The original post said: ‘The Salvation Army’s own positional statement reminds us that a ‘disposition towards homosexuality is not in itself blameworthy nor is the disposition seen as rectifiable at will’. As far as we can tell, a person’s sexual orientation is, in most cases, something they are born with – whether homosexual or heterosexual.’

This sentiment exists in many mainstream church statements about homosexuality in an effort to appear anti-homophobic. The difficulty is that almost all churches (including the Salvos) go on to state that sexual activity between two people of the same gender is not condoned because it is sin.

Archbishop Peter Jensen (a well known opponent of gays) has written (and often been quoted) as saying that sex within conventional [not gay] marriage is the only and perfect answer to a healthy society. His article ‘Ordination and the Practice of Homosexuality’ appeared in a 2001 book called Faithfulness in Fellowship: Reflections on Homosexuality and the Church.

Australian writer Robert Connell in his book ‘Masculinities’ refers to religious right views of gay sex as ‘an army of law breakers, violating God’s commands’. I could ask how right-wing church people in the US (I refuse to use the word Christian here) can tell gays God hates them and that we should burn in hell?

I give these examples only to accentuate the mix of hatred and confusion some church people have for the GLBTIQQ community because they fear this thing called sex. The action by Koorong Books in taking Anthony’s book off the shelves is part of this same hostility. The intent is to make gays and lesbians feel so guilty that we might stop trying to live a liberated life and give up.

These issues are not about the Bible. I’ve seen some good studies that question almost all references to homosexuality in the Bible, some because of mistranslation. The word homosexual never even existed before the mid-1800’s. Taking Robert’s quote about the Sodom story, from where we get the term sodomy in the English language: the men who bothered Lot only said they wanted to ‘know’ his visitors. The word ‘know’ appears 943 times in the Old Testament and it only means sex 10 times. (So much for the joke ‘I mean know you in the Biblical sense’ – I’d insert a LOL symbol here but I can’t get my emoticons to work). It’s plausible that the men of Sodom were angry when they found out Lot had some secret visitors. Even Jesus Christ’s only references to Sodom are about a lack of hospitality and unbelief. He mentions nothing of Sodom’s supposed homosexuality.

I have my own formula for reading the Bible. Look for inspiration. Skip the confusion and the unbelievable. Accept that much of it is a mystery because God is the author of the abstract. If the Bible was intended to be the answer to all life’s questions, it would be. Its lack of substance about homosexuality is proof to me that we need faith in ourselves and faith in God. Hence the mystery. However it does tell us to love the homophobes. Not easy, huh?

As for Cam, I think I understand your dilemma, which is why I think we’re most likely to experience faith when we can make sense of Jesus Christ coming to our earth in 4BC as an incarnation of a loving God, as well as still being an advocate for us in the spiritual realm. I think its clear that there’s no real connection between God and homophobes who call themselves Christians.

Kit