Fellow Orthodox Laity, We Must Band Together To Call For The Orthodox Church to Hold a Series Discussion on Homosexuality.

Once upon a time, there was a blog called, JN1034, but now that blog is no more and good riddance to it. I know it sounds harsh and I don't say it lightly. JN1034 lured in individuals such as myself who were questioning the common Orthodox consensus of banning gay marriage and forbidding the ordination of women.

At first they released tension by being a mouthpiece for the frustrations felt by myself and others that the Church was remaining rather silent on these issues. They, the bloggers, rambled on and on about how they were high ranking priests under the Ecumenical Patriarch, but of course they couldn't prove it because they had to remain anonymous. So...we never really actually, knew if they were telling the truth. But that's not the point really. Whether they were who they said they were really doesn't matter. The point is, they were really...iffy, for lack of a better word.

I must say, looking back, I found Jn1034 to be very proud and arrogant. They didn't always seem that way, but it seems as time went on they got worse and worse. They began explaining their position a lot less and instead bragging about their position a lot more.

At any rate, there's no need for them. A constructive dialogue in the Orthodox Church which creates a truthful view of homosexuality is up to us, the laity; not them. We need not advocate either for or against.

We need only band together and declare with one voice that we want a discussion. A real discussion. Not one of those sudo-moral discussion of the past were some aged intolerant priest teaching the congregation about homosexuality with a fictional, gay, "little billy" character.

"Today kids we're going to discussion why homosexuality is wrong. This is little billy. Little billy wants to be popular and modern. Little billy wants to be called little Susie. Oh look, now little Susie is doing meth and beating children. Now how could you defend a life style that involves meth a beating children?"

And that would be the end of the discussion. And the congregation would walk out being none the smarter for having listened to that intolerant crap.

So...we need to band together with other Orthodox (they must be Orthodox) and declare loud and clear that past discussions within the Church have been stereotyped, unproductive, unclear, and dismissive.

We need to tell the highest authorities in the Orthodox world, make them understand, this issue cannot be ignored any longer. The laity demand and answer and the Church has been unclear. Even the passages in the Bible, are unclear. Furthermore the passages used to condemn gays in America are in English. How accurate are those English phrases? Do they even have the same meaning?

Even to this day, I have no clue what the passage in Romans is really referring to. I even read St. John Chrysostom's homily on it, and he didn't even clarify what exactly it was about. He just kept saying it was something which he would not mention.

Anyway, we need a dialogue. A long and serious dialogue, which involves homosexual members of our own Church.

We do not need JN1034 to reemerge with their arrogance and sometimes, questionable doctrine.

We are the laity. When we work together, our voice is louder, clearer and taken more seriously. If anything JN1034 is nothing more than "diverted dissent", our own dis-info unit to 1984's Goldstien.

Get your friends, get your neighbors, get your clergy, to say, "We want a dialogue." That's it. Nothing more. Not, we want gay marriage, not, we don't want gay marriage. No, just, "We want a dialogue."
One that is serious. One that isn't run by biased agendas or special interest groups.
We need our Church Hierarchy to sit down and look gay couples in the face to tell them and tell the Church once and for all, whether gay marriage is in, or out.

Pssst! Fire Fox Users, Want to Fix That Memory Leak?

I noticed a lot of my visitors use Fire Fox. I use it too, and I love it. However, you've no doubt wrestled with Fire Fox 3's annoying memory leak; sometimes taking up to 1 GB of your memory. You know just as well as I do, that it doesn't take 400 MB of RAM to open Google.com!

Anyway, if you're looking for a fix, I have one for you, Memory Fox. I use it and it works spectacularly!

PS
Just remember, after you install it, to turn it on! Uff da! Dat vas an oversight on Ole's part, Ja!

Hey all you readers out there

Hey, sorry about the lack of updates. I've been rather busy. Also, school is coming up very soon. I'll try and give you guys some news every Weekend or so.

Restructuring of the blog

Just a quick announcement. Your blogger has decided to narrow down and focus this blog a little more. So, less sex and less Orthodox based articles and more politics. Basically your blogger is just trying to specialize the blog a little more.

Change blog direction?

I'm not a narcissist (really I'm not). The blog isn't supposed to be about me (or it wasn't). But if I'm going to increase my readership beyond...1, very nice, reader...I'm going to have to start offering something special to the blogging world. Something you won't find elsewhere. I have that. I have (read am) quite possibly one of the most liberal Orthodox Christians you're going to find (or that I've found).


And as you may know if you want to sell something it has to be something special; that is, if you're going for success.

