Posted on 12/19/2006 8:16:09 AM PST by sionnsar
Two things, Jim. Far be it from me to tell you how to run your site but before I made a charge like this, I'd confirm that that Nigerian law actually did mandate jail time for two homosexuals eating together in a restaurant rather than simply take the word of a New York Times reporter for it. Otherwise, a lot of us Neanderthals are going to conclude that libel is now part of the TECleft style book.
Also, your assertion is particularly, um, interesting considering that you work for a diocese that had Mohammed Khatami, the former president of Iran, in for a speech at the NatCat a while back. Did you know that Iran executes homosexuals, Jim? The only reason I ask is that you didn't mention it here.
The members of Truro and the Falls Church have now declared that belonging to a church that permits gays and lesbians to become bishops is too great a tax on their conscience, while belonging to a church that believes gay people should be imprisoned for eating together in public is not.
I can suggest three reasons that Bishop Martyn Minns and his flock may have taken this decision. The first is naked bigotry. The second is a willingness to trade the human rights of innocent Africans for a more advantageous position in the battle for control of the Anglican Communion. The third is a profoundly distorted understanding of who Jesus was and what he taught.
I’d like to believe that the last of these reasons explains the majority of the votes, because I recognize that my own salvation may depend on God showing mercy to those of us who are sincere in our misapprehensions.
But, if Bishop Minns and his followers do, indeed, believe that gay Nigerians should be imprisoned for visiting a restaurant together, they need to inform us whether they believe gay Americans should be imprisoned for similar activities. And if they do not support the criminalization of such behavior in the United States, they need to explain why they favor--or, at the very least, acquiesce--in depriving Nigerians of rights that Americans enjoy.
Jim Naughton
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. Go ahead and conclude it. It's been true for a while. These are people who knoingly and without any apparent conflict of conscience made ordination vows (and in some cases marriage vows) while planning to break them. Truth isn't a part of their armamentarium and they see no reason why it should be.
These clowns rode roughshod over protections written into the TEC constitution and Canons precisely so that radical changes would happen gradually and thus provide opportunity for accomodation and settlement. Back in the '80s they backed the church, diocese by diocese, into approving homosexual behavior by pretending that to disapprove one would have to pass a canon or a resolution. They pretended that keeping things they way they had been was a change, while makng a change needed no official statement or countenance.
When they chose to do that, whether they knew it or not, they chose to split TEC. They cynically played the canons, and inept or dishonest parliamentarians and bishops allowed them to do so, and this is the result. Nice play, jerks!
(And I trust all the inconvenineces of wind and rain are under control, yes?)
The boss-lady and I were discussing Pike a couple of nights ago. There was a great dodging of the bullet then, but that dodging indicated that an agree upon external, like, say the Lambeth Quadrilateral, was going to be a dead letter when it came down to actual cases on the ground, so to speak.
I don't LIKE ragging on TEC. I was no doubt a lousy priest, but I did love it and meant my vows and the whole nine yards. This is like seeing the first signs of terminal liver damage in a loved one who has been drinking alcoholically. I figured it as coming, but she's a loved one, darn it, and I don't like it at all.
We're getting there. Power at home Wednesday night or Thursday is the prediction. No word about the church.
I understand. It was very hard for me to leave...
Jim Naughton is a gay as a giddy goose gazing into a lake at its own image and falling in and drowning.
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