www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality: A New Clinical Approach (Paperback)

Dear Paul you posted the following by Bob Rossi:

"And I'm really coming to be in favor of locking up people who engage in hate speech."

I say:

I totally agree with your following response:

"And this, to you, doesn't have an eerie association with the Nazis?"

What is interesting to know is that at the time the Nazis were coming into power, the nationalist movement was supported by a strong group of homosexuals. Eventually he killed them.

But that of course was only one of the many cruelties of the era. An era when two opposing 'evils' comfronted one another: Communism and Fascism. Very similar to the evils of our own time: Secularism and Islam.

We must take into consideration that a society as immoral as that of Berlin in the 1920's, a society without any 'religious' constraints, and further burdened by an economic depression, is bound to be a breeding ground for the growth of all 'negative' (demonic) behavior. To see the end result, we have only to look at the pictures of Europe at the end of the war.

Zenovia

Dear Alice,

Since you addressed your post to me, I'm confused. Where have my posts here "reduced" the topic to divisive politics?

With love,
Nonna

Dear Bob,

I don't know much about the liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, I am sorry. I know that his sentiments are good, but that he has been silenced by the Church.

Therefore, I prefer, as an *obedient* (that may seem like a bad, unenlightened and ignorant word to some I suppose) Orthodox Christian to follow the teachings of the Church Fathers, Doctors of the Church and great saints, whether they are Orthodox or Catholic. They sit well with my soul and the spiritual life I have explored, experienced, and sometimes questioned, all my life.

I believe that the Pope of Blessed memory, John Paul II, will become one of those saints and doctors of the Church. As a modern theologian, I have great respect for his teachings, example and authority. If he did not condone the theology of Boff, then I don't need to explore it.

If I did not wish to follow this path, I would not be Orthodox OR Roman or Byzantine Catholic and I probably would be on a different forum.

Blessings and love in Jesus Christ,
Alice

I think we all need to take a deep breath here.

It seems that whenever anything related to this subject is posted, we have the passions inflamed were everyone seems to take one side or another and tries to justify their opinion as the way. I have followed this type of therapy for almost my entire priesthood, since Elizabeth Morebly made a presentation at Saint Vladimir Orthodox Theological Seminary on the subject in 1991. A number of interesting points are brought about with this matter.

While I do not condone or condemn the therapy, or argue regarding the lifestyle when actively practiced is sinful, I have to make the following observation. Therapy of any sort is useless unless the person seeks it out. It is only effective if the person is able to embrace the therapy and make it work for themselves. Even then, it must be practiced constantly in their lives for any long term results.

While I look at such therapies with professional interest, I have to remark that the results of all studies published regarding this matter have been based on very short term results, and from statistics I have seen published beyond the 5 year mark, have been very disappointing to say the least.

As in any sin and behavior, the desire for change must come from within, and then by the Grace of God may be effective. This applies not only to homosexuality, but any sin or undesirable behavior for that matter. Therapies come and go almost with the regularity of changing fashion. If any desire to turn from sin, the Great Physician is available to all. He and only He will prescribe the way for those to change and avoid the occasion of fall.

We are all subject to sins. We all struggle with them daily. Yet, we all succumb to them also on a regular basis. One of which we all seem to do is judge others for what is yet to be proven realistically as the way of repair from sin.

I hate (figuratively) to see the threads on this subject, because they become extremly passionate and obssessive. Prayer cures all and changes all only if we approach God with a pure heart and an earnest desire.

I pray, that we can come to peace with this and stop looking to justify ourselves before each other.

Forgive me if I offended.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Originally posted by Bob Rossi:Originally posted by Bob Rossi:


So this is a long and rather complicaed response about hate speech and the question of nazism. I'm sorry if this took us off topic.

One Love.

bob r.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's a beautiful statement about civil society and hate speech, Caro Roberto.
Keep up the spirit!
Nonna



I ask your forgiveness, truly.

Bob R started it and that post should have been addressed to him.

