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The London Times yesterday ran a feature about the recent Exodus Conference in North Carolina. You can read it here. This is one of the opening paragraphs that sets the scene:
Exodus is one of the ministries of the so-called “ex-gay” movement, a controversial fundamentalist Christian campaign that encourages gay people to renounce their sexuality. This, its annual conference, promises “an amazing week of breakthroughs, transformations and healings”. A Christian rock band begins to play and the 800 men and women who moments earlier seemed to have only awkwardness in common begin singing and clapping in unison. Eyes closed, they raise their hands above their heads, uplifted by the hope of being reborn.
Where to start? The problem with Lucy Bannerman’s piece is that she betrays her non-objectivity from the start. The language of "renounce their sexuality" displays very clearly that Lucy believes that sexual attraction isn’t a fluid thing, and that the very idea that someone might see a (dramatic) change in their sexual orientation is simply beyond her radar. This combined with the use of emotive language - for example, the North Carolina based Freedom Conference is described as an "ex-gay boot camp", which is a bizarre way to describe a gathering that not only includes men and women struggling with issues of sexual attraction and identity, but also pastors and counsellors - delivers a critique that is less interested in getting inside the real human stories and is more concerned with a sensational headline. Her use of expressions like "evangelism psychotherapy" demonstrates that she hasn’t even done her basic groundwork (the word she is looking for is "Evangelical", not evangelism - a religion reporter who doesn’t even know the difference between "evangelical" and "evangelism" isn’t off to a good start in anybody’s books).
That isn’t to say that Bannerman doesn’t put her finger on one or two of the more unfortunate aspects of ex-gay ministries. She is absolutely right to comment on the perceived goal of such ministries:
Each evening, a roll-call of “former homosexuals” hold up their husbands and wives like kitemarks of their newfound heterosexuality. We are told repeatedly that marriage is evidence of healing. Stereotypes are the ex-gay currency, and the heterosexual ideal is practically ringed by a white picket fence.
This visual display of victory seems to contrast with the words of Alan Chambers, the current Director of Exodus:
“The opposite of homosexuality is not heterosexuality,” says Chambers, sagely. “It’s holiness.”
There are also examples given of some more questionable seminars on offer:
The timetable is packed. A class on “True Femininity”, which concludes cryptically that true femininity “is the ability to receive”, would probably have reduced Germaine Greer to tears. Another features an Angela Lansbury lookalike who manages to link her gay ex-husband’s death from an Aids-related illness to his father’s links with the “Serbian mafia”.
Bannerman shares some of the journey of her room-mate (though Bannerman’s criticism of the sharing of rooms at the conference strikes me as odd, as though she’s suggesting that it’s simply impossible to keep your pants on in the presence of anybody of the same sex that you are attracted to) but these aren’t ever really followed up and explored. Rather, they are presented in a format that is designed to cast scorn upon her decisioning:
Back in her room, Michelle has had an epiphany. “I’ve realised that I’ve been looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places - food, drugs, sex,” she says, firmly. “My homosexuality is just one of many things to come from this place of pain, and all it gave me was a heart full of ache"
If the Exodus experience seems far-fetched - the sort of thing that could happen only in America - then think again.
Perhaps for me though, the most disappointing part of the piece was the failure to engage with anybody in the UK who has had a positive experience of these kind of ministries. While Bannerman was happy to talk to Jeremy Marks whose Courage ministry did a complete volte-face on the issue a few years ago, given that the piece was finished off by Ruth Gledhill (the Times’ wonderful religion correspondent and blogger), and given that Ruth is fully aware of myself and my availability to comment on these issues, the blatant failure to speak to anybody in this country who has seen dramatic changes in their sexual attraction through this kind of approach (and other approaches) is at best a journalistic failure and at worst, an obvious and unfortunate sign of the bias of the author.
The final paragraph of the piece sums up the myopia of Bannerman’s approach:
Packing her suitcase, Michelle feels that she has found an answer. “To focus on sex is missing the point,” she says. “It’s not about gay or straight. It’s about holiness and my relationship with Christ.” She wants to marry but admits that she may never be attracted to men. “Then it means I’ve been called to singleness.” And lifelong celibacy? “I’m surrendering to God’s way.” And she leaves, ready to face a new life in which love and sex are reduced to the sound of elevator music.
One is left wondering that if Bannerman feels that any life would be empty and pointless without sex, and that one cannot love in any meaningful way without coitus, then perhaps she needs to book herself into chatting with someone about that, and maybe this time she won’t need to lie about her reasons for being there.
Tags: Awkwardness, Bannerman, Boot Camp, Christian Rock Band, Dramatic Change, Evangelism, Exodus, Freedom Conference, Gay Boot, Groundwork, Healings, London Times, Objectivity, Pastors, Psychotherapy, Religion Reporter, S Books, Sensational Headline, Sexual Attraction, Sexual Orientation
October 7th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Lucy was present at one of Mario Bergner’s talks at Canterbury in July. I did get the impression that she didn’t really want to hear what he had to say, but wanted people to listen to her. Sadly I had to run off as I had someone waiting for me, just as she was holding forth, so didn’t catch much of it. I would have liked to hear any exchanges which might have taken place between her and Mario.
