From: lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Louie Crew)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Bisexuals
Date: 22 Jul 92 06:17:43 GMT
Reply-To: <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

Our moderator, Chuck Hedrick, writes:

>[One interesting aspect of the homosexual discussion is that I've
>heard very little positive discussion of Christian sexual ethics from
>the homosexual side.  

Chuck, merely to post a message here as a lesbigay Christian brings out
the stone-throwers in abundance, who argue about whether they can even 
afford to sit down in our company.  Do you seriously think that s.r.c. 
is a venue where so beautiful and vulnerable and delicate
and living a relationship as a lesbigay Christian partnership can be 
discussed?   This is a war zone, as is most of the hetero dictatorship 
that makes us the heteroChurch and heterosociety.

Jesus warned against casting pearls where they will be trampled.

If you want to hear lesbigay Christians talking about our relationships,
read us when we're not trying to dodge rock-throwers and not trying to 
win points in a debate, but rather, trying to make sense of our lives.  
Subscribe to _More Light_ (Lesbigay Presbyterians), _Voice of Integrity_ 
(LBG Anglicans), _Voice of the Turtle_ (LBG Baptists).... _Open Hands_, 
_Partners_ (specifically about LBG partnerships)....  Drop into soc.motss
and eavesdrop, coPASSIONately.  

When I analysed and quantified discourse on Gaynet a couple of years back, I 
found that much of it focused on religion and on the quality of relationships.
I would not expect to find nearly as much discussion of the quality of 
relationships here on soc.religion.christian.   Here the discussion almost
always focuses on rules, not on persons.

>However I think some of
>those who are willing to listen are worried about the wider
>implications.  When the Presbyterian Church (USA) rejected the report
>of the committee on human sexuality a year or so ago, a lot of the
>concern focused not on homosexuality, but on a perception that it
>called for all rules to be abolished.  

LBG Christians do not speak as one voice, any more than strait Christians
do.  Even within Anglican lbg circles, I have tried sensitively to listen
to the Spirit moving through humanity's great diversity rather than to make 
an idol out of the monogamous, life-long commitment which has characterized 
my own journey with Ernest for nearly 19 years; but I will dare to speak to 
the issue of abolishing rules: 

It's not rules that I would abolish, but "living by rules."  I live by a 
new and much less certain, much more wondrous "law of love."   And that 
is possible only because I have been loved, bought at great price, and 
have been ransomed.  I can't understand it, but I accept it.  What I was 
never able to accomplish living under the tyranny of the old covenannt
has become gloriously radiant and sustaining and enduring, not as a 
prize for following a list, but as a gift, as freely given as Christ
gave eternal water to my Samaritan sister at the well and as he gave an 
advanced reservation for Paradise to the guy on the next cross -- not because 
the guy repented or promised to follow the rules for his last few hours, 
and not because the guy converted fully to every statement in the Apostles or
Nicene Creed, but because the guy spontaneously empathized with Jesus while 
Jesus suffered.

I grieve when I read all the words heterosexualists spill forth on sex
here on soc.religion.christian.  Most of it is joyless and frightened and
territorial.  My God loved Creation when She called forth genitalia.  
My God looks on all that He makes and says, It is Good!  Call not unclean
anyone whom I have made.

My God delights in passion, especially passion for another human being,
passion that leads to sacrifice, passion that becomes even fuller when
arthritus sets in and when pubes have turned gray, passion that affirms
the beloved even when the beloved has behaved badly and is not "lovely,"...

Most of what I read from heterosexualist Christians about sex suggests they 
think it is dirty but necessary.  They seem to believe that earth is really 
not a nice place to be, that heaven is the only place to strive for.
My God disagrees and commands us to pray that heaven "will come on earth"!
God so loves the world that She dies for it, and calls us to do so!  If 
heaven were enough, we could be done with this place.  Instead, it is our 
joyful duty to be in love with this place and with EVERY creature here.

I am amused as some posters talk about how they will try to love the lesbigay 
sinner but not the sin.  Self-righteousness reeks from such rhetoric.
Jesus would never have gotten into the Publican's house on such terms,
unless sinners and tax-collectors were radically different in his days 
than in ours.   Yet sinners welcomed him!   They realized that he loved 
them, and he did not require them to wear Sunday-school merit badges.
Most chuches would never tolerate the human diversity that he insisted on
having around him in most of his social moments.

I have seen God work in lives of straits and gays alike in ways that I
would never expect.  I have seen God at work in relationships that 
violated most rules, in relationships that I nor anyone else would hold up as 
normative.  It is for that reason that I am less and less concerned to
define or discover what is or should be normative. I focus instead  
on living out my own gratitude to God who loves me by loving God in my
neighbor, in ALL of them.  If God can love Lutibelle the sinner, she won't
have trouble with anyone else; and yes, Jesus loves me, this I know.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, alive and well all around me, even known
once in a blue moon to twinkle of postings on s.r.c.

And I am audacious enough to assert that all I have said directly manifests
what you say you have not heard from homosexual Christians, namely,
"a positive discussion of Christian ethics from a homosexual side."
Let the redeemed of God say so!  I am talking positive Christian ethics.

Quean Lutibelle/Louie


-- 
  ==========================================================================
  Louie Crew, Assoc. Prof., Academic Foundations Dept., Rutgers U./NWK 07102
  lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu                                   201-485-4503