A Few Bible Stories, updated

I recently wrote an essay entitled, “A Few Bible
Stories”, which I emailed it to my friends and
posted on my blog. I've been bothered ever since
about something I wrote in it, and I really
haven't been completely sure why it bothered me.
The offending lines?

“Is homosexuality a sin? Yes, it is.”

At first I thought the problem was that I was
uncomfortable making solemn declarations:
“homosexuality is a sin”, and that's probably part
of it. I thought that maybe I should have said
something along the line of “The Bible tells us
that it is.” I was also a bit concerned that I
might offend homosexuals and those who know and
love them, or that I might turn off people who are
not convinced that homosexuality is a sin, so that
they might miss the essential part of the message,
which is that discrimination is wrong. These are
also valid concerns. But these still didn't tell
me why I was so bothered by it.

I took a 40 mile ride on my bicycle today, and I
thought about this while I was riding. And I
think I know what really bothers me about what I
wrote:


The question is utterly irrelevant.

And so is the answer, regardless of what the
answer might be.


It doesn't matter if homosexuality is a sin.
There's probably some of you that think it is a
sin, and there's probably some of you that think
it isn't. It doesn't matter if it is or not.
It's completely irrelevant. Here's a question
that is relevant:

Is a homosexual a human being?

And the answer is: Yes, a homosexual is a human
being.

It really doesn't matter if you think
homosexuality is a sin or not. It doesn't matter
if God thinks homosexuality is a sin. What
matters is that this is a human being, and we
don't discriminate against our fellow human
beings.

For those of you who are Christians, you know that
Jesus said:

“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

When asked, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus told a
story that made it clear that everybody is our
neighbor. That means that we must love everyone
as we love ourselves. Everyone includes
homosexuals.

And for those of you who are not Christians, think
about this: If the person whom you dislike most
were starving to death, would you feed him? Think
about it: if you give this person food, he will
live. If you withhold the food, he will die. Are
you able to watch a person starve to death because
you won't give him food? I doubt that very many
of us could do this; we recognize a person's
humanity, whether we like them or not. Then how
can we justify treating this person differently
under any circumstances?

So there it is: it doesn't matter if
homosexuality is a sin, any more than it matters
if the person in question is a homosexual, a
heterosexual, a black, a Jew, male or female, or
anything else. A person is a person, and we must
love them all the same, and we must treat them all
the same. We cannot justify doing otherwise.