But when conservative Christians say “homosexuality,” they usually think of gay sex, rather than sexual orientation. And that creates a lot of misunderstanding.

So back to the question, Is homosexuality a sin? And the straightforward answer is No.

Homosexuality (i.e. a homosexual orientation) is no more a sin than a heterosexual orientation. Both gay and straight person may sin sexually by engaging in sex outside of marriage, since God designed sex exclusively for life-long marriage between a man and a woman, as the Bible makes clear.

The Bible defines sin in terms of what we do or think, not in terms of who we are or how we are tempted to sin:

1 John 3:4 “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.”James 4:17 The JKV says that is is the “transgression of the law.” That has the sense of stepping across a line that is drawn, or breaking the law, as in breaking a speed limit.

Romans 14:23 “.. everything that does not come from faith is sin.” (NIV)

James 4:17 “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”(NIV)

So don’t let anyone tell you that is is a sin to be gay/homosexually oriented. Sin is something you do or think, not something you are.

That said, we are all sinners in need of saving – both gay and straight people. And that’s why Jesus came to this earth to walk among us and die for us – that all who choose to accept His saving grace and power will be saved to be eternally with Him.

I asked her, “Do you feel that you have financial problems because you were abused?  Do you think that your child is crying because you were abused?”

I explained that what she was experiencing emotionally was like putting a great big spike in the wall and hanging all the black pictures on it.  I suggested that she consider putting the different problems on different hooks on her emotional wall, and then we could deal with them one at a time.

I wonder if some people use homosexuality as the spike in the wall? Is sexual orientation being blamed for anything and everything that goes wrong?

What if they knew? Would they accept me? Would I still have friends? I’m tired of hiding this part of who I really am.  Wearing this mask is driving me crazy.

Almost everyone wears a mask of some kind; those that don’t can be a real pain.

A few months ago another two couples joined us for dinner. The older couple were definitely old school. They appeared stern and unbending. The younger couple seemed to accept both the good and the bad that life had offered them over the years.

Since gay marriages was such a hotly debated topic at the time it was no surprise that it entered the dinner conversation. I asked the guests, “If someone from the church told you that they were gay, would it make any difference to your feelings about them?”

The replies surprised me. The older dyed-in-the wool guy spoke first. No, it wouldn’t make any difference to him. His wife agreed. The younger lady and her husband both said that it would make a difference in their relationship and they would not want to be told.

Would it be fair to this couple for a person to out himself?  I think not.  There are things that even the best of friends don’t discuss.  And you can’t unring a bell.

The late Pierre Trudeau, when Prime Minister of Canada, commented to reporters, “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”

When we close the bathroom door, or bedroom door, or our lips, we are not hiding behind a mask; we are just being sensitive to the feelings of others.

Some things are personal, and are no one’s business, so we can put the “What if they knew?” speculations to rest. Most people are far more concerned about their ingrown toe nail than about your aching  back—or your sexual orientation.

Ralph

Does the Bible really justify this conclusion? Do we know what abomination really means? Let’s see if the rest of the Bible sheds light on the matter by checking out a few other “abomination” texts. I have used the King James Version of the Bible for this purpose .  (Other versions do not use the word abomination as much. For instance, the NIV does not use the word abomination for sexual sins.)

Sexual sins of any kind are considered “abominations” to the Lord in the King James Version. (See Leviticus 18: 18 – 30, paying particular attention to verses 27 – 30, which refer to “all these abominations” after various kinds of sexual activities apart from marriage have been mentioned.) A similar list is repeated in Leviticus 20, concluding that God’s people ought not to do these things “after the manner of the nations which I cast out before you.” We find that the levitical laws also forbade remarriages of divorced couples, after the wife had been married to another man,  even if the second husband died, calling such an act an “abomination.” (Deuteronomy 24: 1 – 4)

When we consider that Christ amplified these laws to include the lustful thought, who is without sin to cast the first stone?

