IMPROV
You know what blows? I’ll tell you what blows. When Third Worlders go off-script:
The Nobel Peace Prize winner and president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has defended a law that criminalises homosexual acts, saying: “We like ourselves just the way we are.”
In a joint interview with Tony Blair, who was left looking visibly uncomfortable by her remarks, Sirleaf told the Guardian: “We’ve got certain traditional values in our society that we would like to preserve.”
I’ve always wondered about something. One of the words the Episcopalians used to justify their apostasies of the last nine years was “context.” Western society, they said, has come to the conclusion that homosexuality is simply a fact and that no moral taint attaches to it any more than it does to heterosexuality or left-handedness.
That being the case, homosexual individuals ought to be as welcome in the church as anyone else without having to change who they are, how they think or who they love. Consequently, any homosexual who displays the fruit of the Spirit in his or her life is a fit candidate for holy orders in the church, up to and including the office of bishop.
And that’s fine for over here. But over there is a society whose “context” teaches that homosexuality is notnormal, not a given and not a behavior which should be engaged in. How does the West, whose context teaches otherwise, react to laws like Liberia’s or Uganda’s even more draconian proposal, laws that come from a cultural context that so radically differs from its own?
Does it declare that what’s right for us might not necessarily be right for you and leave it at that? Of course not. They’re horrified or at least they declare themselves horrified; Lord knows, the Episcopalians anyway have never cut ecclesiastical ties with anyone over this issue or even considered the idea.
Which, from their standpoint, is a smart move. They’re not going to listen to us if they can’t hear us because we refuse to talk to them. But all this does provide any truly honest person with yet another example of the fact that for western liberals, The Issue only has one right answer and that their “context” argument is the worst kind of sham.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner and president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has defended a law that criminalises homosexual acts, saying: “We like ourselves just the way we are.”
In a joint interview with Tony Blair, who was left looking visibly uncomfortable by her remarks, Sirleaf told the Guardian: “We’ve got certain traditional values in our society that we would like to preserve.”
I’ve always wondered about something. One of the words the Episcopalians used to justify their apostasies of the last nine years was “context.” Western society, they said, has come to the conclusion that homosexuality is simply a fact and that no moral taint attaches to it any more than it does to heterosexuality or left-handedness.
That being the case, homosexual individuals ought to be as welcome in the church as anyone else without having to change who they are, how they think or who they love. Consequently, any homosexual who displays the fruit of the Spirit in his or her life is a fit candidate for holy orders in the church, up to and including the office of bishop.
And that’s fine for over here. But over there is a society whose “context” teaches that homosexuality is notnormal, not a given and not a behavior which should be engaged in. How does the West, whose context teaches otherwise, react to laws like Liberia’s or Uganda’s even more draconian proposal, laws that come from a cultural context that so radically differs from its own?
Does it declare that what’s right for us might not necessarily be right for you and leave it at that? Of course not. They’re horrified or at least they declare themselves horrified; Lord knows, the Episcopalians anyway have never cut ecclesiastical ties with anyone over this issue or even considered the idea.
Which, from their standpoint, is a smart move. They’re not going to listen to us if they can’t hear us because we refuse to talk to them. But all this does provide any truly honest person with yet another example of the fact that for western liberals, The Issue only has one right answer and that their “context” argument is the worst kind of sham.
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