Dear Banjo,

Thank you for your survey of of homosexuality, religion and same-sex marriage or wedlock which is probably a better term.

One item can be added. Some homosexuals are religious believers and would like to see their relationship acknowledged in a religious ceremony. As you pointed out Quakers, Liberal Jews, Wiccans, Druids, Episcopalians and Unitarian Universalists condone and practice same-sex wedlock.

There is no rason to assume that the percentage of religious believers among homosexuals is significantly different than among the heterosexual population at least at the beginning of their realisation of their sexual nature. They may leave their religion because they have been made to feel unwelcome.

Banjo Paterson:

#… Opposition to same-sex wedlock is increasingly seen as a homophobic attitude, qualified by some as heterosexism or heterocentrism, similar to sexism or prohibition to interracial marriage during apartheid in South Africa…#.

...With this hysterical attack on those in opposition to homosexual marriage, you shot all your arguments in the foot!
Homosexuality, is an aberration of nature and not the fault of those suffering from the affliction of homosexuality; true. But this aberration should not be turned into a club of “guilt” to be used as a weapon against the majority of our community either.

...The fact remains, there is a homosexual lobby; as there is a rebel group in Syria opposed to Bashar Hafez al-Assad and undefinable; vague; deliberately evasive and harbouring hidden agendas; and “dangerous” to the greater good of the community.

...And obviously, the majority in the community are actually opposed to including in homosexual marriage into any further social construct, and with good cause.

The passage doesn't say "deserves to be put to death", it says "deserves death" Tony. It supports the conventional reading of the passage. No-one is talking about putting homosexuals to death.

I fully agree with what Graham Y just said.

Kipp,
The Salvation Army's PR were quite likely concerned by the media and their excesses or misunderstandings rather than by the comments of their Major.

Tony.
Craibe is accused by the media of saying something odd. It seems that he is happy to clarify that he's only espousing what St Paul wrote in the Bible, and that which has been Christian doctrine for thousands of years.

Thanks for highlighting what Paul wrote in the book of Romans. Generally, in the early part of Romans Paul is teaching about universal sinfulness. 

Paul singles out homosexuality as a key illustration of how people have fallen away from worship of the true God (see Gen  19:1-28 ; Lev  18:22 ; ). God created human beings as male and female, and engaging in homosexual activity is a violation of God’s creative intention. Yet in verse 32, the condemnation of death refers to a great long list of sins. And reading further into chapter 2, we see that the sins are not committed by a few but committed by all. All of us sinned and all are deserving of death. Paul says that the entire world is guilty before God.

Death is universal because sin is universal. When Paul specifies in Romans 5:14 that everyone - from the time of Adam to the time of Moses - died (physically), he is relating death with the disobedience of Adam, for Adam was the only one who broke a specific command ('don't eat the fruit'), for the other laws weren't given until Moses' day.

This reveals that the punishment of death Paul mentions in 1:32 is a physical death. Yet it is the same condemnation of natural death that we are all under and which all experience, for all have sinned. For everyone has died since the time of Adam (and not before then, as the evolutionists claim.)

>>The passage doesn't say "deserves to be put to death", it says "deserves death" Tony.<<

Well obviously. I can read you know. If you'd like to read back whatever I actually wrote and not what you think I wrote here it is again:

>>I fail to see the metaphorical intent you and the Salvos attribute to St. Paul. His words on the subject seem quite clear and unambiguous to me: those who do such things deserve death. Not spiritual death: just death.<<

Can you see the word 'put' in those sentences?

>>It supports the conventional reading of the passage.<<

The conventional reading? The one that goes 'Where St. Paul says death he really means 'spiritual death': pay no attention to what is actually written on the page.'? I'll pass: I think it's important to look at what is actually written down and not some be-frocked gentleman's creative interpretation.

>>No-one is talking about putting homosexuals to death.<<

Kipp was earlier. I corrected him. I had thought that had settled the matter.

>>Death is universal because sin is universal. When Paul specifies in Romans 5:14 that everyone - from the time of Adam to the time of Moses - died (physically), he is relating death with the disobedience of Adam, for Adam was the only one who broke a specific command ('don't eat the fruit'), for the other laws weren't given until Moses' day.

This reveals that the punishment of death Paul mentions in 1:32 is a physical death. Yet it is the same condemnation of natural death that we are all under and which all experience, for all have sinned. For everyone has died since the time of Adam (and not before then, as the evolutionists claim.)<<

Well that's one way to look at it.

Just to clear things up: Adam was supposed to have lived and died about 6,000 years ago. Archaeologists - not 'evolutionists' - have discovered human remains dating as far back 190,000 BC so we were dying long before Adam was traipsing about the garden of Eden.

Cheers,

Tony

'Archaeologists - not 'evolutionists' - have discovered human remains dating as far back 190,000 BC so we were dying long before Adam was traipsing about the garden of Eden. '

Oh that's the latest chapter is it Tony. Don't worry it will need to be changed to fit the next chapter in evolutionary fraud. You have to laugh at such nonsense or be mad that taxpayers are paying for this fraud.