lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Louie Crew) (05/30/91)
SYSOP Chuck Hedrick charges that surely I know that most Christians believe that homosexuality it sinful..... In simple majorities, yes, but I am not accustomed to allowing majorities to shape my discourse, nor would anyone else be wise to do so, since most human beings fall into a variety of minority groups. Besides, many Christians disagree with the current majority view about homosexuality, and not just the 10 percent of those of us who happen to be gay or lesbian; and dissenters far more clearly define that part of the Church in which I serve than do those whom you cite, Chuck. Nearly 48 percent of the Episcopal House of Bishops, including the Presiding Bishop, when under great pressure to do so, refused to disassociate themselves from the actions of my bishop The Rt. Rev. John S. Spong when he ordained an openly gay person. The majority of the Christians in my diocese have voted overwhelmingly to support with money and time and personnel the Oasis, a lesgay ministry in the diocese. The members of my parish recently voted to become sustaining members (with a $500 pledge) to this ministry). An important Presbyterian commisssion recently released a daring report on this matter. The Hunt Commission of the Episcopal Church has released a similar report towards our own General Convention in July...., and Bishop Hunt has just published a foreword in my new book on this matter. Yes, if you want to count majorities, you still have the numbers for that ancient taboo, but I not under any obligation to let them define the terms of discourse when I speak. >While you may attempt to enlighten them on this subject, you should not be >surprised if their love for they refer to homosexual activity as sinful is >perhaps more along the lines of programs for drug addicts... Chuck, do you really expect me to believe any claim to love me that is thus grounded? I am quite willing to believe that people who hold such views _believe_ they love me; but Jesus did not use the Levites', the priest's, or the Samaritan's point of view to determine who treated the person in the ditch in a neighborly way: he used the point of view of the person in the ditch. In case you have not noticed, most people when hit over the head with the bible do not take that as a friend act, and those who still manage to respect the bible do not see that as the proper use of it. >I do not >see that it would make sense to consider them on that account to be >cultists. Can we not simply say that someone is wrong without >bringing in emotionally loaded (and ill-defined) terms like cultist? I have carefully defined cult as I am using it, and indeed it is an emotionally loaded term. I believe that heterosexist interpretations of the gospels are cultish, and when people have had some time to think about this novel statement, most will see that it is rather obvious: the good news is not just for those with heteroplumbing, nor is it conditional upon heteroplumbing. Heterosexuals, like the Jews of old, will find how much more of good news there is when they lose their false claims to an exclusive patent to it. It is wrong for people to indulge in the massive amounts of judgment of lesgay people manifested here again and again without making any effort to know lesgay people as friends and neighbors. I would never think to read the bible to find out about black people or any other group to which I do not belong, especially when those people claimed already to experience the Gospel in their own lives. I would first listen to them tell how their own spiritual journeys, and I would test those claims by the gospel demands. Few indeed are those who listen or move among us in a neighorly way. You ought to see the private male I get following my postings here. A major rhetorician has me send it to him for a project that he is doing on hate rhetoric. >I flatly refuse to believe that someone with the >intellectual capacity to be a Rutgers faculty member, and who has been >active in gay affairs for years, does not at least understand the >arguments of those who disagree. Rather than concern yourself with my IQ, you will get at my meaning much more quickly if you look at my rhetoric: of course I noticed the sexual possibility that I dropped out of the range of explanations I reviewed. I am quite aware that sexuality is the major, sometimes the only, dimension of my experience by which they define me; but I do not start with that premise, nor do most lesgay Christians whom I know. They may have their view, but they cannot control how I enter this conversation. I do not accept heterosexuals' narrow definitions about what constitutes "homosexual activity." I am manifesting homosexual activity when I write books, when I visit prisons, when I care for the sick, when I teach English syntax.... If you want to restrict homosexual activity to narrow genital expressions, you will simply not understand me of my people. Louie Crew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu Associate Professor . . . . . . . . . . . . . .lcrew@draco.rutgers.edu Academic Foundations Department . . . . . . . CompuServe No. 73517,147 Rutgers: The State University of New Jersey. . . . . . 