One of the common expressions used by teenagers against adults is the word ‘patronise’. ‘Don’t patronise me’ is a common cry. What these young people are saying is do not use your knowledge and experience as a way of putting me down. I have opinions and even if they are not based on much life experience, I am still allowed to have them and express them.
Patronising someone is a way of exercising power over them. It may not be as serious or long lasting in its effects at other forms of power-abuse, but we still need to name it for what it is. Yesterday in the Church Times Angela Tilby identified the patronising which many of us have experienced in a church context. She speaks about a scenario where ‘people in distress are patronised by the saved and the certain’. I was struck by this turn of phrase. What Angela is describing is an attitude which we have met many times on this blog. People who hold that the Bible has a single level of truth -the literal- are going to insist on dogmatic answers to a variety of complex issues connected with belief and behaviour. ‘The Bible consistently teaches us that gay relationships are against the will of God; women must be subordinate to their husbands etc..’. The list is endless. Making statements like this is not the beginning of reasoned discussion. It is hitting people with unarguable tenets of dogmatism. The Word of God has been spoken and there can be no other way to proceed.
Angela Tilby has identified an increasingly powerful culture in our national church. This is the brand of evangelicalism which knows only a single way of speaking about truth. The Bible is held to speak clearly about what it means to be a Christian and how we should live our lives. There are however gaping problems for such an assumption. In the first place there many Christians, including self-identified evangelicals, who do not agree with simplistic answers to complex questions. Still less do these Christians, from a variety of backgrounds, agree that the Bible has a single answer to many of the difficult questions of morality whether personal or societal. Most of us who have studied Scripture to any depth recognise that the issue of gay marriage cannot be solved by an appeal to a couple of verses in Romans and some questionable references to gay behaviour in the book of Leviticus. The Bible simply does not allow itself to be mined in such a crude way for proof texts. The use of proof texts, either in preaching or teaching, is experienced as patronising and even abusive. All passages have to be read in their context, and the culture of the time of writing must be allowed to influence our understanding of what the text says to us now.
Christians do not now and probably never have agreed exactly how to interpret Scripture. To pretend that there is a universal consensus is simply dishonest. A still greater problem for Christians who interpret the Scripture and its message as though there are single meanings and interpretations is the huge gulf it creates with those outside the church. A non-Christian looking at the church will be quick to notice the amount of energy given to condemning a variety of sexual behaviours. It may be incorrect to suggest that Christians are universally 50 years behind the rest of society in attitudes about sex. But that is the impression that they give. Why would anyone ever wish to join a group that apparently seems to focus on sexual prohibitions above everything else? The more that we hear about the horror felt against gay sex among some Christian people, the greater the alienation that many people in our society will feel towards the church, even the Church of England.
Angela Tilby’s article recognises that there are deep spiritual needs which exist in many individuals within our society. Traditionally the church has been a place where people could come to explore what she calls ‘existential distress’. The training of clergy, I hope, still allows them to come alongside people experiencing such problems. Perhaps they can be helped to discover gently and gradually the language of spirituality with which to approach them and deal with them. Just as the loud music of a revivalist service is discordant and inappropriate to a person suffering from depression, so dogmatic and inflexible biblical teaching seems equally unhelpful to the actual needs of most people. Over the course of my ministry I have noticed in many places the way the church has withdrawn from trying to be at the heart of its community. It has been changed into a holy huddle concerned only for the spiritual well-being of those who attend. In the past the boundaries between church and community were fuzzy and indistinct. Who knew the precise motivation of parents who brought their children for baptism? Now that commitment is questioned to the point that the open but searching individual is made to feel that they have to remain outside.
Angela Tilby’s piece will be seen as (and already has been) an attack on evangelicals. It is not. It is far more to be read as a challenge to the kind of mind-set that has room for only one sort of Christian. ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions’. That should be a motto to describe the kind of church that many of us want to live in, a place where there is variety, choice and a complete absence of the kind of bullying that is implied by the word ‘patronise’. Long live a church which is free from the experience of being patronised by the ‘saved and the certain.’ That is the church I want to belong to.
I agree in part, but I wish Angela Tilby hadn’t tarred Evangelicalism everywhere with the same brush by her article. Superficial religion should be resisted, but she tends to imply that Evangelical spirituality is shallow and unsatisfying while her brand (middle of the road, prayer book, quiet, solid, maybe tending towards liberal catholic?) is deep and healing. I don’t accept that generalisation!
