Recently, Fuller’s president, Rich Mouw, has been revisiting the topic of convicted civility as his book Uncommon Decency has entered a second existence. (Here’s a short from the Huffington Post.)
As the Huffington Post piece illustrates, and as we all know too well, homosexuality is one of those issues on which civil conversation is very difficult to achieve.
In light of that difficulty, I would like to make a request. This is a general request, but one particularly directed at my Christian brothers and sisters to whom I owe a greater debt of love, and who owe the same to one another.
I would like to request a moratorium on the use of the word “homophobic.”
The word means, “someone who is afraid of homosexuals (or homosexuality).” But it is used pejoratively (in parallel with the way folks often use the term “fundamentalist”) to besmirch anyone who thinks homosexuality is wrong.
To think something is wrong and to be fearful of something are often quite different things. Pinning the label “homophobic” onto everyone who thinks that such relationships are not what God intends is not only a misrepresentation of the position, but an unnecessary attack on the person with whom you disagree.
So how about it? Can we take a step toward more civil discourse by dropping this inflammatory language?
Completely agree. For me, the real pain of being labeled ‘homophobic’ is this: by saying my moral posture is constitutive of fear, I am denied the opportunity and even the possibility of meaningfully loving my homosexual neighbor. Fear doesn’t admit an occasion to love.
I’ll meet you half-way. “Homophobic” like many other pejoratives, should be applied to attitudes and actions – not to people.
The choice of words, however, is more or less correct. Words are not defined by etymology, but by usage. Homophobia/ic is defined rather broadly, encompassing anyone who has a negative subjective attitude about the conduct of homosexuals (or homosexual conduct, if you prefer), or negative behavior toward homosexuals.
It is pejorative (rightly in my view) because it expresses condemnation of such negative attitudes and behaviors.
You may wish for those attitudes and behoviors not to be condemned. You may even praise those attitudes or behaviors. In fact attributing those attitudes and behaviors to God can work two ways – it can serve as praise for them (“They are good enough for God to endorse them”) or you may have come to believe for other reasons that God endorses them, and deduce from this that they are praiseworthy (“My pastor says that homosexuality is a sin in God’s eye’s. If that is the case, I should hold the view that it is a sin.”)
This does not exempt your attitudes and actions from condemnation. Unless someone shares your beliefs that they are praiseworthy and that God endorses them, your justification isn’t sufficient excuse for them in the eyes of that person.
Bush believes that waterboarding isn’t torture, isn’t wrong, and is legal. Only thsoe who share Bush’s beliefs need see those beliefs as justification for excusing waterboarding. The rest of us are right to follow our own beliefs and condemn it as torture.
Smijer,
This is a tough one. I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your position, and the desire to draw attention to something as wrong. But by referring to an idea (and therefore, by extension, to the people who hold it) in a condescending manner, you instantly make it impossible to have a conversation that would be difficult to have in the first place.
One of the more or less constant mantras from “the left” is, rightly, to change the language of how we refer to people so that we do not refer to them and/or their ideas in a condescending or bigoted manner. Continuing to refer to folks who think homosexuality is sinful using such language is as bigoted as someone calling homosexuals “fags” (perhaps with the hopeful expectation that they will be thrown in the fire like their namesakes).
I demur somewhat with your assessment of the etymological fallacy in my argument. The reason why homophobic is used is to impugn those who think it’s wrong by saying that they are afraid. It seems to me that it does carry that connotation.
I do think that if you believe the anti-homosexuality position to be wrong you have a right to express that–and to express why you think it’s wrong. And that’s the level that I’d like to see the conversation occur. If you think it’s bigoted or prejudiced or arcane or ____ to think that homosexual activity is sinful, then lay that out. That’s where fruitful dialogue is possible, even if difficult and rare. And it’s in light of that possibility, however slight, that I ask for the condescending rhetoric to be set aside.
Mark, let’s leave aside the etymology. Fear is only one form of negative attitude. Often it lies behind, in a psychological sense, the belief that homosexuality is “wrong”. Sometimes not. Sometimes it lies behind ones view of the Bible, sometimes not. Let’s just assume, for the sake of argument that it is not.
As I said above – the problem is not with the application of the term, but with its application to a person, instead of their attitude or action.
With that in mind, imagine we are just saying that you condemn homosexuality. Doesn’t the same logic apply as what you presented in your comment? It seems to me equally true to say that “condemnation rules out love” than “fear rules out love”. Neither is perfectly true, but there is a grain of truth in each.
It is perfectly possible to condemn an adulteress while loving her. It is just a possible to fear and adulteress while loving her.
The question is whether the condemnation or fear is appropriate.
If it is appropriate and appropriately done, then the adulteress will likely be able to accept and understand it, and will see how you act in love toward her.
If it is inappropriate, or done inappropriately, then it may prevent you acting in a truly loving way, or at least confuse the object of your love about why you would act or feel the way you do if you truly love her.
You owe it to others to do some soul-searching before you adopt or express a negative attitude toward the way a person relates to others sexually. You owe it to yourself as well, if you truly wish to act with love.
“sometimes not” – If, as indicated in your response, you are willing to grant that some of us are not motivated by fear in our disapproval of homosexuality, then you should be willing to set aside the term as it does not necessarily or accurately reflect the position of many, no?
Furthermore, granting such possibility, it is the presumption of charity and in the interest of civil discourse (to Daniel’s point), to not insist from the start, on using a term which we agree does not necessarily apply. And in the particular case of my dialoguing with you via this post, it most certainly does not apply.
“then you should be willing to set aside the term as it does not necessarily or accurately reflect the position of many, no?”
Please do refer to my other comments explaining why the term is still appropriate both lexically, and as an expression of condemnation.
I will gladly grant (and argue – see my comments in response to John near the end of this thread) that fear may not motivate negative attitudes toward homosexuals in some cases.
I hope you see from the remainder of my arguments that I don’t see that it is necessary to avoid the term “homophobic”, so long as it is appropriately directed against attitudes and actions, not against people. This approach, I think and hope, demonstrates the proper kind of respect for persons.
This is a really interesting post. It is a complicated issue. I think homophobic is used like the word racist. And if you think homosexual relationships are sin, that choice is involved in any way, than you are expressing a preference and idea that heterosexuality is right or better.
The truth is that heterosexuals still maintain the privilege. Sometimes these words that feel so full of rage are used to attempt to get the attention of the privileged. They are not comfortable and they put people on the defensive, this is true. But I know advocates that would claim that the sort of injustice they’ve experienced throughout time calls for nothing less than anger and attention-getting language.
Now as Christians we do have, I believe, an obligation to speak to one another in love. I’ve never used the word homophobic really, I don’t think, so I think I can agree to eliminate it.
Good points, Amy, and perhaps complementing the points of smijer, above and blow.
I tend to use the term “heterosexism” more often than “homophobia,” but I have to say that, in general, I can’t blame anyone for using the term “homophobia” to describe the positions and behaviors of Christians about homosexuality.
The fact is that Christians who interpret the Bible to say homosexuality is “wrong” don’t just disagree with people like me on the point itself, but also on the *basis* for that point. That is, from where I stand, the reasoning behind the idea that Bible condemns homosexuality (any more than it condemns, say, eating shrimp, or wearing cotton-polyester blend, or divorce) is flimsy at best, and it therefore follows that the people who interpret the Bible that way do so not out of scholarly integrity or from a desire to really understand the Bible, but because they have prior reasons and motives. And anyone who is willing to make an interpretive choice that supports a de facto bigotry is very likely doing so out of fear.
Granted, the fear might not be *of* homosexuals — for a lot of people, I bet it’s fear of being shunned or of damaging their careers. But it’s still fear.
John, why do you think it’s fear rather than striving to be faithful to the Bible?
I’d say there are a few good reasons to see homosexuality as outside what is permitted Christians that set it apart from eating shrimp or wearing polyester-blend. One reason is that the prohibition is reaffirmed in the New Testament; another is that it is theologically depicted in the NT as an undoing of God’s created order. Those seem to be good reasons driven by something other than fear.
I’m curious as to where the “I bet it’s fear of…” comes from? Have you heard this whispered?
I understand the frustrations of these conversations, but those types of prejudices don’t help.
I’m trying to decide if I like “heterosexism” any better. Depends on whether one assumes that it carries the pejorative connotations of “sexism,” or whether it’s a more neutral description of the idea that only heterosexuality is acceptable as religious practice.
I really agree with you John. I have spent the time to I think pretty thoroughly research through numberous biblical experts the underpinnings of the conclusion that homosexuality “as we would understand that term today” is banned or otherwise declared wrong in the bible.
It seems to me fairly uncontrovertable that when all is said and done, the bible does not speak to the issue of same-sex relationships as we understand the term today.
The so-called prohibitions in Leviticus, relate to something else quite entirely different. And when you separate Paul’s writings into what he wrote and what was written in his name, much of this slides away.
So we are left, as you suggest, with people who are using some isolated wording in the bible to sustain something they wish to be so rather than because it is clearly so. This smacks of fear as you suggest and bigotry.
I agree that there are some bad biblical arguments against homosexuality. It will never do to appeal to Leviticus, for example.
But there are some good ones as well. First,the main places in the NT that speak of homosexuality are not letters written after Paul, in his name, but Paul’s genuine correspondence: Romans & 1 Corinthians.
Second, the context in Romans places homosexual actions into a narrative flow of the undoing of creation. Same-sex sexual desires and actions are seen as indicators that humanity has gone far from the order of creation that God made.
Third, other factors are important to bear in mind, such as the relative acceptance of homosexuality in the Greco-Roman world, so long as it was being done appropriately. And Jesus’ silence needs to be weighed in a Jewish context within which homosexuality was assumed to be wrong.
One of the important take aways from Dale Martin’s book, Sex and the Single Savior is that homosexuality was seen as sinful–but for reasons that we should reject today. I think the honesty in recognizing that voice in the NT is an important step, even as we also recognize that there are numerous reasons why we might choose to see the Christian story playing out differently in our own day and age.
