Cruel to Be Kind? - A Non-Christian Response to Certain Christian Comments about Gay Marriage

In the weeks leading up to the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, and in the days since, I have read of several Christians propounding a point of view that I might have embraced, too, back in my church days.  That view is this: I share my disapproval as an act of Christian love. 

The most recent version of this comes from Alabama State Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who said on Sunday, June 28:

Christians are commanded not to hate their fellow man. They are commanded to love their fellow man ... We are to love our fellow man and if we love our fellow man what are we do but tell them when there is sin, because sin is something you are supposed to hate.  When they create it as a national right, a fundamental right, what are we to do?

This goes beyond loving the sinner and hating the sin.  It involves telling the sinner of his or her sin.  And this argument was not newly minted after 6/26/15.  As another example, I will quote from blogger Michael Seewald, who happens to be Josh Duggar's father-in-law.  Seewald says that the "loving thing to do is to follow the example of Jesus - tell the truth":

[L]ove instructs the little child not to play in the street. Love teaches the sixteen year old to follow the rules of the road. Love advises the college student to abstain from drunkenness. And yes, love warns the homosexual of the danger that he or she is in. Yet, sometimes, as the apostle Paul said, 'the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved.' All good parents have experienced this as well as many pastors and counselors.

Okay, so a loving Christian teaches, instructs, advises, and warns gay people of their sins, even at the risk of rejection and unpopularity.  Let's hold that thought for just a moment and move to another blogger, Jonathan Parnell, who explained back in April of 2014 "Why Homosexuality Is Not Like Other Sins."  Citing 1 Corinthians 6: 9-10, Parnell says that although homosexuality is named along with idolatry, adultery, immorality, thievery, drunkenness, greed, reviling, and swindling, homosexuality alone "is celebrated by our larger society with pioneering excitement. It’s seen as a good thing, as the new hallmark of progress."  As far as he can tell, "none of those sins is applauded [as] aggressively" as homosexuality.

"[I]t is an oversimplification," Parnell emphasizes, "to say that Christians — or conservative evangelicals — are simply against homosexuality":

We are against any sin that restrains people from everlasting joy in God, and homosexual practice just gets all the press because, at this cultural moment, it’s the main sin that is so freshly endorsed in our context by the powers that be. Let’s hope that if there’s some new cultural agenda promoting thievery — one that says it’s now our right to take whatever we want from others by whatever means — that Christians will speak out against it. The issue is sin. That’s what we’re against. 

Both bloggers' words bring up several points that those of us on the left find frustrating and problematic.  First, let's talk about love.

• Many of us on the left - if not most, if not all - operate from a position of love.  We're not admired for that love, incidentally; we're mocked for it, as "bleeding hearts," apparently for the central reason that we do not invoke Jesus as our exemplar.  And because we do not reference Jesus, our love is laughable. Our love is obnoxious.  Our love is insincere, self-serving, devoid of meaning.
• As much as I still maintain that I love my fellow human beings, I do not (as Parnell maintains) celebrate homosexuality.  As it so happens, I do not celebrate bisexuality, heterosexuality, pansexuality, or asexuality.  What I celebrate are people - their rights, their dignity, their worthiness, and their equality, all of which I hold as valid and incontestable.  Sexuality simply doesn't enter into it for me.  When our forefathers were holding truths to be self-evident, sexuality didn't enter into it for them, either.  Sexuality isn't a deal breaker.  It isn't even at the table for discussion.
• Candidly, I am unaware that anyone celebrates homosexuality as "the new hallmark of progress," as Parnell maintains.  That said, I do want progress for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans individuals.  When I, as a liberal, advocate for their rights, that is my act of love.  I recognize the humanity and dignity of fellow Americans, who have been denied civil rights on the basis of religious views about sexuality.  They deserve progress, because no one should be subject to the dictates of religions in which they may not believe.

Now we come to the second point.  There is much said in both of these blogs about correction as an act of Christian love.  We bear the good news that you are a sinner before God, who loves you!  As Seewald reveals in his examples, however, there is an inherent authority presumed in these corrections.  "[L]ove instructs the little child not to play in the street," he says.  "Love teaches the sixteen year old to follow the rules of the road. Love advises the college student to abstain from drunkenness."  In all of these cases, the gay, autonomous grown up is paralleled with a child.  Not even teenagers like to be treated like children.  Why should autonomous, independent adults?  How can a Christian - even in complete faithfulness and sincerity of devotion - expect to conduct such a conversation?

