The 3 Things and the 5 Things: Toward an Integrative Perspective on Same-Sex Sexuality (II)

In my previous post in this series, I sketched out a very cursive outline for what I am calling an “integrative view” of same-sex sexuality and the Bible. By integrative, I mean a view that attempts to take the things we know to be true about the experience of same-sex sexuality, on the one hand, and integrate them with the things we believe the Bible says about same-sex sex, on the other. I intend to suggest in coming posts that Christians intuitively do this kind of “integrative” work on all kinds of other topics and issues—issues that might be as fraught and complicated as the issue of same-sex sexuality, except that we have taken an “integrative view” of them for so long that it has become second nature and we hardly notice anymore that we are doing so.

Before we get to that, though, and as a first step in filling in the contours of an integrative view on same-sex sexuality, I want to begin by discussing what I call “the 3 things and the 5 things.” When I am asked to speak, as a pastor, on the question of the Church’s posture towards LGBTQ+ people and their experience, I usually start by laying out “the 3 things and the 5 things,” as a way of honestly and (hopefully) compassionately establishing a shared understanding as a starting point for any discussion of these matters.

Not everybody accepts the 3 things and the 5 things, and a blog post is not an ideal forum for presenting the kinds of rigorous research that would be necessary to convince the unconvinced that they are true. I will say that I have come across plenty of research, both quantitative and qualitative, to convince me that they are, and as a result, they profoundly shape my own thinking on this issue.

The 3 things are:

1. That LGBTQ+ people do not chose to be L, G, B, T, or Q.

By this, I mean that the many, diverse, non-heteronormative sexual identities and orientations that fall under the umbrella term LGBTQ+-- the experience of gender dysphoria, for instance, or same-sex attraction, the experience of being queer, or two-spirit, or asexual, and so on—is not, generally speaking, something that people choose. The unconvinced may want to reach for anecdotal evidence to the contrary of this statement, and no-doubt the reasons why people identify with non-heterosexual identities are complex and varied. I believe, however, that on the whole, research shows that people who persistently experience their sexuality in ways that don’t conform with the heterosexual majority, have not chosen to be this way. Personal experience bears this out. The suffering, sacrifices, turmoil and risks involved with “coming out” as LGBTQ+ is far to great, in most cases, to suggest glibly that those enduring them for the sake of being honest about their sexual identity are doing so as a fad, or on a whim, or as a matter of personal choice.

2. The experience of being LGBTQ+ is not subject to change.

People who are gay, or trans, or queer, in other words, cannot change their identities so that they are no longer gay, or trans, or queer. Although this statement may seem highly controversial in some conservative circles, my impression both of the research and my personal experience with LGBTQ+ people is that, generally speaking, these sexual orientations are as permanent as they are persistent. They are not subject to change, and efforts to “change” LGBTQ+ people into being “straight” are almost universally harmful (psychologically traumatic, emotionally scarring, damaging to relationships, financially burdensome, and a plain waste of time).

Again, the unconvinced may reach for anecdotal evidence that “so-and-so” was gay and he “prayed the gay away.” Besides being extremely rare, however, these stories are also unfinished, and many people who claim to have been delivered from their same-sex attractions find the change is neither total nor permanent, and the attractions return, often painfully and harmfully at later points down the road. Similarly, for every story of “someone who changed,” there are multiple dozens of stories of those who tried “changing” and suffered spiritual, emotional, and psychological trauma as a result. Stories of “gay people who changed” should certainly not be held up as a normative expectation, and the risks associated with so-called conversion therapies are so great that the possibility of change is not something responsible Christians should encourage LGBTQ+ people to pursue. It’s no accident that the vast majority of Christian conversion therapy ministries ignobly closed their doors in the early 2000s, after it became painfully evident that it was not only unrealistic, but inhumane, to try to “change” LGBTQ+ people.

3. LGBTQ+ people experience harm when they are not able in some meaningful way to integrate their experience of being LGBTQ+ with their sense of personhood.

This statement may cause conservative readers to scratch their heads, but what I am trying to say is that it hurts LGBTQ+ people—emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically—to believe that their experience of their sexuality is “abnormal,” “perverse,” “abhorrent,” “shameful,” or any of the other painful messages that LGBTQ+ people so-often come to believe about themselves when they first begin to discover that they are L, G, B, T, or Q. It is no coincidence that rates both of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts are higher among LGBTQ+ people than the general population. And, whether the non-affirming church wishes to accept this fact or not, the message that LGBTQ+ people typically hear from non-affirming Christians has been shown to exacerbate the harm (it’s one thing to think there’s something wrong with you for being gay; it’s quite another to think that God hates you because of it). Studies have shown, for instance, that among suicidal young people generally, having faith is a source of help that can mitigate and help manage the suicidal ideations; however, among LGBTQ+ youth, the opposite is true, and having faith tends to intensify and exacerbate their suicidality.

Christians may be tempted to try and sweep this fact away with platitudes about how Jesus never promised us a pain-free life following him, or how the most loving thing is to tell people “the truth” even if it hurts them—but my experience of ministering in conservative Christian circles for more than 2 decades now has been that as a rule, many (maybe most?) non-affirming Christians are irresponsibly unwilling to wrestle deeply with this plain fact: no matter how gently and lovingly we try to present it, the run-of-the-mill, non-affirming Christian message hurts a lot of LGBTQ+ people. A lot.

So those are the three things we know to be true about LGBTQ+ experience: it’s not chosen, it doesn’t change, and it hurts not to be able to integrate it with your sense of self.

The 5 things are more quickly and succinctly summarized. They are the basic “options” that LGBTQ+ Christians have—people who want to follow Jesus but their experience of their sexuality is described by those previous 3 things, I mean. What are they supposed to do? Especially if they are involved in a non-affirming church, or have been taught all their lives to believe non-affirming theology?

As far as I can tell, they only have 5 basic options:

They can:

1. Stay in the closet, denying that they are LGBTQ+ and suffering in silence

2. “Come out” as LGBTQ+ but resist their “temptations” and seek to live singly and celibately

3. Leave their non-affirming community and try to find an affirming church

4. Abandon their faith and give up on living as a Christian altogether

5. Re-examine and potentially revise their understanding of what the Bible really says about being LGBTQ+

In laying out these five options, I am not meaning, at this point, to suggest which of those 5 is best; though I will say that, in my mind, option 1 is out of the question (see thing #3 above); and as a Christian pastor, I hope that no believer, LGBTQ or not, will ever find themselves in a place where option 4 seems like the only viable way forward. So hopefully we can scratch at least those two off the list from the outset.

Beyond that, however, I am simply asking at this point that we wrestle humbly with these 3 things and these 5 things before we make any pronouncements on “what the Bible says about same-sex sexuality,” and “what LGBTQ+ people should do as a result.” My own wrestling has led me to adopt an integrative view, one that seeks to support and celebrate LGBTQ+ people as cherished children of God even though I remain unconvinced by many of the arguments that support an “affirming” reading of the scripture. As I’ve said, I intend to show how and why I do this in coming posts. In the final analysis, you may find this position—the integrative view—to be unconvincing or unsatisfying, but whatever view we adopt, I believe that it must include an honest and compassionate accounting for the 3 things and the 5 things.

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