Help! Quotes needed!

[suzer1013]

Can anyone point me to the thread we had a while back that had some good, GLBT affirming quotes on it? We are going to be making signs for the peaceful protest/vigil coming up this Saturday, and I'm looking for ideas.

My goal is to find quotes of a more positive nature, rather than an anti- or negative nature. More like, "GLBT people are created and loved by God", as opposed to "you are wrong, wrong wrong!" (which I don't find very constructive -- y'all know what I mean).

I KNOW there was a thread, but I can't find it. (I seem to remember Nate had a bunch of ideas he listed on it -- I'd love to find those again.) We've got a few quote threads going, but I can't put my finger on the one I was looking for. I do have a cold, so am a bit foggier than usual right now, too!

Thanks, y'all!

Susan

[Lydia]

Did you find them?

[suzer1013]

No, unfortunately, no one ever found the thread. But it's o.k. -- we ended up having quite a few creative folks there at the sign-making gathering, and we got alot of good signs made. I was out of creative ideas, so I stuck to making rainbow fish and such! Anyway, I'm sure I'll come across that thread again at some point, and I'll bookmark it or something!

Thx for asking, though!

Susan

[kara speltz]

No, unfortunately, no one ever found the thread. But it's o.k. -- we ended up having quite a few creative folks there at the sign-making gathering, and we got alot of good signs made. I was out of creative ideas, so I stuck to making rainbow fish and such! Anyway, I'm sure I'll come across that thread again at some point, and I'll bookmark it or something!

Thx for asking, though!

Susan

Dear Susan: While these following quotes, are really not appropriate for signs, they are extremely powerful. They're from "Letter to Louise." They speak to the demand by so many church authorities that LGBTs remain celibate. I found them really helpful as I respond to people's questions and wanted to share them. If you haven't read Letter to Louise, I highly recommend it. It was written by a former SBC minister who had a change of heart. If you use any of this please be sure to credit, "Letter to Louise."

Eight. It is not only unrealistic to expect homosexuals to live without sex, but also it is psychologically harmful to them for them to do so.

Now we are face to face with the question of what is moral in sex expression. In so many people's minds, the whole meaning of homosexuality is immoral sex. And that is evil, they say, because sex must be between male and female, and it is evil because sex must be in marriage; it is as simple and black and white as that. But nothing as complex as sex, which plumbs both the heights of beauty and the depths of ugliness, can be simple, and no black and white rule can touch it. Professor Kathy Rudy says, "Christian ethicists, moral theologians, and religious leaders throughout the ages have spent an enormous amount of time and energy thinking about when sex can be considered moral and when it cannot."8-1



Theologian James B. Nelson writes,

Even on such a major issue as sexual intercourse between unmarried consenting adults there is no explicit prohibition in either Hebrew Scripture or the New Testament (which John Calvin discovered to his consternation). Indeed, the Song of Solomon celebrates one such relationship. I believe that our best biblical scholarship reaches Walter Wink's conclusion: `There is no biblical sex ethic. The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period.'8-2



One reason theologians and Christian ethicists have difficulty finding a sex ethic in the Bible is that the Bible's condemnation of sexual acts is always associated with selfish lust, with nothing said about a loving sex life. Further, the Bible does not say that moral sex is confined to what we understand marriage to be. For example, David and Solomon, beloved and used by God, were polygamists. Solomon had hundreds of mistresses. A pastor is found to have one mistress, and he is quickly gone. (This is not to comment on whether he should or should not be, only to point out the contrast between our concepts and a Biblical example.) Some New Testament Christians, church members, obviously were not "the husband of one wife" or I Timothy 3:2 would not have been written.



Must sex be between male and female? One act of sex must be. Is that all of sex, or for heterosexuals does sex--let's think only of beautiful sex--involve many other acts, some of which sometimes become more important than that one act? Does marriage make sex beautiful and moral? Even those who insist that sex must be only in marriage admit that there is often immoral sex within marriage--selfishness, exploitation, even rape. So the marriage certificate is not what determines whether sex is moral or immoral. Then we must say that if legality is not the criterion for the morality of sex, lack of legality cannot be the criterion for its immorality.



McNeill speaks to this:

The average person has associated and confused the question of the morality of sexual conduct with the question of its objective legal status. The reason for this confusion is, in part, that one finds a very easily applied objective norm: sex before marriage is wrong; sex after marriage is right.... There is something more to the moral quality of sexual behavior than the purely objective legal question of marriage... Something else ought to be present; that something else is love.... The human conforms to the divine image revealed in Christ not by acting in an impersonal, rational way, but by acting from a motive of love.8-3



Nelson, Wink, and McNeill say love is the criterion. At least we can know that the definition is not in either a certificate or a specific sex act but is somewhere in the heart and mind of the participants. This does not define moral sex, but it tells us that the definition is not in an objective rule, but in the subjective psyche of the participants. Since the minds and hearts of gays and lesbians are in no way limited, are no different from the minds and hearts of heterosexuals, they can have the same criteria as heterosexuals for a moral sex act.



