Important Considerations Regarding Homosexuality: Why Churches Should Welcome and Affirm Christian GLBTs
By Bruce Lowe, Ret. SBC pastor
It terrified me to think that God made me just to hate me and send me to hell.” This was the response of a teenager hearing his pastor tell the congregation that the Bible says God hates homosexuals and will send them to hell. He knew he was gay; he didn’t want to be, but that was the way God had made him. But God hates him? God will send him to hell for something he has no control over? Is this the kind of God we worship? Or was the pastor exhibiting very faulty Bible interpretation? The Bible says or implies so many times that “whosoever” believes will have eternal life that we cannot discard that assurance. So whatever the Bible says or doesn’t say about LGBTs, that is, Gays-Lesbians-Bisexuals-Transgendered, they may not necessarily be going to hell. But sadly isn’t this pastor’s belief accepted by many without any thought toward responsible interpretation?
I am 96 and shall not see the time when Christian GLBTs are welcomed and affirmed by our churches, but I do believe many of you reading this will. Until then, these special people will continue to suffer (at the ignorant hands of society and the ignorant/sinful hands of the church), many will never go to a church to hear the saving gospel preached, and our churches will continue to be deprived of their talents. Lord, open the eyes of your people, and hasten the day.
I discuss below what I consider to be six very important truths about homosexuality that have been generally overlooked.
1. There is really nothing in the Bible about homosexuality or homosexual people per se.
My eyes were first opened to this truth when I read theology professor Elizabeth Stuart: “…it is misleading to give the impression that the biblical authors talked about homosexuality at all, since the concept and reality of homosexuality…is barely a century old.”1 And theologian Walter Wink writes, “The idea (homosexuality) was not available in (the bible writer’s) world.”2
If there is something the writer could not have known, could not have had in his mind, we can eliminate that as a possible meaning. If I suggested that a Bible writer talked about electricity, you would say “preposterous” (or something worse). Electricity existed from the beginning of the world, but it would not be discovered for many centuries after the Bible writers lived. No Bible writer could have had it in his mind, could have said anything about it.
In the same way, the concept of homosexuality was unknown for centuries after the Bible writers lived. It was not until the 19th century that the word “homosexual” was used for the first time3. That being the case, the Bible writers could not have written about homosexual people or anything they did.
References to same-gender sex in the Bible are about heterosexual people – condemnations of heterosexual lust.The Bible speaks in several places of same-sex practices, sex which was widely practiced by people who unquestionably were heterosexual4 but who held women in low and often despised esteem which was normal in the culture.5
Also, it was common for a man who had a grudge against another man to subdue the begrudged, to rape him, thus reducing him to the place of a woman.6 When an army conquered another army the conquering army degraded all their captives by raping them. “Gang rape (was) an extreme means to disgrace one’s enemies… to reduce one to a woman’s role…the ultimate means of subjugation and domination.”7 Sex was incidental; heterosexual men were raping other heterosexual men to degrade them and show domination over them.
In the Greco-Roman world of the New Testament, married men with families often kept male lovers, often young boys from the lower classes for whom they provided needed food, clothing, and education. “The Greeks regarded it impossible for a man to have a deep, all-encompassing relationship with a woman. This was possible only between two men”.8 Women were uneducated and virtual slaves to their responsibilities as mothers and housekeepers and cooks. Historians tell us that men had debates “about which sex was preferable (sex with another man or sex with a woman) as erotic focus. Bible writers condemned these forms of same-gender heterosexual sex, the only kind they knew. Homosexual people, per se, were not known.
2. Sexual orientation (heterosexual and homosexual) is innate and unchangeable; it is not a choice.
The concept of a homosexual nature first appeared in print in Europe in 1860 and in the United States in 1889. Freud, in the early 20th century accepted homosexuality as natural and considered it unchangeable.9 Theologian Helmut Thielicke recognized in his work, The Ethics of Sex, written some 50 years ago, that at least some gay men and lesbian women have “constitutional homosexuality”; he says we must “accept the fact that it is “incurable,” and therefore, “our attitude toward (it) changes.” (his italics)10
In 1998 the American Psychological Association concluded, “There is no scientific evidence that reparative or conversion therapy is effective in changing a person’s sexual orientation. There is, however, evidence that this type of therapy can be destructive.”11 The National Cancer Institute reports on a study finding that “[b]eing gay is not simply a choice or purely a decision. People have no control over the genes they inherit and there is no way to change them.”12
Other evidence that homosexuality is unchangeable includes: (a) ten thousand suicides each year of homosexual youth, unable to change and unwilling to face life with that orientation which includes the ostracism of society and the condemnation of the church; (b) the large numbers of homosexuals who go to psychotherapists desperately wanting to change their orientation, and the disappointing failure of the psychotherapy to help after hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars have been spent; (c) the millions of homosexual people who live “in the closet,” not wanting anyone to learn of their orientation because of a homophobic society and church.
