I need some advice

rusmeister said:

Hey, Capp, not trying to get acidic here.
The Church welcomes all, but homosexuals who would join the Church MUST take up a struggle against their passion, just like the alcoholic, guy who can't control his anger or anybody else.
The enormous difference with what the world means by welcoming and accepting is that the world - including this movement in the Boy Scouts - wants us to AFFIRM their passion and treat it as a normal and fine thing. I'm even having deja vu about having said this to you before. Surely you understand this difference??

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The Boy Scouts are hardly in a position to tell anyone to struggle against anything. It would just not be appropriate, nor useful.

inconsequential said:

I spoke with my son's godfather (OrthodoxyUSA) and he suggested I put together a couple paragraphs with some ideas and present it to the parish council. I'm going to also speak to my boss about using some of his land for camping and he might want to get his 8 children involved and the other folks from the mission parish he attends. It could be an awesome thing! Please pray that this turns into something good for us. We have lots of young children in our mission.

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I think the insurance issues might be a bit of a pickle to work out. THe youth outreach group associated with our parish has a lot of headaches with it. Recently, they had to ask parishoners who wanted to drive kids to events to increase their liability insurance to 2 million dollars.

This is one of the reasons scouting has become so much more expensive in recent years.

rusmeister said:

The enormous difference with what the world means by welcoming and accepting is that the world - including this movement in the Boy Scouts - wants us to AFFIRM their passion and treat it as a normal and fine thing. I'm even having deja vu about having said this to you before. Surely you understand this difference??

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I'm not sure what position you think the BSA has actually taken here. I have seen no affirmation of gay sex.

What you seem to dislike is the notion that you can be okay with being a homosexual. Well, here I flat out disagree with you. What you are advocating, then, is abusive and pathological.

This is condescending to homosexuals but I'll use it anyway for the purposes of this conversation: When you teach a teenager about masturbation, you don't tell them that their sexuality is totally depraved for having the disposition to do that sort of thing. You don't tell them that there is nothing good there whatsoever in that dynamic movement of the human person. What you do is tell them that to act out on certain behaviors is a misuse and abuse of what is fundamentally good.

The disposition that often sublimates itself in homosexual acts, though it is different from a heterosexual, is not by necessity evil and totally wrong. We can acknowledge that that same disposition, when redeemed just like our fallen heterosexual disposition, can contribute to the Church and to society in a way that is perhaps distinct or unique. Perhaps the particular way that redeemed eros shines through in a person like this will lead one to act positively in a way that they otherwise would not.

For example some of our venerated saints were homosexual, weren't they? Even if we don't know their names it is only sensible that this would be the case. Fr. Hopko mentions St. Symeon as having had "unnatural" passions in his youth, and he may have been one of those people. What if his disposition, when redeemed, allowed him to write his beautiful poetry to God in a unique way? We can't know for sure, but it's possible.

So to say that the entire disposition is just 100% corrupt and sinful as it deviates from fallen heterosexuality... I don't think you can say that. I think that's sort of a reductionist and small minded way of thinking that in a sense even denies the full salvific power of God to bring good out of everything.

In short, telling people they can be okay with themselves and their homosexual dispositions, insofar as they have that disposition and will deal with it the rest of their lives to their salvation or destruction, is not the same as advocating gay sex. The former does imply the latter. It does not.

And I would rather live in a society where some fall into sins out of ignorance or poor instruction because the Christians were not ham-fisted, unmerciful and dishonest enough in their condemnations, than one where Christians crucify Christ again by driving pariahs into total destruction... because at least in the former world there are still Christians. Ideally we would be right in the middle where everything is balanced so that nobody sins and nobody is condemned, but that's fantasy until the end of the Age.

I am an American Orthodox Christian, and I will see eleven guilty men go free before I see one innocent man falsely condemned. The tzars of this Age can make of that what they will.

Cappadocious said:

I'm not sure what position you think the BSA has actually taken here. I have seen no affirmation of gay sex.

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If people would actually read what the Boy Scouts have written about their changes to rules allowing homosexuals to be members, they would find that BSA has made it clear that chastity is required of all members regardless of sexual orientation. They simply are not going to exclude children who are gay.

I think you guys think I am speaking Chinese or something.

No one, least of all me, is suggesting that they are going to start teaching sexual acts. When I say "affirm", I mean, to teach and insist that children can "be gay" and furthermore, that this is a normal and wholesome state, something no Orthodox Christian may accept.

That you yourselves speak of "being gay" despite all efforts to show you that the very expression "be gay" is a falsehood that no Orthodox Christian should use, has resulted in accepting a lot of the advancement of the propaganda in general.
It is the number one reason why we are at this pass today. All moral evils accepted by the public begin with a change in language. California has gone insane in giving driver's licences to illegal aliens - but not before changing the true "illegal aliens" to the deceptive euphemism "undocumented workers". The use of the false language of the world enables the falsehood it advocates to reach even into the Church and deceive and confuse Christians, as we have seen in nearly every Christian denomination regarding sodomy and the idea that there is a natural and normal state called "being gay".

