New US church leader says homosexuality no sin

Ed. What happens when a man enters the world with the affections ordered toward, say, five different women or another woman and another man. Do those relationships qualify for marriage too? Following the thinking of the new Episcopal bishop, it should.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) Mon Jun 19, 2006

Newly elected leader of the U.S. Episcopal Church Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said on Monday she believed homosexuality was no sin and homosexuals were created by God to love people of the same gender.

Jefferts Schori, bishop of the Diocese of Nevada, was elected on Sunday as the first woman leader of the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church. the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. She will formally take office later this year.

Interviewed on CNN, Jefferts Schori was asked if it was a sin to be homosexual.

“I don’t believe so. I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us,” she said.

“Some people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender and some people come into this world with affections directed at people of the other gender.”

Jefferts Schori’s election seemed certain to exacerbate splits within a Episcopal Church that is already deeply divided over homosexuality with several dioceses and parishes threatening to break away.

It could also widen divisions with other Anglican communities, including the Church of England, which do not allow women bishops. In the worldwide Anglican church women are bishops only in Canada, the United States and New Zealand.

Three years ago when the Church last met in convention, a majority of U.S. bishops backed the consecration of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in more than 450 years of Anglican history.

The Robinson issue has been particularly criticized in Africa where the church has a growing membership and where homosexuality is often taboo.

Jefferts Schori, who was raised a Roman Catholic and graduated in marine biology with a doctorate specialization in squids and oysters, supported the consecration of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in more than 450 years of Anglican history.

The 52-year-old bishop is married to Richard Schori, a retired theoretical mathematician. They have one daughter, Katharine Johanna, 24, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force and a pilot like her mother.

Asked how she reconciled her position on homosexuality with specific passages in the Bible declaring sexual relations between men an abomination, Jefferts Schori said the Bible was written in a very different historical context by people asking different questions.

“The Bible has a great deal to teach us about how to live as human beings. The Bible does not have so much to teach us about what sorts of food to eat, what sorts of clothes to wear — there are rules in the Bible about those that we don’t observe today,” she said.

“The Bible tells us about how to treat other human beings, and that’s certainly the great message of Jesus — to include the unincluded.”

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65 thoughts on “New US church leader says homosexuality no sin”

  1. “all this cultural/religious polarization is just a convenient smokescreen to divert attention from the growing economic polarization in America. Conservative Christians have played a valuable, if unwitting, role running interference for an economic elite waging class warfare on the rest of America.”

    LOL! Dean, I think you post this stuff for the laughs. Perhaps you are right. Christianly speaking, it’s not abortion, or marriage, or what is taught in the schools I should be concerned about – it’s the tax structure. I pay too little taxes, that’s it, that’s the REAL evil! If only Washington had more money – that’s the ticket. What happened to Ann, I thought SHE was the devil??

    Dean,

    I know you don’t agree but many conservatives support the war in Iraq as part of the greater war on terror and not for an abstract “nation building” exercise. Getting Iraq into something that is more friendly to US interests (i.e. not being a source of real danger to US or Israel) is the goal. In this case, something of a “liberal” teachers union taking over the public screwals in Iraq would be a good thing…;)

  2. Found this on the author’s website:

    In the burned-over districts of conservatism the right-wing class war grown so powerful that it has taken over the environmental niche once held by the left. It is the dissenting movement out there, the voice of the hard-done-by, and in places like Kansas it draws headlines with its high-profile campaigns against evolution and abortion.

    Looks like the problem isn’t economics as much as, you guessed it, evolution and abortion. Further, I’m not too sure about these conservative districts being “burned over.” After all, the Democrats have not elected a president with a majority since Carter in 1976 (51%). Reagan ended up pulling in a lot of Democrats disenchanted with the increasing leftward drift of the Democratic party. Sounds pretty vibrant to me. OTOH, maybe the good people from Kansas are just too stupid to grasp what their real interests are. Good thing they have Franks to show them the way.

