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From: davet@oakhill.UUCP (Dave Trissel)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Church Discipline and Gay Christians
Message-ID: <355@oakhill.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 8-Mar-85 12:28:00 EST
Article-I.D.: oakhill.355
Posted: Fri Mar  8 12:28:00 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Mar-85 04:14:50 EST
References: 
Reply-To: davet@oakhill.UUCP (Dave Trissel)
Organization: Motorola Inc. Austin, Tx
Lines: 132
Summary: 

There seems to be many open minded Christians here on the net.  My reply to
Bob is addressed to you all as well as to him and I would be interested in
hearing your responses.  All I ask is that you give serious consideration to
the points and questions I pose.

In article <1292@akgua.UUCP> rjb@akgua.UUCP (R.J. Brown [Bob]) writes:
>
>However, those people who claim to be Christians and flout the obvious
>moral imperatives provided for us in Scripture are to be educated
>(gently) in their error first.  ...

Its fairly obvious Bob that you haven't been among openly gay Christians. Your
eyes might be somewhat opened if you attended one of the gay churches in your
area or if you had a friend you knew was gay.  (I can see why gays would wish
to stay closeted around you.)

If you were to attend a gay church you would be put into quite a dilemma for
you would find Christians just as devoted as you taking communion, testifying,
and living the exact same religious life as you.  Of course the position you
would be forced to place yourself in is one of either totally rejecting the
obvious of what you'd be seeing/experiencing ("whats wrong with these sinners!
How can they let Satan decieve them so? They are so stupid! Can't they read
the Bible?") or starting to understand that your concepts of reality may need
a little growing and stretching.

Somehow I get the feeling from the tone of your posting that you are not about
to open yourself up to the possibility of gay Christianity.  You can stand on
your soapbox and post all day about those gays who think they are Christian
but aren't. My challange to you is to meet some of the people you condem.
Or is this beneath you?  Your attitude is all too typical of the Christians
in the church I grew up in.  That's one of the reasons I left.

>Again the scriptures teach us "Forsake not the assembling of yourselves
>together..".  There is no such thing (he says dogmatically) as a Lone
>Ranger Christian (by choice) who is not headed for a hard fall or at 
>the very least severely retarded spiritual growth. .....

Would you care to substantiate this?  Even though I am not a Christian I know
several people who are that seldom attend any church.   I find it highly
unlikely that you personally know of several who tried let alone tried and
failed. Could you point out in scripture where this is predicted?

>is abundantly clear we have accountability to our brothers and
>sisters as well.  

Do you take this seriously?  Are you willing to investigate the facts about
your gay Chistian brothers and sisters?  If you are not interested then don't
keep spouting things about people you know nothing about.  There are others
here in net..christian that seem willing to keep an open mind and let their
God through both prayer and examination show them the answer to these things.
What do you think about such an attitude?  Would you trust God enough to do
the same thing?

>
>But I digress,...Gay lifestyles are clearly sinful for Christians.
>The New Testament Scripture references (especially Romans 1) have 
>been cited repeatedly.  Even if homosexuality were not prohibited 
>in and of itself, we could make an
>argument against it on the basis of sex outside of marriage is either
>fornication or adultery.  Since marriage is never spoken of in the
>Scriptures in the context of man/man or woman/woman.......

If gay lifestyles are clearly sinful then why don't the gay Christians see
that?  Do you have any idea?  Have you ever asked any?  Is it not worth
your effort to go and ask?  Or do you already "know the truth" anyway.

The issues are not as clear cut as you make them out to be.  Haven't you been
reading the postings regarding John Boswell's book?  Haven't you seen the
fact that nowhere in the Old Testament fornication is prohibited (and thus
did God change his mind for the New Testament?)  Do you just ignore any
information that conflicts with your worldview?

Do you look in the Bible to see how many teeth a sheep has instead of looking
in the sheeps mouth? I may not know very much, but a lot of what I do know
has been tested by checking to see if those concepts match what I actually
find in the world.  The problem is what I find in the external world doesn't
seem to match up with what you are saying.

>.......................................................  The corner-
>stone of their argumentation is that gayness is genetically determined.

Now we get to the heart of the matter.

>The Gay theological error in my opinion is "God made me this way".  We
>are born into a fallen world which produces these kinds of 
>aberrations (sp?) ...

Let me ask a simple question here: Are you heterosexual because God made you
that way, or did you choose it?  How do you know?

The vast majority of gays feel that they had no choice in the matter.  Are
they all wrong?  Do you really think you know them better they do themselves?

>..............  I have heard the testimony of many ex-gay people who
>have been delivered from homosexuality to the point that I suspect 
>that it is a learned behavior perhaps in some cases abetted by 
>natural predisposition.
>
There are a few problems with this.  First of all you have seen only one side
of the fence.  You are obviously unfamiliar with those Christians who have
left your church after years of waiting for God to change them from being gay
to straight, only to come to understand that not only is God not going to
change them but He wants them the way he created them.  Most gay Christians
have spent years thinking that their gay inclinations were somehow wrong, and
only after a lot of prayer and time did it dawn on them that they were
supposed to be gay.  Of course, some gays (Christian or not) automatically
sense that their gayness is normal and so don't go through as much turmoil.

The second point to make is that sexuality is a continuim.  Most people seem
to be on the ends of the spectrum but there are people all the way in between
from pure heterosexuality to pure homosexuality.  It may be easy to think of
the world as all black and white, but thats just not reality. I can see many
people that may be in the middle and able to adjust to either side.  That may
explain some of the people you have come accross.

The churches are full of people who claim to be "saved" from the evils of
drugs, alchohol, etc. etc by God.  Now I have a different idea what really
happens here but thats beside the point.  The facts are that people can
radically change for the better via religous experiences.  The problem is
that almost all gays which are christian end up NOT being changed.  If they
were there wouldn't be any gay churches since there would be no gays in them!!
Do you really think God is incapable of changing them? Or that they are so
far from God that they don't know any better? By the way, gay churches range
from Jewish to Morman to Catholic to ...  Here in Austin there are several
varieties including fundamentalist, catholic and charismatic.


Well Bob I think I have brought up a number of questions I hope you and the
many other Christians here honestly consider.

					 Kindest Regards,
					 Dave Trissel