Still dogma. Not God.

I AM equal as a lesbian and we homosexuals deserve to have our equality recognized by law. Religions have no business appropriating the apparatus of the state to enforce their doctrines.

Cynthia

Cynthia, you are setting up a straw man here. My expressly stated intention was to offer an apologia/defense for the Church’s position on homosexuality and, by extension, homosexual marriage as a way of explaining why what you ask is impossible. Mounting a defensible apologia is only feasible with reference to the doctrines of Scripture, which the historical Christian Church (hCC) asserts is not the doctrines of men but of God. [Note, when I say 'hCC,' I am not speaking of the doctrines of the Church of Rome which have diverged from that of the hCC.] So, while I assent to your point that doctrine (I do appreciate the negative entailments of your use of ‘dogma’) is not the same as God (I never made that point), He is its source because Scripture is the out-breathed, inspired Word of God. I do not share the higher critical perspective on Scripture.

Let us, for clarity’s sake, make a distinction between ‘dogma,’ as you are using it and ‘doctrine,’ as I’m using it. I understand you to mean rules written by men to bend the Church to suit their agenda. I mean the God-given teachings of the Church as found in Scripture. On to your other points.

Now, some have argued that Scripture supports man on man slavery and the oppression of women; that is not a doctrine of the hCC, and I challenge you to prove that it is. There are things that God does not like but he allowed because of the hardness of the human heart; divorce is one. Slavery is another. In the OT, tempering the practice of slavery, amongst the people of the time, is the Jubilee and the slave as heir to the goods of the master of the house, if he dies without heir. Plus, there are laws governing the treatment of such.

Jump forward to the NT where you’ll find the clear expression of what the OT intended on the subject. The Letters to Philemon and Ephesians demonstrate the error of man-made dogma wrt slavery and women. Philemon slave-master of Onesimus the runaway new Christian and slave sent back by Paul with this message to Philemon: this is your brother in Christ, treat him as you would me. In a word, freedom. If we’ve moved past slavery in the West, we did so within the context of Christian doctrine, which was the basis for the abolition and emancipation of slavery. It’s an amazing thing when people actually heed what the Book says. It was not secularists who spearheaded the Emancipation; it was Christians heeding the Word.

The notion of woman as property has no doctrinal foundation; it is likely a cultural corruption handed own and blanking out doctrine on the matter. For instance, Proverbs 31, especially, places a high valuation on women. Ephesians, in particular, says woman is to die for. Husbands, love your wife as Christ loves the Church. Not oppress; put her ahead of you and die for her if necessary. That’s the married women. The single women like you and me, it is silent. However, we are covered by ‘love your neighbor….’ Not oppression. Liberation.
There is no Judaeo-Christian doctrine corresponding to any of the Islamic attitudes to women. If there is dogma, it cannot be supported by Scripture.

Nevertheless, Cynthia, I—a woman—am doulos. Slave. Not to man. To Christ. Therein is my liberation, no matter what happens to my body.

Concerning your point “that motivated theologians can rationalize anything they want,” wrong. The dictum of scriptural hermeneutics is “the intended sense is one.” In sum, this means that no matter who interprets a text, the interpretations should be approximate. That is possible if one takes a grammatical-historical rather than a higher critical approach. Fidelity demands adherence to the Word rather than to a personal agenda. Agenda-driven hermeneutics is what you refer to; people like Spong engage in such.

My response to this statement of yours, “my equality is indeed a civil rights issue and that I deserve full equality under law in every aspect of life” is as I’ve said. The state is free to make whatever laws it chooses. Moreover, you are already equal under law which asserts your equality before God. I would posit that equality under the law and before God is a very basic construct that does not and can not address “every aspect of life.” For instance, we are all equal, but we are not all men or all women. We are all equal, but we do not possess equal abilities, skills, or talents. Therefore, again, you ask for the impossible because it takes the principle ad absurdam.

The corollary of your statement is that whatever Jones has you want so that you may be equal with him. If he is an engineer, so should you be. If he is a serial monogamist, so should you be. If he has children, so should you. Wait a minute, equality runs into a problem there, doesn’t it? In order for you to be equal there, you must implement measures he doesn’t have to. In sum, you are not equal beyond the basics (procreative organs) even though you demand “full equality under law in every aspect of life.” If he takes a wife, you should, too. Impediment! In this case, it’s both biology and theology. The first is surmountable; the second requires that you tell God He is wrong; marriage is His social construct. I would posit that we all have basic equality. With regard to “every aspect of life,” there is a remarkable and immutable inequality that no courts of law can ever eradicate.