Dishonest business practices are named as an “abomination” in Deuteronomy 25: 13 – 16, Proverbs 11: 1 and  Proverbs 20: 10. It seems that scrupulously honest business practices are required of any professing to be the Lord’s people.

Do our practices pass the careful scrutiny of the Omniscient One?

Oppressive treatment of others and a  haughty attitude are considered as “abomination” in Proverbs 3: 31 – 32, and a “froward heart” (KJV, the Amplified Bible translates this as “willfully contrary in heart”) is again mentioned in Proverbs 11:20. I wonder if some of the attitudes of conservative Christians towards gay people might not fall into these categories of “abominations.”

I have trouble with these labels, for I am not sure whether a person is talking about orientation or actions. Instead of representing human sexuality as three separate boxes, I believe that sexual orientation can be represented best as a color bar which gradates from yellow (heterosexuality) on one end to red (homosexuality) at the other.

Some men who say that they are straight probably could have a little erotic attraction for men under the right conditions. With the exception of people who are at the gay end of the spectrum, most have had varying degrees of attraction towards the opposite gender some time in their lives.

Just as surely as the color bar has two ends, it also has a middle. I believe that a high percentage of people occupy this middle ground. And most of them don’t even give it a second thought. A few years ago, even men who were quite gay-oriented would marry because that was what a man was expected to do. Orientation wasn’t even discussed.

But with the present awareness of the gay population, these same men will at least experiment with gay sex. And gay sex is addictive. That swells the number of people that are counted in any gay census.

Ministries under the umbrella of Exodus International probably have their best success with people whose orientation is toward the yellow end of the spectrum. There are some people who feel so poorly about themselves that they will go into an unhealthy relationship because they need a friend who will meet their emotional needs. Unfortunately predators, gay or straight, take advantage of such people and lure them into relationships which are more than emotional. This adds guilt and lowers a man’s self-esteem still further.

Bi-straight Marriage

Can a marriage between a bi and a straight work?

Most certainly!

True, some men who are gay have married to prove that they were straight. This is not a valid reason to marry. Such a marriage starts out on the wrong foot and has a high risk of failure.

Of the straight population, over half of the marriages end in divorce. (What excuse do they use for the breakup?) And of the other half, only a few are truly happy. I know of no evidence that gay-straight marriages cannot have at least as high a success rate as straight-straight marriages.

The person who finds himself on the middle ground has to make an intellectual decision to make the marriage work. Without his veins throbbing with hormones, he has a better chance of building the relationship on a more solid footing than the shifting sand of sexual desire. And building on a foundation of unselfish Christian love and mutual commitment will result in a better marriage than the average.

A woman who marries such a man will not have to concern herself about her husband chasing skirts. He just isn’t interested.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First published on the GLOW site by Ralph Seland in 1999. Permission to copy, provided credit is given to author, with a link to this blog entry.

Let’s take this argument apart just a little and examine the first premise — “God made me gay.” ¹

Causes of Homosexuality

As a matter of fact, we still don’t know all the contributing factors to a homosexual orientation. We do know that most gay people didn’t choose to be homosexually oriented, contrary to what many conservative Christians seem to think. There also seems to be significant evidence for a biological link to homosexuality, even though it’s almost sure that a “gay gene” will never be found. (Sexuality is a far too complex human behavior cluster to be determined by one gene. It is likely that when all the results are in, it will be found that, as in all other behaviors and habits, biology accounts for roughly 50% and environmental factors for roughly another 50% of sexual orientation.) The very studies that are cited in favor of the gay gene theory actually disprove the theory, because only 52% of identical twins of gay men also had a homosexual orientation. (Since identical twins have the same chromosomes and genes, a genetically determined trait should show 100% concordance.) However, the studies do indicate some kind of biological link.

