Rob, Perhaps my example was too crude, but when one identifies oneself as anything other than a living being made in the image and likeness of God but maimed by sin we are turning away from God and our own humanity. The end result is horror.
In addition, my point was to highlight the logical progression of Zachery’s false anthropology, i.e, if a pathology exists in nature it must be OK and if it exists in nature it is immutable (just the way someone is). What goes for the animals goes for us because, after all we are nothing but evolved animals.
Psychopaths such as Jeffrey Dahlmer identify themselves with their sins rather than their humanity. The PC approach to homosexuality is the strikingly similar: if one rejects the sin, one rejects them as human beings. The anger, despair and other self-destructive acts that are the fruit of such identification trap them. By acknowledging our sins, repenting of them and submitting to the love of Christ transformation is possible, even escape from the darkest, most evil places our vain imaginings can put us.
If one is to make the argument that we are immutable, as many genetic and social determinists do these days, there is simply no basis for any ordering of society except survial of the fittest. If we are required to ‘love’ homosexuals as they are and required to allow them to act out their sins without any oppobrium and even approve of those acts, on what basis are we to condemn even darker and more evil sins?
Indeed, marriage has been disconnected from God as have most of our lives. Marriage has become an act of human lust, emotion and will. Since the depravity of our imaginations approaches the infinite, all sorts of ways for satisfying our lust, emotions and will can be found. That is what Jeffrey Dalhmer did.
That is exactly what St. Paul was pointing out in Romans 1 and elsewhere.
]]>Michael, the modern acceptance of homosexuality has much to do with the evolution of our own conceptualization of heterosexual marriage. For many people in developed nations, the concept of marriage and sexuality has more to do with personal fulfillment, finding one’s “soul mate”, convenience, affection and even material advantage than it does living out a religious sacrament with all of its obligations and considerations.*
As such, it’s really not hard to see same-sex relationships is merely another avenue to these particular ends.
If you wish to critique these notions in light of your understanding of Orthodox moral theology, please do so. It does no justice to the discussion, however, to bring cannibalism and rape into it as if they are naturally the end result of the toleration of homosexual conduct.
*On the plus side, women are now seen as co-equals and partners in marriage (unlike in the colonial era when they forfeited most of their legal rights). Unfortunately, marriage is now for too many just another disposable relationship where one’s word and commitment last only so long as the money and romance does.
]]>Hey, Jeffrey Dahlmer anyone? . How can anyone doubt his strength of belief and commitment to his personal identy as a cannabilistic, homosexual serial killer? Surely that is who he was, right? People are just way to judgemental about him man. Lighten up.
Where is your arbitrary line on sexual practices drawn Zachary and by what ‘right’ or reason do you draw it?
What is your replacement for the Christian understanding of human beings and on what authority to you seek to overturn our understanding?
]]>Zachary, “wikipedia” and “The Washington Post” are hardly reputable “scientific” sources.
]]>Zachary, when you say that “psychologists” consider homosexuality to be fundamentally different than pedophilia or bestiality you are going over a logical cliff. My first answer would be “so?” What gives them the right to make this judgment? Especially when just a few decades ago they were unanimous in their belief that homosexuality was very much a psychological aberration?
]]>“Homosexuality is widespread in the kingdom Animalia.”
Zachary,
Just thought I’d point out that so is eating one’s own newborn young (under certain conditions–or for the male of some species, under any conditions, which is why the female drives him off after mating)!
Transparently, what you state here is not a valid argument for why homosexual behavior is healthy, right, and good among human beings. As others have pointed out this is true, particularly when you start with the Christian tradition’s revelation of what a human being actually is, i.e., an embodied spirit made in the image of God for the ultimate purpose of a spiritual Communion of love with the Being of God (and in the likeness of God’s kind of Self-giving, life-giving love revealed in Jesus Christ). Christians do not believe we are merely advanced animals, programmed to be conditioned by our environment within the limitations of our genetic potential and completely at the mercy of our own basic instincts or physical drives.
Science can describe what is. It cannot be the sole guide to establish the proper values and relationships among those things. For that, we have to look outside of science.
]]>Zachary, anal coition is the unsafe sexual practice that causes AIDS. It’s an abnormality, one that causes fissures to the rectum and inocculates the blood stream with semen (hence the high proportion of Hepatitis B suffers among the catamite sub-strata). The only possible evolutionary reason that animals may engage at times in homosexuality is to subjugate a potential genetic rival. In human societies this was done by castrating rogue males.
]]>Leslie, your reference to another correspondent’s post (which shows an inaccurate understanding of history) does not buttress your own point. The abolition of slavery was set in motion by Constantine the Great and given theological sanction by St Gregory of Nyssa. The reintroduction of slavery in the early modern period happened in spite of Christianity and the trajectory of freedom begun in the West by the Church a millenium earlier.
]]>Dave, Kathy, other Midwesterners, et al: you are indeed fortunate to have such a man as bishop. If I may press a certain point: is Mark Stokoe in his diocese? And if so, has he been disciplined by his archpastor? It would seem the first step would be to remove him from the Metropolitan Council.
]]>Well, isn’t this interesting. The past president of the APA who was adamantly against reparative therapy changes his mind and is now a featured speaker at NARTH. Yet you argue that the way he used to think should prevail.
Could it be that the question is not a closed as you want us to think it is?
]]>