50 Shades of Anti-LGBTQ Rhetoric

I recently came upon an article which quoted a Christian activist claiming that he was motivated by “love” to support a Kansas Republican Party resolution condemning all efforts to “validate transgender identity.” The activist’s statement was as follows:

Eric Teetsel, president of the Family Policy Alliance of Kansas who proposed the resolution, told The Wichita Eagle that he was “motivated by love” to put forward the document because he believes that the GOP should stand up for what he described as Christian principles.

“Ultimately, an ideology that says you can determine your own gender identity is broken and it’s going to lead to a lot of pain, and that’s why it’s important to bring us back to what we know to be true and good,” Teetsel said.

“It is concern for the well-being of others that drives us to seek out what is true and not just for society, but for them personally,” he added.

The claim being made here is that it’s worse to allow transgender individuals to transition than it is to force them to live as their assigned gender, with (Christian) counseling and therapies to help them accept “the way God created them.” Of course, the science manifestly states that that is not the case. Individuals are worse off when they are not allowed to transition. But the science has not always mattered to evangelicals—particularly those whose science starts (and sometimes ends) with the Bible.

But as I read Teetsel’s statement, I thought about some other comments I had read recently. Namely, Everett Piper of Oklahoma Wesleyan University wrote an op-ed comparing LGBTQ individuals with ISIS.

If you’re still not feeling a bit unstable on this slippery slope, I recommend this simple exercise: Go to any article in any magazine or website that argues for “conversations” about sexual morality and simply replace the acronym of the day with another set of letters.

For example, every time you see LGBTQ in an article, simply replace those letters with ISIS. Change nothing else. Do this throughout the entire column in question.

In doing this, something will quickly become quite obvious. Sentences will emerge such as these: “Love is love and ISIS has the right to love who they want to love.” “The ISIS community simply wants to be accepted and affirmed.” “What right does anyone have to refuse to bake a cake for an ISIS wedding?”

As such absurdities jump off the page, hopefully it becomes clear how absolutely ridiculous our culture’s game of sexual politics has become.

This is not the first time Piper has used such language. (Piper has the ear of some powerful individuals. He was an invited speaker at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in January, at the announcement of the department’s new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division.) Nor is Piper alone in using harsh language (or imaging) for LGBTQ individuals. 

Within evangelicalism today, there seem to be two disparate ways of talking about LGBT individuals and identities. The first involves disgust and revulsion and (often times) painting LGBT individuals as monsters or perverts. The second involves protestations of love and statements that gay and lesbian individuals can change or find meaning and purpose with God by living celibate lives. Both rhetorical approaches, however, do typically have at least one thing in common—opposition to expanding or protecting LGBT rights.

Consider where Teetsel’s proclamations of “love” take him:

Teetsel has decried the idea of bakers and other wedding vendors being forced by nondiscrimination laws to serve same-sex couples because, “The belief that marriage is solely for one man and woman ought not to be included in that list alongside racism and miscegenation, for it is a belief rooted in love.”

The use of the term “miscegenation” is ironic. Teetsel surely meant “misogyny,” but the word he used is a reference to interracial births. The irony is that promoters of segregation frequently argued that they were doing a kindness in forbidding certain kinds of contact between the races, because the children of interracial unions belonged not to one race or the other and thus did not have a place where they “fit.” Forbidding interracial intermingling was an act of kindness, they insisted. In other words, anti-LGBTQ sentiment is not the first bigotry to be cloaked in language of love, kindness, and a faux insistence that the oppressors are simply looking out for the needs of the oppressed.

Teetsel should be well aware that misogyny, too, has often been (and often still is) cloaked in language of love and kindness. Women’s rightful place is in the home, the argument goes—that is where God has designed woman to be, and that is where woman is happiest. Indeed, those who make these arguments frequently point to sexual harassment in the workplace as evidence that women would be better off if they stayed out of the workplace and concentrated on raising children in their homes, where they would be “safe.”

Even efforts to limit women’s access to divorce are framed in this rhetoric—divorced women suffer financial and other problems, the argument goes. Women—even those in troubled relationships—would be better off if they stayed married.

I’ve seen bigoted rhetoric of “love” play out in toxic ways my own community of origin—among evangelical and fundamentalist Christian homeschooling families. The idea is that it may be more “loving” to cut a wayward grown child off, or to deny them access to their siblings, than it would be to include them in the family and accept (or overlook) their questioning and sin. Cutting them out of the family until they repent may hurt, but it may also hasten repentance and bring them back to Jesus more quickly, thus sparing them an eternity in hell.

People are capable of doing terrible things in the name of “love.”

When it comes to areas like this, it may be best to focus less on intent and rhetoric and more on actions. Arguably, the extent that the actions of those like Teeter, who couch their bigotry in a rhetoric of “love,” differ from the actions of those like Piper, whose bigotry is stated less than nicely, is the extent of the actual distinction between the two. Do Teetsel’s actions differ from Piper’s?

It is possible that Teetsel would treat LGBTQ individuals he might personally come in contact with with more respect than Piper would. However, whatever his rhetoric, Teetsel’s organization supports banning transgender individuals from the military and supports the use of anti-transgender and ant-gay “conversion” therapy on minors—and that’s just the start. Regardless of how he has couched his rhetoric—regardless of how many times he professes to “love” LGBTQ people—Teetsel’s actions do very real harm to LGBTQ individuals.