by Rev. Gregory Youngchild

Battle Creek Enquirer, June 4, 2000

3. You did not choose your sexual orientation. God chose it for you, as both gift and challenge, whether it is homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual. You who are gay are privileged! On only 5-10% of humanity did God bestow your particular gift; only 5-10% are deemed strong enough to bear the challenge. Believe that God did not create you to fall prey to other’s vicious snares of self-doubt, but has profound faith in your innate abilities to bear your special gift with Pride.

I read Stephen J. Heaney's Aug. 5 counterpoint, "Human sexuality is about biology, not just about love," and felt a familiar nausea. The statements about God's grand plan, the right kind of relationship, the reproductive organ argument, the comparison of homosexuality to a disordered desire or addictive disorder. Yes, those darn homosexuals, trying to get us to dismiss their disorders and say they're all right so they can quit struggling to rectify their lives. The big question is: Even if they wanted to not act on their feelings, what does that mean? That they spend the rest of their lives without a close, committed relationship? Or do they marry someone of the opposite sex, try to live a "normal" life and make their spouse miserable? Or is friendship supposed to be fulfilling enough for them? Would it be for you? Do they accept their homosexuality as a particular struggle God has given them, accept their misery on earth, and comfort themselves with promises of happiness they will one day receive in heaven? I don't understand! My 14-year-old son is gay and every time I read about the Boy Scout controversy, Dr. Laura, church doctrine against performing gay commitment ceremonies, opinions about states that allow gay couples legal marital rights, and so on, it's like someone pounding on me, telling me my son is immoral and deviant and will not have the same rights as the rest of us upstanding citizens. A big part of the problem is that the people who are so down on gays don't personally know any. I don't mean they don't know so-and-so in the office who's gay or haven't seen a gay character on TV. I mean they don't really know a gay person, an individual. If you know an individual, you know there is more to being gay than sex. My son has been called a girl, made fun of, and ostracized most of his life. He's a feminine boy, always preferring My Little Pony and Barbie to sports and trucks. So boys ask him to prove he's really a boy. They threaten to staple his tongue to his chin. In private, the straight boys flirt with him and touch him and try to get him to touch them. He thinks they really like him, until he's once again ostracized in public. He changes for gym class in the office because the other boys stare at him, waiting to see if he can prove he's a boy or whether he makes a move where they can accuse him of looking at them. He spent lunchtime in the school library because no one would let him sit with them. He even got asked to move when he sat at a table alone. I thought maybe my son was gay when he was 3 because of his feminine ways. Then I was angry at myself for that prejudice, knowing that not all gay men are feminine, and why can't a boy like bright colors and girlish toys? When my son told me he was gay at 9, I thought, no way, he's too young to know! Puberty hasn't even hit yet! He just knows he's different and the kids call him a girl and tell him he's a fag so he's just being affected by those taunts. I played baseball with him more. I tried to get him to sign up for sports. I signed him up for karate so he could at least defend himself. I coached him on being more masculine. I called it being more assertive, told him to speak in a gruffer voice, told him not to flail with his hands when he was talking. I hated myself for trying to make him into something he wasn't, shaming him for the things he was, buckling under what society considered "normal" and therefore OK. But I was afraid he might end up beat up someday, maybe even dead. I'm still afraid of those things. When my son at age 12 again told me he was gay, while he was crying and wishing he was dead, I didn't know what to do. I wanted to stop the pain. I wanted to grab all the people in the world who have hurt him personally or through articles like Heaney's counterpoint and drag them into my house and show them the results of their words and actions. Instead, I got my son antidepressants and therapy once a week. The way my son is is the way he is. I can't change him. He's tried to feel attracted to girls but doesn't. Why do people accept other characteristics people are born with? We don't look at anything else in the same way that we look at homosexuality. Suddenly it's about God, and a threat to families and the institute of marriage. Is that because it has to do with sex? I don't get it! People get upset because gays are in their face, having gay pride marches, protesting at the Republican convention. What? Once a year they get to openly walk the streets showing their affection for each other, something we do and take for granted every day? They are tired of being ignored and treated as less than human. They want to have health insurance, to have their partner receive their pension if they die, to have immediate family visitation rights in the hospital. These are all normal, responsible desires, but we won't even allow them that. This is about having legal, human rights. It is not a conspiracy or grand plot to make us all homosexual or bring on the downfall of society. "Homosexual acts ... make no sense"? Because the organs fit together, does r ape make sense? If a heterosexual couple does not want children, do their sexual acts no longer make sense or is it still OK because they have the organs-fitting-together thing going for them? I hate it when people call their opinions "the truth." Call it your truth, because it certainly isn't mine. God creating feelings in people that he then expects them to ignore? Now that doesn't make sense. It seems like some warped joke that only man could create, not God. My son and I don't go to church anymore. Even though not all churches preach hatred, the institution has come to represent pain. God's name has been used so much to frighten and hurt people. So I keep asking God to please help people like Dr. Laura and Mr. Heaney see and understand what they are doing to God's children so all this can please stop.

