That seems to make my point, in spades, about the morality teachers not having any idea what the Truth is, doesn't it?

Can 62 bishops be wrong if 45 bishops are right?

Orrin, your comment appears to put morality up to majority vote.

Harry:

No number of bishops can make moral that which God says is not.

Churches are human institutions and therefore make many mistakes.

.... especially churches that put theological questions to a vote.

(my two cents)

Did God say it wasn't moral, or did men in God's name?

From my earliest awareness of homosexuality , it sure as hell seemed immoral to me. A product of an unenlightened time in need of deconstruction and sensitivity training I'm sure...

I was reading on the web that the Episcopal Church may split again on the issue of ordaining an openly believing Christian as Bishop. Apparently a real nutcase who insists that Jesus is the ONLY way.

As you can imagine this has caused great consternation.

Tom:
The question remains. Did God say it wasn't moral, or was it men speaking in God's name?

Jeff:

I am sure you know the references as well as we do. For those who hold to divine inspiration, both the OT and NT call homosexuality a sin. Of course, there are numerous other sins which get much more attention (i.e., money is mentioned in the NT over 2000 times alone, most in a negative sense), so the churches which spend most of their time railing at gays don't really know their own doctrine very well. But when bishops start to invert the clear words of Scripture, then they need to leave - it is the only coherent thing to do. How would you feel sitting with a co-pilot who suddenly decided to fly upside down?

Christ said to love one another--you can't love someone and degrade them and yourself as buggery requires.

Jim:
Actually, I don't, and I'd rather know more, rather than purely guessing.

I seem to remember one of the references being part of a list of 600+ thou shalt nots in the Old Testament that came from a meeting of elders.

That would seem to be a case of the OT reporting what men had decided, as opposed to what had been divinely revealed.

And, so far as I can recall, Christ never said a word one way or another on the subject.

My point being that much within the OT and NT is open to debate, and not all that is in there is straight from God's mouth to our ears.

The equivalent distinction in flying is between technique and procedure.

And since I don't know the references, and their sources, then I can't begin to understand the context of the Biblically derived opposition.

My question remains: for those of us who don't have a direct pipeline to god, where do we go for reliable information about his desires?

Obviously, a church would be the last place to look. What's the first place?

Why even bother electing bishops? All believers are priests, there is no central authority to Christendom anymore, why all the pretense about this election being in any sense important?

Harry, the pipeline is a closed loop from the believer's brain back to the believer's brain. There is a certain amount of mental gymnastics involved in being able to believe that the voice coming out of the pipeline is not your own. It's like that Twilight Zone episode where the ventriliquist started to believe that his dummy was actually talking to him.

The Bible.

OJ:
I wasn't aware you are a Bible literalist.

Where to people who don't happen to take every word in the Bible as inerrant go?

"Obviously, a church would be the last place to look. What's the first place?"--Harry

"The Bible"--OJ

"I wasn't aware you are a Bible literalist."--Jeff

?

OJ:
Apologies for the (slight) tongue in cheek. But. If the first place to go is the Bible, then either it is the only place to go, or it is the best place to start.

If the only place, then everything in it must be literally true, to be taken at face value, with no need for selection or intepretation.

If the best place to start, then someone, somewhere has to decide meaning and applicability.

So it seems you are either a literalist, or you failed to answer Harry's question.

"Obviously, a church would be the last place to look. What's the first place?"--Harry

"The Bible"--OJ

oj:

But, it's A-OK to degrade only ONE partner, as your definition of heterosexual intercourse requires, eh ?

That's how nature rendered us--someone has to submit.

Actually, the Bible has a lot to say about sex, and not all of it is negative.

The OT is quite protective of women and their 'virtue' (and futures). Men who violated women were required to marry them and care for them. Rapists were put to death.