Evidently factors in the womb also affect the developing fetus. One of these is a hormonal wash that masculinizes the male brain and occurs between the 16th and 24th weeks of pregnancy. When, because of trauma in the mother’s life, this hormonal wash does not occur or is of insufficient quantity to fully masculinize the brain of the developing fetus, the male baby is born with a brain that essentially functions like a female brain. (That’s probably why women find gay men so understanding and attractive.) While this will not make a person gay, it can be a contributing factor for a child who does not emotionally bond with his father but does bond closely with his mother. And that is probably why orientation change ministries under the Exodus umbrella often teach that homosexuality is caused by a poor father bond and over-mothering. (There is some truth to every fallacy.) Perhaps, for some, these two factors are all that’s needed to develop a homosexual orientation. I know of enough gay people with stories of both sexual and other abuse in their backgrounds to surmise that that is probably another contributing factor for some, and if it comes on top of a couple of other factors, a homosexual orientation is almost a given.

So did God ordain that mothers be traumatized so that their male children would not have a fully masculinized brain? Did God ordain conditions that would prevent emotional bonding with fathers? Did God ordain sexual and other abuse?

I think not!

If Jesus were here today

While God walked this earth in human flesh as Jesus Christ, He made clear that He identifies with those who suffer because of the ravages of sin in this world. He healed the sick, the lame, the blind, the lepers. He taught that their conditions were not necessarily the result of their personal choices. And if Jesus walked this earth today, He would identify with the gay people of the world, not condemning them, but drawing them to Himself, just like He drew the outcasts of society two thousand years ago.

We live on a planet that demonstrates the effects of sin – not necessarily particular sins, but sin in general. The Apostle Paul tells us that the “whole creation groans together” under the curse of sin, waiting for the deliverance that comes when Christ returns to this planet again. And a homosexual orientation is just one of the many and varied effects of sin on this planet. That does not mean that homosexually oriented persons are any more sinful than heterosexually oriented persons. It just means that their road in life is more difficult in some respects than that of a heterosexually oriented person in otherwise similar circumstances. And with more difficulty comes more grace. As the old song says,

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater.
He sendeth more strength when the labors increase.
To added affliction He addeth His mercy;
To multiplied trials, His multiplies peace.

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.

His love has no limit; His grace has no measure
His power has no boundary known unto man.
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again!
– by Annie Johnson Flint
(in Love Songs for all God’s Children. Kansas City: Lillenas Publishing Co., 1975)

A logical fallacy

To see the fallacy in the God-made-me-gay argument, let’s try inserting some other variables into the argument: The person predisposed to alcoholism could, with the same logic, say, “God made me an alcoholic; therefore He wants me to get drunk.” The person predisposed to gain weight could just as logically say, “God made me to be fat; therefore I should eat as much as I can – especially cake.” The person predisposed towards infidelity in marriage could say, “God made me promiscuous, and He wants me to have as much sex as I can get.”

You get the picture …

Now let’s examine the argument of the bird’s wings – that if God didn’t expect a bird to fly, He wouldn’t have given it wings, and if He didn’t expect a gay person to indulge His sexual desires, He wouldn’t have given Him the desire and ability to have sex.

Does “nature” make it right?

On other subjects, most people see fairly clearly that having the ability to do something is not equivalent to a moral right to do it. Just because I’m stronger than my neighbor, does not mean that I have the right to take from him the things that I want. God expects me to discipline my thoughts and desires to harmonize with His will.

If I’m a diabetic with a craving for sweets, I’m asking for certain disaster to indulge my craving. I may argue that God wouldn’t have given me a craving for sweets if he didn’t expect me to indulge it, but the natural law of my body would soon expose the fallacy of the argument.

Most societies recognize that sexual maturity, which comes at puberty, does not automatically come with the right to engage in sexual acts. Societies with moral values have recognized the necessity to discipline the sex drive in order to channel it in the right direction, which is recognized as the marriage relationship between husband and wife.