    Missourian, if you can spare a couple of hours away from your project, chime on in. You understand economics. Moreover, you live in Kansas.

    One final point. Dean, whenever you are caught short on one of your challenges, you tend to lob out another one. First its global warming, then Coulter, and now economics. The theme that seems to unify this haphazard approach is moral outrage. (Throw out enough issues and maybe the persistent drone of anger will leave an impression.) It’s easy to see what you are outraged about. It’s harder to determine why you are outraged since you don’t tend to follow through on defending your ideas. (Feelings and ideas are two different things.)

    One more point (ok, last one). The quasi-Marxist approach of Franks (class warfare, etc.) gets tiresome. It’s been discredited. Maybe that’s why the book hasn’t got any traction.

  3. Father: You write “The quasi-Marxist approach of Franks (class warfare, etc.) gets tiresome. It’s been discredited

    Since when have the economic values of the Eisenhower administration been considered quasi-Marxist?. People during the nineteen-fifties still had vivid memories of the Great Depression. They wanted their government to work to alleviate poverty, safeguard the economic security of all Americans and prevent future economic calamity. They wanted government regulation to prevent financial fraud and corporate monopoly. They wanted their government to be fiscally responsible and avoid ruinous deficit spending. The GI Bill strengthened their belief that govrnment ought to assist people from all sociail strata to go to college. Their corporations had more egalitarian salary structures and more social interaction between people of different income-levels. They would have been horirified by the great concentrationsof wealth and disparites of income we have today in this new Bush-era Gilded age. Does that make them, in your opinion, Quasi-Marxists?

    These are the economic values that your GOP heroes currently in the majority in Congress have been working so hard to reverse. The GOP efforts to repeal the Estate Tax (levied only on the wealthiest of Americans) during a time of war and at a cost to the US Treasury of a TRILLION dollars over the next ten years without any matching spending cuts is immoral, unChristian and a disgrace. How can you, as an intelligent man, a student of US history whose insights I respect, and a keen observer of current affairs possibly defend it?

    Frank’s thesis is not discredited but supported by the Economist magazine article I also quoted as well as a number of other economic research papers I am happy to cite:

    “The Polarisation of the U.S. Labour Market”, by David H. Autor, Lawrence F. Katz and Melissa S. Kearney. NBER Working Paper No 11986. January 2006

    “Trends in U.S. Wage Inequality: Re-assessing the Revisionists”, by David Autor, Lawrence F. Katz and Melissa Kearney. NBER 11627. September 2005

    “The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective”, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. NBER Working Paper 11955. January 2006

    “Top Wealth Shares in the United States, 1916-2000: Evidence from Estate Tax Returns”, by Wojciech Kopczuk and Emmanuel Saez. National Tax Journal. June 2004

    “Trends in the Transitory Variance of Earnings in the United States”, by Robert A. Moffitt and Peter Gottschalk. Economic Journal. March 2002

    “Understanding Mobility in America”, by Tom Hertz, American University. Centre for American Progress. April 2006

    “American Exceptionalism in a New Light: A Comparison of Intergenerational Earnings Mobility in the Nordic Countries, the United Kingdom and the United States”, by Markus Jantti, Knut Roed, Robin Naylor, Anders Bjorklund, Bernt Bratsberg, Oddbjorn Raaum and Tor Eriksson. IZA Discussion Paper No 1938. January 2006

    “Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults? Lessons from a Cross Country Comparison of Generational Earnings Mobility”, by Miles Corak. IZA Discussion Paper No 1993. March 2006

    “Where Did the Productivity Growth Go? Inflation Dynamics and the Distribution of Income”, by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon. NBER Working Paper 11842. December 2005

    “How Computerised Work and Globalisation Shape Human Skill Demands”, by Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane. May 2006

    http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2006/06/american_dream.html

  4. Note 53. Dean writes:

    Since when have the economic values of the Eisenhower administration been considered quasi-Marxist?

