Let’s Talk About Sex - Introduction & Part 1
Over the past several months I have wrestled with the issue of homosexuality, reading books that analyze the issue technically within Scripture, those that approach it culturally within the setting of ancient Israel and Rome, and those that deal with it personally - sharing the pain of those who have known this struggle more personally and intimately than I have thus far. While reflecting on what I have learned, I have come up with eight questions and challenges that I have to my Christian family and friends. I will be addressing each of these questions over the next month in a series of eight essays. These are questions that I believe will lead to greater peace, dialogue and grace in what has become an unnecessarily contentious issue.
In the Immortal Words of Salt ‘N Peppa: “Let’s Talk about Sex!” -
Introduction & Part 1
Coming into college, I was a troubled young man recovering from a quasi-cultic, extremely sectarian Christian fundamentalist environment. I was harnessed to the idea that the world was a scary place, seeking to rob me of my values, and to remake me in its image. This worldly image would include, at the top of the list, the idea that right and wrong were to be defined on an individual basis which in turn would mean that no such thing as objective truth existed. This concern is a valid fear, and becomes easier to understand as we all contemplate the advancing tide of modernity, where new ideas as supported by science make our questions of origins and truth more problematic, not less. Attempting to ask where objective truth comes from is one of the answers that religious thought provides, as it does for the question of origins; however, ultimately we may find that questions of where objective truth come from are as problematic and multi-dimensional as are questions relating to the origination of life and meaning of the universe.
For a number of reasons, homosexuality today represents a lynch-pin issue for people from both sides of the political and religious spectrum: for those on the “right” homosexuality represents the moral relativism that will lead towards everything being questioned and nothing held sacred. On the “left” the issue is seen as a civil-rights problem; they feel that those who stand so stridently against homosexuality are of the same form and function as those who stood against the rights of blacks and women. As with too many debates currently being thrown around in the United States, the issue of homosexuality is more significant for what it represents to the people doing battle, and not for the underlying issue itself. It is all-too-easy to lose sight that underneath all the hyperbole and debate are real people struggling with real issues who need real help, love, care and grace.
Coming out of my own cloistered fundamentalist experience, of all the things that frightened me most, that I was most terrified of, homosexuals were near the top of my list. I said things about them I now view as disgusting and terribly wrong in spirit and fact. I was then a product of deeply hidden prejudice, a realization I have had when reflecting on how my environment responded towards things like mixed-marriage, African-Americans in general, and the fall of apartheid. It was subtly taught and reinforced throughout my childhood that homosexuals were to be hated and feared. Little did I know that my best friend was gay, that a man within our church was hiding his homosexual desires underneath the guise of a family, or that a young man I worked with and whose company I enjoyed was homosexual.
As I have grown older, I have had prejudice after prejudice torn down and destroyed. I am thankful for these walls coming down, even when they have been painful and have caused those around me pain. Sometimes pain is necessary for growth. Within the evangelical church, the pain being created over homosexuality is illegitimate pain that is largely self-inflicted through the use of half-truths and out-right lies on the part of people such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Kennedy and James Dobson in order to make homosexuality into a politicized issue. The pain the church should be feeling should be the pain of integrating homosexuals into evangelical churches, reaching out to them as we would to anyone with whom we desire fellowship. But that is precisely the issue that is causing such pain within the evangelical church: the church does not desire fellowship with homosexuals. The church views them as the enemy, as people that can afford to be marginalized. These emotions taking place within an environment supposedly built around the idea of grace, forgiveness, and cautious judgment come together to cause friction. While the church was formed around the teachings of Christ, it is struggling to live up to these same standards when dealing with homosexuality. No institution so divided between what supposedly drew it together and what is motivating its energies now can maintain its purity and effectiveness. It is within such moments in time that the true intentions of the church will be seen by all - a warning to those who desperately love the church and wish for it to keep its efficacy in the US. If the underlying motives of the church relative to homosexuality prove to be largely political and prejudicial, those disaffected and uninterested in the church will take notice for generations to come. The church can ill-afford to have around its neck another albatross like that of suffrage or civil rights. Even for those within the church who disagree with proponents and apologists of homosexuality, the decorum of this debate matters profoundly.
My wrestling with the issue of homosexuality is deeply related to my own religious faith; a struggle I take very personally and very seriously. I challenged myself some time ago to no longer offer my opinion on any issue I have not studied both sides to. I deeply desire to be the kind of person who has genuine wisdom; something that I believe only comes through contemplation of the value and arguments on both sides of contentious issues. Over the past several months I have wrestled with the issue of homosexuality, reading books that analyze the issue technically within Scripture, those that approach it culturally within the setting of ancient Israel and Rome, and those that deal with it personally - sharing the pain of those who have known this struggle more personally and intimately than I have thus far. While reflecting on what I have learned, I have come up with eight questions and challenges that I have to my Christian family and friends. I will be addressing each of these questions over the next month in a series of eight essays. These are questions that I believe will lead to greater peace, dialogue and grace in what has become an unnecessarily contentious issue:
• Can you believe such a thing exists as real love between homosexuals - the same kind of renewing relational love you know towards your own spouse?
