Lynn, thanks for the exchange. I am sorry you feel I have made unfounded statements about your beliefs. I understand that to be the nature of a back-and-forth dialogue, with both sides trying to come to an understanding but falling short in some ways each time they respond to one another. As for your disappointment in my limiting your criteria to a loving and committed relationship, I would be comfortable including the other things you list (i.e. conscience, existential relationship with God, etc.) and still made the same points. I don’t know why you wish to characterize what I have said as “condemnation,” except perhaps to victimize yourself. I disagree with you, and at the moment I would even say that I think you are wrong, though I am open to correction (I, like everyone else, has thought things to be wrong in the past that I now think to be ok). I certainly do not condemn you. I would even be willing to say that we would get along quite well in person. As for your other comments, I will give a response below to some of the points, and other than some brief future comments this will be my final extended post on the whole matter.

1. I am not a geneticist so I can’t speak to how much we are wired at birth for certain orientations. I do believe that we are all born sinful and that there is something innately wrong with our orientations to all aspects of our future lives. As to your other comments on your first point, I think it comes down to that I think all people have the potential to change in their sexuality (in all areas, not just in terms of homo/hetero sexuality) and you do not. You feel that we all have an unchanging orientation and I do not. You feel that most people would agree with you I think the same about the opposite. I appreciate your looking for several studies as, if you recall, this was the point of my initial post on the matter.

2-3, 5. I agree with Darrell’s comments on the specifics regarding the fuller “presentation of your beliefs” about the Bible, which he sums up saying: “Now as for condemnation. The beauty of the gospel is that grace triumphs over sin. There are thousands, I am sure, saved homosexuals. Just as there are thousands of saved liers, slanderers, greedy, etc. Many of these people struggle to overcome that for which Christ died. What is disturbing about the position you are holding to is that it fails to truly face the way God spoke about this practice. You even make a point of it in stating your personal identity ("I am a gay, born again believer myself"). I can be greedy and angry as a person, but that does not make me proud to have those qualitied in my life and I pray that God continues to work on these areas. Grace is capable of reversing and is at work on these. Your position is such that you are arguing this is not necessary in an area Scripture consistently portrays negatively. That fact alone would give me pause, if I were you, about whether my view of liberty is actually correct.” If you wish to rehash your overall arguments I will let you do that with him.

I would only add to his statement that it is not just a practice which “Scripture consistently portrays negatively” but it is also a practice that those in the 2000 year history of Christianity have not questioned as being incorrect, and even now, your beliefs are an extremely small minority of worldwide ecumenical Christianity. I realize that you are sincere in what you think, as am I, but sincerity in the context of a relationship with God does not make one’s position correct. Clearly, one of us is sincerely wrong and only time will tell if your position is adopted by the rest of Christianity (in which case I would also adopt it) or if it will, as so many other past notions held by sincere Christians, be judged to be incorrect and outside of Christian teaching.

4. Just because neither of us have encountered incestuous relationships in the church does not mean they do not exist. I have not doubt that a long time ago you could have made all the statements that you have never heard of someone in a homosexual relationship that also believed themselves to be Christian, and that something like that “might occur on the frequency of a serial killing.” Since homosexuality is only recently a real issue in the church you cannot say that because incest is not currently an issue that it is illegitimate to make it one. You have not really engaged this issue, and perhaps you could explain why it is so “self-explanatory.” I only bring it up because I think your same method for justifying homosexuality could be used to justify incest. Obviously, sincere Christians disagree on a number of issues and so I do not give much weight to your “instinctive” understanding.

6. There are laws established in the Hebrew scriptures that Christians no longer follow. It is important to realize though that Christians would still want to follow the spirit of those laws even though they do not follow the laws in their wooden sense. I think you have to say this or else you will make God’s revelation in the NT in disagreement with his revelation in the OT, which then would be Marcionism. Darrell is a dispensational scholar so perhaps he has fuller thoughts on this then what I can present. However, I don’t even see this as an issue with homosexuality since it is presented as sinful in both the Old and New Testaments.

Finally, those who believe homosexuality to be sinful do not believe it haphazardly. It is born out of a deep desire to obey God, perhaps even against some of their own sexual tendencies, which they would also believe to be rooted in their sinful nature. Again such sexual tendencies need not be limited to homo/hetero sexuality but all areas of sexuality. Also, love is not absent from those who believe homosexuality is sinful. There is a desire to love God by obeying what they believe he has told them and there is a love for neighbor in the belief that their relationship with their neighbor is best when they are obeying God.