Be that as it may, the persecution of the Christian view - that sodomic desires are an abomination that need to be rejected - has only begun, as business owners and operaters have already learned to their cost. Do you guys know nothing of this?

And to Capp, very specifically, you are mixing and matching two different situations. It is fine to talk about what homosexuals in the Church should strive for, but that will never come on the table in the BSA. You will even be punished for trying to talk about "redeeming" one's fallen state in that organization. Your fine speech is entirely relevant to how to address people who have come to the Church and say "What must I do to be saved?", but not at all relevant to what is going on inside a secular organization that proposes to teach our children a number of things, which ALWAYS involves an attitude toward those things. And one of those things is that there is nothing to redeem. The very idea that children "are gay" is insanity. An eight year old has no "orientation" (can I have an orientation towards animals or young children?), another falsehood demonstrated by applying it to other evils.

I am NOT saying we should call for the execution of homosexuals, or that we should teach children to hate and deride. Indeed part of the problem is in the word "homosexual" itself, a euphemism coined circa 1892, changing an admitted moral evil into a mere medical problem (which ceased to be considered even a medical problem in 1973). The Church has known about this problem for two thousand years. The modern world has nothing to teach the Church. And where is the Church father, the authority in all of its history that EVER spoke of "being "gay"?
So you see, this language is of the world, not the Church. The Church in its history speaks correctly about this issue. WE do not.

I consider preteens and teenagers to be children, so yes, a child can have a sexual orientation.

I keep hearing "sodomic desires" over and over. I swear that is going to end up being the title of a gay porn film. Scary stuff, mates!

I often wonder why "Gomorrah" doesn't ever get any love?

rusmeister said:

When I say "affirm", I mean, to teach and insist that children can "be gay"

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Manufactured controversy is the domain of fundamentalist evangelicals. Let's not throw our hat in that ring.

rusmeister said:

and furthermore, that this is a normal and wholesome state

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"Normal" as pertains to what? This is a fallen world. Nothing that's normal is what it is. That's sort of the point. As for "wholesome", I don't even know what that means vis a vis sexual orientation.

rusmeister said:

That you yourselves speak of "being gay" despite all efforts to show you that the very expression "be gay" is a falsehood that no Orthodox Christian should use

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To deny the obvious reality that there are homosexuals whose disposition is wrapped up in their existence in this age, and perhaps in some redeemed sense in eternity, is false witness, and thus a sin.

rusmeister said:

All moral evils accepted by the public begin with a change in language. California has gone insane in giving driver's licences to illegal aliens - but not before changing the true "illegal aliens" to the deceptive euphemism "undocumented workers".

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Falsehood = Slightly left of Center pet issues
Truth = Slightly right of Center pet issues

rusmeister said:

Be that as it may, the persecution of the Christian view

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Blasphemy against the martyrs, IMO.

rusmeister said:

- that sodomic desires are an abomination that need to be rejected

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Nothing from the BSA statements advocate that people indulge such sexual desires.

rusmeister said:

- has only begun, as business owners and operaters have already learned to their cost. Do you guys know nothing of this?

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I think what is happening is that a lot of the absurdity and hestia worship that goes on in the wedding industry is being rooted out and exposed.

rusmeister said:

but that will never come on the table in the BSA.

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I don't think Orthodox Christians should be in the BSA regardless, though I don't fault the kids who are members. That's my opinion. The fact that they let gays join and will not teach them that being gay is anything at all is fine with me, because it's, at best, a little vague club, and little vague clubs shouldn't be trying to teach any Christian anthropology to our kids.

rusmeister said:

for trying to talk about "redeeming" one's fallen state in that organization.

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If any leadership is talking about more than how to whittle, and basic interpersonal decency, pull the kids out.

rusmeister said:

Your fine speech is entirely relevant to how to address people who have come to the Church and say "What must I do to be saved?", but not at all relevant to what is going on inside a secular organization

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So it's a secular organization now? Good.

rusmeister said:

that proposes to teach our children a number of things, which ALWAYS involves an attitude toward those things. And one of those things is that there is nothing to redeem.

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Where is that proposal?

rusmeister said:

An eight year old has no "orientation"

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I was eight once, and that's not how I remember it.

It's funny timing, but my wife and I have been talking about possibly signing up our eldest for Cub Scouts. My son would really love it. I did as a kid. We never talked about sex or gender roles or intercourse or gays. I can't really picture that happening much in my area anyway. This area is more Republican than Republican. Tea Party Headquarters, USA.

Why if people are so upset about this gay thing (aka people with intense sodomic desires ) don't they create their own scouts alternative a la Royal Rangers (Assemblies of God) kind of thing?

