The Nashville Statement: Sexual Heresy

For the sake of clarity, let me preface my argument by stating that I am a cisgendered evangelical Christian male married to a cisgendered evangelical Christian female. I have no need to oppose the Nashville Statement for any personal gain, but only oppose it for the cause of supporting right doctrine within Christianity.

This is my final argument concerning the Nashville Statement, I believe, because I feel confident it will prove there exists an inevitable logical choice between two options: (A) The Nashville Statement is logically inconsistent, or (B) Christianity is morally inconsistent. I will of course choose option (A).

The Nashville Statement (hereafter "NS") makes a number of statements I take issue with, but here I address only four:
1. Same-sex marriage is a sin. (NS Article 1)
2. Transgenderism (i.e. choosing a gender identity that does not match your biological gender) is a sin. (NS Article 13)
3. People who do not have an easy-to-identify biological gender must conform with the binary gender paradigm, and act as though they are the gender their genotype would suggest or they are in sin. (NS Article 6 and quote below)
4. Disagreeing with any of the above (or any other part of the NS) causes one to be in a state of sin. (NS Article 10)

As evidence, I put to readers that there exists a medical condition known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (hereafter "AIS"). People with AIS are genetically male, having the sexual genotype "XY", but without genetic testing are almost impossible to differentiate from a sterile female. In fact, while I cannot prove it to be so, I suggest it to be laughable to deny that at various times in the past (and even present) men have married and had sex with (although society has always considered them "women", Denny Burk, one of the main authors and #1 signer of the NS would tell us they are "men"*; remember that according to NS Article 10, you cannot disagree with this assessment) who have AIS. This includes couples in which both partners were professing Christians.

Here is the logical/moral dilemma. If these are men with AIS, then these were/are same-sex marriages. The NS tells us that this is sin, and therefore...what?

If engaging in a same-sex marriage is an unpardonable sin no matter what, this implies that God had to send these people to Hell for committing a sin without knowing they were doing it. Result: God is not just.

If the fact that they did not know they were doing it excuses them, that implies the sinful nature of same-sex marriage is a subjective matter and same-sex marriage is not a sin if you don't believe it is. Result: The NS is wrong about same-sex marriage.

If this was not same-sex marriage because the man with AIS identified as a woman, then either transgenderism is acceptable, or intersex people do not have to conform to the gender suggested by their genotype; possibly both. Result: The NS is wrong about transgenderism, intersex, or both.

If there is a fourth possibility that saves both the just nature of God and the integrity of the NS, I cannot imagine what it is, but I am open to discussion. Note that I am not denying the truth of statements 1, 2, or 3, but since they cannot all be true at once, I suggest that one or more of them must be rejected, and one must certainly by all means reject statement 4. Good Christians can and indeed should disagree with the Nashville Statement.

*"Try to determine as soon as possible the chromosomal makeup of the child. If there is a Y chromosome present, that would strongly militate against raising the child as a female, regardless of the apperance of the genitals or other secondary sex characteristics." Denny Burk, What is the Meaning of Sex?, page 81,

Queer voting: Don't ask, don't tell.

Well, let's just have one last talk about Proposition 8, but then that's it. (At least until after the election; then I'm sure I won't be able to resist.)

I've said it many times, both in conversation and in writing that I realized long ago I simply can't retain my sanity and get involved in certain discussions. Politics and religion, those general topics that many people say ought to be avoided in polite company, are some of my favorites, but there are more specific topics that are like Plutonium. Abortion is the most prominent one, the fact being that there are enough people in the world who feel strongly enough about the subject at either extreme that open discussion of the issue is impossible. Suggest the slightest shade of grey to the issue, and you may be reduced immediately to the rubbish bin in people's esteem relegated for child molesters and telemarketers. (Sorry telemarketers, I couldn't resist a line like that, and lawyers need a break now and again.)

Anyway, I've come to realize (unfortunately too late for a handful of conversations already let out of Pandora's Box) that Proposition 8 and the legal status of same-sex marriage is one of those conversations. It's a topic I've talked and written about many times, and yet something seems to have shifted. Maybe it's the bringing of the topic to the forefront of the culture by putting it on the ballot yet again, but suddenly, it seems to be undiscussable.

You see, I'm in a difficult position of having a foot in both camps due to the company that I have kept in my life. Let me make it clear that I make no apology for either group nor my associations with them, but a fair portion of my friends are conservative Christians, and at the same time, a fair portion of my friends are gay/lesbian/bisexual. What's a guy to do? No matter how I vote, I'm going to offend some people I care about very deeply. I simply can't avoid it.

I briefly considered abstaining, but then I realized that was a copout. Not just a copout, but one that would be counterproductive. Abstaining would solve no problems, and it would simply offend everyone, I imagine. It reminded me for a moment of Bill Clinton and "Don't ask, don't tell." In an attempt to please everyone, a solution was arrived at that pleased virtually nobody. Homophobes want to ask. Homosexuals want to tell. Nobody's satisfied.

Clearly, I had to make a decision, and I wanted it to simply be the right one, not the one that society (or any subsection thereof) told me I should choose. Don't think I'm going to tell you here, because in case I didn't make it clear, part of my process was eventually deciding that whatever I chose, I would not tell a soul. But still, there was something that needed to be said. What people on both sides of the issue agree on is the fact that it's an important issue.

There were plenty of reasons to vote Yes. As a Christian, I do believe that the Bible, the basis for Christian morality, teaches that certain sexual relationships are not to be condoned, and allowing a person to legally call certain of such relationships "marriage" would be condoning. There were plenty of reasons to vote No. Our government is secular, and has no compelling reason to bow to religious morality, and finding a reason for this law outside of that realm of thought is difficult. Yet if morality is not our basis for deciding our vote, then what is? Yet what good does it do to impose one's personal morality on another? You can go back and forth all day.

Furthermore, I'm often left with the impression that despite the supposed importance of this law, the outcome of this vote isn't really going to change anything. The proponents of the law said as much, which was an odd argument to my mind. (I've always said that if you had a choice between two religions, one of which says, "believe in me or suffer," and the other says, "believe whatever you want, it doesn't matter," then it seems believing in the former is a manner of hedging your bets, so to speak.) Long before same-sex marriage was declared to be legal, I knew many same-sex couples that had weddings and considered themselves wife and wife. It seems that with legal domestic partnership, this law is really a matter of semantics. You can be married, but you can't technically call yourself a "married" couple is what the law says, which in some ways is ridiculous, since the name was all that same-sex couples can really get away with without having to get government sanction. You call anything whatever you want to call it; that's free speech.