And in the NT, when the Pharisees aksed Jesus about their twisted ideas on divorce (for any reason, even to the matter of burnt toast), he pointed them back to Eden, clearly defending marriage as unbreakable (except for adultery). The disciples were so stunned that Peter even replied "it is better not to marry!".

I wonder what Gene Robinson thinks about that?

Which part of the Bible?

Start at the beginning. All you really need to know is that God Created Man in His Image. All morality depends on those simple truths.

Jeff-

God was silent. When the gay fellow made an advence on me as a thirteen year old, my gut told me it was immoral, as well as very creepy.

Start at the beginning. All you really need to know is that God Created Man in His Image. All morality depends on those simple truths.

That is not so simple. Milton wrote thousands of verses about the implications of believing it to be true.

Besides, what if you interpret the story to say that he created the Serpent in His image? The Serpent thought so.

And he had rather more reason to, didn't he?

Satan is Created in His Image. Many people think we too should become Satans and try to usurp Him.

My point exactly.

You lay a claim, then try to ratify it by an arbitrary choice among (at least) two options that, so far as the evidence goes, are pretty close.

Again, other than self-esteem (usually my department), why think we were the chosen ones?

You cannot just say "the Bible," which is vague, contradictory and circular.

The Bible

Hmmm. Still vague, contradictory, and circular.

If that were sufficient, there would be precisely one monolithic version of Christianity.

Why? We're still humans. There's never been a book that two or more humans read and came away with identical understandings of, no matter how clear the text.

oj:

I agree.

Now, why do you believe that BOTH are degraded, if two men have sex ? Only one is submitting, and the other would have been dominant even if it were hetero sex.

It's wrong to exploit another man in such a way.

Oh. One Truth, but 6 billion interpretations of what it is.

Or, to put it another way, 6 billion truths.

Such are humans--doesn't change the Truth though.

"It's wrong to exploit another man in such a way."

You are making the assumption that external biology and the brain are consonant. If they were, though, then it wouldn't be an issue. On the other hand, men are very likely to be gay because some wiring in their brain is, in fact, female.

Which, if true, means you are drawing a false conclusion from irrelevant evidence. Degradation is a mental state, but external biological details are not.

You are right, it doesn't change the truth. But it makes the odds of determining it vanishingly small.

The Soul is superior to the Body--overcome your "wiring".

Unless, of course, the wiring is that person's Soul.

To the extent that God is responsible for making us in his image, that is a possibility not to be discarded to lightly.

Besides, the point in question is whether gay men are self degrading. That would be the case if they are thinking with a brain like yours. But if they aren't, then your assertion is empty, based wholly on external appearances, without the slightest regard for the possiblity that nature happened to produce a brain-body discontinuity.

It would be the surrender to such a discontinuity that degraded them.

Well, I think that vowing to avoid sex is degrading and, in the not-so-very-long run, self-defeating. But that's just an opinion. Some people disagree.

The idea of unknowable truth sounds very pagan -- specifically, Greek -- to me, Orrin. Not a Christian idea at all.

OJ:
Your response is meaningless.

At first it was the act that is degrading. Now it is surrender to a brain-body discontinuity that is. When one is faced with a discontinuity, that presents a requirement to make a choice. Clearly, gays choose their brains. You would have them choose body.

Why is your choice superior to theirs? Why is their choosing mind over body wrong? What does degradation have to do with any of this?

Jeff:

No, I'd have them choose not to degrade themselves, even if their body tells them they want to.

Harry:

Everything is unknowable--all we have is faith.

And those who don't have faith have nothing?

They too have faith--else they'd scrap themselves.

OJ:
Your biology is all screwed up. With respect to sex, it is the brain that does the telling, not the body. So for you to assert degradation is to emphasize the physical at the expense of the mental.

I guess it all depends which part is image, and which is substance. Apparently you emphasize body. I emphasize brain.

I don't have faith. I haven't scrapped myself. Your assertion seems a mite ambitious.

The brain is the body--I speak of the soul.