Seewald does allow that this sort of conversation may lead to diminishing popularity.  "All good parents have experienced this," he says, "as well as many pastors and counselors."  The problem is that parents are recognized authorities to children, while pastors are recognized by their flocks.  What happens when Christians, even in a spirit of love, invoke a spiritual authority that a gay person may not recognize or worship?  After all, a Christian would surely not respond to correction by a Muslim.  It seems a very tricky business, this correcting.

We'll come back to that issue by way of our third point, which is this: Why are Christians not urged, as an act of love, to correct all sinners?  Perhaps part of the problem is that such correction might appear like this:

That is a correction that professes love, yet it is not loving.  It is not kind.  It is not even polite. 

Let's revisit that list of sins Parnell mentioned from Corinthians, which includes idolatry, adultery, immorality, thievery, drunkenness, greed, reviling, and swindling.  Of all these sins, Parnell says, homosexuality alone is celebrated, which is why Christians must give it a disproportionate amount of attention.  The problem with this claim is that it skips over things taking place at every level, all of the time, yet not "celebrated" by the left.  Here are just a few examples.

• There's the greed of Wall Street, which resulted in illogical and deliberately misleading classifications of mortgages for personal financial gain.  Once the inevitable bubble burst, the entire world economy went reeling. The US sank into recession. People lost jobs, homes, stability.  Yet Wall Street carries on, essentially unpunished.  (And Occupy Wall Street was roundly mocked.)
• Income inequity is at the greatest it's been in roughly a hundred years.  Workers' wages have stagnated and even declined, while executive wages have skyrocketed.  Workers are laid off to boost profits for stockholders.  Jobs are sent overseas simply to boost profits.  "That's just good business," some might say.  But that would be to suggest that no one ran a good business prior to the 1980s.  Let's call this obsession with profit at any cost by its right name: It is greed.  It is the desire for money.  I'm sure I don't need to cite all of the bible verses on that subject.
• Drunkenness, meanwhile, is the third-leading cause of preventable death in the United States.  In 2013, it contributed to more than 30% of driving fatalities.  More than 10% of our children live with a parent who has alcohol dependency problems.  Globally, the misuse of alcohol is the #1 risk factor for death and disability among people ages 15-49.  Substance abuse - that is, abuse of alcohol or drugs - was implicated in 78% of violent crimes in the US in 2010.  (All statistics are from the National Institute of Health except the violent crimes statistic.) 
• More than half of married adults who engage in adultery seek a divorce. 

There is simply no logic by which homosexuality can be "worse" than these issues, more damaging to the country than these issues, or more certain to doom us all.  Yet one does not see loving Christians going into bars to dissuade patrons from drinking.  One does not see loving Christians entering businesses to discuss fair pay or ethical business practices.

What one does see are levels of histrionics over Obergefell v. Hodges that are almost not to be believed.  Bryan Fischer tweeted, ""From a moral standpoint, 6/26 is now our 9/11."  Why should the civil rights of gays and lesbians be this profoundly upsetting?   Let's go back to where we started.  Chief Justice Moore said:  "We are to love our fellow man and if we love our fellow man what are we do but tell them when there is sin, because sin is something you are supposed to hate.  When they create it as a national right, a fundamental right, what are we to do?"

Apparently, Moore's expectation was that secular law must do the spiritual double duty of reproving gay people and denying them civil rights because "there is sin."  Apparently, secular law was meant to solve the problem of what happens when people don't respect the authority of the Christian god: Those people still have to follow the law of the land.  But that is not how it works.  You don't get to have civil rights if and only if someone's god reportedly approves of you.  You get to have civil rights because you are a human being.

I find on the internet that "Christian persecution is any hostility experienced from the world as a result of one's identification as a Christian."  I have seen many individual Christians howling at the notion that they are persecuting gays - and naturally, there are many, many Christians who aren't, and don't, and never would.  Yet it is hard not to see hostility in all of this supposed "love," and in the singling out of homosexuality amongst all other sins. It is hard to feel Christ's love in this Christian correction. And when winning one's civil rights is compared to terrorists attacking and slaughtering innocents, well, that's just hard to see.