However, it appears that what one is not allowed to say is that one is a Christian, and yet votes No on 8; or that one is friendly to homosexuals and yet votes Yes on 8. I hate it, and yet, it seems a fair enough evaluation, which puts me in a quandary. Do I lie? No, that's wrong as well. Do I say nothing? It seems the safest, although with the way I end up talking about the subject so often, almost everyone who knows me at all well knows I'm on the fence, or at least near it, and would be rightly curious of my choice. I don't want to lose friends and create enemies.

Or do I? I started to think about it. Do friends really break off their friendships over politics? Well, maybe they do, but I hope it's over something of great depth. I would like to think that in Nazi Germany (Godwin's law again, sure, but it's always a great example) there were people who were moral and brave enough to break off friendships with friends who joined the Nazi party. I'm sure there are lesser issues that might apply, but not many, in my mind. If I had voted for President Bush in 2004, are there people who would have refused to ever talk to me again after hearing such an admission? I know a few people who seem to feel as strongly as that about him, but if they weren't exaggerating their feelings, I imagine they would have moved to Canada by now.

Although I don't feel so strongly, I almost understand how someone could feel very strongly about the abortion issue, on either side. Actually, the fact that I can understand both sides no doubt has a lot to do with why I'm not at either extreme. What I really have a hard time understanding is why people feel so very strongly about an issue that really is just semantics. If you really think that homosexuality is so evil that it can't be allowed, then this law ought not to be enough for you; you ought to be pushing to outlaw same-gender sexual relations entirely. If you really think that gay people ought to be allowed to be married, then damn the law, and get married anyway!

If you are a person who has a strong opinion on this issue, and you want to know how I'm voting, I've decided what it is I want to say to you: Please assume that I voted the opposite of how you voted (or would have voted, had you the chance). Treat me accordingly. If you don't judge me on my voting record (and I'm not a politician, so I'm not sure you should) then fine. If you do, then judge away, but for now, I'm done talking about it.

I've got issues...

Let's revisit Proposition 8, shall we?

As is usual in my writing, I don't think the real point I'm trying to make is going to be right here in the beginning. Whether or not Proposition 8 should be passed or not is not really the main issue, but really, it's sort of a sub-issue, if you will. Shortly after I last wrote about Proposition 8, I had someone tell me that all good Christians should, as a matter of principle, vote against legalization of same-sex marriage. Assuming that you are a Christian who believes that same-sex marriage is a bad thing, there's some level of logic to this. As I myself have argued, "You can't legislate morality!" is a poor argument. I really do believe that morality is the only thing we really legislate, in one way or another. If you really believe that government has no place to pass laws that dictate moral choices, then may I suggest first that you really ought to be a Libertarian, and second that such a belief is really a moral choice itself. Make of that what you will.

For most of us, when we try to make choices about how we're going to vote, or what energies and/or donations we're going to give to various causes, we're thinking of moral choices much more overtly. I know a lot of people, usually Christians, who feel that the abortion issue is of tantamount importance, and will invariably vote for whichever candidate most strongly opposes abortions. Of course, there are also plenty of voters who take essentially the opposite tack. For many other people, the choices involve the weighing of various issues and finding the candidate or set of issues that best makes sense. For me, I tend to strongly favor propositions that support public transportation, and while there is a proposition on the ballot supporting the building of a new rail system here in California, in this case, I've been getting the feeling that the benefits may not warrant the amount of money being proposed for the cause, nor the manner in which the money is to be raised and spent. Even pet issues have to be tempered with an understanding of the bigger picture. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, I'd like to point out that Hitler was against abortion; this is not to say that banning abortion is immoral, but that no matter how bad you think abortion is, I hope you realize there is potentially an overriding issue. (That does, of course, go for the other side, as well as potentially any other issue.)

Well, what is it about same-sex marriage that supposedly makes it one of the few cut-and-dry issues? The belief that the Bible treats it as such, saying that homosexuality is unambiguously immoral. If the Bible doesn't mince terms, then why should we, as believers in the Bible, do any less? Well, it's tough, because there are a lot of things that the Bible unambiguously calls immoral, and if we're going to deal with one, we have to deal with all of them. When I talk about this, I'm not taking the tack of some skeptics who point out that the Bible bans the eating of shellfish and wearing of mixed-fiber clothing; that's a red herring. Whether skeptics choose to recognize it or not, there are some parts of the Law (referring to rules given in the first five books of the Bible by way of Moses) that apply only to ancient Israel. I would argue that most of these laws still apply to Jews, although the manner of enforcement may be questionable; many of these laws do not apply to gentile Bible-believers. (One of the rules that I would argue still applies to all people is that blood should not be ingested, but I'll readily admit that I'm guilty of enjoying a bloody steak or a bit of gravy from time to time. Feel free to skewer my hypocrisy.)

One of the areas where the moral code of the Old Testament carries over to non-Jews is in sexual morality. While homosexuality does seem to be a part of this, I think a lot of people get very worked up over the supposed evils of homosexuality while winking at heterosexual sin. I do believe that if a married man in my church were to run off with another woman, his friends within the church would encourage him to break off the affair, and (if his wife was willing) to return to his wife and be reconciled. If the same man ran off with another man, I do think a few people would react in the same way, but suspect that there would be more than a few that would write him off as a loss. Depending on your point of view, it may be either a shame that people give up on such a person, or a shame that they don't simply accept his newfound sexuality. Anyway, people of many a personal philosophical bent find themselves unable to treat homosexuality the same as heterosexuality, even if they don't accept the spiritual concept of "sinfulness", although intellectually it's been assented (by some) that there is no difference.

Anyway, sometimes it may seem that there is some inequality in law as well. After all, heterosexuals are pretty much allowed to marry any member of the opposite gender, but homosexuals are not allowed to marry members of the same gender, or at least they weren't until recently, and they won't once again when Proposition 8 passes (assuming it does). If you take this from a conservative Christian point of view, there is some small validity to this claim of inequality, but very small. Marriage between two people of opposite gender can be used in the Christian view, to legitimize their sexuality, whereas homosexual sex is never legitimate. Where the sliver of validity comes in is in the fact that there are no laws banning, say, heterosexual cohabitation or extramarital sex. That's only a sliver, though, at least in California, as I believe that the only thing homosexual couples have been banned from doing is getting married. In states where homosexual intercourse is banned, it perhaps seems that it might make sense to give the same penalties to "illicit" heterosexual intercourse. I don't know though, there may be places where this is the case. (Actually, I could be wrong about California law!)

