MysteriousFaith

Question 5: Why is Homosexuality Such a Super-Sin?

Certainly Christians do not really believe the world is going to end if you look at the time, money and effort spent on politics? Do we think this would be our real response if we believed at the core of our being the world was going to end? We would form a political action committee and lobby congress for a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage? It is when we realize that the core emotion, the common thread that runs through the infatuation with apocalypse and political involvement is that both accommodate a stark fear of where the world is going, a deep confusion about whether the direction of modern man will lead to further enlightenment or deeper conflict.

Question 5 - Why is Homosexuality Such a Super-Sin?

“During the 1990s, when the religious right shifted the focus of their fund-raising appeals form the ‘evil communist empire’ to ‘the homosexual agenda for the destruction of America,’ I began collecting samples of their terrible lies against us. One of my early hate-mail ‘treasures’ was an emergency Jerry Falwell fund-raiser sent in an oversize envelope (five by fourteen inches) with a bold red banner across its face stating simply: ‘Declaration of War … Official Notice.’ … In spite of all the progress in understanding and acceptance we have made, leaders on the religious right continue to mount an ever more hysterical campaign against us. Finding it more and more difficult to raise enough money and to recruit enough volunteers, their claims against lesbians and gays grow more lurid and more far-fetched every day. You cannot listen to a religious radio or television station very long without hearing another evangelist or talk show host or radio counselor warn this nation about the ‘threat of the gay agenda.’”

Stranger at the Gate: to be Gay and Christian in America,
by Mel White, pages 224 and 230

“The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say: you helped this happen.”

Jerry Falwell, post-9/11

If the church today has lost its ability to effect change in the world, it should look no further than its attachment to political power. Today’s Christian political forces are stretched between two opposing ideological extremes. On one side is the belief that the moral degeneracy in the world is a sign of the forthcoming apocalypse and the return of Christ. On the other side is a deep commitment to political causes, a belief that only through political action can they preserve their particular way of being. We do not have to look any further than the 2004 elections to see the power this particular part of America wields. This tension speaks to a deeper dysfunction underneath Christianity; I have long suspected that much of our (including my own) Christian identity speaks less to my beliefs and more to my need to easily identify friend versus foe. The primacy with which I assign my need to have a particular identity supersedes actual wrestling with what constitutes my beliefs. Another way of saying this is to say we look for groups we can fit into and accept their dogma, making it our own not because we have fully wrestled with it, but because it is a prerequisite to being accepted within the group.

Why is this important to the earlier point about dysfunction? Because the “imminent apocalypse” that is a standard part of the Christian church is, I would suggest, not really representative of the people within the Church. It fits within a broader fear of modernity, confusion about how to cope in an increasingly complex world where problems require more nuance and sophistication than ever to resolve. But this apocalyptic fervor is best seen as an outgrowth of the deeper emotion of confusion and frustration over a changing world that is tracking in a direction that holds out less of a promise for the “American Dream” than any generation prior to it. In a similar vein, turning to political power is, I would suggest, a sign that those within the church are looking for solutions where they really feel matters most. The dogma of the apocalypse is well and good until you have to get up on Monday morning and actually live your life; then you want something different, then you want hope, then you want action. And political involvement promises just that - it promises change and it promises action. If we are paying attention, we see the irony in this: the evangelical church, which holds to the “any-day-now” return of Christ and uses as a primary justification of this the moral relativism of the day, when judged by what the church does - not what it says - turns to politics, it admits its teaching in contrast to what it actually does are fundamentally at odds with one another. Certainly Christians do not really believe the world is going to end if you look at the time, money and effort spent on politics? Do we think this would be our real response if we believed at the core of our being the world was going to end? We would form a political action committee and lobby congress for a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage? It is when we realize that the core emotion, the common thread that runs through the infatuation with apocalypse and political involvement is that both accommodate a stark fear of where the world is going, a deep confusion about whether the direction of modern man will lead to further enlightenment or deeper conflict.

As I write these words, my mind goes back to reflect on what a dear friend told me several weeks ago. When talking about my writing he commented that I tended to come across as “polemic.” I should apologize for this, and do to my few readers. I have realized more than ever since his comments that what we need now, more than ever, are voices to heal, not to simply debate. If I am honest, I am not sure my earlier comments or my current perspective accommodate this type of graciousness. Much of my own life mirrors the threat of modernity of which I write about. When I write about politics, religion or issues like homosexuality, I see in my own life the same hesitancies, fears and frustrations. I am no better than any one else, and my preaching is heard first by my own ears and said to my own soul, before it is written here. I believe more and more firmly that how we handle issues like homosexuality will determine the direction of the future. By my use of the word “how” I mean both the means by which we converse with those who disagree with us as well as the actual resolutions we find on the questions we choose to debate. If we are to advance as a species, we must find the means within ourselves to allow modernity to reveal truth to us, adapt, and move on. If we are to make adaptation a central part of our movement forward, we must also find within ourselves the ability to speak graciously, candidly and sincerely about those things we disagree. The world is getting more complicated at the same time it is getting smaller; we no longer have the luxury of distance or ignorance to avoid the difficult questions posed to us by modernity.