The, ‘Saved and certain’ are indeed to be resisted; a lot of carnage has been left behind because of them.
A ‘Fixed position’ should be allowed when it is held in good conscience, otherwise words like, ‘Homophobic’ gather absolutism and generate hatred in exactly the same way as the word, ‘Jew’ ‘Muslim’ ‘immigrant’ ‘Conshie’
I’m still with David Starkey on this ( see his recent comments on ‘A New Tyranny youtube’)
I am vague about, ‘Patronizing,’ ‘Speaking the truth in love’ maybe a better idea.
I find something worrying about the way Angela Tilby’s letter has been put together.
And again I mention, if we respect a Holy Spirit led Church, then there has to be some kind of authority on matters of human behaviour that go beyond personal choice and even the human intellect.
Hi, Chris. The problem is not so much that God is indeed our authority, it is interpreting what he is saying. The sort of person who claims to be speaking for God needs to be avoided. How can they be sure? How can we?
My Church Times hasn’t arrived yet! So I can’t comment on the article. I wouldn’t say that evangelicals have the monopoly on being sure they’re right, though. I find I’m patronised because I worked in a supermarket and as a Cathedral verger. Totes the lowest of the low, church-wise! So it is assumed I am stupid and poorly educated. And highly placed clergy speak to me in the voice usually reserved for children and animals! I’m going to strangle some unwitting Bishop or Archdeacon one day!
Chris, I once raised a large laugh at a Readers’ do by saying, “It’s funny how clergy never hesitate to tell the truth in love”! The point of course, is, there is no love. It’s just a hurtful criticism, and that is how it is intended.
Good article Stephen. I haven’t read Angela Tilby’s writing on Patronism in Church,but I have experienced it from Christians in all parts of the Church of England especially when I was younger.
I now am quietly amused by those who know the black and white answers to everything by quoting the Bible out of context to prove their point. Book, chapter and verse of course! Unfortunately this presents a closed ‘shop’ – don’t bother to join our church unless you agree to being brainwashed!
It would help to have some kind of publication that set out the Church of England’s position on scripture. People like Mr Gumbel quote scripture with a saved certain smile. David Jenkings, (Former Archbishop of Durham) liked to play tiddlywinks with it?
No one ever argues that murder is wrong or stops short of quoting; “Thou Shalt not kill”
It’s all a mess to me. “Praise be to Nero’s Neptune the Titanic sails at dawn, everyone is shouting out, ‘which side are you on?”
The trouble is, once you write something down, you’re doing the “I know I’m right” thing. When I was running a Bible study on one occasion, one chap, lovely man, and a real weaker after truth, turned up with some quotes entitled “True Christian Belief”. It was actually a good half hour before I twigged that he was challenging some of the things we were discussing on the grounds that this book was true Christian belief, so obviously anything else wasn’t right. I tried going down the ” it’s what this author thinks is true, that’s all” route, but I don’t think he was convinced. Besides, the CofE doesn’t really go in for telling people “this is what you have to believe”. Does it help to think of Scripture as ” God breathed “?
Sorry, the tablet changed that after I typed it. Seeker after truth.
The ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is just one of those certain certainties which is not certain, otherwise there could be no Just War Theory.
It seems that Christians across the spectrum will soon be challenged by one of the assumed “certainties” in the bible – that God created humans male and female – being swept away.
The United Nations have had a campaign on intersex awareness “Perfect just the way they are” for a while now, http://www.unfe.org/intersex-awareness/ and it was reported last Friday that a leading scientist at international athletics’ governing body has said he is in favour of a third category for intersex athletes and that it could happen within five years. http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/apr/26/iaaf-doctor-calls-for-intersex-category-athletics-caster-semenya
It will be interesting to see how we all accommodate this shift in understanding of such a widely accepted truth.
Indeed. Does it say “only” in the Hebrew?
I’ve no idea about the translation from Hebrew, but engaging with the truth that humans can be created intersex has all sorts of consequences – not least for the concept that marriage or “acceptable” sexual relationships can only be between one man and one woman!
I was kind of teasing, but with a serious point. I don’t speak Hebrew, but I do have a Hebrew/ English interlinear. So far as I can see, there is no “only”! But not so long ago, no one would have thought it weird to assume that was intended. Now we know better. So important not to be too rigid in our reading of the Bible.