I think one of the real problems with letting our morality inform our political choices is that it's hard to avoid being hypocritical. On some level, I can actually accept the logic that we should vote against homosexual marriage because the Bible says it's bad, but this presents a conundrum. I can be in danger of overgeneralizing, I suppose, but it seems to me that when it comes to the issues of banning homosexual marriage and abortion, your supporters are largely going to be Republicans, conservatives, right? Okay, no surprise there, but what happens when we talk about issues like welfare?

The Bible teaches far more unequivocally than it teaches about homosexuality that we should be doing all we can to reach out to the needy and less fortunate and help them. Shouldn't we be voting for expansion of welfare programs, helping out the homeless, single parents and needy children? The argument I seem to most commonly hear is that the church should be taking care of this, and it's not the business of the government to be "redistributing wealth". Am I the only one who sees the problem with this logic? Once again, in itself, there's something to it. While a lot of us agree that something should be done about people on the low end of the economic spectrum, it does seem there ought to be something voluntary about the solution. If someone has no interest in helping out the homeless, then taking his money and giving it to a homeless person is hardly going to make him more sympathetic, and in addition to helping people out, increasing the general level of sympathy for those less fortunate seems like a good thing. If the rich (or the middle class) are being stolen from, or at least feel like they're being stolen from, there's something wrong with that on some level.

It comes together with the more overt moral issues to create a clash of rational viewpoints. If we are so adamant that it should be left to individuals and various benevolence organizations such as churches to determine how and in what manner the needy are to be helped, why can't we leave it to the same to determine sexual morality? If my church wishes to not recognize same-sex marriage, and the church down the road is just fine with them, can't we agree to disagree and leave the government out of it? The truth is, we're happy to let individuals and localities decide for themselves how to live their lives so long as we're convinced that they'll probably decide in a way we approve, aren't we?

This is a hypocrisy we all share, both Republicans and Democrats. The breakdown in logic goes both ways. Democrats believe in freedom: freedom of individuals to make their own choices in how they live their lives, but they'll raise taxes to make people with more money pay for the freedoms of those with less. Republicans believe in freedom: freedom of the market and allowing businesses to make investment choices, but they don't like people making individual choices that threaten the conservative values that they treasure, and their freedom to live life as they see fit. Both groups want to have their cake and eat it too, but it tends to feel like, "We want to have our cake and eat yours!"

Perhaps that's the real reason that despite the fact I've been a fundamentalist Christian for over 10 years, I'm still a Democrat. Like many of my friends, both Christian and non-Christian, have realized, neither party is really going to serve exactly the causes that you as an individual want them to serve. Every single individual among Obama, McCain, Palin and Biden has positions on issues that I respect and agree with, but none of them is exactly what I want in my government. Furthermore, while we tend to view the President as the single most powerful individual in the nation, to be responsible for the overall wellbeing of our nation, the federal government has two other branches that keep the President's power limited, and even the perfect Presidential candidate who agreed with me on every single issue isn't going to transform government into utopia in a single four-year term.

Furthermore, individual issues and propositions are in many ways in the same boat. If Proposition 8 passes, next year we'll see some group of people bring about Proposition 18 (or whatever) to repeal Proposition 8. If it fails, the same group that brought this one will bring Proposition 8 (with a new number) right back and try again. There will always be homosexuals that want to get married, and there will always be people who think they shouldn't be allowed to do so. Same-sex marriage may be a cut-and-dry issue with individuals, but I highly doubt it will ever be a cut-and-dry issue in the political arena within our lifetimes. My condolences to homosexuals and fundamentalists alike.

For what it's worth, congratulations...

So today begins in earnest the legalization of same-sex marriage in California. We can all expect to see a lot of footage on the news of same-sex couples standing and facing each other with big smiles while people stand at a distance with placards reading a variety of messages, the most common word probably being "sin". It's an odd day in California for me in particular, because nominally, I'm a person who has lived in both parts of that picture.

I think it's obvious to most people who know me presently, even if it's just through my blogging, that I'm one of those "fundies", or whatever society likes to call us this week. What is less obvious is that there was a time in my life when I had more gay than straight friends, few of which (among both orientations) were Christians. There's a certain emotional investment in my life on both sides of the debate, and I know virtually nobody was asking, "Hey, where does Brucker stand on this issue?" But I'll share anyway.

As loyal followers of my blog should know, I'm an ordained minister, and the day I became an ordained minister, I suggested here that ministers that support gay marriage and the separation of church and state should be performing ceremonies for same-sex couples regardless of the legal ramifications. I don't think I've expressed it in this blog, but really, if two people want to be together and simply say that they are a married couple, the government can refuse them certain rights, but they can't refuse them the right to simply say it, and live as if it were so. Same-sex marriage, polygamy and other alternatives to "traditional" marriage are being practiced whether the government sanctions it or not.

On a more personal level, though, I came to the realization a couple days ago that I am once again in life coming across a situation where my political beliefs and my religious beliefs are in conflict. Like times before when I've had to balance the concept that I have a duty to do what I am asked by my employer with the concept that my employer may be asking me to do something I morally oppose, there's a conflict. (I recall stories in the news of pharmacists who refused to fill out prescriptions for drugs they morally opposed; I think if you're morally opposed to something that's simply part of your job, then your duty is not to fail to do your job in that area, but find a different line of work.) I saw that as an ordained minister who is not under the authority of my church in any palpable way, I could very well go out and perform same-sex wedding ceremonies. Really, given the landslide of such ceremonies we're likely to see in the next few days, it would be an opportunity to make some quick, easy money simply by being there to say a few words to make people happy. Is that so bad?

I realized that, even though I have no strong political opposition to this ruling, even though I have friends that will likely be taking the day off of work today to stand in line at a courthouse somewhere to finally claim government recognition of their dedication to one another, and I am happy for them, even though I am a lover of controversy and would enjoy being there in the middle of it...I simply couldn't do it.

In the end, my religious beliefs won out. I see God as saying, no, this is unacceptable. Despite what I may feel about individual couples on a personal level, and despite my support of separation of church and state, I really could not condone it.

Does that make me more of a hypocrite for not sticking to my political beliefs, or does it make me less of a hypocrite for clinging to my religious beliefs? I can't decide, but I think it's good. I mean, in the end, don't we all need to cling to what we think is right?

