I am going on hiatus. I always wanted the make this place a resource if nothing else for those on the minority side of the Bible/homosexual debate and to throw in a few thing of personal interest. I might or might not come back. I'll do as by the leading of the Holy Spirit.

God Bless you all and may He put you in perfect understanding.

Frank

The "Other" White Meat

I once received a comment telling me not all Christians are anti-gay. I wrote back; "Then why don't you stand up to your brethren that are?" I try to nudge these Christians who sit silent in a corner to actually speak up. These loud-mouthed, anti-gay, Christian bullies are the face of Christianity to the un-believing world while other Christians who actually get what the 'Golden Rule' is all about seem to all be hiding under blanket forts, in caves or making every effort to hide themselves. These "Good" Christians with homosexuality don't want to make waves with "Bad" Christians with homosexuality because they tend to be less confrontational unlike their anti-gay kin who can't shut up. That's now changing. NALT

"In other words, the most notorious, plain, and victorious truth of God is that God participates in our history - even yours and mine. Our history - all our anxieties - have become the scene of His presence and the matter of his care. We are safe. We are free. Wherever we turn we shall discover that God is already there. Therefore, wherever it be, fear not, be thankful, rejoice, and boast of God."

- William Stringfellow

Dear Dad...

This was the set-up of the above video since deleted. On the stage of an Evangelical conference, Todd Friel reads two letters from fathers to their gay sons who just came out to them. The first letter was the Christian father saying he's sorry to his son, but he never wants to hear from or see him again and to please don't contact him or his mother again. Ending the letter with the gall of saying "God Bless."

The second letter is from a pastor who also says his son is living a life contrary to God and he will never accept it or condone it, but he won't take the step to disown him. Instead, if the son decides to visit the family for the holidays, there are "rules" he needs to follow in the house the father says he must abide by.

This was my response:

So one was a disgusting worthy of Hell letter (1 Tim. 5:8) from the first father and the letter from the second dad is full of conditions and judgment with forcing him to go to church and saying he chose to be gay and it better not rub off on the children with his open displays of affection that he probably won't do out of respect for his dad's religious beliefs.

Both letters are saying "My Way or the Highway" with the first father not even giving his son a chance. Both letters are bad. 

Now what if the parents wanted to visit that same son and he wrote a similar letter to them?:

"Dear mom and dad, I love you. I am the same son you raised and loved. I didn't change with telling you I'm gay dad, YOU did.

I'd like to set some ground rules in my home before you come visit like you did for me in your house.

I don't want you to make my husband Pedro uncomfortable with talking about how you believe. Treat him with the same dignity and respect you treat Cathy's husband. I also expect you to go to a PFLAG meeting we have every Thursday at the community center. The leader of the meeting is an Evangelical pastor with a gay daughter and you guys should talk.

I want to constantly remind you while you're in my house that how you believe is contrary to my own faith in God. I belong to a gay affirming church that gives me love and acceptance with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I would love it if you and mom went to a service, but no pressure.

I would never cut you off like many do with their Christian parents who won't accept them being gay. Cathy and my brothers have no problem with me, it's only you and mom who do and the reason I don't pick up the phone more often when you guys call. I just don't want to hear all the judging when you aren't talking about my "lifestyle," whatever weird lifestyle you think that is. 

You will always be my dad even if you didn't accept me. I will always love you and you and mom are always in my prayers.

Your loving (I know I'm your favorite) son,

Mark.

P.S. Could you bring some Tommy's chili cheese burgers? We don't have a Tommy's in my state and you know how they're my favorite. Tell mom to pack warm, you know how she gets."

I'm taking a few weeks off unless something interesting comes up for me to post.


(Zach Zurn, who's featured in the song above, is a gay Christian recording artist)

Gagnon the Martyr

"The opening subtitle of Gagnon's (book) Introduction is "The Personal Risks Inherent in Writing Such a Book" outlines the great personal danger he is facing for entering this debate.

Such a claim is extremely unrealistic. Gay people don't persecute Christians except in the minds of those with a "persecution complex". Nobody has ever heard of gay parents throwing out their kids for being Christian, Christian teens are not committing suicide at unusually high rates, the boy-scouts don't ban Christian leaders, we do not hear of cake shops and B&B's denying business to Christian couples, gay cults don't picket the funerals of Christian soldiers, there is no alarming violence perpetrated on those who are perceived to be Christians in the streets, nor do people get fired from gay organisations if they're outed as Christian by a colleague ... You get my drift. "Persecution" is faced by the vulnerable in society, not by dominant ideological forces such as conservative Evangelicalism. Gagnon's "personal risk" is a fantasy. It is about as sympathetic, if slightly less melodrmatic, than Pauline Hanson's video tape recording: "if you are watching this, I have been murdered..."