Brian
I find this confusing.
Some would say that the pre fall world was the place to discern Gods will?
I will make no more comment on this, feel free to have the last word.
My own thoughts on sex started with questions. What is sex for? How might it be practised? I don’t disagree with what the Bible says on the issue but do wish it hadn’t turned into a text throwing battle because the consequence is a general resistance to anything that comes out of the Bible.
Well, my Church Times has finally arrived. Apparently the packing gear developed a taste for newsprint. So I have read Angela Tilby. Interesting and thoughtful as ever. Until the last bit. The presumption that everyone is brought up in the Church of England. Allowing the traditional forms to sink into your psyche over time. What about people who were brought up in other churches or none? Aren’t we that club for the benefit of those who are not its members any more? We need to reach out to those who have never set foot in a church before. Some of them will find the old forms attractive, some will appreciate quality music. Some will be tone deaf, some will find Elizabethan English incomprehensible. Some will want modern language, some will find new worship songs too loud. It’s not easy. But assuming everyone will have a basis already really isn’t true.
Athena, I agree.
Re. God creating humans male and female. I have no insight into the Hebrew text. Even a literalist, however, ought to acknowledge that the text refers to the time before the Fall. At that time there was no illness, no difficulty in childbirth, and no need to work. That’s not the world we live in today. We must live in the world as we find it – and in that world people are intersex, same-sex attracted, and with a huge range of abilities and personality traits.
If anything is clear from scripture, it’s that God loves variety. Even snowflakes all differ. So why would there only be one way for humans to live, or love? My sister, an archaeologist in New Mexico, tells me that some Native American tribes recognise several genders. And I was reading the other day that in the Ottoman Empire 3 were recognised: females, older men and younger men.
JayKay8, thanks for the links.
At the risk of upsetting some people, I wouldn’t take the story of the fall too literally. The “before the fall” descriptions are of the world as the Hebrew theologians imagined it should be, or will be. We certainly don’t live in that world, as you say. But if we’re not taking it literally, we have “and God created chaos”, which most people aren’t comfortable with. The creation stories do seem to be about God creating order out of chaos. But how do we get to free will without it? You can’t have free will in a controlled system.
Janet, if you are interested it is worth seeing these tweets by “an Anglican raising awareness and acceptance of people born intersex”
https://twitter.com/sarahheb1
Thank you. It is interesting.
I’ve now found the first link doesn’t work, but there is a UN YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpWdVTzxgG8
There’s a lovely song based on the Australian aborigine legend of the Dreamtime:
Oh, long ago, long ago, all in the dreamtime
The creatures of the earth all spoke the same tongue
(And) the earth was filled with the glory of their voices
The earth was filled with the glory of their song
And the language of the land was the glory of the ground
Was the song of the earth, was the singing all around
And the air was filled
Filled with beating wings
And the song of the earth it was singing all around
And the water was clear
Filled with swimming things
And the song of the earth it was singing all around
And the ground was clean
Above and below
And the song of the earth it was singing all around
And the earth was filled with the glory of their voices
The earth was filled with the glory of their song
And the language of the land was the glory of the ground
Was the song of the earth, was the singing all around
And the year turned round
As the salmon came to spawn
As the birds began to nest, as the babies they were born
And the earth was filled with the glory of their voices
The earth was filled with the glory of their song
And the language of the land was the glory of the ground
Was the song of the earth, was the singing all around
But the song goes on
Above and below
If you open up and listen you can hear the music go.
Lovely. Thanks.
Shouldn’t we accept that everything in creation is not lovely? The parasitic worms that burrow into the eyes of thousands of children in sub-Saharan Africa causing blindness are often used by David Attenborough as a reason why he can’t believe in a good God. If the understanding of falleness is that everything is not as it should be then we shouldn’t imagine that sexuality is one of the things that escapes this.
I think it’s essential to make a distinction between intersex (variations of sexual anatomy) and sexuality.
One big problem for those who revere the stories in Genesis is that – possibly as a consequence of believing that in a perfect world there were only males and females – until very recently babies and older people born with intersex characteristics have been regarded as “imperfect” and subjected to mutilating surgeries because society deemed they should be either male or female.
