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Joyce said...
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Erika, you have answered my question very well. It’s been a few days since I was able to come back and thank you. If I undertand your explanation,together with snippets from elsewhere that now are making sense,I gather that some LGBT people who want to play a part in the Church are asking for a new logic to be applied. Traditionally,the Christian interpretation of scripture has been that everybody who is not married,regardless of in which direction the bodily desires we all have are directed,is supposed to be celibate.Anybody carrying out sexual acts outside a marriage was/is committing sin. All in the same boat, as we say in UK.
The new thinking,which is apparently not universal,is that those whose desire is for a sexual partner of their own sex and can get one who’s free to join them in a legally binding relationship should be allowed by the Church into the boat hitherto reserved for those who have done so with a member of the opposite sex.
Opinion as to whether this change can or should be absorbed by the Anglican Church soon,if ever,is divided.The main reason it is being taken so seriously at leadership level is that the Holy Spirit ( annoyingly for some )has been calling to the Anglican priesthood LGBTs who are in these new legal partnerships. Some of them are priests already.Doubtless new callees expect to be considered equally alongside other candidates having their vocation tested.
I have yet to encounter any Churchgoing person,BTW,who knows about the controversy let alone cares much one way or the other.I’ve only seen it on the internet where there seems to be a lot of concern.
It took me a while too,Erika, to find out what some abbreviations meant,such as LGBT, ABC,IRL and B&M. Almost all places I visit on the internet are Christian. I’ve discovered over time that ‘gender’ means sex and ‘sex’ means copulation,but not what word means gender :), and that links that the writer says provide information more often than not lead only to a one-sided exposition of a topic I wanted to know about. Something that’s only today dawned on me is that ‘homosexuality’ means homosexual behaviour. That is why I was deeply puzzled by how anybody knew who was homosexual or straight and how anybody could know, let alone approve or disapprove of, another person’s physical feelings, and why there should be a discussion on whether to condone them, with bishops being pro or anti. Perhaps those reading what I asked were puzzled by my question if they didn’t know I didn’t grasp the shorthand. Aplogies to anyone I’ve confused in my turn.
I think I’ve also discovered that here in the blogs section of this site,if I reply to one person and the post leads into something I’m discussing with another person,unlike on a thread in a forum, the other person doesn’t necesarily see it.

10 September 2012 14:51

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