LGBT+ and the Church

Chapter II. Useless Arguments

Peace be with you.

I have not yet moved onto the actual positions of the Church and the general reasons behind it. I thought it'd be useful first to approach what I believe are useless arguments. Now, as a reminder, I have a separate book altogether that combats arguments like "You're going to hell!" and similar ones which are at times seen on the signs waved by self-professing "Christians". This is bad theology and I've no desire to make a whole new chapter arguing against it when the basic conclusion in the other book covers it.

This is different and covers a few short ones I've seen passed around in debate circles that are more relevant. This is intended to be a viable, purposeful, and honest engagement with myself and the reader, and I would also like to assist the fellow Christians reading to understand my personal disagreements with these. I will update this chapter with others I may find along the way.

(1) "[Insert word] is abnormal."
I added the space as it can be interchangeable with "homosexuality" and "transgenderism", as well as variations of these. As these topics in Christianity are a dispute due to ethical reasons, just pointing at it and calling it abnormal does nothing for that topic. Something being abnormal makes no moral difference.

If you have a room full of people with brown and black hair, and then among them you find one ginger, that ginger would be abnormal in the room. This becomes more strongly the case once you zoom out and look at the entire building made up of people with brown and black hair. In some regions in Asia, a white person would be remarkably abnormal. There are videos of young Asian children staring out their schoolroom windows because they'd never seen someone like the foreigner before.

Again, abnormality makes no moral difference and it isn't a good point to make in the discussion. As such, I don't believe this should be used given it serves no benefit to anyone involved.

(2) "[insert word] is unnatural."
It is true in the biblical sense that homosexuality is considered contrary to nature. The most known expression is that found in the epistle to the Romans, where St. Paul writes: "For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due." (1:26-27)

However, in a wider conversation, it would not be as useful. Most secularists or those of more pagan traditions don't understand the nature of humanity in the same way that we would. For Orthodox Christians, what it means to be human is derived from our closeness to God. We were made in His image (reason, free will) and in His likeness (righteousness, morality, virtue). When we consist of both, we are closer to the way we were intended to be as humans and thus reject our classification as likewise with the animals. It is also to our understanding what it means to be fully alive, as the Lord is "the way, the truth, and the life". (Gospel of John, 14:6)

The farther we are from God, the more like animals we become, and go contrary to the nature we were designed to have. As theologically obvious as this is to Christians, the foundation for someone not Christian isn't the same. What is natural to them is based on the contemporary and irreligious definition of natural which consists of that within nature.

So, they would point to something animals do, in the least with exhibiting homosexual behaviours, to prove that it is natural — after all, it's within nature! Why wouldn't it be in that case? They could point to some of the mating patterns of Japanese macaques, the presence of it at times among lions and even penguins, and show it existing within the animal kingdom.

And on the other side, even if they show it exists in nature, it again does not address the ethical framework of this argument. Some animal species eat or kill their young, they can kill for fun, there is rape, there is unprovoked attacking, and even incest. A behaviour in nature does not mean the behaviour is ethical. Same with the development of technology which can be, depending on the argument, unnatural, and yet we welcome its development. Naturalism does not equate to ethics.

With the pitfall of the normality argument and also the different positions on human nature, this is also a useless argument for both sides. For Christians, the likeness and image of God hold our humanity; for the secularists, humanity is among the animals. There is generally no benefit in this dialogue. 

(3) Sodom and Gomorrah
Like the previous point, the moral error is obvious to those with a holistic understanding of Scripture. Homosexual behaviour is pinpointed as sin in other locations and so it being among the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah is there. However, non-Christians will approach the story differently from Christians. They take it in isolation, maybe use the book of Ezekiel in their argument ("Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy." 16:49), and will see no justification to include among it homosexual relations.

When presented as an argument that highlights the sin of homosexuality, although to Christians obvious, it does, indeed, fail when presented to non-Christians. There is no explicit line like we would find in the epistle to the Romans. Instead, we have the story and make inferences. There are many sins within the city; far more than we read in Lot's account which leads to the total destruction of these cities. We read in Ezekiel of some of their sins, like gluttony and pride, and in Jude of their sexual immorality (like rape) and the pursuit of strange flesh.

To the non-Christian, this isn't a valuable argument and wouldn't be until you've convinced them that the Bible describes homosexual behaviours as a sin elsewhere. The interpretation of this story requires a holistic approach. Due to this, and having once been in the position where I did not see homosexual behaviour as a sin, I can understand why this wouldn't be a beneficial argument.

There are grounds on "strange flesh" and emphasising the likelihood that the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah were not aware that the men were angels at Lot's residence, but the counter could be that Jude expressed it as "strange flesh", referring to angels, with a later understanding the citizens did not have. This becomes a more complex discussion which you can have—I personally think prioritising the other areas is much more preferable beforehand.