GAY TRUTH

In a move various media outlets are hailing as “historic,” the New York legislature passed two bills this week that add “gender identity” to the state’s wide-ranging non-discrimination rules and banning medical professionals from treating minors for unwanted homosexual attraction. The so-called Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) bans “discrimination based on gender identity or expression,” making gender-confused individuals a protected class for the purposes of housing, employment, and public accommodation regulations, and adds “gender identity or expression” to the list of factors that can elevate crimes to the status of “hate crimes.” GENDA passed the State Assembly 100-40 and the State Senate 42-19 on Tuesday morning, the Daily Beast reported , after eight years of the bill passing the Assembly but dying in the Republican-controlled Senate. Last fall’s midterm elections delivered the Senate to Democrats, all 39 of whom co-sponsored the legislation. “We are finally...

The daughter of famed science fiction novelist Marion Zimmer Bradley was suspended from posting rights on Facebook last week when she linked to an article on an LGBT website about a man who ceased to have homosexual attractions after living in celibacy for a year. Moira Greyland, who is herself the author of an Amazon  best-selling account  of the sexual abuse inflicted on her by her homosexual parents, linked to an article in Gay Star News, a well-established gay news website in Britain that reported the conversion of a homosexual man and former gay escort to heterosexuality after a year of abstinence from sexual activity.  The story about the young man “going straight” was not only published in Gay Star News but also in the Mirror and the Daily Mail as well. Greyland posted a link to the article on January 8 with the comment, “Gay escort gives up sex for a year, and is now straight. Good job!” On the morning of January 10, Greyland received a message from F...

Earlier this week, I posted “ Four stages of ‘evangelical’ affirmation of gay marriage ,” which traces out a basic trajectory I have observed among those who jettison their biblical beliefs about marriage. Almost immediately, readers pointed out stages that I missed, and I thought of at least one on my own. Rosaria Butterfield wrote to me with an additional stage that I thought worth sharing with you. She writes, I also appreciated your blog post on the 4 stages. I wonder, though, if you missed a stage–somewhere between point 1 and point 2. I believe that the refusal to take a stand happens when someone buys into the sexual orientation identity system that says gay is not how you are through the imprint of original sin, but rather is who you are, through your supposedly morally neutral sexual orientation. I think it will become more and more important to foreground this step, as the next attack on orthodoxy will be (and already is) a resurgence of pelagianism in its denial of the b...

I just finished reading Gregory Coles’ moving memoir Single Gay Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity (IVP, 2017). In many ways, there is much to admire about this book. Coles is a great writer and has put together a real page-turner. This is not a boring book. Coles’ honesty and vulnerability come through in just about every page. Coles is telling his own story—warts and all—and he’s gut-wrenchingly honest about his emerging awareness of himself as a same-sex attracted man. Coles’s story is a very human story, and just about anyone (same-sex attracted or not) can resonate with the humor and the pathos that he narrates. By the end of it, you feel like you know the man. And this is a man who embraces the Bible’s prohibitions on same-sex immorality. Because of that, he has dedicated himself to a life of celibacy out of faithfulness to Christ. As hard as it is, Coles has concluded that faithfulness to Jesus on this point is more important than pursuing a gay relatio...

Two years ago TIME magazine highlighted an evangelical “megachurch” whose pastor had led the congregation to affirm gay marriage and to welcome LGBT persons as full members of the church (see the sermon announcement above from two years ago). The story made quite a splash at the time, even though many pointed out that the church wasn’t really a megachurch and could hardly be seen as a bellwether of things to come. Yesterday, the website “Juicy Ecumenism” reported that the church has cratered over the last two years. From the report : A once-large Nashville-area Evangelical congregation that made headlines after its pastor announced that the church would conduct same-sex marriages is selling its campus and relocating to rented space. After his announcement of LGBT support in 2015, Pastor Stan Mitchell of GracePointe Church in Franklin, Tennessee was profiled in Time magazine. But what was a much sought-after sign of Evangelical movement towards LGBT affirmation may have been wishfu...

Last week,  Pete Enns interviewed Jen Hatmaker  about her recent exit from evangelical Christianity. You can download the interview  here  or listen below: 00:00 00:00 Audio Player Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. – The interview focuses on Hatmaker’s decision to embrace homosexual immorality as consistent with following Jesus. Among other things, Hatmaker describes all the consequences that have resulted from that decision—lost book contracts, cancelled speaking engagements, estranged friends and church members. She describes a harrowing emotional cost for her decision to walk away from the 2,000-year old teaching of the Christian church. I have previously heard her talk about a lot of this, but one item in particular stuck out to me this time. One of the interviewers asked her if she had an “Aha!” moment in her reading of scripture that led her to her new views. Hatmaker explains that since key biblical ...

Recently, there has been much debate about sexuality and human identity. A great deal of it has been related to the upcoming “Revoice” conference in St. Louis. That controversy is ongoing. As I have mentioned previously, evangelicals have not come to a consensus whether same-sex attraction is sinful and whether it is the proper basis for constructing an “identity.” Heath Lambert and I wrote a book back in 2015 arguing that SSA is sinful as it is a part of our fallen Adamic nature (see Transforming Homosexuality, P&R 2015). Our argument goes against some celibate gay identity proponents who argue that SSA may be a part of the brokenness of creation but is not itself sinful. They would say that SSA is fallen, but it’s fallen like cancer not like pride. Our argument also goes against those like Gregory Coles who suggest that SSA may have roots in God’s good creation design. In the book, we identify three components of sexual orientation—sexual attraction, emotional attraction, and ...