October 7th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
She wants to marry but admits that she may never be attracted to men. “Then it means I’ve been called to singleness.” And lifelong celibacy? “I’m surrendering to God’s way.” And she leaves, ready to face a new life in which love and sex are reduced to the sound of elevator music.
Sounds like Michelle has come to the same place I have concerning my sexuality, which is encouraging because in the back of my head Exodus is still primarily the organization that sees heterosexual marriage as “true healing” and everything else as “second best,” which was evidenced by the “roll-call” Ms. Bannerman mentioned.
But perhaps — as I’ve heard — they are doing their best to move away from that image, and the present state of mixed signals is simply due to that transition. Surely it is not wrong for an ex-gay man to talk about his wife and family and how his life has changed, but I would find the testimony of a lifelong single who has found meaningful relationships and purpose without marrying to be equally encouraging, and it’s hard to find those type of role models out there.
October 7th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Finding positive theologies of sexuality is important to balance the general negativity that surrounds so much conservative thinking. I’d like to commend to readers two books which are positive and very worthwhile reading. One is by Jo ind and called Memories of bliss: God sex and us. And the other is by Adrian Thatcher and called Liberating sex. It would be helpful for Lucy Bannerman to read such works to see that not all church people think so negatively about sexuality.
October 7th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I’ve not read the Jo Ind book. Adrian Thatcher’s is disappointing.
I for one have a very positive theology of sexuality. It appears to me though that you have automatically assigned as “negative” anything that denies homosexual activity as holy, and that’s why you describe conservative theologies as such. You seem to have bought into the lie that if one can’t have sex then somehow one is destined to have an inferior life.
October 8th, 2008 at 12:38 am
When I read such critiques of Exodus International I find myself wanting to come to their defense, but then I find myself having my own objections (mostly their dependency on Joseph Nicolosi) which are the reason why I left. I think there needs to be a more Biblical and theologically sound alternative. But on the other hand I am in support of their intentions and motives, to provide loving support to those who do not want to give in to their homosexual temptations.
October 8th, 2008 at 2:49 am
Why not just accept people for who they are and not focus on who they love? God is Love and He made me lesbian. Who am I to deny what God made?
October 8th, 2008 at 10:25 am
The problem with your position (”Why not just accept people for who they are and not focus on who they love”) is that in order to believe it you must be prepared to accept any consensual sexual relationship. What about one between a 13 yo girl and a man of 40? Would you just accept that? If not, you admit that there are moral boundaries to be considered that surpass the simple (naive?) rule of “let people love who they choose”.
October 8th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Dear Happily,
God made me in a fallen world full of sin, in which I am a sinner. Who am I to deny sin? After all, if God made sin, I should embrace it.
Antinomistically yours,
The Foxe.
October 8th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
@Peter Ould
I think that you are deliberately choosing to try and put words into my mouth that I did not utter nor condone. I will prepare a response for you a little later. I want to make sure to choose my words wisely with grace and respect.
@John Foxe
October 8th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Dear Happily,
thank you for your reply. I am sad to hear of your difficult experiences.
Yet now the question remains: does the fall affect our sexuality too? And if so, how?
Regards,
The Foxe
PS You may now find your answers to me elide with those to Peter.
PPS I have no problem with the Niebuhr quote: after all, Reinhold was a man ;) But we’re back to Peter’s questions again.
October 8th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Butting in…
John Foxe: I realise this could be wrong, but I’ll guess you take it that one of the effects of the fall on our sexuality, is that some of us have same-sex desires. If this is your view, what of the fact that few people’s orientation changes after they convert to Christianity and/or grow into deeper faith? (What’s behind that is something James Alison has written - that if same-sex desire is simply a result of the fall, “it would have to be the case that the life of grace would lead the gay or lesbian person to become heterosexual in the degree of his or her growth in grace”. As he later adds, “The problem is that such changes [of orientation] do not seem to take place in a regular and trustworthy way”).
Peter: I don’t understand how your question follows from what Happily said. She asked, “Why not just accept people for who they are and not focus on who they love?”, but you gave the example of a relationship ”between a 13 yo girl and a man of 40″. She didn’t say ‘let people love who they choose’ but ‘let people be accepted for who they are’. Putting that slightly tedious point aside though (my pedantry again) - in any case why do you think this analogy pertinent? What are the points of correspondence between a sexual relationship of a 13yo girl to a 40yo man, and that between 2 adults of the same sex? (As you’ve said before, committed relationships between 2 same-sex adults are what the campaigners within the church are talking about).
Blair
October 9th, 2008 at 9:40 am
The point is this Blair (as I have repeatedly said on this blog), an argument based upon consent (and that is ultimately what HL’s argument is, needs to deal with consensual sexual relationships between an adult and a minor. If we concede that such a consensual relationship is not moral, we have admitted the point that consent does not automatically guarantee morality, and the argument based on consent is rendered irrelevant.
October 9th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Peter,
You say “What about [a consensual sexual relationship] between a 13 yo girl and a man of 40?”.
Do you really think that a 13 year-old girl can give valid consent to such a relationship? She may think that she can, of course, but children may think that they can validly consent to all sorts of things of which they don’t really understand the full meaning and significance; it’s only when they get older that they fully realise that. That’s why, as I ‘ve pointed out before, the law protects children against the consequences of their own ignorance and immaturity - why, for example, a child can’t make a legally valid will, bring or defend a legal action, or have a credit card. And no, this is not a case of the law dictating morality; it’s a matter of morality dictating that the law has a duty to protect children.
