I feel the need to say something quite direct and perhaps unpopular. It seems to me that this whole Gay/ Lesbian/ SSM question is actually a very simple issue. It is a basic issue of human rights!
People don’t choose their sexuality. No matter the factors involved in creating our sexuality (genetic, social, etc) we are who we are. We can’t change it. And given that that is so, the question of people’s “opinions” about our sexuality falls into the category of total and utter irrelevance! The idea that our approach to sexuality it is a “hermeneutical” question (a word invented by theologs and unknown to 99.999% of the population!!!) is just nonsense. Sexuality, our experience of it and our response to it is a fundamental building block of life from which derives a simple matter of human rights: is this or that person is to be accorded full status and rights as a human being – or are they to be oppressed and denied their rights on the basis of the sexual bias of those who find their sexuality distasteful? Worse still, are they to be denied and rejected in the name of God?
As Baptists we should be leading the way in insisting on equal rights for all people, rather than grubbing around in the Bible seeking out verses that will support what is simply our innate and reptilian prejudices against homosexuals. (To explain, it is, I think, quite natural - and almost necessary for the continuation of the species - that heterosexuality will carry some inbuilt bias against homosexuality, but as humans we have both brains and hearts to moderate and control this bias and set an example to others).
I am tired of hearing about the need to be “pastorally sensitive” towards people who “struggle” with (other people’s!) homosexuality. OK we should we gentle, but we should be firm and unyielding in teaching people that this is not a choice that homosexual people have made but rather it is the way that (if you want to put it this way) “God has made them”.
The real and often unaddressed question is – what about the people who are homosexual, whose life is devastated at its very core by the denial by others of their sexual orientation: people pushed into self-doubt, depression and even suicide by the rejection of others in the name of God and righteousness?
Who cares what your “opinion” is on this matter? Who says you even have a right to an “opinion”. Do you have a right to opinions that the earth is flat or that black people are sub-human or that disabled people are morons? We need to get the homosexual “debate” onto the same level. It doesn’t matter what you think – you just need to catch up with reality and accept the fact (!!!) that a person’s sexuality is how it is and that your only proper and Christian response to it is to affirm them and respect them as you would/should anyone else. Their rights in life (such as SSM) must be exactly the same as any other person’s rights.
Of course, a major problem in achieving this in the Baptist community is another “elephant in the church”: namely our traditional approach to scripture as “the Word of God” by which we apparently need to justify every action we take. Where do we get that idea? Did Jesus say that? Jesus said that he would send the Spirit of Reality to lead us into all reality precisely because there were things he wanted to tell us humans that we couldn’t swallow in his day. We will never find the “word of God” simply in the pages of scripture. The Spirit also works in the world at large (over whose chaos she originally hovered in the creation story). It is the Spirit who has led the way in human rights and who informs much of the freedom we enjoy today. The attempt to equate the contemporary witness of the Spirit with that of two to three thousand years ago may be “interesting” but it is not a task which should allow us to ignore or worse still be complicit in the denial of equal rights to all people today.
People don’t choose their sexuality. No matter the factors involved in creating our sexuality (genetic, social, etc) we are who we are. We can’t change it. And given that that is so, the question of people’s “opinions” about our sexuality falls into the category of total and utter irrelevance! The idea that our approach to sexuality it is a “hermeneutical” question (a word invented by theologs and unknown to 99.999% of the population!!!) is just nonsense. Sexuality, our experience of it and our response to it is a fundamental building block of life from which derives a simple matter of human rights: is this or that person is to be accorded full status and rights as a human being – or are they to be oppressed and denied their rights on the basis of the sexual bias of those who find their sexuality distasteful? Worse still, are they to be denied and rejected in the name of God?
As Baptists we should be leading the way in insisting on equal rights for all people, rather than grubbing around in the Bible seeking out verses that will support what is simply our innate and reptilian prejudices against homosexuals. (To explain, it is, I think, quite natural - and almost necessary for the continuation of the species - that heterosexuality will carry some inbuilt bias against homosexuality, but as humans we have both brains and hearts to moderate and control this bias and set an example to others).
I am tired of hearing about the need to be “pastorally sensitive” towards people who “struggle” with (other people’s!) homosexuality. OK we should we gentle, but we should be firm and unyielding in teaching people that this is not a choice that homosexual people have made but rather it is the way that (if you want to put it this way) “God has made them”.
The real and often unaddressed question is – what about the people who are homosexual, whose life is devastated at its very core by the denial by others of their sexual orientation: people pushed into self-doubt, depression and even suicide by the rejection of others in the name of God and righteousness?
Who cares what your “opinion” is on this matter? Who says you even have a right to an “opinion”. Do you have a right to opinions that the earth is flat or that black people are sub-human or that disabled people are morons? We need to get the homosexual “debate” onto the same level. It doesn’t matter what you think – you just need to catch up with reality and accept the fact (!!!) that a person’s sexuality is how it is and that your only proper and Christian response to it is to affirm them and respect them as you would/should anyone else. Their rights in life (such as SSM) must be exactly the same as any other person’s rights.
Of course, a major problem in achieving this in the Baptist community is another “elephant in the church”: namely our traditional approach to scripture as “the Word of God” by which we apparently need to justify every action we take. Where do we get that idea? Did Jesus say that? Jesus said that he would send the Spirit of Reality to lead us into all reality precisely because there were things he wanted to tell us humans that we couldn’t swallow in his day. We will never find the “word of God” simply in the pages of scripture. The Spirit also works in the world at large (over whose chaos she originally hovered in the creation story). It is the Spirit who has led the way in human rights and who informs much of the freedom we enjoy today. The attempt to equate the contemporary witness of the Spirit with that of two to three thousand years ago may be “interesting” but it is not a task which should allow us to ignore or worse still be complicit in the denial of equal rights to all people today.