Snapshot from the Anglican Kulturkrieg…

Canon says he would quit over gay bishop

A SENIOR clergyman has threatened to quit rather than work alongside the man who could become the UK’s first openly gay bishop because he says homosexual acts are “sinful and wrong”.

Canon Peter Jones said he would consider his position should the Dean of St Albans, Dr Jeffrey John, become the new Bishop of Bangor.

And just so you know he isn’t motivated by anything as sordid as mere hate…

Mr Jones, who is married to health visitor Susan and has two grown up children, added: “I’m not against homosexuals as people, but people who engage in homosexual acts or people who teach that such acts may be acceptable.

We don’t hate the person, only the act…  But if if an "act" is all you can see in the sexual intimacy between same sex couples, then you are beyond hating the person.  You don’t even see the person.  Hate has already done its work on you.  It has turned homosexual people into nothing.  It has taken loving same sex couples and turned them into strange two-legged beasts who merely copulate.  It has turned their love for each other into an act.  And now the enemy can no longer be just the act, but the meaning that underscores it. 

Dr John, 55, and his long-term partner the Rev Grant Holmes became civil partners in August 2006, but he claims to be celibate.

Celibate or not, they are a couple, and your enemy isn’t lust, it isn’t sex, it isn’t moral relativism.  The enemy now is love.  Which is why it has to be an act.  "…people who engage in homosexual acts or people who teach that such acts may be acceptable."  Acts.  Acts.  Acts.  Homosexual sex isn’t what offends you.  Homosexual sex isn’t what you are striking out at there.  You are not denying that sex is moral between same sex couples, but that love plays any role in their intimacy.  That’s why it has to be an act.  By calling it such, you are throwing a dagger at the hearts of loving same sex couples and hoping for blood.  You are trashing their garden.  You are spitting on their hearts, because the heart, not the sex, is what offends you. 

Hate has done its work on you.  You are beyond hating the person.  You are beyond hating homosexuals.  You have taken that one critical step past the edge of the Pit and you have fallen in.  The enemy isn’t sex.  The enemy now is Love. 

There probably isn’t any going back from this place.  You’re done.  By all means, return the stole to someone who is fit to wear it.