I think these sorts of accusations needs to be toned down a bit. Yes, there are bigoted people or fearful people or haters who just want an excuse to hate the other. But there are also good reasons for people who consider the NT to be normative to resist the blessing of homosexual unions.
John, I believe in what some call a redemptive-movement hermeneutic. There is a growth toward being a more fully redeemed community, showing more of God’s shalom, from OT through NT and into the future. A trajectory is set with a number of issues like slavery or the status of women. Jesus and Paul make a number of interesting moves that undercut or reshape thinking about slaves and women that move things along a particular trajectory.
Homosexual behavior was far more widely known in biblical days than in the present. There is evidence from 1st Century Rome of same-sex unions. Yet Jesus and Paul explicitly frame a trajectory that points to sexual acts only in the context of a man and women in marriage. Both Jesus and Paul call homosexual acts sin (Jesus implicitly and Paul explicitly). The univocal witness of the church until very recently has been that homosexual acts are sin. Without exception, the ethical trajectory has been toward sex in heterosexual union.
I have read from a variety of positions well. Critics of the traditional position have IMO correctly pointed out inappropriate uses of some passages. But the are interpretations of other passage that simply are not convincing and require tortured leaps of faith to sustain.
I’m still reading, listening and talking, but I cannot in good conscience affirm homosexual acts based on how I understand the trajectory of Scripture. With the circles I run in, I can’t tell you how much simpler my life would be if I could simply make that leap. But I’m not going to be dishonest about where I’m at … even in the face of people who declare me not scholarly or a bigot. There is room for dialog but it won’t be furthered by condescending declarations of your own superior scholarship and charging bigotry to all who differ.
I wish I could be more a part of the dialog that has been happening here but I am on the road with limited time.
That’s about where I am, too, Michael. Thanks for this.
Thanks for your reply, Mr. Kirk.
Let me interrrupt our discussion to introduce myself after a fashion.
I’ve been lurking (through Google Reader) for quite some time, because I enjoy your posts and I think that you generally have a good outlook.
I disagree with many of your beliefs – I am not arguing as a fellow Christian believer who agrees with a theistic foundation for ethical behavior. I don’t wish to misrepresent myself.
That said, I am a big believer in finding common ground, and reading blogs like yours helps me understand your point of view. And there are many points on which we do agree.
The reason I came out of lurking was simply that I believed that I might say something that was worthwhile to you and might help you understand “the other side” better. I’ll likely go back into lurking after this. I’m not here to argue!
So… yes, for many the “-phobic” suffix does carry a connotation of fear. Many people do believe that fear often lies behind anti-homosexuality. I am among them. I think if you will reflect on the matter, you will agree. On the other hand, maybe you are right that it is an unfortunate association and might obscure other motivations behind anti-homosexuality.
In any case, you can see my comments to Mark on that subject, but I want to reiterate my disagreement with your opinion that pejortives must always make reasoned discussion unnecessarily difficult.
I want to remind you that the term “sin” is itself a pejorative. (Here, I want to remind you that we can *always* carry that pejorative to the person “by extension”. Calling blogging a sin is calling a blogger a sinner, for instance. I still don’t endorse this application, since it becomes unnecessarily *personal*, and focuses attention unnecessarily and often hurtfully on a person’s perceived faults rather than on their human dignity.) The fact is, that in discussions of values, laudatory and pejorative language – language of praise and condemnation – is a necessary component. Without it, there is no discussion of values.
You might say that the act of homosexuality is a sin. Someone might make the case that you shouldn’t do so, since that language is inflammatory or pejorative, or carries condemnation. You woudln’t likely be moved by this. You would likely remind them that you wished to make an effort to love the sinner, but that you had to express your condemnation of the sin. In other words, you might be only moved to say “if the shoe fits…”
Likewise, in response to your objections to the language of homophobia – I am tempted to say, “if the shoe fits…” Of course, what I mean by that really is that I think you are wrong, and I think your condemnation of homosexuality is ill-founded and hurtful to others. What I am doing is trying to sway you to reject that view of homosexuality.
You may resist my effort to sway you – and you may in turn make an effort to sway me. But, as we do so, we will be using value-laden language.
Two thoughts:
First, no one is going to stop using the term to describe those opposed to all same-sex relationships. The term is here to stay for better or for worse.
Second, if we’re going to take an etymological approach to the word and say that it is supposed to indicate some sort of fear or disgust at same-sex activity, I wonder why the traditional position shouldn’t be so named. After all, if it is a sin, isn’t it ok to be “afraid” of it or disgusted by it? Isn’t that part of a healthy attitude towards sin, namely finding it terrible and something to be resisted and overcome in our lives?
To put it another way, what does “sin” name if not something that is repulsive, enslaving, rebellious, and malicious? If we’re describing same-sex relations in those terms, the terms of sin, it kinda makes sense that people would take that as homophobic, at least in the sense of despising same-sex activity (perhaps the old hate the sin, love the sinner thing could rescue us from despising the people involved, but that seems like cold comfort).
Full disclosure: I’ve come from a traditional perspective on this as long as I can remember and can’t honestly say, formally anyway, what my position is on this at the moment.
Sin does *not* name what is repulsive, enslaving, etc.
Sin is simply missing the mark, falling short, not meeting a standard. Biblically speaking, homosexuality is as much a sin as lying to one’s parents about eating a cookie.
Our subjective reaction to particular sins don’t make them sinful.
I doubt I agree with Halden’s position on homosexuality, but I do agree with Halden’s exposition on this topic… he succinctly summarizes how value-laden language is necessary for such topics.
Thanks for jumping in out of lurk mode today. I’ve appreciated what you’re bringing to the table here.
To be clear, my “position” is certainly not the traditional one that I’ve embraced through most of my Christian life. What I have now is not so much a position at all as a series of questions to which I don’t have adequate answers and, as such I’m continuing to ask them as I find my way through the matter.
I do think that Sex and the Single Savior by Dale Martin does problematize, pretty definitively a host of the traditional biblical arguments against homosexuality, but most of all it problematizes the notion that the church’s traditional position, at least in the form it has taken theologically and practically, is “loving.”
“John, why do you think it’s fear rather than striving to be faithful to the Bible?”
Well, because all interpretations are choices. All reading requires interpretation. So “being faithful to the Bible” doesn’t hold water for me — you are always deciding how to interpret the Bible, and therefore are a participant in what it says. When you give weight to some commandments over others, that’s also your choice. Anyone reading the Bible seriously has to a do LOT of work to get it to even make sense in a 21st century context. So someone who *isn’t* willing to make sense of marriages and sexuality in a way that’s inclusive of gay people is probably avoiding doing so for reasons having nothing to do with the Bible itself.
I prefer to think it’s fear, because I like a lot of Christians and would rather not imagine some darker, uglier motives….
Against my better judgment, I’m going to jump in one more time… I agree with you (John) that it is difficult to *do a good job of* making the Bible make sense in the 21st century. But not everyone knows that. Many people rely on the church, and in turn on tradition, to make sense of the Bible. That’s much easier to do. People doing this, often don’t realize that they are really active in creating scripture – they think they are passively receiving it… and they think they are passively receiving it *from scripture*… their reliance on church tradition is often as invisible to them as the air is to us or the water is to fish.
Think about the many, many, many Christians who feel they have no choice but to struggle over their own sexuality, since they cannot manage to successfully conform to what they imagine the Bible preaches, yet can’t believe the Bible preaches anything else. They don’t *start* with self-loathing homophobia… but they often end up with it.
So, for a straight person, the process can be the same. They don’t start with homophobia… it is inculcated in them by a traditional approach to the Bible.
Precisely the same thing could be said for interpretive existence in any social context… whenever people try and make sense of life’s issues, their reliance on whatever contextual zeitgeist is often as invisible to them as the air is to us or the water is to fish. This is not a Christian problem, but a human one.
@John, well said, all reading truly does require interpretation. This revelation has become the blessing and the curse of postmodernity. The contemporary church, as you have probably perceived, has been slow to recognize this. Regardless, the proposition that all reading requires interpretation does not necessitate that all interpretations are therefore equally valid. Some interpretations are better than others.
@Daniel: sorry for such a philosophical divergence, but these comments seemed relevant in light of issues raised…
Another off-kilter shot across the bow: I have trouble imagining that gay sex, taken as a whole, could theologically be construed as sinful in a way that heterosexual sex somehow is not. However sex and sin are related it is much more complex than simply hetero=innocent, gay (etc.)=sinful. I’d have a far easier time if we just all admitted that sex of any sort tends to be, well, rather fucked up (sinful) in a variety of ways that are not easily parsed and understood outside of the relationships in which they occur.
On this point I’ve been influenced by Geoffrey Rees’ recent book The Romance of Innocent Sexuality which argues that the problem in the Christian debates over same-sex relationships lies in the fact that we have a romantic construal of some sort of “innocent” sexuality at all.
In other words, maybe the problem underlying all these debates is that we think there is some pristine, innocent, and pure form of sexual expression in the first place rather than beginning from the brokenness of all our relationships and exploring what God’s act of grace in Christ means from within those various contingencies.
You are correct that the issue is far more complex than hetero=innocent, gay=sinful. Whoever thinks that way is woefully ignorant of what the Bible very plainly teaches.
Sex is innocent (more than that, beautiful and God-honoring) only in the context of a monogamous marriage when each spouse is seeking to please the other.
In other words, even marital sex can be sinful if one spouse being purely selfish (1 Corinthians 7:1-5).
I certainly agree with you here. To see another Christian (I think) staunchly defend the use of the term, see a very lively discussion on this very issue in the comments of a recent post on homosexuality on my blog. I couldn’t believe how forcefully he defended the use of the term. I think it highlights how valuable rhetoric can be in a debate over peoples’ hearts.
That’s a fascinating back-and-forth, Steve–and echoes much of what has been said here in favor of the term.
I’ll echo Halden’s recommendation of Martin’s “Sex and the Single Savior” as a really helpful complication of this issue.
His historical work is manifestly impeccable, his constructive suggestions and conclusions less so.