As a human being I find what has happened horrifying and I have to recognise my part in it through being an adult member of society without protesting – or at least not protesting until recently.
By clinging to the stories passed down to us through the centuries we seem to have been blinded, with horrifying consequences.
I agree that a distinction should be made between intersex and sexuality. Intersex being a congenital anomaly, whereas sexuality refers to a persons sexual preference which may or may not have a genetic cause.
But what are the consequences of believing someone, for whatever reason, to be an imperfect version of Homo sapiens? Does this not lead to prejudice, or invasive surgery, or other things, as Jay says? Perhaps we should start by accepting ourselves as imperfect human beings, too.
Why should it lead to prejudice? Only if we believe we are responsible for the way we are.
Responsibility lies in what we do with what we are. We are not responsible for who we are, the way we are or the way we feel and prejudice only arises when those things are assumed to be our responsibility. We become responsible when we start to act and this is where disagreement arises because some feel the way we come brings with it some rights or moral imperatives about our actions whereas others believe that there are moral imperatives that are not determined by who we are or how we feel.
I think my previous comments need to be spelt out in the real world. Some feel that being attracted to persons of the same sex means they ought to have homosexual sex because after all “that’s the way God made me”. The counteracting argument points out that that is a false logic because it assumes everything that is must be the way it ought to be.
None of my gay friends feels they ‘ought’ to have sex with persons of the same gender because ‘that’s the way God me’. They do feel it’s OK to have relationships, and sex, with people of the same gender – and I agree with them. I used, at one time, to think it was not OK for Christians to have same-sex partnerships (unless they were celibate), but it’s years ago I began to really search the scriptures on this and changed my mind.
I agree that not everything is the way it ought to be. I don’t think anyone would argue it’s good that some children are born with severe congenital abnormalities that they die within hours, days, or weeks. No one who has lost a baby or child, or presided at the funeral of a baby or child, could think so. But it’s far from clear that being born intersex, or gay, is such a tragic abnormality. It does make life harder for the person, but that’s partly because our attitude makes it harder. And it shouldn’t.
Christian communities, whether churches or other groupings, ought to be ones where everyone can find acceptance and purpose.
Yeah, me too. Part of my problem was I never really thought about it. And when I was growing up, no one had sex! Even married women stopped when they had completed their family or turned 40! I bet they didn’t, but that’s what was said. So I never thought gays were any different! And its a long long way from beating people up in the street. But you never get a sermon on why the Bible allows you to reexamine these issues. That would help a lot of people. Leslie, I wasn’t suggesting you thought gays were flawed, nor that you are prejudiced. But many people do think like that, so the theology has to make sure we’re not making room for others’ prejudice.
What I am saying is that the way I am doesn’t validate what I do. The two things – who I am and what I do – are separate. Being homosexual doesn’t validate having sex with someone of my own gender. The latter has to be argued separately.
I am new to this site but I have appreciated it very much over the last six month.
I have just been reading the Polish dissident and Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz’s book “The Captive Mind”. It was required reading for my undergraduate political science studies 30 years ago and gives a searing account of a totalitarian culture that has universal resonances. It deserves to be read again and I think it raises issues that are relevant to this debate.
Milosz prefaces the book with a quotation It starts with a quotation from “an old Jew of Galicia” –
“When somebody is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and it’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it is wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God. But what is to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is a bit suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever says he is hundred percent right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal”
Well this is dramatic overstatement of course and I have no come across many thugs and rascals in my years in the evangelical community but I have seen that when a view of faith is held with 100% certainty by the leadership of the church there is a) no room for dissension and b) that power structure within the church develop to marginalise the dissenters. There is an inevitability about this. Whether the prevailing faith is fundamentalist Christianity or (for Milosz, communist dialectical materialism). If the doctrine proclaims as true the fact that 2 +2 equals 5, to tolerate the opinion that 2 x 2 equals 4 would be indecent.
The problem for the leadership though is the more certain they are on elements of dogma, the more potentially fragile is the worshipper’s faith. The child of a young earth creationist will eventually be confronted with the age of the earth in geography lessons, a strict complementarian will come under the management of an inspirational woman, a belief in total depravity will experience acts of human altruistic kindness. Therefore structures must be built to protect the congregation from uncertainty. In the mildest of cases any alternative views are eliminated from the pulpit and PCCs are packed. In the worst cases there is ostracism and shunning.
