It's been a very uneventful 4th of July around here. I spent most of it on the back porch painting. Mike and I went to Ryan's for lunch and ate BBQ. Then we went by Auto Zone and bought a new battery for my car. My neighbor Rob installed it for me. This evening I walked down to Pam's and watched a few fireworks and ate watermelon. The wind coming off the lake was unseasonably cool, so I didn't stay for what sounds like now was the main event. My dogs hate fireworks and they're going off everywhere around us as I'm typing this. It sounds like a war zone out there.

I've been getting hits this week from the United Kingdom - Liverpool, Motherwell, St. Helen's - and they all are entering through the Nov. 13, 2006 post I wrote about our denomination's controversy. Seems someone emailed that post to several people and they're reading to see what this strange woman in Mississippi, USA thinks about it. With the Lambeth Conference coming up next week in Canterbury, I'm curious to know if there is a connection.

.

I do think it was tacky for the Archbishop to invite all the USA bishops except for one. Gayness is not going back in the closet, so the sooner we all accept that, the sooner we can make progress in the larger mission. I read something recently by John Larson of Chicago that I thought made a lot of sense. I wish more people would think this logically:

There are some lessons in logic here.

If God created all humanity including persons with a homosexual orientation then it is illogical that God would declare persons with a homosexual orientation to be evil because God said that "It is Good" to the creation of man.

.

For your position to be true you must believe that sexual orientation is a choice. When did you decide to make the moral choice to be a heterosexual person? Science is very clear that sexual orientation is not a choice. It appears to run the gamut from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual with variations in between. Culture does play a role in individuals choosing to be one or the other for those in the middle, but forthose at the extremes there is no choice. We have conflicting evidence on the numbers at the homosexual extreme, but discrimination based on numbers is wrong.

.

So I contend that my statement that sexual orientation is morally neutral stands. Morality should be based on what a person does, not who they are. This is why it is wrong to discriminate based on things that a person does not control.