From: Justin Hohn
Columbus
First, I must ask my fellow Christians if they honestly believe that homosexuality is a special kind of sin, one that God treats differently than other sins. In my Bible, fornicators are usually lumped in with liars, thieves, idolaters and practitioners of all kinds of different sins. I see no evidence in the Bible that homosexuality is a sin beyond God’s grace or desire to forgive. I assure you God is holy, and gossip, pride, envy, stealing and lust are just as sinful and worthy of judgment as homosexuality. A Christian must reject the lie that his own sin is no big deal, while holding that God will rain fire and brimstone on the homosexual. Falling short of the glory of God, as we’re told we all have done, is not a matter of degrees. When you miss the target, you miss. There is no partial credit.
Christ died for every LGBT person just as surely as he died for anyone else. My sins and your sins are as surely in need of forgiveness as anyone else’s sins, sexual or otherwise.
And like all sin, homosexuality should not be celebrated. I have to wonder exactly what it is about identifying as LGBT that is a source of pride. It can’t be the mere lack of shame; feeling pride and not feeling shame are very different things. What is achieved, or honorable about the LGBT identification that merits feeling proud? Perhaps it is a mistaken understanding of courage? After all, publicly proclaiming a particular temptation or tendency of yours isn’t exactly storming Omaha Beach.
We must reject the false equivalence of LGBT identity as a civil rights issue, and granting of an entire identity group around it. Membership in other protected identity groups such as race or gender can be empirically verified. I can, if desired, define what it means to be African-American or Latino based on ancestry, and I could even verify female identity via a simple DNA test.
Only the LGBT identity is based entirely on an emotion — a feeling. While I’m free to identify as Latino in my emotions, I remain in the ethnic group of my birth — and critically, if I claim Latino status based only on my emotions, preferences, and cultural identification, I would rightly be called a fraud. I’m not Latino and cannot become Latino.
The LGBT identification turns this on its head, making feelings not only a means of claiming a status, but the only basis on which the status can even be asserted. Certainly this is not a basis on which we can award extra legal protections.
No homosexual or sufferer of gender dysphoria chooses those feelings or tendencies. We each have our own particular tendencies, and things against which we must wrestle that keep us from the dignity God would have for us. What matters is our behavior, and our response to temptation.
