You have made excellent points here and I think you have much to teach other Christians about the journey a gay or lesbian Christian may have to walk if they want to stay within a Christian faith community. Have you been able to happily stay within or find a faith-community that allows you to be yourself? I do hope so.

Thank you for your post and I hope folks see it here.

I thank iMonk for the review of the book, and for trumpeting a call (along with Marin and others) to start building bridges with the GLBT community. I am over 30 years old, have spent half my life in counseling and deliverance ministry in an attempt to be healed of my ’sexual brokenness’ that is homosexual orientation. I have cried with friends, I have had demons cast out of me, I have had generational strongholds named and broken, I have dated amazing godly women whom I never quite loved sufficiently to take them down the aisle.

I repented of every thought or feeling of attraction toward another man. I second guessed and over-analyzed my own intentions to build genuine friendships with other Christian brothers. When my Christian friends passed insensitive remarks about gays, I laughed along with them to mask my own pain. When small groups come together to share about what go on in their lives, I could only share the peripheral concerns because the one most preoccupying issue in my life was so often misunderstood and frowned upon by other Christians.

I am most amused by this Christian obsession to “make a stand” on the issue. I think I have known very well what the evangelical stand is. It baffles me why there is a need to keep reiterating the belief that “homosexuality is sin”. Does that help me? Does that propels me to love God more as a gay Christian? Does that make my own struggle any easier? Or are Evangelical Christians obsessed with “making a stand” because there aren’t much else to say beyond “love the sinner hate the sin”?

Well I thought that I would never embrace the “homosexual lifestyle” either. But then I just realized that there isn’t ONE homosexual lifestyle, just as there isn’t ONE heterosexual lifestyle. There are promiscuous straight folks and there are monogamous, chaste straight folks. Likewise, there are promiscuous gays and there are monogamous, chaste gays. To apply a blanket label of “the homosexual lifestyle” to all gays and lesbians is to have an intellectual discourse in a vacuum, without any real life knowledge of what really goes on in the world of gays and lesbians.

The gay men I have met always want to delay sexual intimacy until emotional bonds are cultivated. They are looking for ONE person with whom they can share their lives. And yes, they are more tolerant of Christians than Christians are of them.

And for those who argue that the orientation itself is a sin, should really read the Bible more carefully, and have a more cogent understanding of what constitute moral accountability. To hold on to a conservative position doesn’t make one more biblical.

As a sometimes post-evangelical, now Anglican (as of ‘98) and one who deeply attends to biblical orthodoxy on this subject, it has come at a great price.

As a “same-sex attracted” man, I have gone back and forth between carefully guarding my struggle to being more open in my church(es), friendships and in the workplace. As an athletic and “straight-appearing” guy (according to stereotype), I could have opted for silence, but have at times attempted authenticity.

Having experienced both shunning and vigorous Bible-quoting from my spiritual counterparts, the most painful aspect of this was the relegation to “second-class” Christian status, amounting to disqualification from leadership or ministry.

That’s all I’ll say for now.

Appreciate the dialogue here. Even seeing the closed hearts along with the open ones was somehow redemptive somehow. I am glad there is still grace and peace offered to all regardless of our struggle.

Gays and Lesbians don’t consider themselves to be broken. I doubt that they believed that you “accepted” them. You really only “tolerated” them much as they tolerated you.

Yes, there are evangelical Democrates (!) but on this site, have also engaged many people who speak freely about their faith (or lack of) — and you can’t help by cry when you hear about all the hurt and pain that has been caused “in the name of Christ”. Many topics, but sexuality right up there.

I cried when Prop 8 passe in California, primarily because I did not see the fruit of the spirit… love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

All that effort that went into defeating Prop 8 could have been spent spreading the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ. Personally, I know that my awareness of what is right and what is wrong in my life evolves as I grow in my relationship with Jesus. Let’s just focus our efforts on introducing people to the love that is Jesus and let the holy spirit take care of the rest.

I volunteer with depressed & suicidal people. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve talked with young people from Christian families who want to die when they realise they’ve been brought up to hate themselves.

I make a distinction between ontological labels/categories and behavioral categories/label.

Ontological: racial, gender, physical disabilities, sinner, saint, christian, and yes gay.

Behavioral: alcoholic, drug addict, gossip, idolator, adulterer, pedophile, hero, hard worker, etc

Ontological labels are labels about someone that remain true INDEPENDENT of behavior.

Behavioral labels are labels about someone that are meaningless when disconnected fro behavior.

The two categories are not exclusive. One can bear a label in both categories.

I put sinner in the ontological category. But itis a very special ontological class. perhaps deserves it´s very own class. why? we sin because we are sinners, we are not sinners because we sin. The point of Romans is that we are ALL sinners. But human does not = sinner. ALL sinners are human and all humans are sinners. It does not follow that human=sinner. Why not? we can ONLY know this from the Incarnation: Our Lord was FULLY human, yet he was without sin.

My Lutheran Church LCMS thinks they are more compassionate in that they say “sure we accept homos because we are sinners just like they are, homosexuality is no worse than drug addiction, alcoholism, even gossip.” Sounds compassionate, but there is a category error there, and be sure that gays do not miss that and feel the christians have drunk the haterade for both sin and sinner.

I get that impression because in comparing being gay with being a prostitute you are saying that gay people choose to be gay. Telling any gay person that is slamming the door in their face because it is refusing to accept them for the person they are.
——Yes, I am saying gays choose to be gay, just like my daughter made her choice. Just like I chose to be a drunk.

And I heard the same arguement from my daughter to me–”You refuse to accept me for the person I am.

And I used that very same arguement on my wife trying to get her to accept me as a drunk.

Sarah, you said:”We have no right to say that my sin is any less than your sin or less than your daughter’s sin or than my son’s. We are all sinners.”
——I haven’t done that, nor do I remember anyone in this debate doing that.
fishon