Common Fault Lines in Maintaining an Evangelical Approach to Homosexuality

Peter Wehner is the former deputy assistant to George W. Bush. He also served in the Reagan and other Bush administrations. Wehner, now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a social conservative and an evangelical Christian.

On June 11, Wehner authored a guest post at Patheos entitled, “An Evangelical Christian Looks at Homosexuality.” The context for the piece was a recent exchange Wehner had with a Christian acquaintance on the matter of homosexuality. This unnamed interlocutor was advocating that Christians “speak out more boldly and forcefully” and “vehemently oppose homosexuality and same sex marriage.” Not knowing the details of the exchange, it’s possible I would disagree with Wehner’s Christian acquaintance just as Wehner did. I certainly agreed with Wehner’s contention that applying the laws of ancient Israel to the United States is tricky business and that determining “how the Scriptural injunctions against homosexual behavior should manifest themselves in modern American law and society are not self-evident.” That is to say, our political and legislative positions cannot be determined simply by noting that the Bible calls something a sin and therefore that sin should be illegal. Further considerations about the common good, natural law, human rights, the unfolding of redemptive history, and the nature and scope of the state must come into play. I do not think the state should recognize gay marriage (so called), but my justification for this position goes deeper than merely asserting that homosexual behavior is ethically wrong.

But I digress.

My reason for noting Wehner’s article is because he is a thoughtful Christian who—despite some good points—has, in my estimation, repeated many of the worst arguments Christians often use when equivocating on homosexuality in general and gay marriage in particular. Let me mention four of these arguments. Read more

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