These things clearly indicate that requiring celibacy of gays and lesbians cannot be supported by the Bible, is unjustifiable from an ethical standpoint, and can be damaging psychologically. Many psychiatrists believe (a) it is wrong to consign a person to such isolation and loneliness, one who is thus cut off from close relationships with either sex, not temporarily but until death; (b) it is unrealistic to expect this for it is virtually impossible for it to be done; (c) many of those who attempt to do this do so for pathological reasons; (d) the "almost inevitable results [of attempting celibacy] will be tragic in terms of suffering, guilt, and mental disorder;" and (e) growth and maturity require deep and committed relationships in one's life.8-4



I wondered about pathology in attempts at celibacy until I read McNeill's statement:

In my experience as a psychotherapist, I have found that the vast majority of people living out a life of abstinence do so for pathological reasons. Many have interiorized the homophobia of the surrounding culture and the Church and as a consequence hate and fear their sexual feelings....Others live out a life of abstinence because of serious trauma to their capacity for intimacy with another human....Those who have repressed or denied their homosexual feelings for pathological reasons are the ones in greatest danger of acting out those needs compulsively, imprudently, and unconsciously, seeking punishment for what they see as their crime....I would heartily advise all gay people to develop the most intimate and committed relationship possible for them.8-5



It would seem that a sound scriptural argument against requiring celibacy would be Paul's writing clearly in I Cor. 7:9 that he does not expect all the church people to be able to be celibate even for the brief time before the (expected) return of Christ. Some commentators suggest that I Tim. 4:1-4, in speaking of marriage being good and not to be denied because "everything created by God is good," would include homosexual marriage because God created homosexuality.



Highly respected theologians are coming to the conclusion that gays and lesbians need to develop intimate and committed relationships. Thielicke: "It is true that the homosexual relationship is... very certainly a search for the totality of the other human being. [Italics his] He who says otherwise has not yet observed the possible human depth of a homoerotic-colored friendship."8-6 McNeill: "A general consideration of scriptural data concerning sexual behavior leads to only one certain conclusion: those sexual relations can be justified morally which are a true expression of human love. The call of the Gospel is not one of conforming passively to biological givens; rather, that call is to transform and humanize the natural order through the power to love."8-7



William Barclay, whose commentaries on the books of the New Testament have sold over a million copies, has this comment on celibacy: "Sex is a part of life and the deliberate annihilation of it is not a virtue; it is a criticism of life as God made it and meant it to be."8-8 McNeill believes, "Only a sadistic God would create millions of humans as gay with no choice in the matter and no hope of changing and then deny them the right to express their gayness in a loving relationship for the rest of their lives under threat of eternal damnation."8-9



Historical theology professor Rosemary Reuther writes:

Once sex is no longer confined to procreative genital acts and masculinity and femininity are exposed as social ideologies, then it is no longer possible to argue that sex/love between two persons of the same sex cannot be a valid embrace of bodily selves expressing love. If sex/love is centered primarily on communion between two persons rather than on biological concepts of procreative complementarity, then the love of two persons of the same sex need be no less than that of two persons of the opposite sex. Nor need their experience of ecstatic bodily communion be less valuable.8-10



One of the earliest affirmations of this that I found is a statement made by Quakers back in 1963: "... the Quaker committee, after a long study of homosexuality, drew the conclusion: `Surely it is the nature and quality of a relation that matters; one must not judge it by its outer appearance but its inner worth. Homosexual affection can be as selfless as heterosexual affection, and, therefore, we cannot see that it is in some way morally worse.'"8-11



In 1975 a symposium on homosexuality at the annual meeting of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies [note Christian Association] reported that behavioral science research and the realities of their clinical practice had forced them to propose that while promiscuity, fornication, and adultery should be regarded as sinful for both homosexual and heterosexual persons, a loving, committed, permanent relationship between two persons of the same sex was in an entirely different category and was not condemned in Scripture, and that Christians burdened with an involuntary homosexual orientation could choose a committed homosexual relationship as within God's will rather than an unwanted celibacy.8-12



If I can believe as I do, that gays and lesbians can have in their hearts and minds the criteria set forth here in their relationships, then I can believe, as I have come to, that they can engage in loving sex that is moral and that provides for their psychological needs--God-created needs--as celibacy cannot. And I can believe that their sexual love is not condemned by scripture, but is within the principles God expects us to live by.



You understand this is not a blanket approval of all homosexual sex. It is speaking of loving, committed relationships. I do not know what percentage of homosexuals are included here, but probably it is, unfortunately, a small percentage (10% in one large-scale study of gays.8-13) Many believe that number would increase if society accepted homosexuality for what it is and encouraged committed relationships, as it does heterosexual relationships.

Kara