Laurie Higgins writes “Cool-Shaming and Church Schism” for  the Illinois Family Institute.

It’s a HORRIBLE article, prompted apparently by a Southern Baptist church waking up to the 21st Century, and includes this astounding remark:

The cultural shift being effected by proponents of deviant, anti-biblical sexuality and radical subjectivism is going to divide every congregation and every denomination. Among individual Christians, it will separate wheat from the chaff.

Seriously?  Basically homosexuality (and, by extension, homosexuals) are somehow going to divide the church.  As if one’s position on homosexuality is the (THE) litmus test by which to measure one’s Christianity.

I’m not going to dissect the entire article — it’s a bollocks from start to finish, based on the premise there is only one way to interpret the bible, and it has to be their way, or else you’re not a real Christian.   The article ends with:

Those Christians who don’t see the monumental changes that this (to use a term that sears the ears of the uber-cool) wicked homosexuality-affirming movement is bringing to America are either foolish or asleep at the wheel. Cultural subversives who believe there are no transcendent, objective truths in regard to “gender” and sexuality (other than consent) have brought about a cultural cataclysm which demands side-taking. As with “gender,” there can be no exception to or obliteration of the “binary.”

Brothers and Sisters, you are either for Scripture or agin it.

Ms. Higgins seems to have little understanding of human sexuality in a scientific context, but sees it only through ancient roles of her own favored religious text.  Sex, gender, sexual orientation … none of it is strictly binary at all.  If it were binary and only for procreation, there would be no homosexuals or bisexuals, no intersexed babies, no transgender identity, or much of anything else.  But we know that sexuality is a broad spectrum of possibility, with several layers at each point along the range.

The biggest problem with this kind of Christian is their refusal to accept reality the way it actually is in real life, instead of their make-believe version. This is topped only by their insistence that EVERYONE else is required to see it their way.

I would have no problem with a Christian who says, “My Bible and my faith, tells me that homosexuality is wrong for me, so I will not do that, just like I will not be promiscuous or cheat on my spouse.   My Bible and my faith teaches me nothing about your sexuality or how you are supposed to express it, but it tells me to love you as you are.  My Bible and my faith only dictate MY behavior, not yours.”

But very few Christians are able to do this.  And THAT is why the Church must either get with the program and join the 21st Century, or become a dusty relic of the past.  Gays are not destroying the Church; the Church is destroying itself by pretending it has authority to decide who is in the Church and who isn’t.