Can we stop pretending it isn't just bigotry?
The way the Evangelical church frames LGBT issues actively empowers the worst kinds of cruelty
(Content warning: discussion of homophobia / recent events in the PCA)
There are, to oversimplify, three positions on LGBT issues among Christians. These can be distinguished by their positions on gay relationships and/or sex:
People who fully affirm gay relationships to the same extent as straight relationships.
People who put “gay sex” in the same category as “outside-of-marriage straight sex”, but believe both are immoral at a level similar to their own sins. (Hard to phrase — this group isn’t affirming, but also doesn’t think LGBT people are “worse” than cis straight people.)
People who believe homosexuality is an absolutely terrible thing, far worse than anything they’ve ever done. These are the parents who kick their gay kids out of their houses, the practitioners of conversion therapy, the “God hates gay people” crowds, etc.
You can be a bible-believing Christian and make cases for positions one or two. (You might object that position two can be harmful, and I wouldn’t disagree with you. But the point here is that every Christian should be able to agree that position three is completely unacceptable, and deeply misrepresents who God is.)
This — that the #3-style-condemning of gay people is much more anti-Christian than gay sex — is something that seems kind of obvious to me, but that I’ve never heard preached about, so here are a handful of biblical pointers to get there. If you don’t care, you can skip down to “Okay, okay”, a few paragraphs after the two block quotes.
First, for something the American church has made so central to its identity, the bible doesn’t seem very interested in condemning LGBT people or their actions. By my count, there are six passages that could potentially be read as anti-LGBT, three in each testament.
If you’re ever unsure what God prioritizes, you can consult this handy visual aid:
Second, the bible’s most thorough passage about homosexuality (and the only unambiguous reference in the New Testament) is literally part of an argument against position three.
The second half of Romans 1 is a description, from a Jewish Christian point of view, of horrible “Gentile” sins committed by the non-Jewish nations. Partway through, we get the oft-cited-out-of-context remark:
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Paul stacks shame on top of shame against these outsiders, remarking that “They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.”
But this is all a rhetorical trick to force Paul’s (primarily Jewish Christian) audience to confront their own sins. Having riled them up about the Other, about Those People far away doing evil, Paul hits them with a:
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
In other words: “you know those people, the ‘sinners’ you insist are outside God’s love? Not only are you just as bad as them, but the very judgments you’ve passed on them are condemning you.” In short, if you read the ending of Romans 1 to mean gay people can’t get into heaven, you’re doing precisely the action Paul is saying can condemn you to hell.
Third, just try and read the part of Matthew 23 about people who “tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them” and tell me it doesn’t apply to pastors whose main preaching identity is telling gay people they’ll go to hell if they fall in love. (Spoiler alert: the pastors in the passage are told they’ll go to hell if they don’t change.)
Okay, okay. So option three is unacceptable.
The problem is this: at the moment, position 2 seems to be most common in evangelical settings, with a minority of people holding positions 1 and 3.
The clearest, most biblical fault line should pit positions 1 and 2, which are potentially compatible with Jesus’ ethics, against position 3, which is evil. By any viable Christian standard, people who hold to position three should be considered unqualified for Christian office until they’ve genuinely repented.
But in practice, the people in position three regularly manage to change the framing from “basic Christian love vs. cruel bigotry” into what they call “orthodox Christian sexual ethics vs. people trying to change them.”
In this framing, positions 2 and 3 find themselves allied against position 1, and the larger side is able to exert genuine power against the smaller side. And this leads to all sorts of evil.
We must not think of this as a theoretical discussion. The “orthodox Christian sexual ethics” framing leads to horrible things, the most recent example of which I’m aware of is PCA overture 231, which prohibits celibate people who identify as gay or “same-sex attracted” Christians from becoming church leaders.
To be clear, this isn’t about whether a male pastor could get married to another man. This overture prohibits celibate gay Christians — Christians who were born gay but choose to live celibate, often lonely lives to keep with (presbyterian) church teaching — from serving in church leadership. In other words, if you find yourself attracted to people of the same gender, you aren’t allowed to be honest about that fact even if you don’t act on your attractions.
(If you haven’t met any celibate gay Christians, they are some of the strongest, most genuinely brave people you will ever meet. Even if you disagree with their beliefs, I can’t think of anyone more qualified to teach what it is to give everything up for God.)
The proponents of the overture insist that it only applies to gay people who “place their identity above God” or some nonsense like that, but since “actively homosexual people” were already banned from ministry in the PCA there’s very little doubt of who this is meant to attack.
This is clearly, absolutely, unbiblically evil, and yet it passed with a 1438-417 supermajority.
I don’t believe that everyone who voted for it is intentionally being cruel. I think a number of “position 2” Christians were tricked into supporting a “position 3” stance by the “orthodox sexual ethic” framing.
In some sense that doesn’t matter.
The people you hurt with good intentions are still hurt.
But in another sense, it maybe provides hope that even though the church at large is unlikely to embrace the position 1 in the near future, it’s still possible that a “Christian love vs. bigotry” framing could overtake the current “Orthodox sexual ethics vs. gay people” default, in which case we would already have enough people in power to change some of the worst parts of church culture.
This will take a lot of work by a lot of people.
But until the church gets its priorities in order, the “position 3” group is going to continue to find themselves at home in our churches and in our lives. Gay children will still find themselves kicked out of their homes and schools, gay parents will still find themselves unable to adopt, Christian voters will still care more about bakers forced to bake cakes than parents separated from their children and Jesus’ name will still be used to justify the actions he considered the most heinous.
So if you find yourself in position two, I beg you to think hard and carefully about who you ally yourself with. If you find yourself more outspoken against position 1 than against position 3, I am really truly praying for you to repent. Please.
If your church has more sermons against position 1 than against position 3, say something. Call your pastors to repentance.
Do not let the bigots convince you they’re your teammates.
Do not let your church be known for cruelty.
Do not value your beliefs about sex and gender over the humanity and agency of your friends and neighbors.
And please, please, please do not let the name of Christ remain primarily associated with those who do not uphold his core beliefs.
For more of this, consider signing up to receive All of it Again in your inbox!
I think I’m somehow related to the PCA but am hazy on the details — I want to say my pastor is part of the PCA, but my church isn’t? Or maybe the other way around. In any case, this feels close to home.