“All persons have the right and responsibility to lead sexual lives that express love, justice, mutuality, commitment, consent, and pleasure.”

As my mom would have said, “We’re not put in this life here for our own pleasure.”

“Theological reflection that integrates the wisdom of excluded, often silenced peoples, and insights about sexuality from medicine, social science, the arts and humanities.”

Wisdom? WISDOM?

WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot!!!!!!!

Hey, TLM, the minute you hear “theological reflection” you have to be prepared for nonsense to follow.

Of course this is the logical end of the process which begins with ditching the “one man, one woman” standard — beginning with easy divorce and remarriage, and so on down the line.

Not only is this drivel, it’s not even original drivel. It’s just recycled 1960s crap. Anybody remember Joseph Fletcher(of EDS, where else?)& “Situation Ethics”? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, indeed.

Dr. Sue, just about everything from the left is recycled 1960s crap, which might explain after more than 40 years of it most people seem to have finally had enough.

There’s a serious disconnect here:

“All persons have the right and responsibility to lead sexual lives that express love, justice, mutuality, commitment, consent, and pleasure.”

Those two properties – commitment and pleasure – are often at odds with one another. At least, unless one considers a “one-nighter” to be commitment of some kind – as in “I’m loyal to you forever, dear – or at least until tomorrow morning.” It’s this need to allow for any and all sexual activities that makes elimination of all Biblical morality a necessity for revisionists.

“It calls for sexual relationships to be consensual, non-exploitative, honest, pleasurable and protected” is a classic example. Note that there’s no consideration for anyone other than those hopping in bed; so it’s OK for you to have sex with your neighbor’s wife so long as she says yes, isn’t exploited, and you wear a condom. What your neighbor thinks about the matter isn’t significant; and as to God’s take on the matter – well, humans have pretty well defined what God thinks, with TEC leading the way.

What a load of scheiss.

Hey, they included “bodily condition” so y’know, just because I look like the back of a bus, that’s no reason to deny my right to emotional and sexual fulfilment too!

I’ll be waiting over here, flipping a coin to decide between George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Ah, heck, why be so petty-minded and exclusive? C’mon the pair of ye, lads!

Yeah. Nice notion, but it’ll hit up pretty fast against reality.

And Christopher – Adulterous-American community? Tsk, tsk, tsk, my brother! How outmoded and redolent of judgementalism of a bygone day! No, for too long our brothers and sisters of the Companionate Intimacy Dispersal inclination have suffered under society’s condemnation for perfectly natural impulses. Labels from the past have no place in a twenty-first century faith community

“Bishop Michael Ingham” of Vancouver was all over this a few years ago. http://www.anglican.ca/faith/ethics/wmc/ingham.htm

Living in a Roman-occupied state, Jesus was fully aware of this sort of sexual ethic as an option. Think of the marketing appeal – Jesus heals the sick, calms the storm, and tells everybody that from now on sexual relationships are to be consensual, non-exploitative, honest, pleasurable and protected, whether inside or outside of a covenanted relationship. That would have been a big seller.

But no, Jesus is the one who says “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has committed adultery in his heart.” He’s the one who tells the woman at the well “go and sin no more.”

Time will tell where Gene Robinson and Ed Bacon and Michael Ingham end up. As for me and my family, we will follow the Lord.

So many idiots, so little time. And for gosh sake do they have to blather on and on and on. Sheesh keep it simple you maroons.

We want the right to whore around, we believe God blesses our desire to whore around. We want an end to any secular or religious policy that inteferes with that desire. We want the means to make this possible readily available and we want the means to clean up any consequences readily available.

SKANKS FOR JESUS UNITE!!! WE WORSHIP OUR LIBIDO AND SO SHOULD YOU!!!

Beyond the obvious, what does that attitude do the the metaphor of Christ and the Church as bridegroom and bride?

Fuinseoig, I think Matt Kennedy referred to it as “Expansive Love” in a recent blog.

Ah, yes, the Episcopal Church, where liturgical dance usually requires a sturdy brass pole.

Little Myrmidon, “Expansive Love” is indeed a very good term, especially for those of us built for comfort, not for speed

goddessoftheclassroom, that old guy in Rome had a word or two on this in his “Deus Caritas Est”:

“The Prophets, particularly Hosea and Ezekiel, described God’s passion for his people using boldly erotic images. God’s relationship with Israel is described using the metaphors of betrothal and marriage; idolatry is thus adultery and prostitution. Here we find a specific reference—as we have seen—to the fertility cults and their abuse of eros, but also a description of the relationship of fidelity between Israel and her God. The history of the love-relationship between God and Israel consists, at the deepest level, in the fact that he gives her the Torah, thereby opening Israel’s eyes to man’s true nature and showing her the path leading to true humanism. It consists in the fact that man, through a life of fidelity to the one God, comes to experience himself as loved by God, and discovers joy in truth and in righteousness — a joy in God which becomes his essential happiness: “Whom do I have in heaven but you? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides you … for me it is good to be near God” (Ps 73 [72]:25, 28).

