Experience is theologically significant. The "hot potato" of Paul's time was the question about whether Gentiles were to be included in the saving work of God in Christ. One of the prime arguments used by Paul was that God clearly had included them, no matter how compelling any a priori traditional theology of exclusion could be mounted. Among other things, God had given Gentiles the Holy Spirit. The same argument was used to change the traditional view that excluded women from ministry. Nowadays, we take absolutely for granted that Gentiles can be Christians and most of us view the ordination of women as a triumph of the truth over prejudice and heartache. But let's not underestimate the significance of the theological shift involved! The implications are enormous because they necessitate a revaluation of the past. Do these changes mean that God had changed God's mind? Or that we got it wrong before in assuming that our theology reflected the mind of God?

Both are quite possible. God appears to feel free to do a "new thing" at will, regardless of the theological chaos that ensues. It is also quite clear that we humans have a remarkable facility for uncritically assuming that our mind a matter reflects faithfully the divine mind. Wasn't Jesus challenged over his Jewish-centric view of God's grace by a Samaritan woman - "Are not even the dogs allowed to lick up the crumbs from the table?"

That is why experience is so important. It is the experience of those on the "outside" that challenge most seriously our comfortable assumptions that we know God's will - especially when we are able to quote Scripture in support of it. It is the experience of these groups that make us most keenly aware of the divine freedom to do something new. That is what keeps us on our toes and keeps us faithful!

What does experience teach me about homosexuality? Firstly, as an off-the-scale heterosexual, I always assumed that my own repugnance of gay sex reflected God's moral outrage. But then I had to face the fact that, as a heterosexual male, I found the concept of lesbian sex not repugnant but sexually interesting! I'm not being flippant or trite. I actually found my moral reasoning deeply challenged. That led me, secondly, to take the experience of homosexual people seriously. The easy arguments disappeared. How could I equate the experience of a man who was aware of his sexuality from his earliest years with the picture in Romans of someone setting out quite deliberately to "abandon" his God-given sexual desires? And how could I run an apparent "theology of equality" which says that orientation is not sinful, only its homosexual expression is, so that gay and unmarried heterosexuals were in the same boat - celibacy? That didn't work because, as a heterosexual unmarried man, I could rejoice in my sexual wrestlings because, although they needed controlling, they were a gift from God. My gay schoolfriend, however, had to wrestle to control something that he was told was evil, perverted and cursed by God!

Then I re-read Scripture - the classic passages. I discover that God apparently views sexual intercourse between a married couple during menstruation as an abomination. I learn that my son should never have made it past 3 years old, but ought to have been stoned to death. I discover that the couple who are the greatest Christian saints I have known are actually both divorced and remarried and therefore, in God's eyes, apparently condemned. Oh, and I discover that the men of Sodom are not homosexuals but men intent on male rape (the grossest abuse of the suty of hospitality) and this is condemend by God, while Lot's offer of his virginal daughter for their pleasure seems quite fine by God ...

I'm not making any new exegetical points (I hope!). I'm simply tracking the reality that we have found our experience of God to be theologically normative in trying to work out what is and isn't binding from the past. Or, to put the same point differently, in working out what God's will might be on the subject. And it makes me question why it is homosexuality in particular that we treat so theologically inadequately! I cannot imagine any other topic generating subject lines as emotive or virulent as "Sodomising the Body of Christ". I think I know some of the answers to my own question, now, but I am certain of this: those Christians who are not fundamentalists often treat the question of homosexuality in a radically different way from the way in which they do other theological questions of equality.

I am privileged to have many gay and lesbian Christian friends. God has called them to faith and to many to ministry. They have received Christ and the Spirit. They experience the grace of God operating in their lives as much as anyone else I know. And, crucially, the testimony of others is that they experience God's grace and ministry through my friends. On what basis can I ordain women, abolish slavery, refuse to stone my child, regard with supreme indifference matters of my neighbours' sexual habits during menstruation, and then refuse to acknowledge what God - by any normal canons - appears to be saying with absolute clarity?

I want to make it clear that I am not arguing here that we ought to be nice people and treat everyone kindly! I am advancing a theological argument here for abandoning the second-class place to which we have relegated gay and lesbian Christians in the Church. From those who want to argue that we should continue to do so, I want to know: given that God clearly doesn't find it a problem, on what grounds must we continue to do so?