Amen!!...this is really good..I would like make a comment..but you covered it very well, so I have no input except to say GOOD JOB!!!

Keep up your amazing work! The example of the handsaw and hammer claw...so true..

Greetings Beloveds:

I am quite familiar with this sector having worked and ministered within it from the 70's to the 90's.

Institutional Christians typically fail this group because of their very limited viewpoint of understanding and positional arguments.

Simply put: by any measure - the behaviour - whether it is considered by choice or inborn - by genetics or by selection - is erroneous and disharmonious with both earthly and cosmic constructions.

The error is consistent by any measure - By Scripture - By Nature - By Evolutionary standards - By Creational standards - Additionally by recognized behavioural traits of successfully advancing civilizations throughout history.

Homosexuals themselves know at the depths of their being that their behaviour is incompatible by any of these measures. This fact results in much guilt and its defensive counterparts and mechanisms of denial deflection and defiance.

Once society enables and facilitates these behaviours through its many forms - and Christians fail in their love and positional arguments - it creates a formula and condition that is very hard to reverse.

Of course we can still examine and reduce this to its essence of a sexual behavioural disorder - despite being reconsidered as such in the 70's. (Cancer is still cancer - regardless of what it may be called at any time and no matter how much you would want to embrace it)

By any other name - it is still the same: Our brothers and sisters need our love and understanding to help them escape the bonds of self destructive tendencies and counter productive behaviours. Which is actually something we all need to work on within ourselves.

JamesAD62
------------------------------------
Live Jesus. Be Church.

There are a few problems with this argument. We use different body parts for things besides their intended purpose all of the time. For example, if I walk on my hands rather than my feet, the hands are commiting an"unnatural act". Also if one takes natural law seriously and the"right purposes" for the sexual organs, then one also has to eliminate all sorts of practices that married heterosexual Christian couples committ such as oral copulation, birth control, and masturbation.
As to the "unnaturalness" of the homosexual, I would point to the prophet Isaiah:

Apparently the Father has less of problem with those that are unnatural than his children do.

Good point Steve.

We love the sinner, but hate the sin. Whether that is fornication, sex without commitment, monogamy or purity.

No matter how you slice it, Marriage with one amn and one woman is the best design and why settle for less to satisfy fleshly desires (including masturbation, pornography) etc.? All men were 'born into sin' and need freedom.

No, what has happened here is an attempted discussion of natural law. How is truth clouded by being discussed? Or is what you mean by truth your (or your denominations view of Scripture).If you were truly consistent with the Bible being an absolutist text, you would still be a Jew or at the very least an Orthodox Catholic.

Malleus Deum, could you please explain how we would still be a Jew or an Orthodox Catholic. 

dkline, certainly:

As Father  Vincent pointed out above, we no longer live under the Holiness Code therefore making appeals to said code on this one point while ignoring the rest, is very inconsistent. If you wanted to be an absolutist when it came to the Old Testament, one would have to embrace the practices of the Jews. One could call oneself a Messianic Jew, but one would still have to embrace both the practices and to some degree the theology of Judaism.

In a similar fashion, if one wished to adopt a more early Church absolutist vision one would adopt the practices and theology of the earliest of the Christians, those of the East (Orthodox).

Wow, just absorbing all that is said. I had a cousin die saying he was a believer in Christ yet he was with a man even on his death bed. He said when young he was in love with Keith not his sister on the Partridge Family. It really seemed so sad that he had to lie because of ridicule and was so in love with his partner that it made my relationships seem shallow. HOWEVER, and without hesitation, I shared with him it was an abomination to the Lord and yet I loved him. I never met him, as he was distant in the genealogy charts, but that is how I met him, through geneology hunting.

January 2002, I awakened after three or so days of no email... from a dream where I told him I hadn't talked to him in a few days and yet loved him. I got up in the middle of the night and ran to my pc to email him to say so and got the news he died from his partner. He had been sick for those three days. In some way, I felt the Lord telling me that my love did get through. Now, he was hospitalized for those three days, did he repent? Did my two years of talking to him plant enough seeds where he knew what to do as his pancreas were failing. I don't know. I look forward to heaven to see if Rick Flener is there.

I did what I could and the Lord loved him more than me. So, then if I cringed and ran from knowing him because of his sin, that may have been the difference in him being there or not. I will know then.

Malleus,

 I think an important thing to keep in mind with respect to the Holiness Code is that there were a set of moral laws as well as a set of ritual (or ceremonial) laws. It was the latter that Christ fulfilled. The moral law is not only still in effect...Christ actually raised the bar on it.

 In the original moral law, it was sinful to cheat on your spouse. Christ didn't abolish that law...He said if you even LOOK lustfully at someone besides your spouse, you've already committed adultry.

 In the original moral law, it was "an eye for an eye..." but Christ taught that we should "offer the other cheek."

 In the original moral law, it was sin to murder someone....Christ taught that un-righteous anger against someone was as serious a sin as murder itself.

 So, we must be careful when contrasting the abolishing of the law and realize that it was only the cerimonial law that was abolished...not the moral law. Otherwise, we wouldn't still be expected to follow the 10 commandments. Those were part of the moral law.

 With that, I see no problem with Steve making comparisons of moral laws of the OT. And, forgive me for my ignorance, but I'm not sure there's much of a difference (as far as I know...and how much is THAT really?) between "cultic" sin and moral sin. It seems to me as those two are pretty closely related as they have to do with our heart condition for God.

 Just my $.02.

With all due respect DanC, moral sin and cultic sin are vastly different.For example, to murder an innocent is a moral sin. Uncleaness (as is idolatry) would be a cultic sin.In the OT, the Hebrew word that is translated as "abomination" is almost always used with violations of cultic law. Violations of moral law almost always use another word. Also note that in almost every case in which a homosexual act is mentioned in Scripture, both Old and New Testament, it is connected to idolatry.I don't know how many gay people you know, but I am not aware of any who have ritualistic sex in order to honor Baal or Astarte....

What a ridiculous argument. Someone who disagrees with you interpretation of Scripture is given over to a reprobate mind? What a great way to learn! It explains why there are so many Protestant denominations in the world. May you all wallow in the fetid pit of your own glorious ignorance.