Daniel, I think the problem you’re facing is that in our cultural context, the problem you’re addressing is enormously complex.
Let’s say that you hold to what is considered a “traditional” Biblical view of human sexuality (as I do), in which sexual expression is intended for a life-long covenantal, sacramental relationship between one man and one woman (please — don’t anyone hit me with the polygamy in the OT meme!!). How do I relate in love to others who are homosexual in orientation and lifestyle?
I think one important response is to recognize that at some level I am fearful of our differences. My friends who are gay and who are experiencing loving and stable and socially productive lives do, indeed, existentially challenge my deeply held convictions about sexuality. It would be much easier for me to dismiss them as human beings than for me to wrestle with how their lives and values challenge my paradigms. The notion that I am afraid, and that I may act on my fear through angry denunciations, legal action and other assertions of power, and so on, is justified, I’m sorry to say.
But — and this is the rub — I would ask that my gay friends try to understand that my convictions about human sexuality are not merely born out of fear. I would ask for understanding about the soul searching, study, and prayer I’ve invested over many, many years in coming to my understanding of God, creation, male and female, marriage, sacrament, and sexuality. I’d ask for a hermeneutic of charity about my most basic motives — that I’m convinced to the point of staking my life on the faith that the God revealed in Jesus Christ desires wholeness for all human beings and that whatever counsel or speech or prayers or practices I might bring to questions of sexuality are rooted in that hope. We might still differ, but maybe we can differ within a framework of mutual charity.
To be honest I think the use of homophobia reflects fear on the part of homosexuals who use it. This fear is justified. Past abuses by Christians against homosexuals has in many ways destroyed our credibility so that our “hate the sin love the sinner” type of approach to homosexuality appears disingenuous. Yesterday you talked about how your outsider status made you feel while working in a restaurant. I think many homosexuals get that feeling everywhere. I honestly don’t know what felling that way is like but I can understand why that would cause them to be fearful and condemn any statement that does not support their full acceptance with a pejorative.
I understand why homophobia (along with public condemnation that follows those labeled “homophobes”) is a good survival strategy on the part of homosexuals I do not believe it is entirely accurate in explaining the fear that motivates condemnation of homosexual acts as sinful. A better term would be theophobic. Fear of God (this can be that loving fear that most Christians interpret the Bible to mean) causes Christians to see homosexual acts as sinful.
Hey Daniel,
Thanks for your thoughts. I think there is a concrete different by what is homophobia and heterosexism. Like racism and sexism, heterosexism is a distinct set of practices that Christians participate to exclude the GLBTQ community. Homophobia is real, but it is dread that I see in many Christians faces when they here the word Gay or Lesbian or when they have found out they have been touched by one of them. Anyway those are my thoughts.
A “-phobia” by definition, is irrational.
So if there is a rational position against homosexual behavior (whether you agree with it or not), it is not a phobia. End of story.
I think this would be one of those “Which rationality?” types of situations.
C. S. Lewis wrote an essay on “Bulverism” in his book “God in the Dock.” He claims that modern debate was framed by Ezekiel Bulver (mythical character.) Bulver’s epiphany occurred when overheard his father trying to persuade his mother that two sides of triangle added together will always be longer than the third side. Finally, in exasperation, Bulver’s mother declared, “You just say that because you’re a man!” It was at that point that young Ezekiel learned that it was not necessary to disprove the substance of an argument. You merely needed to assert your position and then turn the conversation to how your opponent became so silly (or so evil.)
In essence, the strategy is to move the conversation from the substance of the issues to argument about your opponents motivations. It is interesting that Robert’s Rules, first written 150 years ago, was written to promote orderly and civil dialog. Notice how Robert’s Rules defines decorum:
“When a question is pending, a member can condemn the nature of likely consequences of the proposed measure in strong terms, but he must avoid personalities, and under no circumstances can he attack or question the motives of another member. The measure, not the member, is the subject of debate. If a member disagrees with a statement by another in regard to an event which both witnessed, he cannot state in debate that the other’s statement “is false.” But he might say, “I believe there is strong evidence that the member is mistaken.” The moment the chair hears such words as “fraud,” “liar,” or “lie” used about a member in debate, he must act immediately and decisively to correct the matter and prevent its repetition.”
Bulverism is an attempt to substitute debate about motivations for dialog about substance. The homophobic epitaph is a classic example of Bulverism. Rather than looking at the substance of what is being said, the opponent is immediately labeled as one with an irrational fear of homosexuals which thus motivates him to have such views. It is a diversion from civil dialog about the issue.
There are indeed some Christians who pridefully set themselves up as judge and jury about who is in with God and who isn’t. But to say an act is sinful is not a condemnation of the person doing the act. One of the marks of a loving relationship is to be open about disagreements in behavior … over what is right and what is wrong. And the way to have productive conversations is to restrain the impulse to Bulverism and actually respectfully deal with the content. We begin by assuming positive intent by another until substantial evidence mounts to the contrary.
Michael, I have no problem with people being super nice and all that, but sometimes I wonder if the insistence that all dialogue remain polite and proper is just a way of policing the debate and rendering it less serious and self-implicating. For whatever that’s worth.
Two other things:
You say: “But to say an act is sinful is not a condemnation of the person doing the act.” This seems to me to be self-evidently false, at least in terms of how sin and sinfulness is discussed throughout the Bible. To call someone’s actions, let alone what they understand as a core feature of their personal constitution sin is to condemn them quite directly.
The Christian tradition and the Scriptures seem to uniformly maintain that God judges and condemns sinners (however we construe what that judgment and condemnation ultimately means). So I don’t think you can get off the hook so easily. Naming something as sin is a condemnatory statement, and it should be. So if homosexuality is a sin, we shouldn’t shy away from that. To do so is dishonest.
Second, you say: “We begin by assuming positive intent by another until substantial evidence mounts to the contrary.”
I guess it’s all about what counts as “substantial evidence”, isn’t it? I’m not one to make sweeping comparisons of the movement towards same-sex marriage rights and the civil rights movement as some do, but the fact is that for many, this is a matter of justice that often outright involves acts of violence and degradation. When people feel violated and degraded there comes a point when they feel they have to say “Enough”, even if it doesn’t conform to the proper decorum and procedures in Robert’s venerable rules of order.
Frankly I wonder if the real diversion from substantive dialog isn’t more the insistence on keeping everything tidy and polite. To try to sanitize everything in advance and make sure no one gets called any names sounds innocent enough, but it is hardly a neutral move. To insist that things never get heated and self-involving is to cast the argument, in advance as one in which all participants are good, honest, basically forward thinking folk that just need to speak more clearly to each other. But its an open question whether that is in fact that case. The gay kid who got the shit kicked out of him all through high school, often by Christians may not feel like he can extend that sort of open hand of politeness, and who are we to say that he has to?
Anyways, my main point is that the desire to sanitize this discussion is itself an ideological move. If we’re really talking about things as important as both sides think we are, there’s no reason to assume that this should be some sort of polite conversation. According to traditional Christian teaching, non-heterosexual sex is a sin against God and an nature, which, like all sins can send you to hell. That’s serious. According to the movement for same-sex rights today the traditional view of homosexuality is degrading, oppressive, and inhumane. That’s serious to.
If we’re talking about things that really are that serious, lets let them be serious rather than trying to keep everything nice and contained. To do that is simply to be dishonest about the nature and severity of the disagreement. And that serves no one, at least in terms of furthering discussion and understanding.
Halden, I’m not saying people need to be super nice. I’m not saying people should be completely dispassionate. Note that even in conservative ole Robert’s Rules it says “When a question is pending, a member can condemn the nature of likely consequences of the proposed measure in strong terms, …” This is not about being sanitized. It is about what we will choose to talk about. It is about refraining from personal attack and making the opponents the focus of debate.
When I wrote of assuming positive intent, I was speaking of how two (or more) particular individuals relate. Sally and Joe are in the conversation. For Sally, she needs to assume positive intent from Joe until Joe offers sufficient evidence about himself that he is not operating with positive intent. I’m arguing against Sally treating Joe as a category of persons and projecting her assessments of that group on her. It’s called stereotyping. The same goes for Joe with Sally.
It seems to me that what you are saying is that it is not possible to have civil conversations about personal behavior. To disagree about a behavior is to condemn someone (not just judge their behavior to be wrong but to declare the person of lesser moral character.) So how would we have a civil conversation about our disagreements?
Could we also have a moratorium on the terms “heretic”, “heterodox”, “revisionist”, “anti-Biblical”, “immoral”, “Satanic”, etc. used in describing people who have the temerity to think that LGBTQ folks are the equals of heterosexuals?
Also, how should we describe the people who exhibit a great deal of fear around homosexuality – that it will destroy the country/culture/church, that homosexuals are recruiting children, etc. If someone is phobic of homosexuality, can we call them homophobic? It isn’t as if people who are clearly phobic (irrationally afraid) of homosexuality aren’t common.
“Also, how should we describe the people who exhibit a great deal of fear around homosexuality – that it will destroy the country/culture/church, that homosexuals are recruiting children, etc. If someone is phobic of homosexuality, can we call them homophobic? It isn’t as if people who are clearly phobic (irrationally afraid) of homosexuality aren’t common.”
First of all, I think you are making broad statements against people who do not hold to everything you just said.
Second of all, history shows that the decay of the biblical model of the family (one man one woman married) invariably leads to societal decay. For example, Rome under Caligula, Sodom and Gomorrah, Romans 1, et al.
Third of all, “that homosexuals are recruiting children,” has never been something of which the majority of Christians from my experience have ever been aware, and so, to attribute that to a Christian position is unfounded.
Fourth of all, with respect to:
“if someone is phobic of homosexuality, can we call them homophobic? It isn’t as if people who are clearly phobic (irrationally afraid) of homosexuality aren’t common.”
you would have to define your terms. Concern over the widespread acceptance of certain lifestyles which are violations of God’s created order is one thing, and that is in NO WAY identical with FEAR of either that lifestyle, or the people who embrace that lifestyle. The point is made. It’s absolutely inaccurate to call Christians homophobes, when the term does not describe many of their numbers.
