Catholics, Orthodox must resolve gay marriage opposition

"A few of those comments mentioned the struggle both the Catholic and Orthodox traditions have had -- and continue to have -- over the issue of how to deal with homosexuality within the Christian household."

_______________________________________________________________

It is not the two Churches who are struggling over how to deal with homosexuality. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches are, and have been, abundantly and consitently clear on the issue. The problem is the lack of obedience of the erstwhile adherents of these two Churches. Please remember that Jesus required that everyone "go and sin no more." Love? yes. And to love means to challenge. To love someone is not to allow them to pursue self-distructive behavior. To quote Hamlet, "You jig, you amble, you lisp, you mock God's creatures and make up truths of your own..."

Thank you Bill,

The only troubling words in all of this matter to me is the idea that anyone with any understanding of either Aristotle or Thomas can boldly speak of an objective disorder. This is very bad epistemology. Simply put, per Thomas Aquinas based of Aristotelian Philosophy all our knowing is through a medium. None of our senses have direct [objective] knowledge of anything.

We are by definition subjective human beings and the very best level of understanding we can bring to anything is subjective. We are sorry to say limited to a subjective understanding of the Real World. If we find someting we disagree with we have learned to say "Oh you ar being subjective". We live in an age where we realize that often the worst witness is an eye witness. Why? Because the 'believe' they are in posession of an objective fact.

George Bernard Shaw stated that "facts are the enemy of truth". In essence we are all believers. We believe what we see and what we hear and what we smell and what we taste and also what we touch. A little humility and areal acceptance of the human condition would readily have us recognise that we do not all share an identical sexual identity. Time to get beyond the need to point the finger at others in order to better ones own standing. That is just sinfully vicious.

The bible is a book, and believe it or not it says nothing! You open it, you read it, and you interpret its content. That is a very subjective matter and your extraction of meaning will be proportionate to you understanding of an ancient culture and an ancient language.

For an exciting study we might all look to the following written symbols and reflect at how terribly difficult it is to navigate from one language meaning to the next:

DABAR - LOGOS-VERBUM-WORD.

Don't get a headache over it but the exercise is a real illumination.

God Bless.

TomC

I'm one of the "over forty" Catholics that Bill identifies as opposing gay marriage. If the under forties cannot understand what the issue is, neither can many of my generation, but from the opposite viewpoint.
I agree that many of us have friends and family members who we know are gay, but we also have friends whose conduct in other matters is disapproved by the
Church. In each case we go by the old rule"hate the sin but love the sinner".
We are not homophobic and we do not approve of those who are rigidly determined that all sinners must be excommunicated. Christ welcomed sinners and ate with them. So should we. God will judge them but he has foridden us to do so.

I am 23 year old Catholic college student. I think to myself whether you the author of this article happens to know what it means to be a Christian? Since you mentioned being a Presbyterian and support ordination of gays I can only imagine that your idea of what that means must be skewed. I do have friends who are "gay" and they are welcomed to come to my church and worship. I love them like anyone else. The mission of any good church is to help the sinner (which is everyone) by professing Christ in their preaching. This has nothing to do however, with the fact that what Christ and the Apostles preached two thousand years ago remains true today and that what they preached in the Kerygma they ACTUALLY believed! We are to turn away from the sin of body and put our faith in God. No one wants to be mean to their gay friends, I know I don't. But God as he is professed in the Catholic-Orthodox faith is not a politically correct kind of guy. He loves you, yes he does and he forgives you. But YOU have to turn away from sin. This is fundamentally what separates Catholicism and Orthodoxy from other so-called "Christian" denominations. They will not compromise for a few who want to change the rules because its convenient for them. The church's absolute teachings on morality cannot "change with the times" in fact they are in some opinions needed more today than ever before. If you are gay or support ordination of gay clergy, more power to you. There are plenty of churches down the street that support that too. External forces and a minority of members should not dictate what the Catholic/Orthodox Church teaches. This contradicts what the Catholic/Orthodox faith is about on so many levels. Let the Catholic and Orthodox religions stand true to their own teachings and we will all get along just fine.

