“So I think a very good case can be made out on the basis of generally accepted moral principles that homosexual behavior is wrong. It is horribly self-destructive and injurious to another person. Thus, wholly apart from the Bible’s prohibition, there are sound, sensible reasons to regard homosexual activity as wrong.” – William Lane Craig
“And while so many of us in the church have been focused on the “threat” to our culture posed by homosexuality, we’ve missed the realization that the church in our culture is under attack—not by gays, but by Christians. We Christians are the sleeper agents. The bomb is in our car. We have become the unwitting assassins of people’s faith. The Christians are killing Christianity.” – Justin Lee
I watched a video recently from a large, Evangelical church from Texas that was part of a video series they publish called “Real Truth, Real Quick” in which they answer tough questions such as “Why Did Jesus Despise Christmas and All That Led To It” and, I cannot stress how seriously this is an actual video, “Is It Okay to Have Breast Augmentation Surgery?” which is over eight minutes long. Obviously among such important questions that all Christians must answer was a video titled “Can you be a Gay Christian”. In it, the pastor and another person who has same sex attractions tackled this issue in less time than it took to answer if it was ok for Christians to get those double D’s. The question was answered in two parts, which basically stated that if you had same sex attractions, well we all are broken sexually so this is no big deal, but if your identity was found in being gay, then you had a problem because our identity should only be found in Christ.
I’m not going to pull apart this specific video, but I bring it up as this church has over 50 thousand followers on Facebook and over 3 thousand people had watched this specific video. Also, “Gay Christian” is probably a term that we came up with. They’d probably just want to be known as, you know, Christian.
So to answer the question quickly, yes, you can be a ‘Gay Christian’. This isn’t because God is gracious to all us sinners, including the gay ones, but rather that being gay (or lesbian or bi or trans) isn’t a sin. It isn’t wrong. Full stop.
I’m not trying to debate anything and this isn’t really to try to convince you if you disagree. There isn’t any real debate any more than there is a debate on whether the Bible affirms slavery or if it says that interracial marriage is wrong. What this is really about is the death of a type of Christianity and (hopefully) the resurrection of something that looks more like eternity. If you feel that God forbids same sex whatever then you’ve already lost. This type of belief, while still harmful to those who are LGBT+, is in its death throes and the last place to look for it is within the Church.
What is left is for those of us who profess to love like Christ is to put to death our fear of ‘other’ and move towards resurrection. Because fear truly is the motivator of all of this. We may pick out some verses in the Bible that forbid homosexuality, but our willingness to disregard parts of the Bible that we disagree with or simply don’t think about reveals our true intent on why we think homosexuality is wrong. It is just fear.
So we can choose to make our videos on if you can be a Gay Christian or not, or we can simply accept the fact that this is a non-issue. At least to us. For those within the church who have same sex attraction, are gender non-conforming or otherwise are included within the LGBT+ community, this is a huge issue. If they only hear that they are broken, need to change, or need to be someone they aren’t then the Church only continues to harm. Let us choose love, or we will assign ourselves to irrelevancy, and worse, we lose out on a chance to show love to those within our walls that need it most.