Since the Ebola scare is today’s top story, there’s a secondary item you may be unaware of: the City Council of Houston has subpoenaed the sermons of local pastors to review what they’ve been saying about homosexuality.
Under any circumstances that’s at least outrageous; at most, frightening. But the events leading to this heavy-handedness only underscore what an abusive, arrogant move it really is.
“Houston, We Have a Problem”
It all began last June, when the Houston City Council passed the Human Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) also known as the “bathroom bill”, a city ordinance claiming to protect differing classes from discrimination in the use of public facilities, granting anyone the right to use a public restroom designated for anyone else. In simpler terms, if a male identifies himself as a female, he is now free to use the ladies room, and vice versa. Some people sincerely view this as progress, including Houston’s Mayor Annise Parker, openly lesbian, whose identification with the bill is summed up in her own public statement: “It is personal, it’s not academic; it is my life that is being discussed.”
Others object. More than 50,000, to be specific, who signed a petition to place the matter on the ballot so the voters could decide its outcome, while a coalition of more than 400 Houston area churches likewise went on record with their opposition. In August the City Council threw the petition out, citing irregularities. In response, a number of its signers filed a lawsuit against the city, and now, allegedly as part of its preparation for the suit, Houston demanded that a number of the city’s pastors turn over records of any sermons they’ve preached in which homosexuality, transgenderism, the “bathroom bill” or the mayor herself were mentioned. Apart from sermons, any other communications touching on these subjects are also demanded.
(Of particular interest is the fact that some of the churches receiving subpoenas were not even part of the coalition, nor are they named in the suit.)
Mayor Parker has distanced herself from this action, stating she was unaware the attorneys involved were taking it, though as of this writing she’s said nothing to denounce, much less stop, these extraordinary measures. And some – me included, I’ll have to admit – find it a huge stretch to believe city attorneys would take such drastic steps without the Mayor’s express knowledge and approval. Regardless, this is a showdown we’ll be watching closely, because it touches on the basics: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and government overreach.
All of which brings up three issues on my heart: Prediction, Preparation and Perseverance.
Prediction
I think “I told you so” is a loser’s saying, an obnoxious way of claiming high ground, and I try to avoid using it. But I’ll bend my own rule a bit by saying “Lots of us said so”, since so many of us, whose work or interests have touched on homosexuality and related issues, have been saying for decades that it would come to this. In fact I’ve often said, and truly believe, that where gay rights go, freedoms of religion, speech, and conscience suffer. Looking at current trends I still think that’s a fair assessment. So OK, we saw it coming.
Which really doesn’t ease the pain. Witnessing the cultural crucifixion of public figures who dare to hold traditional views on marriage, or the civil actions against those whose conscience prohibits them from offering services for a same sex wedding ceremony, or the speech codes strangling honest discussion of the issue among university students, is heartbreaking. It’s like watching a child grow who is defiant and anti-social, knowing full well he’ll wind up in Juvenile Hall. When you finally get the call that he’s been caught shoplifting you may not be surprised, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
Likewise, for decades I’ve feared for America. Now that so much of what I’ve both feared and expected is happening, it’s no surprise, but who cares? I miss the nation I used to know, and honestly doubt that I’ll ever see it again.
Preparation
But we can either freeze in our grief, or prepare for harder times. If churches can now expect to be subpoenaed for sermon material, they can also expect more, and worse. In the not-too-distant future, non-profit religious organizations can realistically expect challenges to, or even revocation of, their tax exempt status, based on their position on homosexuality. Christian universities will surely face the same. Individual churches can expect at least scrutiny, and at most draconian actions, determined by their willingness or unwillingness to dance to the modern piper’s tune. Lawsuits against Christian leaders, pastors, counselors or activists may soon become common. And believers in general can expect to be compared to segregationists of earlier times: bigoted, ignorant, hateful. Those considering homosexuality to be unnatural or immoral are now the minority. Soon we’ll become the despised minority.
As such, in the interest of good stewardship, we’ll need to know the laws governing us, follow the legal roller coaster this issue throws us around on, and, when unjust ordinances are considered, oppose them. (We may well lose, but we’ll need to know we responsibly tried.) Then by God’s grace, if and when injustice prevails, we’ll need to prayerfully consider when to comply, when to privately resist, and when to publicly say along with Peter and John, consequences be damned, “We ought to obey God rather than man.” (Acts 5:29)
Perseverance
This will be the hardest. One of my favorite movie lines comes from the film The Insider, in which the protagonist says,
“But principles only mean something if you stick by them when they’re inconvenient.”
The belief that God intended the sexual union to be heterosexual is, let’s face it, an increasingly inconvenient principle.
Not that we started a fight over this, because I really believe we didn’t. It’s just that we can’t in good conscience go along with the cultural trend, and when we’re told we must, what choice do we have but to resist and thereby become the troublemakers?
And troublemakers we will be, like it or not. To refuse to comply is the same, in many people’s eyes, as active opposition. To the bully, saying no is no different than picking a fight, so here we go.
But as we go, let’s keep this in mind: Gays and lesbians are not our enemies. Many homosexual people by no means want to silence the Church, and many of them do, in fact, oppose actions like those taken by the Houston City Council. A number of leading gay figures, including Andrew Sullivan, Tammy Bruce and Camille Paglia, have openly rejected these kinds of measures, and would stand alongside conservatives in opposition to them. Integrity absolutely exists among any number of same-sex attracted people, and to miss that point is to be crucially in the wrong.
There’s a difference between the gay rights movement and gay people, and our argument is largely with the first, hardly with the second. In fact, many heterosexual people are part of the gay rights movement, and it is that social/political movement which we are (or at least should) be fighting, rather than homosexuals themselves, many of whom have no agenda other than to pay the bills, stay in shape, and be good neighbors and fellow citizens. The movement seeks to normalize homosexuality, then silence opposition, and plenty of people, homo and heterosexual, oppose it.
And what of those who don’t? What of those gays and lesbians who clearly DO want to convert the masses and punish the unconverted? Paul himself faced similar types among the many who opposed him, and his own Jewish countrymen were his fiercest critics and enemies. And of them he said, “For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” (Romans 9:3)
No trite little “Love the sinner; hate the sin” for Paul. His love was a muscular force refusing to hate, loving when reviled, wishing even for his own damnation if it would save the very people who opposed him. That kind of love, impossible for us but granted by God when it’s sought, will sustain us to pray “Father forgive them” when everything in our flesh would scream “Crucify!”
And if, during the hardest of times, we find the deepest love, express it in tangible ways, and refuse to be overcome with evil but rather overcome it with good, then this weirdly predictable battle we’ve long expected but hoped to avoid, will not, by any means, have been fought in vain. Chris Seay, Pastor of Houston’s Ecclesia Church, said it well in his pubic response to the current controversies:
“As religious leaders, if we begin to change our teaching to accommodate popular opinion, we have failed to practice faithfulness to what we believe is our God-given call. We cannot and will not walk that path.”
