In May 2020, the PCA released a report addressing human sexuality.1https://pcaga.org/aicreport/ This report addressed numerous topics, including marriage, concupiscence, and especially homosexuality. This report was resoundingly requested after a PCA church co-hosted a conference with questionable teachings on sexuality and identity. One of the biggest questions this Presbyterian denomination has been asking since then has been the question of identity. Does identifying as a person with same-sex attractions disqualify you from pastoral leadership?
This is an interesting question. However, it is not nearly as interesting as people make it out to be. I found an article by Stephen Spinnenweber that has been somewhat helpful for sorting out some of the PCA issues and drama.2https://heidelblog.net/2022/08/homosexuality-concupiscence-and-the-pca/ Rather than looking at ALL sinful attractions as equal sin, perhaps we should be grading the severity and implications of the attractions as well. After reading his article, I realized that the report itself answered very few of my questions. Kevin DeYoung and Tim Keller both wrote the report, yet had differing opinions on its implications. The amount of discussion online made it very clear that the report solved next to nothing. People still could not differentiate between same-sex attraction, lust, or homosexual identity.
As fun as it is to dissect what accounts for an identity, I am going to ask a far bigger and broader question. Concupiscence is a fun topic for theologians, but ultimately, homosexuality is a real issue for very real people. Rather than attempting to understand homosexuality with theologically intense and narrow questions, I believe we would be better off with a wider approach.
Homosexuality as a Mental Illness
Perhaps the biggest unanswered question as it relates to homosexuality is this: is homosexuality a mental illness? This may have caught you off guard. I have only met a few people convinced of this, yet 100 years ago, I am quite positive this would have been an easy answer. Up until 1973, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder.3https://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/Amer_Psychological_Assn_Amicus_Curiae_Brief.pdf, page 9 The reasoning behind this decision was questionable, but homosexuality solidified its place in the culture in 2003 when Lawrence vs Texas was overturned. This decision overruled state laws that criminalized sodomy.4https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-lawrence-v-texas-overturned-law-banning-gay-sex-2022-6 100 years ago, the answer to the homosexuality question would have been simple. Today, it seems as if nothing can be taken for granted.
Perhaps the question of homosexuality as a mental disorder should be asked another way. It is easy to get caught up in the winds of the times, so let’s try and make the question as easy as possible. When a Christian is looking at these sinful issues, which theological category should we apply to same-sex attraction? Are homosexuals more like heterosexuals, or should they identify with the transgender? If a homosexual attraction is similar to transsexualism, perhaps we would be better off labeling them both mental disorders. After all, gender dysphoria is still considered a mental disorder; perhaps wanting to be a woman and wanting to have intercourse with a man should be in the same theological category. However, if same-sex attraction is just a slightly disordered opposite-sex attraction, there would be no reason to label it a mental illness. After all, a person is not considered mentally ill if they are exhibiting a disordered desire to steal or a patterned attraction to envy, right?
Disordered Orientation
If you were able to read the PCA report on human sexuality, you would probably agree with their conclusion. Same-sex attraction is a sin, even if not acted upon. The support for this concept comes primarily from Matthew 5:28: “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Wrapped up in the report, however, is the idea that a person’s attractions are a manifestation of their orientation.
“How then should we think of the language of sexual orientation? Insofar as the term orientation is used descriptively to articulate a particular set of experiences, namely the persistent and predominant sexual attractions of an individual, it can remain useful as a way of classifying those experiences in contrast to the experiences of the majority of other people.”
“Report of the Ad Interim Committee on Human Sexuality”, May 2020
Sexual orientation as a concept did not exist until the 1900s, and prior to 1973, homosexual orientation was considered a mental disorder. Now, the Presbyterian Church in America recognizes orientation as a helpful term for describing a pattern of attraction. For those of you paying attention, this poses a very serious problem. One particular instance that comes to mind is the idea that a pastor can claim a homosexual orientation but also claim to not be in sin. How do you respond to the following pastor?
“First, experiencing a general orientation is not a sin.
In our sin nature, all of us are disordered sexually. My sexuality is disordered in that I experience a homosexual orientation. What I mean is that my sexual desires are exclusively ‘oriented’ toward the same (homo) sex. This is true of me whether or not I am experiencing a specific attraction at any given moment.”