Milosz has his finger on the pulse here – “People who attend a “club” submit to a collective rhythm and so come to feel that it is absurd to think differently from the collective. The Collective is composed of units of doubt; but as these individuals pronounce the ritual phrases and sing the ritual songs they create a collective aura to which they in turn surrender”.
What interests me is how a church collectively – the “units of doubt” – enable a monoculture based on the most extreme expressions of faith to prevail in a church. To help here Milosz borrows the idea of “Ketman” from the old Persian phenomenon of elective identities. Those who have internalized the way of being called “Ketman” can live with the contradictions of saying one thing and believing another, adapting freely to each new requirement of their leaders while believing that they have preserved somewhere within themselves the autonomy of a free thinker. Here one thinks at one extreme of the evangelicals in the US who have thrown their votes behind Trump . Few of them would admit to admiring the President, much less sharing his worldview, but they have found it possible to align themselves behind him while doubtless maintaining private reservations.
I plead guilty to having elected my own church identity but I am no longer prepared to tolerate it. Sites like yours and the Wartburg Watch raise important issues about power and accountability in church communities which have opened my eyes to the dynamics that I was prepared to go along with because I perceived that the stridency and certitude of my church’s message was the key to its success
Hi David, and welcome!
Thank you, David. I had not run across Ketman before, but have just looked it up thanks to you. It’s a useful concept; I know of people in conservative churches who have adopted a similar approach. An evangelical clergy couple I know each read Dave Tomlinson’s ‘The Post-Evangelical’, but secretly. For weeks they even hid their copies from each other!
You’re on an interesting journey – I wish you well.
“What is truth said jesting Pilate, and stayed not for an answer”. So said Francis Bacon opening his Essay on Truth and like Pilate we are all tempted to follow in his footsteps. However, we shouldn’t, because truth is not something to be played with as a toy whose only value is whether we like it or not (reference certain sexual acts). There is something about truth that gets under the skin or as Robert Burns put it “Facts are chiels that winna ding”. The ring of truth comes with an inherent harmony throughout the universe and it is worth listening for that from whichever corner of the Church we come from.
Leslie, I think we would all agree with you about the value of truth. That’s why we engage with this blog, and others like it.
However, I don’t see how your rider ‘reference certain sexual acts’ logically follows on. Unless you are referring back to your statement in an earlier post, ‘Being homosexual doesn’t validate having sex with someone of my own gender. The latter has to be argued separately’? In which case I’d repeat my earlier comment that ‘I used, at one time, to think it was not OK for Christians to have same-sex partnerships (unless they were celibate), but it’s years ago I began to really search the scriptures on this and changed my mind.’
It was deciding to study in depth what the Bible says (and doesn’t say) on homosexuality that led to an accepting attitude I hadn’t gained from years of casual assumptions based on taking a few verses out of context and at face value.
The truth is worth digging for.
The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland set up a group to look at the subject of homosexuality which reported in 2007. The group was set up deliberately containing a mixture of people on both sides of the debate and came out with a surprising paragraph on the Bible:-
“Although the Group reflects different views on what the church’s attitude to homosexuality should be, there was somewhat surprise at the degree of concord reached regarding the plain reading of Scripture in the specific mentions of same-sex sexual activity. There was almost a weariness with interested readings of certain key texts, which tortuously attempt to repudiate the writer’s clear intention to condemn behaviour as bad. The Bible, when it occasionally takes up the subject of same-sex activity, presents it as a wrong choice.”
The people who were accepting of same sex acts in this Group would not agree with your view of the Bible Janet but I wish we could move away from scripture on this issue. Perhaps if we could start with questions at the base such as “What is sex for?” and then move forward hopefully gaining some measure of agreement on the issues that would come up it would be better. Sadly the debate has fallen into two elements: – if you are accepting of same sex acts then you are modern, liberal and caring, if you are not then you are harsh, critical and unloving. Until we get past this characterisation of each other we will be stuck in a mire of our own making. Just to make it clear, I do not think those who contribute to this blog who differ from me are godless, worldy, immoral people or whatever other epithets may be imagined.
I confess I too am surprised at the Church of Scotland’s conclusion re. Bible teaching on gay sex; though I’m always suspicious of people who talk of a ‘plain reading’ of scripture. And the Scottish Episcopal Church has made a different decision.
