Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mls@sfsup.att.com (Mike Siemon) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Christians -- gay and otherwise Message-ID: Date: 8 Jul 90 03:59:06 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 81 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu I have a tendency to get very confrontational, even angry, in disputation on matters important to me. But despite appearances I very much dislike theological warfare; I am fundamentally committed to *tolerance* in doctrine, so long as the gospel is not forgotten and so long as all disputants are interested more in the pursuit of God's truth than in maintaining positions. Accordingly, I'd like to step a bit outside the homosexuality debate as such and comment on how I see the "arena" in which I find myself a very reluctant combatant. I see the Christian community divided roughly into four more or less distinct groups: 1. The majority would really rather not deal with this at all. They basically "accept" communal mores and church tradition as saying homosexuality is "sinful" without giving the matter much thought. If brought face to face with a homosexual friend, or brother, or daughter or son, they mostly want to know what is the loving, Christian response. This group *is* the church; the other three below are vying for their attention. 2. The dogmatic traditionalists "know for a fact" that homosexuality is "against God's will" and "an abomination" and they will cite the (meagre) proof texts and the (voluminous) hate literature of 2000 years to "prove" their point. No experience spoken by a gay man could ever change a mind that is resting in perfect possession of God's truth, so that anyone who speaks against their dogma MUST be either misled, misinformed, a hypocrite, or a tool of Satan. 3. Homosexual Christian youths (and some adults, throughout entire lives) go through hell. They start, as children, from position #1, and they too learn all the nasty jokes (and have likely used them in nasty, childish taunts) and all the revulsion our culture teaches towards both acts and people so tainted. Adolescence teaches us that *we* are this horrible thing we have been taught to loathe; that our every impulse -- when the world is celebrating with all the means at its disposal the sexual awakening of heterosexuals -- is condemned by God, while what God "commands" is utterly beyond our comprehension and performance -- and may at a trial prove as disgusting to us as *our* impulses to "normal" people. These youths, alienated from themselves and from a society that devalues them and may actively persecute them, are good targets for cults. What is sad is that some of the cults that prey on them are "Christian" -- they take their souls and make them slaves to a social group, all in the "name" of Christ, our Redeemer. All these kids want is acknowledgment that they are human, and they will gladly castrate themselves to get it. "And some make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven" -- yet the Church already decided in the case of Origen that one shouldn't carry that *too* far! 4. Some of us (remarkably many, given how society conspires against us; recall that conservatives maintain that society will disintegrate unless stable heterosexual liasons are actively fostered) go past the anguished days of adolescence and find that deep bonds, aided by sexual intimacy, match every glowing description of the union in one flesh that we read in secular and sacred literature applied to heterosexual bonds. If this joy and unselfish union in love is not the gift of YHWH, then perhaps we should leave the church to search for the great god who has given us what YHWH can't? Pardon the apparent blasphemy of that last; it is altogether *too* close to what some conclude because of too-closely identifying party 2 with the Church. Obviously, people in camps #2 and #4 are somewhat biased by ideology; I can't help but testify to what I know, and I for my part suspect that those in #2 know only their catechisms, and not anything about reality. I will not disguise my bias, but testimony, WITNESS, and martyrdom are the realities that the Church (#1) has always responded to. That is what makes saints. I offer my testimony as one of the least of these, my brothers. I would rather point you to the incredible faith, and love, shown by the myriads of gay couples confronting AIDS -- Christ as both victim and priest present with almost unbearable intensity on a path towards death as grueling as many Golgothas together. Do not despise the testimony of my brothers. Must we *all* die, to show you our love? -- Michael L. Siemon Hell is a different pain, for there is despair. m.siemon@ATT.COM But of all pains that lead to salvation, this ...!att!sfsup!mls is the most pain -- to see thy beloved suffer. standard disclaimer -- Julian of Norwich