In a recent post, I faulted the Catholic Church for an “instruction” which would bar even celibate men from the priesthood. Well, the Catholic Church isn’t the only Christian group excluding someone because of something they can’t control. Dirty Harry reports that a Christian school in Ontario, California is expelling a girl because her parents are lesbians. Anyway, I agree with Dirty Harry’s point that this is “indefensible,” so read his post!
UPDATE–The Anchoress offers a perspective on the Catholic Church’s proposed policy which, I believe, anyone who wants to talk (or blog) about this issue must read. In my initial post, on the Catholic Church’s policy, I updated it to link this post and now she has another where she writes:

My own gut feeling: Rome will not ban gay priests – but the men who DO enter our seminaries-both gay and straight – are going to really, really have to convince that they put their faith and their vows before their inclinations. In other words…they’re going to have to win back the trust of a church and a people grievously harmed. The church will not be able to withstand a second round of scandal or another lavender mafia, moving predator priests from one job to another. And if that means a little bit of difficulty and suffering while we work this all out, I would hope our gay priests would be men enough to deal with it.

Now, please read both posts, here and here.
UP-UPDATE: PrismWarden weighs in here and offers some recollections of experiences with gay seminarians.

Glenn Reynolds (AKA Instapundit) offers some great thoughts on the religious right and a potential danger facing the GOP. Like me, he doesn’t think “we’re in the grip of a theocracy” and he noted that Andrew Sullivan‘s tone of late “has been such that I doubt it’s winning many converts.” Importantly he notes that that gay marriage is “clearly a minority position in this country. . . . You go from being a minority position, to a majority position, by convincing people that you’re right. It’s not clear to me that playing the theocracy card will do that.”
Read the whole thing and follow the links for some thoughtful commentary on the “theocracy” debate.
UPDATE: In a recent column, while Michael Barone finds that Americans are becoming increasingly religious, that doesn’t mean “we’re headed to a theocracy” as “America is too diverse and freedom-loving for that.” Read the whole thing!

According to the Agape Press (hat tip: townhall.com), a few social conservatives fear

the city of Jerusalem will be subjected to “a moral outrage” if a planned 10-day event known as WorldPride 2005 goes forward as planned. If it does take place, the event will bring some 250,000 homosexuals to the holy city in a celebration of their lifestyle.

Mike Evans, founder of Jerusalem Prayer Team, believes that that event organizers are staging the event in Jerusaelm to make a “provocative statment.” In an attempt to prevent the holy city from “being desecrated by homosexuals,” his group is trying to gather one million signatures to convince Israel to stop the event.
Mr. Evans fears that “holding WorldPride 2005 in Jerusalem would lead to the worst debauchery the Middle East has seen since the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.” If Mr. Evans read his Bible, he’d realize that the crime of the people of Sodom was the way they treated strangers. Instead of welcoming Lot’s guests (the two angels) into their community, the Sodomites demanded to have their way with them (Genesis 19:5-9). They were not a hospitable people. And in an age and culture which valued hospitality.
It seems, however, that the City of Jerusalem has chosen to be hospitable to WorldPride 2005.
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As I start this post, let me state clearly I am NOT a supporter of the “ex-gay” ministry stuff. Not, not, not. So the disclosure on this article is that the author of the book profiled appears to be from the “ex-gay” crowd. So if you can get past that…
Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would – TownHall.com
I thought the article was very interesting. Is the “political Christian” movement realizing that, at long last, gays are not going anywhere and there are too many to convert back now?

Should loving them be contingent upon them renouncing their homosexuality? Nope.
“Often LGBT people refuse to accept our message simply because they perceive an ulterior motive on our part. They know that, often, Christians who show them love are doing it only so we can eventually talk them into “going straight.” So we must show love to homosexuals regardless of whether they want to change. Real love does not demand anything in return.”
Unconditional love — now there’s a novel idea. When a call to unconditional love can be legitimately described as a fresh Christian approach, something has gone very wrong.

Should we then not ask ourselves if we should treat anti-gay Christian activists as Jesus Would?
And, perhaps should the real question for the gay community be “shouldn’t gay landlords want to rent to Christian evangelicals?” — the reverse of the question Ryan Zempel poses at the beginning of his column.
Just doing what I can to bring you the stories you won’t see other places…. and let you talk amongst yourselves….

In a statement last week, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) once again showed why gay groups are making little headway in reaching out to “red-state” Americans, particularly people of faith.
Although the statement is titled Articles of Faith: Reframing Issues of Religion, Public Policy, and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community, NGTLF’s Religious Leadership Roundtable does not itself reframe such issues, but instead seems to be insisting that its opponents should be the ones reframing the issues:

Faced with the long history of societal, legal, and religious change in favor of greater freedom and equality, the burden of proof rests on those who oppose equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people

It seems far-fetched for the organization promoting change to insist that the burden of proof falls on those defending the status quo. No, it’s up to us to make the case for change. It’s one reason I have been promoting gay monogamy on this site. If we want social (including religious) institutions to recognize our unions, we need to make clear that we are willing to accept the same conditions attached to traditional marriage.
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