What a beautiful and scholarly writing Bill. In the past different groups have been ostracized due to a supposed sacriptural passage, often taken out of context. At one time religious orders in this country did not accept African Americans. Did God not "Call" them to be religious. We can twist scripture to mean almost anything. It is sad that the church has superceded medicine and psychology in considering homosexuality a mental disorder. Actually I remember a fellow first or second grader being told that being left handed was a disorder.
The difference with his being left handeds and a person being homosexual is that you do not risk being thrown out of your home, pushed away from your friends and told that you are inherently disposed towards evil by your church.
I grew up as a gay catholic. I told a priest this and he said "well, you might want to be a monk." I did and have always been happy as one, but I do not think it is a remedy or good place to send all gay kids.
What does the church do for these kids. If you are ill the church will care for you and accept you as the suffering Christ. If you have the "mental disorder" of being gay, it is simply not discussed. There are no support groups, retreats or organized activities to allow gay kids to grow up as happy, well adjusted Catholics that I know of. We wonder why so many turn to drugs and alcohol; some to suicide. Think about it. Your friends are starting to date and you do not dare date for your own survival. The church considers you ill. A rather bleak surrounding for a young adult trying to find his/her way in the world. I was lucky I found a niche that has always made me happy. I pray so fervently everyday that the church will open up towards its gay and lesbian children and adults and give them the same acceptance they give all of god's other children. I believe God wants it that way!

I don't see the point of this column. Sounds like the Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches are already at least very close to a "joint understanding of what it means to be homosexual." Seems like views on homosexuality would be among the least of the obstacles toward full unity.

I agree with you 100%, but I believe it'll never happen in either faith tradition. Both groups have too much invested in the position they have taken and dug into. Both groups see it as an issue of authority -- how dare you question a long-held prejudice (oops, "moral teaching") of ours? Sad.

And both groups wonder why they're losing more members every week? Watch them both as "defense" of the Defense of Marriage Act plays out. Ugly bigotry will be shown again: true colors. See how those Christians love one another?

A church that includes all sinners need not condone any sin.There is no special exemption for same-sex sex,which our species having two sexes automatically makes wrong for all persons for all time.We must all love one another enough to keep insisting that desire to engage in same-sex sex must never be gratified,never take the easy path of letting those who believe it should be the comfort of that delusion.

I do think it is generally a generational issue. It is also an issue of science vs. belief. I , as a Catholic having many homosexual friends but being a heterosexual myself in a long and happy marriage feel that it is ' another way to love" and how could this ever be wrong?
More love and stable families as many homosexual families I know have, is better than less, and the Church finally better " get it" as my little grandson would say. The Church is so behind in so many issues. It is really sad and the way to explain it to myself is that they, at the upper echelons are surrounded only by people like themselves, trained in a long bureaucracy. They have lost touch woth what most human families are all about.

What is to resolve. The issue is already and has always been resolved, since the beginning of creation. Perhaps in the search for Christian unity, those who have left the path set by the Father and confirmed by Sacred Scripture, the unfailing and unwavering Tradition of the Church, and Natural Law, will return to their senses!

One Church challenge is self-induced problems like how to measure depth in the human psyche to determine whether tendencies are deep (objectively disordered) or merely shallow. A more profound obstacle is the contradiction between theory, however it is stated, and reality in the Catholic clergy. Last summer, Benedict XVI explained to his interviewer that homosexuality is incompatible with the priesthood. http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1004842.htm The world watched pictures on the Internet of gay priests on the town blocks away from the Vatican. The Vicar of Rome promptly ordered all homosexuals in the priesthood to come out and get out. Results are unknown.
http://www.avvenire.it/Cronaca/vicariato+preti+panorama_2010072310594394...

