Anthemius,
Perhaps you are right, but getting those basic supplies was not easy. Maybe during the time of Brezhnev it was, but certainly it was far from us walking into anyone of numerous stores in the US and getting what we want, in the quantity we want with competing markets. I understand and appreciate your comment about the fall of the Soviet Union. Certainly our brothers, the Ukrainian Greek Catholics, would have to disagree with you as their church emerged from the underground. There are certainly pros and cons to the argument.
I do appreciate your comments.
Please stay in touch.
Andriy

Tim,
I can only assume that you are not an Orthodox Christian. The Orthodox Church has always based its teachings on the Bible as well as Holy Tradition. There are numerous beliefs and practices in the Orthodox Church which one cannot find in the Holy Scriptures. For example, there are second and even third marriages in the Church, women are not allowed, according to strict canonical law, allowed to receive Holy Communion (Eucharist) when menstruating, the various fasting rules and regulations and a myriad of other laws and practices not found in the Bible. Some are still adhered to with great reverence – for example, the calculation of when to celebrate Pascha (Easter) – a fourth century decision and other practices are not so strictly enforced. To answer your questions directly:
1) When I write about “life-creating” I am not only speaking of the flesh, but of the spirit. When elderly persons enter into a marriage they are also unable to procreate and yet their marriage is full of life, in that it is full of care, compassion, love kindness, charity and compassion.
2) Same-sex love for those who are gay, lesbian or bisexual is natural for them. As a gay man, I live the fact that same-sex love is natural. I did not choose to be a gay man, I was created this way.
3) As God creates all humans, white and black, male and female, gay and straight, deaf and blind, blue and brown eyed…. He is all of those things.
4) The only error is to tell LGBTQ people that God does not love them as He created them. The only error is for LGBT people to spend a life time in grief, pain and suffering trying to change something that biologically cannot be changed.
Andriy

Can you please expand on this quote, and back it up with scripture? You do realise that when you make an assertion as a Christian, it has to be supported by Biblical truth, yes?

“certain Churches have taken up as a mission to make sure that children know that they are loved by God just as He made them. They are also there to tell young adults that the love they might feel for members of the same sex is natural and can be life-creating.”

Question 1. How is love for the same sex life-creating? One male and one female (2 people of the opposite sex, not 3, not 4, not 2 males, not 2 females) is required to create life.

Question 2. How do you categorically know that love for same sex is natural?

Question 3. (a) How do you know that God makes some children gay? I’m having trouble finding this in His Word. (b) If you really believe this, are you saying that God is homosexual also, since we are made in His image?

Question 4. Why aren’t you willing to err on the side of caution? For example, are you prepared to risk the possibility that God actually doesn’t approve of homosexuality and the fact that your words are aiding people to be slaves to their homosexual sin? (Nobody supporting homosexual Christianity has been able to answer this one using reasonable arguments, without just attacking me. Hoping you can answer it. )

Tim.

Noel,
Certainly the same hypocrisy exists in the Orthodox Church. There were and are bishops who are married to women, bishops with male partners, “celibate” priests with husbands and boyfriends and other hypocritical situations. And yet the bishops would not address allowing a married episcopate or an honest dialogue, in light of scientific truths, about homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism. How sad.
Andriy