Gay marriage

OCA Synod Categorically Rejects Same-Sex Unions and Homosexual Self-Identity

We reject any attempt to create a theological framework which would normalize same-sex erotic relationships or distort humanity’s God-given sexual identity.
OCA Synod Categorically Rejects Same-Sex Unions and Homosexual Self-Identityby OCA Synod –
The Orthodox Church teaches that the union between a man and a woman in marriage reflects the union between Christ and His Church (Eph. 5). As such, marriage is by this reflection monogamous and heterosexual. Within this marriage, sexual relations between a husband and wife are an expression of their love that has been blessed by God. Such is God’s plan for male and female, created in his image and likeness, from the beginning, and such remains his plan for all time. Any other form of sexual expression is by its nature disordered, and cannot be blessed by the Church in any way, [Read more…]

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Homosexual Unions or Intercourse Can Never Be Redeemed or Blessed by God

Fr. Thomas Hopko: Homosexual Advocates Should be Denied Communion in the Orthodox Churchby Fr. Thomas Hopko –
While sexual intercourse between a man and a woman has the possibility of being a pure and proper actualization of divine love when enacted in a godly manner, homosexual intercourse does not.

From Chapter Six: Same-Sex Attraction and Passion in
Christian Faith and Same Sex Attraction: Eastern Orthodox Reflections book by Fr. Thomas Hopko

  • Orthodox Christian Scriptures and saints universally testify that when the attraction between persons of the same sex is godly, genital activity is precluded, because divine love cannot be expressed in sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex.
  • This is so because same-sex intercourse—however it is enacted, and however committed the persons are to each other, and however “monogamous” their relationship is, and however much they believe that they love each other with godly love—can never be complementary, unifying, life-creating and life-enhancing in the ways that God intended human sexual intercourse to be between a man and a woman. [Read more…]
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A Monstrous Immoral Leviathan Destroying America and Individual Liberty

A Monstrous Immoral Leviathan Destroying America and Individual Libertyby Doug Mainwaring –
…
Our government Leviathan is very real and has grown to previously unimaginable proportions. Its ever-increasing reach seems to know no bounds. And what was once perceived to be Leviathan’s mostly fiscal threat to the health and well-being of our nation is now a monstrous moral threat.

Leviathan’s vast bureaucracies are now its foot soldiers, who have busied themselves with weaponizing executive edicts, errant court rulings and out-of-control regulatory powers against all who disagree with our Ruling Elites never-ending social/moral engineering experimentation.

When will a critical mass of Americans of every race, creed, and color wake up and recognize Leviathan’s hot breath on the napes of all our necks, and finally exclaim, once and for all, “Enough is enough?” [Read more…]

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The Abnormal Cannot Dictate What’s Normal

The Abnormal Cannot Dictate What is Normalby Fr. Ioannes Apiarius –
Those who are darkened by spiritual corruption or sexual depravity cannot be trusted to lecture others about what’s normal or demand that the normal embrace abnormality.

Those who are confused about their own sexuality or reject traditional Christian moral principles are incapable of giving advice on normal human relationships or family life inside or outside the Orthodox Church.

Those who believe or teach that sodomy is either “normal” or not sinful have separated themselves from the true teaching of the Orthodox Church and go against the laws of nature. [Read more…]

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Fr. Thomas Hopko: Homosexual Advocates Should be Denied Communion in the Orthodox Church

Homosexual Advocates Should be Denied Communion in the Orthodox Churchby Fr. Thomas Hopko –
For this reason, those who publicly affirm and promote homosexual behavior (like those who publicly advocate abortion) cannot be sacramental communicants in the Orthodox Church.

When Church leaders rightly remove persons from sacramental communion, they must understand their action as therapeutic and not punitive.

From Chapter 24 – Same-Sex Attraction and Sacraments in
Christian Faith and Same Sex Attraction: Eastern Orthodox Reflections book by Fr. Thomas Hopko

  • In Orthodoxy, communicants in the sacramental mysteries are not only obliged to be steadfast in the Christian faith and perpetually repentant over their failures, they are also obliged to take full responsibility for the Church’s teachings and practices, and to be ready, to defend them unto death. [Read more…]
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Gay Iconoclasm: Holding the Line Against the Radical LGBT Agenda

Gay Iconoclasm: Holding the Line Against the Radical LGBT Agendaby Fr. Josiah Trenham –
So here is the essence of the conflict, my friends. It is the LGBT versus the JCIB: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Gay propaganda throws such classical wisdom to the wind without a thought nor a reference, as though it never existed, as though these religious traditions do not possess the hearts of the great majority of the world’s populations. They want civilizations to reorient themselves, overthrowing millennia of wisdom, to embrace the legitimization of sodomy and to crown it with the august dignity of the title marriage. Such a cultural redefinition of marriage is suicidal.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Your All-Holiness Catholicos and Patriarch of Georgia, Ilia II: Evlogēson, Despota. I ask your blessing. Highly esteemed and deeply respected brothers, Levan and Alan and Larry, such a joy to be here in Georgia, and I’m so deeply grateful to have this invitation to speak.

