Greg and Amy unpack the flaws in the suggestion that Christians will eventually change their minds on LGBTQ+ issues.
Transcript
Question: Please help me address this comment posted on social media: “Conservative Christians were once pro-slavery. They were also against women’s suffrage and were once pro-segregation. And they changed their minds—mostly. I’m ready for them to change their mind on LGBTQ+ rights. It will come.”
Greg: Okay, there are two things here. One’s a historical issue. The Republican Party was founded in the mid-1900s for the purpose of destroying slavery, and it was opposed by the Democratic Party until the early ’60s—1960s, not 1860s. Actually, I think, the amendment regarding the Constitution that had to do with suffrage for blacks—there was not a single Democratic vote in favor of that. So, I question all of these statements of fact about the past—I don’t know about women’s suffrage—but especially with regards to the slavery issue, it was predominantly Christians that were the ones who accomplished the abolition of slavery. I mean, obviously in the UK with William Wilberforce, and then we followed suit soon after. And it was Christian organizations and Christian people using biblical arguments. Oh, I understand there were Christians that were against it because they had an interest in it—an interest in slavery and promoting it. But the irony is that when it was finally dealt with, it was finally dealt with because of Christian activism based on biblical principles—and the Republican Party. Okay? That’s just a matter of history. Doesn’t matter what side of the fence you’re on politically now. That’s the history.
There are no moral implications of having dark skin. None. It has nothing to do with behavior. All right? There are moral implications about our sexual behaviors. Doesn’t matter the motivations. People say, “Well, blacks are born this way. Gays are born this way.” Well, blacks were born this way. We have no evidence that gays are born that way. But that’s not relevant, because the relevant issue is not what your inclination happens to be. What’s relevant is what the inclination is that you want to practice freely. And the objection regarding the behavior is that it’s immoral—arguably immoral.
So, there is no parity between these two issues, although the issue is brought up all the time. Now, again, I’m not going to stretch this too far. I’m not saying that Christians are right in their view. I believe that. But the point I’m making now is, you cannot compare these two things.
Well, let’s just change LGBT to pedophilia. I’m not saying they are pedophiles. I’m just saying, if it were pedophilia, would we make this argument? “Conservatives didn’t wake up to the racism and all that until finally they changed their minds. When are they going to change their minds about pedophilia?” Now, you’re going to see immediately the problem with that view because the complaints in the first case is apples and oranges. It’s the behaviors that are the concern.
The difference between pedophilia and LGBTQ is that culture largely approves of LGBT behaviors and not pedophilia behaviors. But the argument doesn’t stand in either case as a comparison to racism. That’s the point I want to see. And this, once again, is an issue of clarity of thinking. There is no parity here. It is very different. Skin color is irrelevant to morality. Most people even acknowledge, in general, that sexual behavior is a moral concern. They’ve just changed the categories or the values they apply to different behaviors now, over time. But it is still a category of moral concern. So, if I were an LGBT advocate, I wouldn’t make this comparison. It’s not a legitimate comparison. There’s no parity between the two. Plus, the historical facts are wrong.
Amy: Some of what you said, Greg, I have here too. So, good job, Greg. We think too much alike. But one thing to remember is you noted that it was those who believed in the Christian worldview who believed that we were all created in the image of God, and that your skin color is irrelevant to your human value—that we’re all intrinsically valuable regardless of our skin color. That is a Christian idea. That’s a conservative Christian idea.
Greg: Which applies equally to LGBT folk. Just to make the point.
Amy: So, those who were consistent with that, like William Wilberforce—and you can read his book about Christianity. He wrote a whole book about how the elites of his time had this kind of nominal Christianity, and he said, “No, you need to look at the actual, real doctrines. They matter. And you should have a more robust Christian worldview. You should love God. You should take this seriously.” So, he was obviously a very serious, conservative Christian.
Greg: And he also started all kinds of other organizations—a whole bunch more—because he wanted to reform what they called “manners.” He reformed manners. That means moral behavior in the culture. And so, all of these other enterprises that he started to help the poor, etc., etc.
Amy: So, he was calling people to a more robust and consistent worldview. Those who went with slavery were going away from the Christian worldview, being swayed by the culture. So, that’s what’s true about the LGBT ideas now. People are moving away from the Christian worldview towards the culture. Whereas, with slavery, being against slavery was moving towards the Christian worldview and away from culture.
