40 Answers for Kevin DeYoung: Part 1

In this three part series James Haikney looks at 40 questions posed to Christians who support gay marriage and provides his own provocative and considered answers for those who hate the rainbow flag.

For Kevin DeYoung, senior pastor and author of 40 Questions for Christians Now Waving Rainbow Flags, it’s been “a hard few days.”. Mr DeYoung is very worried about the privation of religious liberty and “social ostracism” as a result, of the recent Supreme Court ruling in favour of gay marriage across the United States. For this reason, DeYoung has compiled a list of 40 questions for his brethren to pose to any Christian who has turned out to support what he calls the “sexual revolution”.

I will admit straight away that I am not Kevin DeYoung’s target audience: “Bible-believing Christian[s], [followers] of Jesus whose chief aim is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” I’m a staunch atheist, but one of my guiding principles is the defence of people’s right to believe in anything they so choose. What I will not defend, however, are religious views that inhibit the rights of those who do not share the same system of belief. For this reason, I will answer almost every one of Pastor DeYoung’s questions in a thoroughly sincere and biblical way (who knew that my education at a creationist secondary school would ever come in handy?) – I’m going to omit ones that question my personal beliefs, because they don’t apply, but I will nevertheless list them.

I’m also going to tackle this in three parts because damn it’s long.

I should also note a key point of my argument here – the point by which I can convincingly bring Pastor DeYoung down. If there is no instruction in the Bible as to how to handle these issues, then it is an issue of interpretation. And an interpretation cannot be foisted on another; nor can it be used to criticise another as “not a true believer” or some such. Nevertheless, I do feel that scripture is on the side of marriage equality.

Here we go!

1. How long have you believed that gay marriage is something to be celebrated?

Interesting first question, Mr DeYoung. I, personally, have believed it my whole life. Nevertheless, any Christian who has recently altered their position to be in favour of gay marriage is equally justified in their opinion. The length of someone’s belief in something has no impact here.

2. What Bible verses led you to change your mind?

N/A, though arguing that every change of mind must derive from the Bible is quite frail given that the world is ever-changing and the Bible is famously (supposedly) static.

3. How would you make a positive case from Scripture that sexual activity between two persons of the same sex is a blessing to be celebrated?

Here is another misunderstanding of the current political climate: LGBTQIA pride, and other pro-gay festivals and movements, are not simply a celebration of carnal pleasure. They are celebrations of LGBTQIA individuals’ freedom of expression in spite of oppressive governments and cultural minorities (of which Mr DeYoung is, presumably, a part). So, no, I don’t think gay sex is something to be ‘celebrated’ when decontextualized in the same way that I wouldn’t celebrate heterosexual sex. Unless I were involved.

To answer the question head-on, however, you can make a case for homosexual activity with the same verses that promote heterosexual activity.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. [1 John 4:7-8]

I understand that may not be talking about sexual love, but on doing research after finishing the previous sentence, all I could find was condemnation of sexual activity and a strange obsession with boobs. And also a command to rape people [Numbers 31:17-18], but clearly non-cisnormative people are the biggest problem.

4. What verses would you use to show that a marriage between two persons of the same sex can adequately depict Christ and the church?

Another rather devilish question. Here’s the verse to which Mr DeYoung seems to be referring:

For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. [Ephesians 5:23-24]

This brings up many issues about equality within a marriage, but that’s another debate entirely, and one that hasn’t yet reached a peaceful conclusion. What I will say, however, is that there is no literal mandate on two points:

1. That two members of the same sex could not fulfil this kind of spiritual role play (after all, there are very rarely two human beings in a relationship who are equally dominant or equally submissive in their interactions with others).
2. That this needs to be fulfilled at all. It seems that Paul is attempting to explain Christ’s relationship to the Church while throwing in some handy marriage tips along the way, rather than prescribing a literal model to follow. So I kick the question back: where is the instruction that all marriages must follow a Christ/Church model?

5. Do you think Jesus would have been okay with homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in a committed relationship?

Maybe. It’s worth noting that he didn’t openly condemn prostitution [John 8:7], and didn’t mention homosexuality at all. If we’re talking about the integrity of marriage, Jesus was far more concerned with divorce [Matthew 19:5], suggesting that the issue is being committed to another person rather than the specifics of who that person is. I don’t want to speak for Jesus, as seems to be the latent trap of this question, but if love is a gift from God, and gay couples are in love, then that really settles the issue of what Jesus would think.

6. If so, why did he reassert the Genesis definition of marriage as being one man and one woman?

This is largely untrue. He quoted Genesis, yes, but “reassert” is a bit of a leap. Of course, in Genesis there was only one man and one woman, so it’s not as if he could have said it any differently.

7. When Jesus spoke against porneia what sins do you think he was forbidding?

I’m quaking in my boots at the use of a Greek word.

