The Other LGBT Community

This will be a brief post about something that has been on my mind for a bit.

First, let us define our terms.  I am referring to LGBT, gay, or lesbian as anyone who has same sex attraction as a prominent feature of their daily life.

There is a march that has long since been underway in our world and especially within our country to not only guard against mistreatment of gay and lesbian folk, but quite honestly, to shame any who would not whole heartedly embrace homosexual sex as being seen as simply an alternative to heterosexual sex.  This movement largely has taken place in secular environments of pop culture, legal settings, and studies within various scientific disciplines(genetics, brain function, etc.).

 However, it has also been and is being fought within the church.  It is not as though I argue for a strict separation between these two worlds.  They obviously overlap in all sorts of ways within our daily lives, but there are some extremely important distinctions that need to be made.

We, in the church, as I understand,are charged with, among other things, faithfully communicating to our generation the gospel and all that it entails.  The scriptures are generally viewed as being a primary,and for Protestants, THE primary source of authoritative information for us to acquire and faithfully communicate in regards to the gospel.  My "thing" that has been nagging at me is simply this.  Many within the church have taken it upon themselves to decide that homosexuality is not inherently sinful before God.  It is my belief that the vast majority do so in an effort to show that God is loving and is not seeking to condemn people who are struggling so intensely with deeply real and personal feelings and attractions that are many times unrelenting.  Let me quote Rosaria Butterfield Champagne here who says, "People of God, please know that you are not more merciful than God."
Who is she, and why should you care what she says about this?  She is currently a believer who is married to a Presbyterian minister.  She is also an author who has written among other things, Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert.  She WAS an English professor at Syracuse who was a radical feminist who had lived in committed lesbian relationships for many years prior to her rather unorthodox conversion story(shared in the book above).  I invoke her story not because she is the ONLY person allowed to speak about this issue.  I know that she is not.  However, her voice and those like hers are, I would argue, the MOST under represented voices within the current discussion about LGBT issues.  In other words, have you, Christian, ever considered that there are people within your own church or social group who are currently living with same sex attraction but have chosen not to make that known?  Have you considered that the reason they have not made it known is not because they are secretly engaging in homosexual sex and in homosexual relationships but BECAUSE they have those attractions and have determined that to remain faithful means to deny the fulfillment of these desires??  Have you considered that when you choose, in your mercy, to seek to affirm homosexuality as mentioned above, you are also impacting these fellow believers who have chosen to live their life based on their genuinely held convictions about truth rather than allowing their desires to be the ultimate deciding factor?  God is the most merciful being in the universe.  Perhaps we should spend more time squaring our understanding of that with his prohibition regarding homosexual sex.   Or perhaps you don't really believe that.  Perhaps you believe you are more merciful than God.  This is directed to those WITHIN the community professing belief in Christ.  I am also posting a link a video below that will make this point far better than  I am able to make it.   Thank you.



Please watch