The essential thing about churches and homosexuality is that they should deal with it just as they do other sins. This raises the issue of what they do with other sins.

There is a rhetorical switch-game here. Take racial hatred and homosexuality. With homosexuality, people take the theologically correct position that you should hate the sin and love the sinner, and that we are all sinners, and must remember to be compassionate. All quite true. But when it comes to racism, people condemn it unthinkingly and somehow all the caveats about loving the sinner never get mentioned. Why the difference? I think it is because people don't like to offend the world.

But if, for example, you think it is proper for a church to speak out strongly against racial hatred, then you think it is proper for a church to speak out against homosexuality. Both racial hatred and homosexuality are sins . The main difference is that racial hatred is, in the Bloomington of 2003, a sin of the powerless, whereas homosexuality is a sin of the powerful. That, I think, is the entire explanation for why churches feel they have to be so much more compassionate to homosexuals than to racists.

Racial hatred and homosexuality are not the only two sins either. The same principle applies to child molesters, drug dealers, wife beaters, and cannibals. In each case, hate the sin but love the sinner. In each case, the church must decide whether to take a public position. And in each case, the church must decide whether a person actively and proudly engaged in the sin should be welcomed as a full member of the church.

Thus, if the Episcopal Church takes the position that (a) homosexuality is a sin, but (b) homosexuality should not block someone from being a priest, it should also not block drug dealers or child molesters from being priests. (Actually, that probably is its policy.)

Churches should never give up on any of these people, but it should condemn them strongly even while it invites them come to church services and Bible studies. The church should not tolerate open sin in members, and certainly not in church leaders.

I'll have to think more about this, which I haven't done for a while, because there are relevant Bible verses about how to deal with open sin, but they are not altogether clear. (One of the main hard-liners in that Bible study group has since become an apostate, which makes the issue poignant.) Here are some verses to think about:

Matthew 18:15 "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 "But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. 17 "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

1 Corinthians 5:9 I wrote unto you in my epistle to have no company with fornicators; 10 not at all meaning with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous and extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world: 11 but as it is, I wrote unto you not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such a one no, not to eat.

2 Thessalonians 3:10 For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. 11 For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. 12 Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread. 13 But ye, brethren, be not weary in well doing. 14 And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. 15 Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.

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