LGBT rights vs. religious freedom: no middle ground?

Christian ethicist David Gushee, claiming to be evangelical, yet LGBT promoter fired a warning shot across the bow of conservative evangelicals and religious traditionalists. He writes, “[y]ou are either for full and unequivocal social and legal equality for LGBT people, or you are against it. . . neutrality is not an option. Neither is polite half-acceptance . . . Hide as you might, the issue will come and find you.”

Christian ethicist David Gushee of Mercer University writes: 

For Christians, the LGBT debate has always been framed as a question of sexual ethics. Our argument has centered on six or seven biblical passages that appear to mention homosexuality negatively or appear to establish a heterosexual norm: the sin of Sodom, the laws of Leviticus and the list of “the unrighteous” in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. For most of my career, these ideas formed the foundation of my views and teachings as an evangelical minister and professor of Christian ethics. I co-authored a popular textbook that stated this position flatly: “Homosexual conduct is one form of sexual expression that falls outside the will of God.” I wasn’t mean about it. But I said it.
In recent years, my moral position has shifted. It has dawned on me with shocking force that homosexuality is not primarily an issue of Christian sexual ethics. It’s primarily an issue of human suffering. With that realization, I have now made the radical decision to stand in solidarity with the LGBT community.

Unfortunately, Gushee fails to adhere to scripture by excluding Romans 1 and even genesis 1. But putting that aside, if human suffering is a particular homosexual issue then biblically through repentance of that sin, suffering is forgiven, lifted, removed and the person is made new. Gushee confuses race issues with sexual lust issues. But most of all and sadly, he sees the plight of his gay sister and instead of administering Christ's love and calling for repentance, he reinterprets Christ's love and embrace but no mention of repenting of sin. So eseentially he has ripped out of scripture the concept of - sin no more. 

Now, there have been honest attempts by people on both sides of these issues to offer third-way sensible solutions, even compromises, that accommodate religious freedom and LGBT rights. Still, I think Gushee is right when he said these solutions will largely be rejected, shouted down by demands of a full embrace of the LGBT agenda.

What bothered me, however, deeply about Gushee’s piece, was how he framed the struggle of those who hold strongly to the historic Christian vision of sex and marriage. Conservative religious holdouts, Gushee writes, “are organizing legal defense efforts under the guise of religious liberty, and interpreting their plight as religious persecution.”

Jake Meador, writing at Mere Orthodoxy, was bothered too, using much stronger words than I am today. We’ve seen time and again, and Jake lists them, how federal, state, and local governments are forcing people to choose between their livelihoods and their faith. Meador goes on to point out what is really going on here—a clash of worldviews. And one side, at least, sees it as a total war.

And that side, as I tweeted, sees biological physical reality as fully optional and malleable to our surgical and chemical demands, while at the same time seeing emotional inclinations and sexual attraction as fixed and permanent. This is nothing but pagan Gnosticism on steroids. Gnosticism, over which Christianity triumphed 17 or 18 hundred years ago, held that the body was at best inconsequential, at worst, outright evil. Physical, biological reality is no reality at all.

And that’s where we are today. When the Supreme Court ruled on so called same-sex “marriage,” as my friend Jeffrey Ventrella pointed out to me recently, it wasn’t just legislating morality. It was legislating metaphysics. It placed itself and our nation on the side of those who believe that, as Meador wrote, we “are completely autonomous, self-defining human individuals and [that] the government has an obligation to protect our right to self-definition.”

And all who question that definition, for example Christians—who believe that what God created was good and quite real—well, we’ll just simply have to go along. Or else.

So middle-ground solutions, though possible, are becoming increasingly implausible in today’s divided community in which a Christian ethicist like Gushee sees no reason to accommodate Christians in a pluralist society.

So, where does that leave us? God willing, it leaves us right where we are, at our posts, obeying Christ, loving God and our neighbors. We continue to educate the young, heal the sick, feed the hungry, preach the Gospel. We continue, as Rod Dreher wrote about last week, mucking through the flood waters of Louisiana like Istrouma Baptist Church, bringing relief to the suffering—and I guarantee there you’re not tripping over volunteers from the LGBT Human Rights Campaign.

No matter how difficult Christian faithfulness might become—middle ground or no—we must continue to be the Church, Christ’s body on earth.

Reprinted with permission from Break Point.