Homosexuality is not a topic I blog on often as (1) I see little value in using my voice to inflame debates which are already overheated and (2) homosexuality is not a topic which I consider myself particularly qualified to comment on in any case.
My friend Nigel Chapman, however, has written an article that I feel makes a worthy contribution to the conversation. As church secretary for Surry Hills Baptist, a suburb where up to 30% of the population is homosexual, he has a wealth of experience in engaging with the gay community and Christians with same-sex orientation. It is with this in mind that I highly recommend you read his article, Gay Sex for Evangelicals.
I’m not going to quote it, I’m not going to comment on it up front, I’m not even saying how much I agree with it or not, I’m just going to encourage you to read it in full, without any short cuts.
Curious Christian 
Gotta say Matt, I’d come to a pretty similar conclusion though wrestling with a different Evangelical starting point. See here: http://nouslife.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/c-of-e-same-sex-marriage-and-ethical.html
Also commend this book for a closer examination of the other exegetical issues: http://nouslife.blogspot.com/2013/04/gods-gay-agenda.html
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Hi Matt. I got your note on Facebook. I’ve skimmed (read about 75%) Chapman’s paper. I’ve decided to share my thoughts on my own blog:
http://musings.northerngrove.com/archives/2013/05/a-heterosexual-evangelical-christian-writes-about-lgbt-matters-and-a-friend-foolishly-asks-for-my-th.html
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There’s a really good book out on this topic: “Sexology”. It’s an intelligent evangelical response to an Australian book advocating pro-homosexuality Bibiblical exegeses. Available from Koorong.
Ian Shanahan.
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Thanks Jarred, I was expecting a little fire from your end, except I was expecting it from a different direction which just goes to show how much I still have to learn in this area. You have both given me much to think about. I am glad I have guys like you to give me your perspective.
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Ian:
I think you mean EA’s Sexegesis, a response to ‘Five Uneasy Pieces’. I agreed with most of its critique of the other work, but disagreed with several of it’s own key points: That the question of interpretation is resolved (p.4 in my paper) and that Paul addressed orientation in Rom 1 (p.18).
Jarred:
I’m hesitant to respond to a review based on a 75% skim-read, as I think you’d probably correct these points yourself on review. (So I’ll post this here rather than on your own blog; happy to repost there if you like.)
No. You’re not the target audience. It’s for Evangelicals, as stated, and addresses a specific impasse in the Evangelical discussion (see p.4).
If anyone has thus far produced a complete and biblically persuasive resolution of these issues, then neither I nor the Evangelicals or LGBT Christians of my own acquaintance have seen it, and those resolutions have certainly not shown up in current Evangelical discussions, or the LGBT Christian works to which they were replying (e.g. see my comment to Ian). There are only five or six innovations in this paper, each resolving key blockages. They appear among a large number of other points that I take to be common knowledge but which need to be stated for completeness, which is probably what you are noticing. It would surprise me greatly if I were the first to have hit upon the points that I think are new contributions to the Evangelical discussion, but I haven’t seen them previously published, whether individually or in combination.
You can check this for yourself, but the word “unassailable”, twice quote-marked in your response, appears nowhere in my paper.
— Nigel
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Nigel: I feel you have either missed or chosen to completely ignore the greater thrust of my criticisms. So let me blunt:
Heterosexual men (and heterosexual women, though they don’t seem to saturate or dominate the conversation nearly as much as their male counterparts) need to quit taking it upon themselves to lead the way in addressing this issue. By and large, they need to realize they’ve talked enough, shut up and actually start listening to the people this conversation is about. Even when LGBT people aren’t the target audience. When the target audience is other heterosexual people, they need to say, “Hey, shut up and listen to the LGBT people.” Full stop.
Heterosexual men need to quit taking it upon themselves to figure out the big moral questions about LGBT lives and relationships, because those big questions don’t affect them like they do actual LGBT people. When it comes to the question of LGBT people and their relationships, the real questions heterosexual men should be asking is “What can we do to do to love and support LGBT people, both individually and collectively? What can we do to rectify the large and small injustices that we and others like us have caused LGBT people to suffer, either directly or as a result of the societal systems we have built and reinforced?”
My commentary is not just about your paper, but about a system of privilege — which your paper both benefits from and helps to reinforce — that says that heterosexual people — especially heterosexual men — are the important voices in determining how LGBT people should live their lives. I find it all highly paternalistic and it tends to bring the phrase “straight man’s burden” to mind.
