Is it right to have a pastor that is homosexual?

Yes!

The Christian church is split into many factions and belief systems. Some believe homosexuality is a sin, others do not. It would really depend upon the beliefs of that particular church whether it would be morally egregious to them to have a homosexual pastor. I, personally, do not care.

I have known people whose Christian beliefs include women should wear dresses, no makeup and not cut their hair. However, most Christian denominations do not espouse these beliefs.

It depends on the denomination. For some, it is acceptable.

I don’t think so. Homosexuality is forbidden in the Bible.

It’s fine as long as the pastor is not hateful against gay people. Hypocrisy would be the only thing that would bother me. Each Christian group interprets and makes up their own ideas about God and the bible. If there are Chrisians who accept homosexuality, I have no problem with it, not every Spinoff of Christianity is the same.

As far as priests, if you mean Catholics, it is almost a tradition to be gay in the priesthood.

Different parts of the Bible have been used as the basis for prohibiting many different things:

dancing
listening to music
eating meat and shellfish
combining different types of food, or even textiles
allowing people to live who have broken various rules which we do not now consider capital crimes

Other parts of the Bible are more tolerant of the same behaviors that were an excuse for stoning or ostracism from the group in other parts of the same book.

I think it’s wrong to attempt to live in strict accordance to anyone else’s rules. Even God’s, if you suppose that It exists.

I’m just saying that if a denomintion forbids homosexuality. Then it is a conflict of interest to be a pastor of that denomination.

@Mikewlf337 I agree. The pastor would have to be supportive of homosexuality for me to be ok with it. I know people who go to a gay church, Christian church.

It should be said that there’s a lot of ground between “being” homosexual and being a “practicing” homosexual. If the pastor of a homophobic denomination is homosexual, but refrains from acting on his feelings and prays (I suppose – not being a Christian or a homosexual) then he should be no different from any other sinner. (Actually, I suppose that even if he does practice what he preaches against, but asks for and accepts forgiveness – assuming he feels bad about it – then it’s just another sin to be forgiven, isn’t it?)

Christian churches haven’t decided that their pastors have to be perfect yet, have they?

@WasCy So if they are in a romantic same sex relationship, but never have sex, all good?

I don’t know, @JLeslie. I’m not going to attempt to split hairs on Christian theology. But I have picked up on the “forgiveness for sins” thing. I’m not going to say what is “good” or not in Christianity. But if rape and murder can be forgiven, then I hardly see why love can’t be.

Aren’t all pastors some kind of sinners? That’s a central tenet of the religion (only Christ is sinless).

@WasCy I guess I never was very keen on the whole forgive the sinner thing.

Your way of looking at it is very different than mine. Interesting to me.

My 2 posts conflict with each other. I personally don’t think a homosexual can be a pastor but that is just my opinion. I’m not conflicted with the opinion of others. Most people on here are right. It depends on who you ask.

I’ve always been under the impression that a pastor’s main role in a community was to be a spiritual guide and source of strength for his/her flock. I don’t see how sexual preference can affect this.

Yes

I wouldn’t have a problem with it. “Right” is subjective.

There’s an interesting guy by the name of Rev. Troy Perry who realized it was ridiculous that he should have to give up his faith just because he was gay and others (also sinful humans) wanted to judge him for it.

So he started the Metropolition Community Church which welcomes all people gay or straight.

He also wrote a book entitled “The Lord is My Shepherd and He Knows I’m Gay”

www.mccchurch.org

So, in response to your Q, I’ll pose another.

Why should gay people be deprived of a place where they can worship God in a way that is comfortable for them, just because of the judgementalism of narrow minded people?

Of course a gay person can be a minister or rabbi or whatever religious position they feel called to and are prepared to meet the training requirements for.

Yes, it is wrong to have a pastor.

Only if (s)he specifically preached against it – people tend to have a hard time following hypocrites, and it would make him/her an ineffective shepard.

I agree with crazyivan. Being a pastor is wrong, so is having a pastor. Still, what a bunch of people want to do behind their own closed doors is no real concern of mine, so long as they keep it there.

Well unless you think a pastor’s job has anything to do with sexuality (and believe me,some pastors regardless of sexuality are confused about the boundary)...so yes, a gay pastor is ‘right’, whatever that means.

@crazyivan and @gmander – You can say that you don’t agree with having or being a pastor, but you cannot say it is “wrong” without sounding very narrow minded- more narrow minded in fact than those who DO have pastors.

To answer the question, I agree with those who are saying that it depends what the position of the particular church is. To be a gay pastor of a church that condemns homosexuality is hypocritical, but also improbable.

@Harold Why improbable?

