Gay Clergy-About time or moral oxymoron?

Good to see you jeanbean!

I am a believer and yet have no constraint on my imagination or any other natural ability, to boot Depends on your belief, I guess

Who are ewe calling Scottish?

I am by no means a religious scholar, I am not well-versed in that realm, but I dabbled in researching the religions of the world when I was younger, and came to the conclusion that the 'Kingdom of God' the 'Key to Enlightenment' whatever you wanna call it, rests within yourself, not in an outside power. Maybe Frank or Timber can pop in for some clarity on Aquinas, but that is how I took his thoughts when I read them years ago, and saw the same in every darn religion I looked into. The message, not the political dogma, is what matters.

The concept is so overstated in all religions, and every cult, that it has become a cliche. It is the simplest concept in the world, and yet the scariest for most to accept. If most people could accept that concept, I doubt we would be arguing about gay clergy at all.

Post-Script: That is, in the sense that when we make peace with ourselves, we generally do not have problems with others, and I don't see that religion, in it's current state, will help anyone these days with that one

Hear hear, bravissimo!!!!!!!!

Aquinas was lacking only one real essential in his "five proofs of the existence of God." Unfortuntely, the missing ingredient was "proof."

I think however, that you are correct in stating that many religions posit that "salvation" is something private between the individual and his/her God -- and not much of value can come from any outsider no matter how steeped in dogma it might be.

Sodomy and the church
Sodomy is a likely evil because semen probably contains addictive and controlling chemicals that can be absorbed by the digestive system (but not to any significant extent by the female reproductive system). (See EDIT (Moderator): Link removed. Do not post links to your pages on this site. for this theory of mine.) What's more, church is for sinners ("... for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance"--Matthew 9:13) and, more particularly, for sinners who sin on account of addiction. Indeed, a rightfully self-confident person would do better to develop his own moral philosophy partly using his understanding of philosophy and science (there have after all been advances in moral philosophy and science over the past two millennia), and if someone commits a sin because it is his nature to engage in that sin, there realistically is not much hope for his reform, while if he sins on account of his having been addicted, there is hope.

Church with its tradition plays a useful role in reforming those who rightfully feel so screwed up as to not feel up to evaluating which modern moral-philosophical viewpoints are merely new-fangled fads. Church is not very useful to non-screwed up people; thus if a church does not maintain a fundamentalist stance on depraved addiction it will merely become worse than useless and worthy of pointed contempt.

Not that sodomy is fundamentally a homosexual issue (females being more commonly sodomized are doubtless hurt more by being sodomized than males), but male homosexuality, being understood to involve sodomy, is a sodomy issue. Lesbianism doesn't particularly bother me (though female-female oral-genital contact strikes me as unsanitary), so if lesbians want to be bishops, fine. But a male homosexual, like anyone who practices sodomy (by which I mean a behavior that introduces semen into the digestive system) or who believes sodomy to be innocuous, should not be allowed to have a position of authority in a church.

welcome step314, thanks for sharing your opinion

Semen's addictive, eh?

(though female-female oral-genital contact strikes me as unsanitary)
--------------------
SAY WHAT?
So, man-female oral genital contact is more sanitary?
What manner of sexual discrimination do this be?
<many ill thoughts and sputtering>


Welcome Step 314.

i think its all nasty and should be prohibited but i like it

truth
Dyslexia, when I was a small boy an adult helpfully informed me that sex is supposed to be sexy. I assumed by that that me meant "dirty."
By the way, is there any non-presumptive evidence from the scriptures that Jesus was heterosexual?
And the phrase, "the first openly gay bishop," suggests in the face of the fact that many priests and ministers are gay or bisexual (as is the general population) that all Christian churches (with the possible exception of the Unitarians) do not mind homosexuality in its ranks so long as it remains in the closet--as if shame and guilt must not be challenged by "shamelessly" open homosexuality.
Society IS moving forward..

hi JLN welcome back long time no see

oral sodomy


Well, that depends. Male-female oral genital contact is probably only merely unsanitary (if it's the female's genitals involved), but it is likely much worse if the male genitals are involved. Semen should not enter the digestive system via the mouth, either! I hate the term "oral sex", which both glorifies sodomy and degrades sex. Ironically I agree with Clinton--he didn't engage in sex with "that woman". He engaged in oral sodomy--that's what he did. Yeah, though, it is in one sense a big mistake to view things symmetrically. It is physiologically impossible for females to sodomize.

