You are neither a squirrel nor a homosexual, according to some wingnut Porno Pete likes.
Here’s a column that you’ll enjoy reading, from Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina. Porno Pete thinks it’s a great column, so you know it’s some grade-A wingnuttery.
Creech is very upset about Exodus International shutting down:
Chambers, who now rejects the view that sexual orientation can be changed through the Gospel, wrote that he believes there is a sense in which his apology is for the whole church. “[I]f the church is a body, with many members being connected to the whole, then I believe that when one of us does right we all do right, and when one of us does wrong we all do wrong,” he said. “We have done wrong, and I stand with many others who now recognize the need to offer apologies and make things right.” [1]
But Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention takes umbrage with Chambers’ apology, arguing: “I think there is a tendency to see Exodus folding as a parable of Christian capitulation and ethic. That is not what is happening. Instead what you have is an organization that has some confusion about its mission and purpose…What is not happening here, is an evangelical revision of a biblical sexual ethic.” [2]
Peter LaBarbera, who leads Americans for Truth About Homosxuality, would agree with Moore. When OneNewsNow recently asked LaBarbera about Exodus shutting down, he said, “I think Alan Chambers, who basically ruined the organization, had no choice because the affiliates were leaving. All the people who support the truth that homosexuals can change and overcome this perversion through Jesus Christ were leaving Exodus.”
“All the people” = a hundred wingnuts sadly licking their wounds in Oklahoma.
LaBarbera, who called Exodus’ closing one of the greatest tragedies he had witnessed in the pro-family movement, also shared where he believes the ministry made its fatal mistake. He said, “Homosexuality is about behavior, and behaviors can be changed with the help of God and through Christ…That’s what Exodus used to be about. But once they started talking about so called ‘gay sexual orientation,’ as if this is the inherent state of somebody’s being, they got in trouble.”
Once Exodus started talking about reality, they got in trouble.
LaBarbera makes a critical point that raises a fundamental question: Is the concept of “sexual orientation” biblical? It is my contention that this expression, which finds its source in modern psychology and is so easily bandied about, doesn’t have a biblical leg to stand on.
Cool. Does that matter? It seems to me there are a whole lot of things we now understand about the universe that “don’t have a biblical leg to stand on,” because the authors of the Bible didn’t understand them at the time. Modern medicine doesn’t have a “biblical leg to stand on,” relying as it does on the fact of evolution.
The point is that the language of “sexual orientation” is an imposition today on much of what the Bible says about sexuality.
Because the Bible really doesn’t say anything about sexuality.
According to the Bible no one was born heterosexual or homosexual, each was born ether a male or a female biologically.
Um, please cite the scripture where you found that the Bible says no one is born homosexual or heterosexual, “pastor.”
It’s interesting that the concept of “sexual orientation” is based strongly upon one’s feelings. How does one know that one is gay?
People have biological responses to sexual stimulus, and they’re completely natural. That’s one of the ways we know and it has nothing to do with “feelings.”
Numerous are the individuals who have said, “I’ve felt that I was gay since I was a child.” But if one felt that he or she was a squirrel, would that qualify as proof that one was justified in risking life and limb by climbing trees and eating only nuts?
This may be the most nonsensical remark made by a wingnut in an entire week. (They’re getting crazier and crazier, so they’re outdoing themselves on a weekly basis these days.) Slowly, for the wingnut: we can actually verify whether people are gay, independently of what they say! This is why so much of the “ex-gay” set is still finally having to admit that sexual orientation doesn’t change. The “ex-gay” men are still into guys, and the “ex-gay” women still like ladies. (Unless they’re like Anne Paulk, who is either bisexual or hooked up with a girl in college once, and is using the fact that she hasn’t done it since to avoid having to get a real job.)
The apostle James forewarned about arguments like “sexual orientation” saying they are the same as blaming God for evil. It appears similar arguments were apparent even in his day. He wrote, “When tempted no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed” (James. 1:13-14). To blame homosexuality on heredity is no less than to blame the Creator for one’s failure – an argument which is unconscionable.
Oh, the apostle James forewarned no such thing. Moreover, we actually have solid science on what makes people gay! Pro-tip: if scientific consensus is at war with your notion of what God is, your notion of God is wrong.
I skipped the boring parts of Creech’s column, but let’s just take a moment to reflect on the fact that wingnuts have been reduced to sputtering nonsense about how “yew can say yer gay all you want, but yer not. And yer not a squirrel neither!”
Oh, they add so much to the grown-up discourse in these United States.