Of course there are boundaries, even if a relationship really is consensual. That’s why we regard adultery as wrong, to take the most obvious example, and I’m sure that we can think of other reasons why a sexual relationship may be wrong even if it is between two consenting adults. As far as I am concerned, the fact that a sexual relationship is between two person of the same sex is definitely not one of those reasons (although you clearly think otherwise), and that is the point at issue. What Happy Lezzie Me was really getting at was “Why not just accept people for who they are and not focus on the sex of the person they love?”
October 9th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
William,
I know of at least one consensual relationship between a boy of 13 and a man over 30. You are deluding yourself if you refuse to accept that these things (however rare) happen. Attempting to argue about whether consent really is consent in these cases is just dodging the issue, and often the dodging comes because the one dodging understands the implications of the reasoning.
HLM is making an argument about consent - she simply wants us to accept to a consensual relationship. Whether we are talking about age differences, or same-sex partners, the case she is making is that if both partners desire the relationship and consent to it, why should anyone else care? All I’m doing is applying that exact same argument to another relationship to demonstrate that if you apply such a reasning consistently, either you accept the under-age relationship or you admit that the “we consent so it’s none of your business” argument doesn’t hold up.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
You say that Lucy’s language shows that she “believes that sexual attraction isn’t a fluid thing”. Well, for a few people it may be, but for most – and certainly for the vast majority of men – it clearly isn’t. Jeremy Marks finally faced this after many years, and that’s why his Courage ministry did a volte face, as you put it. All credit to him, and I highly recommend his recently published book, Exchanging the truth of God for a lie (available from Amazon).
October 9th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
William, you have completely avoided coming back on the issue of consent.
My understanding, and I am happy to be corrected on this, is that Jeremy Marks entered a marriage thinking that somehow that would help solve his sexual attraction issues. I have to say I don’t think that was the wisest move ever.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Dear Blair,
thank you for your comment. I’d express the effects of the fall rather more broadly. Our sexual desires are fallen so that we desire sexual relations beyond the limits God has set. Homosexual desires would be covered by that as would heterosexual desires outside of marriage.
Growth in holiness for someone with homosexual desires does not necessarily equate to becoming heterosexual because the opposite to sinful sexual desires is either to express them within marriage or to be celibate. Celibacy is thus the path of holiness for those unable to feel heterosexual desires, just as it is for the many heterosexual Christians who are single.
Thus I cannot see that James Alison’s quote reflects scriptural reality.
As an aside I nearly typed, ‘Celibacy is thus the path of holiness for those unable or unwilling to feel heterosexual desires’. That, of course, brings us back to the question as to whether homosexuality is mutable or not (or whether it is in some people but not in others). I don’t profess to have any expertise on the answer to this question but if a homosexual person considers that it is mutable, ie it is a matter of the will, then an unwillingness at least to lose homosexual desires is sinful to that person at least. (This applies just as much to heterosexual desires which are willed beyond the boundaries of marriage.)
I’m sure Peter can be much more erudite on these points than I.
Regards,
John Foxe.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Dear William,
you seem to be confusing the legal and the moral notions of consent. The law deems that people below a certain age are not able to give consent. This is not at all the same as saying they are incapable of ‘understanding the full meaning and significance’ of what they are giving consent to. If you were correct we would have to accept that a child the day before their 16th birthday doesn’t understand the full meaning and signficance of sexual relations but, hey presto, the following morning they do.
On the other hand if understanding ‘the full meaning and significance’ is essential to consent and therefore moral sex perhaps we should sterilise all those below a certain IQ?
Barkingly,
The Foxe.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Dear John Foxe,
You say:
“The law deems that people below a certain age are not able to give consent. This is not at all the same as saying they are incapable of ‘understanding the full meaning and significance’ of what they are giving consent to.”
No, it isn’t, but it does mean that the law deems them to be incapable of understanding the full meaning and significance of what they are giving consent to. Why? Because on the strength of a whim the law wishes to pretend that they’re incapable of giving meaningful consent when it knows perfectly well that they are? No, of course not. The law does this because it has a moral duty to protect people, so it has to calculate an age below which it is reasonable to think that a person is unlikely to be able to give meaningful consent - or, if you prefer to put it the other way round, it has to calculate an age above which it is reasonable to think that a person is probably able to give meaningful consent. The simple fact is that laws of regarding ages of consent and age limits are arbitrary, but unavoidably so, and they are based on moral considerations.
You then go on:
“If you were correct we would have to accept that a child the day before their 16th birthday doesn’t understand the full meaning and signficance of sexual relations but, hey presto, the following morning they do.”
You could apply the same argument to, e.g. making a will, and say that the law implies that a person the day before their 18th birthday doesn’t understand the full meaning and signficance of making a will but, hey presto, the following morning they do.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
“Unlikely” implies “possible”. Therefore the question about consent still stands.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Dear William,
you are trying to equate legal capacity with morality. The two are simply not synonymous. Although issues of morality undergird some laws, we are trying to get to the moral principles themselves. Again, although it is (usually) immoral to break the law, being within the law does not equate to acting morally. It’s not illegal to sleep with the wife of my next door neighbour, but it is immoral, for instance.