Adherance to a genuine, explicitly expressed fear is one thing. Adherance to an outside standard of absolute truth is another.
Michael, I suppose I’m glad you don’t think people have to be “completely dispassionate” — only mostly dispassionate is it?
But seriously, you’re operating with far too fragile a notion of “personal attack” here. Remember, it is fundamentally personal and deeply hurtful to have what one perceives as constitutive of their own personhood called sinful. If that’s not a personal attack, I don’t know what is.
For better or worse people, not ideas, terms, or concepts are the center of this argument, Michael. Your claims would require us to take them as something else, something conceptual and theoretical. But that is patently not the situation. There is no way for us to know, in advance who Joe and Sally ought to properly interact with each other. Its an abstraction that seeks to dodge the real seriousness of what this disagreement entails.
Back to “personal attacks” for a moment. Certainly I can imagine scenarios in which just yelling “Homophobe!” would serve no purpose other to to emote for its own sake. But the word is not simply an “epitaph” as you claim. It isn’t like calling some a faggot or a nigger. Rather it points out an activity and mode of action and thought toward homosexaul which they experience as fear and disgust. Again, you’re welcome to make the argument that the gay community just doesn’t know how they’re really being treated, and what they experience as fear and disgust is actually love and dignity, but that’d have to be one amazing argument.
To call an argument or a position “homophobic” is not inherently a personal attack any more than criticizing, say, an immigration policy as xenophobic is inherently nothing more than a rude break of decorum.
Also, the whole notion that we can condemn behaviors without condemning those who perform them is stupid. Agents and actions cannot be abstracted in that way. That’s why in the Bible God consistently judges and condemns not “sin” but people who are sinners. Do you deny that the Bible presents God’s judgment in this way? There is nothing in the Bible that treats “sin” as some abstract category about which we make claims that are then extraneous to our moral evaluation of people. To try to cast the debate that way is just dishonest. None of us lives our lives as if we can deal with “behavior” rather than people. All we have is people and what they do defines them.
Finally, what’s wrong with a little uncivil conversation? Why must a conversation conform to some arbitrary list of niceties for it to be a helpful and revelatory conversation? Couldn’t an uncivil conversation, like the ones that Jesus and the Apostles tended to have be, perhaps, better ones?
Halden,
I agree that agent and action can’t be fully separated. To call the actions of another wrong entails an element of judgment against their behavior. But as a Christian, I don’t make such assessments from the position of faultless judge but as one who also sins. Therefore, the finger I point in judgment does a u-turn and points at me. This is Jesus’ point:
Matt 7:1-2
“1 “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. 2 For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” NRSV
I think it is clear that Jesus was not asking his followers to refrain from making assessments about moral behavior. But the question is about our posture toward those who sin (however that is defined). If we want to take a posture of condemnation and “othering” toward those who sin, then we have chosen our own fate. But if we’ve chosen grace, community, dialog and forbearance then we have also chosen our fate. It is in this sense that I am saying that we can speak of an action of sin but refuse a relationship of condemnation with the agent. I’m not by any means suggesting Christians have done this well and we have been particularly abysmal with issues of sexuality.
But Halden, I put my question back to you. I’ve laid out some ground rules that I think would facilitate civil dialog. If I’m reading you right, you don’t seem to think it is necessary to begin from a position of assuming positive intent. There need be no substantiation that a person is indeed operating from phobic motives before ascribing them to him … guilty until proven otherwise? In essence, what I read is that you don’t believe there can be civil dialog. If you do believe it is possible, how does it work?
What I’m saying is that the “ground rules” you’ve laid out covertly slant the debate toward your perspective though you continue to fail to acknowledge it. Or basically all the points I’ve made.
Halden, I don’t propose this for just this issue. It is a code I try to live by in all controversial discussions. I try to assume positive intent and try to stay away from presuming and attacking motives. I’m not sure how this slants things in my favor. But let’s say it does. What is your alternative? How do we have meaningful civil discussion?
By being committed to truth even when its uncomfortable and makes things get heated. If this makes for uncivil conversation so be it.
“Civility” seems like something of a fetish for you.
Fetish – “an object of irrational reverence or obsessive devotion”
Hmmm… So now we’ve moved from ascribing irrational fears to ascribing irrational reverence?
Grace and peace to you my friend.
For someone championing “civil dialouge” you sure seem disinterested in responding to the substantive points I made in my various postings above. I find that curious.
Halden, when Michael speaks of assuming positive intent, are you reading that as “civility”? At first I thought you were just avoiding this point of his, but now I’m starting to wonder whether you’re lumping it with niceness/dispassion/civility/etc.
I don’t think that’s at all what’s being said by “assuming positive intent”. I think it’s something more like “interpretative charity” rather than any kind of opposition to rudeness or to blatant disagreement between two people.
Michael I hear what you’re saying but otoh I feel like trotting out the term Bulverism in some circles is in itself a Bulverist move
Yep. I’ve seen “Bulverism” used just as you describe. Have I done so here?
Heterosexuality is the Bible’s standard.
Consider this though in light of the Fall of Man. If we are born that way, does that make it right? Not really. We are all born into sin. It’s part of the way of the world
It’s our choice whether or not we choose to act on those desires, and ultimately what we do with them. Surrender them to God or surrender to them. Unfortunately, our permissive society says it’s okay to do whatever you want. There are no absolutes. Unfortunately, truth is not true just because I believe it. Truth is still true no matter who believes it. There are absolutes and moreover, there is such a thing as absolute truth.
God’s standards say for us all to surrender. Period. Whether or not we do is up to us.
Good comments by the way, GC.
I am not afraid of them, therefore to label me a homophobe is inaccurate and foolhardy.
Why else would I tell the truth? To win a popularity contest? Yeah, right.
Like all skirmishes for cultural ‘integrity’ the current conversations around equal rights for LGBT people both within and without the church are full of pejoratives, mis-direction and untruths:
It is the Homophobes vs The Gay Agenda
The Traditionalists vs the Revisionists
Same ol same ol – US against THEM.
I am just a lay-person, but didn’t Jesus put an end to that era?? What are we still doing fighting that battle?
I trust that God will judge each of us for our sins AND for how we treated each other. If homosexuality is a sin, I am entirely confident that God is capable of dealing with it. But if I refuse ANY person the milk of kindness for ANY reason, I am equally certain God will judge me.
Don’t wait for the other person to be nice first.
I think there could be a phobic element in those few(?) cases where a Christian has the idea he owes his own personal salvation as a kind of ‘exchange’ for the fact that he himself put an end to his own homosexuality.
I wonder how many Christians feel that Jesus accepted them only because they shunned some proclivity to sexual sin in the holy resolve of an altar call? This would make these same ‘sins’ kind of huge for those persons I think – and then we could be talking about the kinds of subconscious reactions that resemble phobias. Especially if homosexuality is not a matter of simple ‘choice’ but more with a biologic orientation that has been ‘stuffed’ for Christ.
Funny, when I quit smoking I spent about three years being extremely annoyed with smokers who had not quit. It was part self-righteousness and part concern that they were endangering themselves. But I eased up eventually – maybe when the chemical memory of nicotene finally disappeared continually.
If homosexuality is indeed a hard-wired orientation rather than merely a partnership choice, then someone feeling they had ‘given it up’ might be angry at (and concerned for) homosexuals for as long as they were capable of sexual arousal.
Ironically, I think homosexuality is only a ‘choice’ for so-called ex-gays. As a dyed-in-the-wool heterosexual I can certainly avow that it has never represented itself as a ‘choice’ for me.
If you live on Walden Pond and are convinced that your solitudinous, ‘green’, pastoral life is righteous, then in all likelihood, sinful, Ralph Lauren consumers in the city scare you because of their gratuitous consumption.
You have a phobia and you have made a judgment.
The vibe I get is not just that you are fearful if you are homophobic, but that you are fearful because of an irrational prejudice. Anything that you say is irrelevant because it all comes out of this irrational emotion. Am I feeling too much content?
J. R. Daniel Kirk,
I’m interested in a reply to Doug’s question above – if we are going to stop using homophobe to describe people who regard homosexuality as a sin, are we also going to stop using heretic, apostate, heterodox, false-teacher, revisionist, un-biblical etc… to describe those who do not regard homosexuality as a sin?
Though I’d enjoy a fruitful dialogue, I think it is disingenuous to imply that ad hominem distractions are the province of “the left”. It has the sound of wealthy white men complaining about “reverse-racism” – it rings hollow because the persecution, historical and present, overwhelmingly runs in the other direction.
Yes this is what I was trying to say. Well said.
Aric- This is probably not your intention, but you are coming across as though you want to retain the use of “homophobe” so long as others retain ad hominems, or you are not willing to recognize the improper uses of “homophobe” until other improper uses of terminology are addressed. But let’s move forward on BOTH counts and we have to start somewhere. The argument: “But other people do it to me” (and versions of it) doesn’t really help. I think a better response is not yes-but, rather: yes-and
It’s not wanting to retain the use of the word homophobe, for me at least it’s wondering why the first thing we think of is eliminating homophobe instead of a general discussion about the language we use. That’s what smacks of reverse racism claims or misandry accusations.
And the reason is, I think, because prior to now people who opposed homosexuality or think it’s a sin didn’t have to be made to feel uncomfortable in any way about it, it was the general societal value and still is in many ways. That’s called privilege, you don’t notice you have it because you aren’t forced to think about it every day. But a homosexual person lives it with every single day and faces day in and day out a lack of acceptance from society, physical threats, and emotional abuse. Most literature deals with how depressing it is to be gay, and very few gay characters are ever main characters in TV or film. That’s why, I think, it’s necessary to ask the question, can we make this a broader conversation? Or are we only proposing the elimination of the word because people are being made to feel uncomfortable for their position on homosexuality with the use of a less than pleasant word? Who needs to be protected the most? And what message is sent when we are bothered by the use of the word homophobia over the historical marginalization of homosexual people?
