The year 1066 is a very important one in British history… I didn’t come up with a single idea on the theme though. But I did come up with this…
Welcome to ASBO Jesus
Enjoy your stay and have your say! Cheers, Jon
Blogroll
- BigDaddyWhale
- birchmultimedia
- celtic difference
- changing worship
- dennis coburn
- frontier youth trust
- growing enthusiasm
- holy famoley
- iain cotton, sculptor
- jonny baker
- let them eat cake
- mark roques
- mindwriter
- naked pastor
- proost.co.uk
- Rainforest SOS
- reality bites
- sanctuary
- si smith
- sophia network
- stepping stones nigeria
Archives
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
I love your way of celebrating the anniversary, jon. It is fitting.
Then sue each other 7 months later for 1.7 million and country cottage no doubt! Sorry couldn’t resist it.
Nice. Let’s hope that one day it might actually become a reality.
As an aside, if my brother makes it to 90 his birthday will be on the 1,000 year anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. Random fact but there you go.
As another aside, when he says ‘You may kiss the husband’ which one is he talking to? If I was being pedantic I would suggest that perhaps he should say ‘You may both now kiss the husband’.
lanceleuven… i very much approve of your pedantry. so much so, in fact, that i have amended the cartoon. nice one!
gerald coates (or ‘god’s ale crate’… as the famous adrian plass anagram goes) has ‘come out’ opposing gay marriage, i read. the church will find itself very divided on this, i’m sure. shame, i think. to my mind… and my heart… gay marriage makes all the sense in the world and would be a clear sign to me that we were moving beyond the cave man towards something vaguely civil.
it’s catch 22 Jon, how well would this cartoon – or would we need it, – work with a female & male couple?
however, I am aware of more and more ‘gay’ couple’s openly showing love & respect towards each other, without the fear of violence towards them. so yes, we need this legal equality.
Hah! Nice one jon. I’m glad to have played a part!
Ahh how lovely. Long and happy life x
(sigh) One day…
Although I really hope that by that time, we will have all stopped wearing such stiff, formal attire as those suits, ties and top hats, and started wearing something more comfortable and beautiful instead
I went to a gay wedding in Norway last year; they are legal there, although it didn’t take place in church; it was a humanist ceremony. I had been to the baptism and confirmation of one of the grooms and I wasn’t going to miss his wedding! it happened more or less as in your cartoon, Jon.
The main that the mothers couldn’t decide who was the mother of the bride, which is important when you come to the speeches,
I’ve been lurking for a while, but couldn’t resist this one!
Hiya Geordle Gilly, how cool to hear you attened the baptism, confirmation & wedding of a mate, i don’t think i’ve come close. good to hear your chipping in on the blog here too. all the best
geordie gilly… cool. thank you for the comment… glad you couldn’t resist.
mike… i only really wear grey and black, so it wouldn’t affect me too much. although, last week i got brave and bought a pair of pink (or is that coral?) jeans.
subo… yup, this cartoon wouldn’t work at all with the usual man and woman wedding scenario and yup, we wouldn’t need it. i just thought it would make a sweet image and hoped it might spark a bit of thoughtfulness. in a week when a scottish cardinal and an english evangelical leader have both ‘come out’ in opposition i thought i should air the subject. no prizes for guessing what i think.
“i only really wear grey and black….”
You and Johnny Cash,”The Man in Black”, except he excluded even grey..
haha! i’m a big johnny cash fan, grandmere mimi… i wear grey to express my unbridled joy.
Jon – a church leader once advised me that the reason he thought I was dodgy was because ” you always wear black”. Don’t know if he associated that particular colour with depression, evil or just poor dress sense! Whatever way, it was complete crap.
Love your “i wear grey to express my unbridled joy” comment…I will steal it (crediting you of course).
A friend of mine has a t-shirt that reads: “I’m only wearing black ’til they make a darker colour” …..
I want to see Jon in his coral (or pink) Jeans
very brave.
I read a shocking piece of news at the weekend about groups of kids who are ‘emo’s’ being rounded up and shot in Iraq, and their wearing of black was considered evil.
I want to see this become reality … and great to see the new Dean of St Pauls talking of embracing this
… the black thing … there are Christians in my home town, who I have known for 20 years who refuse to talk to me …. because I dare to wear black …. *sigh* …
david ward… that’s just barmy, isn’t it? especially given that ‘black’ is a colour of the priesthood in most denominations.
kim… i’m so glad i live here. orthodox jews wear black… i wonder if that’s an association too. very upsetting.
robryan65… because you wear black? they’re mad! your clothing may have the absence of colour, but surely that’s better than an absent heart? strange.
dennis the mennis… they’re in the wash as i write.
grandmere mimi… i’m sure johnny cash had better motives than me for wearing black, but i bet, deep down, he too reckoned he looked great in it.
janetp… your friend makes perfect sense to me.
And there’s the old Chuck Norris movie, “Good Guys Wear Black”.
Jon you may be right about Johnny Cash thinking he looked great in black, but he always seemed to me to carry the the sadness of the world on his shoulders.
yes… grandmere mimi… that’s what i like about him. i feel i can relate… i often feel very burdened down with it all too.
In Canada, same-sex marriage is already a reality across the country, at least at a civil level. However, that doesn’t mean that all churches are willing to go along with it — some denominations do and some don’t, and even within the ones that don’t, some churches will. Considering that many christians are still asking questions like “can homosexuals be christians?”, a lot more movement needs to happen before lgbt people will be welcome and feel welcome in most churches.
rob g… Considering that many christians are still asking questions like “can homosexuals be christians?” depressing, isn’t it?
