The Christian Response To Homosexuality and Its Flaws

An Introduction

I am a teenaged gay (possibly bi but still firmly in the closet regardless) female growing up in the South aka the Bible Belt. I have grown up in a Southern Baptist family that is very religious. I have grown up in a world with a church on every block, almost literally I've looked, and no option about attendance on Sundays. My parents have always been very serious about being Christians since they see it as a lifestyle or a world view instead of as a religion. All that to say that I am quite aware of what I am talking about at least as I have been taught it. This is basically like the part during a trial when a lawyer is swearing in an expert witness and is going over a long list of their credentials to prove it.

A Definition (as it has been defined to me)

The Christian's do not believe in homosexuality in any forms and typically do not tolerate it. For my specific situation, it is not really tolerated at all. I do not attend a hell-fire and brimstone church but I do go to one that believes in speaking it's mind whenever something occurs in the world that goes against the beliefs of it's religion. When President Obama announced that he supported gay marriage I knew a sermon was coming and sure enough that night we had one titled, "The Christian Response to Homosexuality". It is this sermon that I am pretty much using as my basis for two reasons: 1) it basically summarizes everything I've ever been told and 2) it is not overly radical so I believe it is a good reflection on my upbringing so that no one sees it as a hostile-all-Christians-want-to-kill-gays thing.

There were two main points presented in the sermon:

Love the sinner, hate the sin.

People are not born gay, it is a choice that they make.

An Age-Old Sentiment

One reason that the Christian's response to homosexuality will almost always fail is because it calls upon a feeling of us-against-them and also a feeling of you're-different-so-you-must-be-wrong that has been around for an uncountable amount of time.

First the us-against-them or in this case Gays vs. Christians or just Homophobic people, which unfortunately happen to be mostly christian. Whenever you see the formation of teams you ought to know that neither side is going to go down without a fight. To use a slightly more ridiculous example, the movie Twilight. I for one thought the books were stupid and didn't read them or see the movies but I did get to hang around my friends who did and I heard all about 'team Jacob' and 'team Edward'. And for anyone who happens to have any contact with a teenaged female around this time, there's a good chance you know just how aggressive some of the arguments over these two fictional characters could get. If something that's fake could stir so much controversy, why is it such a shock that a homosexual would resist when you tell them that everything about them is wrong?

Then the you're-different-so-you-must-be-wrong feeling. I would propose that even though homosexuality has been around since Henry VIII and before it is basically a 21st century phenomenon. Before now everyone was straight and there wasn't a whole lot of question about it, you just were. Then something different, guys with guys and girls with girls, started emerging and because it was different it was almost immediately perceived as wrong just for that, before anyone even started getting into how it's all morally wrong and junk. So once again, a I'm-going-to-rebel-because-everyone's-being-so-unfair-towards-me-because-I-dare-to-be-different mentality is emerging and really can you blame them? If you've ever been on that side of a situation you probably felt the same way.