You took consensuality as the ultimate moral criterion. Though the law may deem under 16s to lack the legal capacity to consent they might understand the full meaning and significance of sex so any sexual relations they engage in are, on your analysis, immoral only because they are breaking the law. Were a pair of 13 year olds to go to Austria (example picked to pique Peter) their act would not be immoral as long as they understood the full meaning and significance of it. On the other hand, on your uliimate criterion, if they did not understand the full meaning and significance then their Austrian fling would be immoral. This illustrates that legal capacity and morality are not coterminous on your arguments!
Your will example proves my point the other way. Legal capacity isn’t directly linked to understanding the full meaning and significance of an act. You either can do it in law, or you can’t. Whether you can or can’t do it has no direct connection with an independent morality in any particular case.
Thus the fact that certain laws are based on moral assumptions for the good of society does not establish the morality or immorality of any particular act.
Even though you seem to take the view that consent is all that matters, as long as its legal (hence Oscar Wilde’s acts were immoral) my comments demonstrate the incoherence of this stance. Consent on its own does not establish morality.
Regards,
The Foxe
PS Peter made my point much more succinctly!
October 9th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Peter, you say:
“I know of at least one consensual relationship between a boy of 13 and a man over 30. You are deluding yourself if you refuse to accept that these things (however rare) happen.”
No, Peter, I’m not deluding myself. I know perfectly well that these things happen. I have a former work colleague whom I haven’t now seen for many years but with whom I’m still in occasional touch by telephone, and who has a number of convictions for sexual offences against boys aged around 11 to 14. (As in so many of these cases, he is, or rather was - he’s now divorced - a married man with children of his own.) He insists that his behaviour with these boys was consensual; he even told me that the only thing wrong with it was that it was against the law. I say that he was taking immoral advantage of those boys, whether they consented or not, and that boys of that age were not capable of giving valid consent to sex with an adult. That was what made his behaviour morally wrong (quite apart from the legal aspect), not the fact that it was same-sex behaviour. It would have been equally wrong if he had behaved in this way with girls of that age.
I have already agreed with you that sexual behaviour may be wrong even if both partners are adult and do fully consent, and I gave adultery as an example. What I do not accept is that homosexual behaviour is wrong simply by virtue of its being homosexual, although there may be, and are, times when it is wrong for other reasons.
It sounds to me - and I apologise if I’m wrong - that you are trying to impale those who disagree with you on the horns of a dilemma, something along the lines of: “If you accept that homosexual behaviour between consenting men or consenting women can be morally licit, then there’s no point at which you can stop; you’ll have to accept sex between adults and children.” I repudiate that. It rather puts me in mind of a talk which was given by a Catholic philosopher back in 1978 in defence of the Vatican’s teaching on birth-control and which the Catholic Herald was injudicious enough to re-publish a few weeks ago to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the encyclical Humanae Vitae. In it she said:
“I used to think you could argue, sufficiently to convince a Catholic, that no sort of sexual acts could be excluded if once you admitted contraceptive intercourse. But the enemies of Humanae Vitae seem now to embrace that conclusion.
“Not indeed without any restriction, but at least as far as concerns sexual activity between two people; I suppose adult people. For though I know Catholics who solemnly defend and commend homosexual activity, I don’t know any who make propaganda for bestiality, group sex or paedophilia [emphasis added]. No doubt, however, all that will come as the world at large becomes accepting of these things.”
That was a crass statement to make at the time. To read it now is downright embarrassing, especially in view of what has come to light concerning the way in which the ecclesiastical authorities covered up sexual abuse of children and adolescents by some of their priests.
With regard to Jeremy Marks, I can’t comment on the circumstances of his marriage since I know little or nothing about them. What I do remember was the reason that he gave some years ago for Courage’s change of direction, which was that none of the clients of Courage’s ministry had converted to heterosexuality “no matter how much prayer and effort they’ve put into it.” He gives a very full account of this in his book.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
No, John Foxe, I have taken consensuality as an indispensable criterion, not as the ultimate criterion nor the sole one. I have never stated or implied that “consent is all that matters.” See my post above.
Peter, I seem to remember some time back on your blog citing the case of an Indian judge in his seventies who had married a girl of ten (and who got a mouthful for it from Madame Blavatsky). This was apparently legal in India at the time (I don’t know about nowadays), but more importantly from your point of view it was presumably consensual as well as being heterosexual and within the bonds of matrimony. Was it morally all right? With whom would you side, him or Madame Blavatsky?
October 9th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Dear William,
I think my points about consensuality and children stand. I see you acknowledge thre are some boundaries in sexual behviour. Nonetheless I recognise that the issue for you is that you do not see the sinfulness of homosexual sex. I have no desire to flog a dead horse on this subject and no doubt Peter will chip in if he considers you are unaware of the arguments from the Bible on this.
As an aside I note John Knox’s second marriage was at the age of 58 to a 16 year old.
Regards,
JF
October 9th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
William,
The answer to your question is quite simple. Would the judge be able to love his wife as Christ loved the church, giving himself up for her? If the answer is yes then the marriage is moral.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Thank you for that, Peter. You’ve made your position very clear.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
And what position do you believe that to be?