You've ample faith, you've just displaced it because of your understandable anger at the Father. You'll grow out of it.

How do you know the soul isn't the brain, or that the brain isn't the phsyical manifestation of the soul?

In any event, degradation is a state of mind. You fail to take into account the nature of that mind when asserting gay sex is degrading to the participants.

Jeff:

Yes, you've backed yourself into the corner you Darwinists always do--if all is brain--mere biology--then morality has no basis and nothing anyone does is wrong. Morality requires a soul and the capacity to exercise free will in such a way as to override the dictates of nature. This is where folks like Stephen Jay Gould and you bail out because you're decent enopugh to want to preserve the idea that things like genocide are immoral in and of themselves, even if you can justify many other horrors to yourselves.

OJ:
I repeat, how do you know the soul isn't the brain, or that the brain isn't the physical manifestation of the soul?

How do you know God didn't ensoul gays that way? After all, unless my question above simply went unanswered, it appears neither God nor Jesus had anything one way or another to say about homosexuality.

Beyond that, it is your use of the term "degradation" that is at issue here. If gays aren't thinking with the same brain you are, then what is degrading to you need not be to them. And, like it or not, if they don't feel degraded by their acts, they aren't. It is their act, their minds. Not yours.

We all have the same soul--recall that bit about "created equal"

All people share the same soul?

Gee, I was suffering under the misapphrehension believers felt there was a unique soul for each person.

By your logic, we all have to share the same brain to be created equal.

So let me make sure I understand. By your lack of answers, I presume:

No one knows whether the soul and brain are distinct, or if the brain is the physical manifestation of the soul.

No one knows if God ensouled gays the way they are.

The Bible contains no divine statements (i.e., from God or Jesus) regarding homosexuality one way or another.

Each soul is unique. All of ours are the same when we're born. They are corruptible.

"All of ours are the same when we're born."

How do you know? Are female souls the same as male souls? Are souls completely binary?

I take it my presumptions are reasonably correct. (I'm being curious, not rhetorical.)

No, male and female are different. Women have less need to be moral creatures.

"Women have less need to be moral creatures."

I take it God compensates for this--after all, there is no point having a surfeit of morality--by providing women with less moral souls.

Right?

No, men take care of it.

I have read your comments and, while they are centrally popular to the current disagreement, they do not touch on a larger extra-biblical argument that is central to all exegetical interpretation. "What was/is the (God's) intention?" Simply put, what was the point/intention then and how are we living now? One of the most common mistakes made today in the confusion of the church triumphant with the church militant. The church triumphant is what we should have/ are to be, the church militant is what we actually are. A liberal over emphasis on what we are ignores the intention and extols a "bloom where your planted" motif to the exclusion of all else. An orthodox over emphasis can so focus on the what we should be that the present reality is over simplified and degraded. Moderately applying either perspective leads back to the original question and some obvious answers. God is a God of order. God sought order in creation. The order of creation reflects or is reflected by the ying and yang, black and white, positive and negative, up and down, etc. Philosophically then, all that does not reflect order is a result of corruption and not proof of intention. That is not to say disorder does not exist, we know it does, only that it does not represent the original intention but rather the corruption or dilution of that intention. Therefore, in our current argument, the question is, "does homosexual activity represent order?" Order, in this case, is easily defined by the American Medical Association who has written generic a-moral tissue type and purpose publications which are applicable to our discussion. Homosexuals involved in physical sexual activity pose a serious health risk to themselves and others because of damage to tissues which are not biologically designed to function as they are. So, if God had intended the human body to function that way--God would have designed it to accommodate that activity. Homosexual intercourse or hetero-sexual anal intercourse based on simple medical biology are out of order therefore not intended by nature, and for our argument, not intended by God. That being said, the question remains, "now knowing this activity (and therefore the desire that accompanies it)is not of the natural order or of God's order, how do we faithfully respond? Ignore the intention and extol the present or embrace the intention and try to live into it?