But, getting away from the Bible as you wish, what is your objection to gay sex?
I am myself celibate, but I take it the purpose of sex is to express and deepen the relationship between two people who love each other and are committed to each other; and, where it is both possible and desirable, for procreation.
I understand your wariness of the phrase “plain reading of scripture” Janet (I sometimes grimace at that too) but bearing in mind the diversity in the constituency of the reporting group I think they were saying that trying to wrestle any reading of the Bible into positive acceptance of homosexual acts was tortuous and a wearisome task.
But I suppose I should throw in that hated phrase “plain reading” with regard to my question “What is sex for?” Just to be plain myself, your expression of deep and committed love between people of the same sex I have no difficulty with at all but sexual acts have a gendered implication. Sexual arousal in men or women come with the same physiological results regardless of straight or gay. What they do to the body give us a clue to purpose of sex.
Leslie, I’m afraid you’ve lost me there.
Janet, oh dear, I suppose I am trying not to be too explicit but as Francis Bacon said that one should look in a horse’s mouth if one wanted to count its teeth maybe I have to be.
When a man is sexually aroused blood flows to the penis causing engorgement and erection, when a woman is sexually aroused blood flow causes lubrication in the vaginal walls and engorgement and swelling of the labia. This is what I meant when I said that physiological results give us a clue to the meaning of sex and that lies in the meeting of two genders in intercourse.
The lubrication and network of muscles make the vagina able to allow allow friction without damage in the penile penetration of intercourse by contrast, if you want to go further, the anus is altogether different comprising small muscles in an’exit only’ passage not designed for repeated trauma.
Apologies if this is too much information but I hope our physiology does give us a clue to the question “What is sex for?”
Leslie, I appreciate your efforts not to condemn those who have different views. That’s kind of where I came at it. Peter Akinola really upset me with some of his pronouncements. I would hesitate to agree with him that rain was wet! So having decided I didn’t want to be in his club, I went for learning to get along with those with whom I did/do not always agree. Plus in these days of a greater openness, I can tell you I have a fair few gay friends and acquaintances. And they don’t have two years or anything. So then I ask myself, what do you say/do about those in one’s community who don’t keep the rules? Not just about sex, there are other things. And it becomes clear that churches would often go for jumping on someone’s head about sex, but often not other things. I can think of worse transgressions, and become more relaxed as I get older.
Isn’t sex also for fun? Human beings fool around, see cave paintings! We try things for a giggle! Mostly we go back to “ordinary” , but it’s not all there is. I mean straights! It’s not just gays who experiment.
Sex is also about intimacy. There’s nowhere to hide. But that is also mopping up an icky baby in the middle of the night. “You deal with the sheets, I’ll deal with him”! Looking at each other to see if a lump is getting bigger. That sort of thing. Love and intimacy are much harder to argue against. Surely, that is what eternity is like?
Sorry. New updates. Two heads got changed to years after I had moved on.
Leslie, I do know about the mechanics of sex, I just wasn’t sure that was where you were arguing from. Can I presume, then, that you are OK with women having lesbian sex? Because your argument doesn’t seem to apply there.
Nor am I clear why men should be considered wrong to have gay sex, if they are willing to take the risks? Condoms and lubrication do a lot to ameliorate any physical damage, I am told, as do poppers for those who want to take them.
I understand Christian teaching to be that sex should be reserved for committed relationships; I’d say ‘marriage’ but marriage has taken so many different forms down the millennia, and many people would assume I meant a white wedding. In any case I can’t see why gay people who are in a committed relationship should not have sex as an expression of their love and commitment for each other – and even for pleasure, as Athena suggests.
There is no doubt there are plenty worse things than gay sex. One of the things that has bedeviled this debate is the use of words such as right and wrong in a legalistic way with parties loving to point fingers at each other like children playing a game of “you’re it”. Rather it would be better to say that there are some things which are more appropriate to our design and nature than others. I know that it is possible to have an orgasm through anal penetration but what I would say is that it is not appropriate to the way we are made.
I forgot to express my wholehearted agreement on profound and deep love between people of the same gender, indeed doesn’t the Bible speak of such love between David and Jonathan but they really weren’t poster boys for a Bethlehem Gay Pride march. It is a pity that such friendship has been pushed into the back benches these days. Nevertheless, Love lives. Amen to that.