You seem to accept him doing it, though my post should still have been addressed to him.

Again asking your forgiveness at my confusion.
In Christ,
Alice

Dear Bob you said:

"I think that if you talk about calling or forcing someone to repent for the "sin" of homosexuality that sounds like hate speech.

I think that if you engage in loose talk about Biblical injunctions of stoning people to death for homosexual acts you are engaging in hate speech.

I am NOT saying that people who do this in this forum are haters. I am ONLY commenting on the speech."

I say:

I am an Orthodox Christian. I believe that all concepts of right and wrong is through the love of the Holy Spirit that comes into one's heart. But in order to acquire the reasoning that is Christianity, one must first accept themselves as being a sinner and repent. It is only then that our hearts can be open so that our Lord and His love and comprehension can come inside.

It is not for us to judge which part of the teachings of our Lord we want to accept, and which part we do not want to accept, but rather our Lord does it for us by entering into our hearts and giving us the 'discernment' to 'know' what is right and wrong.

So you might believe in one way according to the discernment, if any, our Lord has given you, and I and others might believe in another way, according to the discernment, if any, our Lord has given me and others.

Topic I believe is ended.

Zenovia

Dear Alice:

I lauded the tone and thought that Bob put into his post. I did not necessarily agree with every detail in it. I didn't see Bob's post about hate speech as divisive. He was merely expressing his own heartfelt reaction to the things he was reading in this thread.

Frankly, I find more divisive the judgemental pronouncements made by other in this thread who seem to spend a lot of time focussing on the sins of others when they might do better to focus on their own sins. WE all would do better to focus on our own sins.

What is the First Commandment?
And what is the Second Comandment?
and who exactly is our "neighbor"?

with love,
Nonna

Dear Zenovia,

You really make me smile! *chuckle*

Those that talk the loudest longest and last aren't really winners. Winning is only an illusion.

with love,
Nonna

Dear Nonna,

I don't think that the posters here (who, granted, I have come to know because of the length of time they have been here) are focusing on other's sins.

I truly think that they are trying to be helpful with a problem that seems to affect many in society today. Similar discussions have been had about divorce, and abortion, too.

If any poster is deemed uncharitably judgemental in words or tone, they will be told so.

These are complex situations with very personal struggles, that the Church (and that includes Orthodoxy as well) addresses all the time. As such, they are not innapropriate, in my humble opinion, for a religious forum under the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Best regards and love,
Alice

Dear Bob,

To clarify what I posted above, I believe that there is definitely a right and wrong. The Ten Commandments are not the ten suggestions. What I meant about the heart, is that we are not able to comprehend God's truths without opening our hearts to our Lord's love and accepting ourselves as fallible human beings and therefore sinners.

To sin is human, but to believe that a sin is not a sin in order to excuse one's behavior, is sinning against the Holy Spirit...and God cannot forgive a sin if one refuses to accept it as a sin.

But again it comes down to 'discernment', and that again comes down to opening one's heart to our Lord's Grace in order to comprehend what is sinful and what is not.

Prayer is the answer. Only prayer can free us from sin. Everything else, including this discussion is foolishness. Believe me it has nothing to do with politics...

Zenovia

Nonna,
Here is a link to a site that has a dialogue on homosexuality:

http://www.catholicintl.com/catholicissues/bib_homo.htm

Sorry, but I've been at work, those darn patients keep me from my evangelization work!

Genesis 13:13
Genesis 18:16-19:29
Leviticus 18:22-23 and 20:13
Judges 19
Romans 1:25-27
1 Corinthians 6:9-10
1 Timothy 1:9-10
Jude 7

The inhospitality argument is covered in the above link.

The Bible actually condones and elevates marriage, this is the true way to expres sexual love. "In the beginning he created them male and female..."