@Harold Ditto, why improbable? Have you ever heard the saying thou doth protest too much.? Or, that during Salem witch trials, the best way to not be accused of being a witch, was to accuse someone else? The modern day equivalent is all of these politicians and preachers speaking against gay people and infidelity.

@Harold Here are some examples:

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_4817067

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Haggard look under scandal.

All of my catholic friends have had a gay priest at their church at one time or another during their lives.

I’m sure the majority of preachers are straight, but plenty are gay.

Pastor should be a-sexed. Period. ; )
Teachers should not be allowed to be married, like in the good old days.

It’s not right or wrong just like having a straight pastor is neither right or wrong. It’s just a part of who the person is and providing they are doing their job well who cares?

The vicar that christened me was a man at the time but has since had a full sex change. As far as I know she is still a vicar.

@JLeslie your first link – I know him. Sweet guy, stayed with his wife, no longer thinks it’s a sin…

@Harold – As there is no god, a pastor is wrong, but I wouldn’t condemn someone for their mistake. It’s my belief, if having and expressing my belief is narrow-minded then where does that put you?

@JLeslie & @MyNewtBoobs – I said improbable, because sooner or later they would probably be caught out. I do see your point, however.

@gmander – Your belief that there is no God does not make it fact any more than my belief that there is a God makes that a fact. Saying it is wrong IN YOUR OPINION is a different thing. However, you stated it as an indisputable fact, which it clearly is not. THAT is what I was referring to as narrow-minded. What did I say that was narrow-minded?

@Dutchess II Ah, the good old days of rampant sexism…

@Harold Sorry, bro. Believing the Tooth Fairy exists is wrong, period. Believing that the coreolis effect causes water to spin the other way in Australian bath tubs is wrong. Listening to a person who pretends to have a direct line to an invisible, omnipotent superhero in the sky is wrong. There is correct and there is incorrect.

You can think me narrow minded if you want (and apparently you want to), but I think we can all agree that either god exists or doesn’t exist. One side is right and the other is wrong. Now, I stand on the side that has stuff like evidence, data, logic and a willingness to change its suppositions. Hard to make the argument that that’s the narrow minded side.

@crazyivan – you have obviously made up your mind and are entitled to your beliefs. To me, YOU are wrong, but that is just my opinion. Narrow minded is not taking one side of the argument or the other. It is taking one side and branding the other side as incorrect publicly, without being prepared to concede that you might just be wrong. You imply you are willing to change your suppositions, but it doesn’t sound that way much to me.

@Harold, are you willing to admit that you might be wrong and the sun actually revolves around the earth?

Or do just demand this kind of agnosticism from people who have the audacity to claim that your own pet beliefs are false?

@Qingu – I would admit that I was wrong in ANYTHING, provided it was proved to my satisfaction. I don’t believe that any belief system is infallible, be it religious, scientific, or whatever. Anyone who is not prepared to admit their error in the face of irrefutable evidence is narrow minded, regardless of which side of the fence they are on.

Okay. What would it take to prove, to your satisfaction, that Zeus is imaginary?

@Qingu well what proof do you have that God doesnt exist. Nobody has definite proof of that either so you cant say that he doesnt exist.

@Qingu – I have no desire to get into a petty “proof” competition with you.

@Eggie, you seem to be missing the point. You cannot prove a negative.

If I told you that a tiny teacup was orbiting Alpha Centauri, you cannot “prove” the teacup doesn’t exist (because I can always say you’re not looking close enough, or its orbital plane makes it invisible to us).

Nevertheless, why would you ever believe for a second that there is a tiny teacup orbiting Alpha Centauri? The burden of proof is on me, the person asserting the teacup’s existence.

Now as far as I can tell, claims about any gods (Yahweh, Zeus, Thor, Odin, Marduk, etc) are just as ridiculous as the claim that a tiny teapot orbits Alpha Centauri, and the burden of proof is on the person asserting these characters’ existence. But perhaps it would help me answer your question if you let me which specific god you’re talking about.

@Qingu I feel sorry for you…....

@Eggie Of course you do, because the other option is facing his point head on, which you’re clearly not wiling to do.

@Harold I’m not willing to change my ‘suppositions’ because they’re based on empirical evidence and no evidence has been produced to the contrary. Most atheists start out as theists and eventually they grow up intellectually. The very fact that I was raised in a religious household and have rejected religion is proof that I’m willing to “change” my position… I already have.

As to your “well, in my opinion, you’re wrong” nonsense, well, your opinion doesn’t enter in to it and neither does mine. If you said the sun rose in the east and I said that “in my opinion you’re wrong”, I’d be wrong. Statements of fact don’t give a rat’s ass about my opinion or yours.

