Where do you find fault in Lance’s comment?

I say the answer to your question is a resounding YES. Homosexuality is one of my struggles, and I know that there are many men in the Church who don't speak up for fear that they will be misunderstood and rejected. To tell you the truth it's difficult to stay in the Church at times because of certain people's attitudes but that's different than whether you're saved. If you love Jesus and seek to honor him in all you do (including your sexuality) then you have nothing to worry about. Your particular temptation isn't going to separate you from the love of Christ. Just find some supportive male friends with whom you can pray and be honest. Don't worry if you feel a crush coming on. It happens and it doesn't mean you're a bad person. Handsome men of substance and integrity are naturally attractive and there’s nothing wrong with admiration. Just submit it to the Lord, and don't dwell on it or let it become a source of sin. It will pass and you will be stronger for it. The Lord loves you and would never reject you. It sounds like you want to live your life by HIS standards and that’s very good. Just trust his love for you and his strength that’s made perfect in your weakness.

I agree that “gay” has a lot attached to it and I choose not to self apply the term (most of the time) for that reason. I would also argue that the term “condition” is problematic since it carries the connotation of malfunction or a deficiency of mental faculties. I don’t think being same-sex attracted (to borrow your phrase) is the like having ADD or some similar psychiatric disability. In the same way Christians are often offended by the term “gay” because of the immorality it has come to imply, many same-sex attracted people (myself included) find the term “condition” demeaning because it implies that we have especially broken brains. It also suggests that with counseling and/or medication we could “get better” just as if we had some recognized illness and simply went to the doctor. I don’t think it works that way. I really think that homosexual orientation is born primarily out of biological factors and only secondarily by environment.

I have serious doubts about secret plots to eliminate most of the world’s population. I don’t buy conspiracy theories. Regardless, there is nothing sinister in admitting that huge populations can get to a point where they stretch limited resources too thin. That’s just common sense.

Did you read my first comment on this thread? Concern over overpopulation isn’t merely a question of "room to put people". Rather it’s a problem of how to use limited, unevenly distributed resources in the face of ever growing demand for such resources (like food and especially fresh water). Here in California there are constant battles between farmers, cities, Native American tribes and conservationists over our limited supply of Sierra Nevada snow melt. It’s just a fact that there isn’t enough snow falling in the mountains to supply everyone with what they need, and the solutions are not easy. When farmers get water everyone else gets what returns to our rivers from the fields. That water is usually warm and full of fertilizers that cause algae blooms. This effects wild life, like salmon, and jeopardizes the livelihood of California fishermen and Native Americans who depend on the salmon every year. These are not easy problems to solve and solving them isn’t made any easier when people deny that large populations can be a problem to maintain. Again, I’m not talking about anything as stupid as exterminating people; just that we realize that a rapidly growing population means much bigger food, water, and waste problems.

I think we’d all agree that it would be a different matter entirely for a man, gay or straight, to profess his devotion for the Lord while actively living in sin.

It’s true that there is physically enough space to fit many more people on our planet, but simple square footage is misleading. There’s a lot more to population than just the space needed to house a person or family. It takes a LOT more land to grow the food to support a population of people than it does to house it. There are issues of waste disposal and the gigantic undertaking of water distribution (there’s only so much fresh water). We currently grow enough food to feed the population of earth, but that’s not the end of the story. The food can’t be produced uniformly and so much of it needs to be transported from areas of rich agriculture to areas where little food can be cultivated, and on a global scale that’s a huge challenge. There is the cost of refrigerated containers and other packaging, food safety inspection so we aren’t distributing spoiled food. Then there is the huge industry required to produce and maintain the needed shipping vessels. There's the massive space and resources needed for ports. These concerns are neither trivial nor are they the only difficulties in supporting 6 billion people. Being concerned about population is not the same thing as supporting a forcible reduction (killing) of the population.

To the rest of you: I really do think I’m nearing my limit for all of this. I don’t know how many times I need to say I don’t approve of homosexuality before you stop accusing me of doing so. I think most of you hear what you want to hear in my posts. I agree that homosexuality is sin, but I don’t agree that I need to entangle myself in legal battles over things like gay marriage. I just don’t think it’s fair or effective. I mean, if lobbying to make gay marriage illegal actually won some souls then I’d be all for it, but it doesn’t. Sharing the love of Christ with people in a personal way is the only strategy that works at all. Jesus ministered to people where they were and didn’t hurl insults at them. His love for “unlovable” sinners opened their hearts to the work of the Holy Spirit so they could understand the shamefulness of their sin. That kind of real love was the only thing that made me want to submit to Jesus and change my ways; not name calling or threats of Hell.

I’m not defending the “righteousness” of homosexuality, just the right of people to be left alone to make their own choices between themselves and God without abuse from “Christians” like Greeter, Yamil, etc. Preaching the Gospel of reconciliation through Christ is not the same thing as verbal abuse and name calling (i.e. pseudo-sodomite). I think Lurker and a few others see that, but I think the majority of you have so villainized gay people that you no longer really care about their salvation; you just want to protect your freedom to call them perverts. As if making them feel worthless is the same thing as Holy Spirit conviction. Tommy, my suggestion is to leave this website and never post here again. These people do not understand that you didn’t choose to feel as you do and will only abuse you even as you seek to live a righteous life before your wife and God. I can hook you up with more supportive people if you’d like.

