Gay Bishop

[john]

Does it matter if a Bishop is gay?

What does it mean to be gay and celibate? I mean can you be really gay if you don't do anything?

[Nearly Sane]

Does it matter if a Bishop is gay?

What does it mean to be gay and celibate? I mean can you be really gay if you don't do anything?

What is 'really gay?'

[bluehillside Retd.]

NS,

What is 'really gay?'

Gay, only not just at the weekends?

I sometimes wonder if the homophobic christians don't just have a typo in the bibles - it was figs that Jesus hated....

[Aruntraveller]

Can you be really heterosexual if you don't do anything?

[trippymonkey]

Isn't sexuality about what 'gets you off' & doesn't necessarily mean you have to have sexual intercourse or 'nearly' to be gay. No actual physical contact?
It's a state of mind, no?

If you're male & you get sexually aroused ONLY my males & male nudity, I would say you were gay etc.

Nick

[Brownie]

Does it matter if a Bishop is gay?

What does it mean to be gay and celibate? I mean can you be really gay if you don't do anything?

Course you can be gay and celibate.  Think about it, there are plenty of celibate heterosexual people.  Doesn't mean any of them have always been celibate but sometimes people reach a place in life where that's how it is and they are comfortable with it.

I read about the Bishop and couldn't quite work out how it was relevant but I suppose, as he lives with a long term partner, he felt he had to say to shut up the speculators.

[Harrowby Hall]

How many more times? Celibate means unmarried not totally abstemious.

Isn't it about time that "Christians" got over their obsession with sex? It is a natural part of the human condition. In medieval times the church learned that sex was a very efficient tool for social control. Much of what,for example, the RC church "teaches" about sex is scientific tripe, but the punters still swallow it.

What any individual does with contents of his or her underwear is of no concern to any one else.

Are we soon to be faced with calls for the Bishop of Grantham not to be allowed into schools so that he cannot corrupt innocent minds?

[Brownie]

Everywhere on the internet, celibacy is defined as abstaining from sexual relations.
This is the Oxford Dictionary definition of 'celibate' but there are plenty of others, plus a Wiki article, and they all say much the same:

1Abstaining from marriage and sexual relations, typically for religious reasons

So the Bishop is celibate, he has said so, and now everyone can stop nosing around in his business which is probably  hy he made the statement.

[SusanDoris]

In my opinion, it matters not a jot whether the Bishop is gay or not; what matters is that all Bishops and leaders of god-believing religions tell their followers to believe in some god or other with not one shred of testable evidence to back up such beliefs.

[floo]

Does it matter if a Bishop is gay?

What does it mean to be gay and celibate? I mean can you be really gay if you don't do anything?

Of course it shouldn't matter, there is nothing wrong with being gay. The Bishop be able to have a  sex life too.

[Harrowby Hall]

A couple of excerpts from the Wikipedia entry on Celibacy:

1   The English word celibacy derives from the Latin caelibatus, "state of being unmarried", from Latin caelebs, meaning "unmarried".

2   A. W. Richard Sipe, while focusing on the topic of celibacy in Catholicism, states that "the most commonly assumed definition of celibate is simply an unmarried or single person, and celibacy is perceived as synonymous with sexual abstinence or restraint."[14] Sipe adds that even in the relatively uniform milieu of Catholic priests in the United States "there is simply no clear operational definition of celibacy".

In French celibataire means unmarried.

To the best of my knowledge, the Bishop of Grantham has not married his partner. He is thus celibate.

In the RC church, until about the 11th and 12th centuries, priests were married. The rule of celibacy was introduced to protect church property from being inherited by the children of priests.

[floo]

A couple of excerpts from the Wikipedia entry on Celibacy:

1   The English word celibacy derives from the Latin caelibatus, "state of being unmarried", from Latin caelebs, meaning "unmarried".

2   A. W. Richard Sipe, while focusing on the topic of celibacy in Catholicism, states that "the most commonly assumed definition of celibate is simply an unmarried or single person, and celibacy is perceived as synonymous with sexual abstinence or restraint."[14] Sipe adds that even in the relatively uniform milieu of Catholic priests in the United States "there is simply no clear operational definition of celibacy".

In French celibataire means unmarried.

To the best of my knowledge, the Bishop of Grantham has not married his partner. He is thus celibate.

In the RC church, until about the 11th and 12th centuries, priests were married. The rule of celibacy was introduced to protect church property from being inherited by the children of priests.

It is about time the Catholic Church dropped this daft celibacy rule, especially as married Anglican Priests who convert can continue to serve as priests.

