"First Things" and Wheaton College school the Apostle Paul...

But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity... - Hebrews 5:14; 6:1a

Recently, both conservative Roman Catholics and Wheaton Evangelicals have begun to promote Satan's lie that being lesbian or effeminate is perfectly fine as long as the lesbian or effeminate don't copulate with each other. Thus the editors of First Things have been promoting a young lesbian writer named Eve Tushnet who has just released her book, Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith. With the book's release, FT's editors hosted Ms. Tushnet for a lecture and book signing, publicizing the event on their web site. The Washington Post introduces Ms. Tushnet,,,

...Tushnet is a leader in a small but growing movement of celibate gay Christians who find it easier than before to be out of the closet in their traditional churches because they’re celibate. She is busy speaking at conservative Christian conferences with other celibate Catholics and Protestants...

You caught that, right? Ms. Tushnet leads a growing number of lesbians and effeminate who find it easier to come out of the closet in their traditional churches because they're not sexually active. So, publicly affirming her lesbianism in every way but touch, how does Ms. Tushnet present herself? Here are several excerpts from interviews she's given:

More than anything, I hope this book reaches younger people–teens and young adults–who are gay and Christian, and wondering if there is any future for them in the Church, or if all that lies ahead of them is a blank lonely wilderness. I hope they see that a future full of love is just as possible for them as it is for their straight or secular peers.

I had all these misconceptions about Christianity in general — probably Catholicism in particular. I was very allergic to the language of sin. It seemed to me that it was a way of telling people that they were bad or unclean. And having people say no, that’s not right, let’s think about this differently, was very important. ...the more the Catholics talked, the more what they said resonated... specifically the emphasis on the importance of things in the world, of art and stuff. You know, a tree is super-important if you’re Catholic. It has been charged with some sort of specific meaning given to it by God. And that totally resonated with me as someone who loves literature , and I think also as a lesbian. ...I really didn’t — to some extent still don’t — understand the Church’s arguments surrounding sexuality.

[The interviewer] You seem very comfortable with your sexual identity, but you clearly don’t feel you should act on it. Do you struggle with that?
[Ms. Tushnet]...a bit of language that I would challenge is the idea that to act on being a lesbian is to have sex with a woman. I think there are a lot of things I do in life that are in some way a result of me being a lesbian... I’ve become progressively less interested in guys and more sort of just lesbian as time has gone on...

[The interviewer]: it sounds like when you came into the Church, were you not feeling that your sexual orientation was some kind of baggage or something to be denied?
[Ms. Tushnet]: Not something to be denied.

[The interviewer]: Do you think you could ever be a gay Catholic who is sexually active, or would that be a complete conflict?
[Ms. Tushnet]: To be honest I don’t know how I would get there from here. I just kind of don’t see it. But no one can predict the future.

But in terms of finding community in the church, right now my primary community within the church is pretty much other gay Christians. One of the things that I find really heartening is just how many people there are who are coming out and accepting themselves, but also staying within the Catholic Church or other churches that hold to a traditional understanding of sexuality.

Ms. Tushnet claims to be a convert to Roman Catholicism and hits the sweet spot of the church's abandonment of Biblical sexuality by being a self-affirming lesbian who tells everyone listening that first, she is gay; but second, she is not presently having sex with another woman. Thus her concession to the Roman Catholic Church is not to agree that, as the Vatican's Congregation for the Sacred Doctrine of the Faith put it, her lesbianism is "a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent." No, she is a self-affirming lesbian assertive in her gayness with her only concession to the Roman Catholic Church being that she says she's not currently acting through touch to consummate her gay identity and desires. Aside from that small part of her gayness, she's a full-on lesbian the conservative Roman Catholics at First Things as well as many others claiming Christian faith (including traditional Protestants) are quite excited to call their own. "Imagine, an attractive, bright, and articulate young lesbian with a degree from Yale who has converted to Rome and is willing to submit to the Church by remaining celibate! Isn't it wonderful?"

Now Wheaton College jumps on the bandwagon. This past Fall, Wheaton's Chaplains Office hired a self-affirming lesbian who, like Ms. Tushnet, tells everyone listening that first, she is gay; but second, she is not having sex with another woman. Her concession to the Christian church and the Word of God is not any agreement that her lesbianism is contrary to our Lord's statement, "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female" (Matthew 19:4). Rather, she lives outside the God-ordained binary sexuality of "male and female," instead calling herself "gay" and "lesbian." She reassures everyone this is fully honoring of God, His Creation Order, and Scripture because she doesn't act to consummate her gay identity and desires; she doesn't touch anyone sexually. Aside from that, she's a full-on lesbian that Wheaton Evangelicals are quite excited to call their own. "Imagine, an attractive, bright, and articulate young lesbian who loves Jesus and is willing to remain celibate! Isn't it wonderful?"

The woman's name is Julie Rodgers and she arrived on Wheaton's campus the second time (the first was a decade earlier as a student athlete on Wheaton's women's basketball team) this past September after being offered a position under Wheaton's Presbyterian Chaplain, Steve Kellough. She works out of the Chaplain's Office as Ministry Associate for Student Affairs and explains her work this way: "I aim to help the church imagine a robust future for LGBT people in Christian communities...".1 Ms. Rodgers took up her position at the beginning of the 2014/15 academic year during which Chaplain Kellough was appointed Chaplain Emeritus after serving as Chaplain for a quarter-century.