This whole blog was inspired by Ed Strong (- nudity, NSFW). The idea was to make a blog like Ed Strong, except Orthodox. But if you've been following the blog for a while, then you know by now that, if you weren't adverse to lots of nude and erotic images, there were a lot of similarities between that blog and this one, save for the Orthodox articles, general lack of nudity (I've always had way less then he does) and the occasional sex article that wasn't pulled from his list.

Well, I'm not Ed Strong. I gotta be me. Perhaps as a highly liberal Orthodox Christian I will have something unique to offer the blogging world...

There are a lot of people of all kinds who, I'm sure, for one reason or another feel like they've been kicked out of the larger assembly. So come on in, join me and we'll be misfits together!

Sorry, couldn't quite find the BDSM version I wanted.

Thinking About Closing it Down

When your blogger started this...blog...they had the idea that they had some kind of special service to offer via their news updates. In a way, they did. They had a service, so specialized that it had virtually 0 audience.

You have a blogger who:

- supports gay marriage

- is okay with the idea of polyamory (or at least with, other, people doing it)

- is fairly open-minded

- is open minded about socialism and a little capitalism and maybe even a little bit of communism

- is so liberal that they virtually regard Barack Obama as a conservative (almost....almost)

- is so sexually open minded about so many things...

- is a feminist and totally supports a world where men and women are totally equal in all things

- supports the protection of the environment (as we all should)

- is okay with sexual media (the tasteful kind, not necessarily the trashy porn stuff)

- is Eastern Orthodox

- supports women as priests, bishops...etc. And women's rites in general across the globe.

- is pro-life and considers being pro-gay a part of that (gotta have something to live for)


Your blogger isn't sure where exactly they manage to alienate everybody, but they have no doubt in their mind that they do.
maybe it's that fact that all the pro-lifers are the same Catholics who thinks gays are in a scheme to turn us all gay (or in the case of your blogger, get them to stop looking at tits...got news for them gays...ain't gonna happen, your blogger prefer only the breast in life). When posting about Orthodoxy...there's no doubt that the pro-feminist undertones to the links are already preaching the perhaps the smallest crowd in the history of Orthodoxy eva! The pro-sexual themes on the rest of the blog whittle down even that feminist Orthodox crowd to...well, nothing. No doubt the politics section doesn't fair too much better, how many liberals out there actually think Obama is comparable to W Bush? I mean sure they used to think the war on terror was a bad idea when Bush was doing it, now it's great because Obama's at the wheel...carrying on Bush's war.

It was a simple idea, Sex, Politics & Religion. Your blogger figured maybe there were other like minded Orthodox who believed it was okay to have female acolytes, or even female priests, and perhaps there are...just not with the same pro-sex almost, free-love attitude that's on the rest of the site.

And then there's the ethical part. At first your blogger was like, 'yeah this is great, I'll provide a news outlet to others with similar views' but after a while, posting highly liberal articles on sexuality and then posting highly religious articles that quote the Holy Fathers right underneath...it's down right uncomfortable!

It's a simple desire to reconcile the love for a nice soft pair of breasts and teach people about Orthodoxy in the same blog...guess what...it doesn't work.

Your blogger thought briefly about taking the blog in either, this direction (towards sexual politics) and in that direction (towards posting videos of Orthodox hermits in Romania (everyone should watch that video, btw)) but in my exploration of the one, I'd feel the desire to somehow express the other. Though your blogger does simplify the direction of, tits, it's more than that, there's tits, yes but also opening the readers eyes to new elements of sexuality that they may never have known about before (search this blog (or the web) for ANR ABF if you're interested).

Unfortunately the two sides don't like each other very much.

Couple this with the fact that the audience that this blog intends itself for must be a very, very small audience indeed (you're blogger doesn't even know if half the stuff posted is ever even read by anyone). Let's face it...how many Orthodox Christians out there support gay marriage? How many of them are even at least open minded about so called, "open marriages" let alone poly-amorous ones? And even of those said people...how many of them want to see artsy photos of nude women (there's a diff between "nude" and "naked") like this one, or this one? How many liberals are pro-life? How many gay marriage supporters are pro-life?

You're blogger fears they have specialized this blog into oblivion.

PS
Just like to say, for what's it's worth, that the blogger of Passion Within Marriage (listed in the bar to the right) is Eastern Orthodox too. Although, as much as she blogs about sex, you're blogger is sure she'd have a fit if she saw the stuff posted here, never-mind that she probably doesn't support gay marriage.

Nudity removed from the front page

Your blog author has removed nudity from the front page, for those who come here to see the political, or other sections only. Be advised that the warning for adult content continues to apply to this blog.