Needed information...

It has been said that information is power and in that light I would like to recommend the www site of Dr. Robert Gagnon, a Professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. The site itself is not particularly well designed, (lots of ads and kind of hard to look at), but the information presented on the Bible and sexuality is worth the visit and the site should be bookmarked by Christians seeking to understand these issues.

In recent years there have been many attempts, sadly, by Christian clerics and even hierarchs to distort the teachings of Scripture regarding sexuality and argue for an ethic of permissiveness by dramatically misinterpreting the texts to support their arguments. Unfortunately people of traditional and historic faith are often overwhelmed by these arguments because the person conveys the authority of their office and appears to be intelligent. Dr. Gagnon is a scholar, familiar with the original languages and cultures, whose special area of focus has been the Scriptures and sexuality. His material is generally easy to read and thoroughly supports the historic understandings of Christian texts in the area of sexuality.

A special feature is the availability of many of his works in PDF format which you may save and copy for your own use and to help you not be overwhelmed when the nice man in the collar and a business card full of initials wants to convince you that it doesn't say what it really says. Although Dr. Gagnon is not Orthodox he is certainly "orthodox" in his understanding of Scripture and sexuality and I recommend his work as a valuable aid not only to help Orthodox Christians get into the Scriptures, which they should always be doing, but also to provide valuable information on these hot topic issues from a historic/traditional perspective.