-- Mary Olson is a Twins Cities writer.

November 11, 1990

All Saints Episcopal Church Pasadena, California

"God, Sex, and Justice" is the title of this sermon. God and justice—we certainly know they belong together. But God and sex— and in church? It may be a puzzle to some because we have been the lifelong recipients of double messages. "Sex is good and beautiful, but let's not talk about it in church." Or, "Sex is dirty. Save it for someone you love!" I never have understood how that works! Years ago the psychologist Carl Jung observed that religion and sexuality were closely intertwined. When people brought to him religious questions, they turned out to be sexual issues. And when they came with sexual questions, they turned out to be religious ones. At conscious and unconscious levels our spirituality and our sexuality are very much intertwined. By spirituality, I mean all of the external, ritualistic forms that help to connect us to God, the creator. I mean also the informal ways we forge a union between our own spirit and the divine spirit, and live in God, the lover. It is a journey into God who is the ultimate power and meaning in our lives. It is the recognition that it is God in whom we live and move and have our existence. In part, that is what spirituality means. By sexuality I do mean erotic arousal and genital expressions of love. But I mean much more. Sexuality is a basic dimension of human existence. It affects all of our thoughts and feelings and actions. Sexuality is our way of being in the world as female and male persons, and living as bodied persons with the capacity of sensuousness and touch and communion. It is our way of being in the world with certain sexual and affectional orientations. In short, sexuality is our way of being in the world by God's design and creation—created in such a marvelous way that we can be drawn into intimacy and touch and communion. Our sexuality is all of that. During the 1960s we experienced a sexual revolution. During the last quarter of a century we have witnessed great changes in the cultural and religious understanding of sex roles, sexual behavior outside of marriage, single parent families, homosexuality, and the explicit ways in which sexual matters are discussed. There was enormous resistance to these changes, but it happened. In 1984 Time magazine did a cover story announcing that the sexual revolution was over. Veterans of the revolution, Time said, were bored and wounded. The one night stand had lost its sheen. Helped along by herpes and AIDS, commitment and intimacy were "in" again, and celibacy was once more a respectable option. There was some evidence that the "me generation" was giving way to the "we generation." There is no question that much of that is true. However, in a deeper sense, the sexual revolution is far from over. Many scholars are saying that never before in the history of the Church has there been so much ferment as there is now on human sexuality. The outpouring of resolutions by national church bodies, the pronouncements by national religious figures trying to reaffirm the traditional values on sexual practice, has been unprecedented. It is a tremendous privilege to be the rector of a church that is willing to live with conflict in its life. One of the things I treasure most about All Saints Church is the fact that we have not shied away from trying to deal with the tough, controversial questions of the contemporary world. It has been hard work, but we've tried to face these issues openly, gracefully and honestly. I love that about you. This morning I want to engage you on a difficult issue. Among many ethicists whom I respect there is the growing conviction that human sexuality is the test case for communities of faith in our time. These complex issues of sexuality are placed forcefully on the Church's agenda: full equality and justice for women, abortion rights, sexual love outside of marriage, and the most controversial of them all, homosexuality. William S. Coffin, formerly the senior minister of Riverside Church in New York City and a leading prophetic voice in American churches, says the issue of homosexuality is probably the most divisive issue since slavery split the Church. The mandate of Amos and the prophets, and the imperative of Jesus and the Church to seek social justice will not allow us to forget the fact that discrimination and oppression continue against millions of gay and lesbian people in the structures of society, as well as within the Church. We must address that injustice. My case has four dimensions to it. I. We of the Jewish Christian heritage are a people of the Book. So what does the Bible say about homosexuality? Many of the people who condemn and reject gay men and lesbians and want to deal with them punitively read the Bible with a selective literalism. I just read a recent article by the Chaplain of the United States Senate where he called homosexual practice an aberration and abomination—and quoted scripture to show how sinful and perverse such behavior is.

