Reading the Bible the “Gay-Friendly” Way?

By Sonja Dalton

Do not be deceived:

• Ruth (a woman) was married to Naomi’s son (a man) until he died — ie, Ruth was in a heterosexual marriage with a man who died, not in a “committed same-sex relationship” with her mother-in-law. Maybe Mr. Miner and Mr. Connoley should finish reading the Old Testman book of Ruth to learn that, after being widowed, she re-married her kinsman-redeemer, Boaz (a man), and that the natural offspring procreated by their heterosexual marital sex is included in the lineage of Christ. The story of Ruth has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality.
• The word in Matthew 8:5-13 for the centurion’s servant is “pai’ß” which is rendered servant because that is what it means. End of story.
• Homosexuality, like all sin, is primarily a spiritual disorder. Here is the “Gay-Friendly” Gospel: With sacrificial love for all sinners, Jesus Christ came as a physician to heal the spiritually sick — and He still offers healing today, including to homosexuals. But He demands repentance from sin, not self-justification while continuing in sin.

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The following is excerpted from Reading the Bible the Gay-Friendly Way, by Will Kilburn, published Nov 26, 2006, by Boston Globe:

In the battle over gay rights and same-sex marriage, those who oppose both often cite Biblical passages which, they believe, clearly state that homosexuality is wrong.

Trying to rebut this view is a movement led by people who are both gay and Christian who say that the Bible is on their side.

“Most people think that the attitude of gay Christians is, ‘Who cares what the Bible says?’ when in reality, we care deeply what the Bible says,” said the Rev. Jeff Miner , pastor of the Jesus Metropolitan Community Church , a gay-friendly congregation in Indianapolis. He led a forum on the topic last weekend at Arlington Street Church. “We think there are a lot of powerful, affirming things that are in the Bible that have been ignored.”

Those affirming messages were detailed by Miner and forum co-leader John Tyler Connoley in their 2002 book, “The Children are Free: Reexamining the Biblical Evidence on Same-sex Relationships.” The book served as the text for the forum, sponsored by an array of gay-friendly local church groups, which drew about 200 people.

Most of the forum was devoted to passages that the authors say treat homosexuals and heterosexuals equally. In the Old Testament, claim the authors, Ruth’s covenant with Naomi, which includes the memorable phrase, “Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live,” actually refers to a committed same-sex relationship. They also offered a different interpretation of a story that appears in both Matthew and Luke, in which a centurion asks Jesus to heal a man who is typically identified — misidentified, says Miner — as the centurion’s servant.

“That story’s often preached about in straight churches,” said Miner, but “nobody bothers to mention that the Greek word used to describe the sick man is the word used in the ancient world to describe your same-sex partner.”

Both Miner and Connoley said they had to leave the relatively conservative churches of their childhoods when they came out as gay, Connoley spending two years in so-called “ex-gay therapy,” in which homosexuality is treated as a mental disorder. Similar conflicts, both internal and external, were recounted by some of the organizers of the forum.

“My primary goal was to provide an opportunity for people who are gay, bisexual, transgender, to come and be affirmed and to be loved,” said Sam Gloyd , 60, an Arlington Street Church congregant who came out as gay when he came to Boston for graduate school 20 years ago.

Gloyd says he got the idea for the forum partly in response to a conference held in Boston last year by the Colorado Springs-based group Focus on the Family . Called “Love One Out,” the event, held at nearby Tremont Temple Baptist Church, offered instruction to families on how to convert a gay relative back to heterosexuality. While some protested on the street, Gloyd chose to go inside and hear what the group had to say, a move that turned painful a few hours later. “I wasn’t just traumatized, I was re-traumatized, because for 40 years of my life I lived this trauma of feeling like I was unacceptable to God,” he recalled. “So it was inspiration from that conference that sort of spurred me on to say we need to offer some alternative voice to this hateful message that’s masked in love.”

That alternative voice doesn’t sway the Rev. Ray Pendleton, pastor of Tremont Temple Baptist Church, where the “Love One Out” event was held.

“The Biblical view of sexuality is pretty clear,” he said. “It says that genital sexuality is to be expressed between a man and woman in the context of marriage, period.” Pendleton was careful to make a distinction between homosexual orientation and the practice itself. “When you look at what the Bible teaches, the Bible doesn’t talk about orientation; the Bible talks about behavior.”

Continue reading at Boston Globe…