In present circumstances, any Church movement to moderate its position against (lay) homosexuals will inevitably bring up questions about the homosexual fraction of the clergy, which, by most estimates, is several times larger than the fraction in the general population. The embarrassment, accusations of hypocrisy, and introduction of other sexuality issues that would result are surely foreseeable enough to preclude any significant change unless forced by broader overarching reform pressures.

An act has an object. If it's the wrong object, like eating stones, then the act of eating is disordered as to its object, in other words, "objectively disordered". That's all this term means: disordered as to its object.

I think that nonsense like this is exactly why a Catholic-Orthodox reunion is so necessary. Those who actually hold the Christian Faith of the ages can't afford to let something like the Filioque clause divide us when so many professed Christians have drifted so far from anything that resembles biblical, traditional Christianity.

What you fail to understand is that scripture proceeds from the church (the church wrote the gospels, etc.), and the churches were unanimous in condemning homosexual activity as inconsistent with both Jewish and Christian teaching for nearly two thousand years. That doesn't go away just because you want it to. We all live next door to men who beat their wives, and some of them appear to be nice guys, but that doesn't mean we should condone their behavior. If you want to promote homosexuality, say so. But don't make believe there's any support for it in scripture, or that there's no significant difference between a vagina and a rectum.

I pray everyday for the health of all Christian Churches - especially the RCC which I felt, in conscience, I must leave after almost 60 years. I have a wonderful son, who is gay, and who is doing good work with his artistic gifts. He tried to see change as possible in the RCC and I tried with him - but after 5 years of looking for the hierarchy to reexamine their views - on mistaken interpretations of Scripture - and in addition stubbornly ignoring entirely the scholarship of Medicine and Psychology - I had to leave -

My son now questions whether or not Christianity is able to see him as a whole person and does not worship anymore. I pray that he will come back to worship - but he must have a Church to come back to that will welcome him.

I have been welcomed by the Episcopal Church and I know that when my son comes back to worship he will be welcomed there. Still, I pray for all gay Catholics and hope that they and their families will someday find a home within Roman Catholicism --

Don't write off older people as to what they think I am 85 and agree with Bill 100%
ML

Hate the Sin and teach it is wrong. but welcome all as brothers or sisters.

The sun begets its own light. The moon has no light of its own and depends on the sun for its light.

On thing that drives the Orthodox churches nuts is non orthodox telling them how to become "enlightned".

It is well-known among the Orthodox,that most of their bishops are,in point of fact, gay. Just ask anyone of their priests. The Orthodox church is really quite hypocritical about homosexuality. As as matter of fact,some of their older liturgical books include a gay "marriage" ceremony. It is well known in circles of some Orthodox jurisdictions, that worthy straight ordinands have been denied ordination, while some less than edifying gay candidates have been brought to the highest rank. Ask around. Keep your ear to the ground.

The opposition of the Bible to "homosexuality" is largely illusory, mostly because the categories we're discussing weren't recognized then. The re-evaluations of traditional understandings of the Bible that allowed the condemnation of slavery as sin and the ordination of women were as or more significant.

For me key is Acts 15, where believers who were Pharisees (!!) bring up that Scripture required circumcision of converts. No one at the council of Jerusalem disputed this point, but instead argued from the prophetic witness and presence of the Holy Spirit in the converts.

It seems to me (a point deserving discussion, of course), that we see today the work of the Holy Spirit among Christians to allow believing gays to be whole members of God's church.

There are issues needing discussion, and I would also say that the "of course they're wrong" response from either side is misplaced.

Your last few lines sum it up for me:
"As Justin Cannon writes in his new book: “Jesus befriended those who were marginalized because he knew it was only in the security of loving, unconditional relationships that hearts and lives are healed.”

If that’s not the Jesus a unified Catholic-Orthodox church intends to follow, who will want to belong?"