Anna Quindlen says in Newsweek that "The gay-marriage isssue is over and done with." Oddly (to me at least) she quotes from a second-century poem about two men getting married in Rome. If it's so over and done with, then why are we still fighting it 19 centuries later? Why is it that pointing out that same-sex marriage has been around for two milennia bolsters the case for it while people argue about the outdatedness of Biblical principles for the very same reason? Despite the fact that Quindlen is delighted her children are so accepting of homosexuality, it neither means that homosexuality is morally acceptable nor that the matter won't still be debated long after her children are dead and gone another two milennia from now.

If this single issue is complicated enough that it can't be fully sorted out even within a single mind without being oversimplified, what makes anyone think this is even close to the end of the matter?

The myth of homosexuality

Love that title? I thought it would be an attention-getter. Don't judge too harshly before you read, but do know that this may get a PG-13 rating if not worse. I started to write this entry on Monday, and as so often seems to happen, I get a fair way into a bit of clever writing and somehow manage to do something to screw it up and lose it. In this case, I shifted in my seat and kicked the computer's plug out, losing not only my writing, but other documents that had actual importance. Still, I had this clever bit about how I should rename my blog "Theologian Rants Always on Something Homosexual" since it seems to be a far too prominent topic for what I had intended this blog to be; oh, well. On the positive side, I've decided to take a different approach to the topic here which I think will cover a broader topic than my initial attempt. But I ought to get to where I'm going.

Ted Haggard. You've probably heard of the guy. If you didn't, here's what you need to know: Ted Haggard was (and perhaps still is) the leader of a prominent evangelical organization that had a lot of the standard fundamentalist views on homosexuality and drug abuse; in any case, those views were expressed in Haggard's sermons, that much is for sure. Then not so long ago (about a month or so) the story broke that Haggard had had an affair with a male prostitute from whom he had also bought drugs. Haggard claimed that he had only gone to this guy for a massage, and while he had indeed bought the drugs, he had not used them.

Whether or not Haggard had indeed had a same-sex affair or been a user of illicit drugs is not the issue. He and the other leaders of his organization agreed that he had done something wrong, and needed a time to himself for repentance and healing. The public had largely cast its judgment as well, and many of them had decided that clearly, Haggard was a closeted homosexual. It's this judgment that I really wish to focus on here.

Some have said, and I don't think that the view is so very alien and uncommon, that the root of the problem was Christianity's decision to treat the "sin" of homosexuality so harshly, or even to consider it a sin at all. No doubt, Haggard was gay, had always been gay, and had simply spent most of his life burying his true desires under a persona of religious zealotry. If only he had been allowed to live freely, he would have had a simple, happy life as an openly gay man.

I don't buy it. The guy has children, and has been married for a long time--to a woman, natch. A guy spends most of his life having a woman as his sexual outlet, and then has a single same-sex affair, and that means he's gay? I can think of a number of other possibilities that seem more likely, at least to me. Sure, he might be gay, but then, he might be bisexual. Or he may even be a straight man who somehow got tempted to try something that didn't immediately seem pleasing. Sure, the latter seems at face value to be very far-fetched, but I don't think it's out of the question; smoking tobacco is not a pleasant experience for people who try it at first, but many people do it anyway.

In thinking about this topic, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about the word "pervert". Generally, the word is used to refer to someone who has an unnatural sexual desire, but since there is a great deal of debate as to what is "natural", this generally gets used to mean: "Someone who has a sexual desire that *I* don't like/approve of." It's far too arbitrary in that sense, but I think there's something telling in what the word means in a more technical sense. Stripping away the moral implications of the word (which is hard to do, since it's a big part of what the word is about), the idea is that perverting something is to redirect it away from its intended use in an unexpected way. (Now, if you're certain that God intended sex to only be between a man and a woman, then any homosexual is a "pervert" in that sense, but I'm not trying to simplify this issue; I'm intending to hugely complicate it!)

Morality aside, if indeed Haggard is gay, and indeed being homosexual is a characteristic that you are naturally born with, then the perverted thing that Haggard did was to get married to a woman! Someone who is truly homosexual should not try to pervert those natural desires by pretending and/or attempting to act in a manner consistent with heterosexuals. But then, if they find they are easily able to do so, perhaps they are not homosexual? They must be bisexual; but then, if we as a society only accept monogamy, how does a bisexual stay true to their sexuality?

Now I've ventured back to the arena of morality again, and I do want to view this issue both from within that arena and without. There is a tendency I feel I have seen in society as of late, and I don't know how prevalent it is. I don't exactly hear about this sort of thing happening very often, but then, it probably doesn't happen so often anyway. The scenario is presented of a man who has been in a long-lasting marriage that to all outsiders seems to be a happy and successful marriage, but then one day, he admits that he has spent his life as a closeted homosexual. Essentially, he says, "I have realized that I need to be honest and true to myself. My wife is a good woman, but I have a desire to have sex with men, and as such, I am leaving my wife to be with a man." A large portion of society seems to applaud this decision. The man is liberated, he's being true to himself, and casting off the chains of an outmoded societal standard that was keeping him from the pursuit of happiness.

Now let's take another man, a man in the same situation before the revelation. He comes to a realization about his true desires, and he decides it's time for him to likewise cast off the chains of outmoded morality and pursue his happiness. "I have realized that I need to be honest and true to myself. My wife is a good woman, but I have a desire to have sex with twenty-year-old blondes, and as such, I am leaving my fifty-year-old brunette wife to be with one." Does society applaud this man? I don't think so. But really, is there such a difference between him and the previous one? If you're in a long-term committed relationship with another person, I think you have a responsibility to stay true to that person. That doesn't mean that separation is never an option, but it's something that shouldn't be taken lightly, regardless of the issues involved. (I'd even go so far as to say that goes for a same-sex couple in which one partner becomes convinced that homosexual relations are immoral; I don't think I'd advise such a person to just "drop their partner like a hot rock," so to speak, but find a way to make the transition out of the relationship as smoothly and respectfully as possible.)

But perhaps you'll claim that in the latter case this is not a matter of a person's orientation, but a matter of a "dirty old man", but that's subjective. The fact is that society as a whole, and various sub-sections of society make up their minds as to what is perversion and what is not, in both a moral and non-moral sense. It's not just Christians that do it, everyone does, and really, I don't think that's wrong per se. We have to judge others because that's how we interact personally; and we have to likewise judge ourselves, because that's how we make moral decisions. What makes choosing a sexual partner based on gender right, and choosing one based on age wrong? Isn't that just another kind of "sexual orientation"?