Christians who accept the Bible as the Word of God understand that God invented sex, and He gave it to humanity made in His image for the specific purpose of participating in the creative process through the act of sexual intercourse. And He said that through this act, man and woman would become “one flesh” – a statement that medical science has demonstrated to be more than a figure of speech.

God loves gay people

No, God does not hate homosexuals. He loves gay people, and I believe He identifies with them particularly in the same manner as He identifies with children, widows, and orphans – those who have a more difficult time than others on this planet. He freely offers His grace to all gay people who seek it in order to submit their lives to His will. He will guide them into the right choices, and those choices are much more varied and broad than either the conservative Christian world or the gay world would have us believe. (See “I’m a Gay Christian — So What Are My Options?”)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That’s a valid question. Most often we regard those to be “in sin” who sin differently than we do, forgetting that we are all “in sin,” one way or another.

I used to wonder why gay people, in particular, hate the expression to “love the sinner but hate the sin” so much. I wondered until I received a note which said, “I’m only saying this because I love you” when the content of the note revealed clearly that the person didn’t care enough to try to understand me and was only trying to impose her idea of morality on me.

Too often we can use the expression that we “love the sinner, but hate the sin” to cover up our own feelings of self-righteousness. The expression is often used in reference to homosexuals – as in loving homosexuals but hating homosexuality. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel very loving to homosexuals because the folks who use the terminology don’t bother taking the trouble to understand what it means to have a homosexual orientation.

If we really love sinners, it will show without us making a lot of noise about it. If we really love sinners, it will show that we see ourselves as sinners and thus see that we are just as much in need of God’s grace as the next sinner, including the gay activist sinner.

God really loves the sinner and hates the sin

And I’m so glad, because it means that God really loves me, a sinner.

If God didn’t love sinners, we’d all be toast. And if  God didn’t hate sin, He wouldn’t be God. Sin, after all, is all that is contrary to His character of love.

I believe that the real meaning of “love the sinner and hate the sin” is a contrast to our usual way of dealing with things. It is quite “normal” for us to hate the sinner – the one in whom we see our own sins demonstrated – and love the sin, doing the very things we condemn in others. That’s what Pharisaism is all about. And unfortunately the expression “love the sinner and hate the sin” has been too often used by those who practice quite the opposite.

To “love the sinner and hate the sin” means to be God-like. It means to love people irrespective of the sins that we may see in them, recognizing that we, too, are sinners in need of grace. It means accepting those who sin differently than we do and loving them just as they are. We don’t have to deny that people are sinning in order to love them, just as God doesn’t deny that we are sinning while He loves us.

Can we really love other sinners?

Of course, it is quite impossible to truly love those who sin differently than we do. We have a natural affection for our sins and a natural hatred for other people’s sins. Only God makes this kind of love possible when we accept the love of God into our own lives and submit to His transformation of our hearts and lives.

I believe that the objection most gay people have to this terminology hinges on their idea that when we “love the sinner, hate the sin,” we refuse to accept something intrinsic to their personality ¹. The primary meaning of the expression to “love the sinner and hate the sin,” really means to love the person without adopting their standards or lack of them in our own lives, i.e. without practicing the same sins.

The concept is very liberating, really. It allows us to leave the judging up to God while we practice the self-sacrificing love He demonstrated on the cross. It allows us to hold ourselves to a high moral standard without consigning to hell those who do not see things the way we do. It frees us from imposing our standards of morality on those around us, and, if adopted by those whose morality depends on theological hair-splitting, it can still make them loving and lovable Christians.

If we truly love the “sinner,” we will want him/her to know the liberating freedom of knowing God as we do – to experience the power of God to liberate us from the sins that do so easily beset us. However, urging them to give up their sins doesn’t usually have the desired effect. It is far more effective to love the “sinner” as Christ loved us sinners and, by our own conduct and communication, model a better way. Even in words we can uplift the right and the good, and sin will appear in its true colors. However, if we do not model the love of Christ and give no evidence of His power in our lives, no amount of verbal haranguing will induce the “sinner” to give up his/her sin. And it will only drag us down further, for by beholding we become changed – whether we behold Christ in His purity or the “sinner” in his sinfulness.

