It's a good post, but I have one correction if you don't mind. I moderated an infant loss support group for about six years, and I never saw anyone post that they wanted someone else's child. They all wanted their own child back. Some didn't even want a future child.

The closest I ever saw anyone get to your assertion is when they'd say they didn't understand why drug addicts and child abusers would have the gift of a healthy baby when their baby had died. But precisely because that's such an abnormal reaction (most of the women on the support group were more concerned that other women might suffer the same loss, not that they wanted other people to experience the same thing) the environmental and outside stressors need to be that much higher.

I've wondered about that too, whether the pro-choice community would embrace a family's right to choose not to have a homosexual child. There's already a strange dichotomy among pro-choice speakers about whether it's okay to have sex-selection abortions, where it's okay to abort a child because it's inconvenient or because it will be disabled, but it's misogyny to abort a child because it's female.

In the current political climate, I can't imagine anyone would secure the funding to research treatments for homosexuality.

My daughter was diagnosed with a lethal abnormality. We carried to term and I have a website to help other moms who are in the same situation: http://www.janelebak.com/ctt/index.html

If the person accepts the rule, then he's to some extent accepting that there are objective standards of behavior outside himself. That creates in the person an understanding that someone created that objective standard, and when the person adheres to that standard, the person is to some small extent making himself docile to the Holy Spirit, putting a little bit of himself to death in order to forward the kingdom of God in this specific way.

The rules aren't the POINT of it all, of course, but they're a good place to start because "Act in a loving way toward everyone" is nebulous, whereas "Don't steal your office-mate's pretty pens" is very specific. A discerning soul will quickly come to realize that this extends to not stealing the office-mate's pretty paper-clips and eventually "Don't steal from anyone" and that's now a part of the person's soul closed off to evil, and fertile ground for God to keep working.

Rules aren't the point of it all, no. And heaping rules upon rules isn't always for the best. But they're a great place to start the journey.