More on Jensen

I have received a copy of the media release by Changing Attitude Australia from Fr Andrew Eaton in Bendigo. Thankfully the number of Anglican churches and Dioceses around the world which support gay people seems to grow. When I was a teenager, it appeared none were supportive although I know that was not completely true even in evangelical Sydney but everything was so concealed in those days. Perhaps the ridiculous comments by the Jensens and their ilk these days is the last backlash of a losing minority. I pray that may be so.
Letters to the Sydney Morning Herald have pointed out the problems with the studies these fundamentalists like to quote.

So, we have two studies claiming gay men's life expectancy is shorter than heterosexual men. One of those, according to its original authors, is out of date (Vancouver at the height of the AIDS crisis). The other, according to independent analysis, is irredeemably flawed. These are the facts. They were not difficult to find and they have not been censored. They do not come from the publications of gay rights groups or other activist organisations, but from the research of professional scientists and statisticians.

Another points out

Perhaps if Jensen, Jim Wallace, et al had grown up hearing that, because of their Christian faith, they were an ''abomination", mercilessly bullied in the schoolyard, treated as a social pariah, disowned by their families or even outcast by their entire community, they may have some understanding of why so many young gay and lesbian people fall into a self-destructive lifestyle of drugs, casual sex and nihilistic hedonism.

Surely the ability for young gay men and lesbians to meet socially, to be proud in front of family and friends of who they are, to form life long same sex partnerships, create their own families, even marriages will reduce the temptation to seek refuge in destructive lifestyles. Churches should be encouraging this not leading the attack on such developments. However to quote Jeremiah:

Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not: