Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: fasano@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Cathy Fasano) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Gay Ordination in the Presbyterian Church Message-ID: Date: 5 Apr 91 08:08:02 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of Pittsburgh Lines: 75 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article jhpb@garage.att.com writes: >> [Joe Buehler commented that homosexual thoughts can't be engaged in >> if you want to enter the kingdom on heaven. Cathy Fasano objected >> that considering the action is not in itself immoral. Unacted-out >> temptation is never considered sinful, as resisting temptation is >> a virtue. --clh] > >I didn't see Cathy's response, so can only quote the moderator's >summary. Which didn't quite get to the meat of my objection... (not that this is the fault of Our Sainted Moderator; I was unclear.) What I was objecting to was the all-emcompassing nature of the term "homosexual thought." I'm not claiming that *all* "homosexual thoughts" (or "heterosexual thoughts" for that matter) are virtuous; I'm simply claiming that the term is sufficiently broad to include some things which are clearly *not* sinful. Joe's broad condemnation of *all* "homosexual thoughts" is a condemnation of *being* homosexual, since even the thought, "I am attracted to members of the same sex," is an example of a "homosexual thought." The Judeo-Christian tradition has always made this distinction between these kinds of thoughts. We use words like "covet" and "lust" as distinct from "want" or "admire". For example, someone else quoted a translation which rendered Matt. 5:28 as (approximately) ...any man who looks at a woman with the intent to possess her commits adulterey... The problem is that taken at face value this verse would include a man considering making an honorable marriage proposal, and we all pretty much agree that that is *not* the intent. (The NAB translates the term as "looks lustfully" which is what I think we pretty much agree it means.) {Joe then tells a story to illustrate the difference between temptation and "impure thoughts." While I might put a little different interpretation on some of the details of the story, Joe and I have no disagreement that there is a distinction.} >A further comment: I gave the thought/word/deed categorization; there >are others. For example, somone who defends homosexuality, while not >strictly engaging in it himself, is guilty of it. I mean that quite >literally -- someone who defends a sin has to answer for that sin at >their personal judgement. This is sin by way of condoning, vs. doing. Likewise (to put this in a context) -- we live in a society in which drunken gangs of frat boys lurk around gay bars and beat up and kill men who come out. To the extent that catagorical denounciations of whole classes of people (even when the broadness of the denunciation is purely rhetorical excess) encourage this kind of violence, they are at least unwise if not actually sinful. [ok -- I guess Joe and I are even now in the accusing-each-other-of-sin department. :^] The Catholic church in recent times has some sensitivity to this issue -- the recent Vatican document which called homosexuality an "objective disorder" also condemned violence against homosexuals in pretty strong terms. As to why *I* put the issue in this context -- As some folks here know, up until eight months ago I worked for an commodity options trading firm. The subculture of trading is pretty groty, and has been described as a cross between a locker room and drunken frat party. (I'm still trying to shed the prodigious vocabulary of obscenities which I acquired there! :-) ) Now these guys are pretty homophobic (it's part of the adolescent macho posturing), and I was regularly subjected to graphic descriptions of the violence and mayhem which they wanted to do to gays. (Fortunately most of these guys were smart enough to avoid discussing plans for violence against women when they were around women, so I was spared that...) So yes, I've vehemently defended homosexuals many times over the last five years, and I rather hope Joe would have, too. -- Cathy Fasano, aka: Cathy Johnston, cathy@gargoyle.uchicago.edu, fasano@unix.cis.pitt.edu "If yer gonna skate on thin ice, ya' might as well dance."