October 9th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
“And what position do you believe that to be?”
(1) That as long as it’s heterosexual, intramatrimonial and consensual (irrespective of the age of a younger female partner, although you don’t say whether you’d impose any lower age limit at all), then it’s fine.
(2) That if it’s homosexual, then it’s bad.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Nope, that’s not my position.
October 9th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
O.K., sorry. Then how about a nice, pithy, “in-a-nutshell” statement of your real position, as clear and unambiguous as my misstatement of it? It shouldn’t be that difficult. Even if you can’t make it as brief as my misconceived attempt, you surely should be able to make it at least as short as the Apostles’ Creed - or even as short as LGCM’s Statement of Conviction.
October 9th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Not a problem.
If the husband is able to love his wife as Christ loves the church, laying himself down for her, then the marriage is moral.
October 9th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Well, that sounds fine to me - except that you still haven’t said whether you’d impose any lower age limit at all. That reservation apart, I can subscribe to that with no trouble.
That doesn’t, however, as far I’m concerned, preclude a gay relationship in which the two partners love each other as Jesus loved his disciples from also being moral. If that includes sex, then that’s fine by me, and I believe that it’s also fine by God.
October 9th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
William,
You’re the one who insists in the age limit, and in doing so you define a moral marriage in a manner that Scripture doesn’t.
Your second argument (”a gay relationship in which the two partners love each other as Jesus loved his disciples”) is only valid if you can first demonstrate that Jesus had sex with his disciples. Otherwise all you’re arguing is for strong male friendships, and you won’t find me objecting to that.
October 9th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Peter - going back a few steps, you say, “HLM is making an argument about consent”. She does not mention consent at all but asks, “Why not just accept people for who they are”. You haven’t shown how what she said implies an argument about consent. I’m aware of your position on this and that we’ve debated it before but frankly it seemed a red herring in the context of Happily’s post.
Blair
October 9th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Peter, you can’t demonstrate that Jesus has or ever had sex with the church either, but that doesn’t seem to bother you - nor should it.
October 9th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Ephesians 5, referring to Genesis 2, makes the clear link between the sexual union of husband and wife and spiritual union of Christ and the Church. If you can explicitly demonstrate from Scripture how the sexual union of two men signifies an action of Christ then you might have a case.
October 9th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Blair,
The argument that HLM is making is one of consent. The acceptance of someone’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
No one is arguing about the facility to love. What we are arguing about is the way that that love is to be expressed.
October 9th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
And yes, I do insist on an age limit. This is the case in all civilised societies, and the fact that no age limit is specified in Scripture is neither here nor there: we don’t simply lift our moral code out of the Bible, even if some people like to imagine that they do. As the Dutch theologian Harry Kuitert puts it, “people knew about good and evil long before there was a Bible.”
October 9th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
If you want to draw your ethics from a man who denies the divinity of Jesus, be my guest.
October 9th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
“If you can explicitly demonstrate from Scripture how the sexual union of two men signifies an action of Christ then you might have a case.”
I don’t need to demonstrate any such thing. I believe that a gay relationship is good precisely for what it is. If anyone else wants to look for some anagogical justification in Scripture, then let him or her do so.
October 9th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
I don’t draw my ethics from Harry Kuitert, and I certainly wouldn’t dream of quoting him as though he were an infallible authority or oracle, but I think he’s right on this point.
October 9th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Peter - you say “The argument that HLM is making is one of consent. The acceptance of someone’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with the issue at hand” - but nowhere in her first post did she mention consent. She said, “Why not just accept people for who they are and not focus on who they love? God is Love and He made me lesbian”. It seems to me that she is arguing about acceptance of sexual orientation (and sexual acts flowing from it) - I still don’t see where the consent/underage sex thing comes into that.
John Foxe - will reply later when I’m at home…
Blair
October 9th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Blair,
If HLM is arguing that we should just let people have sex with who they want (which is what I think you’re accepting she is saying) then how is that not a question of consent? What is the difference between “we should just let people have sex with who they want” and “we should just let people have sex with who they consent to have it with”?
William,
You’ve just demonstrated why this conversation will get nowhere. I draw my ethics from the Scriptures - you are happy to look to other, contradictory, sources. That is the real difference between us - our attitude to God’s revelation.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Dear William,
as true as Kuitert’s comment is, ‘we’ do now have a Bible and ‘we’ do draw our morality from it. If you don’t, then we have a bigger issue to deal with as is clearly the case if you do actually think Jesus had sex with his disciples.
The Foxe.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Peter, I usually respect most of what you write, but I take issue with one of your comments about Ms. Bannerman’s article in the Times. You wrote: “There are also examples given of some more questionable seminars on offer.”
I sat in on another of the workshops she ”reported,” the one called ”Overcoming Shame and Guilt.” In addition to describing the presenter - a personal friend of mine - in an extremely snarky fashion, Bannerman also ommitted the crucial conclusion to the “strange practical exercise” she observed. The whole point was that participants exchanged the “derogatory nametags” for those containing words of affirmation, acceptance and grace. A symbolic reenactment of God’s welcome and a repudiation of some of the judgmental attitudes SSA folk have experienced in the Body of Christ. Bannerman either left early and therefore didn’t get the full picture, or she just didn’t “get it,” or (my belief), she was deliberately misleading her readers. Either way, I don’t believe a bit of anything else she wrote in the article. The fact that you gave her even a small amount of credibility is quite troubling.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Yes, Peter, I think you’re right. We do start from different premises.
