What does it take to shock respectable middle-aged men these days? Acts of public lewdness? Teenagers with rings in their noses? 50 Shades of Grey? The price of a haircut?
When the self-styled respectable men are ageing homosexuals – homosexuality being the new yardstick by which we are expected to judge “respectability” – all it takes is to be told they can’t share a bed in someone else’s house.
Michael Black and John Morgan are sensitive souls – you can tell from John’s tattoos – so to soothe their ruffled sensibilities, they sued the Christian B&B owners where they were refused – not rooms, but a double bed – to prevent others from suffering the same emotionally devastating discrimination.
In actual fact, it is quite apparent from this video that the pair has derived considerable satisfaction from the whole episode of being supposedly wronged, vindicated and financially rewarded, not to mention the profound enjoyment of imposing their belief system on a couple of hapless Christians.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, before Christian B&B owners are driven irretrievably out of business, characters like Black and Morgan and Preddy and Hall spend future vacations scouring England for B&Bs owned by Christians in order to demand a room in the hope of being refused. All in the name of banishing any vestigial remnants of what used to be called decency – now renamed inequality – from England’s green and increasingly unpleasant land.
“spend future vacations scouring England for B&Bs owned by Christians in order to demand a room in the hope of being refused.”
I do get your point, David. My parish got targeted in the same way, by gay couples wanting to be married (my priest was very prominent in the Essentials movement at the time). However – I really like Peter Ould’s view on how to manage a Christian B&B, which I think is much more likely to spread a postitive Gospel message than refusing a gay (or unmarried straight) couple a room. See the post here:
http://www.peter-ould.net/2010/03/26/how-i-would-manage-a-bb/
Really like the Chez Ould piece, Kate. Thanks.
I’ve just clicked on the “Our Genesis” link at the ANiC homepage. It takes one to a section almost entirely devoted to homosexuality. Please tell me this movement didn’t actually start because of people not being able to deal with homosexuality. This is too depressing for words. 🙁
The Anglican Network in Canada is dealing splendidly with the trivialization invading the world, Vincent.
Sorry that you can’t cope with disagreement over unnatural vice. Try to learn to tolerate ordinary people, at least in public.
Well, I posted because I was specifically told — after noticing that quite a number of posts here where in fact about homosexuality — that the ANiC is _not_ overly fascinated by homosexuality. And then I realise that the page entitled “Our Genesis” at the ANiC website is overwhelmingly about homosexuality. That seemed a little odd to me. I didn’t want to upset anyone.
http://anglicannetwork.ca/pdf/montreal_declaration_aec.pdf
Again, thank you. I read this through, and there is much I find lovely and right in this declaration. I note that the language is considerably more guarded and less dismissive than what one reads in this blogs and its comments, but that’s to be expected: this space is yours. The bits about sexual morality and the family, specific and pointed as they are when contrasted to the 13 preceding wider doctrinal articles, really call attention to themselves and might as well be headed “The actual reason we were moved to write this declaration”. Also, they’ll date the text pretty accurately. Enjoy your church. I wish you well.
I have no idea what this means, sorry.
Vincent, here’s a website dedicated to the issue of homosexuality that’s a far better resource than the link you’ve referenced. Hope this helps.
“What is central here is the notion of the homosexual’s unconscious self-pity. This strong habit is not willful, but autonomous. It propels “masochistic” behavior. The homosexual wish itself is embedded in this unconscious self-pity, as are his feelings of gender inferiority. This view harmonizes the notions and behavioral observations of Alfred Adler (1930; that inferiority complex and compensation wishes aim at “reparation” of inferiority), Austrian-American psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler (1957; homosexuality as “psychic masochism”), and Dutch psychiatrist Johan Arndt (1961; concept of compulsive self-pity).”
http://thetruthsetsyoufree.wordpress.com/homosexuality-an-overview/
Yes, thank you. 🙂 I know what homosexuality is. Not that this website, truth be told, is of any help, as it absolutely begs the question, in the actual sense of the phrase. I also know that regardless of what you or I may think of homosexuality, it has absolutely no negative impact on my heterosexual life, marriage and children. Focusing on it (and being told, elsewhere on this very site, that it is not a focal point of the ANiC — which seems a little disingenuous) seems intensely peculiar to me. To each his own.
It’s an extensive website, thoughtful and comprehensive in its approach to the issue. And it merits genuine consideration, not a cursory and dismissive once-over. Otherwise, someone might have the idea you’re being disingenuous. I know nothing about your life, Vincent … heterosexual, married with children or otherwise. The Anglican Network in Canada is not, as far as I know, concerned with your or any other egocentric perception of homosexuality, but with the larger enduring truths expressed in the Gospel. And, same-sex marriage could not be any more antithetical to Biblical teaching; as Dr Robert Gagnon writes, “Indeed, every narrative, law, proverb, exhortation, poetry, and metaphor in the pages of Scripture that has anything to do with sexual relations presupposes a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations and marriage.”
Larger enduring truths: with the best will in the world, that’s precisely my point. Seems to me the larger enduring truth in the Gospel is be nice. That’s basically on every page. Any strong opinion about homosexuality in the Gospel is pretty far down the list, surely? In any case, devotion to larger enduring truths inevitably lead to being less than kind to people who’ve done nothing wrong to you or yours. It inevitably leads to slammed doors, anger and peevish overvaluing of details at the expense of compassion. I don’t know. I don’t suppose we’ll see eye to eye today. That’s okay. I wish you well.
Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice. — Alexander Solzhenitsyn
There is a video by Kendall Harmon on Youtube that speaks to the issues comparing it to an iceberg – with homosexuality just being the part that shows while there are 7/8s underwater that do not show. These are the real issues, homosexuality is just the one that was the last straw. It is well worth seeing. Perhaps David would be kind enough to put up a link as he knows I am computer-challenged.
Here it is:
thanks David
This is excellent and puts forward the larger picture so often missed, or purposefully ignored. A terrible problem of “the homosexual wish … embedded in … unconscious self-pity” is that it is stuck in referencing nothing but itself. Advocates for the LGBTQQIA agenda, while claiming other people are obsessed with homosexuality, too often become single-minded hammers for whom the whole world looks like nothing so much as a gay-rights’ nail to pound.
In their defense, when a group gets told off for a long while because of a specific characteristic, that characteristic does start to define them a bit. And then they usually try to reclaim it. It’s hardly a phenomenon limited to gays.