My big realization (while it may be complete crap, as I'm sure so much of my writing is) is that I was both wrong and right about something I used to think years ago. See, I used to think that people were not born homosexual, but to be fair, they weren't born heterosexual, either. I figured they were born bisexual (although perhaps "asexual" is more to the point) in that what sort of sexual partner one would prefer in adulthood was largely a preference formed by a variety of childhood experiences. Most people ended up going one way or the other, although some people stayed somewhere in the vague middle. I think now that I was right in that potentially each person would be open to a variety of placements on the sexual spectrum based on their early psychosocial development. But I was wrong in a bigger way.

I think I am now convinced that "sexual orientation" is a myth.

Because we as human beings like to judge people and pigeonhole them, we look at a man like Haggard and put him in a box. We say, "He's a homosexual." Really, that's where the word came from, as do many words; there were people that acted in certain ways sexually, and we wanted to put a simple handle on this behavior and build a box where we could contain it. Homosexual. As opposed to heterosexual. But this pigeonholing of people causes the sorts of problems that we have with gays in the military. The people against gays in the military feel that homosexuals will cause morale problems. Why? Because a soldier will always be wondering if there's some guy in his platoon who wants to have sex with him, although he has no interest in that, I guess.

Look, though. Where did the assumption come from? We say, "homosexual males are sexually attracted to other males," and it frankly must sound to some homophobes that there must be thousands of gay men out there somewhere who would like nothing better than to catch you with your pants down, right? But do you assume that every heterosexual woman in the world is looking to sleep with you? Do you want to sleep with every single woman in the world? (Maybe you do, and maybe there are indeed gay men who likewise would be amenable to sleeping with any other man, but it's certainly not the norm.)

The simple labels that we put on sexual orientation make the subject look like it's a simple matter, but it simply is not. The number and scope of the issues are huge enough that several books could be and have been written on the subject. If a person enjoyed masturbation, isn't that sex with a person of the same gender? Is a bisexual really a bisexual if they've never had sex with a member of the same gender? People say that pedophilia has nothing to do with homosexuality, but I wonder; aren't there male pedophiles that only molest young boys? Aren't there others that only molest young girls? Might one say that the former is a homosexual pedophile while the latter is a heterosexual one? Nobody wants to be associated with pedophiles, so if you're in the homosexual "box", you don't want (homosexual) pedophiles in the box with you, surely. Is sexual orientation about finding certain people attractive, desiring to have sex with certain people, or being sexually turned on by certain people? I once knew a woman who was a lesbian, but she was turned on by watching gay men kiss; what does that say about her "orientation"? What about the whole can of worms of the sexual orientation of transsexuals and intersexed individuals?

The fact is, the world does not consist of merely two types of people, homosexuals and heterosexuals. The world consists of six billion individuals each of whom has their own particular sexual desires. This is neither right nor wrong, it is simply a fact. Perhaps each and every one of us is a "pervert" in someone else's view?

My neighbor's dog can say "Hello", and I think she's a lesbian

Two dogs are having a conversation. One of them says to the other, "Woof!" The other replies, "Moo!" The first dog is perplexed. "Moo? Why did you say moo?" The other dog says, "I'm trying to learn a foreign language."

I was planning to eventually do another piece on homosexuality, and my opinion on what the Bible says about the prospect of "reforming" homosexuals. I was putting it off since it seems to have turned out to be much more of popular topic for my blog than I meant it to be, and I wanted to do some more stuff on comics as an art form. Then I was reading some of the archives on Wonkette and came across a link and commentary on this: http://www.no-moo-lies.com/ (Note that many of the things linked to in this post require Flash to view.)

Okay, um... There are a number of interesting current events that I like to comment on, and I'm rather fond of constructing a good metaphor to illustrate my point, as anyone who has read my stuff or talked to me in person knows. (Yes, readers, I actually talk like I write if you get me started, just with less parentheses.) I don't always know when a metaphor is particularly good, but I sure think I can spot a bad one.

Let's summarize: Colorado doesn't need domestic partnerships because DOGS DON'T GO "MOO"! Wow, you've got to hand it to them; if there were any valid points to be brought up about this issue, they were completely overshadowed by the ridiculousness of the really awful metaphor. Although the dog is pretty cute, I guess. I really do think they brought up some good points, but before you really get to them, you get loaded up with some really odd baggage. Let's walk through it, shall we?

When I first opened the site, I didn't have my headphones on, so what I saw was a dog with a line connecting to the word "sherman". That alone was quite odd, as it looked like the sort of simplified quote balloons some cartoonists use, and in fact, the very same animation uses only two seconds later with "woof". My first thought was not that this dog was supposed to be Sherman, but that the dog was calling to Sherman, and we were about to be treated to a new episode of Mr. Peabody's Improbable History. I expected, "Sherman! Come set the WABAC machine for 1955, when even liberals had respect for traditional family values!"

Okay, once the short animation (so short and simple that it's hard to understand why they bothered with flash at all) was over, it was clear this wasn't going to happen, but instead, we're treated with the claim: "If dogs were born to bark, why are some people trying to convince you they can moo?" Wow, I thought, who's trying to do that?

After some web searching, I discovered that they really exist, apparently. I'll get to them in a moment. For now, let me just say that I found the site rather confusing because I had no idea what they were talking about. A reference to the original mooing dog would have been quite a bit helpful in determining that while they were partaking in this nonsense, at least they weren't the originators of it. I guess they assumed that residents of Colorado would know about it, and that's what's important.

They're talking about borndifferent.com, which apparently is an ad campaign to convince Colorado residents that homosexuality is just as normal as a dog that goes "MOO". Boy, if I wanted to convince people that gay people are weirdos, I think I'd be behind this message 100%. Which brings me to a new strange thing about the "No moo lies" site that I wasn't even thinking of when I began to write this post: If these guys are trying to be taken serious for their mooing dog, I'd think the best way to counter their message is to echo the message back and say, "Gay marriage is as natural as this dog who moos? We probably couldn't have put it better ourselves!" As I myself said in a comment to the site:

Moo? This doesn't make any sense. What does mooing have to do with sexual orientation? I don't think making Norman your spokesdog if you will is winning too many points. Some dogs hump their owner's legs, which comes closer to the concept of sexual orientation than mooing. Is this a connection you want people to make? If you're gay, you're just another person. If you're a dog that moos, you're a freak for the sideshow. C'mon, now.

