Throughout the bible we have any number of examples of prophets who stand up against the prevailing culture of the day and declare that it is wrong before God. With Jesus we see this in his attitude to divorce; he imposes a far higher standard than the Jews of his day were happy with - they had come to see the instructions about divorce in the law of Moses as a justification for divorce on just about any grounds. Jesus comes along and tells them they are wrong - and note that his criticism applies to an awful lot of divorces these days.

The issue about gay practice is therefore about what we believe about God's will in this matter and why. The willingness of this guy to abandon his principles in the face of the hypothetical possibility of his daughter being a lesbian suggests a somewhat limited engagement with the issue. Being a Christian does not mean doing everything you can to ensure that you and everyone around you has a prosperous and healthy life - at times it means standing up for God's way when that choice means imprisonment or even death.

And somewhere in the undergrowth is a line of logic that starts from the beliefs that:

1) I have the right to be happy
2) Only in a sexual relationship will I be happy
3) This person makes me happy and I want to have sex with them

Therefore

4) I have a right marry this person.

[Note that this logic underlies a lot of divorces / remarriages as well as the gay argument.}

We live in a society where single people tend not to fit in, and struggle to find appropriate relationships and fulfilment. Therefore those in reasonably happy families have a bias towards wanting to offer their single friends a way out of their singleness. Throw in an unwillingness to tell someone else not to do something that you are merrily enjoying, as well as the modern aversion to being judgemental, and you have a recipe for the church to find itself under pressure to conform to the patterns of the world. But let's be clear - Jesus is not impressed when the church does surrender to the way of the world:

"20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. 21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. 22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds." Revelation 2.

What it comes down to is coming to a very clear understanding of WHY you believe what you believe, and working through the implications of that position. For me the arguments against gay relationships are overwhelming, and to abandon in the face of emotionally driven hard cases is not God's way. Know what you believe, know why you believe it, and then be prepared to stand up for it. Anything else is 'just being nice. And a way of staying in touch with the neighbours' as Terry Pratchett describes it in 'Carpe Jugulum'.