Posted on 10/14/2003 9:44:56 AM PDT by dead
The evidence that being gay is not a choice undermines the arguments of homophobes, writes John Shelby Spong.
It was Professor Sarah Coakley, an Anglican theologian at Harvard University, who described the church as being something like a swimming pool. "Most of the noise," she said, "comes from the shallow end."
That is exactly my sense when I listen to the debate over the issue of homosexuality taking place today in the Christian Church in general and within my Anglican communion in particular. The noise, and it is very loud, comes from those who define this issue as a moral battle between God and the devil.
To maintain this attitude they must elevate a pre-modern definition that sees homosexuality as a sinful and evil practice, engaged in by people who are either morally depraved or mentally sick.
Against this distorted practice they assume that God has called them to do battle lest all morality disappear from the Christian world. They cite the sacred scriptures which they seem to believe God dictated - despite the fact that in some passages God is portrayed as less than moral - to demonstrate that the God they serve has affirmed their judgement.
They either fail to recall or conveniently forget that it was this appeal to scripture that has been used again and again to undergird causes that the Western world has today abandoned. The divine right of kings was supported by appeals to scripture to mount opposition to the Magna Carta and the birth of democracy in the 13th century. The divine right of kings and the Bible lost that battle.
The Bible was quoted in the 17th century to prove that the earth was the centre of the universe around which the sun rotated and that therefore Galileo was wrong. But again the Bible lost and Galileo won. Even the Vatican admitted that in 1991.
The Bible was quoted, and still is, in the less enlightened parts of the world, to prove that women are not fit to be priests and bishops. In most parts of the Anglican communion that battle is simply over and is not likely to be fought again with those who cannot adjust to reality.
The battle over homosexuality is thus a kind of final battle and last stand for the Bible quoters. Perhaps that is why they fight so furiously and so constantly trying to make a virtue out of a close-minded and uninformed prejudice.
It is quite simply not a battle between light and darkness, as homophobic church people try to pretend. It is a battle over consciousness, over new definitions based on new scientific and medical data that are invading and winning the minds of educated people.
Quoting a sacred text like the Bible, which came into written form between 1000BC and AD135, is strangely inappropriate to this new consciousness. No one would go to a doctor who sought authority for his or her medical practice in a medical textbook written in that period of history.
Jesus is actively pictured in the Gospels as believing that epilepsy is caused by demon possession and that sickness is the result of God's punishment. No one in His day knew about germs, viruses or leukaemia.
The new consciousness on homosexuality has emerged from a consensus of modern medical and scientific data that asserts that sexual orientation is no more a matter of choice than is left-handedness. It is a matter of awakening to one's own being and identity.
It is just the way some people are. Homosexuals also now seem to make up a consistent percentage of the population in all times and places. Homosexuality has even been documented in the animal kingdom. One can hardly call that "unnatural".
This new definition also asserts that no one can cause another person to become homosexual. Efforts therefore on the part of zealous but uninformed people to turn homosexual people heterosexual must be regarded as nothing less than fraudulent. That is, indeed, the way these efforts are increasingly regarded in medical circles.
One psychiatric association in the US has referred to efforts to change a person's sexual orientation as an act of "pastoral violence". As these realities seep down from the scientists into the common minds of the average citizen the old definitions become inoperative and a new consciousness is born.
That is really where the battle is in our churches between the definitions of yesterday and the emerging new consciousness of today. One can no more hold back new truths than one can stand on the shore and try to hold back the incoming tide. Quoting the Bible will not save this losing effort. Indeed, in time it will render the Bible quoters quaint, irrelevant, ignorant and even laughable.
Does this mean that those people who accept the new consciousness must condone all homosexual behaviour? Of course not. Some homosexual behaviour is depraved. Perhaps people haven't noticed that some heterosexual behaviour is also depraved.
Prostitution, pimping and child molesting are overwhelmingly the proclivities of heterosexuals, not homosexuals. Multiple partners, divorce and unfaithfulness are not unknown in the heterosexual world.
The day will surely come and it must come when any sexual behaviour that violates the sacred personhood or the solemn vows of any human being will be called evil and will be opposed by the church. But sexual activity that is faithful, that enhances life, increases love and calls each partner into a new humanity will ultimately be called holy.
Then we can take our marching orders again from the Bible, rather than the literal words. Jesus is quoted as having said: "I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly."
John Shelby Spong, a retired US Anglican bishop, is the author of A New Christianity for a New World.
The lack of evidence makes homosexuality a lie. What evidence? There isn't any except "We said so, so there!"
These mutants and their propaganda are something from an alternate universe or something.
Even non-Christians know that.
That's why those who engage in vile behavior have to use facist litigation and the thought control police to get their laws passed. They'd never make it past the will of the people at the voting booths.
Jesus is actively pictured in the Gospels as believing that epilepsy is caused by demon possession and that sickness is the result of God's punishment.Spong is delusional.
To quote Abaraham -
"Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?"
Serious lack of evidence. The gay lobby preaches gayness is all hard-wired genetics, but there is not one shred of scientific evidence that has not been thoroughly dispoven that suggests this. The gay lobby makes stupid claims that hetrosexual males commit the majority of child abuse, but that is only because 98% of males are hetrosexual. Gays still commit these crimes at a much much higher rate. You can make a strong case against homosexuality without even quoting the Bible, which I never do in making arguements anyways. You just need to look at promiscuity, AIDS, other STDs to make the point it is not a healthy lifestyle. Even in the gay community they make fun of the 'mythical' gay couple, because it so rarely exists for very long.
Well, Prof. Sarak Coakley how about this little adage:
"Death comes to those who go off the deep end and get in over their head with nothing to stand on."
Today, they claim certain cancers are caused by stress, and holostic medicine (the whole patient, i.e., physical/mental/spiritual) is proving itself correct.
Jesus must have been right, because he healed them immediately. Even todays medicine can't pull that stuff off.
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