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.”