    Your Progressive methodology is showing again, Dean. Motives don’t justify ideas, results do. Franks filters economic data through a Marxist social grid where the upper class wars against the middle class, and the middle class wars against the poor. At the top is the economist analyst, who, in this case, just happens to be Franks. What a coincidence. It’s simply a justification for economic redistributionism which the evidence shows does nothing to eliminate poverty. Hence my assertion that the method is discredited.

  5. “The GOP efforts to repeal the Estate Tax (levied only on the wealthiest of Americans) during a time of war and at a cost to the US Treasury of a TRILLION dollars over the next ten years without any matching spending cuts is immoral, unChristian and a disgrace”

    Yep, I knew it. Christianly, it’s not abortion, or marriage, or defense of the innocent, or even global warming and Ann Culture that is to be an Christians concern. Nope, it’s the tax structure. The Death Tax is the Christian’s numeral uno concern. A million children slaughtered every year? Ah, what can we do to “reduce” that – why, be sure to support the tax structure so we can “reduce” abortion through giveaway programs. He even pretends not to see the marxist connection!

    Dean is instructive though, for he puts the Olympia Snowes (and the Ecumenical Patriarch who support the Snowes) in a framework of grass roots support/base…

  6. Do you believe there is a point at which the distribution of wealth and income becomes so skewed (Highly concentrated among a small number of the population) that it becomes unhealthy for the stabilty and well-being of a society?

    I don’t think a capitalist economy can ever have a classic “normal” distribution (bell-curve) because you will always a minority of talented individuals in the population whose ability to generate income is above average.

    However, there may be a point where obstacles develop which hinder access to the economy, even by talented individuals; obstacles which serve to keep wealth concentrated among those who already have it. Examples of these obstacles could be lack of access to quality education or jobs by talented indiviuals from the working class, informal cartels and collusion, government favoritism in awarding subsidies and contracts and crafting regulation, and monopolistic practices. Even Hayek saw a critical role for government in maintaining a competitive and level economic playing field.

    I don’t think that the current Republican Congress could care less about a competitive and level playing field. They have transformed government instead in to the pay-to-play arbiter of who wins and who loses in the economy based on how much money they are willing to pay to the party in power.

    The current Net Neutrality issue is a good example. Do you think Father Jacobse should have to pay more to the phone companies so that readers can have as rapid access to Orthodoxy Today, as they do to the web sites of major corporations willing to pay more money for a privileged share of bandwidth? Many Republicans in Congress do.

  7. Note 55. Dean writes:

    Do you believe there is a point at which the distribution of wealth and income becomes so skewed (Highly concentrated among a small number of the population) that it becomes unhealthy for the stabilty and well-being of a society?

    Yes. Mexico is a good example. It still has a rough medieval model although you could call it a kind of sanctioned Mafia these days. Marxist countries uniformly exhibit the same economic pathology although they eventually go bankrupt or are overthrown due to the social instability they create.

    However, there may be a point where obstacles develop which hinder access to the economy, even by talented individuals; obstacles which serve to keep wealth concentrated among those who already have it. Examples of these obstacles could be lack of access to quality education or jobs by talented indiviuals from the working class, informal cartels and collusion, government favoritism in awarding subsidies and contracts and crafting regulation, and monopolistic practices. Even Hayek saw a critical role for government in maintaining a competitive and level economic playing field.

    Well sure. The problem is when these rationales are used to justify the redistribution policies that create precisely these problems. That’s why the distinction between intentions and results has to remain clear — a point Hayek made again and again. Remember, Hayek advocated only a minimal amount of government intrustion. Progressives (like Franks) advocate central planning by government and use the language of morality to advance it. Franks is a social utopian, as most Progressives are.

    The current Net Neutrality issue is a good example. Do you think Father Jacobse should have to pay more to the phone companies so that readers can have as rapid access to Orthodoxy Today, as they do to the web sites of major corporations willing to pay more money for a privileged share of bandwidth? Many Republicans in Congress do.

