Cannot see it is morally worse

An act which expresses true affection between two individuals and gives pleasure to them both, does not seem to us to be sinful by reason alone of the fact that it is homosexual.
…
Surely it is the nature and quality of a relationship that matters: one must not judge it by its outward appearance but by its inner worth. Homosexual affection can be as selfless as heterosexual affection, and therefore we cannot see that it is in some way morally worse.

These excerpts are from the book Towards a Quaker View of Sex published by the Quakers in Britain in 1963.

Back in 1957 the Quakers gathered 11 authors, psychiatrist, psychologists, and teachers to examine the issues of homosexuality. At least one member of the group was bisexual and knew the stigma associated with being gay. To understand gay relationships they studied what makes up good and bad relationships. Once they had that they saw that gay relationships were no different from straight ones. Their conclusion was astonishing for the time. Alas, a lot of Christian denominations still don't see it 50 years later.



Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin takes a look at the Russian Olympics situation. He has noticed a lot of our allies are Talking Sternly and Raising Concerns. But in seeing Russian intransigence they mutter that conflict is bad and we gay people should just shut up and be invisible. We have a grand international party coming up (which will generate lots of money for our sponsors) and we don't want you to mess it up. We've got athletes to glorify. But we raised the issue! Maybe we should get a medal for being On Your Side. Kincaid is not impressed.



I wrote a while back that Russian gays were pointing out gay Russians have contributed to society throughout history. That prompted the government to take care of that little problem. The culture minister Vladimir Medinksy declared there is no evidence that Piotr Tchaikovsky was gay. None. He wasn't "anything other than a lonely man who failed to find a suitable woman to marry."

As one commenter says, does this mean I can be gay my whole life and after I'm dead a friend can declare me not gay and I get into heaven anyway?



There is a new bill in Congress with the title of Marriage and Religious Freedom Act. One provision would prohibit the gov't from discrimination against individuals and institutions that insist that marriage is one man-one woman. Timothy Kincaid says that's fine. But another provision says the gov't can't:

Deny or exclude a person from receiving any federal grant, contract, loan, license, certification, accreditation, employment, or other similar position or status

if they don't like gays getting married.

Which means: A clerk at Social Security could refuse paperwork for a gay couple. An IRS auditor could take a gay couple's joint return and declare it fraudulent. A customs official could decide your spouse isn't really your spouse and deny entry. The list is long.

Kincaid responds that a companion bill is needed. If you want Southern Baptists florists to be able to refuse service to gay couples you need to allow gay florists to refuse service to Southern Baptists.