| Bishop Melvin Wheatley
Excerpt from book, Beyond Acceptance:
"I am an enthusiastically heterosexual male. Is my heterosexuality a virtue? A sign of righteousness? Either an accomplishment or a victory of some kind on my part? Of course not. I had nothing whatsoever to do with my being heterosexual. It is a mysterious gift of God's grace communicated through an exceedingly complex set of chemical, biological, chromosomal, hormonal, environmental factors--totally outside of my control. My heteroseuxality is a gift--neither a virtue nor a sin.
What I do with my heterosexuality, however, is my personal, moral, and spiritual responsibility. My behavior as a heterosexual, may therefore, be very sinful--brutal, exploitative, selfish, promiscuous, superficial. My behavior as a heterosexual, on the other hand, may be beautiful--tender, considerate, loyal, other-centered, profound.
Precicely the same distinction between being a heterosexual and behaving as a heterosexual applies to homosexual persons, unless you and I are to be guilty of that lowest blow of all, and that is to work by double standards.
Homosexuality, quite like heterosexuality, is neither a virtue nor an accomplishment. It is a mysterious gift of God's grace communicated through an exceedingly complex set of chemical, biological, chromosomal, hormonal, environmental factors--totally outside of my homosexual friend's control. His or her homoseuxality is a gift--neither a virtue nor a sin. What one does with one's homosexuality, however, is one's personal, moral, and spiritual responsibility.
Behavior as a homosexual, may therefore, be very sinful--brutal, exploitative, selfish, promiscuous, superficial. Behavior as a homosexual, on the other hand, may be beautiful--tender, considerate, loyal, other-centered, profound.
With this interpretation of the mystery that must be attributed to sexual orientation, both heterosexual and homosexual, I clearly do not believe that homosexuality is a sin."
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