In fact, I’d argue that your response to me pretty much demonstrates my point: To you, this isn’t so much about LGBT people but your thoughts on LGBT people. I find it highly questionable that you’d choose to center yourself like that in a conversation about others.
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“You’re not the target audience.”
Let’s take a closer look at that one statement. So, Nigel is admitting that he’s engaging in a conversation about LGBT people, LGBT lives, and LGBT relationships, and expects that conversation to take place “away from” LGBT people — or at least some LGBT people. He apparently thinks that this is not only something he can do, but should do.
So yet, let the heterosexual people return to their conclaves and have Very Important Discussions About Other People And Their Lives while excluding those very Other people from the conversation. Does anyone other than me see just how condescending, paternalistic, and othering it is to be told that while a conversation was about me, it’s not for me?
Things like this are exactly why I think heterosexuals — and especially heterosexual evangelical Christians — need to quit distracting themselves with questions about the morality of same-sex sexual activity and refocus on their problematic — and often subtle — attitudes toward and treatment of LGBT people. Their questions about the morality of my sexual choices is distracting them from doing the hard work of self-examination and change they need to take on themselves.
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Hi Jarred,
For several years I have helped to run a Pastoral Ministry conference in Sydney at Mardi Gras[1] that has said precisely “Hey, shut up and listen to the LGBT people.” It’s partly due to this experience that I’m persuaded that, for most Evangelicals, this won’t occur until the specifically Evangelical issues which prevent it are resolved.
So my paper isn’t advocacy, and is only indirectly concerned with listening, rather, it’s theological problem-solving: Is there a genuinely Evangelical solution to a present deadlock? Telling people to just “shut up and listen,” won’t have ant effect. Rather, I start with the moral contradictions of which Evangelicals are already conscious, between God’s universal love, observed orientation, and the biblical condemnations. Resolve this, and it doesn’t just fix the barrier to listening, it resolves every other concern as well (pp.7, 29-30).
In a context in which LGBT Christians, especially, lack even a voice, those of us who have a voice have an obligation to speak and to change that. In this situation, I simply don’t accept being silenced by representatives of Evangelicalism or, in this case, a representative of the LGBT community.
I would say that *this*, assuming “this” to mean my paper, is about a damaging inconsistency in Evangelical thought about LGBT people, which prevents LGBT people being seriously heard and known by Evangelicals (and vice versa), and that I address this inconsistency in the hope of resolving it.
Does that clarify in any helpful manner?
Nigel.
[1] In fact, we interacted briefly in 2010 on that subject: http://mattstone.blogs.com/christian/2010/01/glbt-conversations-in-christian-ministry.html
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It’s partly due to this experience that I’m persuaded that, for most Evangelicals, this won’t occur until the specifically Evangelical issues which prevent it are resolved.
Of course it won’t. Because most evangelicals don’t want to give up the power involved in being the moral authority in my life. However, I’d like to call the desire to keep that moral power over my life sin. I’d also like to point out that by agreeing to help them answer those questions, you are enabling them to remain in that sin rather than calling it out and challenging them for it.
The Bible says to love your neighbor. It doesn’t say anything about getting around to loving your neighbor after you figure out if their life choices are okay. The latter is exactly what evangelical Christians are doing to their LGBT neighbors. I would ask again that you quit enabling that behavior by playing their game and instead remind them of what their Christian duty actually involves regarding LGBT people.
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I cannot stress this enough, but I don’t think it’s being heard, so I’m going to say it one last time and then bow out of this thread:
The insistence by heterosexual Christians that they must first answer whether LGBT lives and relationships are moral before they engage in acts of love toward and relationship with LGBT people is an aggressive act of power against and privileging heterosexual Christians over LGBT Christians. As long as heterosexual Christians insist on reserving that power and privilege for themselves, they are actively causing harm toward LGBT people. I call this sin and would ask that all evangelical Christians who believe that harming LGBT people and exercising power over them to be sinful to call all who engage in this particular act of aggression and pride to repentance.
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Hi Jarred,
You may have bowed out and thus miss this reply (and please feel no obligation to re-engage), but let me respond anyway to a couple of the points you made on the way out. This will take a little while. (1300w~10m)
First up, a rhetorical question. I wouldn’t ask it, but imagine if I did:
Q. How about you just ignore your moral convictions?
When you express the view that certain people’s conduct is morally wrong and actually harmful (say mine, or that of Evangelicals in general), you believe it follows that those people ought to change their behavior (repent). This is true: morals that aren’t imperatives are really no morals at all. Now if I said to you “how about you just ignore those moral convictions”? If you were moved at all by this suggestion it would be by the trivialization of your integrity which it presented. At very least, you would want to be persuaded that your convictions were wrong rather than simply told to give them up, and you would reserve the right to make up your own mind on any matter, though whatever process you considered appropriate.
