In Context

Last week, my friend shared a quote from Pete Buttigieg. Loath to take anything I read on social media at face value, I researched the source and found video from a 2020 town hall meeting for presidential candidates.

After I'd learned the quote was legitimate, I commented that I was glad for it, explaining, "Having been part of Evangelical churches where the term 'gay lifestyle' is used unironically, I think it's very important to point out these very clear examples of hypocrisy."

Should you not be familiar with the term, the gay lifestyle is a concept that originated from underground bars and clubs that allowed primarily closeted members of the LGBTQ+ community to be open about their orientations and identities within an accepting space. The term came to be connected with heavy drinking, illicit drug use, and promiscuous sexual encounters. Over the last several decades, as LGBTQ+ people have been encouraged to use terms like lesbian, trans, or queer more openly, it became clear that there is no more a single homogeneous gay lifestyle  than there is a single homogeneous straight lifestyle. There are still some people, however, who continue to believe someone's coming out as gay (or bi or trans, etc.) means they conduct their lives in this stereotypical manner.

The churches I mentioned continue to teach that any sexual orientation or gender identity other than cisgender/heterosexual is "broken" and in need of healing. In this view, God created people in a strict gender binary (Adam as male, Eve as female, Adam and Eve as complementary to one another), and anything else must therefore be evidence of sin, if not sinful in and of itself. To be, for instance, openly gay and enter a same-sex marriage, is seen as active rebellion against God, because one is not just sinning personally, but encouraging others to sin as well, by any way they legitimize this sinful relationship. Most people I have known who hold this view would argue they are showing love by refusing to affirm sinful behaviors—that sentiment being summed up by a phrase I heard often growing up, "God loves you just as you are, but loves you too much to leave you that way."

Another commenter asked me why anyone would follow leaders who teach such things when evidence shows, for instance, that same-sex partners can have fruitful and God-honoring relationships. 

In my experience, this view of gender and orientation is one smaller piece within a larger set of beliefs about biblical authority. The specific churches I was raised in, for instance, lauded higher education, but at the same time regarded it with some suspicion. Scripture is considered the ultimate authority, the very words of God. Because God loves everyone, the Bible must, therefore, be something accessible to all. I was taught a "plain reading" would provide me everything I would need to know in order to live an abundant Christian life here on earth and spend eternity with God after death. Under this authority model, every part of the Bible affirms every other part. Any inconsistencies are explained away by the idea that it is human understanding—including perhaps the translation or copywork of the text—that is faulty, rather than anything in the biblical record actually contradicting anything else. 

Within that context, a happy, healthy, loving same-sex marriage is an oxymoron. Pete and Chasten Buttigieg having true family values would be an impossibility because their whole relationship is viewed as a rejection of God's instructions provided in the Bible. Scripture itself can't be wrong, because it is the whole basis of faith. Interpretation may be wrong, but for Christians who argue biblical interpretation is a minimal piece of understanding the Bible, if something seems clearly stated, they don't believe there is anything further to interpret. Any contradictory evidence we see must not actually show what it appears to, since it doesn't agree with what God already stated millennia ago.

Worth pointing out is the difficulty in translating any text from one language to another, even among modern speakers of both languages. Some phrases simply don’t translate in a word-for-word fashion, and require detailed explanations to fully express the nuances of meaning implicit in one language, but not another. In ancient texts, from cultures that no longer exist as they once did, this challenge is magnified exponentially. Take for instance, Leviticus 18:22. In 1995, the New American Standard Bible (NASB) rendered the opening of this verse “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female,” with a note indicating the literal translation of  “one lies” would be “those who lie.” Just two-and-a-half decades later, the 2020 edition of the NASB rewrites the same section as “You shall not sleep with a male as one sleeps with a female” with an updated note that the literal translation would be “a woman’s bed.” Again, this is merely 25 years' worth of changes in a single version of a text that was likely completed some 2,500 years ago. Still, for those who advocate a simple reading of the Bible, these verses clearly say men shouldn’t have sex with other men, and there is nothing further to discuss. The fact that sexual mores in the ancient near east were significantly different than they are today in my neighborhood means there is a lot more context involved in what exactly these passages mean for us, here, now.

This same argument—evidence in contrast to biblical views must simply be wrong—has been used against many other advancements in scientific understanding, from heliocentrism to evolution to gender identity. In my experience, most people who adhere to this sort of biblical authority aren't actually very familiar with the processes of scientific discovery and their understanding of “what the science says” is generally decades behind the general consensus among those who actually research these things. For example, the churches I mentioned above (where they talk unironically about a “gay lifestyle”) continue to disseminate a thoroughly debunked origin story in which a gay man, for instance, grew up with a distant or abusive father. Missing this natural bond, the son somehow began to see other men with a sexual desire in order to make up for the relationship he lacked with his father. This reparative-drive model of homosexuality has not been considered good science since the 1980s, yet it fits what they believe the Bible teaches, so they continue to speak it as truth.

Conversation for this post hosted at facebook.com/ShamelessHonesty