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God condemns the action, not the tendency, or we would by definition all be doomed. ALL of us have sinful tendencies and desires, which is exactly why we need the saving grace of Christ.

You are on the right track but recognize too what Christ said in Matthew 5:28 ‘But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’ This is a verse that addresses adultery as opposed to a homosexual act but since sin is sin, I don’t think that it matters since the principle is the same. In other words, it is NOT simply the action that is sin.....unless one wants to say that ‘lusting in one’s heart is an action’. What Christ has laid out is obviously impossible to follow which is why I believe that my faith in salvation is a continuing one... and hence I also can believe in the promise in 2 Corinthians 4:16 ‘For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day’.

What I see as a big problem in discussions like this is that it is clear that that much of the battle is already lost simply because those who promote the concept that ‘homosexuality is normal and just fine’ have managed to control the agenda by virtue of gaining control of the language. And giving up control of the language is the first and most important step in retreating and in fact conceding the battle. Using the language that those who promote acceptance of ‘homosexuality’ is endemic in society and sadly it includes many of those commenting here. Essentially once you agree to use the language as ‘they have defined it’, the debate is virtually over...let me elaborate.

The idea of ‘being homosexual’ is simply not a concept that is found in scripture and in fact, it shouldn’t be a concept that exists today. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as homosexuality... or heterosexuality either for that matter. There is only sexuality which is the sexual component of the nature of created mankind... and sexuality manifests itself in many ways i.e. healthy, unhealthy, perverted, forms that sanctioned by God, forms that are totally abhorred by God etc. When people use words such as homosexual and heterosexual, they are speaking strictly about something that doesn’t exist in any tangible way....it is just something that is conjured up in one’s own mind and as such, it is nothing more than being a self-identification or self-declarative statement of something that is perceived but can’t be known. Since there is no means test that can act as a repeatable and consistent methodology for providing proof, the terms are meaningless. Thus if a person was to say “I’m a homosexual”, how could that be verified to be a true statement? It can’t and even those who champion so-called ‘homosexual rights’ (I refuse to use the word ‘gay’) will often say things like “we are no different than you are ”. Whenever scripture deals with issues like this, it never addresses it in terms of ‘what you are’... it addresses it in terms of ‘what you are doing’. As in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (King James Version) ‘Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.’ Note that for each of the parties on this list, the word used is referring to something that they are doing i.e. a fornicator is one who is fornicating, an idolater is one who is practising the worshipping of idols, a thief is one who is thieving etc. A thief isn’t a thief because he thinks of himself as a thief, he is a thief because he stole something. Similarly, it is not simply the thought of thinking about one’s predispositions or even contemplating a sexual act with one who is the same sex that is the problem... it is the act of doing it. By the same token, one gets into a bit of mental gymnastics with this if the question is posed “is a person who has self-identified him or herself as a homosexual but never acted on their feelings, really a homosexual?” If a person said yes to this question, how would they prove it? This is why the concept of same-sex marriage is totally flawed. There is the very important aspect to a person’s thought life that Jesus talks about that I mentioned above but with respect to this subject, it is the act that’s the problem. Incidentally, the Bible verse above uses the word ‘effeminate’ as quoted in the King James Version. It probably wasn’t the best choice of word and other translations use the word ‘sodomite’ and ‘men who lie with men’.....both of which are consistent with the point that it’s the act carried out by the individual(s) as opposed to some characteristic of the individual.

The bottom line is that by using the word ‘homosexual’, one is agreeing that conceptually it exists as something tangible and thus an entity that needs to be addressed... and for most people, that means that they look at it as ‘something that just is’ and therefore on these grounds, difficult to not accept. The issue becomes a conundrum when it gets confused with fallacious positions such as “it is something that is intrinsic with a person’s personality and character, he/she was born that way, it is who I am, and then of course there is something else that really mixes people up (even if they are generally opposed to homosexual behaviour) and that is how to react to someone who says that they are a homosexual but remain celibate etc etc. So.... the answer is to use other language when speaking about this issue. The options are ‘one who commits sexual acts with a member of their own sex, sodomite.... or perhaps the least offensive might be ‘one who claims to be or identified himself/herself to be homosexual’.