NMSP Preview Video: I'm thrilled and delighted to have been asked to, to give this talk to you. I'd like to explain as part of this exercise in non-special bleeding, why, um, Why that seemed to me to be important. And it's because I've noticed just over the last 10 years really. How so many people both in Uh The post-evangelical world and the Catholic world. are themselves effectively. Wanting to move on in, in this sphere, say, OK, yeah, we get it. We're basically OK with gay and lesbian people. We're, we're, we're used to this. Uh, what we can't really work out is why the, the church or our churches are, are so hung up on this, um. But we'd like to move on. Nevertheless, we, we, some of us at least have a sort of niggles of conscience. About, well, maybe there's something, uh, that, that they know that we don't, uh, uh, about basic Christianity, and if we understood it better, maybe we would be against gay people. That would be a kind of a Catholic reaction or in the Protestant reaction. Well, you know, the Bible, yes, they use these things, they use these phrases, and we don't really get that, but, uh, maybe if we were to take the Bible seriously, maybe, maybe it would be against, uh, uh, gay and lesbian people. And Also, so I, I noticed this, I know people wanting to move on, but not having, if you like, what I call good conscience about moving on, saying actually. No, the Bible doesn't say those things, at least the things that you say it says don't mean what you think it does. And no, uh, basic Christianity doesn't allow church authority to think that they know something better than what you know about your gay and lesbian and bisexual and trans brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, colleagues, friends. Um So what I wanted to do is to say, Rather than Treat this as an exercise in special pleading, pleading, arguing about gay people. Go back to first principles and just set out what basic Christianity is all about in such a way that it's obvious. To people that it's the natural outgrowth of what Christianity is all about, that it is open to our learning how to love and be alongside our gay, lesbian, etc. etc.