A commenter back at Wonkette says (in response to the Sherman site's question "Why can't we base our behavior on what animals do?"):

Indeed. I'm off to lick my balls and take a dump on the sidewalk.

I'm not sure who that sarcasm was aimed at, as I'd originally thought it was at the anti-gay marriage site, but the link given goes to a page that is intended to point out the ridiculousness of the idea. As they say on that page, animals do a lot of stuff, including (as I said, but they refrained from, no doubt in order to be family friendly) attempting to have sex with other species. I don't think the pro-gay marriage people want to support bestiality, as that would just be begging for a slippery-slope argument that, well, nonetheless might be worth pondering.

Now, one of the odd things that get brought up by both sites is the timely, important issue of penguin sexual orientation. I wish I could have made this up, really. Born Different points to the story of two male penguins in New Zealand that have been nearly lifelong partners, choosing each others' company over that of female penguins. For some reason, they refer to them as the "unlikeliest gay couple". I don't know if that's because they have some stats on how penguins are the least gay species on the planet or something, or maybe it's because, as the article says:

"They don't actually bonk," says [bird curator Rochelle Deane]. "But they're totally out there."

You know, in college I had a roommate for three years. We were both men and we lived together, cooked food for each other, went to movies together, and spent far more of our free time with each other than with members of the opposite sex. We didn't "bonk" each other, though. Still, I suppose we may have been gay and I just missed it. No-Moo-Lies points to another same-sex penguin couple in New York, who not only kept a monogamous relationship with each other for several years, but was allowed by the zookeepers to hatch an egg and raise a daughter together. They of course point to this because of the twist ending: a female named Scrappy was introduced into the mix, and one of the "gay penguins" became "perhaps the world's first documented ex-gay penguin". You know what I like about the way the traditional-values people bring up these penguins in response? Two things. First, the way they refer to Scrappy as "a hot little bird" or "a saucy female penguin". I'm wondering if there are any sites out there that refer her as a "darling little God-fearing penguin seductress"? I guess I just did; can I copyright that? Second thing to note is that it's funny that the anti-gay marriage folks want to point to the ex-gay penguin as evidence of anything (perhaps I'm misunderstanding their intentions), because it seems like they're giving credence to the idea of gay penguins meaning something in the first place. If so, what does all of this really mean in light of the fact that the little girl penguin they raised is now apparently in a committed relationship with another female? There's some sort of gay animal soap opera happening at that zoo, I tell you.

Both sites talk a bit about sexual orientation and genetics. Born Different points out that there are identical twins that are both gay, such as Canadian musicians Tegan and Sara. (Pretty good musicans, actually, I've heard their stuff.) We are told that "[I]f one twin is born gay, there is a higher chance (52%) that the other will be gay as well. [S]ince identical twins share DNA, this tells us that genetics plays a part in sexual orientation[. T]hat means some people are born gay." While there is no citation given for the initial statistic, I'm more than willing to believe it. However, I don't buy the claims that follow. Consider replacing the word "gay" with "blond" in the first sentence. What would you expect the percentage to be? I'd expect 99%, maybe more. There may indeed be a genetic component to sexual orientation, but I don't think the stats given are showing anything of the sort, and it certainly is not proven that people are "born gay". They may be, but I know of nothing (certainly not this statistic) that would prove this. (Forget "blond" now and replace "gay" with "affluent"; genetics thus plays a role in personal net worth, right?)

Now, despite the (suggested) fact that people are not born gay, the people at No-Moo-Lies admit that "Same-sex attraction results from a combination of factors...which can begin in the earliest stages of childhood." Now, while I don't see them explicitly making a bad assumption here, it does seem to be implicit all over their site: that if you weren't "born gay" then you must have chosen it, as though those are the only two possibilities. Both my mother and I were born with blond hair. As we entered our late teens, our hair turned more of a light brown, and then eventually, in our early 30's started going rather grayish. I wasn't born gray, but I didn't choose it either. Nor do I mind, I rather like the look. Of course, I could dye my hair whatever color I want, and be an "ex-gray".

Does genetics make something right to do, or wrong to deny? I knew a guy in school who strangled his girlfriend to death. His older brother did, too, a few years later. It was later found out that their father (who had not raised them, and therefore only influenced them through his genetics) was in prison for strangling his own girlfriend to death. It seems like this family carries a genetic disposition towards girlfriend-strangling. Does that make it right? Of course not. Is homosexuality the moral equivalent of girlfriend-strangling? Let me be crystal-clear that I don't want to imply that at all! I only point out that genetic inclination doesn't imply a moral high ground. It seems that some gays can change. (And I assume that not everyone who has a desire to kill their significant other acts out that desire.) Maybe all can, who knows? Maybe it's all an illusion, and as some people have claimed, "ex-gays" are really reoriented bisexuals. I don't know. No-Moo-Lies doesn't really address the issues of homosexuals who failed to be changed by the therapy, and Born Different doesn't address the few successes as far as I can find. One report linked to states:

To date, there are no scientifically rigorous outcome studies to determine either the actual efficacy or harm of "reparative" treatments. There is sparse scientific data about selection criteria, risks versus benefits of the treatment, and long-term outcomes of "reparative" therapies. The literature consists of anecdotal reports of individuals who have claimed to change, people who claim that attempts to change were harmful to them, and others who claimed to have changed and then later recanted those claims.

In other words, we all seem to have opinions, but nobody seems to have conclusive hard data. In lack of such data, where is a Christian to turn to? Maybe this is a place where the Bible gives some insight, at least if you're of the theological stripe to recognize the Bible as the Word of God. From I Corinthians 6:

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Gee, harsh words. Some people love to trot out this verse to condemn homosexuals, probably because it's one of the very few that actually mentions homosexuality. But note that "homosexual offenders" is only one of ten different types of people that are mentioned. I think there are few people who won't find themselves on this list somewhere, if not in more than one of the items. I know most of them would have been appropriate labels for me at some point in the past. So where's the hope? Did we forget to finish out the paragraph? Next verse:

And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

A good lesson not to take a verse out of context is here. If you are a Christian, and you believe that God will not change some aspect of you because there is nothing wrong with it, then that's a moral position that may be defensible. If you are going to claim that God cannot change you, you're making a theological statement about the power of God. Maybe God thinks being gay is alright. Maybe not. I do think it's quite likely that God would rather see us spending time and energy on things other than mooing dogs and sexy penguins.

Oh crap, and I just wrote my longest post ever on the subject, too.