201-485-4503 h P. O. Box 30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201-648-5434 o Newark, NJ 07101 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201-648-5700 FAX Only a dead fish floats with the current. [My comments were not intended to suggest that the great number of people against you means you are wrong. Just that I would expect people to write with some understanding of the view of their audience. Jennifer Irani said > On campus, we have sought to love those who are not always >accepted--and that includes homosexuals. However, I do not have to >accept the sin to love the person. You claimed not to have any idea what sin she was talking about. This is simply silly, as is your misunderstanding of my term "homosexual activity" to include all activities of homosexuals. This group has enough problems of understanding without this kind of thing. --clh]
math1h3@JANE.UH.EDU (David H. Wagner) (06/03/91)
In article <May.30.00.32.07.1991.19270@athos.rutgers.edu>, lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Louie Crew) writes: >Besides, many Christians disagree with the current majority view about >homosexuality, and not just the 10 percent of those of us who happen to be >gay or lesbian; and dissenters far more clearly define that part of the >Church in which I serve than do those whom you cite, Chuck.... "From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace. Are they not ashamed of their loathesome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought down when they are punished, says the LORD. ... Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?" These words of Jeremiah express some of the pain I feel, when a formerly living and vital church shows it lacks the spiritual strength to expel false teachers who want to dress people's spiritual wounds with false comfort. David H. Wagner a confessional Lutheran "The Church's one foundation Is Jesus Christ, her Lord; She is His new creation By water and the Word. From heav'n he came and sought her To be His Holy bride; With His own blood they bought her, And for her life He died. "Though with a scornful wonder Men see her sore oppressed, By schisms rent asunder, By heresies distressed, Yet saints their watch are keeping; Their cry goes up, 'How long?' And soon the night of weeping Shall be the morn of song." --"The Church's One Foundation" v. 1,4 --Samuel J. Stone, 1866. My opinions and beliefs on this matter are disclaimed by The University of Houston. [Having permitted Louie's remarks, I can hardly refuse this, but I have to say that I didn't have in mind replacing discussions on the Biblical/theological justification or lack thereof for homosexuality with trading condemnations. --clh]
lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Louie Crew) (06/03/91)
SYSOP Chuck Hedrick writes: [My comments were not intended to suggest that the great number of >people against you means you are wrong. Just that I would expect >people to write with some understanding of the view of their >audience. Jennifer Irani said >> On campus, we have sought to love those who are not always >>accepted--and that includes homosexuals. However, I do not have to >>accept the sin to love the person. >You claimed not to have any idea what sin she was talking about. Of course I knew which stone Jenifer had picked up to aim at me, but rather than finish the job for her, I ducked, and called attention to the other issues that should certainly be considered about sexual sin, hetero or lesgay, before soc.religion.christian continues with this regular ritual of singling out gay people as a class for public abuse. No one knows what Jesus wrote on this when he moved his stick through the sand on a similar occasion, but what he said to the crowd was hardly "Hit em a lick, hit em a lick, harder, harder!" -- as you cheer Jennifer on to do. >This is simply silly, Cf. "Jesus! Don't be silly! This woman has committed grave offenses against Moses' Law handed down by Yaweh, and The Bible tells us to stone her. How dare you to re-write that Law by doodling in the sand and asking us instead to look at our own lives! We are not on trial here! She is! Go to it, boys. Here's a nice boulder that even I can handle! " >This is simply silly as is your misunderstanding of my term "homosexual >activity" to include all activities of homosexuals. This group has >enough problems of understanding without this kind of thing. Your lose me. While I cannot sort out your point, I can state mine: I hold sexual orientation to be integral to personhood, not incidental. Most of the psychological literature now concurs, as has the official listing of disorders in the manuals of APA since 1974. I was on the Board of the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force at that time, and know how hard it was