Note that Jesus still defines sin as lack of love (Matthew 22:36-40). Fornication and adultery are unloving because each has a victim. What is unloving about a couple in a homosexual love relationships? Neither is victim, neither is unloved. Where is the hurt? Who is the victim being sinned against? No Gospel writer nor prophet covers homosexuality because it is not a sin issue. The King James Version comes closest to a correct English translation of two condemning nouns used in Leviticus 18:22 against homosexuals. It translates as "sexual immorality", not necessarily homosexual. (Remember that "homosexual" was coined about 1865, so any translation using a form of that word is a lie that needs to be ammended. In 1946 it premiered in an English Bible.) If God didn't want men (or women?) to have sex with other men, He would have said "Man shall not lie with man PERIOD That whole "...as with a woman" thing condemns straight men pretending to make it with a woman.

What's a conservative here? Jesus' table fellowship with sinners was a scandal to the religious leaders of his day. His invitation to Zacchaeus in Luke, was a scandal because the community understood eating with a holy teacher was a blessing from God. And it's not repentant Zacchaeus Jesus singles out, the repentance comes after an unconditional invitation to commune with Jesus. St. Paul says 'God made the sinless one into sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,' and he appeals to the Old Testament law that says, 'anyone who hangs on a tree is accursed,' to drive the point home - as if Jesus' dying for us in the fellowship of murderers, thieves and anti-Roman terrorists needed further explanation. After the resurrection, Jesus appears to bless, forgive and renew the disciples who betrayed and abandoned him.

When Christian people try to make their communities pure, they're not being conservative. Unreserved welcome to sinners (all of us) is Jesus' practice, hiw work, and the working of prevenient grace. My reading of the Gospels and of St. Paul makes formulas deciding who to condemn and exclude real revisionism.

(I write this as an American Episcopal priest, grateful for Evangelical roots and upbringing. My prayer for our church is that through our difficult global conversations, we learn a deeper love of Scripture and of our sisters and brothers in Africa.)

Fred - Your understanding/exegesis is severely deficient. The term you note as "sexual immorality" includes homosexual as well as non-marital sexual conduct. All of the Gospel writers and prophets who railed against "sexual immorality" were including the homosexual stuff.

The Scriptures from beginning to end make it fairly clear that one man/one woman (in a permanent monogamous union) is God's design - all else is sinful. And homosexual conduct was not uncommon in the times and places when/where the Scriptures were written.

I am curious how you could come to the conclusion that fornication inherently has a victim while homosexual conduct has no victim. That makes no sense.

I left the Amer Episcopal Ch 20 years. I was an LEM and a member of a Massachusetts Diocese committee. It is sad that this schism didnt happen 30 years ago. In a same sex relationship, both partners use the other as a crutch for their own emotional and spiritual hurt. It is a codependent relationship. Both partners are each others enablers. This is never a loving relationship, NEVER. It is an addiction as is or can be television, vid games, drugs, alcohol, gossip, keeping up with the Joneses (coveting that which is your neighbor's), etc. "For all have sinned" including me "and have come short of the glory of God." For the Amer Episcopal Church to not understand this, there is no longer any reason for it to exist.

Fred Conwell implies in his post that because homosexuality is "victimless" and "loving" it is acceptable and right.

He argues that fornication and adultery are unloving because each has a victim. It would seem, according to him, that if I love you and my actions do you no harm then these actions are somehow righteous.

The only thing wrong with that line of reasoning it that it has absolutely no biblical support.

Take his reference to fornication (sex between unmarried persons) as an example.

According to Conwell's reasoning should two persons love each other, and should each of them be unattached to any other, then there is no victim, unless of course, that term extends to family, relatives etc.

However, the Bible condemns fornication regardless of whether those involved love each other or whether or not anyone is hurt.

Similarly, whether two males or females love each other or not homosexuality is condemned. As for not having victims, although the persons involved may not feel wronged or hurt by the behaviour, family, relatves and friends very well may.

The fact of the matter is neither love nor hurt can be advanced as an argument for indulging in fornication, adultery or homosexuality. Sin always hurts, whether it is the individual himself or the individual and others.