One nation, (out from) under God, part IV

There are a handful of phrases that seem to really set me off, and there's one in particular that I'd like to include in this series. "You can't legislate morality." The phrase seems to be brought up most often in the context of debates on homosexuality and legal matters tied thereto, but it can crop up in regard to any issue that is perceived by non-Christians as a Christian issue. Generally, I think it's crap.

To be fair, I've been thinking about this post for a few days, and in the process of mulling it over, I've realized that there is another side to this issue that I don't often consider. Once again, if one takes context and tries to find out what is meant by the statement, it may be that people using the phrase are saying something I totally agree with, namely that making something illegal won't change most people's attitudes towards it. Most places in this country have laws against polygamy, usage of certain drugs, sex with underage partners, and sodomy, but that doesn't stop those things from being done. Pretty much everywhere in this country and even the world, murder and stealing are illegal, and those go on incessantly. While many people think those items in the first list are immoral, and just about everyone thinks the latter items are immoral, I feel safe in saying that any of these acts are committed on a daily basis by someone who feels no twinge of guilt over them. In the case of the former, it's not real clear that they should.

Yes, if we were to make same-gender sexual intimacy illegal across the nation (as I believe it already is in a number of states), while it may change the sexual behavior of some people, it won't change a single homosexual into a heterosexual, as the definition of homosexual is not one of behavior, but of inclination. As such, it may be very well to ask what the point is of making laws that restrict the rights of what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes. I know I don't want the government monitoring what goes on in my bedroom, and although I am involved in a monogamous heterosexual marriage, it's quite likely if not downright inevitable that there are things I do with my wife that some people would like to see laws against. (No doubt, there are even some people who would like to see any sex at all illegal, although I would assume such people are few and far between.)

It must also be noted as an aside that the "between consenting adults" defense, while seeming to carry much weight, is far from conclusive. Other than perhaps strict libertarians, most people probably would have some reason that they would agree that the government should step in to a situation in which consenting adults are doing something in private. Think of a crack house perhaps, in which consenting adults are behind closed doors selling, buying and using harmful illegal drugs. Maybe you don't think so, but I think law enforcement should step in in such a situation.

With all of that aside, though, I did have an original point that I'm taking far too long to arrive at. Can we legislate morality? I believe that on a purely behavioral level, the answer is not just "Yes" but "Well, what else is there to legislate?" I suggest that not only can we legislate morality, we do legislate it and ought to, because in the end, it's the only reason to legislate.

As I said above, almost everyone agrees that murder should be illegal, and it is. Does it stop murder from occurring? Not completely, that's for sure, but I don't think that the fact laws exist to punish murderers do not stop all people from murdering, and the fact that they stop nobody who wants to murder from thinking about it, is good enough reason to simply not bother. If you believe that a certain action is wrong, then it is not just your right, but I think on some level your obligation to push for laws to be created to avert that action from occurring.

This is where this whole discussion fits into a discussion of the separation of church and state: People complain that it's not right for a president or a representative to push their Christian morality on the rest of the country, but I say, if the president is a Christian, what other moral base does he have to work off of? All of that indeed should be tempered with thoughts of the golden rule, and any elected official needs to think of the ramifications of any legislation they wish to support. If the government is given the right to peek in your bedroom and make sure you're not up to the wrong sorts of stuff, how will you feel about that? Is it really worth the loss of your own right to privacy to catch a few homosexuals in an act that, if it is indeed harmful, is only harmful to themselves? Maybe we even ought to rethink the crack house. What if powers-that-be outlawed alcohol once again, and the police broke into your house, caught you sipping a glass of sherry with dinner and dragged you off to jail? When the FBI comes to the house of a retired president that signed a bill outlawing sodomy, and catches him enjoying oral sex with his wife, how is he going to think about a couple years in the penitentiary?

So, we have to consider the pros and cons of every legislation, no doubt, but in the end, we outlaw certain acts because we believe them to be immoral. We reward things we believe are good, probably through tax breaks. Legislating morality is just what we do, and whether or not it's fair to do so is another issue entirely.

Thoughts on mistaken identity

You know, although most of my posts so far in this blog have been pretty random, I usually have an idea as to what I'm trying to say, but today ought to be interesting, my thought for the day is pretty much a random ramble. Not that it matters as nobody seems to be reading this or giving feedback. Hmmm...

Anyway, I had an odd moment this morning. I have a co-worker that for quite some time I had thought was a lesbian. Then somebody told me that she was a Christian. Then I overheard her saying something that seemed to confirm that she was indeed a lesbian. Then I overheard her talking about church. Back and forth, back and forth... I was confused, and to this day, I still don't know for sure whether she is a Christian or a lesbian.

The thing is, well, that "back and forth" thing I said above. In my mind, while I was trying to sort out her personal life without being pushy and outright asking her for personal information that I don't need in order to do my job properly, it did feel like a "back and forth" thing. Surely she was either a lesbian or a Christian, right? But I realized in specific this morning something that I knew in general already. It may be possible that she is both! I mean, why not?

In particular, I had an online friend a couple years ago that I had known for some time, and this young woman was, as far as I knew, a very good, upstanding and moral person who had a solid grasp on Christian theology. She was intelligent, well-versed in the Bible, and devoted to serving God in her life. Then I found out that she was a lesbian, too. Because I knew her as well as I did, my impression of who she was as a person was not really altered much by this revelation. (Unfortunately, I found out about it roughly the same time her parents did, and her parents, whom you'd think would have an even better grasp on who she really was in her heart of hearts, had a much less favorable reaction to her coming out of the closet.) While I do tend to be of the understanding that the Bible says homosexuality is wrong, it's not something I have a personal problem with, nor is it a sticking point in my personal grasp of Christian doctrine. I'm much more inclined to believe I'm mistaken about that point than about 90% of the rest of my doctrine.

My friend was a good person, and a good Christian, and even if same-sex sexual relations indeed are a sin, I did not, and still do not believe that her attraction to people of the same gender makes her any less so. Yet at the same time, because of my understanding of doctrine, it's hard for me to accept someone as being a Christian from the get-go if they have certain characteristics. Why is that?

I suppose it's a form of prejudice, even though in this case it stems from a doctrinal issue. There are probably a lot of things that are characteristic of myself that would make other Christians question the status of my salvation and/or devotion. I'm a registered Democrat, have long hair and tattoos, listen almost exclusively to secular music, and enjoy reading the Harry Potter books. Sheesh, I might as well be a Satan worshipper as well as some of that!