    Sure you got your facts right, Dean? Republicans defeat Net neutrality proposal, House Energy & Commerce Committee Votes on Markey Amendment and the COPE Act (includes voter score card).

    BTW, just read in USA Today today that unemployment is down to 5% (virtual unemployment in economic terms) and business is having difficulty finding skilled labor. This is good news for labor. Opportunity knocks.

  8. Note 55. Christopher quotes Dean:

    “The GOP efforts to repeal the Estate Tax (levied only on the wealthiest of Americans) during a time of war and at a cost to the US Treasury of a TRILLION dollars over the next ten years without any matching spending cuts is immoral, unChristian and a disgrace”

    Look at the phrase “at the cost to the US Treasury…” as if the treasury has an intrinsic claim on this money. Further, look at the context in which this claim is framed, ie: Christian virtue. The only conclusion that you can draw (if you believe the assumption) is that Christian virtue demands the payment of inheritance taxes.

    Trouble is, those who make the claim the loudest don’t do it. Look at this article I posted a few days ago Do As I Say — Not As I Do. The author states:

    Noam Chomsky, for example, has attacked wealthy Americans who set up trusts to avoid paying inheritance taxes. But this self-professed “radical socialist” has a tax attorney and did the very same thing.

    Ted Kennedy likes to pose as the Robin Hood of the Senate, forcing wealthy Americans to pay their taxes to help the poor. But I discovered that Kennedys record of actually paying taxes is horrible. Tax the inheritance tax. He says that Americans should pay 49% to the IRS when they die in the name of “social justice.” But according to public records, the Kennedys have almost completely avoided contributing to “social justice” by placing their assets in trusts that are located overseas. The Kennedys, over the past thirty years, have paid less than 1% in inheritance taxes on more than $300 million. Ted Kennedy, like Hillary Clinton and George Soros, loves higher taxes. On other people.

    Less than 1%? Dean, do you think that you should first clean your own house before telling others how to clean theirs?

  9. Fr. Jacobse,

    Unfortunately, the Dem’s are on the right side of “net neutrality”. What the legislation was originally intended to prevent (though, since it was mostly supported by Dem’s in the end who knows what else it did) was traffic shaping at the TCP/IP level by the core carriers. The core carriers have big plans (though at this point the return to them is nebulous) to create a “tiered” net – really changing the fundamental nature of the net from a place where every node (i.e. computer or router) and every route (i.e. the path from one node to another) has “equal” access and status to every other node and route – limited by bandwidth of course, but not priority or status. This was crucial in the original design of TCP/IP which was to get one computer talking to another even if certain routes and nodes were destroyed (by a nuke attack). It turned out it was a great way to create a global computer network that could handle the burdens we place on it today.

    Essentially, they plan to create multiple “Intranets” that are not all equal. To the average end user, this will mean certain sites are more respond better than others, or even are inaccessible as a practical matter. It also could affect the search ability of the Internet. It really will be an experiment with the very basics of the Intranet and it looks to only benefit the core carriers. In a lot of ways, it is sort of like putting toll houses/forts on a heavy trafficated river which was once open to all. Who gains? The soldiers and war lords who built the fort. Who loses? everyone else.

    This is another case where the libertarian business interests of the Republicans have won out yet again. Conservatives stay home 2006!!!

  10. Fr. hans writes: “Look at the phrase “at the cost to the US Treasury…” as if the treasury has an intrinsic claim on this money.”

    The estate tax thing is sold as a tax cut. The problem is that ultimately, the only “tax cut” is spending less. In other words, when government spends, SOMEONE eventually pays for it, unless the government goes bankrupt. It may not be you. It may be your children or grandchildren. But someone will eventually pay.

    In that sense, yes, when the government spends money the U.S. Treasury does have a claim to tax money — unless you plan to discontinue paying on the national debt.