@crazyivan – What you call fact I call your opinion. you say it’s fact, I say it’s not. I don’t call being sucked in by false science growing up in any way. Funny how my opinion is nonsense and your’s isn’t. I would change my opinion if proved wrong (and have before), but no-one has done that yet. The sun rising in the east is provable.

@Harold – “sucked in by false science”, where did that come from?

crazyivan has a point when he talks about changing opinion on god. I also come from a religious background but have taken a different view from my parents on god. It really does show a willingness to alter one’s opinion on the matter. If pushed I could come up with many, many ways that I could change my opinion again but, apparently, god won’t do anything to show himself. Even finding an alien intelligence elsewhere that had a reasoned belief in a supreme being of some kind could push me back into the theist camp, and that’s not requiring any ‘showy’ stuff from god.

What conditions would you require to change your opinion?

@Harold My “false science” is based on provable fact, empirical evidence, intellectual discourse and objective data. Religion is based on ancient texts, ever changing interpretations, internal feelings, anecdotes and profiteering prophets.

So again, your “saying it’s not” really has no bearing on reality. It only has bearing on your brain. It is not based on testable hypothesis, it is not based on objective data, it can’t be falsified and it can’t be proven. In any reasonable discussion, fact trumps opinion. But don’t worry, I’ve yet to find a reasonable discussion about religion so you’re safe.

@crazyivan and @ @gmander – This is the problem I always find when discussing these issues with those who have rejected God. Generally, I find that they are willing to accept the findings of scientists, without having done the experimentation themselves. I understand that it is impossible for one person to carry out all the experiments themself, but why would you base your belief on the word of strangers you don’t even know? Believe me, there is such strong competition in the academic world for grants etc, people are always trying to prove themselves better than the next person, and truth is often the victim. I don’t believe that either point of view can be proved by the scientific method. However, we have to use the brains we have to decide what makes the most sense. Personally, I cannot accept evolution as the reason I am here. It is simply illogical to me. Can I prove to you that God exists? No. Has He proven to me that He exists? Yes. It Is that simple, really.
I am not worried by the way- I’ve heard it all before.

You guys….ever heard of Freedom of Religion? Leave it alone.

@Dutchess_III – Freedom to have religion or not have it- that’s fine by me. I just get sick of the arrogance of people who think they have all the answers and can’t possibly be wrong.

@Dutchess_III – Well excuse me, but if you followed the thread you would notice that it was Harold that started this by commenting on crazyivan’s and my own first posts. We did not initiate this. Harold is free to give his views on religion and I likewise.

@Harold – As I thought. Despite claiming an open mind and an ability to accept when you are wrong, you can’t actually give any cases where you would change your mind on your religious beliefs. I have done so, you have not. As you say, “I just get sick of the arrogance of people who think they have all the answers and can’t possibly be wrong.” You may be arrogant, but at least you appear to have the sense to know it!

Harold, I think one of your misconceptions is that non-religious people reject god. They reject the concept of god. The concept of god does exist, but god does not. So, I can reject the concept, but I cannot reject god. Many religious people simply cannot get their heads around this idea, that there are people who really, really have concluded that god is an illusion. It’s not like cutting off an old friend who you know exists, but you decide not to acknowledge any more, it’s more like having an imaginary friend that only you can see and then one day deciding to admit that the imaginary friend isn’t actually real.

You ask, “why would you base your belief on the word of strangers you don’t even know?” If, today, I accepted a religious viewpoint from someone, they would also be someone I don’t know. So, I have no choice in this matter, I don’t know you, why should I accept your word then? Essentially, you have used a spurious argument which might apply to yourself, but has no bearing on my own experience as I do not live in a religious environment. Actually, if I was to pick a religion based on the local population, I’d probably have to go for Islam or Hinduism. Hindus have been around for a very long time, but if god existed and even bothered in human affairs, I have to think that he/she/it had definitely come down for Islam as the new way forward, given its rate of growth.

You don’t have to accept evolution as the reason for your existence, you can accept a god as the reason for your existence (the ‘why’) and also accept evolution as god’s chosen mechanism for bringing your existence into being (the ‘how’). I prefer to listen to people who admit that their theories are still ‘works in progress’ rather than the dusty words of people already dead for thousands of years. Evolution is not a substitute for god, indeed there is no inherent contradiction between science and religion. Science only really offers solutions to questions of ‘how’, not ‘why’. That’s the domain of philosophy and, if you will, religion. Anyone that claims science answers questions of ‘why’ is really not a scientist, they are just jumping on a populist bandwagon. You see the bandwagon rolling and call it out for what it is. So do I.