‘porneia’ is the term that literally translates as “sexual immorality,” and it’s laughable to say that this could only be homosexuality. Let me provide some alternatives (which are, in fact, far worse): sexual assault, rape, paedophilia, bestiality.

8. If some homosexual behavior is acceptable, how do you understand the sinful “exchange” Paul highlights in Romans 1?

I don’t understand where in this article it was decided that “some” is acceptable; nor do I know any who believe that “some” is acceptable. In the world of liberals and fundamentalists, it’s all or nothing. Obviously I’m in the ‘all’ category.

To really understand this passage, which is the real cornerstone of the fundamentalist argument, I’m going to have to quote all of it. My apologies.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is for ever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. [Romans 1:21-27]

So, immediately, it’s quite clear that this isn’t a cut-and-dry anti-gay passage. This is God dealing with serial offenders who are flaunting commandments one and two (‘no other God’ and ‘no graven images’).

Then we come on to the punishment – effectively a mass orgy. I agree that this isn’t an easy one to explain away, although the issue I’d personally highlight is “God gave them over,” which is somewhat suspect.

Nevertheless, it would be a punishment for anyone to engage in sexual activities they didn’t want to, homosexual or otherwise – and there lies my argument (shared, I’ll have you know, by Saint Augustine, but we’ll come on to that later).

What is a “natural sexual relation”? What is a “shameful act”? We don’t know. Of course, Kevin DeYoung et al have been using these verses in an anti-gay way, but they could just as easily refer to – as Augustine believed – oral and anal sex. So, really, the idea at issue here is not whether or not people do have sex, but how they do it.

I’ll tackle the next two simultaneously so I don’t repeat myself.

9. Do you believe that passages like 1 Corinthians 6:9 and Revelation 21:8 teach that sexual immorality can keep you out of heaven?
10. What sexual sins do you think they were referring to?

Revelation 21:8 says that the sexually immoral are going to end up in a lake of burning sulphur. Unless heaven just got a new kind of Jacuzzi, that one seems pretty clear. The other passage is the more interesting on this issue:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, [1 Corinthians 6:9]

Well, that seems pretty clear.

…or is it? Depends if you look at the original Greek or not – and, since Mr DeYoung was so keen to go down that route in Question 7, I couldn’t possibly disappoint him now.

The “men who practice homosexuality” point, according to wouldjesusdiscriminate.org  , consists of two incredibly rare and difficult-to-translate words. One refers to a dominant individual in sex, and the other the submissive. Thus a translation along the lines of “those who abuse power in sex” would be equally as valid – the anti-gay translation has likely been influenced not only by contemporary fundamentalist thought, but by overly assertive translations elsewhere, some of which I’ve already covered.

And I’ve already talked about other sexual sins, Mr DeYoung (rape and so on); what do you want from me?

11. As you think about the long history of the church and the near universal disapproval of same-sex sexual activity, what do you think you understand about the Bible that Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Luther failed to grasp?

“Yes, well, your independent is great and all. But you’re stupid compared to straight white men hundreds of years ago!”

I think the church’s heavily entrenched disapproval of “same-sex sexual activity” [just say “gay people”, Mr DeYoung. It’ll free up so much of your day.] has been misguided and is not based on the Bible but on a cis-het fear of the ‘other’.

Augustine has already worked against you, anyway. This isn’t a one-way street.

12. What arguments would you use to explain to Christians in Africa, Asia, and South America that their understanding of homosexuality is biblically incorrect and your new understanding of homosexuality is not culturally conditioned?

I’ve tackled a lot of the biblical arguments, so I’m going to focus instead on the “culturally conditioned” point. It’s a very dangerous phrase.

It would not surprise me if Mr DeYoung thinks there is an evil force at work in our culture – dark individuals behind the scenes, furtively influencing what people should think. But, really, so-called “cultural conditioning” is just as easily described as “people getting together and having a think,” because that’s what culture is: a collective endorsement of certain ideas.

So yes – I’d have no shame in confronting those in less economically developed nations and advocating that they don’t murder gay people just for their sexual orientation (as in Uganda and so on).

13. Do you think Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were motivated by personal animus and bigotry when they, for almost all of their lives, defined marriage as a covenant relationship between one man and one woman?

No. They were motivated by political expediency, since American culture – at the time of those statements – was far more anti-gay than it is today. They’ve since come out in support of it, which seems a lot more genuine.

[This is a very surprising question in that it seems to play directly into the hands of Mr DeYoung’s opponents. Or maybe I’m misunderstanding something.]

14. Do you think children do best with a mother and a father?

I think they do best with parents – and if you’re going to deny them parents just because those parents are gay, then you’re a despicable human being.

15. If not, what research would you point to in support of that conclusion?

Firstly, here

And then here,

Also this.

Seriously – that was just from a quick Google. You see, there’s this magical thing called ‘the internet’…

Come back on Wednesday 8th July for Part 2 of 3.

written by James Haikney