Letter To Louise

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So many times I have stood in the vestibule after a service to speak to people as they left the church and had someone comment on something I had said in the sermon, only to think to myself, Where in the world did they get that? Thus, we are able to circumvent much of what is jokingly referred to as `The Battle of the Sexes’ – really, no joking matter at all.

Down through history same-gender sex was universally considered to be acts by (heterosexual) people who had chosen to engage in perverted sex. Lively, amusing at times,never dull and a real tear jerker when Pauline has to hand over her baby for adoption . We should embrace gays and lesbians and mutually help one another achieve the purposes God has for us all. And Richard Hays, although believing homosexuality to be sinful, notes that other sins are in the same list with homosexuality, and concludes, “It is arbitrary to single out homosexuality as a special sin that precludes ordination.The material benefits of marriage are considerable, but it is the moral benefit that is especially attractive to many couples, including gay and lesbian ones. If I can say God made me as I am, a heterosexual, then homosexuals can say God made them as they are.

Few saw anything morally wrong with their crimes, and more than a few of them told her that they were justified in their opinions and in their actions by the religious traditions from which they came. Evelyn Hooker, who taught psychology at UCLA, conducted the “…very first investigation into whether or not homosexuality was an illness that examined a population of `normal’ gay men–men who were not residents of mental hospitals, prisoners, or distressed patients in therapy [common subjects of study at that time], but ordinary people living ordinary, if closeted, lives….Full acceptance by society, including the blessings and legality of marriage should be extended to gays and lesbians in the same way it is extended to others. At least we can know that the definition is not in either a certificate or a specific sex act but is somewhere in the heart and mind of the participants. In explaining the circumstances of her daughter's conception, birth, and adoption, British actress Collins (the Upstairs, Downstairs series; star of Shirley Valentine) provides a warm, appealing account of her own English childhood—and of her experiences with acting companies in Ireland, and at the convent she took refuge in while hiding her pregnancy from her family.