    Fr. Hans: “Further, look at the context in which this claim is framed, ie: Christian virtue. The only conclusion that you can draw (if you believe the assumption) is that Christian virtue demands the payment of inheritance taxes.”

    Well, yes it does, in a sense. At least in Catholic theology. Catholic teaching is that on the one hand the State does not have the right to confiscate to the point of exhaustion someone’s private wealth. On the other hand the State can strike a balance between private wealth and the common good. It’s not that estate taxes themselves are necessary for this, but I think it is reasonable to conclude that if taxes are being lowered on the wealthiest, with no offsetting cut in spending, those less wealthy will have to make up the difference.

    Fr. Hans: “Chomsky . . . Kennedy . . . ”

    You know, I don’t lose a great deal of sleep over how selected individuals manage their money. I am, however, concerned with large scale efforts to reduce taxes on the wealthiest, who are also the very people whose wealth and income have gone up the most in recent years. In this sense, I suppose the Republican love of the rich is consistent with the gospel: “To him that hath, shall more be given, and to him that hath not shall be taken away even that he hath.” Is this the operative passage?

    Fr. Hans: “BTW, just read in USA Today today that unemployment is down to 5% (virtual unemployment in economic terms) and business is having difficulty finding skilled labor.”

    Yes, this is what happens when you stimulate the economy with massive deficits. We would have the same effect at the private level if we all charged another $10,000 to our credit cards. The only difference is that you have to pay back the credit card debt, and your grandchildren will have to pay back the federal debt.

  11. Father: I don’t think you can consider the Estate Tax issue isolated from the broader context of our nation’s already dangerous deficits and and level of debt.

    Conservative economist and Eisenhower Republican, Ben Stein writes (addressing his comments to Secretary of the Treasury nominee Henry Paulison):

    But now you have your work cut out for you as Treasury secretary. You are facing what is, in many ways, the most dangerous economic future since the Depression. Danger is coming on many fronts, only dimly seen by the powers that be in Washington, and your insights and eloquence will be urgently necessary.

    Just to give you an idea what you are up against, Standard & Poor’s issued a warning not long ago. The caution was that if the United States government did not seriously alter fiscal policy, Treasury bonds would be downgraded to BBB, slightly above junk status, by 2020. This is a stunning piece of news for the world’s most highly rated security denominated in its primary reserve currency. The S.& P. report said further that if the nation did not make serious changes after that, by 2025 Treasuries would be junk bonds, like the bonds of less successful emerging-markets nations.

    These downgrades would occur because the federal budget deficit and the cumulative national debt would be so high relative to the gross domestic product. This debt would presumably come largely from Social Security and Medicare obligations, considered sacred contracts by American taxpayers. (The statement said similar downgrades would also happen to other major countries in the developed world that have large aging populations.)

    Just to get an idea of the size of the structural cumulative deficit for Medicare alone, Phil DeMuth, along with others, has calculated that the total Medicare obligations for the balance of this century, if brought down to net present value at the long-term bond rate, would exceed the wealth of the entire nation. This means that if you sold every home, every farm, every factory, every business in America and invested the money in something that returned as much as long-term bonds, there would not be enough to pay for the foreseeable Medicare expenditures of this nation in the 21st century. And that’s not counting Social Security or the military or the interest on the debt or the livelihood of 300 million Americans.

    ..May I respectfully suggest that in this environment, ending the estate tax is not a major sensible priority? May I suggest that having the lowest taxes in 65 years on high-income taxpayers is not really as prudent as it might be if we were not running stupendous deficits, with far worse in the future?

    I know you are a Republican, and so am I. Now and then, scornful fellow Republicans ask me what kind of Republican I am, since I’m for higher taxes on the rich. I tell them that I am an Eisenhower Republican, the kind who wants to leave a healthier America to posterity. That includes an economy not headed for the status of a banana republic’s economy.


    Note to the New Treasury Secretary: It’s Time to Raise Taxes

  12. Note 59 and 60. No argument about needing to cut spending. The Republicans have proven to be as irresponsible as the Democrats on this. And yes, there is spending for the common good. But this is a different discussion than the one we are having on economic redistributionism.