Rob,
I’m with Halden in believing that requesting the cessation of ‘homophobic’ is itself an ideological move which invariably benefits those in the privileged position. The reason the analogy to reverse racism is apt is because it is obscene for people of power and privilege to complain about slights to their person in face of the overwhelming disadvantage faced by those they are accusing of reverse-racism. Christians are the majority in our society. We are not a disadvantaged group or a minority. Whatever slights or insults we feel we have sustained are nothing in comparison to the outright hatred, legal discrimination and rejection faced by LGBTQ persons. Being called a homophobe, however distracting is not comparable to violence, incessant bullying, social exclusion, familial rejection etc… David McNelley below says “my foot” to my claim that oppression runs the other direction in our society, demonstrating just how out of touch with reality we can be. Let me know when the kids in middle school are shouting “christian” at each other as an insult instead of “fag” and we can talk.
Fair responses (Aric and Amy) as far as I’m concerned. But I’ll add that homophobe (like other words such as “heretic” or whatever) is just not accurate in many many cases. My own opinions about the matter have noting to do with fear, and it seems a bit ridiculous for someone who knows nothing about me to claim this is so, or to make statements to the effect that any person who holds X position does so because of fear. I’m also not sure what I think about the idea that some classes of people need to be protected and that this project somehow justifies the use of inaccurate and pejorative language. I think that the LGBTQ community needs to learn the same lesson as the fundamentalist sign carrying preacher: ad hominems only convince the people who already agree with you and further alienate the people you disagree with. Bottom line: I’m trying to defend the moral high ground of the call to accuracy in language. And I agree that it should apply to EVERYONE.
Rob… I’m for accuracy in language also. That’s why I support the use of the term. As I said at the top of the thread, words are defined by usage, not by etymology. I’ll go further and say that words’ meanings rely on usage even more than on the dictionary definition, which serves only to convey current usage. Dictionary.com defines homophobia as “unreasoning fear of or antipathy toward homosexuals and homosexuality.”
That was an or – not an and. In other words, homophobia does not necessarily entail fear.
Unreasoning? Yes – that is generally the accusation that is being made. Maybe not always. Probably, “unjustified” would be a better word to convey the sense of the antipathy described by “homophobia” as that word is normally used.
Thanks for that clarification. I totally agree about words and their use. Of course, etymology is also complex because while it does not necessarily define meaning it can (as in the case of popular etymologies which re-define the meaning of the word on the basis of a misunderstanding of morphology). But let’s be realistic: this is a strategically coined term where morphology is indeed meaningful (like biology or philosophy). However, the “H” word is new to language and may be in flux. I will also grant that there are probably many people who have an unreasoning fear of or antipathy to homosexuals, and that the word may appropriately be used in reference to them (though strategically it seems like a bad idea to me, but that is another matter. In the same way, I would never call a homosexual a “bible hater” even though surely the term could apply to some homosexuals). What I continue to object to, however, is the attribution of any internal state of mind to a person based on a stated opinion, especially when that state of mind is applied to vast numbers of people. This is a trend I see in many different areas. Our public discourse is often little more than a battle of unjustified generalizations. In any case, my current practice in conversation is to simply ask that any use of the “H” word be clarified. This tends to be helpful.
Persecution. Hmmm, speaking of Persecution, let’s not forget to include the persecution done to Christians etc. Overwhelmingly runs in the other direction, my foot.
Actually, they are homoclasts. We are not afraid of the homosexual lifestyle or people. We love the people and denounce the sinful lifestyle. It can be done.
Well said, Robert.
There are a lot of excellent points being made here. Thanks, everyone.
When I was at Duke, a professor who liked to push people’s buttons used the term “flaming faggot” in a doctoral seminar. Someone got rightly offended at this and called him on it.
Here’s my concern: we can always say, “Well, you stop and I’ll stop.” Or, “I’ll stop once x, y, and z objectives are achieved.”
From a Christian standpoint, these responses are moral failures. Our calling is always to love our neighbor as ourselves, and to do unto others as we would have done to ourselves.
So, within Christian calls for civil conversation, I don’t think “homophobe” is appropriate, even if it provocatively makes people feel the weight of what they are doing to others. The Christian position is not, “Do unto others what has been done unto you so that the other will know how you really feel.”
Also, this is related to general pursuit of peace and justice: progress with people does not come when we insult one another and impute various sorts of motivations to one another’s behavior. You can justify, and probably well, the use of this language in a situation where homosexuals have been the targets of discrimination and oppression. But you are also cutting yourself off from people of goodwill with whom you disagree, and are thereby hindering the change you want to see occur.
That is just the point. You are calling your conversation partner irrational … based on what?
To have meaningful conversation I must first assume positive intent and that my conversation partner is both rational and of good will.
So my conversation partner says she thinks homosexual acts are wrong. Based on that alone, do I know that she is being irrational? If the answer is yes, then there is no point in having the conversation. To assert homophobia merely directs conversation away from her reasoning. It denies the opportunity to interact with her reasoning to see what may be learned and what may be shared that would alter her perspective. And the same goes for calling someone who affirms homosexual acts a heretic.
In both cases, doesn’t saying, “I think you position is unjustified” further communication better than inflammatory labels?
Ooops! This was intended as a reply to smijer.
An accusation of irrationality invites the accused to use rationality. An accusation of unreasoning invites the accused to reason. As I said, “unjustified” is probably less inflammatory, and more in line than the language I normally use. However, lexically speaking, “homophobia” is just fine. And if a speaker finds condemnation called for, it is an appropriate choice of words with which to condemn.
The issue is whether the speaker chooses to use language of condemnation at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way in order to achieve a positive purpose. Really, that’s the only issue.
“The issue is whether the speaker chooses to use language of condemnation at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way in order to achieve a positive purpose. Really, that’s the only issue.”
Yes. If a person begins lapsing into irrational or unreasonable behavior it may be appropriate. But even here I would want reflect carefully on why I’m making the charge and what I hope to accomplish.
I agree with that last, mostly. Unfortunately, most of the time, most people hold most opinions unreasoningly. That includes those most likely to use the term “homophobia”. Humans just aren’t wired to think through thinks logically. Reason is an artifice – a wonderful tool – but one that most folks rarely pick up and use.
One of the things that troubles me about the manner in which I see the term ‘homophobia’ employed has to do with the manner in which the term often functions to prevent thoughtful discourse, and to rule out any questioning of a gay agenda. For instance, one may have no problem with homosexual relationships, but if one were to speak out against gay marriage (e.g. for undermining the grammar of the institution of marriage, as it serves to preserve and foster the bonds of blood, the relationship between the sexes, the bond between generations, and as it is oriented towards providing a secure setting for the flourishing of the family, rather than merely for the satisfaction of the partners), one finds oneself instantly labeled as ‘homophobic’. Your arguments aren’t answered, just dismissed.
I think that this reflects a more general troubling trend in public discourse. Public discourse has come to be oriented around sensitivities, rather than around truth and rational discourse. It increasingly seems to be the case that people believe that their feelings of offense have bearing upon academic debate. In the past, were you to respond to an opponent’s position by claiming that you were offended, you would be seen to be admitting defeat, rather than providing a valid response.
People erect a human shield around substantive issues. Raise deeper, challenging, and uncomfortable issues of religion, morality, cultural practice, sexual ethics, and the like, and people will rush to claim that your questions are offensive, even when no personal attack was intended and no vicious intent existed. The more allowances that we make for thin skins in the public square, the more we put a free society at risk. Full participation in a free society demands of us a willingness to ask and be asked tough and searching questions, questions that strike at issues that are dear to us and that may be central to our identities. Debate shouldn’t be vicious, but it should be challenging and uncompromising.
Political correctness is the most obvious example of this reorientation of public discourse in action. Certain questions and claims are placed out of bounds, purely because they might cause offense to some group, irrespective of whether they are true or not. The closing down of public discourse, and the gradual loss of the freedom of a public voice for many people, is brought about by the elevation of people’s sensitivities over the claims of a shared societal commitment to the quest for truth in combative and challenging dialogue. Terms like ‘prejudice’ and ‘discrimination’ are thrown around, while no one asks whether the prejudice is a sound one, which can be supported by rational argument, or whether there are strong bases on which the discrimination can be justified.
The debate on gay marriage is a great example of a context in which most of these things can be seen in action. Deeper questions about the nature of morality, personhood, sex, the purpose of marriage, and the like are systematically excluded. The ‘debate’ is then waged using empty terms like ‘equality’ and ‘freedom’. The meaning of freedom is presumed, never argued for. Equality is asserted, rather than demonstrated (as Steven Smith points out, equality can only become meaningful when we are arguing for it in terms of substantive criteria). Shouting ‘equality’ as if it were an argument for something like gay marriage is thus an entirely circular argument – first it has to be demonstrated that, relative to the criteria of marriage, homosexual couples are in fact equal to heterosexual couples. The human shield is then erected around the issue. The victim card is played, those who challenge gay marriage are labeled ‘homophobes’, and accused of ‘prejudice’ and ‘discrimination’. In all of this no real, substantive dialogue really takes place, or could take place.
As we forsake the idea of a society bound together by a common quest for truth, despite radically different positions, we have embarked upon a new vision for social cohesion, based upon such notions as tolerance and nonjudgmentalism. ‘Tolerance’, ‘nonjudgmentalism’, ‘reasonableness’ – all of these things concern the restriction of reason and the claims of debate from realms where they formerly operated. Tolerance means that we cannot subject individuals and their core beliefs and identities to the claims of a greater truth. Nonjudgmentalism means that we should not be rigorous in forming and applying considered judgments. Reasonableness means that we should not introduce our deepest convictions to public discourse.
