{"id":401,"date":"2009-08-04T22:29:23","date_gmt":"2009-08-04T22:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/2009\/08\/an-honest-question-about-gays.html"},"modified":"2009-08-04T22:29:23","modified_gmt":"2009-08-04T22:29:23","slug":"an-honest-question-about-gays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/08\/an-honest-question-about-gays.html","title":{"rendered":"An Honest Question about Gays in the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OK, I&#8217;m serious about this. I&#8217;m not even being snarky. Really.<\/p>\n<p>If you are one who thinks that homosexual sex is sinful, <b>can you please explain to me WHY a gay or lesbian person who is in a long-term, monogamous relationship would not be able to wholeheartedly follow Christ?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>My only stipulation is this: You may not quote one of the six verses in scripture that mentions homosexuality.&nbsp; Instead, you must use <i>theological and\/or philosophical arguments<\/i> to attempt to convince me that when you have genital contact with someone of your own gender, it somehow inhibits your relationship with Christ.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you in advance for your civility in answering this question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, I&#8217;m serious about this. I&#8217;m not even being snarky. Really. If you are one who thinks that homosexual sex is sinful, can you please explain to me WHY a gay or lesbian person who is in a long-term, monogamous relationship would not be able to wholeheartedly follow Christ? My only stipulation is this: You&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-glbt","category-same-sex-marriage"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>An Honest Question about Gays in the Church - The New Christians<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/08\/an-honest-question-about-gays.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Honest Question about Gays in the Church - The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"OK, I&#8217;m serious about this. I&#8217;m not even being snarky. Really. If you are one who thinks that homosexual sex is sinful, can you please explain to me WHY a gay or lesbian person who is in a long-term, monogamous relationship would not be able to wholeheartedly follow Christ? My only stipulation is this: You&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/08\/an-honest-question-about-gays.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-08-04T22:29:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tony Jones\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"An Honest Question about Gays in the Church - The New Christians","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/08\/an-honest-question-about-gays.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"An Honest Question about Gays in the Church - The New Christians","og_description":"OK, I&#8217;m serious about this. I&#8217;m not even being snarky. Really. If you are one who thinks that homosexual sex is sinful, can you please explain to me WHY a gay or lesbian person who is in a long-term, monogamous relationship would not be able to wholeheartedly follow Christ? My only stipulation is this: You&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/08\/an-honest-question-about-gays.html","og_site_name":"The New Christians","article_published_time":"2009-08-04T22:29:23+00:00","author":"Tony Jones","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/08\/an-honest-question-about-gays.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/08\/an-honest-question-about-gays.html","name":"An Honest Question about Gays in the Church - The New Christians","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-08-04T22:29:23+00:00","dateModified":"2009-08-04T22:29:23+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/a5d6dffe0f41c25b4bd8136be22c4074"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/08\/an-honest-question-about-gays.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/08\/an-honest-question-about-gays.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/08\/an-honest-question-about-gays.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"An Honest Question about Gays in the Church"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/","name":"The New Christians","description":"Tony Jones on Christianity and the Emerging Church","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/a5d6dffe0f41c25b4bd8136be22c4074","name":"Tony Jones","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d50\/d50708c3731048719806adf9c6f6df30x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d50\/d50708c3731048719806adf9c6f6df30x96.jpg","caption":"Tony Jones"},"description":"Tony Jones is the author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier and several other books on Christianity and prayer.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/author\/tjones"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}