October 10th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Hello again Peter and all,
just to add to another of the many strands here - Peter and William, you mentioned Jeremy Marks. Might be worth noting his own words about his marriage:
“During the early years of the Courage ministry, in common with many other evangelicals, Jeremy was unable to reconcile his own homosexuality and Christian faith, believing that you must shun the one to pursue the other. In those days, the way ahead for gay Christians seemed limited to celibacy or marriage. Therefore, for some, to consider marriage was to pursue a welcome alternative to the probability of lifelong celibacy.
“So, Jeremy married his wife Bren in October 1991 – not as a triumphal statement of a gay man becoming straight but rather providing, above all, mutual love and companionship”. (From Courage’s website)
Peter, you say above that, “If HLM is arguing that we should just let people have sex with who they want (which is what I think you’re accepting she is saying)…”. I’m not accepting that she’s saying this. Her first post doesn’t argue that people should be allowed to have sex with who they want, but that God made her lesbian and she should be accepted as such: “Why not just accept people for who they are and not focus on who they love? God is Love and He made me lesbian”. I still don’t see how the consent / underage sex thing arises out of this. I do accept your argument that consent is not the only criterion or arbiter in discernment about relationships - but I don’t think anybody on this thread has been arguing against that point.
in friendship, Blair
October 10th, 2008 at 1:30 am
John Foxe, thought I’d post again to reply to you (am trying to break the habit of mile-long comments…)
You say you “cannot see that James Alison’s quote reflects scriptural reality”. I’d like to put to you something drawing on Romans 1. Doubtless you’re aware that in v22-23 Paul says, “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man….”. v24 continues, “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts…” (quoting from the NIV). So it could be said that, given this text, same-sex desire is one result of idolatry - hence it could also be thought that recognition and worship of the true God would lead to heterosexual desire. I’m not saying this is my position, just hazarding that from a conservative viewpoint this might be a consistent position to hold (and also suggesting that James Alison’s quote isn’t so out of tune with “scriptural reality”). This is also why it seems pertinent to me to ask what it means that a majority of people’s orientation does not change (the results of Stanton and Yarhouse’s study suggested that, if I remember rightly).
You also said, “Growth in holiness for someone with homosexual desires does not necessarily equate to becoming heterosexual because the opposite to sinful sexual desires is either to express them within marriage or to be celibate. Celibacy is thus the path of holiness for those unable to feel heterosexual desires, just as it is for the many heterosexual Christians who are single”. The first sentence reads a bit oddly to me - one might have expected the opposite to sinful sexual desires to be holy sexual desires, that there might be some transformation (though I do note that you said “not necessarily”). I realise that could sound a bit simple or naive, or that “growth in holiness” is straightfoward - and I fully accept that it ain’t. And yet… Also, I would challenge the “just as it is” of the next sentence - “those [Christians] unable to feel heterosexual desires” and single straight Christians aren’t in the same position. The latter don’t have the stigma that the former are likely to, and do have the hope of marriage which the former don’t, on this view.
Slightly surprised by some of your last paragraph - particularly the phrase, “a matter of the will”. If you’re willing to answer, do you experience or have you experienced your own sexual desires like that, that you could will to change them (I am assuming you’re straight by the way)? You said you nearly typed, “unable or unwilling to feel heterosexual desires”… well, I am willing to experience heterosexual desires, but I don’t.
High time I stopped - sorry for any lack of clarity.
in friendship, Blair
October 10th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Karen,
Thanks for that clarification. To be honest, I didn’t really have a problem with that part of the article. It was the Serbian mafia that intrigues me!!!!
October 10th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
I never said any of that at all! Why do you keep trying to put words into my mouth? Are you that insecure in what you believe? I never said a single solitary word about sex and certainly a 13 year old with an adult is a form of abuse whether the child appears to consent or not. You are making an unfair judgment on and about me that is not your job to do at all. So now I am going to put words in your mouth that you appear to imply . You have the right to condemn me simply because I said that I am a lesbian. You then say that I condone or approve of child abuse.
My feeling is that you are not God and might not even be one of God’s little lambs and I will not allow you to condemn me to hell because you don’t have the right to do so in the first place and in the second place I don’t think that you want to accept anyone who doesn’t believe exactly as you do. You have misquoted, tried to bait me, and condemned me. You have lost all respect that I might have had for you. All I asked you to do was accept me as a child of God without worrying about whom I love. And you never even bothered to acknowledge that. Instead you chose to attack . . . over and over and over.
Galatians 3
Faith or Observance of the Law
1 You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? 4 Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? 5 Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?
6 Consider Abraham: “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”[ 7Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. 8The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” 9So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
10All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” 11Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, “The righteous will live by faith.” 12The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, “The man who does these things will live by them.” 13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” 14He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.
The Law and the Promise
15Brothers, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. 16The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ. 17 What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. 18 For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.
19 What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was put into effect through angels by a mediator. 20 A mediator, however, does not represent just one party; but God is one.
21Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. 22But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.
23Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. 24So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. 25Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.
