How can we who died to sin still live in it. Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness. As to homosexuals being rejected by religion instead of by God, that is a prejudicial disparagement. I do not claim universal knowledge on this point, but I have never known of a church rejecting a member simply because he or she had same-gender attraction. It is not the same-sex attraction that is at issue but it is their sexual practice.
Homosexual desires are no cause for rejection any more than are heterosexual desires.
When persons expressed desire to become a part of the congrega-tions where I served, I never subjected them to questions of a private nature. However, if a man had confided to me his homosexual orientation indicating his intention of abstinence, I would have welcomed him and offered him what help I might have been able to give, and I would have done the same to a single heterosexual man or woman. If, however, Jim and Tim, wishing to be in our congregation, were to have confided that they were homosexual partners committed to living with each other, I would have had to offer them Scriptural teaching concerning their sinful relationship. The same would have been true if John and Jane had revealed that they were living together out of wedlock. God makes some people with homosexual tendencies, some claim, so God approves their sexual exercises.