This is one of the main reasons I originally got pissed with religion and started looking at the situation objectively:
Anglican leaders demanded Monday that the U.S. Episcopal Church unequivocally bar official prayers for gay couples and the consecration of more gay bishops to undo the damage that North Americans have caused the Anglican family.
In a statement ending a tense six-day meeting, the leaders said that past pledges by Episcopalians for a moratorium on gay unions and consecrations have been so ambiguous that they have failed to fully mend “broken relationships” in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion.
Okay, so basically they’re making a gigantic deal out of this same-sex thing. Damage? The Episcopalian church has caused major damage? Riiiight. I mean, honestly, is this really an issue that requires week-long summits and meetings and hollering back and forth between the groups on either side of the aisle? Aren’t there other things we need to be worrying about? Seems to me the issue regarding the blessing of homosexual unions needs to take a back seat to dealing with rapist priests, cliquey churches, and general ungodliness in societies around the world.
::sigh:: I don’t know… I suppose we’re dealing with the definition of sin, and whether one sin carries more weight than another. While that concept is not in scripture, it certainly is a very common staple in modern churches of many denominations. Personally, I don’t perceive homosexuality as being a sin in the slightest: it causes no harm whatsoever to my fellow human beings or any living thing on this earth. It is honestly the only thing the church defines as a sin that I don’t understand the reasoning behind its classification as such, aside from cultural ideals 2,000 years ago when the Bible was first adopted.
Personally, I think it was only a social taboo because anal sex, widely thought as the main form of sexual expression between two men, has a tendency to spread disease and cause medical problems. Without medical knoledge, governmental leaders just knew it could make you sick. This would be a major concern in the days before modern medicine and medical care, and to ban it would seem a completely logical action, human rights notwithstanding. Anyway, whatever the reason, logical or otherwise, it was not something that was permitted by society at the time.
Interestingly enough, nor were women’s rights. This is a much more prevalent subject in the Bible, and one must think about how there are hundreds of passages placing women below men in one form or another compared to the handful of verses that (theoretically) mention homosexuality. For example, in numerous places the Bible states that the woman is not to have authority over any man. Another verse states that the wife is never to ask a priest if she has any questions; she is to wait until she gets home and ask her husband so she doesn’t embarrass the family.
Both of these ridiculous statements, if presented to society today, would be widely rejected, and the modern church doesn’t follow their decrees either (without risking major societal upheval from the feminists and their supporters). Some denominations still don’t allow ordination of women, but the majority do (including the Anglican church). Where are the “strict constructionists” of the Bible when regarding this? Nowhere to be found, and absolutely silent.
Here’s the deal: when the Bible was written, Christianity was a new religion. To be accepted as a valid religion, they had to incorporate societal and “pagan” traditions so potential converts weren’t turned off by any vast differences between their prospective new lives and their old ones. From this, we get those leftover traditions (such as demeaning women’s rights and lists of various punishments [stoning, tongue removal, etc.] for certain ridiculous sins like growing a beard) that don’t really reflect God’s will and completely smash any chance of Christianity actually growing in today’s society ( down 8% from 1990-2002). Anyone looking around for a religion to follow is going to be turned off by the medieval sins and punishments.
Even some of the evangelicals try to make religion seem like a really cool and hip thing to do, what with their music and young, tattooed, and pierced authority figures; this makes me laugh, especially since they are among the strongest proponents of the strict Bible interpretation. Take a look at Ted Haggard… that situation really makes me want to place all evangelical leaders in the category of “Most Trustworthy People,” huh?
Still, the majority of Christians think of Christianity as just the ten commandments + the Jesus thing… but when fundamentalists start advocating strict interpretation of scripture, this view (and all the progress we as a society have made through technology and thinking globally) is thrown out the window.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying the Church has no right to claim homosexuality as a sin; quite the contrary, they have every right to do so. I just simply won’t join a church with such convictions, and I think quite a few Americans feel the same way (certainly not the majority, but we’re working on it). Hopefully when membership drops, the elders of the church might take the hint, and the gay issue will go the way of the feminist issue. We’ll see. But anyway, the only thing I am questioning is their logic behind such decrees. I mean, why would God find it displeasing? The common answer to that question is “it’s not what he intended,” meaning the relationship cannot bear children. Okay, well what about people born sterile? Are their relationships to be shunned? So again, for real this time, I ask: Why would God find this displeasing? I probably wouldn’t be satisfied with their “reasoning,” but with religion not being based in reality, that’s probably to be expected.
I leave you with an excerpt from the article referenced above, which really made me laugh (all emphasis mine):
In 2005, Anglican leaders had asked the Episcopal Church to temporarily stop electing gay bishops and developing official prayer services for same-sex couples.
No sarcastic comment could make that statement any funnier.