As a long-married heterosexual Catholic grandfather much closer to 80 than to 40 I do not see LGBT couples in committed relationships as sinning. At the very least, and as a beginning, both churches should distinguish between the civil act of marriage and the sacrament of matrimony -- and butt out of the debate about civil marriage. Then, perhaps, we can go on to helping our churches become the Body of Christ by becoming as inclusive as what Jesus offered us.

Alas both the Catholics and the Orthodox churches are in quite a pickle, refusing to comprehend that they have too rigidly painted themselves into traditionalistic corners in ethics and in theology. Is this all that strange? Actually, no. Way before sexual orientation became a discovery which was becoming an issue at just about the same time, the Jewish believers in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Mediterranean were challenged to sort through centuries of covenant ethics/theology combined, much of which targeted the gentiles as impossible of anything but following pagan deities, including sex worship traditions. We can turn to the pages of scripture to get an inkling of how that generally turned out; though even scripture does not report the whole ancient near eastern church story in anything like the detail we hold up these days as a standard for complete, accurate historical investigations. Following that dilemma, the church was next faced with the innumerable gnostic Christian believers. Thanks in great part to Emperor Constantine, presiding over the Roman Empire in the east, the dilemma about the gnostics by and large resulted in their utter exterminations. But not so fast, later history shows how bits and pieces of quasi-gnostic mystical reinterpretations of doctrines and ethics constantly resurfaced, set against a rigid, received, closed revelation understanding. After winning the gnostic extermination, with violent assistance from state authority in the empire, the church more or less settled down satisfied that it indeed possessed unchanging, closed revelation truth that could not be challenged, except by heretics willing to die for their heresies. Next arose Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo - unexpected. The self-satisfied church had freely inferred all manner of cosmic things in its readings of scripture, buttressed by tradition and by the less than empirical science legacies of the Ptolemaic System. Suffice it to say that, very slowly over long (and often violent?) centuries, the Catholics and the Orthodox lost that round of heavy battling over who could know what, and how. Then church and people battled over economics - longstanding law, public policy, church theology, and church ethics being anti-Semitic, along with the clear scriptural prohibitions against usury aka loaning money for interest. The corollary of that battle seems to have been the emergence of city states, rise of a mercantile class and guilds - new arenas for independence and daily life business not necessarily beholden to legacy constraints of the existing church-state meld. New ways of earning/generating/managing money (with the Knights Templar establishing what was the first effective worldwide banking system, used even by monarchs); along with change trumped theology and ethics. We've changed so much that hardly any believer, Catholic or Orthodox, now pledges that following Jesus stands or falls, categorically, as related to modern investment economies, doing accurate empirical sciences, or being categorically anti-Jewish based on a closed revelation understanding of these matters. If churches lost their battles over a flat earth cosmology, they also gave very significant ground when it came to understanding, managing, and holding great powerful sway over the human body. Formerly, churches were unanimous in prohibiting and interfering with anatomy/physiology/medicine. Just visit a local hospital surgery to see where that struggle ended up. What sudden amnesias set in, after each of these church life and belief battles, not that long after things changed, one way or the other. We are still not done attending to the history of church and change. That solid, immense revelation understanding mountain range - the divine rights of monarchs - also was challenged, fell, and is hardly praised these days as the only possible bedrock for a civil society, or for good government, or for ethical citizenship in daily life in a modern democracy. The fading of the divine right of monarchs was huge; again amnesia sets in, and we forget how drastic each of these historical changes indeed were. At some point, a closed and solid revelation understanding of white