Public Post from Lorraine Harris follows - What would those that say they know God is against homosexuals say to her? Do they know their communications with God is superior to hers?

"I am a born-again believer, that is I met the Living Jesus & have a personal relationship with him since 1963. I am baptized in the Holy Ghost, and I speak in tongues and operate in a number of other gifts."

"I am a "Lesbian" - I was born that way - for a number of years I believed the teachings of the churches regarding homosexuality, but in the early 1980's I had an experience which made me question the traditional interpretation of the Bible regarding homosexuality and God led me thru the scriptures with a final conclusion that as far as I could see homosexuality is not mentioned in the original texts of the Bible, not in the O.T. nor in the N.T."

Felicia Fontaine now a clergyperson with MCC discussing Romans 1 and "natural":

"I believe my internal, intrinsic nature is to be lesbian, then for me to engage in heterosexual relationships would be wrong. I will go so far as to say that when I did try and deny my nature, my relationship with God suffered tremendously because I used men to help me feel better about myself, and I abused myself because I refused to accept who I believed and still believe God made me to be."

A Minister Warning Homosexuals not to Join His Church Due To Ignorance Ignorance and prejudice about homosexuality is damaging even to the point of suicide. It is for that reason that I do not encourage gays and lesbians to become of our church and will not knowingly baptize one of God's gay children into the church unless they are determined and fully aware (and prepared to deal with) the hatred and prejudice they will face at the hand of fellow members. We as a church are not prepared to receive them and treat them with the equality and dignity which we recognize is every other minorities due. It is truly a sad state of affairs when people must be shielded from the negative consequences resulting from ignorance on the part of those who claim to represent Christ. I'm reminded of Hosea 4:6 "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge," only in cases like this our ignorance results in the destruction of other people. This is the ultimate travesty for we are here to help rather than to hurt people. Those with a sexual orientation that our members are not prepared to deal with should be referred elsewhere for spiritual nurture. As one stated "If you can't help them (without insisting on chastity or changing their natural sexual orientation), at least don't hurt them." Our church is no place for a person with a homosexual orientation, and we are the ones who lose out on the gifts and talents they can offer the body of Christ. The Adventist church does not support gays and lesbians unless they are willing to look with loathing and repugnance upon their sexual orientation, and spend their entire lives hating themselves for being what they are and denying themselves totally when it comes to sexual satisfaction. - Prodigy post Ron Astorly, Adventist minister.

"I can only take so much. Homophobia has been part of the Catholic Church for eons. But the Bishop of Rome (henceforth, that is how I address him) went too far in Vatican City when he viciously attacked Gay people who mean no harm to anyone. I'm tired of being treated like trash by the Catholic Church. It will be heart-wrenching to leave, but I now realize that the Catholic Church hates me and will never love me."

"I shall write the Bishop of Rome (he is no longer my Pope) today although I know my letter will never, ever, be read by anyone in Vatican City of any importance, at least I will have had the satisfaction of explaining to hi Holiness that his vicious attack yesterday on gay people while saying Mass was the straw that broke the camel's back. I am no longer a Roman Catholic as of today. And I am shocked seeing the sentence I have just written. I will go where I am loved and accepted and treated with human dignity at all times." - Xavier Salinger Public Prodigy post

"I sympathize with you completely. When I heard the Pope's address, I became very angry and very hurt. I was raised and educated in the Church and I finally realized how hypocritical the Church is after all. How can A church consider itself to be the heritage of Christ and proclaim a policy of social discrimination and hatred? I guess I cannot understand the outright hypocrisy of the whole matter. After all, the Church has idolized what can be considered a completely unnatural form of sexuality for centuries - celibacy. Yet, at the same time, it is now quick to condemn those individuals who seek to form healthy loving and long-term gay relationships (in marriage). But, then, Xavier, what can we really expect from a Church that only recently admitted that after all Galileo was right. In recent years, I have come to understand the difference between a relationship with a loving and always-present God and a relationship with a bureaucratic and dispassionate ecclesiastical organization."

"Congratulations! Perhaps now you can join me and many others who could no longer accept an organization trapped by its own homophobia and discrimination. Perhaps you will come to agree with me that this was an organization that has lost Christ's message of compassion and love. Instead, it has become a Church guilty of blatant idolatry and ignorance."

New Catechism Admits Homosexuality Natuaral But Makes God Very Unloving Catholics at least now recognize that homosexuals have no choice in their sexual orientation (a fact now proven psychologically and now finding genetic support) but consider their condition is "aberrant behavior which is against the natural order." Wow does that lack any logical Congruence!

Lets see, God creates homosexuals giving them strong sexual desires and then forces them to live a life of misery, artificially repressing the natural sexual desire God gave them. That's quite a mean God, certainly not the one I know.

First of all homosexuality is not a behavior, therefore it can not be aberrant. Homosexuality is an inborn/innate orientation not a behavior choice.

Heterosexuals never have to be forced into celibacy. Why would God single out the persons created homosexual to live a life of forced celibacy, and then permit them to be so ostracized and abused by the heterosexual and religious community! This is a loving God?

The vast number of "conversions" of natural homosexuals, result not in a heterosexual desire but a life of celibacy out of fear of God due to false teachings that somehow homosexuality is sinful.

If a man is born with only one leg, we provide an artificial leg, we don't pray that God will grow him a new one. But in essence, the homosexual is told to pray a lot and hop on one leg for all of life by being celibate.