However, each of these commitments entails the closing down of the challenging and searching public discourse that once secured a free and open society. Discourse is increasingly truncated, until it is no longer able to say much that is meaningful. Consequently, we are left with a society which is driven by the disingenuousness of political correctness, rather than bound together by a shared public discourse in search of truth. Rival positions are increasingly ridiculed, rather than substantially engaged with. This contributes to a growing ghettoization of ideological positions. Faith in the power of persuasion and in the shared pursuit of truth is abandoned, to create a fragile truce among coexisting errors, a truce that could be unsettled if anyone were allowed to speak too much.
In contrast to a society bound together by a shared agonistic public conversation in search of truth through engagement with substantive issues, it is by no means clear to me that freedom will thrive within the new context of tolerance, where the public quest for truth has been abandoned. While freedom and emancipation could be advanced in the past by means of the claims of truth, in the context of the new ‘tolerant’ society, the claims of truth hold less weight and may not even be admissible. Politically inconvenient or inexpedient truths can no longer easily be advanced by recourse to the uncompromising force of reason, as political correctness has excluded them from discussion altogether. Society is left ever more vulnerable to political caprice and is progressively dispossessed of the emancipatory discourse that has served it so well in the past.
This is what I think that we risk by giving words like ‘homophobia’ too much of a place in public discourse.
In reply to Mr. McNeely:
“Second of all, history shows that the decay of the biblical model of the family (one man one woman married) invariably leads to societal decay. For example, Rome under Caligula, Sodom and Gomorrah, Romans 1, et al.”
I’m sorry, but this statement is factually incorrect, as well as logically fallacious. The modern model of marriage is just that: modern. If you have something other than conjectural evidence to support the idea that ancient Mesopotamian or European cultures were ever anything but functionally polygamous, please do link. Futher, your notion of causality is troubling – even if we were to agree on your summary of human sexuality and family in ancient cultures, it still would not follow that a change in them led to “societal decay.” By the same reasoning, we could argue that learning to read and write leads to societal decay, and that would at least be Biblical, in a traditional sense, since John’s gospel and Paul’s writings express a deep distrust of the written word. And “history” never shows us anything; we interpret it and use it for our own projects.
There is much about the modern model of marriage that is simply modern, as you say. However, I think that the polygamy card is often overplayed in these debates. Under polygamy a marriage is still for one man and one woman. The difference is that a single person can have a number of marriages simultaneously.
The one man and one women model of marriage is practically universal, as marriage is built around the fact of reproductive relationships. As the relationship between a man and a woman is the relationship from which all community ultimately derives, it is a relationship that is of vital public interest and information.
And:
“Actually, they are homoclasts. We are not afraid of the homosexual lifestyle or people. We love the people and denounce the sinful lifestyle. It can be done.”
I think, though, that from my point of view, the choice to believe it is a “sinful lifestyle” is the issue — why make that interperative choice? If you say “tradition” I’ll point out that you’re willing to ditch tradition on other matters. If you say “scriptural integrity,” again, what does and doesn’t fall under that umbrella changes with the times.
The fact is, you haven’t got a nonhuman source for that interperative choice. The lack of that source combined with the insistence by otherwise kind, rational people to continue condoning discrimination against gay folks means that the motives must be irrational.
It also mean that, if I am being a good neighbor to my gay friends and relatives, I should be pushing this point with Christians more, right?
“The fact is, you haven’t got a nonhuman source for that interperative choice.”
By your interpretation, then neither do you for your interpretive choice. Therefore, being a Christian is divorced from revelation and and form the witness of the saints over history. They have no voice in the conversation (not that they are the only voices.) In effect, Christianity is now a “might makes right” war in which whoever can most successfully demonize their opponent wins. Yes?
Since I think that the analogy between “homophobia” and “racism” is right on in terms of actual usage, I want to explore the analogy just a bit to see what it means.
In its root meaning, “racism” refers to the systematic marginalization of one racial group by another. But the term does not merely have a descriptive meaning. It also makes a strongly negative evaluative judgment. Thus, the term binds together systematic oppression based on race with the judgment that such systematic oppression is wrong. By extension, lots of things—acts, people, beliefs, attitudes—can be called racist insofar as they are the kinds of things that serve to perpetuate the social marginalization of racial minorities. A belief would do this if, were it true, it would JUSTIFY the practice of social marginalization.
As such, in calling a belief “racist” one is not merely casting a pejorative label on it but offering a reason to reject it. One is saying, in short-hand, that this belief implies that the social marginalization based on race is just; but it is not just; hence, the belief implies something false and so must itself be rejected as false.
That one can say all of this with a word rather than an argument both reinforces and expresses the appropriateness of binding together the descriptive and normative senses connoted by the term. That is, in using the term, one expresses the fittingness of treating a certain moral judgment as presumptively correct.
Now if you think it is indeed fitting to condemn the systematic exclusion of gays and lesbians from full access to crucial social goods (marriage), then you will find it fitting to use the term “homophobic” to label beliefs, attitudes, and practices that contribute to such social exclusion. For example, it will be judged fitting to label as homophobic the belief that all homosexual acts are wrong (since this belief justifies what one takes to be clearly unjust practices and policies, the belief is therefore judged false).
If, however, you think that all homosexual acts are wrong, you will by implication think that the systematic social marginalization of sexual minorities is not wrong, and so you will find the homophobia label unfitting—since this term attaches a negative judgment on something you do not think warrants such a judgment. And you are likely to bristle at the use of the term, because its use takes for granted a moral perspective with which you do not agree.
Such bristling CAN be an impediment to productive dialogue—but it can also serve other purposes. There is a tendency for many in the dispute about homosexuality to assume that there is only one locus of moral debate: namely, over the morality of homosexuality. They think that only once THAT matter is settled should we look at whether excluding sexual minorities from access to marriage is unjust. But the homophobia label can serve as a potent reminder that there are two loci of moral debate—one over the morality of homosexuality, one over the morality of systematically marginalizing gays and lesbians. Since how we answer one has implications for how we answer the other, to set aside consideration of the ethics of socially marginalizing gays and lesbians until we’ve settled whether homosexuality is wrong may be to unfairly exclude from the moral discourse one of the most compelling reasons to think that homosexuality is NOT wrong. Shouting “homophobia!” may, it seems to me, be a way for marginalized gays and lesbians and their allies to demand due attention to the social justice issue.
I think that identifying the exclusion of gay couples from marriage as ‘marginalization’ is a little over the top. There are other ways in which gay people are marginalized within society, of course, but the marriage case doesn’t seem to be one of them.
Marriage is a particular type of relationship that is central to society’s existence, and is celebrated for this reason. It furthers society’s interests in ways that homosexual relationships can not. It produces society in the first place. It binds together the sexes, teaching men and women how to relate to each other (as husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, brothers, and sisters). It binds together parents and their biological children, and strengthens and supports the bonds of blood. It accomplishes the movement from one generation to the next. The relationship is traditionally oriented to provide a secure setting for the raising of children. It binds together sex and procreation and provides a context in which sex can be undertaken as a responsible act, where the potential consequences are provided for (detach sex from reproduction and government will have to move in to take the responsibility that we are failing to take).
The simple fact of the matter is that, even in cases of adoption, gay marriages doesn’t accomplish any of these things. Furthermore, changing the grammar of the institution to include gay marriages will serve to compromise every single one of the major things that marriage does for our society.
In many ways, gay marriage is merely the point that the heterosexual dilution of marriage to a hedonic close personal relationship, ordered primarily to the desires of the partners, has led us. To the extent that an institution is something that transcends the desires and intentions of individuals and establishes a clear structure, we have been working towards the deinstitutionalization of marriage for some time. You don’t get to run an institution however you like.
If homosexuals were agreeing for a sui generis institution to recognize committed unions, subject to certain social norms of behaviour, we could have a debate. The fact that they are arguing for their relationships to be called ‘marriages’ is an assault upon society’s central institution.
It is also an argument for the equivalence of homosexual and heterosexual relationships, when huge differences exist between the two. This strikes me as hugely problematic. When a society celebrates gay relationships as equivalent to heterosexual relationships – whatever one’s conception of morality – I think that a line has been crossed and a politically incorrect reality is being denied. Denying reality to serve political correctness will generally be accompanied by legal and political force that serves to maintain the illusion.
The further question of why the fact of sexual intercourse between two people makes their relationship worthy of public celebration is raised. In the case of heterosexual marriage, there are fairly obvious reasons, given the fact that the union is oriented towards procreation and is consummated in a reproductive-type act (even when a marriage produces no children, the grammar of the institution is still oriented towards procreation). Why should we distinguish between a couple wanting public celebration of their commitment to lifelong celibate friendship and a gay couple wanting to get married, though? Why does a genital relationship between two individuals set their relationship apart from all others in the public’s eyes and make it worthy of celebration? It strikes me that the marginalization discourse has increasingly divorced things from reality, as people bend over backwards to give the gay rights movement what it wants, without ever raising the questions of equity that would deny them such celebration.
Simply put, there are extremely good reasons for the privileging of committed heterosexual relationships over committed homosexual ones. Equity demands such ‘heterosexism’; we just dare not say it.
Alastair,
I would argue that exclusion from participation in marriage is the paradigm of gay and lesbian marginalization. The basic social unit in our culture is the family, and marriage is the institution that enables adults to form a socially recognized family unit. As such, that gays and lesbians cannot have their pair-bonds recognized in this way is a very significant form of social marginalization
And it is, by the way, about pair-bonds–a distinctive and complex species of human intimacy that pulls people towards life partnerships, that is, towards forming a social unit. While sexual intimacy is a part of such pair-bonding, it is ONLY a part and should not be reduced to it. Even if my wife and I had never had children, our partnership would still be about far more than “friends with benefits” because we’d be a social unit acting as partners in life, bonded by a distinctive species of love unlike what characterizes the intimacy of mere friends (or mere friends who occasionally have sex).
The same is true for my gay and lesbian who are in enduring partnerships. The difference is that their partnerships are denied the social recognition as a family unit. And this is no small thing. After all, they all grew up in a family and have a cultural (and, I think, natural) inclination as adults to form for themselves this kind of communal entity out of which they will engage the broader social world. That the broader social world refuses to recognize these efforts, given the centrality of the family unit to the social fabric, constitutes a fundamental alienation, similar in some ways to the sort of alienation that people who remain single all their lives feel, but crucially different in that even when they do form a pair-bond its status is *rejected*.