    Still, confiscating 50% of an inheritance is a lot of power to grant the government. Kennedy knows this even though he makes others pay his share. Don’t Democrats call this welfare for the rich?

  13. Fr. Jacobse,

    Unfortunately, the Dem’s are on the right side of “net neutrality”. What the legislation was originally intended to prevent (though, since it was mostly supported by Dem’s in the end who knows what else it did) was traffic shaping at the TCP/IP level by the core carriers. The core carriers have big plans (though at this point the return to them is nebulous) to create a “tiered” net – really changing the fundamental nature of the net from a place where every node (i.e. computer or router) and every route (i.e. the path from one node to another) has “equal” access and status to every other node and route – limited by bandwidth of course, but not priority or status. This was crucial in the original design of TCP/IP which was to get one computer talking to another even if certain routes and nodes were destroyed (by a nuke attack). It turned out it was a great way to create a global computer network that could handle the burdens we place on it today.

    Essentially, they plan to create multiple “Intranets” that are not all equal. To the average end user, this will mean certain sites are more respond better than others, or even are inaccessible as a practical matter. It also could affect the search ability of the Internet. It really will be an experiment with the very basics of the Intranet and it looks to only benefit the core carriers. In a lot of ways, it is sort of like putting toll houses/forts on a heavy trafficated river which was once open to all. Who gains? The soldiers and war lords who built the fort. Who loses? everyone else.

    This is another case where the libertarian business interests of the Republicans have won out yet again. Conservatives stay home 2006!!!………..

  14. Note 63. Christopher, I’ll take the correction if necessary, but my understanding is that the corportate interests (Google etc.) favor the two-tiered system and the vote last week was a vote against this approach. That’s the way I read it anyway and that is what the two pieces I linked to reported. Am I wrong on this one?

  15. Note 64,

    As I understand it, Google, Ebay, Amazon, and others with similar large stakes with the system as it is currently designed wanted it to remain as is. Leaving the system as is – all TCP/IP packets being equal – is what most refer to as “net neutrality”. Google does not gain by paying the toll to AT&T, Sprint, and other large core carriers. Not only would they have to pay more to have their data packets (i.e. TCP/IP packet) back to the customer making the connection “prioritized”, but the customer might have to pay more to have his traffic “prioritized” to Google. In fact, they may not be able to pay anything to get their traffic equal to others because the carriers and large ISP’s have other agendas.

    Smaller ISP’s do not gain because they are in the business of providing access to the customer, not paying a toll to the core carriers. Larger ISP’s, especially the cable TV companies who are now in the business of being ISP’s, might gain in that they could prioritize certain traffic (e.g. digital TV) over other traffic.

    Here is an analogy I like to use. Suppose a city came together and everyone agreed that the roads would be common property and maintained by the government (this is the Internet when it was a government/research project). Now suppose the city decided to outsource the building of new roads and maintenance of roads to contractors, the citizens would have to provide their own roads on their property and connections to city roads, but the city still wrote the laws governing how everyone drives on city roads – and the rules of the road apply the same to everyone – such as a common speed limit (this is the Internet as it is today).

    Now, suppose the city decided to outsource the rules of the road to the contractors, so that the contractors could decide things like “Those with SUV’s have to drive 35 unless they pay an extra $1000 dollars a year in taxes then they can drive 55, and sedans have to drive 45 but can never turn left…”. This is the Internet of the future with traffic prioritization, shaping, core carriers “recovering their real cost”, etc. It really changes the fundamental nature of the internet. The TCP/IP protocol is getting ready to become a sub protocol – something that sits under core carriers real protocols and routing procedures. Now, this will not be all bad, but it will not be all good either. The Internet, such as it is, is getting ready to disappear. The question becomes is the Internet such a thing like “the commons”, and if so how should it be maintained?

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