I didn't tell anyone here to read Boff, though I think that he's great. I said, or tried to say, that his opening pages on his book about the Our Father and the Hail Mary prayers explain a fundamental concept of how everything in creation is within God and that, and from that, makes politics (for instance) an extension of the sacred. Boff backed up his point by quoting two Popes and at least one document from a Bishop's Conference. And he wasn't silenced for that book, which was published by a Catholic press and is today distributed by a Catholic distributor.

I don't share the interpretation of the Ten Commandments given here but, even if I did, I would also say that those are balanced by the Beatitudes and the commandmant to love.

There is no doubt that I am a judgemental person with a great deal of angst and a terrible sinner besides. You all can safely agree on that and I will agree. But I would not want to compound my sins by accepting the premises of the pseudo-therapy which this thread began with or the rhetoric surrounding it.

One Love.

bob r.

Dr. Eric,

You are about to get sucker punched. Be careful.

CDL

My classic Torah commentary understands the "In the beginning he created them male and female..." to mean that our first ancestor or ancestors had characteristics of both men and women.

Now, one can argue the point but one cannot argue that this is a proper and historically accepted Jewish interpretation of the text. I will provide the citation of the commentator if you doubt this.

And one would be hard pressed to say that we get to pick and choose from religious texts in order to make our political case.

So, for instance, if you are going to quote the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament and accept all of them as still fully relevent and as applying to us all, you must also accept all that went with the Ten Commandments.

That means all of the laws which flowed into and out of the Ten Commandments.

Good luck.

And, still further and if only for the sake of consistency, you must also accept every part of the Old Testament as it was intended to be understood.

And that would mean accepting the above interpretation, or at least sriously considering it.

And that would certainly and logically change your understanding of gender and gender roles and the place of gender in our lives.

At the very least you would have to say that you don't know what the text really means.

And not understanding the full meaning of the text ought to give all of us good pause before we support the kind of therapy mentioned here or talk much longer about masculinity.

One Love.

bob r.

You can disagree with me, but you'd better not mess with these guys:

Justin Martyr

"[W]e have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we should do anyone harm and lest we should sin against God, first, because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but also the males) are brought up to prostitution. And for this pollution a multitude of females and hermaphrodites, and those who commit unmentionable iniquities, are found in every nation. And you receive the hire of these, and duty and taxes from them, whom you ought to exterminate from your realm. And anyone who uses such persons, besides the godless and infamous and impure intercourse, may possibly be having intercourse with his own child, or relative, or brother. And there are some who prostitute even their own children and wives, and some are openly mutilated for the purpose of sodomy; and they refer these mysteries to the mother of the gods" (First Apology 27 [A.D. 151]).

Clement of Alexandria

"All honor to that king of the Scythians, whoever Anacharsis was, who shot with an arrow one of his subjects who imitated among the Scythians the mystery of the mother of the gods . . . condemning him as having become effeminate among the Greeks, and a teacher of the disease of effeminacy to the rest of the Scythians" (Exhortation to the Greeks 2 [A.D. 190]).

"[According to Greek myth] Baubo [a female native of Eleusis] having received [the goddess] Demeter hospitably, reached to her a refreshing draught; and on her refusing it, not having any inclination to drink (for she was very sad), and Baubo having become annoyed, thinking herself slighted, uncovered her shame, and exhibited her nudity to the goddess. Demeter is delighted with the sight�pleased, I repeat, at the spectacle. These are the secret mysteries of the Athenians; these Orpheus records" (ibid.).

"It is not, then, without reason that the poets call him [Hercules] a cruel wretch and a nefarious scoundrel. It were tedious to recount his adulteries of all sorts, and debauching of boys. For your gods did not even abstain from boys, one having loved Hylas, another Hyacinthus, another Pelops, another Chrysippus, another Ganymede. Let such gods as these be worshipped by your wives, and let them pray that their husbands be such as these�so temperate; that, emulating them in the same practices, they may be like the gods. Such gods let your boys be trained to worship, that they may grow up to be men with the accursed likeness of fornication on them received from the gods" (ibid.).

...