Nick Roen, “Is It Sin to Experience Same-Sex Attraction?”, December 17, 20135https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/is-it-sin-to-experience-same-sex-attraction
In this article hosted on Desiring God, the word “orientation” is used to describe a semi-biological predisposition toward a particular sex. Nick states that, because of the fall, he was given a disordered orientation. In some ways, this disordered attraction can be compared to people born with a disability. As an example: some people are born with non-functioning legs, and some people are born with a homosexual orientation. While some people say their sexual orientation changes in the course of their life, there are others who would say they were born with a same-sex orientation.
Regrettably, understanding the depths of sexual orientation seems to have been a fruitless venture for Christianity. You must remember the original question: Are homosexuals more like heterosexuals, or should they identify with the transgender? If orientation just describes a pattern of attractions, it is a very unhelpful term. In fact, reducing homosexuality to a fetish is singularly unhelpful. Describing same-sex orientation as little more than a pattern of attraction cheapens the word. When you use the term “homosexual orientation,” nobody assumes you are restricting its meaning to “predominant attractions.” What about gender identity? Or gender expression? What about emotional attraction?
No, sexual orientation is so much more than a “particular set of experiences.”
The Disoriented Mind
This is the part where we leave the theologians for a minute. We’ll come back, but we need to check in with the real world. What does orientation mean? Certain health sites may choose to define homosexual orientation in this way: “People who are homosexual are romantically and physically attracted to people of the same sex.”6https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/sexual-orientation.html They later go on to assert that: “Most medical experts believe that, in general, sexual orientation is not something that a person voluntarily chooses. Instead, sexual orientation is just a natural part of who a person is.”
Sexual orientation is a very modern subject, and people still don’t understand it. A quick Google search for the “gay gene” will show you many different opinions. Yet, despite the questionable science behind sexual orientation, every mainstream opinion agrees that sexual preferences are complex.7https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnstaceyennis/2019/08/30/the-gay-gene-is-a-myth-but-being-gay-is-natural-say-scientists/?sh=145e9b387fa7
Maybe you’re wondering why this matters. Perhaps you’re struggling to understand how a person’s sexual orientation can be detached from biological components yet also be involuntary. If orientation is truly just a pattern of attraction, how could you possibly know what causes someone to find another person attractive? If you feel the dilemma, you are finally ready for the answer. It took a lot of work to get here, but I hope the payoff is worth it. Once again: Are homosexuals more like heterosexuals, or should they identify with the transgender?
Two Paths
Ultimately, the discerning Christian has only two lenses through which to view a person claiming a same-sex attraction.
- “Sexual orientation,” as a term, does not exist. Attractions can change and are not tied to a person’s biology. The idea that a person can have a homosexual orientation is a lie intended to give credibility to a sinful lifestyle.
- Sexual orientation exists, and it is a serious mental disorder. Homosexuals have been given same-sex attractions, similar to a disability, and must be treated as such.
While option 1 is preferable, option 2 appears to have some validity as well. A Christian may find value in using either of the two lenses. What is not helpful is attempting to find a middle ground between them. 1) If you believe that a person’s orientation changes or is tied to life experiences, will, or environment, you have a non-biological understanding of a person’s sexual orientation. This view sees homosexuality as a choice. But when sexual orientation becomes a mutable idea, there is no point in using the word. 2) If you believe that homosexuality is a mental disorder, then you believe it has an intrinsic variable that must be addressed. Like a person with schizophrenia, you believe that this mental sickness was not necessarily a conscious choice, even though science does not currently understand the specific biological cause of the illness.
Orientation Isn’t Real
Denying the concept of sexual orientation is one of the easiest things Christians can do to solidify their response to homosexuality. This should be done in tandem with calling it out as the abominable act that it is (Leviticus 18:22) and speaking the truth in love (Ephesian 4:15). Homosexuals have made incredibly poor choices and have traded the truth of God for a cheap lie (Romans 1:25). If you want to help these people, you must deny the existence of an “orientation.” You are also not alone in this perspective.
People like Rosaria Butterfield8https://blog.choosetruthovertribe.com/a-challenge-to-side-b-lgbtq-christians and Carl Trueman believe the world would be far better off without the Freudian idea of an “orientation.” In fact, arguing within this secular, sexual sphere only hurts the Christian’s witness.
“Sexual orientation has not provided the dependable underpinning for virtue that its inventors hoped it would, especially lately. Nevertheless, many conservative-minded Christians today feel that we should continue to enshrine the gay–straight divide and the heterosexual ideal in our popular catechesis, since that still seems to them the best way to make our moral maxims appear reasonable and attractive.