10. We have seen that God’s eros for man is also totally agape. This is not only because it is bestowed in a completely gratuitous manner, without any previous merit, but also because it is love which forgives. Hosea above all shows us that this agape dimension of God’s love for man goes far beyond the aspect of gratuity. Israel has committed “adultery” and has broken the covenant; God should judge and repudiate her. It is precisely at this point that God is revealed to be God and not man: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel! … My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst” (Hos 11:8-9). God’s passionate love for his people—for humanity—is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice. Here Christians can see a dim prefigurement of the mystery of the Cross: so great is God’s love for man that by becoming man he follows him even into death, and so reconciles justice and love.

The philosophical dimension to be noted in this biblical vision, and its importance from the standpoint of the history of religions, lies in the fact that on the one hand we find ourselves before a strictly metaphysical image of God: God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal principle of creation — the Logos, primordial reason — is at the same time a lover with all the passion of a true love. Eros is thus supremely ennobled, yet at the same time it is so purified as to become one with agape. We can thus see how the reception of the Song of Songs in the canon of sacred Scripture was soon explained by the idea that these love songs ultimately describe God’s relation to man and man’s relation to God. Thus the Song of Songs became, both in Christian and Jewish literature, a source of mystical knowledge and experience, an expression of the essence of biblical faith: that man can indeed enter into union with God—his primordial aspiration. But this union is no mere fusion, a sinking in the nameless ocean of the Divine; it is a unity which creates love, a unity in which both God and man remain themselves and yet become fully one. As Saint Paul says: “He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:17).

11. The first novelty of biblical faith consists, as we have seen, in its image of God. The second, essentially connected to this, is found in the image of man. The biblical account of creation speaks of the solitude of Adam, the first man, and God’s decision to give him a helper. Of all other creatures, not one is capable of being the helper that man needs, even though he has assigned a name to all the wild beasts and birds and thus made them fully a part of his life. So God forms woman from the rib of man. Now Adam finds the helper that he needed: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). Here one might detect hints of ideas that are also found, for example, in the myth mentioned by Plato, according to which man was originally spherical, because he was complete in himself and self-sufficient. But as a punishment for pride, he was split in two by Zeus, so that now he longs for his other half, striving with all his being to possess it and thus regain his integrity.[8] While the biblical narrative does not speak of punishment, the idea is certainly present that man is somehow incomplete, driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole, the idea that only in communion with the opposite sex can he become “complete”. The biblical account thus concludes with a prophecy about Adam: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).

Two aspects of this are important. First, eros is somehow rooted in man’s very nature; Adam is a seeker, who “abandons his mother and father” in order to find woman; only together do the two represent complete humanity and become “one flesh”. The second aspect is equally important. From the standpoint of creation, eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfil its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God’s way of loving becomes the measure of human love. This close connection between eros and marriage in the Bible has practically no equivalent in extra-biblical literature.”

There is a bright side to this. Usually such folks are not interested in reproducing and their drivel dies with them. Less likely to be indoctrinating a younger generation, tho they want to spread it to *your* and *my* children. They need to be dealt with like any would-be molester. I think I’d encourage vasectomy or tubal ligation whenever this line of thought arises.

The new sexual ethics say you must seek out all that is pleasurable to you And then they wonder why divorce rates are so high.
Art+

“We, the undersigned, invite our colleagues and faith communities to join us in promoting sexual immorality”

There, fixed it for ya!

art: Well obviously people just shouldn’t get married in this brave new sexually available world.

Ugh

So, just out of curiosity…is there anywhere in this screed where she mentions, er, children? Perhaps they are included obliquely in the reference to contraception and abortion, but does she actually utter the C word anywhere?

You’d really think there was absolutely no connection between sex and babies. Simply amazing. Send this woman back to 7th-grade Health Class.

Sorry, bob.

Although these people won’t reproduce themselves, they love to teach in public schools in order to indoctrinate children.

They also insist on the right to adopt.

It’s the ‘MY will be done’ religion.

These people need to get a kung-fu grip, man.

I thought this “endorser” rather interesting:

The Rt. Rev. Charles E. Bennison, Jr., Bishop, Episcopal Diocese of PA

Well, gee, I dunno. On the one hand, the woman is obviously nuts, as are her cohorts, and they seem to think that having re-discovered paganism and the practices of various Gnostic sexual cults from the 1st Century A.D. they are really being very “with it.” Sorry, folks, Baal has seen all this before. Got any other “new” ideas? BUT, on the OTHER hand, the proposal that sexual activities not be restricted due to, among other things, “age” and “bodily condition” sorta caught my eye. I mean, at my age, well, I’m just sayin’……

Is the Rev Debra Haffner related to Rev. Hugh Heffner of the Church of Playboy? What she is advancing is a retake on the “Playboy Philosophy”. It is always striking in ythe sens of stopping in your path when so called leaders of the “womyn’s movement” preach a way of life which is the antithesis of women’s natural instinct towards commitment, faithfulness and modesty.