Part of the duties assigned to Ministry Associate Rodgers was the spiritual oversight of the LGBT fellowship created by Wheaton's administration called Refuge. Ms. Rodgers has been hired to provide spiritual care and supervision to this gay community written about almost two years ago here on Baylyblog, thus making it clear that Wheaton is no longer calling men and women to the sanctification the Apostle Paul spoke of in First Corinthians 6:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. (1Corinthians 6:9-11)

Obviously the Apostle Paul is not speaking here of celibate gay men or lesbian women. Obviously he's not speaking of effeminate and homosexuals within the Corinthian church who had stopped touching each other sexually. He's not speaking of touch while leaving personhood alone. He's not splitting the sort of hairs Wheaton and First Things think he should split. He's not engaging in the casuistry Wheaton and First Things are using to hide their conniving. He's not telling us gender identity is infinitely plastic allowing for butch women, effeminate men, butch women trapped in the bodies of effeminate men, effeminate men trapped in the bodies of butch women, and so on—while sex is always and only binary, and thus Wheaton's Rodgers and First Things's Tushnet are lesbian gendered but celibate sexually. He's not telling us Elton John is free to marry David Furnish as long as he doesn't bed David. And how are we to define cuddling; is Ellen Degeneres free to marry her latest fling as long as they don't cuddle? Or are lesbians allowed to cuddle as long as they stop short of...

Need I go on?

The announcement that Wheaton had hired a lesbian to give spiritual care to other lesbians and the effeminate led to the consumption of a lot of bandwidth by many. Sadly, though, most of that bandwidth was wasted because Evangelicals long ago stopped using the word 'sex' to refer to anything other than physical intimacy. For years now, any mention of "sex" has been limited to what goes on in the bedroom and "gender" has become the way we navigate the politics of identity. So Evangelicals weren't quite comfortable with First Things and Wheaton, but they had a terrible time trying to explain why? The homosexualists kept asking them what their problem was; the squeamish kept saying that being lesbian might lead to touch; the homosexualists kept trying to explain that, as Ms. Tushnet puts it, the identity of the effeminate and lesbian is so much more than touch; the squeamish responded that you couldn't separate touch from the identity of the effeminate and lesbian; and then it was back to square one and it all started over again...

Evangelicals today think sex is touch and touch is sex, so there's no holy kiss as was universally practiced for the first four centuries of the church at worship, and if the effeminate or lesbian tries to defend his effeminacy or her lesbianism, all the Evangelical can do is throw a fit about how dangerous this "identity" is because of how easily it will lead to bad touch. To the church today, sex isn't personhood. It's simply copulation. Do what you want with your gender as long as what you do with it doesn't jeopardize holy touch.

But who are the Apostle Paul's "effeminate" if not men who in former days thrust aside their manhood, exchanging it for a feminine posture? It is absurd to suggest that the Christian men of Corinth who were commended by the Apostle Paul continued to identify as "effeminate" while staying out of one another's beds. And as with the effeminate, so with lesbians; it is absurd to suggest that the women commended by the Apostle Paul continued to identify as "butch" while not cuddling on the couch or in the bedroom.

When God makes each and every one of us, He decrees our most basic station in life—our sexuality. He makes us either man or woman and we know which of the two it is by looking at our genitals. The man who tries to squealch his male station in life is defying God, and it matters little how far his squealching of that station progresses. Does he simply prance instead of walking? Does he simply swing his non-hips seductively? Does he speak and dress effeminately? Does he wear lipstick and take estrogen doses? Does he wear a bra under a blouse tucked into a skirt? Does he have sexual intercourse with one other man? Does he have sexual intercourse with many other men?

And precisely where was the Apostle Paul drawing the line when he said that some of the members of the Corinthian church had been "effeminate?"

No, this list of things characteristic of effeminacy has no point at which the change from moral neutrality to moral condemnation takes place. When God calls a man, He calls that man to the Christian discipleship in which old sinful things are passed away and all things become new. Not copulation without clothing. Not copulation and clothing while continuing to make a living as a countertenor. Sex is a calling from God and is foundational to Christian discipleship, so the man who says he's a celibate effeminate is a rebel against God. The women who says she's a celibate lesbian is a rebel against God.

So again:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. (1Corinthians 6:9-11)

Do not be deceived. There's a good reason God forbids men to wear women's clothing and women to wear men's clothing, and it's not simply because cross-dressing might lead to something more. Cross dressing itself is forbidden:

A woman shall not wear man’s clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God. (Deuteronomy 22:5)

Cross-dressing is an abomination to the Lord. The effeminate will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Don't tell any faithful shepherd that you're an effeminate (gay) Christian. He'll respond that you cannot be effeminate if you are a Christian, so your hour of decision has arrived. Choose whom you will serve, your sinful desires or Jesus Christ, but never both.

Don't tell any faithful shepherd that you're a lesbian Christian. He'll respond that you cannot be lesbian if you are a Christian, so your hour of decision has arrived. Choose whom you will serve, your sinful desires or the Most Holy God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Who Himself declares:

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (2Corinthians 5:17)

Instead, confess to him that you are a Christian who struggles against temptations to effeminacy or lesbianism. He'll understand and pray with and for you because he struggles with besetting sins himself, depending upon the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome them. Just like you.

• 1. Accessed December 25, 2014. For more on Ms. Rodgers.