At least for homosexuals who don’t believe in God, the critical concern in their contact with Christians who hold to a conservative theology (ie. who don’t believe that same-sex desire/intercourse is part of God’s original plan for creation) is not the question of whether their homosexuality will send them to hell.

Think about it: if they don’t believe that God, heaven or hell exist, then this particular question can’t be a ‘real’ concern that grinds against them and causes their hackles to rise whenever they meet a Christian believer.

No, the real concern (at least in most cases) is surely:

“What is it going to take to get these Christians to quit looking at me and treating me with disdain?”.

While the elevation of the gay issue in society to a human rights issue certainly has the potential to be abused (as we have already seen through the criminal prosecution of many who only reject homosexuality as a matter of conscience and have no thoughts of hatred whatsoever), I am by no means entirely against this elevation. For there are certainly ‘some’ aspects of the historic civil rights struggle which bear upon the gay issue today. I have no doubt, for instance, that the majority of gay people in the erstwhile Christian West have at some point been led in despair to ask the question,

“Am I not a man and a brother?”.

In fact, I would even go so far as to say that – at least in urban culture – it is largely the Christians who fail to grasp the existential significance of this question to a gay population that by any modern standard (and by the Bible’s too for that matter) still experiences social exclusion at the hands of the wider culture.

So while the presenting issue in many instances might be ‘accuracy’ (ie. what does the Bible say or not say on homosexuality?), what people are usually seeking is not accuracy but ‘acceptance’. They want to hear a kind word, some kind of reassurance that despite their same-sex feelings, they can still be accepted by their heterosexual fellow men and women.

Now Christians…

If we have truly understood the gospel then we will know that that kind word – that blessing – can only truly come to someone from the Father, through the Son and by the Spirit… and that no pronouncement we might make either way can condemn or comfort so long as it comes from us.

If we have truly understood the pain and the questions of our fellow human beings then we will seek to answer the question of their heart and their hurt (ie. “am I not a man and a brother?”) before we answer the question of their lips (ie. “surely you don’t believe that homosexuality is wrong?”).

Let me be clear. I am not seeking to sidestep the issue of whether homosexual practice is sinful etc etc. I am simply saying that if Christians at every level of society were able to communicate and demonstrate that they genuinely did not disdain people of other sexual orientation, then not only would this aspect of the culture wars be neutralised, but society as a whole would feel a lot more comfortable in giving us a hearing. If they genuinely felt that we loved them, then they genuinely would want to hear the reasons why theologically conservative Christians continue in the 21st Century to reject homosexuality as a helpful thing for human flourishing.

Even if they remained unconvinced, they could finally agree to disagree with us. It’s not a solution but the tide has to turn somewhere, right?

I write this as a matter of urgency, since in the end the ‘gays’ are not some group of people out there, they are real people. They are you and I and anyone you might speak to, both in church and out of it, who happens to have same-sex feelings. Let us love one another, for truth without love is no truth at all…