One lesbian, accused of choosing her orientation, said, “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.” A gay man said, “No homosexual ever lived who didn’t wish he could change.” A friend said to me, “My brother hates God because God made him gay.”
How can anyone believe that GLBTs (gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites) choose their orientation?
3. Homosexual people are often highly gifted.
Sigmund Freud found homosexual persons to be “of high intellectual and ethical development” and “as characterized by special development of their social instinctual impulses and by their devotion to the interests of the community.”13
Psychologist Mark Friedman found that the gay and lesbian subjects he tested were superior to their heterosexual counter parts in such psychological qualities as autonomy, spontaneity, orientation toward the present, and increased sensitivity to the value of the person.14 Thielicke found that the homosexual “is frequently gifted with a remarkable heightened sense of empathy.”15
The eminent psychologist Jung gives five very positive aspects of the homosexual male: 1) a great capacity for friendship, an astonishing tenderness between men; 2) a heightened aesthetic sense; 3) supremely gifted as a teachers; 4) strong feelings for history, conservative in the best sense while cherishing the values of the past; and 5) endowed with a wealth of religious feelings, helping to bring the ecclesia spiritualis into reality, and a spiritual receptivity which makes him responsive to revelation.16
While those who are gay and lesbian make up probably 4%-6% of the population, a study of the biographies of 1,004 eminent people found 11% of them to be homosexual or bisexual, with certain categories higher: 24% of poets, 21% of fiction writers, and 15% of artists and musicians.17
Surely, we ought to look on the gay man or lesbian woman as potentially a very special person, made that way by God, one we could find joy in associating with, and especially a benefit and blessing to our churches.
4. Many churches and pastors are sinning greatly against homosexual people.
“Kill a Queer for Christ”
This cleverly alliterative bumper sticker is sad, even unbelievable, and so very real.
The thinking shown in the bumper sticker and the position of so many churches and their pastors abets the crimes against gay men and lesbian women. Peter Gomes, Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard, says, “The combination of ignorance and prejudice under the guise of morality makes the religious community, and its abuse of scripture in this regard, itself morally culpable.”18 He relates this:
In preparing for her novel The Drowning of Stephen Jones, based upon the true story of a young gay man tossed from a bridge to his death by a group of young gay-bashers, author Bette Greene interviewed more than four hundred young men in jail for various forms of gay-bashing. Few of the men, she noted, showed any remorse for their crimes. Few saw anything morally wrong with their crimes, and more than a few of them told her that they were justified in their opinions and in their actions by the religious traditions from which they came. Homosexuality was wrong and against the Bible. One of those interviewed told her that the pastor of his church had said that homosexuals represented Satan and the Devil. The implication of his logic was clear: Who could possibly do wrong in destroying Satan and any of his works? The legitimization of violence against homosexuals and Jews and women and blacks, as we have seen, comes from the view that the Bible stigmatizes these people, thereby making them fair game. If the Bible expresses such a prejudice, then it certainly cannot be wrong to act on that prejudice. This is the argument every anti-Semite and racist has used with demonstrably devastating consequences, as our social history all too vividly shows.19
At the funeral of Matt Shepard, the young gay man tied to a fence and beaten to death in Kansas a preacher from Kansas and his followers from several states marched with placards reading, “God Hates Fags” and “Fag Matt in Hell.” It is some consolation to know that the people of the town put themselves between the marchers and the family, and when the marchers began to cry out their messages, the people sang loudly “Amazing Grace.”
When a straight man became a Christian, his gay friend asked, “Now that you are a Christian, will you still love me?” Such a woeful question!
Jesus’ love included; our lack of love excludes.
Theologian John Cobb tells of Ignacio Castuera, Latin American Liberation Theology leader, saying “that if he (Castuera) were to be true to liberation theology, he must be especially concerned for those who are most oppressed in our society. He had come to the conclusion that these are gay people.” Then Cobb comments: “Some may question whether GLBTs are the most oppressed in our society. There is serious competition for that spot. But it is clear that whereas in most other oppressions the church has given at least some support to the oppressed, in this case the church has been the leader in the oppression.”20
Sagacious Will Campbell has observed that many denominations have apologized to blacks for the way they were once treated. Brother Will prophesied that one day we will apologize to gays and lesbians for the way we are treating them.