So, what we have here is Christians being against segregation and slavery because skin color is irrelevant to our value, but being for male and female marriage because sex is relevant to marriage, according to the Christian worldview—because of the nature marriage and how we were created as human beings. So, we were created in a certain way. That means that our sex is relevant to marriage. So, you have skin color irrelevant to value—sex relevant to marriage.
So, again, you have those who went towards slavery were going away from a Christian worldview, and those who are going towards LGBT are going away from a Christian worldview. Those who oppose segregation are going towards a Christian worldview. Those who oppose the LGBT ideas are moving towards a Christian worldview. The question is not the change or whether or not they’re going along with society. The question is, are they going with a Christian worldview, or are they not? That’s why I don’t think you can expect to see a large movement of Christians towards same-sex marriage and homosexuality and all those sorts of things. I mean, hopefully, if they’re going to stay faithful.
I would also point out, the people who went with the crowd were wrong, and they ended up going along with all sorts of harms to society. And that’s the argument we make. If you go away from the nature of how we are created, and you fight against that, the result will be pain for our entire society. So, I hope that we don’t go in that direction, although the fight’s getting harder, because the more pressure you get from society, the more people go along with it.
You know, there was a time, way back when, when Christians—I think they had almost gotten rid of slavery in the West. Christians have been arguing against slavery since way back when—the early Christians. So, this kind of movement in that direction was not based in Christianity.
Finally, I wanted to say something quickly about women’s suffrage. And Nancy Pearcey addresses this in her book The Toxic War on Masculinity. And, again, I don’t know if there was a particular view that Christians took or not. It might be hard to tell because everyone would claim to be Christian. I really don’t know. I don’t know about that. However, what I do know is that, based on the research Nancy Pearcey did, is that this wasn’t about what people assume it was about today. So, people think, “Okay, people were against suffrage because they didn’t think women were human beings, or they weren’t valuable, or they weren’t smart.” That actually wasn’t why people were opposed. In fact, there were a lot of women who were opposed. And here’s what she says. She says they understood clearly that universal suffrage implied a shift from the household to the individual as the basic unit of society.
They said “the vote would strike at the family as the self-governing unit upon which the state is built.” So, what they didn’t want was for the government to start intruding into the family, and they didn’t want the family to be broken apart into individuals. They wanted it to be seen as a group. So, the explanations were not quite what people think today. And maybe there’s more merit to it than we’ve understood. And I don’t know that much about it. I only know what she wrote about in her book. But there’s something to consider.
Greg: She’s a very good researcher too, just for the record.
Amy: So, there were a lot of women who were against women’s suffrage for that reason. And I can imagine there was also probably a lot of misunderstanding even then. Or maybe people mocked it or said they’re really against women. I really don’t know. I don’t know the history of this.
Greg: Well, Hollywood—the media—control the conversation, and they control the terms of it. So, you put this into films as having been a certain way, and people believe that’s the way it actually was. And, many times, it wasn’t that way at all. You look at the historical record, you find something entirely different.
Amy: So, there were a lot of women who wanted to be represented as a household rather than as an individual, for legitimate reasons. Whether they were right or not, I haven’t done enough research on that. But it wasn’t just bigotry.
So, there you go. Christians—I mean, like every human being—we sin. And anyone can be bigoted. But Christianity is not bigoted. Christianity is based on truths about reality and how we were created. And we learn to be wise by reading God’s law and finding out what is good and what is right. So, the more people—the closer they get to that—the better our society will be. And that’s what Christians truly believe. But people assume we make all sorts of decisions based on anger and malice and all those sorts of things. I just wish they would take time to understand where we’re coming from.
Greg: Atheistic secularism was not the incentive for stopping slavery. In fact, when you look at the philosophical foundations of atheistic secularism, there is no foundation for doing that. You can have individual people who are atheists who have a personal belief about these things, but the question I ask is, what is the moral principle inherent to atheism that dictates this particular public good? And the answer is, there is none, because there are no moral principles inherent to atheism. Atheism is molecules in motion. That’s what you’re left with, is a simple way of putting the worldview. And that means all kinds of things that are entailed with a theistic worldview—what we’re talking about—which is morality and rights and humans made in the image of God and all kinds of other things. The atheistic worldview is evacuated of all of those things.
When you hold a worldview, the worldview entails other things. If there is a God, that entails—at least in principle—a whole host of other things. If you hold that there is no God, that eliminates those things that are dependent on God as part of the worldview. Again, atheists can be, in a certain sense, as good as Mother Teresa. But there is nothing in their worldview that informs that. That’s an individual decision, and they could just as easily have decided otherwise and still been completely consistent with their worldview.