Now, if someone tells me that evolution is wrong because there is already an old book that describes how god made the world in 6 days and built a garden, put a forbidden fruit in it (duh?), kicked us out, made one specific group his chosen people, changed his mind on that, sent his son down to be killed etc. etc. then they really are closed to rational thought, and debate is completely pointless. However, it’s probably not their fault, it will be a result of social conditioning and conformance to the social norms in which they have been brought up.

@gmander – you have successfully made it look like I said things that I never said. I have not asked to accept what I believe. I would not ask you or anyone else to go against their conscience, what is logic to them, or anything else. I wouldn’t want to to accept God unless you were convinced of His existence. I agree that my argument might be applied to myself.

I apparently neglected to answer your question about what I would be prepared to change, and thus you have accused me (perhaps fairly) of not being true to what I said. Let me correct that. If someone could show me a realistic alternative to God’s existence, and explain not only how, but why, my personal experience of Him was explained by a natural phenomenon, I would accept that in a heartbeat.

I do not claim to have all the answers. I don’t think any human does. No matter whether someone believes in God or not, they don’t have all the answers. This whole thread started from claims that having a pastor is wrong. That is what I was referring to by arrogance. If the statement was followed by “in my opinion”, I would never have had an issue with it. Opinion and fact are two very different things.

@Harold are you saying it is wrong to have a pastor as a homosexual?

@Eggie – no, I am not taking a position on that. The jury is still out as far as I am concerned.

@Harold For the record, I don’t know many people who take any scientist “at their word”. Myself and most people who accept logic as their basis for belief trust in the majority opinion of scientists or the consensus view. The idea that this is somehow tantamount to “just believing” someone is kind of silly since it is religion that rests on belief. Science rests on doubt.

@crazyivan – The problem is that logic and supposed science have a large conflict, to my way of thinking at least. If science rests on doubt, then I am a scientist, because I doubt what they say. To accept the findings of “science” without testing it yourself is obviously taking it at their word- it can’t be anything else. As I said before, it is unreasonable to expect that everyone would repeat all “scientific” experiments and observations themselves, therefore one has no choice but to look at all arguments and decide what is logical to them. If you see “science” as logic, then I am pleased for you. To me, it is not logical at all.

@Harold – What’s with ‘supposed science’ and putting the word science in quotes? Have you got a downer on all science? Maths, physics, chemistry…

It seems to me hard to doubt that a lot of science is demonstrably true. You doubt that electricity is real? Stick you fingers into a socket then? You doubt the existence of gravity? Feel free to jump off a cliff.

I will admit that some scientific experiments have doubtful results. I spent many hours trying to replicate Millikan’s oil drop experiment, and never could. It is now generally accepted that he fudged the results to match his expectation. The point is that he was found out, that’s what scientists do.

@gmander – Obviously science that can results in useful discoveries such as electricity etc is true, and demonstrably provable. Maths is provable. I have studied it myself to a high level. My point by supposed science etc is that the science people use to prove that the earth is millions of years old, that man evolved from a lower life form, etc etc is not provable.

I would hope that when it is shown that the experiments/research etc that supposedly prove we descended from lower life forms are discredited, that the scientific community will admit it.

@Harold Of course, if we follow your line of reasoning to it’s logical conclusion, it’s impossible to know anything. You really tip your hypocritical hand at the end there, though. In your last paragraph you essentially endorse a “future” scientific discovery under the condition that it confirms your existing belief… after suggesting that science is incapable of answering those questions.

Now, take the age of the earth as your example. This can be proven to any reasonable standard. I would recommend Bill Bryson’s “History of Nearly Everything” for a solid and easily understable run down of how we know that, step by step. The experiments that prove this are repeatable, observable and don’t require that one be steeped in the lingo of, say, geology. The method by which strata of rock are created can be observed, the strata can be counted, the time frame can be assessed.

Of course, this is a fact that is confirmed by hundreds of discoveries over dozens of individual scientific disciplines. You’ve all but admitted that you don’t believe it because you don’t want to (after all, you’ve already accepted nonexistent contrary evidence should it ever come into existence) so don’t try to cloak it as a problem with science. It’s a problem with your preconceived notions.

@crazyivan – Thank you for the character assessment and reading of my thoughts. Maybe one day I’ll be as smart as you and be able to assess people’s characters and motives by their logical defence of their position. Until then, I am happy to remain ignorant, and assess arguments without making them personal.

@Harold I was actually reading your words. I did not know there were thoughts attached to them.

I’m probably the wrong person to answer this. I would question why you need a pastor at all?

If you need to be religious, why not pray on your own? Wasn’t there something in the bible about not being pretentious and against praying in public? To me pastors, priests, shaman, are all about public magic and private profit. I don’t seriously care what they do for sex, I would be more concerned about why they thing I should support them.