More cut-and-paste religion

From The New York Times:

RALEIGH, N.C. — Justin Lee believes that the Virgin birth was real, that there is a heaven and a hell, that salvation comes through Christ alone and that he, the 29-year-old son of Southern Baptists, is an evangelical Christian.

Just as he is certain about the tenets of his faith, Mr. Lee also knows he is gay, that he did not choose it and cannot change it.

We are all sinners. We are all born as sinners. None of us personally chose to be sinners, we inherited it from Adam (although each of us would have done what he did if we were in his place).

Although we are all sinners we are not all the same kind of sinner. Some people are tempted to homosexual sin and others (like me) are tempted to heterosexual sin. Some are temped to murder (me, when I drive through heavy traffic) and others to theft. Some are tempted to lie, to gossip or to pride.

Regardless of which particular types of sin attract us we are all sinners. What sets gay "evangelicals" like Justin Lee apart from a straight evangelical like me is that Mr. Lee demands a special dispensation to indulge his sinful temptations while I and other Christians (gay and straight) who aren't attempting to work our Bibles over with a bottle of whiteout grit our teeth and resist our baser natures, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

To fallen men and women sin is a natural and normal desire. To pursue righteousness is unnatural and difficult and requires us to act contrary to our natural inclinations. What Mr. Lee needs to understand is that God's eternal standard does not change to accommodate our rebellious nature just because we find it difficult to live up to.