IMonk….you just made it really easy for me to remove your blog from my favorite list.
Inflammatory rhetoric linked without one word of caution from you, our moderator.

That sounds far too much like the Gnostic “*I* Have Spiritual Eyes” type that makes me wonder if I just stepped through the reality barrier into a bad Star Wars prequel or Call of Cthulhu game. Or into the hands of some Witchfinder-General smelling out Witches through Spectral Evidence.

I think the problem is that these days Evangelical identity is oppositional, they know what they aren’t, but they don’t know what they are. — Dave the PK

“WHATEVER IT IS — I’M AGAINST IT!”
– Groucho Marx as Professor Wagstaff, Horsefeathers

Try telling some of these people that Reagan was engaged in ongoing sin, they don’t like it. — Dave the PK

Oh, Reagan got on a LOT of Christians’ bad side back in ‘81, but for a completely different reason. He told the Christian Culture warriors of the time that he had been elected President of the US — the entire country, not any single faction within it.

You saw the “RONALD WILSON REAGAN = 666!” posters and grafitti within days of that statement.

There are other incoherences in certain strains of Evangelical Christianity; cheerleaders for war, but pro-life. Pro-death penalty, but pro-life. — Dave the PK

These are some of those inexplicable connections you find everywhere, like pro-abortion plus gun control, or pro-abortion plus pro-animal-rights. Just more of Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe.

I think another problem is the clergy. Many clergymen, including my father, are aware of double-standard their flock have vis-a-vis socially acceptable sins. Yet these preachers are too cowardly to confront their own flock. Instead, they keep the focus on the “world” (external forces) so everyone can continue to feel good about themselves.
There are other incoherences in certain strains of Evangelical Christianity; cheerleaders for war, but pro-life. Pro-death penalty, but pro-life. I also think many Evangelicals don’t realize that we are supposed to pay our taxes and be loyal to the powers that be, but we aren’t supposed to try and justify their actions. I don’t recall Christ or Paul ever saying “we need a righteous man in Rome.” The debauchery the emperors were capable of would make even the worse escapades in the Oval Office pale by comparison.

Personally, I find my grandmother (traditional Church of the Brethren with Mennonite ancestors)’s German Anabaptist sensibilities to be more coherent and less full of inconsistencies than Anglo-American based Evangelical traditions. For her people the world is always sinful, there is no changing it, and the greatest struggle is the internal one.

You have category errors. You make orientation into something that is behavioral. Behaviors include thoughts, words and deeds.

Ontological labels (labels that are true about you independent of behavior or choice): man,black ,white ,human, gay.

Consider: white/black/human/heterosexual lifestyle/choice

Behavioral Labels (labels that are meaningless apart from behavior. Some of those behaviors may seem indelible and involuntary(ie no choice): adulterer, liar, thief, alcoholic, addict, child-molester, gossip, glutton, hero, or in the example you provided: bridled adulterer.

Consider: Your example: “bridled adulterer” not “bridled man” or “bridled heterosexual”

The Sin Label: 1) All humans bear labels from both categories. 2) The label “sinner/sinful” applies to all humans and all labels and so is unique.

Consider: Evangelicals believe that we are sinners because we sin (behavioral). Lutherans (like me!) believe we sin because we are sinners (ontological, or rather the anti-ontology. What would be the implications of this fundamental theological difference in viewpoint here?

Luckily, it’s not my job to condemn anyone, but it doesn’t really surprise me when some Christians speak out more loudly about homosexuality than they do other kinds of sin. Adulterers, for example, generally do not hold parades in which they claim that they’ve made a perfectly valid lifestyle choice and that the rest of us should offer them some kind of legal recognition.

Fortunately for me, most of my sins don’t show on the outside.

iMonk: You said you weren’t going to have a Protestant/Catholic discussion on the issue but then ask for Bible quotes to support the Catholic position.

In related news, I’m not about to have any sweet snacks today. Also, if anyone has any cupcakes, I’ll take one.

“So it seems to me that the call to love everyone- regardless of their sexual behavior- is one that shouldn’t be held hostage to the likelihood that loving people in the verb sense won’t make them automatically agree or affirm your own believes, or even stop hating you.

It should be done because in that joyful, radically, giving of the self in love to others, we create a space that can be filled with God’s love for us- for us to experience and appreciate that love?”

That sounds correct. Bless those who curse you, love your enemies, etc. Suffering for doing right is blessing; suffering for doing wrong is justice.

Hm.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re mistaken about this one, Brian.”

Maybe you believe that an approach of “I maintain that the lifestyle on which you base your identity is sinful and wrong, but I’m going to be very kind and compassionate towards you anyway” is going to impress your gay neighbor. Maybe for some it will. I say that the gay neighbor more likely will receive it as something like “I maintain that you as a black person are inherently inferior to me as a white person, but I’m going to be very kind and compassionate towards you anyway.”

I say that our discussion sounds to them like “How do we treat black people with dignity and respect without compromising our belief that we are racially superior to them?”

So no, I don’t at all buy this nonsense of “If we’re just super nice to gays, they’ll overlook what our religion teaches.” If the Christian carries out Jesus’ commands correctly with regard to loving his gay neighbor, he will be perceived as a very polite bigot.

The reason this is important is because if getting the larger culture to stop calling us hateful bigots on the subject of homosexuality stays as the unspoken assumed goal (which your response confirms to me that it is), or that it is the physical evidence that we have come into accord with God’s will on the matter, then when being very kind and compassionate to gays fails to work, we’ll be sorely tempted just to move away from the faith as handed down to us.