It is true that there is a passage in the book of Leviticus in the Jewish Bible that does call a man lying down with another man an abomination. But I want to point out that the Leviticus law also used the word abomination in reference to other behaviors as well: eating pork, misuse of incense, sexual intercourse during the menstrual period, and wearing clothing of mixed fabric. Selective literalism always gets us in trouble!

The television evangelists are always talking about the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, and how homosexuality destroyed the city. I can't imagine any respectable Biblical scholar attributing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to homosexuality. Yet the words sodomy and sodomite have come to mean the perversity of homosexuality.

I heard a great story about Sodom and Gomorrah. A political scientist, who was also a good lay theologian, opened a speech he was giving in Washington, D.C. in this manner: "Washington is full of sodomites. The Congress of the United States is half full of sodomites. And the President of this country is probably a sodomite." Then he said, "Let me tell you what sodomy means. I will read from the Book of Ezekiel, the sixteenth chapter, the forty-ninth verse: 'This was the sin of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had the pride that goes with food in plenty, comfort, and ease, and yet she never helped the poor in their need.'"

He said, the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was the sin of inhospitality, the sin of hardness of heart in the presence of human need, the sin of injustice, the sin of neglecting the poor. That is the abomination to God. Those are the sodomites. I'm sure he got their attention!

The world in which the Bible was written did not know about the loyal, faithful, tender, non-exploitive loving acts of same-sex couples for whom mutual attraction is part of their given natures.

When the Bible condemns homosexuality, it is speaking about rape, incest, prostitution and cruelty which is also sinful for the heterosexual. And there is not a single word from the lips of Jesus about homosexuality.

The really serious problem for the people of the Book is not how to square homosexuality with certain Biblical passages that appear to condemn it, but rather how to reconcile rejection, prejudice, hostility, and punishment of homosexuality with the unconditional love of Christ.

II.

Homosexuality in the vast majority of cases is a condition that is given and not chosen. From my own reading and personal experience with gay and lesbian persons, I am convinced that at least ninety per cent of homosexuals do not have anything remotely close to a choice in their sexual orientation.

I recognize that a few say they do. Some believe they have freely chosen to be homosexuals and live out that sexual orientation. I respect that position—and honor those people. What do we know about the causes of homosexuality? The exact causes are unknown—but it is increasingly clear that the more we know about heterosexuality the more we will understand homosexuality. It is a continuum. I don't believe a person is absolutely straight or absolutely gay.

I have been guided very substantially in my understanding of homosexuality by the many books of James B. Nelson.1 He is a brilliant theologian who teaches at the United Theological Seminary in Minneapolis. He is recognized as the country's leading ethicist on human sexuality.