As a male, heterosexually married, Christian author, Gagnon ought to be aware of his privilege, and write with some humility about it. Because he does not acknowledge it, and in fact maintains a delusion of persecution, his unrecognised privilege become a blind spot which will distort his interpretation of biblical texts."

- Unknown.

- From critical-discipleship.blogspot.com

Sunshine Saints

I remember when the Chick-fil-A debacle happened and Christians claiming to be 'persecuted' for what they believed supported the place in droves as an issue of freedom of religion and speech instead of seeing it for what it really was, as an organization that gives financial support to anti-gay marriage groups. There was no example of loving your gay neighbor as yourself as much as it was a "Let's stick it to the gays" (the real thrust behind the Chick-fil-A support) that went directly against 1 Corinthians 8:13. Some Christians went to the protest demonstrations outside the restaurants knowing their presence there would turn into confrontations with gays and their supporters. These same Christians would then post all over social media the clashes they had with these protesting gays with; "See how gays are bullies and hate the Gospel?" Instead of admitting they went with the intent of adding fuel to the fire by baiting gays to react, the way ANYONE would react. Don't ask me what this has to do with street preachers because I haven't a clue why I went here other than writing this post when it first blew up.

Street preachers (Not the screaming ones. I have yet to hear of a testimony where someone says "I was saved by someone screaming at me on a street corner from sleeping with as many women as I could") really believe they are taking the high road with talking personally to homosexuals on the street with what they think is a message of love, but if a message is bad, it doesn't matter if you say it from a bullhorn on the street corner or in a quiet voice one-on-one. When dealing with unbelievers, gay or straight, you have to be led by the Holy Spirit with a correct message otherwise it's a message that will fall on deaf ears. When that happens confusion and anger reign and God is in no part in it. I spoke with street preacher Steve Sanchez on his blog and it was going well until he realized:

A. I was a homosexual who did believe the Gospel.
B. I was reaching out to him in loving kindness by pointing out his error instead of giving him the reactionary response he was expecting.
and
C. He wasn't looking very 'right' in our discussion.

The next thing I knew, he deleted all my posting and I was left saying; "What just happened?"
Instead of taking what I said as food for thought, he just didn't want to hear it anymore because he's been doing what he's been doing for so long, that he believes he CAN'T be wrong. You shouldn't take pride in throwing the Gospel in the face of others like it was a pail of ice water. The moving of the Holy Spirit on the heart is what brings conviction to Salvation, not arguments bringing shame and condemnation.

The saying; "Hell is paved with good intentions" really hits the mark with street preachers who have their hearts in the right place the right place, but not knowing a knowing God is sitting this one out.

Russ

Those who know me on social at any length, or read my testimony, know I'm in a relationship. I never talk about Russ because this is a ministry and not a couple's blog with my lovable lug. I guess if I did incorporate him more, people would see that you really can be gay and in a committed , Christ- centered, relationship of genuine love that can be an inspiration. I can post pics on Instagram of us with our kids (Pepo, Pendejo, and Sal) and TikToks of our family outing when we just eat whole Cosco chickens in the parking lot instead of a park. 

I did for real have a secular blog years ago and it was pretty cool. But I also know that if I started to be more of a couple on social media, it would take away, even if a little, what I say about homosexuality and the Bible because then people would only be invested in us as a couple and not what I preach.

So for the sake of this ministry, no pics of picnics in wet soccer fields or Russ giving a wallop to Sal because he ate all of Pepo's chicken legs.

"N.T. Wright's blunder on homosexuality," By Richard Fellows. 

Paul, I think, was against heterosexual sex outside of committed relationships (marriage), and it is safe to assume that he was also against homosexual sex outside of committed relationships. Paul's statements against homosexuality in Rom 1:18-2:4 and 1 Cor 6:9 do not state that gay marriage is an exception, but this silence is significant only if something similar to gay marriage occurred in Rome or Corinth in Paul's day. N.T. Wright believes that Paul was indeed aware of committed homosexual relationships: 

He gave the following comments in this video.