“Our culture needs a sexual ethic focused on personal relationships and social justice rather than particular sexual acts”…the way a fish needs a bicycle.

(Btw, the “social justice” bit leads me to posit the next wrinkle in this fabric of perversion: isn’t it the ultimate act of judgemental, unloving, social injustice to say “no” to someone who’s in need of your body? You know, bring them out so that we may know them, and all that? Nah…that’s just slippery-slope talk.)

“Theological reflection that integrates the wisdom of excluded, often silenced peoples, and insights about sexuality from medicine, social science, the arts and humanities.”

Maybe I’m not up on all the latest ‘theology’, but what do ‘excluded, often silenced peoples’ have anything to do with this?

I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it.

It is very plain what this female so-called ‘reverend’ reveres and values most.

When you hear someone say, ‘we are sexual beings,’ you can be sure that person is a baal worshipper.

They have drunk the kool-aid.

No need to look or dialogue any further.

They have laid their heart/mind/soul wide open.

Translation:

‘We are sexual beings’ is code for ‘nothing and noone had better get between me and my next o—-m.’

Is that phrase a Spongism?

When I was quite young, I heard a sermon that holds up well: The New Morality is Simply the Old Immorality.

Bovina Bloviator has a good one for us today:

“Dr. Sue, just about everything from the left is recycled 1960s crap, which might explain after more than 40 years of it most people seem to have finally had enough.”

So all these bad vestments are really LSD flashbacks?!!!

Our priest, and I’ve heard it in other venues since, told us that a large number of the left were in seminary as a way to avoid Vietnam. Their calling wasn’t by God, but avoidance.

Ah, I read Fletcher in high school. I wasn’t convinced then (too much Bible and Christian ethics and morality teaching in my family) and I am certainly not convinced now. Fletcher was at least presuming a background where some sort of respect for the other was minimally involved, I think. He got it wrong. This lassie does as well.

Thou shalt not………….because it wrecks human life which is to be centred in the Life of the Trinity not one’s genitals. Apparently that is a very, very dificult proposition. So much easier to luv ‘em and leave ‘em.

I must note that it shows not the least appreciation of basic biology which I shall make simply as I can: sexual intercourse leads to dirty diapers. You may colloquialize at will and with whatever cultural lowest common denominator works for you. it probably will take that to break through this corinthianized load of “ethical” feces.

This Heffner is another fine example of Episcopal seminary professors who formed the likes of KJS and Ragsdale.

She is now retired and not a moment too soon.

Well, if everybody has a RIGHT to sexual pleasure, what happens when someone has sex &, um, it isn’t so good. Have his/her rights been violated?

Anonymous Anglican,
A number of years ago, I read an op/ed piece by the late James Mitchener.
In it he opined that the quality of teachers in the American school system went down hill for simular reasons. Lot of draft age men went into teaching to avoid service in Nam. Makes sense. Draft dodgers/avoiders are hardly the ones to be teaching our young.

Justice is now defined as “being able to do as i like without guilt or other bad consequences”? Seems i’ve heard that before…

” Lot of draft age men went into teaching to avoid service in Nam. Makes sense. Draft dodgers/avoiders are hardly the ones to be teaching our young.”

Makes sense.In “Tunnel in the Sky”, Heinlein posited a society in which only those who had served in either the military or a public sector service job (Vista, Peace Corps) were allowed to vote and hold teaching posotions.

Fat chance of that ever happening.

sure wish these jackasses would quit using the words “we” when they really are speaking about themselves and/or their degenerate friends.

I’m wondering along with SouthCoast, what does ‘social justice’ have to do with this? Although I’m more open to other theories. Her mind may have been on autopilot and that phrase got thrown in at random.

Yes, Sinner, isn’t it odd? Lovecraft was a materialistic atheist, yet he still had a sense of morality that he tried to pass off as horror. Perhaps GC12 will deconstruct Arthur Jermyn and use it as the basis in order to expand the boundaries of inclusive love still further.

A faith-based commitment to sexual and reproductive rights, including access to voluntary contraception, abortion, and HIV/STD prevention and treatment.

I thought abortion was a health-of-the-mother issue. if it’s a health issue, it’s completely out of place in this list of demands. Have they stopped pretending that abortion is anything other than retroactive contraception?

[...] off her recent Greek Broad Who Married A Rich Homosexual Post article referred to in the post below, the Rev. Debra Haffner brings her Gittin’ Sahm crusade to the Methodists.  To start [...]

Well, I was shielded from the ’60s by natural shyness and protective parents. I attended college in the 70s, where I noticed that genuinely hot people never talked like this.

I wonder why?