Hey Beanie - good to hear from you. I wasn't implying that one takes a feminine role and the other the masculine.
I was asking how Christian homosexuals interpret and apply Ephesians - since it specifically states "husbands" and "wives." Sorry if that wasn't clear.
You weren't following what I said.
When I said, "We don't have to choose (who is the woman and who is the man)", I mean that we don't have to choose gender roles. One of us doesn't have to be expected to earn money, and the other expected to do all the cleaning. One doesn't have the last word just because of his sex organs. It is much more of a partnership.
Heterosexuals have asked me, "well, does he bring you flowers, or..do you bring him flowers? Who leads when you dance???" Heterosexuals have been programmed to follow their roles to the T. Boys don't cry, girls shouldn't be strong or like sports. Boys like blue, girls like pink. So, when suddenly the see two men together, they can't understand how their societal roles compute. Who leads? Whomever wants to. There is even an amazing scene in The Man of My Dreams where two men dance the Tango, changing the leader roles. But for heterosexual men, who criticize each other by calling them a "woman", this is degrading, because they see being a woman degrading itself. When you suggest that that gay men define their own roles, and can dance, sing, and decorate, or go play on a softball team, who is not expected to play a role, but allowed to be themselves and create their own roles, and even change them, it's like watching a movie where a robot is allowed to think for the first time in his life, and it frightens him.
In heterosexual relationships, often, the man will think "women's work" beneath him, and barely lift a finger to help his wife. Sometimes, the woman will look to Ephesians (if this is what you are referring to, where women are to submit to their husbands), and unable to make a decision on their own. However, more and more, men and women are making their marriages equal, a balance of work from both, support from both, child rearing from both, and coming to agreements when making decisions together, rather than one of dominant and submissive roles from archaic verses that found nothing disturbing about seeing their wife as property to be owned, and not a spirit to be honored.
Christians don't make burnt sacrifices, nor annoint their guests' heads with oil, or offer to bathe their feet when they come for dinner, and allow women to speak in church despite the command for them to keep silent, so I've never quite understood how one can look to this kind of passage, and then think it specifically applicable to modern day life. In a time that had no concept of homosexuality, but rather understood homosexual acts the same as a man having a 3 way - not an orientation, but an act, and a concept that we hadn't even come to grips with until that last 40 years or so, it would be foolish for me to think the bible would speak same-sex loving marriages the same way it would be for me to think that the bible speaks Civil Rights. It speaks of slavery, of how to treat your slaves, but most people believe slavery to be an immoral institution, and no one in the US would condone it, despite its mention in the bible.
One shouldn't foolishly read the bible, and obey it blindly and create their own restrictions, and in so, go backward in their spiritual evolution to the beliefs, understandings, superstitions, and morality of a people that lived 2000 years ago. As with the issue of slavery, one simply needs to weigh it against culture of the time, understanding of the time, and modern day common sense, to understand what is moving forward, and what is m moving back. In terms of unions, men and women enter into marriage as two equals, unlike the bible, and such is the same for two people of the same sex, one would assume, because the idea of women being lower than, the double standard that grants men promiscuity while condemning it in women, etc., was never created by gay men, because they don't have the need to control women as heterosexual men do. But, we have hope for them.