However you are saying that 1) when heterosexual Evangelicals think gay sex is morally wrong, or harmful, they should just ignore their moral convictions, and, 2) whether they think it right or wrong, or whatever opinion they hold, they are not morally free to collectively discuss and reexamine that at the present time; only to ignore it while they listen to the experience of LGBT people.
Let me check that this is what you really meant to say. In the first case (1), you said that heterosexual Christians should not insist on resolving the moral question of “LGBT lives and relationships” before they start loving and relating to LGBT people. We acknowledge that obligation. But the “moral question” still has to be addressed. As I said, true morality is an imperative (notice how you use it in your call to repentance), and ignoring a moral imperative simply treats it as if it’s not one. You don’t think gay sex is actually a moral issue any more than hetero sex is. Others, clearly, think it is. Trying to dictate the terms of engagement for those others, and demanding that they ignore or suppress their own moral compass is simply not going to help in any way.
I recognize that, for you and most LGBT people, the position of non-affirming Evangelicals is morally incomprehensible, sub-humane, and something of a retrogression to the stone age, a position that denies part of the core of your humanity, one you’ve had to fight all your life, and one that people have died from fighting.
But as actually held, this view of gay sex is a moral position, and to be resolved, it must be addressed as such. Moral convictions are right or wrong; optional morality is an hypocrisy. No-one for whom there actually is a moral question can avoid addressing it.
That’s why a brief or selective appeal to the Christian love ethic on it’s own is ineffective (as you may have generally observed). The love ethic is the apex of a larger ideal of moral goodness grounded in God’s nature, and most Evangelicals really do think this means that gay sex is morally wrong, so that affirming it can’t in fact be loving, even for someone with a permanent and involuntary same-sex attraction, in a faithful and monogamous relationship. It works to appeal to the love ethic to inspire Christian listening, but not if you simply dismiss their moral questions as verboten.
Virtually all Evangelicals of my acquaintance acknowledge their positive obligation for “acts of love toward and relationship with LGBT people”. They could hardly avoid doing so, when they acknowledge this for all people. There are a few I know that I would describe as consciously prejudiced; some number live in homogeneous hetero communities and think they’ve never met such an rare and exotic creature (!) as an LGBT person; but most have a principled moral concern, don’t know how to comfortably reconcile it with orientation, and do nothing. This is the paralysis or impasse that I discuss. This leaves the talking space to those who don’t experience this dilemma between the love imperatives and the life experience of orientation. Mainly that means political activists, the ignorant or argumentative, and genuine bigots. Without a resolution of the biblical and moral questions, all these people need to be is rude in order to disrupt effective listening and ramp up the alienation and opposition, and they do. I am very reluctant to put almost any Christian LGBT person in the position of speaking in a church situation precisely because of this dynamic (though your blog has suggested to me one promising idea as an alternative). With a rational and compassionate resolution, which can be laid down at the start as a basis for discussion, not only does the listening becomes safe, but it can be heard without reservation.
To LGBT people, for whom orientation is a basic part of their humanity, it will still seem nothing more or less than intolerable that anyone could see an acknowledgement of that humanity as a contingent judgment to be granted or withheld. But that’s exactly the issue. Many Evangelicals don’t actually see orientation as a basic part of your humanity. When listening is forced, as may happen in existing close relationships like families, that acknowledgement can precede a resolution of the moral questions. But listening can’t be forced, and can too easily be undermined by those who won’t respond to anyone’s advice to “shut up and listen.” However, no Evangelical can avoid the moral questions, and addressing them directly and resolving them leaves not just listening, but repentance and conciliation as unavoidable obligations.
Now in the second case, you said (2), that an Evangelical re-examination of Evangelical morals is an entrenchment of privilege that denies LGBT people their own voice. But that system of privilege depends completely and utterly on the perception of moral difference. Dismantling that perception at the roots is hardly reinforcing or enabling the system built upon it. Is there moral difference, especially on Evangelical premises? Answering that question will do more good, and faster, than wrangling with second-order political phenomena like privilege, and it will then resolve those other issues anyway. All inequities ought to be countermanded by the Christian love imperatives, but in this case, there’s a blocker. Evangelicalism itself is able and indeed obligated to resolve the issues presented by its own moral dilemma in this issue.