• Can you believe such a thing as a Christian homosexual exists?
• Can you set aside your own pet stereotypes about homosexuals?
• Can you appreciate that secular people believe evangelicalism’s treatment of homosexuality to be the modern equivalent of how the church handled slavery and women’s suffrage?
• Are you willing to ask yourself honestly why homosexuality is being presented today as such a super-sin?
• Are you willing to recognize homosexuality is being used as a political wedge issue by those whose motives are political power not personal purity?
• Are you willing to ask yourself if the reasons why homosexuality is wrong make sense?
• What does grace mean within the context of the homosexual issue?
Question 1: Can Real Love Exist?
I grew up with the need to believe that homosexual relationships were aberrant; that homosexuals were pedophiles, promiscuous and engaged in sexual acts that were deviant and dirty. About three years ago I began to wrestle with a question that caused me to reflect on the core of my deepest prejudice towards homosexuals: when I see a voluptuous woman walk by, I take immediate sexual interest and gratification. What if I had a similar response to someone of my own sex? My sexual drive is one of my most basic drives (right after life and food!); the idea that someone could have as natural a same-sex response as I do to those of a different sex began to trouble me deeply. But more profoundly, I began to build on this realization and ask myself if I believed they could actually love in the same way I loved my wife. If they could have the same self-less love that I have for my wife, the same desire to be with this person for their entire life, the same desire to be intimate not as an end in-and-of-itself but as an outgrowth of a relationship, I would have to deal with my view of their desires as being entirely aberrant. Homosexuality is about more than just sex; it is within the war of words that homosexuality has been lost on many. Too easily this word incorporates “sex” and immediately raises the guard of many who fear sex being treated cavalierly but who might otherwise listen to language about love.
Very gracious Christian leaders such as Tony Campolo accept that homosexuals are “born that way.” Campolo represents a school of thought that views homosexuality as a combination of misplaced affections and aberrancy from the Fall (the introduction of sin by Adam and Eve). Here I believe Campolo has, possibly by design, introduced sexuality before he deals with love. It is easy to frame homosexuality within the confines of aberrant behavior if I first have discussed it in sexual terms; if I choose to discuss it first within the confines of feeling, emotion and genuine love, I am forced to tell someone that what they love is wrong. It is much easier for me to define a particular behavior as wrong if I can first deal with it in sexual terms and imagery. Arguing that someone’s love is misplaced is a much more complex argument and one that is tenuous at best because it ultimately revolves around the postulate that it is wrong because “the Bible says so” (an issue we will discuss this later on in upcoming essays).
Before we go further let me encourage you to believe the following: same-sex couples can love each other as much, as deeply and as purely as you love your spouse. See them first as human beings who love before you see them as manifestations of what you believe to be sexual aberrancies. Even if ultimately you choose to believe their behavior is wrong, you will reach out to them differently than you do now if you believe they love each other as you know love yourself.
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“If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.”
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January 26th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
Do you think that you will be able to come to any (helpful) conclusions as a result of your pursuit of this subject? So much of this seems to lead to the human desire to love & be loved, don’t you think? I appreciate that you have provoked me to think about this.
January 26th, 2005 at 8:02 pm
If I were backed into a corner, I would tell you that the desire to be loved is why I struggle to believe homosexuality is “wrong.” As I said in another essay, to tell people that their desires are natural (Christianity’s pallid way of accepting modern psychiatry, biology and anecdotal evidence of said facts), and that we recognize this desire is first to be loved, second to be intimate, third to be sexual; but that all of these are wrong, is to load the pistol of anguish and then be surprised when they commit suicide of the soul. Promisquity is evidence of little more than people who have been told that they are aberations; that they are mistakes. If they are mistakes, then caution being thrown to the wind makes perfect sense.
As I have worked through this issue, I have had to redefine what I mean when I talk about graciousness. At first, I thought that I would come to a point of stating “I think it is wrong, but I think the church needs to be more gracious in how it handles these people.” This is the Tony Campolo route and it has enormous value within fundamentalist circles. But as I exposed myself to various stories (Andrew Sullivan’s first chapter in Virtually Normal is a powerful discussion on this topic) about homosexuals struggling with their self-realization, I came to see that my sense of graciousness was being measured from my perspective, not from theirs.
If I step into their shoes and see a Christian who goes from being completely hostile to being at least gracious, I am thankful. I wish for more, and frankly, what I wish for is simply to be in relation with those who I was made to relate to. As seen from this desire, the initial move of the church, while appreciated, still comes short of helping me live.
Not all of us are capable of the same level or type of change. Most of us go so far, then settle. The homosexual movement - I believe - needs people who believe they are capable of healthy relationships and who seek to steer them clear of the same damaging relational problems heterosexuals find themselves in.