This isn't fair, to either gays or Christians

[adderslj]

I grow more and more depressed the more I watch the coverage of the great Anglican homosexuality debate, and how Christian views are being repeatedly misrepresented.

To be clear:

Gay men (and women) can become bishops and several already are so within the Anglican church

They are in exactly the same position as single straight men and women. They have to remain celibate.

Straight people currently have an option that gay people don't, which is marriage. Jesus explicitly gave marriage as the context for sex. Ergo, only married people who aspire to leading Christian communities get to shag.

The prohibition against gay Christian marriage is substantially based on a single statement of Paul's and the fact that Jesus only refers to heterosexual relationships. However in many people's minds these prohibitions aren't clear and thus bear examination with the guidance of the Spirit.

This discussion is underway in the church. Unfortunately, a rather arrogant man who left a wife and two children for another lover, enough to make him a fairly suspect candidate for a bishopric in the first place, has pushed this situation to a head.

Yes, I know that's all a lot less sensational than what we're all seeing in the news right now, but that's the mass media all over, isn't it? What really upsets me is that this sort of coverage breeds the sort of hateful hostility that oakthorne so neatly and brilliantly dissected in his recent post..

Comments

[adders.livejournal.com]

"This also happens in other cases of separation and divorce, yet I don't hear much about this when it's a heterosexual affair."

And I think that's a terrible failing of the Anglican church. While I accept that allowing divorce is a theologically acceptable position which applies the principle of love to a fallen, imperfect world, it should never be celebrated, just regretted. I may be liberal in my views on homosexual marriage, but I'm pretty conservative when it comes to marriage itself.

"Furthermore, I have to ask you whether you consider marriage to be a sacrament, because you ascribe great weight to how this affects someone's relationship with God. If it isn't (and the Anglican teaching is that it isn't), then marraige is a symbolic gesture."

No, I consider marriage in the light of Jesus's own teachings on the matter, which are pretty straightforward on the way two married people should approach one another. he's pretty hardcore on the matter (Matthew 5:27-31). I also consider it in the light of my personal experience of being brought up by two parents from broken homes, who had some very, very strong views on the matter. Happily, Jesus's teachings and my parents views coincide rather neatly.

"We can consider the failure of a marriage to be disappointing, but it's certainly possible to consider mitigating factors and apply compassion in a fashion one wouldn't extend to sacramental affairs."

That's exactly my viewpoint. My problem with Gene Robinson is that he celebrates the end of his marriage, which makes him a far poorer poster boy for the issue of gay marriage that he might me.

"Oh no; my wording was obviously un clear. What I'm saying is that, implicitly at least, church teachings are also the community's statement on how people who aren't a part of that body ought to behave. Thus, even if you say that this is simply what you need to do to be a good Christain, it is implicit that this is what you feel a person of any religious persuasion should do."

I don't actually think that follows. I certainly don't think my Christian beliefs define how a Muslim should live his life... All Christian teaching can do is teach us how Christians should behave and give us a moral context for commenting on the lives of others.

"All the same, social change allows us to examine what details are consistent with the message of the faith. For instance, a growing social consciousness about the status of women allows the church to find a context to examine whether its own positions on women are coherent parts of the religion. This sort of examination has borne positive fruit without forcing the church to obey social trends."

That I agree with.

" and to respect gifts of God such as (homo)sexuality"

Again, speaking as somebody who is broadly pro-Homosexual marriage within the church, I think the "this is a sexuality that God gifted us" is probably the weakest argument of all, simply because it opens to the door to the argument "God gave me the desire to have sex with children/goats/97 people at the same time/people other than my wife, and this is a gift from God that should be respected". The you have to fall back on "homosexuality is good and the others are bad because...." argument, and you're essentially making a different case.

I feel it's better argued that marriage is a life-long commitment between two people to companionship, mutual aid and succour, love and the expression of love between them in a physical manner. I have yet to see a really good argument why that relationship cannot be expressed between two people of the same sex without offending God.

[doctorcaligari.livejournal.com]

Coolness. Manifest proof that reason and Christianity are not incompatible...I agree that it often looks in the media like radicals, loonies and the hopelessly dogma-bound have hijacked religion, and that this is a tragedy, but that can only be countered by examples such as you're both providing. The sane need to be far oftener heard from.

[eyebeams.livejournal.com]

I don't want to continue the discussion to the point where it gets unwieldy, but I wanted to comment on this:

"Again, speaking as somebody who is broadly pro-Homosexual marriage within the church, I think the "this is a sexuality that God gifted us" is probably the weakest argument of all, simply because it opens to the door to the argument "God gave me the desire to have sex with children/goats/97 people at the same time/people other than my wife, and this is a gift from God that should be respected"."

. . . because I anticipated it when I posted it. We certainly wouldn't call any urge that does harm to others (or, in neutral conditions, ourselves) a divine gift, and can filter out the stuff that your contervailing examples are mostly about. I think we can apply reason to determine that consensual sexual contact between emotionally prepared adults is inherently different than pederasty, and that the urge to express this gift is different from the urge to do harm. Plus, of course, when we examine the personal histories of abusers, we see that they have almost always been harmed themselves, and are not expressing the potential of their own selves properly.

"The you have to fall back on "homosexuality is good and the others are bad because...." argument, and you're essentially making a different case."

I don't think so. I think that when we talk about sexuality as a gift from God, we have to do so in a fashion that limits it to things that are consistent with God's love, so other instances that do harm don't even show up on the radar. Most of them have explainable psychological origins anyway that make them different from the nature we could presume God laid down upon us.