I will be thinking some more about your characterization of Evangelicals as not wanting “to give up the power of being the moral authority in [your] life.” My initial thought was that this describes no-one that I know, these being all post-Lockean in practice, so that no true faith or morals can be compelled by authority, and who consequently don’t seek to possess it. Not so sure, the more meanings I consider in that phrase, especially collectively. I suspect you are saying that there shouldn’t be Evangelicals, because that entails specific morals that Evangelicals consider authoritative, and that is the entrenchment of privilege to which you really object, but we could discuss that bigger question separately.
I have been appreciating your blogging and your interaction here. I doubt I have to tell you to keep it up, or that my particular encouragement will matter much, but I do say seriously: Keep it up!
Nigel.
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With a rational and compassionate resolution, which can be laid down at the start as a basis for discussion, not only does the listening becomes safe, but it can be heard without reservation.
In Justin Lee’s book he describes an experience he had when he first joined his campus’s Christian organization, only to discover they had invited a speaker from an ex-gay ministry to come and discuss homosexuality at one of their meetings. Justin describes an online conversation with the speaker prior to the event. I’d say the conversation is a trainwreck and would encourage you to read it (and Justin’s whole book) if you have the time to do so and the means to get your hands on the copy of the book. Unsatisfied with the outcome of that conversation, he decides to take his concerns to the leaders of the group:
Justin’s conversation with Mandy wasn’t much (if any) better. I’d post his conversations with both her and Derek, but I really think I already pushed the Fair Use clause far enough when I quoted his conversation with Warren.
Now here’s my thing. This is a story that various heterosexual evangelical Christians feel they need to resolve the moral question before they can listen to it “without reservation”????? I find that…problematic. And that’s an understatement.
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I also hope it’s not lost on anyone that the story I chose to share involved multiple people who were so focused on declaring their “moral position” to Justin that they talked over him, ignored what he actually said, and made all kinds of assumptions about him as a person.
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Hi Jarred,
Re: “Without reservation.” I think you have exactly nailed the issue. When there is a genuine perception of a real “moral question”, there can’t be listening without at least some reservations (even if they are more subtle than Warren’s), and that is still not what you deserve. When I say that I think this should be an in-house Evangelical discussion, one of the major factors in my mind is that my crowd are going to have to talk back and forth about their sincerely held moral views and I honestly believe that LGBTI people, and even LGBTI Evangelicals, should not have to listen to those discussions. You’re not the problem. You don’t have the problem. We have the problem and as far as I can see, we have to fix it.
Re: Justin’s story. Just a comment. 🙂 If you track back through your blog entries and your comments here, you may find you have made a few assumptions about me as a person. It’s not a big issue to me, ’cause I’m like privileged and all, but a fair list could have been be compiled.
Let me wish you all the best, in any case. I’m about to be away for a week or two traveling, but if you reply here I’ll check back in at some stage.
Nigel.
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We have the problem and as far as I can see, we have to fix it.
Agreed. I merely take exception to your apparent belief that you think the way to fix this is to argue over whether same-sex sexual activity is a sin rather than saying, “Hey, it doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t be dicks to people. Not even people we think might be sinning. And we should certainly be able to listen (not approve, not agree with, just listen) to someone without first deciding whether we agree with them.” Because by insisting on answering the morality question rather than saying, “listen already,” you’re implicitly saying it’s okay to refuse to listen to and continue to mistreat people they think are (or might be) sinning.
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Quite frankly, I’d much rather someone listen to me — even “with reservation” — rather than ignore me or shut me out.
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Let’s try a thought experiment:
Imagine you have several Hindu families in your neighborhood. (From what I gather from Matt — and assuming you live in the same part of Australia as him — this might not require any imagination.) You find your congregation knows absolutely nothing about Hinduism. In fact, you find out they have a lot of misconceptions about Hinduism. It’s affecting how some members of your congregation are treating these Hindu families in the neighborhood, and it’s not pretty. After all, you know you all have to live together. But by and large, your congregation believes that those families are following a false religion, which they have a moral problem with. So they refuse to engage with the Hindu families or even listen to their experiences of living in the community, which on a whole tends treat those families poorly.
