Monday, March 12, 2012

Romans 8:35-39

     Pat Robertson:
Meeuwsen: This is from Kathryn who says: ‘I’ve been asked to be a bridesmaid in my sister’s wedding. There is only one problem. My sister is gay and she’s marrying her partner. I don’t know what to do. If I don’t agree, our relationship will be ruined. I don’t even know if I should attend the wedding, much less be a part of it.’

Robertson: That is a very hard decision but you can’t add you’re—if you go what you’re doing is saying ‘I bless this union and I agree that what you’re doing is right.’ You know the Bible is so clear about homosexuality and when you read in what Paul said, he said, ‘Wherefore God gave them up,’ and having given them up they did evil things with their own bodies, men for men and women with women, defaming their bodies. Read Romans, read the Book of Romans, this isn’t something I came up with, read it in Romans. You say, ‘should I go to my sister’s wedding, should I participate,’ the answer is to tell your sister, ‘I love you but I cannot participate a ceremony that is contrary to God’s word, period.’
If she doesn’t like it, if that breaks the union between you, that’s tough luck.
     Andrew Sullivan:

          In the other recent case of anti-gay bias at the very altar, when a priest refused communion to a lesbian attending the funeral mass of her mother, the priest has been removed from ministry. But the reason given is not his cruelty to the lesbian daughter or indeed anything to do with his refusal of communion at all. He has been relieved of his duties for “engaging in intimidating behavior toward parish staff and others that is incompatible with proper priestly ministry.” Again the proximate cause of this is excised from the record. Any sign that the Catholic hierarchy might sympathize with gay people, defend them against hate or marginalization, or recognize their human dignity ... is over the horizon.
          This is a church now intent on erasing from visibility a small minority of human beings, while waging a campaign to keep them as second class citizens in their own countries and as subhuman "objectively disordered" beings in their own church. They cannot even speak our name. Because were they to see us as the human beings we are, if they had to confront the actual experienced reality of our lives, if they actually had a conversation with us, and engaged the problem rather than dismissing it as "madness", their pretense would be exposed.
          The leaders of the current Catholic hierarchy are the Pharisees of our time. They are the people Jesus came to liberate us from. And he does. And he will.

     And then there was the man who lost his job for getting married.

No comments:

Post a Comment