Sons of God
26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
I do belong to Jesus because by the law of grace and the sacrifice He was for me, I am perfect in the eyes of God. I accept the promise, the blood, the grace, the forgiveness, and the Father’s love for me. I will pray for you Peter.
This little lamb says “Baa baa baa” all the way to her Heavenly Home.
October 10th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
HLM,
You need to slow right down. I didn’t say that you approved of sex between adults and minors. All I did was quite correctly point out that the logic of your argument was “Why can’t you just accept me”, which is an argument based around consent - “why can’t I be allowed to do what I want to do, what I consent to do”. All I did was apply the same logic to another relationship and challenge you (and others) whether you would be happy to accept such a relationship.
Neither have I “condemned you to hell” for being a lesbian. In fact, the Bible says didly squat about sexual orientation, but it has a huge amount to say about sexual activity.
If you want to come onto this blog and debate what I’ve written then you need to accept that I am going to pick you up on what you write and press you on your arguments. I’m sorry if your response to that was to feel that we were implying all kinds of opinions and preferences upon you - we weren’t, we were simply challenging the axiomatic basis of what you have written.
So the next move from you is either:
i) to respond to the idea that your validation of your sexual activity is by consent, and to show that it’s not
ii) to recognise that your argument about the validity of your sex life *is* based around consent, but to show how that is different to the equal consent shown in another relationship that you (and I and most of the readers of this blog) find immoral.
What we’re saying is this - you need to think through the arguments you are presenting for the morality of your sexual relationship, and you need to be consistent in how you apply them, not just to yourself but to others.
October 10th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
HLM I’m sure you can speak for yourself but…
Peter - “All I did was quite correctly point out that the logic of your argument was “Why can’t you just accept me”, which is an argument based around consent - “why can’t I be allowed to do what I want to do, what I consent to do”. ”
‘Why can’t you just accept me’ is not an argument based around consent - you still haven’t shown the link between those two things, how the one follows from the other. Surely if anything it’s an argument that, ‘this is who I am, this is my nature; I should be accepted as such’. Issues of consent (or even ‘doing what i want’ don’t directly follow from that, it seems to me. Nobody’s been arguing that consent is the only criterion - I don’t understand why you keep returning to that point, or why you feel the underage sex analogy is appropriate when discussing whether 2 same-sex adults should have a sexual relationship, and whether this can point towards God in any way.
Anyhow, sorry. I’ve been argumentative and quite snippy this week and i don’t think it’s always been helpful. HLM I’m not trying to speak for you….. though that does raise the question, why post this…
in friendship, Blair
October 10th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Blair,
Let’s take the “this is me, accept me as I am” argument. If that is what HLM is arguing then she still has to deal with applying the same logic to a sexual relationship between a minor and adult. The adult says “This is me - I like to have sex with children”. The child says “This is me - I like to have sex with people much older than me”.
We’re still left in the same place - a sexual morality based upon consent and choice, unless of course HLM is arguing that sexual activity *must* naturally follow from sexual desire and that one has no control over not only who one is attracted to but also who one actually has sex with?
October 10th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
What you seem to be totally leaving out of consideration here, Peter, is the matter of harm. A man might say, “This is me - I like to strangle women”. The answer has to be, “Sorry, you can’t be allowed to do that, no matter how much you want to - even if you can find women who will consent to be strangled.”
It’s on this principle that we don’t allow adults to have sex with children (whether male or female), even if some children are willing to let this happen. Some people may say, of course, that you can’t prove that adult-child sex always causes harm. No, you can’t, but you don’t need to. You only have to know that it causes harm often enough to justify forbidding it.
Can consensual gay sex between adults be regarded as being in the same category as strangling women or sex with children, albeit far less serious? My answer is very definitely “no”.
October 10th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
On what basis do you decide that strangling someone, even if they consent, is immoral?
October 10th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Why are you still talking about sex and consent? I was talking about love, not sex and self acceptance, not murder. We are instructed to obey the civil laws of the places we live in and to pay our taxes. In most places child sex is against the law as is strangulation. Your logic makes no sense Peter Ould and seems very perverted to me and you are still trying to put words into my mouth that I did not say and have repeatedly denied saying those things.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
“On what basis do you decide that strangling someone, even if they consent, is immoral?”
Well, Peter, I just believe that it is, although I can’t prove it, and I’m sure that nearly everyone would agree with me - and that doesn’t prove it either.
I’m certainly not going to quote any text from the Bible to support my view - even if I could think of one which specifically addresses the point, which I can’t - because I would still think that it was wrong even if I had never heard of the Bible or if I were an atheist. I agree with the late Revd Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (alias Lewis Carroll) when he wrote that “the ideas of Right and Wrong rest on eternal and self-existent principles, and not on the arbitrary will of any being whatever.”
October 10th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
And how does one discern what those eternal or self-existent principles are?
October 10th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Evening all.
Peter, I’ve 2 responses to your last-but-one post. The first is the slightly nit-picky one that your examples don’t quite parallel what Happily said. She didn’t say, ‘this is me - I like to have sex with other women’, but, ‘this is me - I’m a lesbian’. She didn’t identify herself by an action, unlike your examples. (If we’re talking of strangulation, HLM you might want to strangle me for taking over somewhat ;) ) So it could be said that your examples are a little off the mark.