I'm in the same boat. I'm available to talk if you'd like.

By the way you didn’t address my discrimination question. Should people who find Christianity and Christian people objectionable be legally allowed to deny you a home or a job for simply religious reasons? If not, why should people be allowed to discriminate against folks because of their sexuality but not because of religion? If both are “chosen lifestyles” and this is a free country shouldn’t both forms of discrimination be allowed?

I never said that I'm in a homosexual relationship. I don't participate in that sort of thing. I'm merely pointing out that most of you seem to want the privileges of a free country all to yourselves. You want freedom of religion and freedom from government intrusion into your religion, but you also want America to be a Christian nation in everything but name. You have no problem with Christian symbols on public grounds but throw a tantrum whenever recognition is given to Islam, Hinduism or any other religion. You expect our Christian belief in heterosexual marriage to be the civil standard no matter what other Americans think. If it’s all about “we the people” then that includes minority voices, not just the majority. I hate to break it to you KK, but there are millions of Americans who believe that being gay is just fine, and they all get to vote. We may not agree with them from a Biblical point of view but we can’t create laws to change their minds or alter their behaviors.

Abigail, if that wasn’t such a strange, utterly ridiculous thing to say I would find it insulting. How many homosexual people do you actually know? Do you spend any significant amount of time with any gay people at all? What makes you such an expert on the average gay person’s life? I know personally between 25 and 30 gay people in my area. Some are friends, some are only friendly acquaintances. Only a couple of them are very effeminate. I’m attracted to men (though I don’t live in sin) and I’m not effeminate at all. You would never know about my attraction unless I told you. That’s true of many of my gay male friends. Most are no more or less effeminate than the straight guys I know. If what you know of gay people is based on how TV portrays them than you don’t know gay people any more than you’d know black people by watching TV. Also, should renters and employers be allowed to deny you an apartment or job because you’re Christian? No one is born Christian, it’s a choice. Should such discrimination be legal?

Abigail,
“Laws have been created to ban discrimination in employment—which includes leadership in churches.”
Which churches? I’ve never heard of gay anti-discrimination laws applying to any religious organizations. It’s just not true that our government mandates that Christian churches must hire gay people. Discrimination in a secular job is one thing. Gay Americans need to eat/live/pay bills just like the rest of us, but Churches are still allowed choose their pastoral staff based on their doctrine.
For the most part I agree that gay Americans enjoy the same protection under the law as the rest of us, but that wasn’t always the case. It used to be perfectly allowable (though I’m not sure it was ever actually legal) to deny a job or apartment to someone because they were gay. That’s not equality. You can’t do that to a sexually active, unmarried straight person. That’s where I think we get into the territory of legislating the Christian life for non-believers, and I don’t think that’s the same as spreading the Gospel.

Greeter,
You have the right to tell law makers anything you want. That's what free speech is all about, but that doesn't mean you have the right to shove gay people into "dark damp caves".

The US government has nothing to do with this at all. In fact, for the government to make any law in this area would be a violation of the First Amendment. Churches in America are under no legal obligation to have gay pastors or any other gay staff. I also don't see why letting gay people marry is a “special right”, rather than an extension of a right straight people already have. It seems to me we can only call it a special right if it applies to gay people alone. So, for instance, if a law was passed that said gay people didn’t have to pay taxes that would be a special right. Also, there's no Constitutional reason why they can't get married. We may not like it, but the Constitution is the supreme law of our country not the Bible. The Bible is the supreme law for the people of God, but not all Americans are Christians and we can’t force them to live like they are.

What special rights do gay Americans get that the rest of us don't have?

You astound me. How in the world does my post prove your point? Amazing! You probably still haven't looked at his CV have you? You'd rather trust what you want to believe about Dawkins than what the man's official academic and professional record show. In case you don’t know a CV is like a scientist’s resume. It has everything you've ever done that's relevant to your professional life, but that doesn't seem to matter to you at all. Just because YOU failed to find a Dawkins publication in a single journal database does not mean they don’t exist. Or do you think your perception of the world determines objective reality Yamil? Dawkins' publishing record is just fine from a scientific point of view, and his numerous publications really do exist whether you chose to accept that fact or not. Also, you accuse Oxford of padding his record but you don’t even know what his record contains. Nice job arguing from a place of complete ignorance. Why not look up his CV and then go through the online archives of the journals listed there to find the actual articles for yourself? No? I guess slander is more your style.

Maybe you should try making up stuff that 5 minutes worth of searching can’t prove totally false. Any academic knows that if you want a list of publications produced by a professor in nearly any discipline you check their curriculum vitae or CV. Try looking for Dawkins’ CV (like I just did) on his official Oxford University webpage before you make transparently false accusations about his publishing history. I found it in less than 5 minutes because I knew what I was looking for, unlike your search which may very well have turned up only one Dawkins publication. I counted about 21 scientific journal publications of primary research (rather than editorials, etc.) from 1968 to about 1983. That’s 21 pubs in 15 years which is a very respectable publication rate for any biologist. Are there more prolific scientists? Sure, but I’m a young scientist and I can tell you that Dawkins’ record is one I’d be happy to have after 15 years. His publications only appear to decline when he changed the focus of his career toward the public understanding of science and popular publishing. I’ll get you your evolution “proof” in a later post.