It also seems that we usually apply the “love the sinner/hate the sin” terminology to what we deem as “open sin,” while we too easily pass over our less visible yet often more dangerous sins – sins like pride and self-righteousness, for instance.

Yes, let us indeed love sinners – and don’t we all fit that category? – and hate the sin in our own lives, including the “acceptable kind,” that makes us poor representatives of the Christ we claim to serve.

In order to communicate effectively and respectfully, Christians need to observe the terminology used by given groups themselves and mirror that language. After all, God Himself set the example by speaking to us in the terms of human culture from the beginning of time as we know it. In Jesus He became man in order to communicate with us. And Paul, the chief New Testament writer, wrote of being “all things to all people.”

By far the most common and accepted language amongst persons attracted to their own gender is “gay and lesbian.” However, there is no real consensus. Some younger people prefer “queer,” suggesting that it is more inclusive of all GLBT (gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, trans-gendered) people and makes a defiant political statement, re-claiming the word from those who would use it against gay and lesbian people (see Wikipedia article). Many from the older generation object to “queer” as demeaning, and none seem to appreciate it when coming from heterosexual persons. Since few who prefer “queer” actually object to “gay and lesbian,” those are probably the most respectful terms (or least disrespectful) terms for people to use within a public venue. (“Gays” and “lesbians” as nouns may be considered disrespectful when coming from heterosexual persons.)

A sure way to determine the term closest to consensus is to look at the names of a wide variety of groups of persons attracted to their own sex. What do they call themselves? It appears that no non-scientific groups use “homosexual” in their names. Gay and lesbian persons recognize the term “homosexual” as signaling opposition and condemnation. They consider it disrespectful outside of a scientific context. And it’s rather difficult to communicate the “Good News” in the face of such a perception.

Most gay and lesbian persons, whether Christian or not, feel that ”homosexuality” places far too much emphasis on sex. They object that same-sex affectional attraction is lost sight of when all the emphasis is placed on homosexual. They argue that it is a gay man’s nature to be attracted to a man, fall in love with a man and create a life with a man. Just as with non-gay people, sexuality is a part of that relationship, but hardly the over-riding aspect of that relationship.

If you are heterosexual, imagine if someone were to invite you into a conversation about the relationship between you and your spouse or your and your special friend. If that person then only asked about the way you have sex and implied that was all there is to your relationship, how would you feel? To reduce your relationship to nothing more than sex would be both misleading and demeaning. Gay and lesbian people feel the same way.

Therefore, on this site, we use the words “gay and lesbian” to refer to those persons who are primarily attracted to their own sex, without any reference to sexual practice. In fact, many gay and lesbian persons live celibate lives or are as happily married to the opposite sex as the average heterosexual married couple. The difference is that their sexual temptations come through persons of their own sex, rather than the opposite sex. (Remember, a successful marriage is founded on the attraction between one man and one woman. Whether the sexual attraction to persons outside the marriage is to the same gender or the opposite gender doesn’t really make a lot of difference.) Gay people who are heterosexually married do know that they have to put some effort into making their marriage work. Could that be why some of them seem to have better than average marriages?

In the Christian community, the terms “same-sex-attracted” and “same-sex-attraction” (SSA) have become more widely used in the last ten years or so. That’s a good, neutral description, but even most people from a Christian background are more likely to search for homosexual, gay or lesbian than same-sex-attracted. On this site we often use “gay and lesbian” and “same-sex-attracted” interchangeably in the same essay or post.

We recommend this terminology to pastors and other Christian workers who want to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.

We pray that this site will facilitate understanding so that we, as Christians, may represent Christ to the world in which we live.

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