These Christian compatriots of mine are wrong to cling so tightly to sexual orientation, confusing our unprecedented and unsuccessful apologia for chastity with its eternal foundation.”
Michael W. Hannon – “Against Heterosexuality”, March 20149https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/03/against-heterosexuality
While the PCA may find orientation to be a “useful tool,” a discerning Christian ought to deny its existence at every turn. Sexuality is not a “complex spectrum.” Rather than playing games with the truth, Christians ought to communicate clearly.
Disordered Mentality
The other way of looking at those claiming a same-sex attraction is to treat them as if they have a mental disorder. Rather than differentiating between those suffering from gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, and homosexuality, this approach, while potentially distasteful to some, has a few advantages. First, the reasons for declassifying homosexuality as a mental illness are unsettled at best. Scientists can find no meaningful data for the origin of homosexuality in general, so making the claim that it is normal is definitely unwarranted. The APA seems to have removed the classification in order to remove the stigma, removing the associated impairment. This removal is definitely questionable.10For further discussion on this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4771012/
If you wanted to get the opinion of the early church, you would also find backing for this point of view. Most church fathers considered homosexuality to be so monstrous in nature that it required a special mention. For Tertullian, this atrocity required barring homosexuals from even stepping foot inside the church.
“[A]ll other frenzies of the lusts which exceed the laws of nature, and are impious toward both [human] bodies and the sexes, we banish, not only from the threshold but also from all shelter of the Church, for they are not sins so much as monstrosities”
Tertullian – “Modesty 4″, A.D 220
Despite the historicity of viewing homosexuality as a mental disorder, there are many Christians who would claim that this view “goes too far.” Yet the majority of these same people would unquestionably affirm the insanity of sex reassignment surgery. Is homosexuality truly that much different from transsexuality? The idea that a person would voluntarily remove healthy parts of their body is absolutely contrary to nature, so to give credibility to one deviant sexuality and not the other is a bizarre and disconnected view of the issue.
If you have chosen to see homosexuality as a mental illness, similar to transsexualism, you may be interested to know that transsexualism is no longer a mental disorder.11https://nicic.gov/being-transgender-no-longer-mental-disorder-apa-2012 Once again, Christians no longer have the benefit of psychology to deter society from degeneracy. If you think it stops there, think again. How long will pedophilia and zoophilia remain mental disorders? As an even more extreme example, what would it take for apotemnophilia12For an interesting read on this disorder: https://web.archive.org/web/20220318133552/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/ to become prevalent? This extreme debauchery cannot continue. When Romans 1:26 says that God “gave them up to dishonorable passions,” was he speaking of this insanity?
Perhaps this is why it is easier to compare homosexuals to transsexualism. If you are seeking to help a man who is trans, one of the best things you can do is stop him from hurting himself. Take steps to destroy the cult-like community, prevent doctors from performing genital mutilations, or stop pediatricians from providing chemically castrating medications. Most of these are impossible for the lone Christian. Modern medicine has run rampant, destroying all opposition. I mean, it took decades to prevent the slaughter of babies, how can we possibly prevent and treat homosexuals?
Just Don’t Go Halfway
If you want to be helpful in this time of madness, do yourself a favor. Pick a side and stay there. If you attempt to “meet them in the middle” and affirm the language of orientation, it is likely that you will do more harm than good.
“…I had previously denied the existence of sexual orientation. I, along with many other evangelicals, did so because we did not want to accept the sexual identity structure that so often goes with sexual orientation. I still reject that notion of sexual identity. But I repented of denying the existence of sexual orientation because denying it was deeply confusing to people struggling with same-sex attraction.“
Albert Mohler – “Sexual Orientation and the Gospel of Jesus Christ”, November 13, 201413https://albertmohler.com/2014/11/13/sexual-orientation-and-the-gospel-of-jesus-christ
Despite Mohler’s insistence that homosexuality is a sin and that marriage is a divine institute for the purpose of procreation, his message is weakened in the immeasurable complexity that is “orientation.” Al denies that treatment or therapy will work for same-sex attraction yet offers no solution for homosexual Christians to avoid sin (other than celibacy). Obviously, this hopeless approach is worse than any solution suggested so far. Don’t do this.
If you want to help, don’t meet homosexuality in the middle.
Sources:
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- 10For further discussion on this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4771012/
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- 12For an interesting read on this disorder: https://web.archive.org/web/20220318133552/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/
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