On the Christian segment of the three-part series on CNN, "God's Warriors", Ron Luce, teen-focused evangelist, was featured. He was bringing a political message to the kids in San Francisco, telling them to get involved in their culture. He was met with a furious cadre of homosexuals demonstrating against him, basically charging him with hate-mongering.
At one time in America, homosexuality floated blissfully below the radar of media and politics. Then came the '60's sex revolution and that began to change. Over the decades to follow, gays were outing themselves with a new passion. Finally came the bombshell: gay-marriage. This became one of the major political themes of the right and the left: responding to gay rights as civil rights.
Fundamentalist Christians are called that because they take the Bible seriously. And for decades, churches had regularly heard sermons about "Sodomites." Even anal sex is deemed "sodomy." It is also an illegal behavior that nobody gets busted for.
And don't forget AIDS blossoming on the American scene. At first it was primarily found among male gays. Obviously, God's judgment on Sodomites.
One of the fundamental and primary scriptures that deals with homosexuality is found in
Genesis 19. This chapter tells how two angels visit Lot, Abraham's nephew, and tell him to take his wife and two daughters and flee Sodom. God is about to burn the city to the ground. But Lot is met at the door by a crowd of men wanting to rape not his daughters but the two male messengers (angels). They aren't even interested in his daughters. (Ironically, this story ends with the daughters committing incest on their sleeping father).
Because of the obvious perversion found abundantly in Sodom, the name has become famous and is now attached to homosexual practices. Also, in the minds of many fundamentalist Christians, it has engendered a kind of fear and paranoia about homosexuals. They see America on a slippery slope toward judgment as the popularity of and permissiveness toward gays flourishes.
It would be nice if America just repented of all this and got right with God. If we all would just turn to Christ, things would get better. God would heal us and prosper us and so forth. But since people don't make a practice of repenting, the next best thing is to make them conform to God's standards by passing laws, and law-passing is political stuff. Like the sodomy law. Very useful.
Meanwhile, the Left protests, "Stay out of our bedrooms you bunch of prudes."
An effective comment, actually. And so the battle lines form and the gays move to the blue states.
Actually, the scriptures do not specifically cite homosexuality as the "sin of Sodom."
Ezekiel 16: 49 " 'Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.
The sins of Sodom listed sound vaguely like the American church in many ways: arrogant, overfed, unconcerned, not helping the poor. But doing detestable things sounds like it could be homosexuality that is being described (unless you are gay and think one man's poison is another man's tea). Basically, though, sexual misdeeds (like all misdeeds) contribute to the decadence and destruction of a culture.
Jesus identified sexual abuses with just thinking about it. If you commit adultery in your head you've done it with your body, so to speak. In other words, everybody in the world is guilty. And if every body's guilty, who is better than anybody else? You may be a mental homosexual who goes to church and even condemns physical homosexuals. This is often called "hypocrisy." But everybody is some kind of hypocrite whether in church or out (and whether in the closet or out).
That said, what's a fundamentalist to do? What if our government not only stops condemning gay marriage but starts to help them out? After all, these are committed relationships. Neither Sam nor George is thinking seriously about having an affair with Melvin, so it's monogamous, dude.
Fundamentalists are now wrestling with the problem of how to hate the sin and love the sinner. Do you put a sign out front: GAYS WELCOME? Do you let them teach Sunday School, sing in the choir (usually falsetto), and make their quiche for pot luck? Do they get to dance before the Lord like they do on the street, with their bodies as their message-boards? Do they get to teach your children? Teach them what? "Hey, kids, God says anything goes."
So fundamentalists have opted to fight, and some, like the Phelps clan in Topeka, Kansas are on caffeine about this. No, they're on speed.
But Jesus also showed the crowd of Jews ready to stone the adulteress that they were phonies before God. They might as well stone themselves, because they are all guilty of the same thing. But to the adulteress He said, "I forgive you, but stop it."
This is a toughy, but we have to humble ourselves before the gays. We have to say, "We've singled you out, and we're sorry." After all, they freaked us out. They started making noise about injustice. Hey, if you can give blacks equal rights you can accept us also.
Most whites love having blacks in their congregations now. We have become a fairly black-friendly culture. But is homosexuality the same thing? In a secular, post-Christian, pluralistic political system, can we continue to prosecute those who practice alternative sex? And how far do we go with it? Will the pedophiles and rapists be lining up for equal rights next?
It's a sticky mess. Do we just stop taking a stand for righteousness? But there is a higher righteousness, and that is love. That has to do with how you treat both your acceptable neighbors and your unacceptable enemies. If America identifies with Sodom, can we stop it politically? Prohibition didn't sink alcoholism. What about the really big Sodom problems: arrogance, obesity, unconcern, and ignoring the poor. At least the Liberals give lip-service to the poor, while the Christian right are often wrongly seen as greed-balls.
Believe me, fundamentalists are processing all this. They are "vexed" like Lot was in Sodom. Some are even now saying we have lost the culture: we can't hope to set up a Christian theocracy in America. So how do we live out Jesus in Sodom? Like He did. We try to love unconditionally. And we hold the line in ourselves.
Homosexuals and pedophiles are obviously already in the church organization. Sometimes they are our leaders. They either come in that way or they develop into it. And the sparks fly. But God is saying something to us. May He grant that we hear Him clearly. Will we become the storm-troopers the Liberals fear, crashing into bedrooms with machine guns, our chests adorned with crosses? Or will we learn how Jesus would handle the problem?