According to Dr. Nelson, we cannot say with any precision what causes homosexuality. It is likely to be an interaction of several factors, including genetic, hormonal and environmental. But psychological and social influences alone probably cannot cause homosexuality. He writes that the genetic, hormonal, neurological predisposition toward homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual orientation is present at birth for all people. But it takes the blending of various factors—and no one seems to be quite sure how—in the earliest years of a child's life to produce a lasting sexual

orientation in that person. Once that is relatively fixed—and the research now says this is between two and five years of age—this sexual research now says this is between two and five years of age—this sexual orientation cannot be changed permanently by therapy. Many gay and lesbian people tell us horror stories of how parents, upon hearing that their child was homosexual, sent them off to a psychiatrist "to be fixed." The dehumanization of that process is overwhelming.

To deny or repress or hide one's sexuality is bad theology and bad psychology. The only healthy thing to do is accept oneself and affirm one's sexuality.

Without self acceptance one cannot possibly live responsibly. But for gay and lesbian people that is a gigantic struggle. They have frequently been told by their families that they don't belong to them, by the Church that they are perverse and desperate sinners because of their sexual orientation, by the medical profession that they are sick and abnormal, and by the Supreme Court of the land that they are criminals.

How have gay and lesbian people withstood such an onslaught? I am amazed to see such health and stability in the homosexual community.

At the core of the Christian faith is the simple and profound assertion: God loves you just as you are. In the Gospel the first and last word is grace. Grace means you don't have to become something before you are loved by God. It is offered free. You can't buy it or earn it or deserve it. All you can do is receive it. That unconditional love and generous acceptance are not marginal to our religion.

They are central to our belief. This radical acceptance is of the total person—body, mind and spirit. James Nelson says that once we allow this radical grace to penetrate and we accept the body as loved by God—we begin to reclaim the lost sexual dimensions of ourselves.

Grace is total acceptance. Our body's feelings, our body's erogenous dimensions, our fantasies, our masculinity and femininity, our heterosexuality, our homosexuality, our sexual irresponsibilities as well as our yearnings for sexual integrity—all of this is graciously accepted by divine love.

That is the wonder and glory of the Christian faith. When we know God loves us just as we are and we put our arms around ourselves in acceptance and self love, there is released in us enormous spiritual power —power to grow into wholeness, into that beautiful person God has created us to be.

III.

I want to move on and share with you my belief that genital expressions of homosexual love can be holy and good. The National Episcopal Church, along with other mainline denominations, as well as the Roman Catholic Church, have said that gay and lesbian persons are welcome. Their presence and service in the Church are valued. But they must remain celibate.

The Episcopal bishops recently by a very narrow vote disassociated themselves from an ordination to the priesthood of a man who is a practicing homosexual. By a vote of 78 to 74, Bishop John Spong of Newark was censured by his colleagues for this ordination. And a couple of years ago the Episcopal House of Bishops reiterated the Church's belief in the traditional values that say genital expressions of love are permitted only for heterosexual couples within the bonds of marriage.

I strongly reject these positions of my Church. Yes, celibacy is an option to be honored when voluntarily chosen for positive reasons. Often celibacy is chosen not because genital love is intrinsically wrong but rather because celibacy is for this person the best way to express a vocational commitment or the best path into sexual integrity. I know many people who have chosen celibacy in whom this commitment is a beautiful quality. It should be supported.

But celibacy is not the only valid homosexual lifestyle for Christians. Every human being has a God-given right to sexual love and intimacy—a right to be lived out in a way that is compatible with the spirit of Christ.

John J. McNeill was a Jesuit for nearly forty years before being expelled from the Society of Jesus in 1987 for his views on gay and lesbian sexuality. His books have helped illumine my journey. Father McNeill writes that only a sadistic God would create millions of human beings who are homosexuals and then deny them the right to sexual intimacy. He says before he believed in such a sadistic God he would choose to believe the Roman Catholic Church is wrong about homosexual activity. And they kicked him out!

After much study, reflection and struggle, I have come to believe that the ethical standards for sexual practice are the same for homosexuals as for heterosexuals. The core issue for sexual ethics is not the assessment of certain types of physical acts as right or wrong, normal or abnormal. The core issue is not whether genital love is within or outside of heterosexual marriage. The pivotal issue is the integrity of the relationship. This is true for us all. Gay men and lesbians desire and need deep, lasting relationships just as much as I do. And they should not be denied genital expressions of that loving communion.

