catapult magazine

i just read an associated press article about how conservative fox news talk show host, bill o’reilly, is in a “fight” with conservative groups over gay rights. i guess he called a minister who speaks out against the adoption of children by gays and lesbians a “religious fanatic.” now, conservative groups are freakin’ out, telling o’reilly he’s going to go to hell.

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2002/09/15/oreilly/index.html

i do believe that homosexuality is sinful. but i don’t know if that means we, as christians, should be campaigning against the rights of gays and lesbians politically, especially homosexuals in monogamous relationships who are seeking to adopt children. o’reilly said he couldn’t understand why the pastor would object to a troubled child in foster care for six years being adopted by a loving gay couple. and personally, i think it’s a valid point.

i tend to think that if we are to be a catalyst for changing the hearts of sinful people (any sin), we’ll do it through love and not through judgement. and, we’ll be doing it through personal relationships with people, not through enacting laws against sin.

do you think christians in political campaigns against homosexual rights are helpful or harmful in showing Christ’s love for the world?

Everyone has heard the adage “Love the sinner; hate the sin”. It sounds nice but where does that put us. I agree with you Rob, that a loving homosexual couple could offer a lonely child a source of hope. How do we go about hating the sin if we enable the sinners to continue in a sinful relationship.
Ultimately it comes down to an issue of love, as does everything. Does agape negate an antinormative eros? How do we, as Christians differentiate good and bad in what oftentimes seems to be such a grey area.
I once heard a pastor who supported gay rights speak about the love of Christ. He wondered that if so many other groups isolate and discriminate agains homosexuals, shouldn’t the Christian church be a place of love and support? After all, Christ spent most of his time with sinners. This isolation and discrimination was of course before the days of “Will and Grace”, but his point sometimes seems too valid to me.
What that means and what I mean still confuse me however.

but, as far as politics are concerned, do you think it’s effective Christian policy to withhold rights from a certain group of people because we believe their lifestyles are sinful?

how does lobbying the government against homosexual rights show love for those people?

i’m just as confused as you, norb. i think this also has a little to do with the discussion grant, keith and sam are having about Christian government, the separation of church and state, etc.

why not let them adopt children? what do we fear will happen?

1. will they abuse their children?
– some will. but some heterosexual families are abusive too. no difference here.
2. will they grow up gay?
– maybe
3. will they grow up with tolerance toward a gay lifestyle?
– very likely.
4. it’s just wrong, because it’s unnatural and unbiblical
– it’s not unnatural. lots of animals exhibit homosexual behaviour
– it’s unbiblical. Paul wouldn’t have approved. Neither would have Moses. Then again they wouldn’t approve of “Veggie Tales” or strapless graduation dresses or of the Reformation itself.
Why can’t we say it’s ok, and move on?

are you saying why don’t we just say it’s okay for homosexuals to adopt children and move on? if so, i’ll agree with you.

or are you saying we should just say homosexuality is okay and move on? if that’s your point, i don’t know if i can agree with you. and i really just don’t know. i’m not necessarily disagreeing with you.

i didn’t really want to make this a thread about whether homosexuality is sinful or not, but i will say that sometimes i find it difficult to speak out firmly against homosexuality.

most, if not all, other sinful actions have negative consequences (spiritual, physical, emotional, etc.) and are generally destructive. And while a lot of homosexual relationships are destructive, so are a lot of heterosexual relationships. a lot of homosexual relationships that i’ve read about are more loving and nurturing than a lot of heterosexual relationships i’ve witnessed.

would God forbid something just for the sake of forbidding it? i don’t know.

reading my last post again makes me feel like i’m challenging God over this issue. i’m certainly not; i’m just saying it’s something i struggle with on a practical level. i know that God can see things we can’t see here (such as ways loving homosexual relationships may be destructive).

but, it pains me to see Christians act hatefully towards gay people, claiming they speak for God:

http://www.godhatesfags.com

and i don’t think working to keep rights away from homosexuals is necessarily a good witness of Christ’s love, either.

Dan has a good point about trying to mimic Paul and Moses in order to decide how we should respond to homosexuality in this day and age. The best we can do is try to understand Paul’s reasons for saying that rampant men-on-men and women-on-women behavior and other sexual immorality are signs of a sinful society. But we make our own spirit-led decisions (as the church) as to what to do now.

One thing that might be helpful in our church decisions about homosexuality is not to allow people to use this term as an identity. A homosexual is not a certain kind of human, completely different in make-up from a heterosexual. Somewhere in our history, scientific categorizing defined the one-who-sticks-his-thing-in-a-person-of-the-same-sex as a homosexual (read Foucault’s very interesting History of Sexuality series). The turning of homosexuality into a community of stereotyped people has terrible implications for the church community’s relation to them and will have increasing negative implications for those who don’t fit the stereotypes, but want to be part of the homosexual community. I think the homosexual community should have learned from the church’s mistakes about letting others narrowly define them.

I’m sorry Rob if this stream is moving away from homosexual rights in a political setting, but this is an important topic for the church. Part of the reason Paul never thought to make it a big issue was because there were no homosexuals at the time, no separately identifiable community demanding rights from the government. Rights weren’t really even invented yet. So, maybe we should be asking if the Church, or the Church’s state ought to be involved in granting people rights. More than that, we should be asking if we can even say that human beings have natural rights in the first place.

Well said grant. [insert manly pat on the back here]. The gay community has a tendency to become a carricature of itself. It leaves little room for homosexuals who don’t want to develop a lisp and would rather not make home decorating their passion. Also, a gay identity is often based on promiscuous (often risky) sexuality — which means that it’s hard for a nice gay corn-fed Iowa boy, who wants to be monogamous, to find the love of his life. I mean, are you really going to pick up your life partner in a bar on Amerst Street? Not if you don’t have a lisp and wave your hand just right. I’m kidding, but it is a real dilemma for boys who love God but don’t love girls.

Excellent thoughts guys. I’d never really considered such things.

I can think of NO reason why a homosexual couple should be held to any other standard than a heterosexual couple when considering adoption.

Perhaps most shocking in this whole thing is that Bill O’Reilly agrees. I guess he can relate to pigeonholed homosexuals since is expected to always fit exactly into the role of “right wing fanatic”. Almost makes me want to watch The Factor.

My apologies to all the lesbians out there following this discussion. My references were all to male homosexuals. How could I be so insensitive?

Thanks for that apology, Dan. It had to be said.

There doesn’t seem to be a good reason to deny same-sex couples the rights that opposite-sex couples have in our societal framework. But in the context of a Biblically-based community, there must be a different way of looking at this issue. I mean, Paul does seem to equate a sinful society with same-sex sex. So what do we do with that as contemporary Bible-believers?