I admire your bravery in even attempting to start such a conversation. (This comment betrays my obvious lack of love and laziness.) In any case, as always, I'm encouraged by the stand you take, and the respectful and gracious way you take it.

 

Thanks Teresa. There are 86+ posts in response. I encourage everyone to read them in their entirety. I honestly sought to engage them in honest discussion, without using scripture. Amazingly it was them that first brought scripture and scriptural wisdom into the discussion. Some were angry others were open-minded. None, I feel really, provided adequate responses (that is not intended to sound vain). The best came from a person calling herself Raven, and a former conservative Christian (allegedly, not intended to sound insulting) who called himself Oddjob.

Every one of their arguments reduces to an emotional cry for acceptance. They for the most part were gracious and for that I am thankful. I feel I am a bit more informed on the average homosexual's viewpoint. I nevertheless need more honest and frank discussion. My heart really does go out to them. Again, I did not approach them with scripture. I approached them with reason. However, scripture is very candid about this lifestyle and how God apparently feels about it. It would be much easier to just accept them as born that way and to believe that God is okay with them as they are. This is not how the Bible portrays God though.

So, I must wrestle with God’s will and their claims. As such, I wrestle with my very faith. I know God is love. I know I am not a bigot or racist or any other hatemonger. I genuinely seek truth in this matter. My heart may want to love everyone the way they are, but to do so would be, in my opinion, to live either a lie or to deny a correct view of scripture and thus my faith, the living hope.

If the Bible is merely metaphorical script relating a people group's perceived experience with what they believed was God through personal experience and interpretation of events, then perhaps they (my opponents in the discussion) are right and their lifestyle may be just as morally valid (if morality can be grounded at all).

I wish they had addressed my arguments more directly. This really is an important issue. It is commonly masked as a civil rights issue. I am unconvinced that it is so. If it is and God does not feel the way evangelical churches assert that He does on the issue of same-sex unions (this can only be deduced if a person reads the Bible through much different lenses than you or I have been trained to use), we need to do everything in our power to assure that the mistakes made in the 50’s and 60’s are not repeated.

 

I actually went and read the comments last night. They were extremely interesting, but I thought the same thing - it boiled down to entirely subjective claims (though subjectivity, seems to be the issue at hand. I have a lot more thoughts on this, I think I'll just email you.

 

Rickie, I finally gave you a link. Forgive me that it took so long.