Seventh Day Adventist cracks over homosexuals

A HOMOSEXUALITY row has flared up in the Seventh Day Adventist Church (SDA) after its leaders called on members to view gays and lesbians as "brothers and sisters also in need of God's saving grace".

SDA world vice president Ella Simmons told a conference in South Africa that congregants should be compassionate towards homosexuals.

The church, which is said to have about 16 million followers worldwide, is famous for upholding conservative Christian values that abhor homosexuality.

Simmons set the cat among the pigeons at the leadership conference held in Cape Town last week where sexuality was one of the main topics, when she called for tolerance for homosexuals.

She immediately sparked an outcry from members of the church in Zimbabwe who were yesterday scrambling to disassociate themselves from her sentiments, also carried by the church's Adventist News Network (ANN) website.

SDA leaders listened to another church member, Peter Swanson, an associate professor of Pastoral Care at Andrews University and a licensed psychologist, urging the SDA to be open-minded about gays and lesbians.

"I strongly support the call of my church to support and protect human rights," Swanson said.

"They (gays and lesbians) need your sympathy, patience, and love. Speak words of encouragement to them."

Swanson also told delegates that change therapy for homosexuals to reduce same-sex attraction was generally ineffective in "reforming" gay people, adding that some Christian gays and lesbians perceive they have been harmed by change therapy.

The Health Ministries director of the Seventh Day Adventist world church, Dr Peter Landless, also spoke on the need for consideration for those in gay and lesbian relationships.

Onaolapo Ajibade, executive secretary of the denomination's West-Central Africa Division, based in Cote d'Ivoire, said since there is no known cause of homosexuality, there is no "cure".

She added: "In the meantime, we've to adopt a Christian approach. Since we don't know the cause, we've to be sympathetic.

"The church is making a spiritual step to equip us to be able to help our brothers and sisters who're in this state."

But the SDA church in Zimbabwe has hit back, declaring God has zero tolerance for gays and lesbians.

"The Bible makes no accommodation for homosexual activity or relationships. Sexual acts outside the circle of heterosexual marriage are forbidden. Leviticus 20 vs 7-21 is clear on how such people should be dealt with," said the communications director, Nkosilathi Khumalo.

Verse 13 reads: "If a man lies with a male as if he were a woman, both men have committed an offence (something perverse, unnatural, abhorrent and detestable) they shall surely be put to death, their blood shall be upon them."

He said during the church's general conference held in October 1999 in Silver Spring, Maryland, the executive committee came up with the SDA's uncompromising stance on homosexuality.

"Sexual intimacy belongs only within the marital relationship of a man and a woman. This was the design established by God at creation," he said.

Khumalo quoted more verses in the Bible using the New International Version (NIV) that he said proved God was totally against homosexuality.

"The scriptures declare; ‘for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh' (Genesis 2 vs 24)," said Khumalo.

The church's worldwide president Dr Ted Wilson, during his visit to Zimbabwe in 2012, said the SDA would never tolerate homosexuality because it was against the Bible.