You might not believe this, but some of the pond's friends have been Anglicans ...

(Above: is there an irony in this splash page? The pond merely asks, and as always you decide).


The good news this meditative Sunday is that the Pellists don't seem to have made it into the Sunday Terror.

The bad news is that this leaves the angry Sydney Anglicans front and centre.

How offensive can they be?

Well David Mansfield does his darnedest to be truly offensive in Tragic Confessions of a True Homophile.

It begins with the clueless header and the appropriation of the word "homophile".

ho·mo·phile  adj. 
1. Gay or lesbian. 
2. Actively concerned with the rights of gay men or lesbians. 
3. Advocating the rights and welfare of homosexuals. 
Noun
1. homophile - someone who practices homosexuality; having a sexual attraction to persons of the same sex ...
Adj. 1. homophile - homosexual or arousing homosexual desires (and so on here)

So what do we cop from a clearly confused Mansfield?

The usual yadda yadda about some of my best friends have been ...

I have had, and have, same-sex attracted people amongst my closest friends, acquaintances and parishioners (I have spent many years as a parish minister) for almost as long as I have been an adult and as long as I have been a follower of Jesus.


It always reminds the pond of the title to an album by George Clinton: Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends.

More to the point, it's a routine that's been around for a long time, as outlined by Bradford Plumer, in Rick Santorum: A Brief History of the 'Some of My Best Friends' Defense.

Plumer pinged Santorum for deploying the defence:

Yup, Rick Santorum went there. The former Pennsylvania senator, known for his less-than-enlightened views on gay rights, has opted for the “Some of my best friends…” approach. Earlier this week, when CNN’s Don Lemon asked him if he had any gay friends, Santorum replied enthusiastically: “Yes! In fact, I was with a gay friend of mine just two days ago. So, yeah, I do. And they respect that I have differences of opinion on that. I talk about these things in front of them, and we have conversations about it. They differ from me, but they know that I love them because they’re my friends.” Naturally, mockery ensued, but mainly because the self-serving line has become such a grizzled cliché.

Plumer goes on to dig into the early history of the defence in the United States, and its effectiveness as a ploy, but while suggesting it made be okay if that's all or the best you've got, adds a rider:

Of course, there are caveats. Michele Bachmann, for one, has a lesbian stepsister, Helen LaFave. Surely LaFave could be useful to Bachmann’s stated quest to prove to the world that she doesn't hate gay people, right? But there’s a hitch: By all accounts, the stepsisters are estranged, in part because of Bachmann’s rabid insistence that, for example, legalizing same-sex marriage will lead to school kids being brainwashed into homosexuality. The moral? Better to get your stories straight before enlisting that best friend.

If you're into tropes and memes, naturally you can find plenty of examples at tv tropes, here. This one from Catch-22 caught the eye:

Colonel Cathcart: Do you really think it's a good idea to let the enlisted men in? 
The Chaplain: I should think it only proper, sir. 
Cathcart: I'd like to keep them out. Oh, don't get me wrong, Chaplain. It isn't that I think the enlisted men are dirty, common and inferior. It's that we just don't have enough room. Frankly, though, I'd just as soon the officers and enlisted men didn't fraternize in the briefing room. They see enough of each other during the mission, it seems to me. Some of my very best friends are enlisted men, you understand, but that's as close as I care to let them come close. Honestly now, Chaplain, you wouldn't want your sister to marry an enlisted man, would you? 
Chaplain: My sister is an enlisted man, sir.

Oh sheesh, there we go again. The pond got so interested in the "some of my best friends are x" defence, that we quite forgot about David Mansfield. What a pity we remembered.

So what sort of friend is Mansfield to his very best gay friends? Does he wish them the pleasure of a hearty fuck and a cheerful ecstatic come?

Steady, let's not get carried away. It's chastity for the filthy deviant perverts, or a lifetime in hell to teach them a bloody good lesson:

Early in our marriage Helen and I lived with someone for several years who experienced same-sex attraction. Throughout life this person sought to be chaste, believing, as we believe, that the place for the expression of our human sexuality, and the procreation and nurture of children, is within the safety of an acknowledged, exclusive, permanent male/female relationship. 
 I have also urged people who are actively and stridently pursuing same-sex sexual activity that there is forgiveness, help and a better way. As I have urged them to repentance I have never withdrawn my love or commitment to their welfare. 
The Bible is very clear. We have been created to express our sexuality within an acknowledged exclusive and permanent male/female relationship.

That's being a true homophile?

You'd have to hope that Mansfield was joking, but of course, being a Sydney Anglican, he's merely deluded and delusional.

Could Mansfield be any more offensive?

Of course he could. Why on earth do you ask?

It’s a theological, anthropological and physiological first principle. 
 God made us to be sexual people. That’s by far not the sum and total of who we are, but it is a part of it, and the key part of it for this discussion. We are either male and female. We have been created to complement one another. We have been made so that our spirituality, psychology, sexuality and physicality meet and match. 
This is not resorting to some oppressive, archaic and cruel religious dogma.

It is of course...

A bit like the 'best friend' routine - as soon as that line is led in an argument, you know where you're heading. This isn't some oppressive, archaic and cruel religious dogma ... now let me lay some oppressive, archaic, cruel and ignorant religious dogma on you.

