On the last day of November 2011 I put this on to my Facebook site:

Friends, I’ve not seen a decent article unpacking this idea: Andrew Marin’s book Love is an Orientation   comes closest, as, from the conservative side, the EA’s Stereotypes book and a Sydney Anglican book published about two decades ago.  

So I’d like to write one, and invite your help.

It will *not* be about hermeneutics (the so-called ‘clobber texts’). It will major on *experience* – how I feel when I say it; how I feel when I hear it.

Here’s something to start with from Richard Rohr’s  Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps  (brilliant, BTW) under the heading of the 8th step: ‘Make a list of all persons I have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all’.

‘Did you ever have someone apologize to you and it felt much more like the person just wanted to let you know how wonderful and Christian they were to forgive you? They are normally trying to regain their bruised self-image by thinking of themselves as magnanimous. It sometimes takes the form of a very properly said “I forgive you, but I hate your sin”. There could perhaps be a good way to understand that statement, but it usually means “I am on moral high ground, but you are not”. The person unlocks himself or herself but not the other person. Christians love to say this to gay people, exonerating and exalting themselves, while binding up the other, and not even knowing it’ (p. 72)

Again, I want this thread to stay with the *experience* of saying this, or hearing it said about others, or having it said to you.

–>> I’m going to be tough with ‘Yes, but’ discursions into Leviticus, Romans, 1 Corinthians or 1 Timothy, or expositions of the moral theology of marriage. There’s a place for those, but this thread is just about the pros and cons of that particular statement.

Thanks! And watch here for the completed article when I have enough raw material supplied by my friends :-)!!!

Thanks

Rowland Croucher

~~

Let ¢â‚¬â„¢s start with Andrew Marin ¢â‚¬â„¢s Love is an Orientation  ¢â‚¬“ a must-read book on this subject.

Andrew starts from a  ¢â‚¬Ëœlove is more than words ¢â‚¬â„¢ only stance.

His view of what ¢â‚¬â„¢s behind the  ¢â‚¬Ëœlove the sinner hate the sin ¢â‚¬â„¢ mantra and why it is so repulsive to his LGBT friends:

•  ¢â‚¬ËœThe Christian community has only ever known one way to handle same-sex sexual behaviour: take a stand and keep a distance ¢â‚¬â„¢ (p. 37)

•  ¢â‚¬ËœThe Christians ¢â‚¬â„¢ default belief system (on the aetiology of a same-sex orientation) is environmental (39)

•  ¢â‚¬ËœResearch suggests that on average only 7 to 15 percent of the GLBT community was sexually abused in their youth ¢â‚¬â„¢ (42)

•  ¢â‚¬ËœWe must acknowledge how our three traditional options  ¢â‚¬“ heterosexuality, celibacy or a life of sin  ¢â‚¬“ are received by GLBT people. We have been too wrapped up in planning the communication of our truth by cooking up contingency plans for potential rebuttals that we have forgotten to think relationally (44)

•  ¢â‚¬ËœAmong gays and lesbians,  ¢â‚¬Å“love the sinner, hate the sin ¢â‚¬  is the most disdained phrase in the Christian vocabulary, If behaviour equals identity, then hating gay sexual behaviour is the same thing as hating the gay person. The most common rebuttal they use to counter that slogan is Jesus ¢â‚¬â„¢ words regarding   judgment in Matthew 7 where he speaks about the plank in our own eye and the speck in our brother ¢â‚¬â„¢s.  ¢â‚¬Å“How can Christians pick this one sin and make it greater than all the rest? The Bible also says not to ____ (eg.  ¢â‚¬Ëœeat crab ¢â‚¬â„¢). Straight people _____     and yet are still accepted. ¢â‚¬  As the Barna Group discovered in research commissioned by the Fermi Project, this logic has earned Christians a reputation for being extremely hypocritical and… judgmental ¢â‚¬â„¢ (46-7).