A class questions issues from hetero privilege to gaydar to LGBTQ racism
Class by class, lecture by lecture, question asked by question answered, an education is built. This is one of a series of visits to one class, on one day, in search of those building blocks at BU.
Are stereotypes about gays—for example, that gay men talk, dress, or gesture differently than straight guys—bigoted blather? Or is there such a thing as reliable gaydar that helps people, including gays, to perceive others’ sexual orientation?
You might not expect openmindedness about stereotyping to reach up in a seminar called Queer Theology, which studies questions about God and religion posed by gay, transgender, bisexual, and gender-questioning people, many of whom, according to educator Pamela Lightsey, ask, “Does God hate me?” because of widespread prejudice.
Lightsey herself, she says, is the only openly lesbian African American cleric in the United Methodist Church, and a fervent critic of stereotyping. But the Institution of Theology associate dean and clinical assistant professor of contextual theology is devoted to coming at an issue from all sides. Recently
What Does the Bible Say About Homosexuality?
What Does The Bible Declare About Homosexuality?
Introduction
For the last two decades, Pew Research Center has reported that one of the most enduring ethical issues across Christian traditions is sexual diversity. For many Christians, one of the most frequently first-asked questions on this topic is, “What does the Bible say about attraction to someone of the alike sex?”
Although its unlikely that the biblical authors had any notion of sexual orientation (for example, the term homosexual wasn't even coined until the adv 19th century) for many people of faith, the Bible is looked to for timeless guidance on what it means to honor God with our lives; and this most certainly includes our sexuality.
Before we can vault into how it is that Christians can maintain the authority of the Bible and also affirm sexual diversity, it might be helpful if we started with a concise but clear overview of some of the assumptions informing many Christian approaches to understanding the Bible.
What is the Bible?
For Christians to whom the Bible is God’s very written word, it is widely understood that God produced its contents through inspired
This article is part of the What Did Jesus Teach? series.
Silence Equals Support?
In a article for Slate online, Will Oremus asked a provocative question: Was Jesus a homophobe?1
The article was occasioned by a story about a homosexual teenager in Ohio who was suing his sky-high school after school officials prohibited him from wearing a T-shirt that said, “Jesus Is Not a Homophobe.”
Oremus was less concerned about the legal issues of the story than he was about the accuracy of the remark on the shirt. Oremus suggests that Jesus’s views on homosexuality were more inclusive than Paul’s. He writes,
While it’s reasonable to assume that Jesus and his fellow Jews in first-century Palestine would hold disapproved of gay sex, there is no write down of his ever having mentioned homosexuality, let alone expressed particular revulsion about it. . . . Never in the Bible does Jesus himself extend an explicit prohibition of homosexuality.
Oremus seems to recommend that since Jesus never explicitly mentioned homosexuality, he must not have been very concerned about it.
There are at least two reasons that we should be skeptical of this view.
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How Should Christians Respond to Gay Friends or Family Members?
Caleb Kaltenbach (M.A. ’07) is an alumnus of Biola’s Talbot School of Theology, lead pastor of a large church in Simi Valley, Calif., and a married father of two. He’s also an emerging voice in the discussion of how Christians should engage the LGBT community. That’s because Kaltenbach has an insider perspective, having been raised by a dad and mom who divorced and independently came out of the closet as a same-sex attracted man and a woman loving woman. Raised in the midst of LGBT parties and pride parades, Kaltenbach became a Christian and a pastor as a immature adult. Today, he manages the tension of holding to the traditional biblical teaching on sexuality while loving his gay parents.
Kaltenbach’s unique story is detailed in his new novel Messy Grace: How a Pastor with Gay Parents Learned to Love Others Without Sacrificing Conviction and landed him on the front page of the New York Times in June. Biola Magazine reached out to him to talk about his novel and his perspective on how Christians can excel navigate the complexities of this issue with reality and grace.
In your novel you say that it’s time for Christians to own the iss