supremacy changed. Contrary to holy scripture, slavery is now widely accepted as a fundamental violation of global human rights, period. At some multiple points in time, women refused to accept being barred and banned - from professions, schools, from voting, from public life. This immense change is still taking place, as are the continuing scientific revolutions which go unnoted in a closed church teaching, until and unless sufficient evidence exists that believers are supported to hold two contrary, contradicting evidentiary realms in separation, or until and unless yet again a settled piece of theology/ethics gets changed/corrected. The huge shifts in our understandings of racial and ethnic diversity, reinforced by lessening the bans and barriers on women and children, would seem to have emboldened the queer folks, too. At first on a seemingly happenstance parallel track starting in the nineteenth century, queer folks began to entertain fantastic notions: 1) queer folks need not hide, 2)queer folks need not live down to the categorically awful beliefs preached and sustained about them, 3)if women, other minorities, and citizens in general had liberty/responsibility as a birthright (innate to being creaturely), then what would daily life look like, if queer folks began to base their selfhood and daily life on that foundation, instead of the utterly negative ones provided by legacy church/state melds? This set of notions was so outlandish at first, that only a very few, privileged (and often, highly educated) gay men or lesbian women could provisionally investigate what change would be. Then the sciences stepped in, along with two world wars in the last century. At first, the sciences were confident of their ability to exchange queer folks for straight ones, using existing medical and science technologies. Failure after failure set in. Simultaneously, service in world wars began to covertly show that valor and honor were not the innate, necessary, exclusive domains of straight folks alone. Especially in WW II, the military began to get an inkling that gay/lesbian soldiers could be wholesome, and highly effective - even leaders. The immense population movements connected with the war also meant that, more than ever before, isolated-hidden queer people could find and connect with one another. Once you share positive notes with other people who have faced antigay preachments and practices, just like you, your sense of isolation and vulnerability to living nothing but down to those negative expectations begins to re-arrange. Queer folks discovered that they pairbonded, pretty much like everybody else, for better and for worse like others who claimed exclusive heterosexual rights and opportunities. Meanwhile, science stepped back, admitting that an accurate, complete empirical understanding of sexual orientation had not yet been achieved to date. New research studies began to flood out; contradicting all or nearly all of the itemized negatives that churches in particular took to be categorically true of queer folks. We are right in the middle of those changes, too. After several decades of new research, however, the balance of evidence has clearly tilted: queer folks are hardly any of the terrible, negative essences posited about them in traditional revelation understandings. It is conceivable that Catholics and Orthodox believers may come closer; along with a rigid church hierarchy that clings fast to its flat earth notions about queer folks. That will not change the ongoing shift, so long as science exists in a dissemination climate of free, accurate publication. The last, pitched battle is yet to be fought. It may never be fought. Instead, the change may be so long delayed in church life that nobody even bothers with it, when it finally officially happens. Witness as example how the official pronouncement, eschewing theological anti-Semitism arrived very late in the change process. Democracy and citizenship earlier did what was later ratified formally by the Vatican. Not an utterly meaningless Vatican shift; and a welcome one. Just a very, very, very late shift that followed change, rather than being empowered to lead it, thanks mainly to established theology and ethics. Something very similar has happened in other official change realms like flat earth cosmology, anatomy-physiology-medicine, demise of monarchy divine establishment ... all possible models for late-arriving official church change when it comes to queer folks. How long family members and local neighbors will put stock in believing completely horrid things about the queer folks they know, up close and personal every day - that is our continuing question?