Gender and sexuality isn't, of course, simple black and white. It's cheerfully diverse. It allows for transexuality, it allows for bisexuality, it stretches and gives ... It isn't a simple binary, a 1 and a 0, and it isn't a theological, anthropological or physiological first principle - unless your imagination and your physiology only extends to the missionary position.

But, but, but you say, in a billy goat mood, surely Mansfield can't get any more offensive? Of course he can, and the next line is a typical moan, a whinge and a whine:

It’s simply getting back to first principles. But in the debate that rages, where any minority view is at least given an airing in our culture that, we are told, celebrates diversity, this is the one view that is vilified and not tolerated on an otherwise diversity spectrum. 
Our sexuality is one of the casualties and consequences of our foolish rebellion against our Creator and his design for how life is to lived in his world. Our world is now flawed, broken and this brokenness even extends to our genetics.

Sheesh, we're back with Adam and Eve again.

Even if same-sex attraction is ‘nature’ rather than ‘nurture’ (and despite the protesting of some, most respected research leans towards nurture); if it is genetic, then is it not the genetics of a flawed universe? We recognise that there is a whole range of genetic ‘abnormalities’. 

Now there's a cunning ploy. Notice how we've slipped "abnormality" into the discussion. You know, because it's quite likely, almost certain that there's a whole range of genetic 'abnormalities' and 'pathologies' that help explain angry Sydney Anglicans fixation on homosexuality. Obsession really. Beyond the valley of the neurotic into the pathological ...

Ah, so that's what somebody means when they say "doing a Mansfield" ...

But on a recent episode of Q and A our former prime minister, overreaching his expertise on a number of subjects, savaged a man who was seeking to make a stand on the framework for human sexuality that is taught in the Bible and has been the bed-rock principle for marriage and family for societies and cultures for thousands of years. 

Uh huh. It is of course too tedious and tiresome to wander yet again through the history of human sexuality, and point out the examples that make a nonsense of this offensive exclusionary rhetoric. Like the good old days in Greece and Rome where you could take your sapphic and young boy pleasures as you found them ...

Never mind, let's keep on with the offensiveness:

As a follower of Jesus who is completely committed to the teaching of the Bible, I want to make it absolutely clear that same-sex attraction is not a sin. Nor is the temptation to infidelity by an opposite-sex attracted person. As a follower of Jesus who is completely committed to the teaching of the Bible, I want to make it absolutely clear that same-sex attraction is not a sin. Nor is the temptation to infidelity by an opposite-sex attracted person. 
Temptation to sin is not sin. 
But acting out those attractions in the mind (lust) or on the mattress (sexual activity) is. So heterosexual sex (outside marriage) and homosexual sex are both wrong.

Of course you can see how this plays out. Get yourself hitched and you can fuck. You can even get divorced and embark on the serial monogamy merry go round. But if you're gay and have a fuck, why then you're off to hell, and you certainly don't pass go or collect any cash in the paw ...

You usually find this sort of blather in people who are full of self-loathing, negative about their sexuality and the sexuality of others.

Cue Mansfield:

My heterosexual lust, for I have often failed to overcome temptation, and another’s heterosexual activity (outside marriage) or homosexual activity are symptoms of the same failure to obey God. 

Too much information, but it seems he's as guilty as sin. Is there room for cilices in the Anglican community?

Sex outside of marriage may reap more bitter social consequences and more devastating family upheaval than lust (lust is not harmless but that is another issue) but both are sinful and symptoms of our fallen humanity and flawed sexuality. 
 For most of my Christian life, almost every Sunday, I have exhorted others and been exhorted myself with these words: 
You must not commit adultery. 
This has not just been a call to repentance for the adulterers in the congregation, or those in the congregation engaging in same-sex sexual activity. It has also been for the loving benefit of people guilty of lust, like myself. 

Guilty of lust? Oh FFS.

So here's what you cop from Mansfield's homophilia:

I have responded, with my brothers and sisters in Christ, with the prayer: Lord, have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law. This prayer, we can pray with confidence, relief and joy, only through the sin-bearing death of our life-giving Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. 
And it is Jesus, the true friend of sexual sinners of every variety, who calls us all to a life of repentance and faith, of sexual purity and Christ-like love for others.

Sexual purity?

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids....

God willing, we will prevail in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of our natural fluids. God bless you all." ... We're still trying to figure out the meaning of that last phrase, sir.

And so on and so forth, and after reading Mansfield, and feeling strangely unclean, the pond came away with a burning desire for a hearty fuck and a profound sense of regret and sympathy for any young person confused about their sexuality, gay or straight, who ends up in the grip, the punishing, guilt-tripping maw of the angry Sydney Anglicans.

A confused and unhappy life is surely certain to follow, besieged by lusts, unhealthy desires, and above all, a bucketload of guilt, right up there with the Catholics ...

Let's hope the young things read the Song of Songs of Solomon at some point and understand that everyone can sing a song with their sexuality ... Song of Songs: The Bible's Gay Love Poem ...

(Below: the sexual compass of the Sydney Anglicans? Encapsulated in an Archie comic? We merely report and you decide, but there's more on the history of Christian Archie comics here).