Notions on Christianity and Queer Communities

Part 1

A Personal Study

Bear with me as I’m going to get “nerdy” for a bit with this series of posts over the next weeks.

Several recent encounters and conversations have led me to dust off an old, unpublished manuscript. This was the culmination of an extensive study I undertook on Christianity and the LGBTQ+ communities.

What This Series Is (and Isn’t)

While experiences in my personal life initiated this study many years ago, this series isn’t going to be an autobiography. Instead, I want to share the “homework.” I’ve spent a significant amount of time (years) diving deep into the verses, the context, and the common arguments that define this conversation.

I hold no illusions that I will be a voice to settle this matter rife with years of arguments and stacks of books published from various positions. However, perhaps for one or two people, there will be something timely in what I share that they will be grateful for.

Personally, this study was challenging, enlightening, and formative for me, and it is a joy to be stirred to reflect upon it once more and review my thoughts after several years have passed.

An Invitation to the Whole Story

I know how divisive this topic is. If you find yourself feeling stirred in some negative way through this, I want you to know that I understand—I’ve been in the middle of it with people I care about and landed on various sides of it at various times. It is polarizing among Christians. However, I encourage you to not give up on the study and to press on through the entire series before making a final judgment.

Secondly, I ask for patience and understanding if I happen to misrepresent, misspeak, or might otherwise inadvertently offend anyone. Through my life, and to this day, I have dear friends who find themselves landing somewhere in an LGBTQ+ community. I also have dear friends who find themselves at odds with the LGBTQ+ communities. This study was—and continues to be—me working to expand my understanding and learning to converse on extremely personal matters to both sides.

I pray that readers will hear my heart underneath any misstep, and I am open to any correction or reflection.

Please feel free to respectfully engage with me through comments or direct messages.

Thank you for being willing to listen whether we come to agree or agree to disagree.

Let’s dive in.

Sorting Out the Details

This study will begin by considering the issue of same-sex attraction and marriage.

I very much like the language that the Counterpoints book Two Views on Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church uses for the two general sides of this discussion. They avoid contrasting the pro-homosexual marriage “affirming” side with the term “non-affirming” since the latter is stated in the negative, and that could unfairly bias people’s minds. Instead, they choose the terms “affirming” and “traditional” to represent those who respectively believe, “consensual, monogamous, same-sex relations can be blessed by God and fully included in the life of the church” and those who take “the position that all forms of same-sex sexual behavior are prohibited by Scripture and Christian theology.”

The Counterpoints book perfectly speaks to the intent of this part of my study. My goal is to consider if “consensual, monogamous, same-sex relations can be blessed by God and fully included in the life of the church.”

In other words, I will consider if homosexuals can live out romance, marriage, and sexual activity under God’s blessing in the same manner evangelicals typically consider a heterosexual can?

As it relates to homosexual attraction itself, I take the word of many homosexuals who tell me that homosexuality is “in their DNA,” so to speak. I am not seeking to disprove this and claim that homosexual attraction is itself a choice or even a default sign of immorality.

I join with both the affirming side and many traditionalists to reject the Christian view that held sway at least into the 1960s, that to even have homosexual urges is degeneracy, sin, and a personal, moral failing. I take the word of proven believers on both sides of the issue who love God, live righteous lives, have strong faith, and show no great moral failing as a person, yet confess to having had homoerotic thoughts the entire time and claim those thoughts are innate to how they are wired.

Robert Gagnon, a top traditional theologian, covers this idea well. He acknowledges that the debate should not be over condemning people who have homoerotic proclivities, but most believers are more concerned with the morality or immorality of engaging in same-sex sexual intimacy, primarily in a marriage setting. Richard Hays, also a well-known traditionalist, supports full church inclusion for nonpracticing homosexuals since he does not see the desire itself as the sin.

Update: After ~40 years of defending his traditionalist view, Richard Hays changed his position to an affirming stance for full inclusion of LGBTQ+ communities. Fairly recently, he authored a book on the matter with his son who is an Old Testament scholar.

Taking People at Their Word

I have heard many testimonies of those with same-sex attraction, who attest that they realize it, as I do my heterosexuality, as something innate within themselves to the point that they are convinced they were born with this attraction. I know of many stories of people who felt and were seen by others as standing out in one way or another as gay from their earliest years. In the process of growing up and experiencing puberty, they found their homosexuality simply became more pronounced, as do the heterosexual traits in those of us who are straight.

For those who have come later in life to determine they are homosexuals, I cannot argue against the idea that under the pressure of a largely heterosexual world—especially one that has obvious anti-homosexual currents running through it—one may attempt to fit, even unconsciously, into the hetero-culture until they realize it just isn’t working out, and they come to realize it isn’t the way they are wired. This phenomenon is observable with other areas of life.

Friends from different ethnicities and cultures tell me about the pressure from their families and communities to follow and hold certain careers and try to conform to expectations and please loved ones. Many will burn themselves out trying to be what their family and culture wish them to be, some eventually coming to realize it doesn’t work for them and rejecting what was imposed on them.

Scriptural Authority

Finally, my study will assume the validity of the Christian canon as an authority for the believer. Brilliant minds engage about how the Scriptures work and how they came to us. These minds weigh different types and levels of inspiration with many convincing cases for their respective conclusions. This study will bypass such discussions and simply work with the general understanding that Scripture, however it came about, is accepted as foundational material for believers and it holds some manner of authority for the Christian’s life. To this end, we will consider the exact words we find in Scripture as well as consider concepts commonly taken from Scripture.

With this groundwork laid, the next post will begin to consider the primary Scripture passages we consider might speak to homosexuality…