From Piet's Blog:

Piet has a good post on the homosexuality debate in the Anglican-Episcopalian church. His basic point is that how do people who are supposed to be studying and bringing God's word to the people make such horrible errors when interpreting it? There are many factors at play, not the least of which is the state of sin in which we as human beings exist. However, when people pick and choose what they want from scripture, you get statements like the one that Piet quotes.

In reading the discussion that the article caused, I was struck by how often people break the "is-ought distinction." This distinction basically says: "just because something is the case, does not mean that it ought to be the case." There is this gem from the discussion:

• If 'God' thought homosexuals were that bad, 'he/she/it' would not have put any on this planet. How does the Church explain that?

Or this one:

• I'm a gay man, in a long term and committed relationship, and strangely enough, I believe in God. He has never made it plain to me that my love for my partner is a sin, and I don't believe he views it that way. So, am I deluding myself, or is God telling me something? Every single objector to gay priests, or gay people in general, bases their objection on their interpretation of the Bible. If the good book really is the word of God, then the one person who can truly interpret it is no mortal man. If God really hates me, as some people seem to think, why did he give me the gift of love?

Or, my personal favourite of the uniformed and unintelligible comments that people make:

• Can we please put to rest once and for all a big misconception that many people here seem to have. I did not "choose" to be gay. I do not have a "preference" to be gay. I am gay, because your "God" made me that way. So what is the problem here?

The arguments basically amount to: homosexuality exists, therefore it must be all right with God, or he would have never let it happen. I find it amazing how often arguments like this are made when it comes to situations that people want to happen, but when horrible genocide occurs, no one uses the argument that it must be okay, since God allowed it to happen. People want to blame God for the bad things, and use God to make moral what is sin. But no one wants to discuss sin and human responsibility. Just because something is the case, doesn't mean it ought to be.

Then you get the discussion that comes up quite often in this debate as well regarding what is more or less important, what is a priority. People will hold up love or compassion as the priority, and all else as lesser points. So it does not matter if you are gay or straight, it matters if you love each other, and God will accept that.

• I say so long as the family is secure, who cares if it is a man and a woman or man and man etc? The childs best interests should be paramount, cut out the dogma please!

Well, you get the picture.

What may be even more of an important issue, but one that I do not have the time to discuss right now, is the fact that many people think that the church has to change with the times, and become more modern to attract the more modern people. The church is falling behind the times and becoming irrelevant. The question to ask, though, is what is the real perspective? Is the church becoming irrelevant because it is falling behind the times, or is it becoming irrelevant because people are moving further away from the truth of God? (And with the latter, it means that the church becomes all the more relevant, because people need to hear the truth, not want they want the truth to be.)