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I’ve discovered that reading the classics is REALLY HARD! Some of them really tax my brain and require quite a bit of work to make sense of them. I’ve concluded that our ancestors were really SMART! Modern literature is no work at all. Apparently Western literature is in decline.

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The first 2 sentences are indeed part of historic Christianity. The third sentence, well, it depends on what the meaning of the word “change” is. A person choosing to voluntarily stop their “sins” in a lifelong struggle? Sure. Changing a homosexual orientation to a heterosexual one? There is no evidence in science that this can be done and nothing in the Christian religion teaches this. To the contrary the Christian religion teaches about immutable sinful nature in the law of your members. Christians have to deal with the fact that the homosexual nature is, at least for many, an immutable part of one’s being. You might ask why God would burden someone with such an immutable trait to commit sin? But you might also ask why God might burden someone with Down Syndrome or all sorts of terrible birth defects and diseases.

Personally I don’t think there is anything “defective” about the homosexual orientation; but were I a Christian, there are arguments I could use without engaging in the myth peddling that everyone can have a full functioning heterosexual orientation.

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Thank you for your comment. This is a very difficult issue, and I have no easy answers.

When my daughter told my wife and I that she was “engaged” to her college roommate, it took us about a week to “accept” the idea of the relationship. There was never a thought of rejecting her and the relationship. I had already over years rejected the mild and unthinking prejudice against homosexuals I had grown up with, and after time as a teacher seen childish bullying and scapegoating for this and other reasons that appalled me. To have it happen in my family meant that I had to personally accept in theory and in my dealings with other people. It wasn’t that difficult to be honest.

I would not accept anything. As I’ve mentioned before, one of my students after graduation conspired with her boyfriend to murder her husband. If my daughter had cold-bloodedly murdered someone, I would have a lot of trouble accepting or “supporting” her.

In my mind, murder is evil and unacceptable. A homosexual relatonship does not (by itself) fall into the category of evil.

I have watched my daughter and her partner raising our granddaughter in a skillful and loving manner. To my mind they deserve to respected as parents in the same way you would want your grandchildren to respect you children as parents. (I don’t know your age, marital status, situation as far as children, etc., so this is a imagined situation.) If you had a grandchild who said, “I have decided I am not a Christian,” my expectation is that you would not want to have that grandchild turn on their Christian parents in a condemning and contemptuous fashion.

That is what I meant by my statement. If my granddaughter decides she is a Christian, then I would still expect her to be polite and respectful toward her mommmies. Just as I expect you would want an atheist grandchild to be polite and respectful to her parents.

If my grandchild started preaching at her parents, that would be her right. It would also be my right to say, “Sorry, granddaughter, I in turn choose to reject and condemn you.”

There are many possible variations on these problems. When my brother and I were teenagers, he was much more of a babe magnet than I and had a variety of girl friends. At one time, he was seeing a girl of Chinese ancestry. Her parents were very upset that she was dating an American (Jewish) boy. She snuck out of her house to see my brother for a while.

At one time I was at a bus stop talking to the daughter of my daughter’s “backup” babysitter who was a white evangelical Christian. Daughter (about 18) complained to me that she was dating a black ski instructor and hiding the relationship from her mother.

We live in a tangled and complex world and in a society with many competing and struggling values and standards.

I simply disagree with the beliefs at this web site in regard to homosexuality. When the situation went from being an abstract theoretical value and a situation in my own life, I “walked the walk” of these values.

We can talk about this four hundreds of hours and we can exchange hundreds of messages. The situation boils down to we disagree. You believe in a God I don’t believe in. You believe that this God has communicated values and standards to you that I don’t agree with. No opinions are going to change. Fortunately we live in a society where we don’t settle these disputes (usually) by violence, but we are still in a situation of conflict and disagreement and someone will win and someone will lose. We are not in agreement on this issue. I doubt in the long run you will be on the winning side.

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******Random,

What do you considered “turning on” someone?

If I have a friend who is a homosexual, and I say, “I don’t approve of your lifestyle. I believe you are living in sin. I believe you can change.” Is that turning on them? If so, then when do you become concerned about my right to my beliefs?

Is it better for me to lie to my friend and act as if I approve when I don’t? Is that what friends do?

So, when my brother was living in sin with a woman for 7 years (they are finally married now), was I to pretend that I didn’t disapprove? Was it unloving of me to disapprove?

Yet, I really do love my brother. We still got together. I was nice to his woman (now his wife). I didn’t regularly give presents to the children then (since they weren’t his biologically or by law yet), but I do now. And, I was very nice to them. As soon as they were married, the children were to call me “Aunt TRS” and I refer to them as my children’s cousins.

So, tell me, why can’t a Christian disapprove of something that a person is doing and yet still love them? And, why does disapproval equal “turning on them” in your eyes? (Or were you limiting your comments to those few Christians who actually do throw the “offender” out of the house and/or turn their backs on them completely? If that’s the case, then you should both be more clear in what you state and make it clear that you understand that this is actually a minority among Evangelical Christians.)

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*****My son was 15 (almost 16) when I first allowed him to read some of my posts and some of the others’ responses.

He now occasionally checks this blog at 16.

But, he had to have a worldviews class first, and I had to feel that he was reasonably anchored before he could deal with this site.

He doesn’t post.

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And Penguin is the only place to get Augustine’s complete City of God.

My only complaint has been that the books are made of such lousy, sulfur-rich paper that they yellow and fall apart in about 10 years.

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Thank you for your post. I think you and New Jersey Lawyer should perhaps have a conversation about Nick. Victoria might join in also as she worries about me (because of my Jewish ancestry.)

I am not sure of what point Nick is trying to get across. You may be correct. You may not be.

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