Around April of this year (2021) I had a back and forth exchange with a person with #FaithfullyLGBTQ in their bio. This individual defended LGBTQ relationships within a Christian context, that is to say, a person can remain Christian while maintaining being in a homosexual relationship or transitioning to another sex. I found out that this hashtag #FaithfullyLGBTQ appears to be an online extension of Episcopalian and Methodist movements seeking to marry LBGTQ ideology with Christianity. In this article, I will show why their attempts at marrying the two ultimately submit Christian faith to LGBTQ ideology and destroy the faiths and harm the spiritual lives of those who are a part of this movement, and why you cannot be #FaithfullyLGBTQ
Definitions
As I defined in my last article Christianity is the belief that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came in the flesh, died and was resurrected on the third day. This underlies the belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Incarnation, and the atonement and excludes groups such as Unitarians and Jehovah’s Witnesses. With that in mind, what do we mean by LGBTQ ideology? LGBTQ ideology refers to the promotion of the widespread normalization of LGBTQ lifestyles which includes homosexual relationships, transitioning as a treatment for gender dysphoria and the ostracization of anyone who does not tolerate the aforementioned. From these definitions, this article will show why these two belief systems are opposed and why trying to marry them will cause more harm than the perceived good it will cause.
Unscriptural
The justifications used by #FaithfullyLGBTQ for the acceptance of LGBTQ among Christianity usually revolve around arguing that Christ did not make mention of these issues and dismissal of what the Old Testament and the Pauline epistles say about homosexuality in one of two ways, rejecting the OT and Pauline epistles outright or arguing that what the OT and Pauline epistles say about homosexuality actually does not apply to homosexuality. The first argument is Marcionite in nature, as like Marcion they mutilate the Scripture to favour their preconceived notions. Marcion denied that the God of the Old Testament was the same God in the New Testament. As such he produced his own canon which only contained 10 of the 13 Pauline epistles and a shortened version of the Gospel of Luke which they called “The Gospel of the Lord”. Marcion did this because he read his own preconceptions of who God is into Scripture and to resolve the cognitive dissonance he threw out large sections of Scripture. The ideas of Marcion ultimately fail since they exclude the prophecies which predict the Messianic ministry of Christ thereby reducing its significance. In much the same way, the rejection of the significance of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Pauline epistles leads to the weakening of the Scriptural witness of Christ as Messiah, thereby leading people away from the Faith.
This is one of the reasons refusal to acknowledge the moral precepts of Scripture is spiritually harmful and not, as some seem to think, helpful for those struggling with what Scripture says about certain sins. To quote Justin Martyr regarding Marcion and his followers “…though they have no proof of what they say, but are carried away irrationally as lambs by a wolf, and become the prey of atheistical doctrines, and of devils” (The First Apology). Haphazard rejection of Scripture in favour of your own views and opinions is spiritually harmful and dangerous.
The second argument #FaithfullyLGBTQ types will use is that what the Scripture says about homosexuality does not actually apply to homosexuality or does not apply to their practice of homosexuality. These arguments rely on a twisting of what the Greek word for homosexuality actually means. In 1 Corinthians 6:9 (NKJV) it says “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites…” The Greek says “ἢ οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἄδικοι βασιλείαν Θεοῦ οὐ κληρονομήσουσι; μὴ πλανᾶσθε· οὔτε πόρνοι οὔτε εἰδωλολάτραι οὔτε μοιχοὶ οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται”. The Greek word Paul uses for homosexuals is “ἀρσενοκοῖται” (Arsenokoitai). Many among the #FaithfullyLGBTQ have argued that this does not refer to homosexual activity but paedophilia as the word first got translated as homosexuality in the 1940s translation of the RSV. They further argue that since the word arsenokoitai is a compound word formed from the Greek male “αρσεν” (arsén) and the Greek word for bed or lying or sexual activity “κοίτη” (koité) therefore it required contextual clues to fully understand what is really being said. So let’s use context. The context we will use is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, wherein Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 we see that words that form the basis for “ἀρσενοκοῖται” are used. Namely “αρσεν” or “ἄρσενος” and “κοίτην”
Leviticus 18:22 says “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.”
The Greek Septuagint reads as “καὶ μετὰ ἄρσενος οὐ κοιμηθήσῃ κοίτην γυναικός· βδέλυγμα γάρ ἐστιν.”
Leviticus 20:13 says “If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.”
The Greek Septuagint reads as “καὶ ὃς ἂν κοιμηθῇ μετὰ ἄρσενος κοίτην γυναικός, βδέλυγμα ἐποίησαν ἀμφότεροι· θανατούσθωσαν, ἔνοχοί εἰσιν.”
As you can see, the words for male (ἄρσενος) and bed (κοίτην) are used in verses that clearly condemn all homosexual relations as an abomination, not just paedophilic or abusive relations. The Septuagint was completed in the 2nd century BC and is the most frequently referred to translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that the New Testament authors use. These words are what Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 6:9 to form the compound word “ἀρσενοκοῖται” that is then translated as sodomite or homosexual. Using the hermeneutic of Scripture interpreting Scripture, it’s clear that Paul is condemning homosexuality here and it is thus a contravention of Scripture to engage in homosexual activity. Furthermore, Christians have since always interpreted this verse as referring to homosexual activity. For example, Tertullian in his commentary uses the term “co-habitors with males” when quoting this verse. Words such as these cannot be logically limited to only paedophilia or abuse. Any practice homosexually, whether paedophilic, abuse or “loving” (as though homosexuality can be separated from abuse given the extremely high incidence of both promiscuity and domestic abuse among them) is condemned.
Gnosticism
As shown with the Marcionite tendencies explored in the earlier section, there are many Gnostic ideas that underlie the LGBTQ movement. One of the prominent Gnostic ideas present in the LGBTQ movement and defended by those professing to be #FaithfullyLGBTQ is the extreme dualism that they profess when defending transgenderism. The defence of transgenderism relies on believing that the soul and body are so separate that the physical characteristics of the body do not correspond to the mind. From a Christian perspective, human nature is a perfect unity of soul and body. Neither the body nor the soul can exist apart from each other as they are created together as we see in Genesis 1. The body and the soul are complementary and when they are separated, we call this death, and we look forward to the Resurrection when body and soul are reunited. Transgenderism goes against this view since they create an opposition between the soul and body as they believe that a soul can have distinct sex from the body.
Transgenderism advocates for the belief that gender dysphoria is caused by a mismatch between biological sex and gender identity and that this mismatch is real in such a way that the solution involves mutilating the body to match the perception of gender identity. This means that the perception of gender identity represents the true reality of an individual implying that the soul of the individual is in opposition to their body. This is of course a Gnostic belief and cannot be squared with Christianity. Gender as a concept is not even valid, having been created by psychologist John Money in 1955 which he based off of experiments on 2 boys that ended with the two boys committing suicide in adulthood due to the trauma he caused them.
Therefore, LGBTQ ideology is contrary to Scripture and relies on values and ideas that make it inherently non-Christian. Remember how we defined Christianity? Part of that involves belief in the resurrection as is stressed by both Jesus Christ (John 11:25) and other writers in the NT. The resurrection is the reuniting of body and soul, how can they be united if they existed in opposition to one another? The understanding of the resurrection in the Bible involves a continuity between the bodies we have today and our perfected bodies in the Eschaton. By rejecting Scripture and creating this kind of opposition between body and soul the advocates of #FaithfullyLGBTQ eschew themselves from anything that can be called Christian and advocate for ideas that cause active spiritual harm especially to those they think they are.
