I think we agree here. No one should be imposing their interpretation of scripture or their notion of God onto anyone else – gay or straight. The implications of living this way allows everyone to be free, and to live their lives as they wish and in accordance to their beliefs.

I appreciate your clarification.

David Roberts:

My thoughts have not been all over the map. I am consistent with the ideas that you have your life, i have mine, and others have theirs – and that we should stop imposing “our God” onto others.

As far as my own personal story – even Michael’s is hard to follow without detailed information. And you have been far too focused on my family – gives me the creeps.

“So where’s the bias???? That gays who want their freedom want others to deny their God.”

Never. That’s the lie you hear over and over again, however. Most of the gay individuals I know are christians, so why would they want others to deny God? The gay individuals I know got married in a church before God, friends and family. I don’t know why you separate it out – Gay from God….they can and do often coexist.

I hope that in the future, we can extend the “civil” rights of marriage to same-sex couples, but this is also including that the church has freedoms as to whether or not to marry someone…as they do with the heterosexual community. For example, the Catholic Church may not marry you if you were divorced before and did not have that relationship annulled.

I do want those with same-sex attractions to act on it, as I hope that those with opposite-sexed attractions act on it – responsibly, with the same rules all around (no rape, not with someone underage, etc..). Why should they have to lead one life, and heterosexuals another?

I’ve often used the 70/30 figure for illustration purposes, but always with the caveat that there is absolutely no data to back it up. It’s nothing but a guess, pure and simple.

Probably the best person to comment on it is Dr. Robert Spitzer, who wrote the study that ex-gay ministries like to use as proof that “change is possible.” But it took him so long to find 200 people who claimed to have changed — despite NARTH and Exodus providing referrals for some 2/3rds of the study population — that he concluded that change was “extremely rare.”

When pressed, Spitzer offered the guess of 5%, but that was only to illustrate what he meant by rare. There no data to substantiate that figure either. But since it took him 16 months to find 200 people even with the active assistance and support from NARTH and Exodus, he concluded that it was a rare phenomenon indeed.