CHURCHES OF CHRIST DEBATE HOMOSEXUALITY

A gay task force here in Denton placed a leaflet in the mailbox of the University Church of Christ, which is hard to the campus of North Texas State University, entitled What Jesus Said About Homosexuality. But the leaflet was composed of blank pages, except a concluding summary that read, “That’s right, Jesus said nothing at all about homosexuality.”

You might get by with adulterating the mailboxes of other churches like that, but not the Church of Christ, especially the University Church of Christ, where they debate at the drop of a hat, or the drop of a leaflet. If they need to finance both sides of the debate, and thus pay the enemy to fight, that they will do, as in the case of flying philosopher Anthony Flew all the way from England to debate Tom Warren. (No pun intended!)

The church challenged Dr. Ralph Blair of New York, the author of the leaflet, who has a ministry to gays, to debate. He accepted. It was a one night stand at the NTSU auditorium and attracted about 1,000 people. There might have been fewer except that the local paper revealed that one side had asked for police protection.

But in a way there was but one side, for it was really the Church of Christ on both sides of the issue. While Dr. Blair is a Presbyterian, he was sponsored by or at least paid by the Acappella Chorus, a Church of Christ gay organization that now has chapters in Houston, Los Angeles, and Seattle. In fact there is now an actual gay Church of Christ in Houston. Many of these were present for the debate, some of whom I know personally, and they were of course supporting Dr. Blair’s efforts to cause people to better understand homosexuality.

Whatever else Blair did or did not do, he struck a responsive chord when he told the Church of Christ audience that he was ministering to their children, some of whom have already committed suicide because their families and churches rejected them and they were left without hope. He explained that he helped them to integrate an alternate lifestyle with meaningful Christian faith. He insisted that a gay or lesbian can’t help being the way he or she is, that it is natural or genetical, and that the church should be realistic and accept this as a fact, and to understand rather than be judgmental and condemnatory.

But Dan Billingsley, minister of the University church, did not see it that way. It is a learned behavior, he insisted, and they can cease and desist from the practice, and when they repent God will forgive them. When he was asked how he would personally minister to a person with such a problem, he said he would advise they “take a cold shower.” Sure enough, that was the line picked up by a reporter for the next edition of our daily paper. We may not intend it, but our folk often come across as insensitive and judgmental. Why is it that whether we debate “sectarians,” atheists, or gays, it is they that win people’s goodwill by their sweet reasonableness while we win the arguments by our polemics?

As Blair contended that homosexuality is inborn and Billingsley denied it, I thought of the gay physician with whom I visited an entire weekend a few years back, a meeting arranged by his wife in hopes of saving their marriage. “I am willing to compete with a woman,” she told me in her misery, “but I can’t compete with a man.” He laid his life before me as only one who has studied medicine could. He identified the time in his young teens when he became fascinated by other boys, but never by girls, not even finally by the girl he married. He married because it was the thing to do, and he tried to make the marriage work, his children being one reason.

As one trained in science could, he described his struggle through the years, his desperate effort to relate to girls while constantly pulled toward boys. There was every indication that his orientation was natural and not learned. I was impressed with the profundity of his problem. Convinced that what he most needed was for a Christian minister to listen to him for at least once in his life, I spent the weekend listening. I did not clobber him with the usual Scriptures, which he had heard again and again and again. Nor did I advise that he settle the problem with cold showers. The problem is much more serious than that --- and at least for once the church can refrain from oversimplification.

I did at last make one suggestion, beside the usual resources of prayer and commitment to God, and that was sublimation. I advised him to direct his orientation for loving a man to the Man we all love, the man Christ Jesus. “You can embrace him and lay your head on his breast like John did, and thus direct your physical desires into spiritual devotion.” A lesbian might be urged to focus upon Mary, the blessed Mother of Jesus, in a similar way. Such urges, whether innate or acquired, can be sublimated, especially by the Christian who has spiritual resources to draw upon.

It is probably just as well that our debating days are almost a thing of the past, for they have been of questionable value, polarizing more than unifying. Most of our debating, whether on social or doctrinal issues, has served more to satisfy some preacher’s ego and a crowd’s curiosity that to further the cause of Christ.

Our Lord sometimes surprises us the way he dealt with those deeply involved in sexual sin. Unlike the spirit of debate, he spoke tenderly: “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” He was especially merciful toward those who were hurting.

But Jesus was not a Church of Christ minister, and that probably made some difference. --- the Editor