Jensen spoke words of love not homophobia
I am a pastoral worker for Liberty Christian Ministries. I once identified as a gay man and lived actively as one for about five years. In that time I went to Anglican churches where Dr Peter Jensen was the archbishop, and I was frequently warned against living in sin. Though I resisted hearing that at times it never once made me feel suicidal or depressed: rather, I felt loved and safe (Letters, September 12).
I knew living as a homosexual was wrong even independently of what the Bible said because I had to have regular health checks to ensure I hadn't picked up hepatitis, AIDS, or blood toxicity from the things I was doing. That is what the gay life involves - risky sex that puts life on the line. It diminishes life quality and life expectancy.
Health research bears out the reality of the risks of gay sexual practice. The 2010 national STD conference run by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the US produced evidence that the rate of new HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men is more than 44 times that of other men and that the rate of syphilis among this population is more than 46 times that of other men.
Peter Jensen's words on Q&A were reasoned, reasonable and said in love because he wants, as I do, people to have freedom in Christ and live life to the full now. That's not homophobic, that's love.
I thought that anybody, gay or straight, who had casual sex and 100 lovers, as Haydn has said of his past...would require regular ongoing health checks. I thought Haydn might have written a letter of support for Jensen's theory that ...men who are married to women who see themselves as their equal, are not real men... I mean ...Sydney Anglicans need complementarian women, trained in inequality, to marry post-gay men, so their status becomes a real men!
Interestingly, some readers were offended by Peter Jensen's remarks...
My brother died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of 46. It really gets to me that his early death is used as part of the evidence to suggest gay men and women have reduced life spans.
He was gay and he was one of earliest to be diagnosed as HIV positive, well before anything was known of this nasty virus, or any treatment program had been put in place. Do Jim Wallace, Peter Jensen et al record him as dying from a disease or as dying of a "gay lifestyle"?
Most HIV, like some cancers and some forms of brain and heart disease, is linked to human activity. We've learnt about the dangers of exposure to the sun and, today, most people wear sunscreen to prevent skin cancer. We've learnt about the dangers of HIV and today most people, both gay and straight, wear condoms to prevent the spread of the disease when having casual sex.
Sex and sun are two of the great Aussie pastimes but I don't see either Jensen or Wallace providing figures from the '60s and '70s, stating that the "surfing lifestyle" was a cause of reduced lifespan.
They are, though, more than happy to use figures from the early '90s to demonstrate the "gay lifestyle" causes a reduction in lifespan. Let us start treating disease as disease; not attributing blame because of lifestyle. And, in case you are not aware; being homosexual chooses you. It is not a lifestyle choice.
Bruce Ingrey Redfern
Statistically, being male is more longevity-threatening than being female. Would the archbishop advise some of us to get a sex change?
Trevor Conomy Cooks Hill
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