As for semen being addictive, I think it is only addictive when it enters the digestive system. That would explain the great evolutionary explosion in the non-monotreme mammals (all mammals except the duck-billed platypus and the spiny anteater). Indeed, only the non-monotreme mammals have separate openings for the (terminus of) the digestive system and the reproductive system. Non-mammals probably tend accordingly to have difficulty with ordinary sex being chemically addictive, which doubtless makes sexual selection much less effective in those animals. The absence of the cloaca is really probably the important thing about non-monotreme mammals. If you lack a cloaca, you have to drink water to allow urine to be expelled (the urine of reptiles can be more dry as it can be passed out with the products of digestion). And if you have to drink water to make urine, you might as well drink enough to allow the evaporative cooling necessary for warm-bloodedness, and at any rate warm-bloodedness is shared with birds, so wouldn't appear that fundamental to mammalness. And if you drink that much water, you might as well make milk. And fur arose as a consequence of the warm-bloodedness. It is also relevant that the vagina, unlike the rectum, is lined by epithelial tissue several cell layers thick, and thus shares less the characteristics of tissue able to absorb chemicals well.

This theory of mine that sodomy is addictive in the ordinary chemical way akin to alcohol or marijuana (only worse) has simply not been investigated in the scientific literature, that despite it is well known that semen is chock full of neuromodulators (e.g., E- and F- type prostaglandins). In fact, some scientists think PGE1 levels in the brain are quite possibly involved in producing ethanol (alcohol) narcosis, and what do you know, human seminal vesicles produce more E- and F- type prostaglandin than the rest of the body combined! (See Elmer GI, George FR. J Pharmacol Exp Ther. 1996 Apr;277(1):308-15. The role of specific eicosanoids in mediating the acute narcotic effects of ethanol. You can find the abstract for this at PubMed.)

It's ridiculous that scientists officially claimed to be scientists have not investigated this obvious likelihood of sodomy being addictive, especially since probably the natural instinct of the majority of humans is to view sodomy as disgusting as though some nefarious addiction were involved. Trent Lott and Reggie White (former defensive end of the Packers) got much heat in the past few years when they publicly claimed that homosexuality was likely an addiction. Well, why should the media criticize them when no one (except me to a limited extent) has investigated scientifically whether they are right in the most obvious sense? As far as male homosexuality is concerned, they are not only likely right, but right when "addiction" is given the everyday meaning of chemical addiction that the word originally rightfully possessed (before silly and self-serving people tried to redefine the word "addictive" to make it mostly a synonym for "pleasant"), and which the word still probably possesses to typical down-to-earth people.

um . Holy Cow, Buffalo Bob! Homosexuality isn't based on a natural attraction to your same sex but is an addiction based on getting semen into the digestive system (at one end or the other, it doesn't seem to matter to step314 which one apparently.) Wow.

So that explains why all those women wanted to meet with me and the boys in the band.....they were addicted to our (you'll forgive the french) spunkadelicious crematoriums.. Oh, yeah!

And I've got to call my friend Eddie and tell him that it wasn't his love for Gerald that made him sad when Gerry died, it was his addiction.

What size tin hat does this guy wear?

JOE

i am inclined to think that someone's ISP consists of rabbit ears, with synapses firing randomly thru the endless paradigm of skinner boxes in seach of velveeta. Hey! who cut the cheese?

What was the name of that band? Oh yeah, Jane's Addiction. Gotcha. Yup. Nope.

Interesting theories being presented.

Here's a question: is semen as addictive as seamen? Wait a sec, I'll just ask my platypus, it seems they have all the answers.

JLN, good comment. "Openly gay bishop" invites its opposite. In fact, there were quotes in the press, from clergy at the conference, about known gay clergy and bishops who were not out. This was compared to a Catholic eating meat on Friday thinking it was Thursday. Ergo, no sin.