28 Aug How Can Christians Respond to the Challenge of LGBTQIA++ in Public Discourse?

What do students and unmarried persons of the Union of Evangelical Students of India know about sex? Have they sinlessly fled youthful lusts (2 Tim 2:22), so that they know only the urge? Or have they, men or women, committed the sin of lust (Mt 5:28), and maybe more? More likely, they have attempted experiments, sometimes as adolescents ignorant of the phrase ‘same sex’. Sexual sin is perhaps the most universal sin that binds Christians together, single or married, in lifelong and repeated repentance before Christ.

To adhere to the godly ideal for any area of life, such as sex, is goodness defined by the absence of sin? No: sin is almost always the corruption of something that was created good (Gen 1:31). It is the good that comes first. A few weeks before our marriage, a senior graduate lent my future wife and me a book, ‘Sexual Happiness in Marriage’ by Herbert Miles. The author describes the good of husband-wife sexual intercourse in these terms:

“A piano and a violin are two different instruments, very different. Yet, when two musicians, playing the instruments, do the right thing, at the right time, in the right attitude, beautiful music is the result. Likewise, the physical bodies of a bride and groom are different, very different. Yet, when they in marriage as husband and wife do the right thing, at the right time, and in the right attitude, they will have beautiful sexual harmony as they express their love to each other.”

God created sex, when He created Adam and Eve – the only species that has sexual intercourse face-to-face, God’s image embracing God’s image, in an exclusive, exhilarating union. Alternative sexual activity that the LGBTQIA++ community posits bears no comparison: mutual masturbation is not biological, complementary, or even sexual intercourse.

I tried to express, in public discourse, the unique goodness of opposite-sex marriage (OSM) when I submitted an intervention in the Supreme Court of India against legalising same-sex marriage (SSM) in 2023. The Hindu newspaper quoted online from my application:

“Som Thomas, who introduced himself as a retired cis-gender male engineer, said laws regarding marriage must not be changed to accommodate the “insubstantial concept” of same-gender or gender-neutral ‘spouses’, since marriage is substantively male-female sexual intercourse of a singular kind. He said that a man-woman sexual intercourse was in a “category of its own”. “The necessary condition for marriage is one-man-one-woman sexual intercourse with the possibility of simultaneous climax through stimulation of and by the sexual organs alone, and no other limbs or artifices. No other sexual intercourse bears resemblance either to the physical act or to its most significant possible consequence, namely conception,” Mr. Thomas argued”.

When I subsequently spoke in the Supreme Court, on 10 May, 2023, I again emphasised that in every Indian law, sexual intercourse of a specific kind (man-woman) initiated marriage, and its violation (through non-consummation or adultery) could end the marriage. I asked the Court that if two women friends lived together, what activity would substantively convert their relationship into a marriage. The Court correctly understood my words, that mere vows never defined a marriage – sex always did, an act which two women cannot perform, and men can only mimic (Rom 1:26-27).

Only in a context in which husband and wife respect each other as equals, and serve each other as ‘one flesh’ (1 Cor 7:5; Eph 5:31), can simultaneous climax take place. The journalist who quoted me was evidently captivated by the uniqueness of what I said, without knowing how Genesis 2:24-25 it was in spirit. I had been present, once before, in the Supreme Court in 2018, with an intervention application to prevent the misuse of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (after I had done a dissertation on its decriminalisation during my PG Diploma in Human Rights Law course). I never forgot how the judges’ minds were visibly captured back then by the false propaganda that same-sex activity is ‘natural’. Therefore, in the 2023 same-sex marriage (SSM) case, I first sought to show that it was unnatural. I submitted medical paper references that showed the unnatural diseases caused by habitual male-male penetration of the penis into the anus, for example – an addiction that no other animal develops. I supplied research on the higher suicide rates among SSM couples even in Scandinavian countries that had long legalised and celebrated such relationships. A surgeon once told me that a doctor who fails to tell his patient, ‘Cigarette-smoking is injurious to health,’ should be charged with medical negligence – and so should a doctor who does not warn, ‘Anal sex is injurious to health.’