Bill Tammeus, Thank you for your insights on this question. Now would be a very good time for the hierarchies of both churches to try and discern how they can be true to the message and spirit of Jesus. Who among us knows the mind or the heart of God? Who can dare to speak for God? If one wants to use the Bible as proof for their repulsion/proscription against homosexuality, then I would suggest that they engage in a true and accurate examination of the biblical passages, why they were written, to whom they were addressed, and the context in which they were originally understood. My understanding is that the latest biblical scholarship shows that the real sin of Sodom was that of the inhospitality of heterosexually identified men who wanted to do sexual violence to strangers. Prohibitions against homosexual acts were actually in regard to heterosexual men engaged in ritual prostitution in the sects surrounding the Jews. These texts were not referring to love between same-sex couples who loved each other, as we understand homosexuality today. If one wants to use "Natural Law" to condemn homosexuals, then using our God given gift of the observation of nature, we see that homosexuality occurs with all of God's creatures. There is your "Natural Law." Ultimately, as "Christians," one must ask, "What did Jesus say about Homosexuality?" The answer is, "Jesus said nothing about Homosexuality." What Jesus did say is that we are to love God above all things and love our neighbor as ourselves. Love is the message of Jesus. Love!

CHURCH OR NO CHURCH (Hierarchy non hierarchy; canon law or no canon law)I will always be a Catholic and always be a homosexual and always (above all) I will be and remain A CHILD OF GOD!! So go ahead you casuistric curial clueless clerics and make all the rules and write all the irrelevant and pharasaic tomes about how disordered the "homosexual" lifestyle is and I will go ahead and read my scripture which affirms the marginalized and oppressed whom Jesus welcomed, ate with, and loved while you spin your warped webs of Tridentine moralism. Meanwhile, as they say in 12 step groups, "It's best to keep your own side of the street clean". If you know what I mean Jelly Bean.

PS - you might also look up the etymology of the word "scapegoat" (i.e. the Adedah) in the Old Testament.

PSS - i wish that sexually repressive straight men would quit telling me how they love me but hate my idea of love (the love that does NOW SPEAK its name).
As Bishop Desmond Tutu pointed out on Krista Tippett's Speaking of Faith show (now known as Being): He said that one of the worsts sins of the Church these days is the exclusion and persecution of LGBT men and women.

A few thoughts. I'm sympathetic to your position, and not really decided on my own position, but I did find the article a bit disappointing.

First, given that they agree in their general understanding of homosexuality, I don't see why this matter would be placed alongside papal primacy and the Filioque as issues the Catholic and Orthodox churches will need to deal with on their way to unity. That makes no sense. Of course they need to discuss this matter in an ongoing way among themselves and with society at large, but it is no obstacle to unity.

Secondly, you seem very confident in your own interpretation of Scripture when you claim that those who oppose homosexual practice perpetuate a 'long misreading' of key Scriptures. I think we must all be alert to the possibility that our own reading is wrong. That way we can seek the truth together. If we are all always convinced that we are right and others are wrong, there will be little progress.

Thirdly, your assertion that generally only those over a certain age still believe homosexuality to be disordered is just wrong and condescending. It's as if you are suggesting that the older generation is a bit ridiculous just because they are over 40, and trying to convince the younger generation that their peers, who are the only sensible ones, already have a unified opinion on this issue. That's nonsense.

Finally, you quote Justin Cannon: "“Jesus befriended those who were marginalized." Absolutely true. The fact that he was friends with prostitutes, however, in no way means he condoned prostitution. I have homosexual friends myself, but I am not will to make myself the arbiter of truth, and at this stage I am not confident that I have grasped the mind of Jesus on the issue. In the meantime, I take my guidance from the legitimate authority of the magisterium of the Church.

So the role of the Church is to conform to public opinion? Or to conform to a self-serving interpretation of scripture? Why is this guy from a dying denomination to prescribe remedies for the two largest Christian denominations on earth?

While Jesus said nothing about homosexuality, he did teach his listeners about the meaning of Sodom and Gomorrah, to wit, the sin of refusing hospitality to the stranger.

The Lord's understanding is good enough for me!

I am impressed by the depth of this discussion. A lot of people are wrestling with a very difficult and complex question. Gay marriage is a simple answer, but it certainly makes a lot of demands on others who are not gay. Indeed, it certainly seems as if the demand for gay marriage is a demand for the acceptance of homosexuality, or more importantly, the acceptance of the person who is attracted homosexually should they choose to act homosexually.

And yet, marriage of its nature intends to set boundaries. When I say "I do" to my spouse, I place limits on my behavior with all others. Thus, it certainly would appear that the promotion of gay marriage is not simply an attempt to make homosexuality legitimate, but to place a limit on our sexuality and our affections. Limiting our sexuality and our affections has been an essential purpose of marriage since long, long before there ever was an Orthodox or Catholic Church.

