Doesn’t really matter if we say we don’t hate homosexuals. For the gay rights movement, if you don’t accept, affirm, & celebrate a person’s gayness, then ipso facto you hate them, no matter what you may say or do. I’ve seen this quite enough on the blogosphere. If you question or argue against, even in the tiniest or most tangential way, homosexuality or anything the gay rights movement wants, like same sex marriage, then you are automatically a homophobe & you should either shut up or else admit you hate them & repent of it. And then the only hope for you is to affirm, accept, & celebrate their gayness & approve of anything they want to do.

That being said, you really need a post on Andrew’s comment #69: http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=11694#comment-93950

That was fantastic.

This might also be a good opportunity to revisit Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s distinction between “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” For Bonhoeffer, cheap grace justifies the sin (homosexuality, divorce, greed, slander, don’t worry, Jesus died to justify these things.) In my opinion that’s what we see in ELCA and the mainline liberal denominations. Unfortunately in the “conservative” lifestyle-based Neo-Evangelical crowd we see Christians that seem convinced that their behavior is right and proper in itself, and as Lutherans we can’t go there either. Costly grace justifies real sinners. Under costly grace sin is still sin, and we, as sinners, are all under its condemnation, but Jesus died to justify sinners like us. The active proponents of sexual diversity aren’t likely to embrace the concept of costly grace, but I think it’s our duty as forgiven sinners to proclaim it in a way they understand anyway.
I’ll also chuck this out on the ice: with the more or less general acceptance of human evolution we’ve lost a cultural understanding of the fall. For a lot of folks out there “natural”=”good.” If God created us as we are, then the homosexuals are free to claim that God created them homosexual, but if we are not as God created mankind to be, if we are fallen in our nature, then they are in the same boat as the rest of us, poor miserable sinners from our conception, and the proper recipients of Our Lord’s costly grace.
Pax Christi+,
-Matt Mills

@Matthew Mills #3
…”if we are not as God created mankind to be, if we are fallen in our nature, then they are in the same boat as the rest of us, poor miserable sinners from our conception, and the proper recipients of Our Lord’s costly grace. Pax Christi+”, –Matt Mills

“Heteros” have made other lifestyles harder to argue against by their own failures. Say that a homo lifestyle is promiscuous and you will be pointed to the number of divorces and remarriages among straight couples… (even in the clergy, in this generation).

[One argument for gay 'marriage' was "so we can have equal access to the divorce courts" !]

@helen #4

Went to a sci-fi convention sometime ago and there was a panel on polyamory. The thesis was that heterosexual (and homosexual) monogamy sets the stage for unrealistic expectations for “trwe luv” and that explained in part why there are multiple divorces, broken commitments and “serial monogamy” issues.

Similarly, I encountered an advice column in which he suggested that monogamy is unnatural. Which brings me to this:

At Facebook, I proposed that Christianity itself is unnatural– with the caveat that “unnatural” must not have a negative value to it. After all, we fly on planes, we take synthetic medicines, we employ artificial limbs, etc. I even work on computer matters that are not animal, vegetable, or mineral! I dare say [at the risk of Gnosticism] that we can acknowledge the material world [...and God called it good]…and then go beyond what is deemed natural by other civilizations. We are called to acknowledge the supernatural– which means that we, as a community, adopt what God prescribed IRT relationships: opposite sex monogamy.

Friendly comments and suggestions are welcome. I’m trying to throw out some coherent thoughts on relationships.

AS WITH ALL sin homosexuality is both irrational and destructuive and often encased in a hard shell of pathological denial.

@Carol Rutz #6

“Similarly, I encountered an advice column in which he suggested that monogamy is unnatural.”

Absurd.

Nowadays men who only have one female partner ever actually have about 15% more kids on average than men who have two or more partners in their lives. So just from simple biology, the one partner men are the “natural” winners so to speak.

@Mrs. Hume #8

…assuming if the aforementioned men ever want children in the first place. To be sure, those guys in hot pursuit are a bunch of cads.

FYI:

Pastor: LCMS Failed a Big Test of Faith – Still Yoked with Apostate ELCA

http://www.crosstalkblog.com/2010/07/pastor-lcms-failed-a-big-test-of-faith-stays-yoked-with-apostate-elca/

MEDIA ADVISORY, July 28 /Christian Newswire/ — The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod- LCMS- had its national convention in July, completely re-structuring the organization, electing Biblically confessional leaders to most of its national posts, and re-affirming its commitment to mission in a weary world.

But the denomination of nearly 3 million members failed its greatest test this year, following behind denominations all over the world that have condemned the departure of the American Mainline and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America from biblical orthodoxy, only to retreat into empty statements…

@Robert #10
Yes. Well,
LCMS should have broken off joint “cooperation” when e_ca began ordaining women.
Or it might have gotten more than “tut tut” a year ago.

Some of the relief efforts… “cooperation in externals” … are arranged for with foreign governments. Dropping them with no notice may make us feel righteous, but what will it do for the recipients of needed aid?

There is opportunity, as the morass of the “restructuring” is worked through, to finish joint projects we started in some places, but start independently in future. At least, that is what I would like to see happen.

We are not obligated to operate on the timetable of a generic Christian organization.