Those who believe in evolution – theistic or otherwise – would further agree that same-sex sexuality is against the principle of ‘survival of the fittest’: the fit would reproduce for new life to be conceived, and cared for, in natural ways, not artificial means like surrogate motherhood. In her book, ‘Them Before Us’, Katy Faust speaks from personal experience as a child of two lesbian women, only one of whom was her biological mother. The person Ms Faust constantly yearned for was her father, who existed, but was not allowed to parent her.

With those and many other available facts that point to the damage that LGBTQIA++ lifestyles tend to inflict on children, adults and society at large, one can be confident in taking a public stand on behalf of the ‘good’ sex of God and ‘good’ parenting, a heritage that has made Indians among the best knowledge workers in the world. Over a decade ago, with whatever knowledge that I then had, I politely raised, within the channels available at my employer MNC, repeated questions when ‘Pride’ events became propaganda rather than protection against non-discrimination. I did not bring the Bible into the discussion. It also began my continuing journey to challenge in public forums the prideful sin that devalues the ‘good’ sex of God and the ‘good’ parenting to which He has called creation.

My employers recognised an absence of hate, so there was no ‘homophobia’ complaint against me. HR, NGO and other personnel (including in some theological circles) often ride the LGBTQIA++ movement to further their own careers. So ‘love’ for transgenders and homosexuals is not a part of public discourse, except by being a political ‘ally’ of their cause. In reality, like any human being, every LGBTQIA++ person has a ‘love language’, and personal friendship is what a LGBTQIA++ person would value most. Their hypersexualised behaviour, the existence of ‘gay bars’, etc, are often just a desperate expression of this vacuum. God has designed ‘good’ sex, but if a partner (even a heterosexual one) sees the relationship primarily in sensual terms, then the other partner can feel devalued (and suicidal in the more tragic cases).

To actually minster to LGBTQIA++ individuals, with unselfish, unjudgmental love, is thus a challenging ministry for Christians, whose love can often be conditional on an individual’s showing signs of change – which may never take place. Among traditional Christians, a person attending the fellowship:
a) is expected to BEHAVE like a Christian
b) as a result of which he or she is assumed to have BELIEVED
c) and then the person is allowed to BELONG to the community.

Whereas, any unbeliever comes with:
a) a desire to BELONG among people – at least a handful – who unconditionally love him or her
b) as a result of which the person may BELIEVE (or may not)
c) and only on having a saving faith in Christ can the person have the Holy Spirit’s help to BEHAVE in transformed ways.

To offer unreserved belongingness to unbelievers, including prostitutes and the unbelieving children of Christians in the fellowship, is a ministry for which easy models do not exist. Whereas Jesus offered the bread dipped in the wine even to Judas (who was responsible to God for pretending to take it while in unbelief). Rosaria Butterfield explains in her book, ‘The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert’, how her life (as a then practising lesbian and non-Christian) was transformed by the loving, open home of a Christian family. Like Dr. Butterfield’s books, her YouTube videos on the subject are some of the most informative.

Some Christian groups resolve the need to avoid judgement by an emotional compromise that celebrates the sin (in this instance, sexual sin) in order to make the sinner feel comfortable. As a recent WSJ newspaper article put it, many LGBTQIA++ victories in the US “were partly because of a crucial change in messaging. While earlier same-sex marriage campaigns had emphasized a dry, legalistic argument about the civil rights and benefits that marriage confers, in 2012 activists pivoted to accentuating love, commitment and universal family values. This change appealed to people’s emotions and helped campaigners reach religious people and conservatives.”

To intend to unconditionally love the sinner (at least at the level of personal friendship, if not as a community), while hating that one universal failing within us which tempts us to love the sin as well, is perhaps the place of moral tension from where a forgiven Christian must learn to respond to the challenge of LGBTQIA++ in private as well as public discourse.

Som Thomas studied mechanical engineering in the 1980s at what is now IIT Roorkee. The EU in the Roorkee hostel was instrumental in his spiritual formation. Now retired, most of his working years were lived in Bengaluru, along with his wife, Shyni, a product of MA College of Engineering, Kothamangalam, and its EU. They have 2 sons and 2 grand-daughters. Reach him at som_thomas@yahoo.co.in