I just finished Jim Brownson's book, Bible, Gender, and Sexuality. I will begin by saying that I know Jim Brownson. I studied under him at Western Seminary, and found him to be both an astute, critical thinker and a deeply spiritual Christian who listens to his heart as well as his head. He not only studies Scripture; he prays it. So when he wrestles deeply with an issue, I'm inclined to listen. That's what I see him doing here - wrestling, struggling, trying to come to terms with this most troubling, divisive situation tearing our denominations, churches, and families apart - and what greater, more urgent impetus could there be than to reconcile God's will with your own son's dilemma?I've read the other reviews and will not rehash their depictions of Brownson's arguments, which I find both concise and accurate - particularly John Byron's. I'll content myself with describing what Brownson is trying to do in general terms. While claiming neither any real expertise in this area, nor a broad reading of the pertinent literature on my part, I am familiar with the usual arguments from both sides and I have read Gagnon's book. I disagree with J. White who claims that "there is honestly nothing new here." The newness in Brownson's book is that he really does not choose sides; his book is not polemical, and, to me, that does feel new. Brownson takes kind of a "dialectical" approach, the traditionalist view constituting the "thesis," the revisionist view the "antithesis," Brownson attempting to find some sort of "synthesis" to guide us in our corporate quandary. He seeks to accomplish this through discerning the "moral logic" of the writers of Scripture for their own times, then extrapolating what that logic might imply for our own.I just finished leading a class at my church (which just gained "gracious dismissal" from the PCUSA, largely over these issues) through some of Andrew Marin's materials (Love Is an Orientation; The Marin Foundation). Marin, an evangelical Christian, seeks to provide safe places for people on both sides to "elevate the conversation" - for evangelical Christians and those in the liberal-progressive camp and the LGBTQ communities to have meaningful dialogue, each validating the others' experience and living together "in the tension" while seeking God's will for all God's children, whatever their sexual orientation. I see Brownson trying to do something similar here, in a scholarly way.I don't hear Brownson trying to provide answers. What I do hear him doing is: 1) suggesting to both camps that they might need to back up and re-evaluate their entrenched positions, 2) asking some deeply probing and engaging questions, and 3) offering some other lenses than the ones we are used to using to prayerfully navigate our way through Scripture in trying to discern God's will for our particular time and situation regarding these contentious issues.I have found the traditional camp to be a bit glibly dismissive of other points of view and a little inconsistent in their high regard of Scripture when it supports their argument, but ignoring all those other parts of Scripture (the purity codes in Leviticus, for example) that we all, including most traditionalists, choose to ignore with impunity. But I often hear the revisionist camp resorting to rather extreme sorts of rationalization in their attempts to deal with Scripture at all regarding sexual morality. Brownson does neither.The truth is that none of us really knows what God's will is in these matters, and the answer, to be at all satisfactory, will need to be both nuanced and complex enough to fit a situation that is by no means simple. I hear Brownson trying here to give us some more tools to use in digging into God's Word in search of God's will, which is, after all, what we all seek to know. I applaud his effort, and highly recommend his book for reflection on these matters.