Sky Anderson - March 11, 2007

Rev. Sky talks about the early days of MCC, including the first MCC General Conference, and the first Pride march in Worcester, Massachusetts.

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Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• MCC
• UFMCC
• Sky
• Anderson
• Transgender
• Gay
• Lesbian
• Bisexual
• Queer
• Spirituality
• Pride
• History
• Worchester
• Massachusetts

[blazerliz]

Hey, this is Missy. I just wanted to say Hi! I don't know if Sky remembers me. We knew each other back in the 70's. Thanks for sharing your stories and your faith for so long.

[dawsen13]

I just want to share with you all the transcript of Rev Dr Yap Kim Hao's address at the Public Dialogue on Christian Perspectives on Homosexuality and Pastoral Care organised by Safehaven on May 10. Please click on VIEW ALL COMMENTS to be able to read the transcript in correct thread order. God bless us all! PEACE!

[dawsen13]

Homosexuality is therefore a gift from God to be accepted. It is not a result of human sin or the fallen nature because of Adam. We all have, by the grace of God, to live out the purposes of God, straight or gay, for we are all created by God.

[dawsen13]

Moreover, this gift is to be expressed in ways that manifest the grace of God - for there is not variance in the reality of God's love, which graces and claims us, whatever the particularities of our own time and place. As for sexual relationships, God's love can find clear expression only where the partners are fully committed and faithful to one another."

[dawsen13]

They are hearing and believing what Victor Paul Furnish said: "It accords with the most fundamental witness of Scripture that one's sexuality is to be received as a good gift of God.

[dawsen13]

As I come alongside them, I sense their silent pain, I see their falling tears, I hear their aching hearts. Today I feel their rising hope for they are receiving affirmation, recovering dignity and restoring pride to be gay.

[dawsen13]

We are aware that the gay community has the responsibility to change the perception that the gay lifestyle is hedonistic and promiscuous. The straights have the problem of pursuing a hedonistic and promiscuous lifestyle as well. The distinctive difference rests on having sexual intercourse with the same or opposite sex.

[dawsen13]

Who would in their right mind choose to be gay when they know they will be relegated to a despised minority. On the contrary, they choose to wear masks and pretend to be straight. Yet opponents of gay rights choose to disregard these personal experiences and continue to portray homosexuality as a sinful choice that should be criminalised.

[dawsen13]

In my experience of pastoral care to the gay community, I feel their pain and agony when they first became aware of their attraction to people of the same sex. Their experience is that it is not a phase that will go away. In the solitariness of their closets they struggle and pray. Most gay people know from painful personal experience that their homosexual inclination is definitely not a deliberate choice.

[dawsen13]

From my perspective, homosexuality is within the purpose of God in creation. There is a continuum of sexual relationships from heterosexualilty to homosexuality. God has made it possible for each individual to be unique and different and I affirm the diversity in God's creation. Homosexuality is a given and not a choice.