Literally.  Via Box Turtle Bulletin…  A Christian writer who takes his anti-gay bible passages seriously, actually notices the elephant in the room…

Another thing about the homosexual/Christian “issue” is that it seems to me that we Christians should be clear on the fact that asserting homosexuals should stop acting homosexual necessarily means asserting that they should spend their lives never knowing the loving intimacy with another that straight people enjoy and know to be the best and richest experience in life.

If I were gay, and I lived and behaved in the way most Christians (understandably!) defend as biblical, I would live alone. I wouldn’t wake up every morning next to my wife. I’d never hold hands with my wife. I’d never kiss my wife. I’d never cuddle with my wife. I’d not know the profound pleasure of every day growing older with my wife. Remaining as sinless as possible would, for me, mean never knowing love of the sort that all straight people, Christian or not, understand as pretty much the best thing life has to offer.

Again: I’m not saying that it’s manifestly absurd and even cruel to suggest that everyone within a broad swath of our population spend their lives in emotional and physical isolation. I believe in the tenets of Christianity as ferociously as any Christian in the world. All I’m saying is that, as far as I can tell, we Christians (insofar as we ever speak with one voice) are saying that it is morally incumbent upon homosexuals to spend their lives in emotional and physical isolation. I hear a lot of Christians asserting that gays and lesbians should stop acting like gays and lesbians. But I never hear anyone saying the unavoidable follow-up to that — saying what that really means — which is that gay and lesbian men and women should spend their lives never experiencing what people most commonly mean when they use the word “love.”

This is what I’ve been waiting to see…someone who believes the bible categorically forbids same sex relationships admit what that really means to gay people.  Not babble that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.  Not witlessly deny that there is ever any fulfilling, romantic, body and soul and spirit component to same sex relationships.  But honestly and seriously look at what denying intimate romantic love to gay people does to their lives, to their inner lives, to their heart and soul.  To our spirit.

Someone who is at least willing to both see human beings when they look at us, and honestly acknowledge the hell we are being put through for the sake of these biblical passages, can be talked with. 

52. Bruce Garrett – April 16, 2008

Thank you Mr. Shore. I’ve been waiting for literally decades to see a Christian writer make this connection. Usually it’s just quickly glossed over. I think the reason why is pretty obvious.

When my mom passed away a few years ago, I inherited her diaries. We never discussed my sexual orientation…it was a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell household. I was, like her, raised a Baptist, and the time of my coming of age coincided, not coincidentally, with the period of my leaving the faith. What I expected to read in her diaries from that time was grief over my slow but steady walk away from our church. But no. Grief there was, but it was almost exclusively over how the bright and cheerful son she once had turned into a moody, sullen, angry young man. It makes me cry to read those entries.

When you take the possibility of love away from someone…what do they have left? Think about that, the next time you see an angry homosexual.

53. John Shore – April 16, 2008

Bruce: Perfectly said. Just … perfect. And what a touching, heart-wrenching story.

Liberal Christians like Fred Clark have never had any trouble acknowledging the spiritual potential of same sex love.  But they’re not generally biblical literalists.  Hopefully I’ll see more of this from those in the coming years.  The people who don’t care and just don’t want to know have had the stage for far too long.