{"id":1713,"date":"2016-03-06T19:10:14","date_gmt":"2016-03-06T23:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1713"},"modified":"2016-03-06T19:12:24","modified_gmt":"2016-03-06T23:12:24","slug":"why-i-am-christian-and-pro-gay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1713","title":{"rendered":"Why I Am Christian and Pro-Gay"},"content":{"rendered":"

This op-ed originally appeared in the March 6, 2016 edition of the Durham Herald-Sun.<\/em><\/p>\n

A North Carolina middle-school has started a support group for gay students and friends. \u00a0I celebrate this. \u00a0Adolescence is a fine time to receive attentive friendship and mentoring about sexuality. \u00a0My mother was a middle-school teacher. \u00a0She says it\u2019s a time when kids begin to get their \u201cstuff\u201d together. \u00a0(She uses saltier wording around adults.) \u00a0We begin to sort out how to define our own style of fashion, practice our signature, and discover our gifts for arts or sports at the very time we are trying to accommodate to bodies that shift weekly. \u00a0It is tricky, finding your own \u201cvoice\u201d when your voice cracks while trying to impress a peer. \u00a0Add to this what can be an isolating realization that your lack of conformity to the predictable Adam and Eve pairing was not just a periodic quirk of elementary school, but a solidifying desire to kiss someone of the same sex. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A friend recently sat through a preschool evaluation of her child that included the question \u201cAre you a boy or a girl?\u201d \u00a0Her toddler \u201cfailed\u201d the test. \u00a0She wondered how other parents might react to such \u201cfailure.\u201d \u00a0Would some children be corrected or scolded for their reply? \u00a0Adolescence is similar to toddlerhood in that parenting involves a combination of encouragement and caution. \u00a0You cannot parent a toddler well while constantly shouting \u201cbe careful!\u201d \u201cdo not run!\u201d and \u201cslow down!\u201d \u00a0Of course you must teach a child not to run in an unsafe place, but cheering the transition from crawling to walking to running, skipping, and jumping is part of what makes a good parent good. \u00a0Teaching a toddler they must identify clearly by gender is also a good way to be a bad parent. \u00a0Similarly, adolescence is a time when adults need to encourage as often as warn. \u00a0If most of your messages to your middle-school child are about the perils of their gender and sexuality, they will learn that their bodies are dangerous. \u00a0That might or might not keep them chaste. \u00a0It could leave them unable even to name their own desire.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are two popular arguments against my case. \u00a0One is that sexuality is inherently anarchic unless formed with a procreative purpose. \u00a0There are Christians who believe a fundamental building block of all that makes human society workable is that sex leads to babies. \u00a0If sexuality is unhooked from making babies, then society itself becomes unhinged from reality. \u00a0Think of the words to the song \u201cAnything Goes!\u201d and turn it into a sermon. \u00a0By this reasoning, sexuality needs to be disciplined from early in life, so that each individual understands they are part of a future dyad called Man\/Woman. \u00a0By this reasoning, if a middle-school boy is able without shame to name that he is beautifully and wonderfully made gay by God, then the firmament may fall down on our heads. \u00a0I affirm that God alone holds up the sky. \u00a0I also lament the harm this version of conformity has caused people I love. <\/span><\/p>\n

There are smart people writing critically about a \u201cProsperity Gospel.\u201d \u00a0I am concerned about a growing \u201cAusterity Gospel.\u201d \u00a0By this form of \u201cGood News,\u201d God brings people closer to one another and to God when we are suffering or otherwise helpless. \u00a0I have heard people living through miserable marriages bemoan the growing, cultural acceptance of gay marriages because \u201cmarriage is not about happiness.\u201d \u00a0Read charitably, what they are saying is marriage is more often about forgiveness than pleasure. \u00a0But an \u201cAusterity Gospel\u201d risks privileging the \u201cworse\u201d part of the \u201cbetter or worse\u201d vow, as if God wishes for us primarily obedience, and uses our pain. \u00a0I do not believe suffering leads inexorably or even frequently toward holiness. \u00a0Just as absence can make a heart grow stranger, suffering can make a heart turn mute.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few clever writers have come up with a new form of what is called \u201cconversion therapy.\u201d \u00a0They take new affirmations that gender and sexuality are fluid, and use this fluidity to assert that gay people can be happy in heterosexual marriages. \u00a0If not all people are made to conform to the Man\/Woman binary, this argument goes, then who is to say that a gay or lesbian person cannot be happy in a heterosexual marriage? \u00a0If \u201canything goes,\u201d then gay Christians are called to go with the will of God, and search until you find someone of the opposite sex who is compatibly gender-bending. \u00a0This is Christianity at its most insidious. \u00a0First, raise children not to know themselves and then, if by courage and grace they still identify as gay, use a new form of disorientation toward obedience. \u00a0Given this foolishness, I can only pray more middle-schools will offer support. \u00a0I pray gay children may grow up to be brave, and joyfully defiant. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This op-ed originally appeared in the March 6, 2016 edition of the Durham Herald-Sun. A North Carolina middle-school has started a support group for gay students and friends. \u00a0I celebrate this. \u00a0Adolescence is a fine time to receive attentive friendship and mentoring about sexuality. \u00a0My mother was a middle-school teacher. \u00a0She says it\u2019s a time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,11,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-durham","category-ethics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7EotM-rD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1713"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1716,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713\/revisions\/1716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}