Evangelical’s Unwitting Support of the Gay Agenda

If you talk to an average Evangelical in the United States about homosexuality, you will almost undoubtedly hear that it is a sin. And this is good as far as it goes, as Evangelicals we are committed to the Bible for the simple reason it is God’s Word. No good Evangelical would knowingly promote or support the gay agenda.

But that we wouldn’t knowingly support it doesn’t mean we wouldn’t unknowingly support it, and the large majority of us are guilty of doing that. Tactically, we’ve been very careful not to support it. Strategically, we’ve practically given our central command over to the powers that be and wonder why we can’t run an effective resistance.

Take Phil Robertson’s (of Duck Dynasty fame) recent comments as an example. Robertson spoke the truth, that homosexuality is a sin, and that this particular sin (like all sin) is illogical. We Evangelicals cheer, because someone with some street cred in our culture is bucking the cultural trend. This gives us what we might call a tactical victory.

Criticism soon follows though, as it has with Robertson’s comments. And it is here that we Evangelicals get ourselves into trouble. GLAAD and the LGBT(QRSUVWXYZ) community start their boohooing. They begin shaping a cultural narrative, great offense is taken, and apologies are demanded. If apologies don’t come, the remaining option is censorship.

We unwittingly support the gay agenda because we allow them to define all the terms. We let them establish the rules for the debate. We let them shape the cultural narrative, which is the playing board. We then try to play the game on their terms and wonder why we keep losing.

Consider how many Evangelicals consider a key point in this debate to be whether people are “born that way” or not. As good Evangelicals, we go around denying that people are “born that way,” and we take this to be a demonstration of Biblical faithfulness. But when the debate is about whether people are “born that way” we’ve lost the battle from the start.

There are two reasons this is the case. First, the thinking goes “If gays are born that way, then it’s not a sin.” Of course, there is a hidden premise in this whole thing, namely that a biological predisposition is adequate grounds for moral standards (patently false, this is the is/ought fallacy). As Christians who believe in total depravity, we should not give an inch to this type of assumption. Additionally, this assumes that biology can never be overcome (say, by the power of the Holy Spirit), once again, an ungodly an pernicious assumption.

Second, however, as Christians we should have no trouble saying “If the current scientific consensus contradicts the Bible then the current scientific consensus is wrong.” This becomes a matter of authority and epistemology. The Bible is self-evidently true, and so when someone comes to me saying science has proven it false I take the claim no more seriously than if someone came up to me saying science has proven circles have corners. I will take the Word of the infallible God over the word of fallible man 100% of the time. Scientific knowledge is always open to revision because we can always learn more. God is omniscient, and no facts of which He was/is not aware exist.

What we need to do, rather than give in to the false assumptions, is assert the authority of Scripture. I’ll take my prophets, Moses, Jesus, and Paul, over the secular prophets of Nietzsche, Russell, and Freud every time. Romans once and for all refuted Nietzsche, and this about 1,800 years before Nietzsche penned a word. We need to make the debate a presuppositional one, because we’ll never convince our culture on the evidential grounds (though we do hold the evidential high ground).

We also need to stop letting groups like GLAAD shape the cultural narrative. We need to challenge their narrative, not offer it our sympathy. They want to say calling homosexuality a sin is hate speech. We need to question where they get an idea of “hate speech” and why it’s bad apart from the Judeo-Christian ethic. Their narrative of persecution assumes (part of) the ethic of Christianity to get off the ground and subsequently call Christianity hateful. We want to dispute being hateful, but when we do this we’ve already lost the battle. What we need to do is dispute where they get a conception of “hate” in the first place.

Finally, when they call us “bigots” and “outdated” and “out of touch with most Americans” we need to quit trying to dispute the charge. What they are doing is applying their rules and saying we’re violating them. Of course we’re violating their rules, but their rules are stupid and unjust, so our most effective protest is to go right on violating them with Biblical truth. We need to show their utter hypocrisy by letting them violate their own rules, which they do frequently.

If we are to effectively resist the gay agenda, we have to stop unwittingly supporting it. And to stop unwittingly supporting it, we have to make the debate a presuppositional one, we have to make the differences between our worldviews painfully obvious. And the whole time we do this we must remember that our goal is not to upset promoters of the gay agenda (which is way too easy), but to honor Christ as Lord.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Josiah