Why Is the Homosexuality-and-Faith Question Important to You?

I'm not being facetious or provocative with this question.  It's an important question to me, for reasons I started to detail in the last post.  And, if you're gay or lesbian, of course I understand why this issue is important to you.

But, continuing on the theme of the Love is an Orientation book club that we launched into (and if you've read the book and haven't commented, please do), I know that for so many of my friends this is a really important issue, and I'd like to hear more.

For one thing, this was a question that was pretty much off the table, say, ten years ago.  The point of view then was largely that, whatever one's personal sympathies, the Bible itself made some things clear that preempted the conversation.  Even today, according to a recent exhaustive Duke University study on congregations in America, we're told that 23% of American congregations would permit someone in a committed gay relationship to hold a volunteer leadership position (that might seem like a large number to some of you, but when you consider the Protestant mainline, which presumably would be supportive here, not to mention Unitarian/Universalist congregations, this number seems small to me).  This is compared, say, to the number of congregations that would permit someone with outspoken pro-choice views to hold a leadership position--41%.  So, all to say, this is still a dramatically minority position.

So...why is this question important to you?  (And, if I could ask just a bit more from you.  On the one side of the issue, you might well answer: "justice."  On the other side of the issue, you might well answer something like: "loyalty to the Bible."  Fair enough, but if those are your answers, could you fill them out a bit?  Why is this sort of justice or this sort of loyalty to the Bible important to you?)  Whatever your answer, was this issue important to you ten years ago, when it wasn't engendering much conversation?