AS A committed, Bible-believing Christian, I am ashamed and appalled by the debate about gay marriage. My views are not those of my son, who is gay and who is now an atheist, but result from some ten years of reading, prayer, discussion, and serious thought.A mother's cry from the heart, surely, and a cry that should touch other hearts and perhaps melt a few hearts of stone. With great courage, Linda names wickedness for what it is. With the mess that straight folks have made of marriage today, who are we to disrespect couples of the same sex who wish to love and cherish one another in faithful, committed relationships? Who are we to decree that these couples may not call their relationships marriage? And where is the church in all this? Why are the civil authorities in England leading the way? Linda speaks to her Church of England, but here in the Episcopal Church in the US, we still have a way to go, although we are headed in the right direction. As Linda says, 'The Church should blaze a trail....'
My son came out at the age of 20, having spent much of his previous ten years knowing that he was not growing up to feel attracted to girls, but to boys. I don’t think he even knew the word “gay” at the beginning of this process, but he knew that he was growing up differently.
I am now convinced that homosexuality is a developmental condition that is not amenable to change at any psychological level; it is not a matter of choice; and is something that has caused many boys and girls to live in shame and fear from their early teens onwards. I know that my son had no access to other gay people through his adolescence, and that it was only at university that he was able to talk this through with heterosexual friends, finally coming to the conclusion that he was gay.
We, the Church, over centuries have perpetrated a great wickedness on these children and developing adults, forcing many to live by deceit, in failed heterosexual marriages, and even in an inability to form relationships because of their own private hell.
At least the gay-rights campaigners have had the courage to stand up and work on some sort of social change. It is a pity that the Church did not do this in the first place.
H/T to Simon Sarmiento at Thinking Anglicans.
'With the mess that straight folks have made of marriage today, who are we to disrespect couples of the same sex who wish to love and cherish one another in faithful, committed relationships? Who are we to decree that these couples may not call their relationships marriage?'
ReplyDeleteSorry chere Mimi, but those words of your bore repeating!
Thanks, cher David. Linda seems to me to be of the evangelical persuasion, so her words are perhaps another sign that at least some evangelicals are coming around.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I like the phrase "developmental condition" because it seems to imply something has gone wrong (tho she may not mean it that way). But, obviously, regarding her general point, the more churchgoers who say what she is saying, the better. She does seem to be of the evangelical persuasion. So, good.
ReplyDeleteAmen!
ReplyDeleteCathy, perhaps the mom refers to development during pregnancy, rather than during childhood. There are instances of identical twins with one twin gay and the other straight, which indicate that where we end up on the spectrum of sexual orientation may not be solely due to genetics and perhaps may be a influenced by hormones during pregnancy. The latest studies show that sexual identity is set at birth, whatever the causes.
ReplyDeleteWe all start out with a basically female model, and through nutrition and hormones develop step by step into a viable human person, the XYs in a masculine direction, some XXs as well. I had a couple of psychology books that stated that some boys were "insufficiently masculinized." No, the process produces what it produces; there's no Platonic ideal for male or female. The intersexed (whose genitals are between male and female) and left-handers demonstrate visibly that the results aren't uniform; we're coming to understand that the unseen development occurs in a range, and not in standard outcomes. Gay, straight, trans, mixtures of all of the above, are simply variations on human possibility. Time to get forget the pigeonholes and let everyone be who they are.
ReplyDeleteWe, the Church, over centuries have perpetrated a great wickedness . . . forcing many to live [in] their own private hell.
ReplyDeleteExactly. This is the key point, the essence of what it means to be gay in this world as it is, which is so terribly hard to get straight people to see and feel. In "Black Like Me," the author talks about the "hate stare" that he discovered white people gave to blacks, a thing he was totally unaware of before he disguised himself as black. When I read that passage, I immediately understood because I have gotten that exact same stare of contempt and disgust as a gay man, many times.
Being black and being gay are not just alike, for several reasons; but the experience of being hated - hated - without cause, for no good reason, is quite the same.
An excellent letter, which I may reblog; thanks for posting this.
Murdoch and all, think of it! In the beginning, we are all girls!
ReplyDeleteTime to get (sic) forget the pigeonholes and let everyone be who they are.
Exactly.
Russ, one would have to walk in another's shoes to know what its like, which Griffin did. I remember the book and movie titled Gentleman's Agreement, in which the journalist pretended to be Jewish to write about antisemitism.
Yes, Gentleman's Agreement was a great film, Gregory Peck did a fine job in that. As usual.
DeleteWho proofreads?
ReplyDeleteYeah, God created Eve, then took the leg of one of her XXs and made an XY to help and support her. Unfortunately the XY used the strength and cleverness he was given to perform his role to lord it over Eve and the whole creation. God may have complained, but by then, XYs were XX-deaf.
Playing the A&E myth a little further, can we note a couple of interesting things?
DeleteFirstly is the supposed masculinity of God - in the first creation story, humans are created, male and female, both in the image of God. In the second, Adam is created and Eve created out of him, again implying that male and female were equally present in the original Imago Dei creation.
Secondly is that despite how historically men have lorded it over women, genetically we men are the defective broken ones, with our Y chromosome and our utter dependence on our one X for colour vision and blood clotting.
Murdoch, sometimes I wonder why I bother with 'Preview', because I still get it wrong. For my blog, you'd think my plan was post first; edit after, for as many times I make 'adjustments'.
ReplyDeleteAnd what about the paintings of Adam and Eve with belly buttons? What's that about?
[digression]
DeleteThere's more in that one that you may know. It's the basis of the Omphalos creationist argument. It goes like this:
"Adam and Eve were created as adults. They'd therefore appear as if they'd been around for say 20 years. They would bear signs of a history that had never occurred - e.g. they would appear to have gone through puberty. Probably therefore they'd have belly buttons. So when God created the earth, it was brand new but had mountains, valleys, rivers and whatnot that give the impression of history."
The argument is used to explain a young earth that appears to be ancient. It's rubbish of course, and contradicts the main thrust of modern creationism which tries to claim that the earth *doesn't* look old.
The reality is simpler than either. It does look ancient, because it is ;)
[/digression]
During my publishing days, we suspected that books were bound with a secret circuit that made all the errors missed in production light up. Nothing like Publish to make one's errors plain.
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