One netfriend:

Could I add my unenlightened view that homosexual practice is forbidden by scripture for sound theological and sociological reasons, regardless of its setting or of whatever strenuous sophistication, political correctness or legalised intimidation that its proponents may choose to apply?

Sexuality is an expression of the creative, edifying interrelationship of love that is constantly occurring within the Trinity. Another aspect of the mystery of the trust God places within us as he makes us in his image.

To equate sexuality with appetite, or a matter of lifestyle choice is to diminish it, to demean ourselves, and to fly in the face of God’s plan for creation. Sexuality is a creative drive that shapes our self-esteem, our identity, our maturity our character and our capacity to give and receive love, which no mere appetite or lifestyle choice could ever hope to achieve. For so many of those who have been used to satisfy the sexual ‘appetite’ of their predators eke out an existence of emotional amputation: self-loathing, shame, false guilt, aggression or passive nothingness.

Homosexual practice is sterile. It can never produce life, and even in its most intimate expression, can it be little more than parallel rather than complementary orgasm?

Yet same-sex relationships help us to become fully mature through being mentors and prot ©g ©s within our own gender. Within this mentoring/prot ©g © relationship – or in friendship generally – we may experience deep and sacrificial love. Prisoners of war testify to the love that helped them withstand the depredations of years of torture and brutality. David confessed his deep love for Jonathan. But to inject such relationships with romance, sexual fantasy or seductive efforts is to step out of line.

The scripture forbids homosexual practice because God wants men to be men and women to be women, so our children can have clear, loving and interactive role patterns.

A friend once observed that he could not understand the fuss over women in church leadership, because for centuries churches have been run by old women of both sexes! (Can’t imagine why he never joined the diplomatic service!)

How many of our churches live by the kind of risk-taking faith that evokes the greatest masculine qualities from our men and the greatest feminine qualities of our women?

Why are so many churches so dominated by issues of safety and survival, over represented by women, with only a few emasculated men ‘whose highest calling appears to be to mind their manners?’ (see John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, a book that opens up a comprehensive and deep range of issues that connect with ministry among men.)

Is it because we too readily limit faithfulness to mere loyalty instead of adding the extra dimension of acting on God-inspired visions that reach the hearts and minds of those who live in darkness? For without a vision, the people perish/become brittle and flexible/throw off restraint. (Prov. 29:18)

Oscar Wilde’s dictum is tragically too accurate: “It’s harder to advance in the church through faith than it is through lack of it.”

What then of acceptance? The gospel is the deepest expression of God’s invitation for anyone to live in relationship with him and in creative, maturing harmony with each other within the body of Christ.

Anyone is welcome, but everyone must be willing to be changed.

Permissive acceptance that diffuses the need for change is a self-deluding half-gospel -despite its noble intentions. To try to use the events of Acts 10:44-8 as a basis for accepting practising homosexuals is to ignore the prayerfully-drafted letter of Acts 15:28-9 that Acts 10:44-8 prompted: “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden (Gentile converts)

beyond abstinence from eating food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from eating strangled animals and from sexual immorality.”

If we choose to condone behaviour that violates the life force of sexuality the self-delusion may even become self-destruction. (1 Cor 6:18)

The gospel expresses acceptance that emboldens us to dismantle our defences and inspires and empowers our redemption and healing, which may take years of conscious cooperation with God’s Spirit working within and through us.

Is homosexual practice an unforgivable sin? No more than any other sin that is excused, denied or persisted with. We all have areas of life that we find hard to relinquish to Jesus’ lordship, but let’s avoid any seductive sophistry that disguises itself as grace while it compounds confusion and denies grace’s full work of healing.

~~~

To which Nathan responded:

As part of a heterosexual couple who have been trying unsuccessfully for several years to conceive a child, I find this argument personally offensive as well as obviously flawed. Any argument against the worth of homosexual love-making on the grounds that it is incapable of procreation is inevitably an attack on the worth of sexual intimacy for an infertile couple in a heterosexual marriage. I do not know of any pastors who advise post-menopausal couples to give up sex on the grounds that it is now sterile and therefore contrary to God’s intention for human sexuality. Such a line of reasoning would presumably also lead us into the well trodden absurdities of declaring that contraception was against the will of God and that all forms of love-making which could not result in conception were thereby falling short of God’s intention for human sexual expression.

Another wrote: Yes, I believe that male homosexual acts involve practices that are injurious to the body and that involve a high risk of infectious disease.

Nathan:

This too seems to be inviting, if not explicitly promulgating, unnecessary and unhelpful generalisations. I’m not aware of any sexual acts which are practised exclusively by homosexual people. I can think of one that is exclusive to heterosexuals, but none that are exclusive to homosexuals. Some of the gay men I know have told me, in response to this line of thinking, that they and many of the gay men they know do not practice anal sex. On the other hand, according to an article in the Age a few months back, anal sex is practised or at least experimented with by an increasing number of heterosexual couples. The reflex equation of homosexual acts with anal sex is, therefore, an unfair generalisation. If it is anal sex that you want to preach against, then there is no reason to target it only against the gays. If, however, [he] is suggesting that other homosexual acts are also injurious and unsanitary, then I’d invite him to be a bit more specific. Because I can’t think of any other sexual act that would be much more prevalent among homosexuals than it is among heterosexuals, or that is inherantly dangerous.

It seems to me that if anyone wants to argue against the acceptance of homosexuality on the grounds that the physical acts are non-procreative, unnatural, or unsafe, then you have to be consistent and be willing to go public with the view that all such acts are also unacceptable within heterosexual marriage.

Anyone out there willing to start preaching that?!

Peace and hope,

Nathan