____________________________

Sunday, February 18, 2001

 Preached at FUMC by Rev. Dr. Kathlyn R. James

Texts: Luke 12:54-57 I Corinthians 3:21 - 4:5

Last August, we had a Sunday in church called "Burning Questions," in  which I responded, on an impromptu basis, to written questions from the  congregation. At that time, I also promised that I would plan to preach an entire sermon  on each of the "top three" questions submitted on that day. I have already  preached on two of those questions, "How can we know the will of God for our  lives?" and "Where is God in the midst of suffering and evil?" Now this morning we  come to the question that was asked more often than any other, which is: "How  should a Christian regard homosexuality?"

 It's not surprising that this question should be at the top of your list.  As most of you know, it has been the subject of rancorous debate in the United  Methodist Church for the past thirty years. At our most recent General Conference,  the debate was so painful that there was talk of the denomination splitting  over this issue. And for the first time in a hundred years, the United Methodist  Church is even holding what can only be called heresy trials, in which pastors are  being expelled for disagreeing with the ruling that gay and lesbian Christians  should be excluded from the full life and ministry of the church.

As your pastor, I know very well that homosexuality is a difficult subject among us. It is an issue on which, as Christian people, we have diverse  opinions and often very complex feelings. But I also know that this is not just a  political question: it is also intensely personal. There are parents sitting here  this morning who are wondering why their child is gay, and if anyone else has struggled  with this. There are gay and lesbian Christians who are active members of this  church, but who live in the closet because they don't want to lose their jobs,  their homes, or your friendship and respect. There are teenagers here who have  contemplated suicide because they suspect they might be gay. Each of us here has our  own background and confusion about this issue. It is time we talked about it.  My goal, this morning, is simply to open the conversation.

And here's my thought: what's the best way to open a conversation? It's  not by presenting a logical line of argument. That's how you begin a debate!  The best way to start a conversation, in which you want others to share freely and  no perspective to be silenced, is simply to speak from your heart, out of  your own experience. So let me simply share with you, this morning, at least part  of my own journey around this issue. In the months ahead, and beginning with  the "dialogue" time immediately following church today, I invite you to do the  same.

I grew up in an atmosphere of traditional values. My family belonged to a Congregational church in which, week after week, I absorbed a basically  mainline Christian theology that emphasized the love of God for all people. I was  taught that the most important thing in life is to love God, and to love our  neighbors as ourselves.

 In that environment, oddly enough, I don't remember one word ever being spoken about homosexuality. I don't even know when I first heard the term  -- probably not before high school. When I did, it was not with any heavy overlay of negativity--and in this, I have come to realize, my experience is different from many people's. I did not grow up being told that  homosexuality was shameful or sordid; I never had a bad experience such as being  molested by a person of my own gender. Only as an adult do I realize what a huge impact  such early experiences have in shaping people's attitudes toward homosexuality.

In fact, I had never met a homosexual person, as far as I knew, even into  my twenties. This combination of influences meant that my attitude was  pretty much "live-and-let-live." I didn't see how it hurt anyone, or how it threatened  me, if two people of the same sex wanted to love each other and live together. What  was the big deal?

It wasn't until seminary, when I was thirty years old, that the issue acquired a human face for me. Her name was Sally. I was a commuting  student at Vancouver School of Theology, with a job and a husband and three  children in Seattle. I drove up to Vancouver on Mondays and came home on Wednesdays,  so I needed a place to stay two nights a week. Sally had a studio apartment  on campus that she was willing to share in return for prorated rent. Over the next  three years, Sally and I became fast friends.