The Bible shows that God has a special design for human sexuality that fornication, adultery and homosexuality fail to fit. These behaviours are condemned equally because they are all sinful, and they are sinful because they violate God's design for humanity.

Homosexuality is against God's natural order. The sexes were meant to compliment each other, to procreate, and to raise children from a male and female perspective - just three of the many important things that two persons of the same sex were intended to do that homosexuals cannot.

Conwell believes that if God had said "man shall not lie with man period", that that would have settled the whole matter. So tell me then Fred, why do we still commit adultery, why do we still steal, and why do we still take the name of the Lord in vain? No, God's failure to clarify His position on human sexuality is not the issue.

The issue is exactly what the Apostle Paul says it is. It is that man "professing to be wise" - believing that "people are born this way", that we "cannot escape our nature", and must remain "what we are" - has in the process given in to a lifestyle never intended by the God whose knowledge of the body and of medical science, man now considers inferior, or at the least outdated.

What is the justification for the belief that all homosexual relationships are codependent?
Further, why should anyone believe that a codependent homosexual relationship is codependent because it is a same-sex relationship? Or that a couple's homosexual behavior is an expression of their codependency and not an expression of something else that is not psychologically unhealthy?
I still consider myself a moral and theological conservative on this issue. But these are questions that defenders of a conservative perspective need to give good answers to, and I do not know how to answer these questions.
I have read a book published by InterVarsity on the subject (Straight and Narrow?) but found it largely unhelpful.

SC, the question might be best answered in terms of how God sees "Church membership." If the Church is one more institution, like the Kiwanis or the Rotary, then members' behavior is all about how the the governing boards define good representation. If we look at membership in terms of Redemption, Incarnation and Sanctification we begin to see that our lives are no longer ours, that it is Christ living through us and sending us as, quite literally, His Body into this world even as He is fashioning us into His perfect likeness and drawing us into greater fellowship with, and effectual service to Him.

All this is surely basic stuff to you. The idea in my own mind is that our lives must mirror His own character and purpose. If a man "loves" a man, then it is with one like himself in strength and in outlook, and the relationship itself, do your own homework here, is going to be more immediately sensual, more volatile & unstable, and more apt to be marred by multiple liaisons before and outside the relationship.
Christ's Bride, at the onset, is not like Him in substance: She is the "weaker vessel," The husband/wife sexual act itself contains many metaphors for worship, and the married life which grows out of that is an amazingly detailed picture of walking by faith. For at least these reasons I'm sure Paul wrote, "This is a great mystery, but I write concerning Christ and the Church."

I'm not sure your answer directly addresses my question about codependency in same-sex relationships. It sounds like you are saying that a sexual or marriage-type relationship that is between two parties that are alike in the relevant way is automatically unhealthy because a healthy marraige relationship is one in which the partners have complementary strengths and weaknesses.
I find this answer personally unsatisfying for the following reasons. First, granting for the sake of discussion that there is a sense in which healthy marriages are relationships between complementary partners, I believe that the strengths and weaknesses of each partner are not determined by the indivdual's sex. In some healthy marriages the wife is better at organizing and handling the household financial records, for example, whereas in other healthy marriages these are more than husband's gifts. Second, there is a difference between healthy complementarity in a marriage and unhealthy codependence. When one partner in a marriage is an immature person and depends upon the other partner's maturity to make him or her a complete, functioning person, this is unhealthy. Third, if your suggestion is that codependency arises in relationships between members of the same sex because they are too much alike, I am left in need of an explanation for why many heterosexual marraiges suffer from codependency.

I have no quarrel, by the way, with the premise that as Christ is our Lord, He gets to set the standards for our marriages. But as Christ loves us, I believe that His standards are not arbitrary, but based on His love for us and His knowledge of what is best for us. Therefore I have difficulty accepting a prohobition against homosexuality or same-sex marriage as arbitrary, and seek an understanding of what is unhealthy about such a relationship for the partners.

My questions are not about the interpretation of scripture on these matters, but about the "natural" side of Christian ethics with regard to homosexuality.