for professional psychologists to stop making money out of what many now consider malpractice, namely the claim to make heterosexuals out of lesbian and gay people. Biblical writers wrote long before we even had such categories. Most do not hesitate to disagree with cosmology of Biblical writers, who believed the world to be flat and at the center of the universe. Nor are we bound to ground our psychological vocabulary into what we can read back into the six or seven specific biblical references to same-sex couplings. To the limited extent that heterosexuals think about it, many seem to view all people as if they are given at the outset only heterosexual proclivities. According to this view, a person becomes something other than heterosexual only when she or he makes an incorrect choice. For many heterosexuals, lesgay persons do not fundamentally exist: instead, we are simply heterosexuals gone bad; and they think we "go bad" only when we connect genitally. That's what you seem to be saying, though I admit I am lost in your vocabulary. It's predictable that at first we seem to see the world in our own image, but this theory simply does not account for the dynamics of pyschosexuality as most lesgays experience it and as most professional psychologists analyze it. Professionals constantly argue whether sexual orientation is inherited or learned, but few professionals argue about how entrenched it is: most note that sexual orientation is set very early and remains largely unchangeable, especially in its involuntary arousal patterns. Most religions hold people accountable for choices, not for what they receive. Current psychosexual understandings show that lesgay persons have far fewer choices than most knew when they shaped current notions of right and wrong sexual behavior. Most lesgay people simply do not have a choice of being heterosexual. They can run some grave risks for themselves and for their friends if they try to monkey around with the psychosexual plumbing, especially in its involuntary manifestations. For example, males do not choose to have a wet dream or an erection: most heterosexuals experience these only or predominately from heterosexual stimuli: most gays, from gay stimuli. Psychological games of behavior modification in these involuntary areas have now been renounced by the professionals who first introduced them, as quackery. Obviously no one can or should act on all stimuli. Most communities prefer to establish relationships in which sexual congress builds responsible community. That's why Saint Paul recommended marriage, as better than "to burn" with sexual desire. The few religions that have venerated celibacy (for example, Roman Catholicism) have never talked about it as a punishment, but as a spiritual gift, one given to only a very few people. No easy answers for moral decisions flow from my comments, but it hardly helps for you to ridicule my efforts to place lesgay sexuality into the more complex registers in which we experience it, rather than to serve your glib reduction of it to basic genital manifestations. This issue will surface this summer when the Episcopal Church debates sexuality. One bishop has put forward the resolution that we state again that all sexuality is limited to marriage. While that is a convenient and probably popular notion, it hardly addresses the complexity it purposes to resolve. What is "sexuality," for example? Will lesbian priests be encouraged to live with their female companions in the rectory so long as they forego genital contact? Will they be allowed to kiss, hold hands as a stated couple.......? At what moment in the complex interplay of persons does "sexuality" occur? At the moment of desire? At the moment one calls for a date? At the moment one "drinks with ones eyes"? At the moment one holds hand? At the moment of erection or lubrication? At the moment of petting? At the moment of penetration? At the moment of ejaculation? At the moment..... My own position does not force me to commit to "a moment" but to a dynamic, one in which the persons involved are responsible to work at every stage towards the full respect of God and of God's image in the partner, integrating sexuality with all other aspects of their relationship. That's not easy, certainly not as easy as having a magic moment towards which one may tease and then stop just in the nick of time for a god who stands with a stop watch or holds a tape at a finish line. I suspect the real intent of the Bishop's resolution is: "Shut up. Go back to the less complicated way it was when we thought we knew all the answers and when we put you to death if we found out who you are. At least have the decency to find a nice member of the opposite sex, and experiment on him/her. Like Lot, of old, I freely offer for you my own child!" Louie Crew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu [Before responding to this, note that I regard this line of discussion as having ended. I'm accepting no postings beyond those in today's group. --clh]