Katharine Schori has done an interview with Integrity for the winter-spring edition of the lgbt organisation's journal.Scripture, tradition, and reason. When reason changes because our scientific knowledge changes, then tradition can and should be reexamined.
In it she says: "As a biologist I look at the natural world where same-sex behaviour is present in many, many species. Today we can look at sexual development happening very early in a person's life. As a person of faith I would look at that and say, it happens before the age of reason; it's a matter of creation, not a matter of choice."
My position, though, is that our traditional interpretation of scripture was wrong even without the science. The question is for me, rather, how do we understand the nature of sin (BCP catechism), and how can homosexuality - choice or not - be considered a sin per se. I don't see that it can. Sin is not a question of whether something is natural, but whether it separates us from God. Thus, long term relationships may not be "natural" either, but I would argue that promiscuity is a sin.
And, we all have things in our development that we could use to explain and excuse our later behavior. That puts us on the slippery slope of denying our God-given free will, our capacity to love and to sin (BCP catechism).
The PB does say in the Integrity interview:
It’s really the church’s task to help all Christians to live holy lives. I think God created us, most of us, as sexual beings, and we’re meant to express that sexuality in healthy ways. Therefore, I believe it’s the church’s job to help us get that idea. And we haven’t really come there yet, in it[s] fullness. The issue with Gene Robinson’s consents would have been far clearer if we as a church had gotten to a place of saying, well, here is a way for appropriate sexual expression for people of same sex orientation. We hadn’t done that yet. We still haven’t done that.Yep.
UPDATE: Thanks to Ruth Gledhill for her kind link to NVCM.
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