Cynthia, religious laws have been the basis of civic law from time immemorial. Therefore, you argue ahistorically when you say “the religious claims that this is a moral issue and that religions are entitled to appropriate the apparatus of the state to enforce their religious codes”. Moreover, you attribute “greed and lust for power” as the cause for the moral and religious codes underpinning civic society. I would argue not. Civic order is grounded in those codes. Without them, anarchy even at the biological level—ask the Arabs about the consequences of consanguineous marriages, once a necessity because of population scarcity and religious purity. Until the law said ‘thou shalt not kill’ or ‘thou shalt not steal,’ there was no impediment to either; when the law came, so did a beneficial change in civic relationships.

It’s far easier to look at man and blame him; there’s nothing to lose in that. It’s a far different and far steeper proposition to point an accusing finger at God. Nevertheless, I encourage you to do it. Being equal before Him means that you can; He expects you to because you are His.

Finally, you pose this: “Isn’t the sum of all the law and all the prophets to love God and love your neighbor as yourself? Don’t you enjoy having equality? Well, love me like yourself and work for my equality because I deserve equality as a homosexual and I assure you, I don’t have it now.” My answer: It is; I’m very aware of the inequities and shrug my shoulders because they are immutable. I do love you like myself even though I’ve never met you. I cannot and will not do as you request because you are asking me to do two things that are impossible: 1) set God aside. 2) accept a proposition (equality in every aspect of life) that is neither logical nor realistic. Like me, you already have what you seek.

I don’t think Pastor Manning believes the children of Lefties and corrupt news anchors and news commentators belong to every single one of the groups he names. I stated in my post that I did not like his inclusion of homosexuality in the list.

I continue to note that you clearly have not processed Pastor Manning’s main point, which is that it is wrong to attack the children of people you disagree with especially when you are so vulnerable to attack yourself.

I also continue to note that you have not repudiated the Left’s vicious attacks on Gov. Palin’s children. This really does mean that you support attacking the children of people you disagree with.

Cynthia

Re Young Republican leader — I have no idea who that is, but I notice you don’t seem to be able to stick to the subject of the post. I gather somehow he or she is evil but people who attack the children of people they disagree with to drive them out of the marketplace of ideas are not.

Cynthia

How revealing that you do not repudiate the Left’s attacks on Gov. Palin’s children. Clearly you support attacking the children of people you disagree with in order to drive them from the marketplace of ideas. You support attacking children! You support attacking a one-year-old child with disabilities and people who are enraged that he was brought to term. The people attacking Trig Palin claim to be pro-choice, but they do not support the choice Gov. Palin made. This means they are lying about their true motives because you can only say you support choice when you support the choice the pregnant woman makes. If you only support termination of a disabled child, you support eugenics, not choice.

You also support sexist, degrading attacks on teen-age girls. You have not repudiated the attacks by the Left and David Letterman on Willow and Bristol Palin. Why are these attacks acceptable against the children of someone you disagree with?

Still no sale on the Mel Gibson tar baby.

I was born in the 1950′s and realized I was a lesbian in 1966 and came out in 1972, so I am well aware of the attitudes towards gays from those eras. Pastor Manning’s grouping of homosexuals with people who genuinely are bad is contemporary. One of the signs that blacks have arrived is that they no longer honor the rainbow coalition and instead seek to invalidate in every possible way the claim of homosexuals to equality. I noted in my post I do not accept Pastor Manning’s attitude about homosexuals.

However, I certainly am able to hear and applaud Pastor Manning’s main point, which was to give the Lefties denouncing Bristol Palin last September a taste of their own medicine by reminding them that Obama was conceived out-of-wedlock by a 17-year-old girl and a man who clearly had just wanted to take sexual advantage of her and abandoned the girl and child the second he could come up with a plausible excuse.

Pastor Manning says he is relying on what his mama and her mama told him about the character of white women in the 1950′s and 60′s who preyed on black men. When you use empathy and imagination to see their point of view, the reason for the passion in it becomes clear. These women were trying to raise their sons and daughters to be decent, sober and productive. But the young black women seeking husbands could not compete with the suddenly available forbidden fruit of white women whose motives for seeking black partners likely would not stand close scrutiny of their purity. The white “floozies” did terrible damage to the efforts of black women to keep their sons and daughters decent, so Obama’s mama deserves the rage directed at her (even if it is likely that the Dunham family was so creepy that she probably came to that pass by being pimped out by her father to Franklin Davis in her early teens, as he describes in his book, Sex Pervert).

People are allowed to criticize other members of their group. I doubt there are any “-ists” or “-isms” that become relevant until their criticisms and attitudes target a different group.

Cynthia

BTW, a black man can be, and often is, racist.

I’m busy with the first of two moves for the summer. Will get back to this discussion.