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, in the United States, as my father and his father before him. Los Angeles is the birthplace of the LGBT revolution. Los Angeles is the international center for homosexual propaganda and activism, the leading producer of its literature, the primary source of its media, the location of its religious iteration in the so-called “gay church,” and the center of its financial base in Hollywood. [Read more…]

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Fr. Michael Courey: Orthodox Church Must be More Inclusive, Welcome Same-Sex Couples

Fr. Michael Courey: Orthodox Church Must be More Inclusive, Welcome Same-Sex Couples On March 12, 2016, as a featured speaker at the Christian Family Life and the Challenges of Faithfulness symposium organized and sponsored by Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) in California, Fr. Michael Courey called on the Orthodox Church to be more inclusive and welcome same-sex couples into her sacramental life.

While admonishing those who “place too much emphasis on our sacramental life on exclusiveness rather than inclusiveness,” and bemoaning that “the Church is so oriented towards the traditional conservative view of marriage and the family” that young and old singles “feel there is no place for them in the pews,” Fr. Michael challenged the Church to “embrace and welcome all who seek shelter from the stormy seas of life, traditional and non-traditional families, with open arms and open minds.”

Fr. Michael Courey, is a Greek Orthodox priest serving St. Katherine Greek Orthodox Church in Redondo Beach, California. The Huffington Ecumenical Institute (HEI) was originally funded by a $5 million dollar donation by openly homosexual and LGBT activist millionaire Michael Huffington who also supports same-sex marriage. [Read more…]

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Christian Pastors Must Stand for Truth, Righteousness, and Morality in the Public Arena

Fr. Josiah Trenham Christian Pastors Must Stand for Truth, Righteousness, and Morality in the Public Arenaby Fr. Josiah Trenham –
You’d be right to ask, I think, what’s a pastor doing at this conservative political conference. I certainly know some of my clerical colleagues are asking what I’m doing here. Some of my own parishioners are probably asking—if they even know—are asking what I’m doing here. The IRS is certainly asking what I’m doing here. That unbiased and non-partisan government agency has been telling lies to clergy for 50 years to keep our mouths shut and to steal freedom of speech in the pulpit.

So let me answer that question, what’s a pastor doing here at this conservative political conference. It is perfectly natural for me to be here. Absolutely natural. Pastors and politics are intimately connected and have always been intimately connected in God’s design, from the beginning, in the old and the new covenant, from Israel right through two millennia of Christian history. Where you have politics, you have pastors. It’s only the Johnny-come-lately secularists who would like us to think and act differently. [Read more…]

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Gay ‘Marriage’ and Religious Freedom Cannot Coexist

Gay 'Marriage' and Religious Freedom Cannot Coexistby Napp Nazworth –
Gay marriage proponents will not allow for religious freedom of their political opponents because their belief system does not allow for the fact that dissenters can be reasonable people of goodwill, Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, argued at the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s 2014 Diane Knippers Memorial Lecture.

Most of those arguing in favor of redefining marriage to include same-sex couples do not understand, or even know, the arguments of those who oppose the redefinition of marriage, George claimed. They assume there are no reasonable arguments against gay marriage and those who oppose it are simply driven by hatred of gays.

“The whole [gay marriage] argument was and is that the idea of marriage as the union of husband and wife lacks a rational basis and amounts to nothing more than ‘bigotry,’ reflecting animus against a certain group of people,” he said. “Therefore, no reasonable person of goodwill, we are told, can dissent from the liberal position on sex and marriage, any more than a reasonable person of goodwill could support racial segregation and subordination. You’ve heard the analogy drawn a thousand times. [Read more…]

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Moral Earthquake is Taking Place in America

Archpriest Victor Potapovby Maria Stroganova –

Father Victor, please tell us how the Orthodox of America reacted to the decision of the US Supreme Court recognizing the legitimacy of same-sex marriage throughout the country?

– To tell you the truth, we feel like we are in mourning. Of course, no one was surprised that it happened. We all understood that the majority of the Supreme Court would vote in favor of the decision to register same-sex marriages. It all started a long time ago, and over a year ago, the Supreme Court declared the Marriage Protection Act illegal Now this is the result.

Of course, homosexuals claim that they are looking for equality in civil life and they want gay husbands and wives to have the right to visit each other in the hospital, inherit property, to have children, and the rights which are provided to traditional couples. I think, though, they actually are pursuing other goals. Just this morning, I read an interview with a rather famous Russian emigrant, Masha Gessen, who has long been an activist in the LGBT movement. She, of course is an anarchist, but they listen to her opinion in America, and she said: “Our goal is to destroy marriage as an institution, so that there is no longer the concept of marriage.” Her words need to be taken very seriously.[Read more…]

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