“In trying to be helpful, many churches have failed, because they have failed to be truthful. They have failed not out of hardness of heart, or lacking of kindness, but in thinking that they are more merciful than God. I shudder to think about how much more rigorous, painful, and dangerous, and difficult my conversion would have been had it taken place in 2016. Rigorous, painful, dangerous, and difficult both for me personally and for my church…Especially today the PCA is smitten in a stupid way, I’m using a hard word, very stupid way and to their shame, to the gay Christian movement.” 

There are a lot of conversations going on in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) concerning homosexuality and same sex attraction. A division exists which seems only to be growing wider. On the one hand are those who believe that homosexual attraction is inherently sinful. They deny that it is ever appropriate for a Christian to identify as gay even if they resist the behavior. They do not see how sexual attraction can be separated from sexual desire. On the other hand are those who believe that homosexual attraction is not inherently sinful. They agree (so far as I can tell) that homosexual sex is sinful. However they do not believe that there is anything inherently sinful with the attraction.

Unfortunately some within the PCA are using unhelpful and potentially damaging language to describe homosexual desire. Phrases like sexual orientation, for instance, suggest that homosexual desire is just one of many available “orientations.” Such language falls far short of that which the Bible uses. I have even seen the phrases “sexual minority” and “gay Christian” being used within the PCA to describe homosexuals.

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