays are not pedophiles. We are against group sex, sex
with the underaged, and sex without mutual consent too.
Beyond that, all is permitted (Countryman; Goss). Gay men are no
more likely to be attracted to children than heterosexual
men (Freud; Watson and Rienzo as cited
by Evans).
Your bigotry fills us with "self-hate, self-blame, and
self-doubt." (Johnston 21).
We are not neurotic. There are no measurable differences
in psychological health between gays and straights (Hooker). That's not to say that the F
scale of the MMPI can't detect homosexuality, only that it
is not correlated with any psychological disturbance.
If you claim to have come out of homosexuality, you're in
denial in the psychological sense, not in Jesus' sense of
denying yourself.
Celibacy is too much to ask of people for whom it is not a
gift.
Because gays are socially in the same position as Blacks
were in the 1950s, extreme measures like ACT UP and Queer
Nation are necessary to get the attention of society. (Goss)
Homosexuality is a normal part of many other cultures down
through history (West; Greenberg).
Homosexuality does not mean for our culture what it meant
for the culture of the Bible. Take the meaning for the
culture, not the form. The Hebrew law prohibited
homosexuality to assure the continuation of humanity, and to
avoid the idolatry of the nations surrounding them.
Imagine bringing the good news of the gospel to a culture
in which gay sex was celebrated. (I'm of course talking
about America in a few more decades.) What good news would
you bring? (Ontario Center for Religious
Tolerance)
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