(And I still don’t see how it follows from accepting a person for who they are, that one must accept any consensual relationship - accepting a person for who they are isn’t a catch-all justification for an action).
My second response is, OK, even if your examples are sound, there’s the question of why we should take what people say at face value. Someone may well say, ‘this is me - I like having sex with children’ but apart from anything else, this is a pathology according to psychological / psychiatric organisations. If someone says, ‘this is me - I’m gay / lesbian’, this isn’t deemed pathological. And no, before you object, I’m not saying that’s a complete or knockdown argument, or the only criterion to apply - but the discernment of the relevant professionals must have a place, surely?
(You went on to say, “unless of course HLM is arguing that sexual activity *must* naturally follow from sexual desire”. Can’t see any sign of that in her posts).
I’m not denying that there are other sources to draw on for moral discernment - such as Scripture. But I don’t think anyone else on this thread has been either.
Interesting looking back over the many turns this thread has taken - we’re some way off the subject of the original post! Out of interest Peter, have you seen Ex-gay Watch’s post on the Times article? Am aware XGW’s probably not your very favouritest website, but Dave Rattigan’s piece there is pretty critical of Lucy Bannerman’s story. His penultimate paragraph: “I’d like to have seen Bannerman dig a little deeper. She confirms a lot of what we’ve seen before, but doesn’t reveal much new. I’d also like to see British journalists digging into the ex-gay movement in the UK, instead of trotting out the usual American suspects time and again. A substantial survey of what’s happening in Britain has yet to be written”. There’s sharper criticism earlier in his post too.
in friendship, Blair
October 11th, 2008 at 1:48 am
Peter!!
I love it!
(This is the by-product of the move away from the rational to the emotional. How is it that language has eroded so?)
I am just writing to reassure you that you are not the only one who sees clearly that HLM is arguing that consent is its own morality.
That is the most logical reading of her post in plain English. Maybe he does not recognize the assumptions behind what she is saying.
It is very easy to mistake the “satisfied” feeling behind you having stated something (i.e. “There! I said it!”) you wanted to say, as evidence of the logicity of what you are saying. In other words, just because you feel someting strongly “deep inside” does not make it logical.
Now, am I the only person to see a contradiction here?
Isn’t being a lesbian (according to this definition) about “who [one] love[s]“?
To me then, this reads:
“Why not just accept me for who I am–a lesbian–and not focus on the fact that I am a lesbian.”
October 11th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
“And how does one discern what those eternal or self-existent principles are?”
That, Peter, is the mystery of Good and Evil, one to which neither theologians nor philosophers have come up with a definitive solution. I would agree with Harry Kuitert, however – and this doesn’t in any way commit me to his views on the Incarnation – that “Morality doesn’t come from the Bible but from the light of nature”; that “one doesn’t need to be a Christian to know the difference between good and evil”; and that it would be absurd to conclude “that non-believers don’t know the difference between good and evil.”
Since you have yourself brought up the subject of paedophilia, let us take the following concrete example. A few years ago I heard on the radio a young man being interviewed who admitted to having sexually abused his little four-year-old sister when he was in his early teens. The interviewer said, “Now you must have known that that was wrong.” The young man replied, “Yes, I did.” No appeal was made here to the Bible or to any religious beliefs, nor was any such appeal necessary. Whether or not the young man had any religious beliefs at all, he knew that it was wrong.
October 11th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I want to suggest that if the young man had grown up in a culture where it was perfectly normal to have sex with children, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. That’s my point - he knew it was wrong because he lived in a society that had decided such an activity was incorrect, and society can change its mind. There has to be some kind of higher basis to ethics than simply social constructs.
Take for example the case of some tribes in Polynesia where pubescent boys leave their mothers, go and join the other boys in the boys’ hut and there they engage in sodomy. This is boys aged around 12 engaged in sodomy with 18 year olds. No one thinks its wrong. No one has any objections because as far as they’re concerned, that’s what you do. To go to one of the 18 year old boys and ask him “Now you must have known that was wrong” would make no sense. Of course he didn’t know, everybody else around him did the same thing and thought it was moral.
We live in a society today in the west that has changed its mind on sexual morals. How do we know that the current sexual morals are correct? Who are we to tell a society where *everybody” engages in sex with people underage that they ought to know better? On the basis of human wisdom and discernment we have no right at all.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Yes, morality does change. Things that we once thought were all right (e.g. slavery and burning heretics) and used the Bible to justify we now realise are not all right at all.
October 13th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
William,
We can argue till the cows come home whether the Bible has ever condoned slavery. But that misses the point that you have failed to engage with the underlying issue of where the basis for making any moral statement comes from?
October 14th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Peter, I’ve already made it clear that I don’t know of any definitive solution to this question; I wish I did. I don’t believe that it’s to be found in any “infallible” sacred text (Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon, Science and Health or whatever).
“Infallible oracles are not given to men; the desire for them is a relic of fetish worship and is essentially superstitious. If infallible guides were available, human judgment would begin to atrophy, just in so far as they were available.”- Sir Oliver Lodge
October 14th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
So Scripture isn’t all “god-breathed”?
You still haven’t responded to my point about the basis of morality and how “we know it’s wrong” doesn’t work.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
If you’re asking me whether I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, then of course I don’t. I grew out of that sort of thing many moons ago.