Friday, September 12, 2014

Via Sonja van Kerkhoff / FB:

Brilliantly said TW "There we have it BP's personal opinion with unconnected quotes from the writings some out of context in quasi support. We'll done. If this version of the faith is true then it is one of the reasons that mankind will not accept it. It's old fashioned, dogmatic and riddled with injustice."

As long as the UHJ follows God's guidance it agrees with B!

BP... I don't expect for a minute for the UHJ to make policy based on popularity, I expect them to be concerned with what fits the Bahai principles and teachings. The UHJ have not ruled on same-sex marriage. Perhaps they will, perhaps they will not. It is a new phenomena but that does not mean that they need to make a ruling. Instead they might allow NSA's to decide what is wisest.

We see above the NSA's letter to Sean asking him to reconsider his marriage. They do not state that he has to leave nor that he has lost his voting rights. This is a step in the right direction. In 2009 Daniel Clark Orey lost his voting rights without consultation nor warning and the only way he could regain them was to divorce his husband. The US Bahai community lost a flower in the garden of humanity because of this action.

The UHJ states that marriage is only between a man and woman but they do not express that as a policy because they think this is expressed in the Bahai writings somewhere. The policy they do make in the 2010 letter on same-sex marriage is that when this is a political matter that Bahai communities are not to take sides. What I am talking now is when same-sex marriage is a law of the land. Both Sean and Daniel's marriage are legal marriages.

The 2010 letter does not associate being homosexual as something bad. I am surprised that you keep confusing Shoghi Effendi's name and authority as official interpreter with the lesser authority of letters written on his behalf which is the only place where homosexuality is mentioned although your comment "The interpreter clarified the matter, and the interpretations and applications of this law never mention child molestation" actually refers to Abdul-Baha not Shoghi Effendi.

I end with something Shoghi Effendi did write: 

"It should also be borne in mind that the machinery of the Cause has been so fashioned, that whatever is deemed necessary to incorporate 23 into it in order to keep it in the forefront of all progressive movements, can, according to the provisions made by Bahá’u’lláh, be safely embodied therein. To this testify the words of Bahá’u’lláh, as recorded in the Eighth Leaf of the exalted Paradise: “It is incumbent upon the Trustees of the House of Justice to take counsel together regarding those things which have not outwardly been revealed in the Book, and to enforce that which is agreeable to them. God will verily inspire them with whatsoever He willeth, and He, verily, is the Provider, the Omniscient.” Not only has the House of Justice been invested by Bahá’u’lláh with the authority to legislate whatsoever has not been explicitly and outwardly recorded in His holy Writ, upon it has also been conferred by the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá the right and power to abrogate, according to the changes and requirements of the time, whatever has been already enacted and enforced by a preceding House of Justice. In this connection, He revealed the following in His Will: “And inasmuch as the House of Justice hath power to enact laws that are not expressly recorded in the Book and bear upon daily transactions, so also it hath power to repeal the same. Thus for example, the House of Justice enacteth today a certain law and enforceth it, and a hundred years hence, circumstances having profoundly changed and the conditions having altered, another House of Justice will then have power, according to the exigencies of the time, to alter that law. This it can do because that law formeth no part of the divine explicit text. The House of Justice is both the initiator and the abrogator of its own laws.”

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