ON BEING GAY . . . .

I came across this item that appeared on Andrew Sullivan's site a few years ago, when I was checking items on my computer.

"John Shore castigates fellow Christians who condemn homosexual acts as sinful:

'Here is that Big Difference between homosexuality and other sins: There is no sin I can commit that, by virtue of committing it, renders me incapable of loving or being loved. I can commit murder. I can steal. I can rob. I can rape. I can drink myself to death. I can do any terrible thing at all—and no one would ever claim that intrinsic to the condition that gave rise to my doing that terrible thing is that I am, by nature, simply incapable of giving or receiving love. No one tells the chronic drinker, or glutton, or adulterer, or any other kind of sinner, to stop experiencing love. Yet that’s exactly what so many Christians are insisting gay people do.

'When you tell a gay person to “resist” being gay, what you are really telling them—what you really mean—is for them to be celibate. What you are truly and actually saying is that you want them to condemn themselves to a life devoid of love. Be alone, you’re demanding. Live alone. Don’t hold anyone’s hand. Don’t snuggle on your couch with anyone. Don’t cuddle up with anyone at night before you fall asleep. Don’t have anyone to chat with over coffee in the morning. Do not bind your life to that of another. Live your whole life without knowing that joy, that sharing, that peace. Just say “no” to love.

'Be alone. Live alone. Die alone.

'The “sinful temptation” that Christians are forever urging LGBT people to resist is love. Being, of course, the one thing Jesus was most clear about wanting his followers to extend to others.'"