Scratch one talking point.

Did Jesus teach against homosexual practice?

Yes.

I have an image of this Anglican priest's congregation sitting in stunned silence with their jaws dropped as he preached a Good Friday sermon on how Jesus was gay...

...except it was a liberal congregation, so they probably liked how the priest's sermon stuck it those dunderheaded conservatives.

Nothing says Christian humility than a liberal's smug, self-satisfaction about being superior to non-liberals.

Actually, my image of the stunned congregation comes from a true story I was told while I was defending a dissident UMC church about a Methodist Bishop who guest-preached an Easter sermon about how "It really doesn't matter if Jesus rose from the dead."

Anyhow, Alternet is featuring the speculation of a New Zealand Anglican priest who preached the Good Friday sermon on "was Jesus gay?"

His answer is "probably yes," and his evidence is the relationship between Jesus and the Beloved Disciple, because in the hyper-sexualized 21st Century, "love" means "having sex" and two men cannot "love" each other without "having sex" with each other.

After much reflection and with certainly no wish to shock, I felt I was left with no option but to suggest, for the first time in half a century of my Anglican priesthood, that Jesus may well have been homosexual. Had he been devoid of sexuality, he would not have been truly human. To believe that would be heretical.

Heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual: Jesus could have been any of these. There can be no certainty which. The homosexual option simply seems the most likely. The intimate relationship with the beloved disciple points in that direction. It would be so interpreted in any person today. Although there is no rabbinic tradition of celibacy, Jesus could well have chosen to refrain from sexual activity, whether he was gay or not. Many Christians will wish to assume it, but I see no theological need to. The physical expression of faithful love is godly. To suggest otherwise is to buy into a kind of puritanism that has long tainted the churches.

All that, I felt deeply, had to be addressed on Good Friday. I saw it as an act of penitence for the suffering and persecution of homosexual people that still persists in many parts of the church. Few readers of this column are likely to be outraged any more than the liberal congregation to whom I was preaching, yet I am only too aware how hurtful these reflections will be to most theologically conservative or simply traditional Christians. The essential question for me is: what does love demand? For my critics it is more often: what does scripture say? In this case, both point in the same direction.

Well, that's transgressive and threatening.

*Yawn*

You know what would really be transgressive and threatening to this congregation?

How about a sermon from Matthew 19:

1 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. 2 Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

10 The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”

11 Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

You want to challenge a liberal congregation about its feelings of smug superiority? Tell them that they get to be married once, that remarriage after divorce is adultery, and that those who surrender sex for God are more blessed than they are.

Nah, that would be too "transgressive" for this guy's congregation to sit still for.

As for the "gay Jesus" meme, this guy's a theological moron.

Is God really indifferent to the sexuality of human beings? Is there no meaning to the fact that the perpetuation of the good of the species occurs through sex and requires the cooperation of the two sexes? Is that just an accident, or is it the case that the normative condition of human beings is to be heterosexual? And if it is true, as this guy says, that sexuality was a necessary aspect of Jesus sharing in humanity, then why wouldn't we expect that Jesus would reflect the normative condition of humanity?

Like I said, this guy is theological moron.