Jaffa;
when I hear Christians battling about homosexuality I get sad. I look at Jesus and what he stood for and what he had to say. While he had nothing to say about homosexuality he had plenty to say about the poor, the downtrodden, the marginalised, and how we as his followers should treat our fellow people. Sadly I have seen too much evidence of homosexual people being treated as second class or worse by the church, and cries of judgment upon them when people should be looking at their own lives and their own sins.
So my first stance is to look at how Jesus acted. He was accepting of everybody. Then there's the whole homosexuality in the bible thing. There was no real concept of committed gay relationships as we have today anywhere in the bible. When Paul takes a hard line on 'homosexual offenders' it looks like he is talking about the rape of young male slaves, in that case often very young boys. If he is taking a hard line against such practices then that can only be good. I wouldn't want a God who would not judge men for raping boys. But there is just not the construct of gay marriages. So we have to look at the overall bible, what God says about relationships in general and take it from there. We cannot, I believe, form a judgment on homosexuality from 'what the bible says', because really, it doesn't.
We can see that God intended men and women to come together in marriage. We can see that some people were called to be single. BUt again, there was never the issue. So I wonder whether we need to decide that we are not God, and it's actually not up to us to make a judgment on such things. Who knows? I suppose you could make that statement about a number of things.
For me, I have friends who are Christian and gay and reconcile it quite happily. I know they are sincere in their relationships with God. I am now much of the opinion that there are more important things for the church to be concerned with, like justice for the poor for example, and droughts in Somalia. Why are we quibbling? It's like the whole women priests thing. What a load of hot air.
I sometimes wonder if Jesus came again now he would look at his church with his head in his hands and go 'that's not what I meant..'
But that's somewhat harsh. There is so much good in the church. I just think we make a big issue of things that don't matter sometimes.
Gay priests is a difficult one for many I know. I just would look at that person and how sold out for God and the gospel they are, I think.
But then again I'll never make archbishop. Tho dh might 