Rob G -
I know Christians who don’t accept that God can create people gay – they think gay people must have “some trauma from their childhood”. Yep, a long way to go, especially in African churches.
shamefully Sigmund Freud came up with something like this Rob G. some kinda flaw in parenting resulted in … I think he & his cronies also came up with a theory of what caused religious belief. – how come so much twaddle has such a revered place in our thinking? & how much bogus Freudianism’s creep into church life?. I suppose it could be worse, we could all become behaviourists
I’m intrigued by some of the posts here, I’m a Christian and I think the gay issue is a very sensitive one. My thinking is that:
- the bible states homosexuality is a sin,
- gay Christians are called to a life of celibacy (i know that sounds terrible)
- The point of a church is to provide a place to worship God with other people and share/promote His teachings. Biblically, a marriage is where a man and woman are joined together with God’s blessing and as such there cannot be a ‘biblically based’ gay marriage
- despite this, legally, gay people should be able to get married/enter civil partnerships that afford them the same rights as heterosexual couples.
So, for me, gay couples should be given the right to get married, however gay marriage should not be endorsed by the church as it goes against the bible.
I try to live according to biblical teaching, which in this case goes against my nature – I don’t really like my view of this, I’m aware of how mean it sounds and, although maybe not apparent from the above, I have a lot of respect for the gay community.
Thoughts?
I try to live according to biblical teaching…
John Dawson, think of all the ways you don’t live your life according to biblical teaching. I won’t spell them out for you, because I know you can come up with them on your own, if you know the Bible. The reason you don’t is because you/we conclude that the teachings were for specific people at a specific period in history and do not apply today.
All right, then, could you perhaps read the few passages in the Bible that actually refer to same-sex activity, perhaps 5 or 6, and consider that taking the passages out of their context and applying them to lives today may not be the way to go? That the controversy over SS activity consumes so much energy and effort in the church in the present day is strange to me, because Jesus never mentioned the subject. Surely if Jesus thought SS activity was so very evil, he would have said so.
John, I totally agree with you, but you wont’ find much sympathy for that view here. I argued the case on another thread, and as it turns out, the conclusion was that such opinions are ‘monstrous.’ Good luck.
The Anglican and Episcopal churches, especially, are so backslidden that what the bible actually teaches does not matter to them anymore, or they’ve twisted their interpretation with self-serving hermeneutics.
>> MIMI: Surely if Jesus thought SS activity was so very evil, he would have said so.
Surely, if Jesus thought bestiality and incest were evil, he would have said so.
Not sure if this thread is dead or not. But DGS raises an interesting point. I think it is helpful to use reason and experience when comparing homosexuality, bestiality and incest. They’re all against the OT law, they were all ignored by Jesus. Are they morally acceptable? What is the balance of their good / bad outcomes?
Incest – we all know that there are good biological reasons for close relatives not having babies together. If we’re talking about adult incest with a minor then experience has shown that that is psychologically damaging in virtually all cases. So I think there are virtually no positive outcomes possible in this activity.
Bestiality – well I’ve never tried it, but frankly if a man wants to have a close relationship with his donkey then it doesn’t really bother me. There is a probably a risk of disease, and the man is not experiencing a loving sexual relationship. Most people would agree that he is better off with another human. If this was going on for a long time, we would want to wean him off this habit. Not really any positive outcomes here.
Homosexuality – again I’ve never tried it, not that that’s relevant here. (for the avoidance of doubt, I’ve never tried incest either). Risk of disease? Probably for men, even in a monogamous relationship, there is an increased risk of infection, but this can be prevented easily. Psychological damage? Well, I think in general men are more promiscuous than women, so potentially the male gay dating arena is likely to be a bit less emotionally healthy than the straight dating arena. (Yeah, of course the main thing all young straight men are looking for is a long-term, stable relationship.) That maybe applies less to gay women. Positive outcomes? Just ask the millions of gay people in loving, committed relationships.
So I conclude:
incest – does not make people happy
bestiality – does not make people happy
homosexuality – does make people happy
And here I’m talking about real, lasting happiness, not the short term kind that comes from a drug hit.
I might as well come clean and say that I don’t believe in moral absolutes. I don’t accept the neat arguments from the likes of CS Lewis, Nicky Gumbell and Tim Keller that morality is handed down to us by God. I think we work these things out by societal consensus. So not only are DGS and I on different pages of the book, we’re reading different books entirely. I’ve gone off on a different tangent to arguing whether this is biblical or not. I just though it was interesting to unpack the “homosexuality, bestiality and incest” thing a bit.
STC: I’m glad you see the illogic in Mimi’s statement. There may be other arguments for accepting homosexuality, both biblical and non, but hers is not one of them.
However, I’m not sure your logic works either. I have seen programs on sister/brother couples who claim they are perfectly happy, except for the societal taboo. Can you deny them this happiness in order to protect their children from birth defects?
And if so, does that mean that people with a greater risk of other diseases are not allowed to marry or have children?
Regarding bestiality, who are you and I to define what makes a person happy? I like eating sheep, others like them for other purposes. I’ve seen some animals (dogs and donkeys come to mind) who are not only close emotional companions, they would hump anything gladly.
I am being a iittle facetious, but my point is, I don’t know if your “does it make people happy” analysis is very sound.
In fact, all three of these lead to various levels of heightened morbidity and mortality for people, as does promiscuity in general.
I am not saying that these three sexual activities are all on par morally speaking, I’m just saying that the logic used to defend hx seems weak here.