I only wish my mom and dad were alive so I could share with them. In the something 40 yrs. of preaching, I never heard my dad once condem gays, either in the pulpit or at home. In fact he just preached the gospel, grew churchs and absolutely loved us, therefore as a lot of uninformed people have been taught to think, our family was not dysfunctional. We had a loving, nuturing home, my brothers and sister were always taken care of and I can speak for all of us, we loved our parents more than anything, except God.
Continue to encourage and love Erik. He may have some struggles ahead but the God we serve can surely take care of everything.
Some of my favorite verses are:

For mom and dad.
Romans 8:1
Romans 10:13

Erik, this is for you.
1st Peter 1:13 & 15.

God bless your family.
Ron

Please let me emphasize that I don’t mean that in any mean or cold way. If you ask me what I’d feel, I only want to answer honestly based on what I know about myself. I don’t think I’d like the situation (understatement), but for myself I have found there are things that I can have and things that I cannot have… ordained by God or not… and these things do not stop me from being a useful, purposeful person regardless; it was with this in mind that I responded.

I am not homosexual but plz do not assume I answer from easy circumstance or that I cannot relate in anyway.

Alike or not, I wish you peace – David

Thank you for your answer; it provides insight into what motivates you. 

Yes, I’d feel it reasonable and rational, as God did not ordain it. 

David, insofar as God created people with heterosexual desire and attraction as their innate, default expression and experience of sexuality, AND created other people with homosexual desire and attraction as their innate, default expression and experience of sexuality, I’d have to answer your question, “Yes, God wishes for *me* to have a primary, intimate, committed sexual relationship with someone of my own sex, AND, NO, God does not wish the same for you, since it would appear from your comment that you are created as a heterosexual person.” 

I would not expect you to understand how I, as a homosexually-oriented person, experience life, but it might help you to place yourself in the position of someone whose primary sexual attraction is to members of their own sex in a world where the majority of people are heterosexually-oriented.  Ask yourself, if the reverse were true, and you were expected to stop being attracted to women, to either somehow *make* yourself be attracted to other men, or face a life of complete celibacy and aloneness, with no loving, intimate spouse with whom to share your life, no children, no family around you in your old age — is this something you would feel was reasonable, rational, God-ordained?  I wouldn’t. 

A couple of comments and a question to the writer. First,  I would suggest that your argument from the “design of nature,” is troubling. The lessons we can intuit from nature are complex and even contradictory. Those attributes that we so often attribute to God and to a “Spirited” Christian life — grace, forgiveness, generosity, mercy, compassion, etc. — are not necessarily the way of the nature. Secondly, because we live an embodied existence, all of our relationships are necessarily sexual relationships — informed by our gender and societal norms related to it — to suggest anything less is to advocate a form of gnosticism. Finally, if I read your last several paragraphs correctly, it would seem that you are suggesting that the issue is not sexual orientation per se, or even same sex relationships, it would appear that your concern is the sex. If that is true, then you have elevated  one element of intimacy at the expense of others and diminished all relationships as a consequence.

I am moved by the courage you exhibited in sharing your
story.

I am humbled by the exceptional love you showed to Erik by
returning his “true identity” to him in such a public and courageous manner.
 

The poet May Sarton wrote a poem called: Now I Become
Myself

Now I become myself. It’s taken

Time, many years and places;

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people’s faces,

You gave Erik the right to claim the precious unique identity that God
gave him; the power to proudly and honestly wear his own face.

With Great Admiration,

Doug Person

Above are distractions. Questions and statements about stuff
like a gay person having value, continuing to have a purpose as a creation of
God, the fact that we all sin and so should not condemn others who sin, and the
fact the God loves a person who is gay are… distractions… to the real question
before us.

I think the popular cultural conversation has twisted into
something where coming out against homosexual behavior is considered = being
against or devaluing people.

How did we get to that? That bothers me. That is not true.

Well, unfortunately it seems clear
that in practice this has been true; I believe many homosexual people when they
indicate they have been hurt by people who have devalued or hated them based on
their homosexuality (and I’d be lying to you if I said I’ve never done so; I
don’t think I ever have actively, but
I’d be naïve if I thought I’ve never done so passively). And so it seems the
(understandable) response is to re-classify homosexual behavior as positive so
that homosexuals will then be treated better? If so, I can understand the
rationale to this approach.

But as Christians don’t we already know that everything Erik’s
parents said about their son continuing to have purpose and value in God’s
world is absolutely true? Should they have to assert it? Everything others have
stated (in replies above) about needing to show love and kindness towards
people experiencing homosexual thoughts is absolutely true. We Covenanters can
already agree on that, can’t we? And you bet gay people can still do good
things. Who in their right mind would think that any attribute of a person
would prevent that same person from doing good stuff? Shucks, if that were true
not one of us would ever love our children or work at a food shelf.

We know we are all imperfect. We know we all have defects,
either born or acquired. We aren’t being hypocritical when we acknowledge that
a behavior of someone else’s is not what God desires… because we also acknowledge
that some of our behaviors are not what God desires. We ALL fall short,
and so we have compassion for us all
(think of the Golden Rule)… or at least we hope
to. We agree on that, right? We try. We fail. We repent. Right?

SO MY POINT HERE IS: isn’t the question for us Covenanters,
us Christians, simply: based on the design of nature and what is stated in the
Bible, do we see evidence that God wishes
for us to have a sexual relationship with a person of the same sex?

   Don’t be distracted
by statements of showing love for all and such; that is TRUE, TRUE, TRUE… for
all people, regardless of how you answer the question. Just answer the
question, and go from there.

Does God wish for
us who profess our love for Him to have a sexual relationship with a person of
the same sex?