As such, the argument you offer here is decidedly not an argument for the conclusion that exclusion from marriage isn’t marginalization. Rather, it is an argument for the view that such marginalization is justified. It is an argument that has been advanced by Jean Bethke Elshtain and Margaret Somerville, among others–and it is, I think, the best argument in support of the systematic social marginalization of gays and lesbians. But it is an argument FOR marginalization, not a proof that gays and lesbians aren’t, in fact, marginalized.
Is it ultimately a convincing argument? Here, again, is where I think it is important to keep in mind the two loci of moral debate. The argument you advance places a moral premium on the reproductive potential of a pair bond. How morally significant is the honoring of that potential with a unique social institution? How does that weigh against the moral case against marginalizing a minority group in ways that, in my judgment based on listening compassionately to my gay and lesbian neighbors, is deeply damaging to their lives? On thing is clear: We cannot answer this question unless we really listen–broadly, deeply, and empathetically–to the diverse life stories of gays and lesbians. Hopefully, at least, we can agree on that.
The thing is, not only does society marginalize these relationships, but (probably because a lot of our society’s norms are rooted in Judeo-Xian eithics/though/philosophy) there is a biblical marginalization (if you choose to use such terms) of homosexual marriage. The God of the Jews and the Christians does not recognize gay marriage, as it is against His created order.
Anyway, hope this helps you understand the reasoning of society’s so-called “marginalization.”
Eric,
I think that the basic error here is thinking that marriage primarily exists to rubberstamp a close personal relationship between two individuals. I don’t want to diminish the importance of ‘pair-bonds’, but nor do I want to diminish the cultural significance of marriage, and gay marriage does that.
Marriage upholds a certain form of ‘relational grammar’ that preserves and fosters a number of relationships, not merely that between two individuals who love each other very much. The idea that marriage could be reduced to this troubles me greatly. Obviously marriage is not merely, or primarily, about sex. Nor need marriage involve procreation for it to be marriage. A particular relationship need not express the entire grammar of the institution for it to be a genuine marriage. The problem is that gay marriage completely rewrites the grammar of the relationship, in a manner that leaves a number of the bonds that marriage exists to protect vulnerable.
I would question the appropriateness of the word ‘marginalization’ in this context. It is a term that is generally used to portray society’s privileging of marriage as if it were an arbitrary celebration of heterosexual people over gay people. As a single person I may feel ‘marginalized’ by the significance that marriage is given, but I know that the institution does not exist to marginalize me, but to protect and uphold certain bonds that are good for society in general. Although as a single person I can do much for society, I cannot do what marriage does. The fact that I do not enjoy its status and privileges is entirely equitable; to frame this in terms of ‘marginalization’ is to present the issue in a very biased light.
The ‘marginalization’ here ultimately comes down to the fact that society’s great project of moving from one generation to the next is one in which nature has not equipped homosexual pair-bonds to participate in in the same way as heterosexual pair bonds. People often fail to see just how much the redefinition of the grammar of marriage to include gay pair-bonds would lead to the marginalization of the concerns of children from the institution.
Gays aren’t ‘excluded’ from marriage, as if there were some arbitrary restriction holding them back. A gay marriage is simply an impossible entity, so we don’t recognize them. If gays were excluded from marriage when their ‘pair-bonds’ could serve society in exactly the same way as heterosexual marriages we could fairly talk about ‘exclusion’, but they can’t and so I think that this is just a matter of coming to terms with reality.
There is a certain degree of social impotence that comes with certain territory. Children are the future and those in committed reproductive relationships will always have great power for this reason. The bonds of blood are strong, and those who work according to them will often be more influential in the long term. Single people, married people without children, people in committed gay relationships, and those who lack the stronger institutional bonds to their children that marriage provides, will always be at some measure of a disadvantage. This situation won’t be changed until government assumes the responsibility for the task of child-rearing, or something like that.
If we were arguing for a sui generis institution that recognized gay pair-bonds, a more realistic debate could be had. The problem is that if we were to recognize gay pair-bonds on their own terms, they would still probably not be viewed as equivalent to marriage bonds.
You claim that the ‘status’ of their pair bonds are ‘rejected’. The status of civil union, including most or all of the privileges of marriage status – save for the name – are given to gay pair-bonds in many jurisdictions. The key thing that is rejected is the claim of their unions to the title of ‘marriage’, which would grant equivalency. However, the claim to this ‘status’ is consistently asserted and never really demonstrated.
You write: “Is it ultimately a convincing argument? Here, again, is where I think it is important to keep in mind the two loci of moral debate. The argument you advance places a moral premium on the reproductive potential of a pair bond. How morally significant is the honoring of that potential with a unique social institution? How does that weigh against the moral case against marginalizing a minority group in ways that, in my judgment based on listening compassionately to my gay and lesbian neighbors, is deeply damaging to their lives? On thing is clear: We cannot answer this question unless we really listen–broadly, deeply, and empathetically–to the diverse life stories of gays and lesbians. Hopefully, at least, we can agree on that.”
First, a clarification. The moral premium is not placed upon the ‘reproductive potential of a pair bond,’ if by that we are talking about particular relationships. The moral premium is rather placed upon an institution that protects and encourages the bonds of blood, the relationship between the sexes, and the relationship between the generations. The moral premium is placed upon an institution that is ordered towards procreation (upon a form of pair bond that has the intrinsic potential to become more than a pair bond) and the needs of children.
The relationships between men and women, between the generations, between the child and their parents, and the relationships of blood impact on all of our lives profoundly. The idea that we should consider redefining an institution designed to protect these to make a particular minority feel more accepted is incredibly reckless, especially when the breakdown of the bonds maintained by a strong marriage culture would be profoundly damaging to everyone, and not just in terms of our feelings of well-being.
There is a time for sympathetic listening. However, there are such things as non-negotiables, matters on which we cannot compromise without the sacrifice of truth. Ultimately, I don’t think that any of the concerns, stories, and issues of the gay community has any bearing on the question of whether their committed unions should be recognized as ‘marriages’. That question boils down to the fact that gay pair-bonds and heterosexual pair-bonds are categorically different in character. No amount of empathetic listening will change the coordinates of the situation in that regard. The listening is, of course, crucial, but it must be undertaken within a situation where the constraints of reality are openly acknowledged, rather than wished away, or fought against.
The problem with all of this ‘sympathy’ talk is that much of the time it boils down to little more than a dissembling euphemism for the rejection of the biblical pattern of truth and love, for the contemporary counterfeit of ‘tolerance’. Tolerance cannot be forthright with its neighbour because it is more concerned with being inoffensive than it is with being truthful in love. This is an issue on which there is a genuine offence and we should not disguise the fact, or pretend that it doesn’t exist. Much as we would like to seem sympathetic of the concerns of the gay community, we must honestly recognize that there are issues on which we must oppose them, and the account of reality presented by much of the gay rights movement. In my experience, many of those who stress that sympathetic listening has a bearing on the fairly clear issues, such as the differences between gay pair bonds and heterosexual pair bonds, are the people who never end up saying anything.
We should also not forget that sympathy can be a profoundly dangerous thing if not handled correctly. The great leaders of the Bible were generally marked out by their ability to act without sympathy when the occasion called. The moral leaders that God appointed for his people were people like Moses, who slew the Egyptian, like the Levites, who killed 3,000 of their brethren, like Phineas, who thrust a spear through a couple, like Samuel, who hacked Agag in pieces, like Nehemiah, who cursed, struck, and pulled out the hair of people, like Peter, who could condemn Ananias and Sapphira to their deaths, like Paul, who could curse opponents like Elymas, etc. The bad leaders in Scripture are often condemned for their sympathy, for having their hearts led astray by sympathy for others, which prevented them from speaking truth and justice (e.g. Eli’s sympathy for his sons, Solomon’s love for his wives, Ahaziah’s love for his mother, the Corinthians’ failure to exercise church discipline in 1 Corinthians 5, etc.).
I posted an extended reply to this comment on my blog yesterday but forgot to add the link here for those interested. My thoughts on the question of whether same-sex marriage fundamentally “rewrites the grammar of marriage” can be found here.
Thanks for the link, Eric. I’ll check our the full post later today. And also, thanks for participating so thoroughly in this conversation. I was extremely pleased with the level of respectful disagreement that went on here.
“By your interpretation, then neither do you for your interpretive choice.”
Indeed.
“In effect, Christianity is now a “might makes right” war in which whoever can most successfully demonize their opponent wins. Yes?”
That doesn’t logically follow. First of all, I’m not sure that “winning” is a necessary conclusion from disagreement. Secondly, I’m curious to know then, how one decides what is and isn’t revealed, and how revelation can be said to exist apart from interpretation. Since we haven’t got a mechanism for deciding objectively what is and isn’t revealed, one is in the same boat regarding revelation as one is with the Biblical text. This is why I take “we see as through a glass darkly” to heart — language is never going to give us a one-to-one representative correspondence with nature.
That doesn’t mean that God isn’t communicating with us. It just means that, we are never in the position of knowing absolutely, what to make of that communication, which is the case with *any* communication. That makes us participants at every level, co-creators in a sense.
John, thanks for the clarification.
I’m using revelation in the sense that God engaged his people. That led to written record of how God’s people interpreted their interaction with God. Over time, the believing community, for both OT and NT came to see that certain writings carried special authority for the whole community. That constituted the canon. They did not so much give Scripture authority as surrender to it.
The witness of the Saints is multi-voiced but it is also gives witness to the ongoing work of God in the world. Wooden interpretations of Scripture and Creeds are not appropriate. We are indeed participants because there is always interpretation. But we do interpretation with those both past and present.
Eric wrote: “the homophobia label can serve as a potent reminder that there are two loci of moral debate—one over the morality of homosexuality, one over the morality of systematically marginalizing gays and lesbians.”