This call to celibacy is like saying "you can be a bird, but don't fly." Why would celibacy bring the homosexual into God's ideal of an integrated life of love? Does a lifetime of denial of true natural self and the refusal of the gift of loving human sexuality be more Christ's will? I think not, especially when no where in scripture is homosexuality as we know it today even mentioned it as sinful.

In Sierra Da Capivara National Park in Brazil archaeologists have uncovered rocks used as tools by man and remains of fires dating back 60,000 years to the Stone Age. Some 1000 families live close to the park, eking out a living by hunting deer and armadillo. The people, most of them illiterate, gave little importance to hundreds of paintings found on the rocks of the mountains.

Faded images in red, white, black and gray of wildlife, such as fish and deer, appear alongside stick-figures hinting and giving birth and graphic illustrations of Stone Age sex.

In Matthew and Luke Jesus is portrayed as tolerant of a pederastic relationship between the centurion and his "boy." A centurion had a slave (doulos) whom he valued highly (or who was very precious); this slave was ill and near death. Hearing about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders with to request Jesus to save his slave's life. The centurion had faith He could cure him. Jesus said "I tell you, nowhere, even in Israel, have I found faith like this." and healed the slave boy. (Luke 7:2-10).

The slightly different version in Matthew (8:5) refers in each instance to the boy as "boy" (pais), not slave (doulos). "Boy in Greek connotes a catamite or youth in a homosexual/pederastic relationship in the Greco-Roman world. These relationships were socially acceptable and not uncommon in that culture. The boy would not be trained to become a lifelong or adult homosexual if he was naturally heterosexual but often would remain bisexual. This public acceptance of pederasty, an institution which the Romans inherited from the Greeks, was accompanied, however, by a measure of public anxiety. Effeminacy and submissiveness, for example, were viewed with contempt. Roman aristocratic families increasingly protected their young men by law from such assignments. Hence the pederastic relationship was increasingly assigned to slaves, who had no social reputation to lose.

The practice was very common in Jesus' day. Plutarch, the Greek biographer, who traveled widely and taught in Rome, was born about a decade after Jesus died. He discusses in his "Dialogue on Love" the question whether the love of boys is superior to the love of women, a critical question of the day. The tradition of the Greeks held the love of boys to be superior to a women.

Readers or hearers of the story in the first century would unquestionably conclude, given the language that is used that the centurion was a pederast and his boy a catamite. Luke reinforces that impression by characterizing the boy as "very precious" to him.

This supports a picture of Jesus as one who was tolerant of such relationships, a picture that is congruent with the rest of the New Testament. However, it is not enough to say that Jesus was merely tolerant of this apparent pederastic relationship. More then that, he was deeply impressed with the centurions faith as to make it a prime example in his teachings recalled by both Matthew and Luke.

"Dave, your discussion of the centurions servant is very interesting. It raises some interesting questions. First, if the ministry of Jesus was to the Jews, as we are told in the Gospels, it is not surprising that the subject of homoeroticism did not present, given that the Jews universally considered homoeroticism (among males) to be a purity issue (toevan, but not zemia) and a practice of the "unclean Gentiles" with whom the Jews refused to mix socially. Therefore, when the opportunity did present - in a setting in which the writers of the Gospels were not only recalling the incident of faith and healing to Jewish Christians but also to "Gentile" Christians - one would think that the writers of the Gospels would have desired to clarify the issue if it were an issue. Because, in their choice of words to label the functional relationship of the young male servant with his master, they did not rule out the possibility of homoeroticism (The Greek word, pais, connotes inclusion of homoeroticism within the scope of the master-slave relationship), they have - perhaps unintentionally - proffered a very strong argument from silence that such a homoerotic relationship simply was not an issue for them and their Hellenic culture.

A discussion of the synoptic process might hold a key. If it is true that Q Source and the original Aramaic Gospel of Matthew was used as an outline for the Gospel of Mark, which was then used together with the original Aramaic Matthew as outlines for the Greek version of Matthew, it is interesting that the story of the Centurian's pais does not appear in Mark. That the story *does* appear in Luke using the Gk word duablos (sp?) argues for the possibility that Luke also used Aramaic Matthew (or Q) in addition to Mark as its outline. The Question then becomes why did Luke use diablos and not pais?

If Luke used the gospel of Mark as an outline, where did he get the story of the healing of the Centurian's servant? From Aramaic Matthew? Luke's use of the Gk duablos for "servant" could be circumstantially explained as translation bias due to Luke's close association with Paul, a Pharisee who did address homoeroticism in his Letter to the Romans as a consequence of the Gentiles' idolatry.

Why did Peter's secretary, Mark, choose not to use the story in his own gospel if he were truly using as his outline the Aramaic Matthew and the stories of Jesus' messianic ministry related by the Apostle Peter?

Why did the author of the Gk version of Matthew choose the word pais translating from the original Aramaic Matthew and using the Gospel of Mark as its outline?"

Samuel 1:25-26 clearly states male-male love is greater than that of a women.

"I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women." King James

or, Revised English " Jonathan lies slain on your heights. I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you are most dear to me; your love for me was wonderful, passing the love of women." Is the same in all modern English versions.

The speaker is King David. David was Jonathan's brother-in-law While some may not like the fact that this is what the scripture says it does clearly state that the love between two men can be greater than between a man and a women. Many Christians are homophobic. They should try really loving homosexuals and they might find the fact homosexuals can deeply love each other not so difficult to grasp and accept.