The Christian life is hard enough on its own that it doesn't need the complications of trying to do God's work of sorting out the saved and the unsaved. Trying to relate to other Christians can be a tricky thing. As much as there is a good amount of agreement over the main points of Christian doctrine among the majority of believers, sometimes there can be a bit of discomfort to be discussing some matter or another with a fellow Christian, and they happen to mention something concerning their personal beliefs that makes for an awkward moment. Maybe they stress the importance of being "born again" (a term only found once in the entire Bible, if I'm not mistaken) while you yourself don't commonly use the term. Maybe you find out that they are a member of a Christian denomination that you consider to be doctrinally questionable, or the reverse: they believe the denomination you belong to is questionable! Maybe they engage in behaviors you find morally questionable, or even outright wrong.

Of course, even non-Christians can probably go through this, as we all have expectations that the people around us are like us to some extent. But you find out that a close friend is a racist, or they have a drug habit, or there's some strange secret in their past, and it throws you for a loop. Perhaps Christians just expect more similarity within the family of God, but why should we? There's probably not much similarity within a regular sort of family. I remember a time when I was a kid and a bunch of my cousins were all bored, so we started sharing secrets about things we'd done that nobody knew about. It was shocking, no doubt about it, but sometimes the most shocking secrets are the ones that are hidden in plain sight. I have a cousin on my mother's side of the family who is also Jewish, and although I've known her all of my life, I didn't know she was Jewish until I was about twenty. She didn't hide her identity, but she also didn't talk about it enough that it was widely known. Finding out didn't change my estimation of her at all, but it threw me for a loop, because I felt that I should have known.

But is there any singular given "flag" that marks one as being Jewish? (I mean, not in the official sense that an Orthodox Rabbi would use, but in a more general cultural/genetic sense.) While there are certain characteristics that are associated with being Jewish, it is far from the truth that all Jews look the same, act the same, and believe the same things. How about being gay? As far as I have known, there is nothing at all that homosexuals have in common across the continuum, despite stereotypes one sees portrayed on "Will & Grace".

The truth is, we as human beings living in a society will categorize and stereotype people as a matter of course, because it makes life easier to get a handle on. While we know intellectually that every person in the world is an individual, our brains can't handle the concept of six billion individuals, so we make clumps of people and think consciously or subconsciously, "These people are all like this..." While it's not wrong per se, it can be jarring at times when we find our categories break down. No Christian could possibly vote Democrat. No member of my family could possibly be a drug addict. No lesbian could possibly be a regular churchgoer.

I don't know what my point in all of this is, nor quite what the theological significance might be, except for the obvious that it's best to keep an open mind, perhaps.

Membership hath its privileges

There's an interesting facet of Christianity that I find sometimes hard to swallow on an intellectual level, despite the fact that I take it on faith. People that are not Christians, mostly agnostics and atheists, complain that it's unfair for Christianity to make the claim that it has exclusive access to Truth-with-a-capital-T. If Jesus is going to say "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) then isn't he being rather intolerant? Well aside from the fact that I don't think that this technically fits the actual definition of intolerant, and that Jesus, being God, pretty much has the right to set the rules however He wants, the thing I think this objection misses very often is the fact that Christianity is not the only religion by far that makes claims of exclusivity. Lots and lots of religions claim to be the only "true" religion, and really, it's a whole topic in itself as to why I think that's not only acceptable, but desirable in a religious practice. But this topic of exclusivity is not the "facet" that I really wanted to talk about, although it's somewhat related, I suppose.

The thing about Christianity that I was pondering yesterday evening was part of the whole, "Don't say you'll believe it when you see it, but believe and then you'll see!" phenomenon. While I believe that there is a great deal of Christianity and its doctrines that can be intellectually understood without having to be a Christian, I think all (well, perhaps most) Christians realize that there is an element of faith that only true believers have a grasp on. We evangelicals have what we like to call "a personal relationship with God." What is that, exactly? I don't think I can describe it to someone who hasn't experienced it for themself, which is too bad, since it's what's really at the heart of Christianity when you strip everything else away.

Interestingly enough, and one of the reasons it's related to the topic in the first paragraph, I found myself pondering this in the midst of reading about Zen Buddhism. I realized that exclusivity is not the only thing by far about Christianity that's hard for an outsider to accept, yet is common to many religions. What is at the center of Zen Buddhism? The experience of zen. What is zen? Well, although philosophers of various religious beliefs can talk about it at length and discuss things about zen, zen itself is not something that can be put into words, even by those who have experienced it. In fact, the inability to describe zen is an inherent property of it, the word "zen" meaning essentially "wordlessness".

Such a concept is found in the Bible in a number of ways. Paul wrote about a vision in which "He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell." (2Cor. 12:4) But aside from that special incident, he writes more generally and practically that "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1Cor. 2:14) There is a concept in many religions that there is just a certain level of spiritual enlightenment that only the true believers will ever experience.

Interestingly enough, I'd say that it's a belief that even some atheists harbor in an odd way. I've been told by atheists that if only I would cease to believe in God for a moment, I'd see how ridiculous the Bible and Christianity as a whole are. Perhaps they're right, but if so, aren't they essentially suggesting that there is such a thing as special atheistic enlightenment that only true atheists can experience? What a concept! (It's hardly a common view among atheists in general, though. If atheists were a religious classification as Christianity is, there would probably be as many "sects" of atheism as there are atheists.)

I'm wondering if the only point of this blog is to toss out thoughts on unanswerable questions that I'm not really asking, nor looking for feedback on. I'm not sure what my point is here in general, and it sounds like yesterday's post, with a lot of "well maybe, or maybe not". Are these facets of Christianity logically unacceptable? Yet they're used by so many. I remember the irony of once having a discussion on the value of various "ex-gay" ministries. There was a lesbian who claimed that if any of these sorts of ministries ever had any successes, it wasn't that they were turning homosexuals into non-homosexuals, but that they were turning bisexuals into operative heterosexuals. How could she be so sure? Because if they were able to be attracted to women ever, then they were simply not homosexuals, nor had they ever been. I thought this was a very familiar concept, and realized it was from 1John 2:19: "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us." See, there's no such thing as an ex-Christian; if a person leaves Christianity, it means they were never really a part of it in the first place.

Christianity has its particulars that are strange and hard to understand, but they don't set it apart as particularly wrong so much as just one among many belief systems. Sure, Christianity is special, but not for any of the above reasons.