The Church and Homosexuality

First, this post is not about answering the question. But I periodically visit IBC’s discussion forum, Table & Fire, and found a new topic introduced by one of the more thoughtful forum regulars. I say forum regulars loosely. In the past, T&F had a fairly significant following. But its server crashed in a serious way, and the entire thing had to be rebuilt. And in the midst of that, the person who had been responsible to maintain it moved and was could no longer do so. So when it finally reemerged a few months later, only a paltry few signed back up. It has been fairly silent for a while until this friend opened the hottest topic yet. And it was viewed, but no response for 10 days. Here is the opening post:

I thought I'd see if T&F was completely dead. I think that IBC should re-evaluate its approach to gay people.

I would argue that God desires loving relationships and that committed same-sex couples should be allowed to enter those relationships without fear of condemnation from our church. Rather they should be encouraged as would any heterosexual couple desiring to marry. I wondered if anyone else felt the same at IBC or if I was just way off here. I'm fairly certain I'm one of a handful (if that) of IBC'ers who may feel this way. I wanted to see if there were others.

That's all. Simple, right?

Being the man of way more than a few words, I have now responded as follows: