oh no you di-in't

I think this semester I will have to come to terms with how I feel about homosexuality. The PLETHORA of comments about joe/homosexuality from last post. This class about "love and politics"- i mean come on do they mix any more obviously than in gay marriage? plus this girl on my hall and her girlfriend (who is now a resident of our hall... simple because of spending the night every night) are in the class.

I want to live peacefully and not feel attacked. I give everyone else the benefit of the doubt. I de believe other people come to their beliefs rationally. Just because I view the world through the lens of a loving god does not mean that I am irrational. Or that I lack logic. I may lack the search for every truth about the world. I believe I have found the ultimate truth, and with is everything else falls in place, will fall in place, or god will help me pull it down into place.

without further ado. Because dialogue (polylogue) is really the best way...

I do believe homosexuality is a sin. More specifically, a perversion. Everyone is a sexual creature. Carly is sexual- in an open way. Sluts are sexual- in a slutty way. Nuns are sexual, but have given their sexuality to god. Everyone is sexual, and God created us that way. no getting around it. We all desire love in one way or another. But, because we live in a fallen world we're like, "ok i'll take god's creation and mess around with it" So we get compulsive liars who take truth and twist it. Some people are hateful and refuse god's love or the love of other people. And some people desire the (romantic) love of the same sex. Like being very "sexual" in the wordly sense- porn star, etc., homosexuality is a perversion of the sexuality god created in us. That's what I belive. that's what I think I belive. When I write it out like now, that's what makes sense.

Now, as regards some things we face:

Gay clergy: Yes. But, again, I don't think someone is born "gay"- they become that way. Somehow, to say "gay clergy" assumes that oh well they can't change it. They can. I permit gay clergy only if he or she acknowledges it is a sin. What if your church ordained a pastor and said, "well this is our new pedophile pastor so-and-so" assuming that "oh well that's how (s)he is. but hey, we welcome everyone" No. Saying "this is who I am" is saying, "God you can't change this about me, you can't touch this" Pedophilia is a perversion, too. I think pastors should be honest about their struggles (especially in the pedophilia circumstance- but that's a whole different post), they need a loving community, too, to help them. I would not feel comfortable hearing about God from someone who so blatantly acknowledges and accepts a thorn in their side. They preach the finer points of some theological concept...

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Matthew 7)

I mean, I do thank God that I don't struggle with the temptation to obtain love from the same sex. It's a hard struggle, and the people that struggle with this are often ostracized. But all the same, it is a struggle, and one that- with the help of God- people can overcome. Clergy can be homosexual, but only if they acknowledge their sin.

Gay marriage: No. I would not feel comfortable in a church that condoned this or held gay marriage ceremonies. What is marriage? The spiritual and physical joining of two people (man and woman!). God creates our sexuality, he creates in us the desire for love, companionship, and sex, so that he can fulfill it!!! In the end, only the love of God can satisfy us, but for the time being, in marriage the other sex can try to satisfy. It can certainly satisfy the sexual desires. God created woman for man, man for woman. I mean just look at the bodies! God didn't say, "oh hey, way to go me- didn't know they'd fit like that!" No. He knew.

What is more enraging to me, though, is that a church might condone this. Like ordaining the minister who chooses to ignore his sin, condoning this man-man, or woman-woman relationship in god's sanctuary is truly blasphemous. In the ceremony, you pray for the relationship, for the marriage. What is the use of praying for something God knows is a perversion and not what he intended? It's spitting in God's face! It's like, "well... you created us... but I like us better this way, ok? So thanks for the raw material, I'll take it from here" no. Marriage is a gift from God, and as such it is holy. Gay marriage, in one sense, is a contradiction of terms. And I do not support it.

I'm not sure, though, how I feel about legal gay marriage. Like, tax benefits, that sort of thing. I don't know enough about it.

Now. To what really matters: the people. I can argue about sin all I want, but what matters is the sinners. Which, if you weren't aware, is all of us. So you've probably all heard, "Love the sinner hate the sin" which is truly what we should aspire to. But to get there let's take a little detour. Jesus says to "love your neighbor as you love yourself". Allow me to quote c.s. lewis (big time) in his discussion of this:

[this is in a chapter about forgiveness] ... And secondly, we might try to understand exactly when loving your neighbour as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself?

Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently, 'Love your neighbour' does not mean 'feel fond of him' or 'find him attractive'. I ought to have seen that before, because, of course, you cannot feel fond of a person by trying. Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact it is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. That is an enormous relief. For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are. [sic: condoning homosexuality either by ordaining or a marriage ceremony! Also, because this is about forgiveness, he refers to 'enemies'. But what I want to point out is how to love people that you know have done wrong. Anyhow, onward and upward!] Go a step further. In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think of myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some things I have done with horror and loathing. So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do. Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. [sic: aha!]

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occured to me that there was one man to whome I had been doing this all my life- namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things... hate [sin, bad things] in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again.

Does all of that make sense? I hope so, because I'm not going to explain it again. Lewis is a smart guy, and a clear one, too. Anyhow, I used to have really jacked view of homosexuality. I'll admit it, I was totally homophobic. but it was in talking with my brother (who is like- maybe i'm christian maybe i'm not- whatever) who was like, "how is it different from any other sin, you hater?" which made me realize how wrong I'd been. So yeah. Post if you want. I hope I don't piss anyone off, but this is what I logically and rationally believe. And I figure before I go any further I should fine tune this. Make sure I'm secure in my faith. I also want my blog to be more faith oriented. I find myself more interesting when I'm talking about God as opposed to when I'm talking about, say, boys.

With apprehension, but not really, I press "publish post".