5. No sex act has morality in itself.
When the Bible talks about “good” or “evil” acts, it is talking about the people behind the acts. We cannot say the Bible condemns the act, in itself, of sex between two men or two women. The same act may be loving conjugal sex or rape. God does not judge the act itself but the hearts of the people involved. So God is not interested in the same-gender sex act itself. God’s judgment is on the hearts of those involved. Homosexual sex can be as loving as heterosexual sex and so just as moral in God’s sight.
It is unfortunate that homophobics seem always to think of perverted sex when they think of homosexuals. To them, a “homosexual act” is sex, though every homosexual performs a thousand acts every day that have nothing to do with sex. Heterosexual sex may be loving or it may be lustful. The same is true with homosexual sex. When sex – heterosexual or homosexual – is out of love, it must have a godlike quality, for God is love.
6. The trend in our society and in our churches is toward affirmation of homosexuals.
As the truths set forth above become known, Americans are beginning to look differently at homosexuals. A letter to the editor of Baptists Today (January 2010) was undoubtedly correct when the writer said: “Whether the church likes it or not, the American culture is on its way to full acceptance of homosexuals.”
More and more church leaders are welcoming and affirming gay and lesbian Christians as they see the depth of spirituality so many of them show. One denomination has elevated a gay minister to the position of Bishop. I know of gay and lesbian Baptists whose spirituality and qualities of leadership have brought them to ordination as deacons. I know a lesbian who grew up Southern Baptist, felt the call to preach and graduated from an SBC seminary. Knowing her chances of pastoring an SBC church as a woman and a lesbian were nil, she went to officials of the Disciples denomination. They told her that her being lesbian was unimportant, they would ordain her and see that she got a church. She is pastor of a Christian (Disciples of Christ) church in one of our southern U.S. cities.
Wikipedia lists 20 denominations (out of 33) that welcome and affirm GLBTs. Some mainline denominations have long done so, e.g. United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church (United States), Evangelical Lutherans. At its General Assembly in the summer of 2010 the Presbyterian Church, USA, voted (for the fourth time) to ordain homosexual deacons, elders and clergy. The Episcopal Church has elevated two homosexual ministers (one gay, one lesbian) to the office of Archbishop. At least 11 denominations have organizations working within them that support gays and lesbians.
Again, I am 96 years old and shall not see the time when Christian GLBTs are welcomed and affirmed by all of our churches, especially in the Southern Baptist Convention, but I do believe many of you reading this will. Lord, open the eyes of your people, and hasten the day.
_____________
1“Dancing in the Spirit” in Timothy Bradshaw, Ed., The Way Forward? 81
2 “Homosexuality and the Bible” in Wink, Ed., Homosexuality and Christian Faith, 36
3In a pamphlet by Karl-Maria Kentbeny expressing opposition to German sodomy laws. He believed some people were naturally attracted erotically to members of the same sex, and that all sodomy or same gender sex was not “mere wickedness”, the common belief at the time.
4 We do not know when true homosexuals first came into civilization.
5 We see this degradation of women in Lot’s offering his two virgin daughters to the mob of Sodom for the mob to do with them whatever it wanted to do. We see it in the daily prayer of Every pious male Jew in Bible times: “Blessed be God, for he did not make me a woman.”
6 Could the very wording in Leviticus, “do not lie with a male as with a woman,” refer to this practice of making a man to be a woman?
7 Martti Nissnen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World, p. 48
8 Ibid. p.64
9 From Ellen Herman, Psychiatry, Psychology, and Homosexuality, 33
10 Helmut Thielicke, The Ethics of Sex, 283-4
11 APA News Release No. 98-56, December 14, 1998
12 Reported in New York Times, October 18, 2000
13 Quoted in David L. Balch, Ed., Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture, 140
14 Psychology Today, Vol. 8, No. 10 (March 1973), 27-33
15 Thielicke, 227f
16 C.G. Jung, The Collected Works, vol. 9, pt. 1, 58-59
1 David Myers “Sexual Orientation and Science” in LeDayne McLeese Polanski and Millard
Eiland, Eds, Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth, 172
18 Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book, 147
19 Ibid., 146
20 John Cobb, Jr., “Being Christian about Homosexuality” in Walter Wink, Ed., Homosexuality and the Christian Faith, 90
