Interesting ...

I don't usually have much to say about gay marriage or homosexuality in general.  It is what it is - awkward, uncomfortable, and increasingly interwoven into our culture at a pace no person or church or denomination can stop.  Gay marriage is going to be legal, and the sooner we come to grips with that reality and do our best to still act like Christians, the less we put ourselves in the position of looking like judgmental pricks.  It's gotten to the point that if any famous person - athlete, movie star, whoever - publicly speaks against gay marriage, that person is immediately destroyed by the media and other celebs (the most recent example was Manny Pacquiao).  With lovable spokespeople like Ellen and Clay Aiken and the gay judge from Dancing with the Stars, the so-called "anti gay" groups have no chance.

But that doesn't mean we, as Christians, need to accept homosexuality as a completely normal and natural condition.  Well, maybe accept is the wrong word.  We do need to be accepting, loving, kind, friendly, and treat gay people no differently than we treat anyone else, because after all, we're all sinners, blah blah blah. Our sin is no better or worse than their sin, and it shouldn't be our place to sit around and talk about their issues when we certainly have our own issues to talk about.  I have a few friends that are gay, and I don't mean to sound self-righteous or awesome, but I treat them the same way I treat my straight friends and that's no big deal.

But there's still that lingering question of "Is it okay?"  Our culture and government and celebrities may say it is, but to me, the final truth still comes from the Bible, and while that particular book isn't always as black-and-white-obvious as we want to pretend it is, I recently read an article by an East Lansing pastor that was particularly well-thought out and unbiased.  I was shocked to find out this guy is Reformed!

Here's a link to the article.  

It's clearly a very intricate topic, and I can't claim to have enough understanding of Hebrew law or the Greek language to be an expert.  I like what DeYoung says about sloppy translation of the phrase 'dishonorable' in terms of ethics.  "It’s like suggesting that if FDR once said “this soup is terrible” and later said “what the Nazis are doing is terrible” that he couldn’t possibly mean anything more than “what the Nazis did was kind of strange and not my personal preference.” 


I don't have much else to say on the topic, other than that even if the Bible clearly, strictly, outrightly says that homosexuality is an abominable sin, which I'm not sure is true, it doesn't change the fact that we ought to treat gay people with as much kindness as we treat anyone else, which for many Christians, isn't that much kindness in the first place.