[trippymonkey]

The best thing about being gay is that there's less likelihood to produce MORE bloody humans on this earth than there already is, eh ?

Nick

[Bubbles]

Can you be really heterosexual if you don't do anything?

Snap! My thought exactly.

[wigginhall]

Yesterday, I felt a bit iffy, but today I'm feeling really really straight.   But tomorrow is another day. 

[jeremyp]

A couple of excerpts from the Wikipedia entry on Celibacy:

1   The English word celibacy derives from the Latin caelibatus, "state of being unmarried", from Latin caelebs, meaning "unmarried".

2   A. W. Richard Sipe, while focusing on the topic of celibacy in Catholicism, states that "the most commonly assumed definition of celibate is simply an unmarried or single person, and celibacy is perceived as synonymous with sexual abstinence or restraint."[14] Sipe adds that even in the relatively uniform milieu of Catholic priests in the United States "there is simply no clear operational definition of celibacy".

In French celibataire means unmarried.

To the best of my knowledge, the Bishop of Grantham has not married his partner. He is thus celibate.

In the RC church, until about the 11th and 12th centuries, priests were married. The rule of celibacy was introduced to protect church property from being inherited by the children of priests.

That's all very well, but in the current context of the Anglican Church and being gay, it means "not having sex"

[Brownie]

Yes it does so the Bishop has said he is not having sex, as if it's anyone's business.   Nothing new anyway!  There have been gay bishops and clergy for aeons, some of them in heterosexual marriage.

[Khatru]

Does it matter if a Bishop is gay?

Only to those whose minds need to be crowbarred out of the late Iron Age.


 

What does it mean to be gay and celibate?

I would have thought it means the same as being heterosexual and celibate.

 

I mean can you be really gay if you don't do anything?

Can you really be heterosexual if you don't do anything?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Does it matter if a Bishop is gay?

What does it mean to be gay and celibate? I mean can you be really gay if you don't do anything?

Aren't you just reducing being Gay to what one does with one's Hector?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

In my opinion, it matters not a jot whether the Bishop is gay or not; what matters is that all Bishops and leaders of god-believing religions tell their followers to believe in some god or other with not one shred of testable evidence to back up such beliefs.

As I said before you put yourself out there in that space where your mind is telling you that there may or may not be a God with whom you can have personal contact with.
Access is free ..........or studiously avoided for fear that God might appear.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Only to those whose minds need to be crowbarred out of the late Iron Age.

I have to say Khatru I've missed you and your posts steeped in the imagery of violence and force.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

As I said before you put yourself out there in that space where your mind is telling you that there may or may not be a God with whom you can have personal contact with.

That's the "space" most people occupy anyway - there may or may not be anything. That anything may be though says nothing about whether something is.

Access is free ..........

Access to what - God? You need to establish that premise before troubling yourself with clams about whether or not there's a cost for "access".

...or studiously avoided for fear that God might appear.

No - some of us "studiously avoid" claims about "God" because that's what study of the arguments made for his existence lead to. Whether it'd be something to fear if ever a cogent argument for a god could be made is a separate matter.

Anyways, back to the gay bishop - personally I'm not sure that it's such a bad thing that some christian clerics are up in arms about it. If they want to keep digging the grave of their faith by showing it to be ever-more ignorant, unpleasant and irrelevant then so be it.     

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

That's the "space" most people occupy anyway - there may or may not be anything. That anything may be though says nothing about whether something is.
   

No.......... it says it may exist(what it says on the tin). Not it can't exist.
Whether people occupy that space is another issue since I have direct experience of avoiding inhabiting it, I know people who have reported the same experience and I can envisage people who just don't go there since  it might involve some change in lifestyle.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

No.......... it says it may exist(what it says on the tin). Not it can't exist.

What are you trying to say here?

Whether people occupy that space is another issue since I have direct experience of avoiding inhabiting it, I know people who have reported the same experience and I can envisage people who just don't go there since  it might involve some change in lifestyle.

See above. The "space" most occupy is that anything might be - the Loch Ness monster, your choice of a god, leprechauns, whatever. The problem for the proponent of any of these claims though is to find a logical path from "might be" to "probably is".   

[Nearly Sane]

No.......... it says it may exist(what it says on the tin). Not it can't exist.
Whether people occupy that space is another issue since I have direct experience of avoiding inhabiting it, I know people who have reported the same experience and I can envisage people who just don't go there since  it might involve some change in lifestyle.

So should the gay bishop have sex with his partner , would he still be suitable as a bishop in your opinion?