I had never met anyone like Sally. For one thing, she was much more  disciplined in her spiritual life than I was. She got up at 5:00 every  morning, which I thought of as an ungodly hour, and left the apartment for a walk or a bike ride,  during which she would pray. She bought all her clothes at Goodwill and had only five  changes of clothing, and two pairs of shoes, in the closet. She spent several  days a week volunteering in a soup kitchen downtown. She kept a prayer journal.  Basically, she put me to shame.

 But the most appealing thing about Sally was that she loved God. She  laughed easily, loved life, loved people, was funny and fun. One night, as we  were going to bed--each of us in a single bed against the wall, our heads in the corners  and our feet toward each other--she asked if I wanted to pray. I had never prayed  with another person before--at least, not like that, opening our inner lives  before God, in each other's presence--and at first I was halting and shy. But over  time we made a habit of praying together, and it was in the course of those years  of praying, of being as honest with ourselves as possible in the presence of  God, that Sally came out to herself as gay.

 It was no problem for me that Sally was discovering this--and I have to  add here, that like most people, Sally discovered her sexual orientation; it  wasn't something she decided. (Isn't that true for you, that your sexual  orientation is something that just seems "given"?) It wasn't as if Sally woke up one  morning and thought, "All things being equal, I think I'd like to be a member of a  despised minority." It was more a process of discovering and owning the truth about  her make-up as a human being.

 But I soon learned what a traumatic discovery that would be. Sally came  out first to herself before God, then to her family, then to the seminary,  then to the church. I accompanied her in that process. When the Presbyterian church  kicked her out of the ordination process, I was stricken: how could they say  that Sally was not qualified to be a pastor? She was the best student in her class,  and a better Christian than I ever expect to be. I knew that she had been  gifted and called to the ministry. Then Sally was fired from her job as the Youth  Director at a church, because someone sent the pastor a letter saying that she was  gay. All I could think at the time was: this is absurd. Sally is great with those  kids; why would people assume she is not safe to work with them? Why did they think  a heterosexual man or woman would be safer?

Things came to a head for me, one morning, when I was standing in the kitchen, pouring a glass of orange juice, and listening to Sally cry her  eyes out on the bed. She often did, in those days. Finally I went over to her,  sat on the edge of the bed, and began to stroke her hair. I was filled with  helpless rage at the world, and fierce tenderness for my friend. I heard myself  saying, "Sally, I don't know what being gay is. But if it's part of who you are,  and if God made you this way, I say I'm glad you are who you are, and I love who you are, and I wouldn't want you to be any different."

 As soon as those words were out of my mouth, I realized something. I had taken a stand. I knew where I stood on this issue. Sally did not deserve  to be despised and rejected; it was the church that was wrong.

After seminary I was appointed to serve Wallingford United Methodist  Church in Seattle, which had decided some years earlier to become a "reconciling congregation"---that is, a congregation that publicly states it is open  and affirming toward all people, regardless of sexual orientation. From that  point on, my learning curve was steep. One of my first pastoral calls was to a  young man who had just slit his wrists with a razor blade. He explained that he  was a Christian and couldn't deny it, that he was also gay and couldn't deny  that either, even though he had tried. He had been told he couldn't be both.  His father had called him "human garbage." He was not fit to live. All I  could do, in response, was to get down on my knees and ask for forgiveness for the church, for communicating to this young man that he was beyond the reach  of God's love.

 In the five years that followed, I had many such experiences. I had young men with AIDS look up at me with hollow eyes and ask, "Do you think I am an abomination?" I sat with young men calling for their parents as they died, parents who never came. These experiences had a profound  impact on me. I kept going back, in my mind, to my earliest Christian training:  the message that God loves everyone, and that Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself. He didn't say, "Love your neighbor, unless he or she happens  to be homosexual." He never said one word about homosexuality at all.

 Jesus spent his whole life going to the poor, the marginalized, the  persons who were called unclean by their society, and demonstrating that God's  love included them. He treated them with compassion and respect. His own harshest words were for the Pharisees who believed that they were righteous in God's eyes, that others were not, and that God's judgments  and opinions were identical to their own.