Eric, that is why I use “heterosexism” — I feel like that term describes “systematically marginalizing gays and lesbians,” and leave “homophobia to describe irrational fear-based reactions.
John,
I agree that the term “heterosexism” is a better fit than “homophobia” for the phenomenon of LGBT marginalization. That said, “homophobia” is the term that has emerged as the correlate to racism and sexism with respect to sexual minorities. Coretta Scott King routinely used it in this way. Howard Dean used it in this way in a 2004 critique of the Bush campaign tactics. I’ve read AIDS pamphlets that use it in this way, headlines, etc. (the phrase oft repeated is “racism, sexism, and homophobia”). For better or worse, the term that is actually used to reference the social marginalization of gays and lesbians is “homophobia.”
Now if your point is that we should strive to change usage–or, more modestly, that those of us who are made conscious of the issue should make a deliberate commitment to use the term “heterosexism” rather than “homophobia” so as to avoid misunderstanding rooted in the original technical meaning of “homophobia,” I think I agree with that. But for the purpose of *understanding* what people (especially on the left) mean to say when they use the term, keeping the racism/sexism analogy front and center is helpful.
For better or worse, people in general WON’T stop using the term that has become dominant in the public discourse for naming marginalization based on sexual orientation–and there are two strategies that can be pursued when one’s aim is to minimize misunderstanding, one based on how we speak and the other based on how we hear.
Alastair: for real? We’re now defining “marriage between one man and one woman” so broadly as to include marriages between one man and multiple women. Okay….
“As the relationship between a man and a woman is the relationship from which all community ultimately derives, it is a relationship that is of vital public interest and information.”
I don’t agree with your premise, and even if I did, your conclusion doesn’t logically follow.
A polygamist isn’t in a group marriage. Polygamists will generally marry their partners individually. Each marriage is a separate entity. Each one is a bond beyond one man and one woman. For a man with multiple wives, the wives are not married to each other, or in a single marriage. If divorce occurs it is not the case that every wife is removed.
Practically every individual walking this planet was conceived through the union of a man and a women. The connection of heterosexual unions with procreation renders them publicly significant in a manner that gay relationships simply aren’t. Out of the sexual union of a man and a woman a new society can be formed. Marriage and the family are organically connected through the fact of procreation and the family is society in embryo. The sexual union between two men does not possess this significance, even were the couple to adopt. Their sexual union cannot render itself public in the way that the sexual union of a heterosexual couple can in procreation. This is why society has a vital interest in committed heterosexual relationships and does not have the same interest in homosexual ones.
I saw this comment of yours, Halden, and figured I would tackle it.
“That’s why in the Bible God consistently judges and condemns not “sin” but people who are sinners. Do you deny that the Bible presents God’s judgment in this way? There is nothing in the Bible that treats “sin” as some abstract category about which we make claims that are then extraneous to our moral evaluation of people.”
I think Romans chapters 1, 3, and particularly 7 deal with sin in the abstract. Pauline thought is replete with this idea of sin as an abstract idea, even if connected to sinners.
To be sure, I do not deny that God deals with sinners. But I would say God deals with sinners and their sins. 1 Thess 4:3-about verse 6, has some of the same ideas, as well as Galatians 5, before you get to verses 22 and 23 which talk about the fruit of the Spirit. The nature of the fallenness of creation by way of man’s rebellion in Genesis 3 is there, albeit quite linked to mankind itself.
And true, God does give men over, along a certain timeline or course, to their own depravity, allowing them to wallow in their sin. But He does also provide a way of escape from that sin. And in addition to this, He provides us with free agency so that we can make the choice what we will decide, whether life or death (Deuteronomy somewhere describes this).
Either way, I think what get God are the attitudes and the choices we make in rebellion against Him. We know better, but we are deliberately choosing the opposite. Not just mistakes, but willful defiance. In those times, the punishment comes, again as a warning based in His love and mercy.
Alistair: Sorry, but I think you’re splitting hairs.
I’ve been thinking about this for the better part of a day now, and I’m going to try to get the tangled morass of ideas and concerns in my mind out onto paper in some coherent way. Here goes:
Western Christianity, like all large conversations that are considered vital by their participants, is presented to its participants by its various gatekeepers and history-makers as having a homogenous, linear tradition that, as time passes, results in further progress toward a closer and closer approximation to the truth of things. That’s a particularly modern way of looking at things, but it’s one trait shared by every major modern ideology. The conversations we call “science” present themselves that way, as do the ones we call “conservatism,” “socialism,” “art,” etc.
That wasn’t always the case, and at the time of the writing of the New Testament, it definitely wasn’t the case. The idea of progress — that human efforts in history will continue to result in better and better outcomes — didn’t exist in ancient cultures, and it’s evident throughout the New Testament — the outcome of history is portrayed as pretty grim, and humans both as individuals and as groups are portrayed (to my reading) as not learning from their mistakes or ever getting any closer to the truth this side of an actual (re)union with God.
That’s why so much of the New Testament puts so much stress on how horribly mistaken humans are when they try to bring that reunion about by adherence to laws and codification of ideas in the form of texts. The Pharisees stand as an example to that, and much of Jesus’s responses to them indicate not that they’ve gotten the rules or the theology wrong, but that they’ve totally misunderstood the point by placing so much emphasis on the rules and theology in the first place. Paul wrote “the letter kills, but the Sprit gives life.” John posited the Son of God as a spoken word, pitted directly against the written word.
What does all this mean for me? Well, it means that the whole business of theology is a process in which I am a participant, and a process that is never certain. If my efforts at describing God, love, the right ordering of the soul, a good society, justice, or any of the other matters addressed by the Bible and the Christian conversation are going to be judged by how close they approximate How Things Really Are, then I will, as Paul pointed out, fail. I see as through a glass darkly. Furthermore, if it were the case that a managed to get any bit of it correct by some objective measure, that alone wouldn’t matter very much if the cost of doing so is that I am less loving for doing so.
If I’m going to get it wrong, and God knows this, and pursuit of getting it right isn’t an end to itself, then that means that the theologies I make only have value inasmuch as they serve some other purpose. And the purpose that stands out to me over and over again is “love my neighbor.”
The story Jesus tells when asked the legalist’s question “well, who is my neighbor?” is, of course, the Good Samaritan tale, but what I’ve always found fascinating about the story is not the common interpretation (EVERYONE is my neighbor!) but this: I think it’s telling that Jesus makes a point of having the injured man “half dead.” This means that, from the road, he probably looked fully dead, and therefore, on the eve of the Sabbath, unclean. The Levite and the priest, both walking to the first Sabbath services, would have been ceremonially unclean for helping him, and therefore didn’t. The Samaritan, by virtue of being permanently unclean in the eyes of the Jews, could help, and did. (That’s Martin Luther King Jr.’s observation, not mine.)
What I take from this is that loving my neighbor means risking being outside the law as understood by the established religious order. It might also mean that if I spend my energies trying to be inside that order that I risk being unable to love my neighbor when I am needed.
What it means to me in relation to this larger issue is that while I don’t think I’m going to be judged based on my ability to make accurate descriptions of God or theologies that at all represent God’s intentions for me and the universe, I do believe, per the Sheep and the Goats parable, that I will be judged based on how much I was willing to set aside concern for my own righteousness and rightness in favor of helping the people who need it. And those people are consistently described in both the Old and New Testaments as those who are oppressed economically and socially by the people in power.
Which brings me to homosexuality. I don’t think we can or are expected to have correct theologies. I do think we are expected to champion the causes of those who are mistreated and oppressed. My theologies will be, in my view, judged “by their fruit.” Did they make me kinder? Did they encourage me to set aside my concern for myself and concern myself instead with others? And I cannot, by any measure, see how clinging to old prejudices about homosexuality furthers me in love or kindness. I continue to see so much evil and hatred and unkindness arise from theologies that condemn it as sin, and I’m not willing to be a part of that.
(The people who are concerned with certainty and knowing absolutely what is and isn’t sin aren’t going to like my view. All I can say to this is that on the personal level, I think you’re missing the entire point, and on the level of polity, a public knowledge of right and wrong doesn’t stop bad people from being bad.)
So, as far as “homophobia” goes, I do, in all honesty, often see Christians who are choosing to cling to old prejudices as doing so out of fear. And I think in those cases, the term is appropriate. In other cases, when describing systems of oppression and marginalization against homosexuals, I prefer “hetereosexism,” but, as I said to Dr. Kirk in a private exchange, a lot of times, I really just see it as old-fashioned bigotry. And I believe that I have a responsibility to my GLBT friends and loved ones to call that out when I see it. It’s not a nice thing to have to say, but I think it is serious, and I’m willing to, as they say, hate the sin and love the sinner.
Thanks for this John.
John,
This is very nicely said. I think it captures in a different way the same broad point I was trying to make in my Religion Dispatches piece a few weeks back (Gays Suicide and the Ethic of Love).
It seems to me that the term “homophobic” works in a way similar to terms like “liberal,” “conservative,” “pro-choice,” “pro-life,” etc. It allows discourse to be terminated or caricatured by categorizing the opponent in a pre-set box of assumptions. Discourse need not continue once the categorized person is clearly identified by the category.
This tendency terminates the exploration of nuances about important issues and cuts short both dialogue and theological reflection. Dr. Mouw is right to address the issue of civility—too often Christians have adopted the ways of American political rhetoric and closed our ears to one other (and those who do not share our faith).
And to put a fine point on it: If I remember my Greek, “homophobic” does not technically mean “fear of homosexuals.” It means “fear of same.” So a true homophobe would run screaming at the sight of twins, never wear matching shoes, socks, or gloves, and avoid double-wrapped Twinkies at all costs.
You guys have invested a lot of thoughtful energy and time into this conversation. Thank you all. I have a few thoughts in response that I will post to the blog as a new post this afternoon.
A lot of these comments are pointing in the same direction: what does it look like to love our neighbor–be it our homosexual neighbor or the neighbor with whom we disagree in debate.
That’s where I think we can all do better, where this post originated, and where I hope it has drawn all of us to think a bit more.