Did the men in the talk actually commit adultery or were they merely discovered to be homosexual?
The context is ambiguous. First it mentions that, "some sisters found out that they were married to homosexuals" which does not necessarily mean that they had committed adultery, but the same sentence describes them as "immoral men". The speaker leaves room for the possibility that what is meant is that even being homosexual is grounds for your mate to divorce you, even if you have not committed adultery.
And why would the Governing Body need to be moved by Jehovah before taking an in-depth look at the meaning of the word porneia? Shouldn't they have exhaustively researched the word in order to be absolutely certain of the correctness of the answer they gave these sisters?
Ray Franz mentions this very subject in his book Crisis of Conscience. It seems everyone on this board has read it but for those who haven't he explains that the Governing Body had decided that for an act to be considered adultery it must be capable of producing children, thus homosexual sex and a wide range of other sex acts were NOT considered adultery. In such cases freedom to divorce and remarry was not given. This disturbed him so much that he began to research the meaning of the word porneia (particularly as used at Matthew 19:9) and learned that the consesus among bible scholars was that the word included all forms of sexual immorality. After sharing his findings the Governing Body decided to reverse their decision.
So, if Ray Franz is to be believed then he is actually the only one who Jehovah moved to look into the matter further?
Since he wasn't a member of the Governing Body in the 1950's when the original position was taken isn't it misleading then to imply that those who made the decision went back, did some research, and decided to make a much needed change?
jabberwock