A new category. (Letters).

Dear editor,

I read Bishop Terry Brown's letter with sadness. How do such similar life experiences end up in such different places? I am a Christian gay man yet I could not find myself included in any of Bishop Brown's categories of people.

I do not believe I fit into the category of those who condemn him or who universalize their personal experience and want to impose it on all humanity yet I do believe in truth. I cannot be included with those who simply dismiss his experience because I do not dismiss his experience anymore than I dismiss my own very similar experience. I don't fit among those who have a problem with bodily intimacy because I do not. I miss the touch of a man. Certainly I am not among those who have physical intimacy in marriage and yet deny it to others. I am not married and am doing my best to live a single and celibate life. Please don't include me among those who have a problem with the lack of potential for procreation. Nor do I fit into the category of those who believe that previous knowledge and present church doctrine can be refuted by a quick and easy discussion of law versus grace. So, where do I fit in?

I think Bishop Brown has missed a category. I propose that we create a new category.

Can I have a category for those same-sex attracted men, and I know many, who believe that God has called them to live chastely and believe that God gives them the grace to do just that? Can this category include those who believe that God calls us all to obedience irrespective of our emotion? Can the people in this category be known as those who have had very similar experiences to Bishop Brown yet decided that the experience of human love does not negate the boundaries that God has placed on that love? Can we in this category be known as those who believe that God loves them so much that he doesn't always give them what they desire, no matter how strongly that is felt, but rather gives them that which love dictates, that which is best for them?

Can this category include the gay Christian man who believes that the Bible is God's word and that it is true as it ever was? Can we in this category inform ourselves by reading the gay affirmative theological works as well as the past and current works that support the traditional interpretations?

Can we in this category be those who believe that experience and love are vital determinants of human behaviour but not the only ones?

Can we assume that love and experience can't be the only determinants of moral truth because if they are then all adult loving sexual relationships are approved including any combination or number of adult family and friends imaginable? Can we surmise that if love and experience are the only determinants of the appropriateness of relationships then such words as promiscuity cease to even exist since we no longer have a standard to define them? Can we believe that when each individual's personal impression of love and experience define those terms then there is simply no longer any right or wrong except what any one person feels?

David Colpitts

Toronto