One of the most damaging components to contemporary public discourse is its seeming inability to function as an advocate and facilitator for reasoned debate over those issues that we are really all struggling with. Regardless of whether you are gay or straight, male or female, Christian or Muslim, Pakistani or American, the issues that tie us together are more than those that drive us apart. We all have a say in how we take the advent of medical technology and apply it to improving quality of life; but we can not seem to have the discussion about what this will cost. Who will pay for this? When is it time to say “good-bye” to a loved one so that precious resources can be better spent elsewhere? These questions are ill-suited to the media rich culture of our day which thrives on new stories every 15 minutes on the hour. So what happens? We substitute trivial questions for deeper ones. We focus on banal issues that are easy to pigeon-hole versus accommodating and encouraging discussion on complex issues in nuanced fashions. Let me ask you this about another hot-button issue - abortion. When have you ever heard the debate over abortion framed within the idea of the responsibility we have towards technology? The sexual revolution brought on by the pill in the 60’s has led to our ability as a species to control birth rates. That is an important social engineering tool that has immense value in countries that have a history of population vastly outstripping food supply. It has played a critical role in allowing couples to plan their families, accommodating a certain richness their younger years together as a married couple would not support had they had children as well as allowing people to make conscious decisions about being a parent. But these benefits also come with responsibilities. Why is that we can not frame the issue of abortion also as a question of responsibility to technology? If we, on one hand, want the technology to control family planning, do we not also have a responsibility to use that technology wisely? To argue that abortion is wrong is easy (which does not make such an argument wrong); the more complex issue is seeing the social causes behind its acceptability. I would contend that this issue, much like homosexuality, serves the explicit purposes of the media environment we live in, ensuring us that sophisticated debate never occurs on issues that really matter.

Over the course of human history, the advancement of science and reason has gradually pulled down opinions held by learned men of the day. Science has had to change science first, and then change religion. I find it helpful to remember that as much as evolution challenges the Christian ideas of creationism, for evolution to be accepted as a theory it had to first establish its own scientific credentials. Where religion finds its cherished beliefs threatened, it would do well to remember that such fear was first known by other schools of scientific thought. We all find the process of advancing technology both exciting and threatening. Typically, we find change most interesting when we are younger or when we have little to gain by the status-quo. As we grow older we typically become more invested in community and the ideologies that are held in common within our social group. These shared views become a central element to our identity and mean, by definition, that changes to these shared views threatens that which binds the community together. Here again I must restate that simply because something threatens group cohesion does not mean either that this “something” is right or wrong; my point is only to draw to our collective attention the realization that we may resist changing our beliefs only because it threatens our identities and not because we have wrestled with its argument. Homosexuality, regardless of whether or not you or I agree with it from a moral perspective, threatens some very basic ideas of family and individual identity. By recognizing that homosexuality poses a concern to ideas and identities that may bind me together with others, I can take the step towards further objectivity when I ask myself questions about the underlying morality or immorality of homosexuality.

In a sea of change, people will find hot-button issues that represent, to them, a line in the sand from which they will not budge. Is the issue itself really that critical? Probably not. But what does matter is that in an increasingly complex world, I find it comforting to know that certain things will not change. At a more dysfunctional level, this resistance to change develops in us a mindset that searches for issues we know can be scape-goated. Homosexuality is one such issue; regardless of where you stand on its rightness, you must acknowledge that the issue has become a symbol of other things and the resistance against homosexuality has built within it motives that you would not want to see applied to yourself or to those you call fellow citizens. And Reverend Falwell, I have a question for you: if you believe the deaths of 3,000 innocent people on 9/11 was the result of “pagans … abortionists … feminists … gays … lesbians … [and the] ACLU” then to whom do you ascribe the blame for the 200,000 innocent dead from the recent tsunami?

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• March 3, 2005

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2 Responses to “Question 5: Why is Homosexuality Such a Super-Sin?”

1. Paul Says:
   March 5th, 2005 at 4:32 pm

   Homosexuality is patently immoral because the behavior is immoral. There is a blog that rationally and scientifically explains this in lenght. Google ezsgblog+com/kxar

   Paul

2. Ben Shobert Says:
   March 8th, 2005 at 3:44 pm

   It is obviously true that black is blue because everyone knows blue is black.

   When words no longer mean anything reason is sacrificed to dogma. Blind dogma has, and always will, be a poor servant of humanity.

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