But one thing I do know, as an ancient historian, is that there is nothing in contemporary understanding and experience of homosexual condition and behavior that was unknown in the first century. The idea that in the first century it was all about masters having odd relationships with slaves or older men with younger men - yeah sure that happened, but read Plato's Symposium. They have permanent faithful stable male-male partnerships - lifelong stuff - Achilles and Patroclus in Homer - all sorts of things. 

Similarly, here, he writes: 

In particular, a point which is often missed, they knew a great deal about what people today would regard as longer-term, reasonably stable relations between two people of the same gender. This is not a modern invention, it's already there in Plato. 

In his Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 1, he writes: 

Nor is it the case, as is sometimes suggested, that in the ancient world homosexual relationships were normally either part of cult prostitution or a matter of older people exploiting younger ones, though both of these were quite common. Homosexual 'marriages' were not unknown, as is shown by the example of Nero himself. Plato offers an extended discussion of the serious and sustained love that can occur between one male and another. 

And he says, 

And as a first century historian I want to say the context in which the New Testament is written is one in which there was a lot of casual homosexual experimentation and whatever. But also as you see, hundreds of years before in Plato, people who were in long-term partnerships. So it isn't the case, as some have said, that the New Testament is simply opposed to a phenomenon which is quite different from what we know today. 

Have you spotted Wright's blunder? The problem here is that the evidence that Wright cites does not support his conclusion. Plato was a Greek writer, not a Roman, and his Symposium was written in 385BC. Paul refers to homosexuality only in 1 Corinthians and Romans, which were written to the most Roman of all his audiences, and he wrote more than four centuries after Plato. Homer's work, the Iliad, dates to the 8th century BC, so is even less relevant to first century Roman sexual practices, and there is no consensus on whether Achilles and Patroclus were homosexual lovers, and, according to Plato, their relationship was one of age dissonance.

As far as I can tell, there is little evidence for anything close to gay marriage in Paul's day. The evidence of committed homosexual relationships in classical Greece merely brings the lack of such evidence from the early Roman empire into sharper focus. Wright, who by his own admission is no specialist on homosexuality, seems to assume that sexual practices must have remained the same across the centuries. They did not. 

The example of Nero, cited by Wright, hardly provides evidence of committed homosexual relationships. Wright is referring to the 'marriages' of Nero to Sporus and to Doryphorus, as recorded by Suetonius: Nero XXVIII-XXIV. The passage, which doesn't make pleasant reading, is reproduced here:

XXVIII. Besides abusing freeborn boys and seducing married women, he debauched the vestal virgin Rubria. The freedwoman Acte he all but made his lawful wife, after bribing some ex-consuls to perjure themselves by swearing that she was of royal birth. He castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his house attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife. And the witty jest that someone made is still current, that it would have been well for the world if Nero s father Domitius had had that kind of wife. This Sporus, decked out with the finery of the empresses and riding in a litter, he took with him to the assizes and marts of Greece, and later at Rome through the Street of the Images, fondly kissing him from time to time. That he even desired illicit relations with his own mother, and was kept from it by her enemies who feared that such a relationship might give the reckless and insolent woman too great influence, was notorious, especially after he added to his concubines a courtesan who was said to look very like Agripinina. Even before that, so they say, whenever he rode in a litter with his mother, he had incestuous relations with her, which were betrayed by the stains on his clothing. 

XXIX. He so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling almost every part of his body, he at last devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was dispatched by his freed man Doryphorus; for he was even married to this man in the same way that he himself had married Sporus, going so far as to imitate the cries and lamentations of a maiden being deflowered. Clearly, Nero was not a homosexual in the sense that we would understand the term, and his "marriages" were not committed relationships in any sense. Suetonius's mentions of Nero's "marriages" to men appear in a discussion of Nero's bazaar sexual practices, and this suggests that Suetonius expected the idea of homosexual marriages to appear bazaar to his readers. Suetonius would not have written "he married him with all the usual ceremonies", if this was a recognized practice. Thus, Wright's mention of Nero's "marriages" backfires on him, doesn't it?

Wright says that there has been a lot of confusion about homosexuality, but I fear that he has added to it. Unfortunately many will turn to Wright and other famous writers for guidance on passages like Rom 1:18-2:4 and 1 Cor 6:9, but there is no substitute for consulting specialists and, preferably, the source documents.