I think my son would enjoy the experience and I can't see sex really coming into it.

gurneyhalleck1 said:

It's funny timing, but my wife and I have been talking about possibly signing up our eldest for Cub Scouts. My son would really love it. I did as a kid. We never talked about sex or gender roles or intercourse or gays. I can't really picture that happening much in my area anyway. This area is more Republican than Republican. Tea Party Headquarters, USA.

Why if people are so upset about this gay thing (aka people with intense sodomic desires ) don't they create their own scouts alternative a la Royal Rangers (Assemblies of God) kind of thing?

I think my son would enjoy the experience and I can't see sex really coming into it.

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It is hard to see how it would come up.

If there was someone - a leader or a member - who for some reason at some point identified as gay, I expect you do what you do in all other parts of life - mind your own business and get down to the task at hand.

Shieldmaiden4Christ said:

I consider preteens and teenagers to be children, so yes, a child can have a sexual orientation.

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Well, the term did not exist twenty-five years ago, S4C. Explain that.
It's quite simple, really. The massive movement to justify and prettify something that is a desire gone HORRIFICALLY wrong began by introducing such language that DID. NOT. EXIST. The language was NEVER part of the Church's teaching. You must understand that the language is of the world and is aimed at deceit. The language of the Church is of God and expresses truth.

In any event, that you think this is evidence enough that the issue will certainly be raised, if not in your immediate scout troup, then in neighboring ones. If other people think this so, and I know they do, then it MUST become an issue sooner or later. Regional branches will certainly issue directives ordering suppression of Christian understanding of the desire and the act.

To MK and Gurney - that you can't see it coming I find simply amazing.

Whatever. I tried to warn you.

Rus, if you lived where I do, in Tea Party, USA, honestly do you think my kids are going to be attending a cub scouts meeting with a kid who is spreading gay propaganda? They allow homosexual kids to play basketball and enroll in karate, but should I keep my kid out of basketball, karate, my daughter out of dance and everything for fear that there might be a gay kid in there? At this point, I could care less if there's a gay kid with sodomic desires P). And if you only knew my neck of the woods, you sure as shootin' won't have a den leader playing "Tiny Dancer" in the background talking the gay lifestyle! I think you would disagree with plenty of my parenting choices, and I likely would disagree with a few of yours. I guess we just have to sit back and ask how our kids are turning out so far? If they're coming out ok and walking the path and loving Christ and knowing good from evil, we're doing ok.

I still say "Sodomic Desires" has to be in the gay porn section of most video stores!

rusmeister said:

To MK and Gurney - that you can't see it coming I find simply amazing.

Whatever. I tried to warn you.

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inconsequential said:

There ARE alternatives in this area but I'd almost rather go with BSA and deal with that than have him come home from a camp out telling me they tried to get him "saved" and told him not to "worship" Mary.

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In some places, that has happened....

rusmeister said:

To MK and Gurney - that you can't see it coming I find simply amazing.

Whatever. I tried to warn you.

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There are homosexuals all over the place, including places my kids go.

Music lessons, drama camp, swimming lessons, probably at friend's homes, the family reunion, my husband's work barbeque. Some of these people are pretty quiet about it, and it doesn't come up at kid's classes and such. It could at events though, if these people bring their significant others with them.

The vast majority of organizations and social groups have no prohibition against homosexuals of any sort participating and taking part.

My kids take piano lessons in a class with an international organization. It would be beyond bizarre for them to have a policy on homosexual teachers or students. The fact that American scouts had one is rather suggestive, really, given their history of fundamentalist, individualistic marriages of the radical reformation and calvinism. And it sure isn't suggestive of any kind of catholic Christian response.

If it's drama, art, music, etc. doesn't the teacher have to be gay?

MKJ said:

There are homosexuals all over the place, including places my kids go.

Music lessons, drama camp, swimming lessons, probably at friend's homes, the family reunion, my husband's work barbeque. Some of these people are pretty quiet about it, and it doesn't come up at kid's classes and such. It could at events though, if these people bring their significant others with them.

The vast majority of organizations and social groups have no prohibition against homosexuals of any sort participating and taking part.

My kids take piano lessons in a class with an international organization. It would be beyond bizarre for them to have a policy on homosexual teachers or students. The fact that American scouts had one is rather suggestive, really, given their history of fundamentalist, individualistic marriages of the radical reformation and calvinism. And it sure isn't suggestive of any kind of catholic Christian response.

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gurneyhalleck1 said:

If it's drama, art, music, etc. doesn't the teacher have to be gay?

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Well, I know the director of one theatre camp my daughter went to was gay, because he is a buddy of my dad's. And my daughters piano teacher is a married head of music ministry in a church. Other than that I have no idea.

gurneyhalleck1 said:

If it's drama, art, music, etc. doesn't the teacher have to be gay?

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I hope not, my mom is an art teacher....

ArmyMatt said:

I hope not, my mom is an art teacher....

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My mom's an art teacher, too!

Although I think he meant men who have those occupations.