 Which brings me to the question of what the Bible has to say about homosexuality. There is not time, this morning, to take up that question in depth. But let me just say a few things here. The word "homosexual"  does not appear anywhere in the Bible--the word was not invented, in any language, until the 1890's, when for the first time the awareness  developed that there are people with a constitutional orientation toward their own  sex.

 In the whole Bible, there are only 7 brief passages that deal with homosexual behavior. The first is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is actually irrelevant to the issue. The attempted gang rape in Sodom has nothing to say about whether or not genuine love expressed between consenting adults of the same gender is legitimate. Neither does the passage in Deuteronomy 23, which refers to Canaanite fertility rites that have infiltrated Jewish worship. Passages in I Corinthians and I  Timothy refer to male prostitution.

Two often-quoted passages prohibiting male homosexual behavior are found in the book of Leviticus. Leviticus also stipulates that any man who  touches a woman during her menstrual period is to be stoned to death, that adulterers are to be executed, that interracial marriage is sinful, that parents may kill a disobedient child, that two types of cloth are not to  be worn together, and certain foods must never be eaten. I know of no  Christians, no matter how fundamentalist, who believe that Christians are bound to  obey all of the Levitical laws. Instead we are driven to ask deeper questions  about how to rightly interpret Scripture, how to separate the Word of God  from cultural norms and prejudices--that is, how to separate the Message from  the envelope in which it comes.

The final Biblical text that deals with homosexuality is found in Paul's letter to the Romans, in which he condemns homosexual behavior. The background for his understanding is the Roman practice of older males "keeping" young boys for sexual exploitation, which he was right to  condemn.

But even if this were not the case, even if Paul knew about and condemned all forms of homosexual behavior, even the most loving, what then? Paul also told women not to teach, not to cut their hair, and not to speak in church. Do we follow his teaching? He told slaves to obey their  masters not once but five times--are we prepared to say today, as Southern slave owners argued 150 years ago, that slavery is God's will?

 The fact is, I am not a disciple of Paul. I am an admirer of Paul, but a disciple of Jesus Christ. Paul himself says that we should not follow  him, but Christ alone. So I come back, again, to the life and teaching of Jesus as the center of my faith. In that light all other biblical teaching must be critiqued. There are seven passages about homosexual behavior in the Bible, all of them debatable as to their meaning for us today. There are thousands of references in the Bible that call us, as  Jesus commands, to love our neighbor, to work for peace and reconciliation  among all people, and to leave judgment to God.

While I was pastor at Wallingford, I put biblical and intellectual foundations under my "heart" experience of knowing Sally. In those years I also came to appreciate and enjoy a community in which both gay and straight Christians could worship together, serve on the Trustees, sing in the choir--simply be human together, trying to grow in the capacity to love God and neighbor without fear.

 As a result, when you ask me, "How should a Christian regard  homosexuality?" my answer today is: as part of the God-given make-up of human beings, a variable in the spectrum of human possibilities. I may be wrong, and I ask God's forgiveness if I am. But I don't believe that sexual  orientation has anything to do with morality, any more than being blond or tall or left-handed does. Homosexuals as well as heterosexuals can be involved in sexual sin, including promiscuity, infidelity and abuse. And homosexuals as well as heterosexuals can love one another with  faithfulness, tenderness, and integrity. The same standards of moral behavior should apply to all Christians, straight and gay. This is what my life experience, and my experience as a pastor, has led me to believe.

When a homosexual couple comes to meet with me in my office, then, and  asks, "Will we be accepted in this church?" I can answer: "I will accept you." But I can only speak for myself. What shall I say on behalf of our whole congregation?

Shall I say, "Yes, you will be accepted here, as long as you aren't open about who you are and who you love?" Shall I say, "Yes, you will be  accepted here, but you may not serve in any leadership positions?" Shall I say, "Yes, you will be accepted here, but whatever you do, don't hold hands in church. Only heterosexual couples are allowed to do that." Shall I just say, "No"?

Or perhaps, simply, "Yes"?