"In accordance with these remarks, conversation about deeds of wickedness is appropriately termed filthy [shameful] speaking, as talk about adultery and pederasty and the like" (The Instructor 6, ca. A.D. 193).

"The fate of the Sodomites was judgment to those who had done wrong, instruction to those who hear. The Sodomites having, through much luxury, fallen into uncleanness, practicing adultery shamelessly, and burning with insane love for boys; the All-seeing Word, whose notice those who commit impieties cannot escape, cast his eye on them. Nor did the sleepless guard of humanity observe their licentiousness in silence; but dissuading us from the imitation of them, and training us up to his own temperance, and falling on some sinners, lest lust being unavenged, should break loose from all the restraints of fear, ordered Sodom to be burned,
pouring forth a little of the sagacious fire on licentiousness; lest lust, through want of punishment, should throw wide the gates to those that were rushing into voluptuousness. Accordingly, the just punishment of the Sodomites became to men an image of the salvation which is well calculated for men. For those who have not committed like sins with those who are punished, will never receive a like punishment" (ibid., 8).

Basil the Great

"He who is guilty of unseemliness with males will be under discipline for the same time as adulterers" (Letters 217:62 [A.D. 367]).

"If you [O, monk] are young in either body or mind, shun the companionship of other young men and avoid them as you would a flame. For through them the enemy has kindled the desires of many and then handed them over to eternal fire, hurling them into the vile pit of the five cities under the pretense of spiritual love. . . . At meals take a seat far from other young men. In lying down to sleep let not their clothes be near yours, but rather have an old man between you. When a young man converses with you, or sings psalms facing you, answer him with eyes cast down, lest perhaps by gazing at his face you receive a seed of desire sown by the enemy and reap sheaves of corruption and ruin. Whether in the house or in a place where there is no one to see your actions, be not found in his company under the pretense either of studying the divine oracles or of any other business whatsoever, however necessary" (The Renunciation of the World [A.D. 373]).

John Chrysostom

"[The pagans] were addicted to the love of boys, and one of their wise men made a law that pederasty . . . should not be allowed to slaves, as if it was an honorable thing; and they had houses for this purpose, in which it was openly practiced. And if all that was done among them was related, it would be seen that they openly outraged nature, and there was none to restrain them. . . . As for their passion for boys, whom they called their paedica, it is not fit to be named" (Homilies on Titus 5 [A.D. 390]).

"[Certain men in church] come in gazing about at the beauty of women; others curious about the blooming youth of boys. After this, do you not marvel that [lightning] bolts are not launched [from heaven], and all these things are not plucked up from their foundations? For worthy both of thunderbolts and hell are the things that are done; but God, who is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forbears awhile his wrath, calling you to repentance and amendment" (Homilies on Matthew 3:3 [A.D. 391]).

"All of these affections [in Rom. 1:26�27] . . . were vile, but chiefly the mad lust after males; for the soul is more the sufferer in sins, and more dishonored than the body in diseases" (Homilies on Romans 4 [A.D. 391]).

"[The men] have done an insult to nature itself. And a yet more disgraceful thing than these is it, when even the women seek after these intercourses, who ought to have more shame than men" (ibid.).

"And sundry other books of the philosophers one may see full of this disease. But we do not therefore say that the thing was made lawful, but that they who received this law were pitiable, and objects for many tears. For these are treated in the same way as women that play the whore. Or rather their plight is more miserable. For in the case of the one the intercourse, even if lawless, is yet according to nature; but this is contrary both to law and nature. For even if there were no hell, and no punishment had been threatened, this would be worse than any punishment" (ibid.)

From www.catholic.com [catholic.com]

Once again, the Church decided which of the Mosaic Laws were ceremonial and which were binding on us. I'm not going to argue with Sts. Paul, Jude, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Basil the Great, and "Our Father in the Faith St. John Chrysostom."

I don't know what this therapy is about, so I can't comment. I know that many children have been subjected to horrible torments and these experiences can warp them. I'm not a psychologist, but I have an interest in the field and have discussed this theme with those in the field.