PCA pastors publicly proclaim the importance, even the precious necessity and gospel utility, of using the designation "gay Christian" for men and women who profess faith in Christ while lusting in the same-sex direction. Those promoting this new label say that same-sex desire is a result of the Fall and a part of human brokenness, but it is most certainly not sin. They tell the church it is honesty and humility that have given birth to their new "gay Christian" identity. They were born gay and born-again Christian, and each and every moment is impacted by those two important personal identities.
Mrs. Rosaria Butterfield, former lesbian feminist professor of English and women's studies, comes to a drastically different conclusion. To insist—as she did before her conversion—that her personhood was defined by her sexual desires...
she says, was rooted in pride...
It was my pride that made me reject God's diagnosis: My pride said that my sexual lust for women was 'who I am'—a reflection of a morally neutral reality. It was God's Word that said that my sexual desire for women was a distortion of who I am as an image bearer of a holy God, a distortion that has made me both guilty and corrupt (Romans 5:18).
Get that? Rather than humility leading her to the identity-marker "gay," she explains that it was her pride that led her to define herself by her corrupt desires. To do so was to rebel against God's design...
It was to deny the reality of the image of God in man. It was rebellion meant to promote more rebellion against God...
One of the powerful implications of George Orwell's 1984 is this: Changing the language changes the logic. We have seen Orwellian logic played out in the world and the church as regards the sin of homosexuality. Is homosexuality sin or grace? What if it is unchosen? If we insist that others use language that emanates from sexual-orientation ideology, we change the logic of what it means to be people born in Adam who must battle sexual sin with the grace of God. Out of this mess emerged a whole plethora of new categories of self that come from sexual-orientation ideology: gay Christian, mixed-orientation marriage.... All of these made-up categories of self create excuse clauses for obedience to God's Word.
Before the wholesale promotion of sodomy in our culture, such views—defining yourself as gay is pride and an excuse for sin—were a boringly normal part of the Church's witness to a dying world. That pastors would advocate for the adoption of homosexual categories, appellations, and understandings is a double portion of pride and excuse.
Andrew Dionne is the pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Spartanburg, SC. He and his wife Sarah have six children. Read more from Andrew here.