If you handled that situation the way you’re handling the situation with LGBT people, you’d have to present religious arguments that Hinduism is a false religion and that those who worship Hindu gods are not immoral. Until you did, they would not be willing to sit down and listen to the Hindu families that they are mistreating.
I’m guessing that you aren’t ready to argue that Hinduism is on part with Christianity or that it’s okay for people to worship Hindu gods. So again, if you limited the way you handled that scenario the same way you’re handling the LGBT issues, I guess the Hindu families would go on being mistreated and your congregation would go on refusing to listen to those families’ grievances.
I’m guessing that’s not the approach you’d take in that situation, however.
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When I say that I think this should be an in-house Evangelical discussion,
The problem with “in-house discussions” about the lives of LGBT people and other marginalized people include:
1. The fact that such “discussion” often turn into little more than a change for the in-crowd to re-affirm their superiority — be it moral or other.
2. Thinking privileged people can — let alone should — try to “solve the problem of marginalization” without the participation of those being marginalized is called “white knighting” and does not work because it continues to feed into the notion that the privileged people are somehow better able to do this because they are somehow better, which is one of the cornerstones of privilege. I suspect you will either not understand this, not see how you are engaging in this, or insist it will work despite mountains of evidence to the contrary provided by just about every effort to redress the problems of just about any marginalized or oppressed group you name. (As an aside, the most effective methods have usually involved privilege people giving up their privilege and following the lead of marginalized people who are already fighting for their own justice.) So I will not try to convince you, but will merely state that fact and let you do with it what you will.
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So let’s look at the consequences of you as a privileged person determining the best way to dismantle privilege/solve the church’s LGBT issues.
1. Because you had to abandon the morality question with Hindu families altogether, you’ve likely pressed your congregation to listen to Hindu families as best as they can, even if it means having some reservations in the listening process. But yet because you’re holding out hope that you can find a way to see same sex sexual activity as moral and convince your congregants the same, you’re engaging in that debate instead of pushing them to listen to LGBT people as best as they can right now. This is called making the perfect an obstacle to the good. Because seriously, your congregation is now showing more respect to a group that even you agree is engaging in something sinful than one you’re hoping may be found to not be engaging in something sinful. That strikes me as pretty messed up.
2. Also, while you and your congregation are busy having this debate that you think is important to have before you push them to get on with the listening, you’ve effectively disappears those LGBT people who have chosen to remain celibate for life. So you’re not even listening to people that your congregation already doesn’t consider sinful. (I’m assuming your congregants believing same sex sexual activity is sinful rather than believing that even being attracted to members of the same sex without actually doing anything about it is also sinful.)
3. You’re also refusing to give me, an actual gay what I’ve asked for all along (for your congregants to listen to me) because you’ve already decided what I deserve (for your congregants to listen to me in the way that you think they should listen to me). I’m not asking for what you think I deserve. I’m perfectly willing to have them listen with reservations, as long as they’re actually listening and not just “listening to find their next argument.” Your insistence on waiting until you can give me what you think I deserve rather than simply giving me what I’ve asked for and said I can live with right now? That’s paternalistic. That’s privilege. That’s a host of other things, all of them problematic.
4. Oh, and the underlying idea that you should be the one determining what I deserve rather than letting me determine that? I find that problematic in its own right.
5. Oh plus there’s the fact — and I admit that this is a new addition on my part to this conversation — that in focusing on the question of whether same-sex sexual activity is sinful, you’ve effectively reduced my entire complex, multi-faceted life and sexuality (because there’s more to sexuality and romantic relationships than having naked fun times, yes?) to sex. I’m always amazed and dismayed by the fact that evangelical Christians often seem to spend more time obsessing over my sex life than I spend even thinking about it myself. And we won’t even go into how much more time they pend obsessing over it than I spend actually having sex! 😉
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Oh, and one last thing, I think referring to Warren’s behavior as mere “reservations” is stretching things. Interrupting someone you’ve asked to talk is just plain rude. Inviting someone on a “get to know you” lunch solely for the purpose of ambushing them with a moral lecture is dishonest. Asking for someone’s opinion solely for the purpose of arguing with that opinion is both dishonest and rude.
And again, I have to wonder at the notion that Christians who believe same-sex sexual activity cannot (or will not) sit and listen openly to a gay man share a story of how a fellow Christian engaged in dishonesty and rudeness toward him. I sincerely have a bigger issue with that than I have with their belief that my sex life is immoral. Infinitely bigger.
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