Do we value something else so much that we would choose to place limits on our sexuality and our affections? What is that something that we do value? Often we say children are what we value. Certainly this must be the case, especially when we still witness the value of healthy families fostered by spouses in healthy marriages. But are children all that we value? Our children grow up and move away, and yet spouses stay together--often growing closer once the pressures of raising children do not tax their inner and outer resources so much.

Is our preference of sexual expression what lies at the root of the movement to create covenant relationships between members of the same sex, or is it perhaps at the same time a case that we sincerely seek to enjoy covenant relationships? Two are better than one. Is it good for people who are attracted sexually to their own gender to enjoy without fear covenant relationships that descend to and include the intimacy of sexual expression with one another?

And yet again, even if we long for this, we and not just our Savior are incarnate. We live within bodies that do differ. Is the intimate, covenantal and sexual union of two men equivalent to the same union of two women? In our haste to make legitimate what is unique about certain relationships do we sincerely seek to homogenize our human relationships? Do we really expect two men in a committed sexual union to behave as would two women in the same union? And do we expect either of these relationships to behave in some identical fashion to the union of a man and a woman in a sexually intimate union? If there is something UNIQUE about a homosexual attraction that should be protected, does this mean that the protection must be completely IDENTICAL to what is given to those who are attracted heterosexually? Equal protection under the law is an abstract ideal, but how often have you noticed the tendency of laws to unequally affect people under varying circumstances?

Do we want to give the same tax breaks to committed homosexuals who never intend to undertake the arduous task of raising children as we do to their heterosexual parents who did raise children? This might work as a gesture to affirm the value of homosexuals, but is it really needed? Gay marriages between men will never, at least in the foreseeable future, include wombs bearing children within their union. Any children they have must always come from wombs outside their union. How does this affect their relationships and their children? If we are concerned that youth getting married too young is bad for both the youth and the children they bear, should we not also take care for how well children will be raised under the varying circumstances that are being proposed under the insistence that equal protection under the law must permit gay marriages? In other words, if gay couples must be protected with the same rights to marriage, what about children? Should children's rights to be born into ideal homes be set aside? In our rush to address the legitimate questions being posed by those who are homosexual in orientation, will our hasty answers trespass on other legitimate questions? Let's keep talking. These are important questions all sides are raising.

You speak of gay marriage as if it were the norm, when in fact only a small percentage of the gay/lesbian population is married or living in monogamous relationships. You also fail to mention that promiscuity, both gay and straight, has given us every manner of sexually transmitted disease, including syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, herpes, and AIDS, and that we will all have to live with the consequences of that promiscuity for the rest of our lives. There are currently 35 million people worldwide living with AIDS, 3 million of them children. Don't you think we have a responsibility to mention that sexual experimentation, both gay and straight, has victims, and that many of them are innocent spouses and children? The Orthodox/Catholic position may seem rigid to you, but fidelity keeps people from dying, and -- according to the evidence -- your position does not.

Excellent book: "Can homosexuality be healed?" by Francis MacNutt

It's more than a bit rich for Western Christians once again to be lecturing those of us in the Christian East on how and what we ought to believe. We don't need a condescending Presbyterian quoting a tendentious Episcopalian seminarian (which is what Cannon identifies as: http://www.inclusiveorthodoxy.org/node/81) on a non-issue as far as Orthodox-Catholic unity is concerned. On moral questions--and much else besides--the two Churches are as one in teaching what is true. That will not change. The only serious issue remains the papacy, about which a crucial new book has just been published: http://undpress.nd.edu/book/P01438.

Here we go. A Protestant telling Catholics and Orthodox that they need to change their attitude toward their definition of marriage. What is wrong with this picture?

Whilst we note your interest in The Catholic Church. I think that tradition and scripture over 2,000 years trump the spirit of the age.

That's just precious that a Protestant is urging change in the Catholic church. That aside I would like to make one correction to the article. Catholics did include gay christians fully within the life of the church. Those gay christian men became priests and molested altar-boys as a result.

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