I really appreciate your observations and by and large agree. All I can add is a personal antidote and a thought or two. I had the chance to meet Lewis Smedes on a couple occasions at gatherings for GLBTQ evangelical Christians. During the times I heard him speak, he said a few things that didn’t sit well with me along the same lines you mentioned, but I also saw a humble elderly man who was trying so hard to understand. Honestly Laura, my take is that were Dr. Smedes to have lived another 20 years he would have come to a different place in his understanding of homosexuality as something quite different than a condition than what you encapsulated above. Yes, he had much further to go, but transformation is a process and until people get to the place where they can fully embrace homosexuality as nothing other than diversity in God’s creation and understand human sexuality as being more complex and varied than a, b, and c, they’re going to have to work through some old ideas and thought processes. Yes, it’s frustrating but at least it’s movement. It’s steps in the right direction and I can’t imagine there’s any other way we can expect it to happen, but like you, I’d really like it to happen sooner than later for the sake of justice and full equality.

He writes in his personal comment section …”it seems to me that homosexuality is a burden that some of God’s children are called on to bear, an anomaly, nature gone awry. But I do believe that homosexuality is the only raw material they have for living as good a life of sexual love as they can within our broken world where so much of life is bent out of shape.”

I have to say I am quite sickened by this. Homosexuality is found throughout Nature, which, if one believes in a Creator, the Creator created him/herself. Would he say the same thing about left-handed people? Or red-headed people? We are learning more and more through science that being gay is a natural as having natural red hair. We know that as a whole, gay people are known to be just as healthy as “straight” people, and that we have healthy relationships and raise healthy families. For many, if not most, of us, coming out was the most emotionally and psychologically freeing experience. For those of us who are homosexual, it is the most Natural thing in the world and feels full of God’s goodness and blessings.

I believe Dr. Smedes has also exposed his own cultural reading of the bible, thereby still being stuck in the rut of his own conditioning. His comments, in the same section I mentioned above, about anything other than “nuclear” being “…no part of God’s design for the family” are clearly ignoring that, from what we read in the bible, Jesus, Paul and the early Christian fathers were NOT pro-nuclear-family at all! I believe too, that those saying they know what God’s design and thoughts are, are disgustingly sanctimonious and self-righteous. They assume they are omniscient and understand all natural laws, and thereby completely understand the mind of God. Highly unlikely, since we are all learning more all the time.

So, while I understand this intellectually, it is still SO disheartening to see that, while some conservative fundamentalist-types are starting to try and see outside themselves, they still virtually pat us on the head and say, that even though we are not what God wants, “they” are trying to include us anyway. And we wonder why suicide rates are higher among gay youth than among heterosexual youth. I mean why are we even here if we are a mistake? I just want to cry…

I know you are busy, but I would SO appreciate your thoughts here… whether on the comments or to my private email – whichever you prefer. Thank you, Laura