I’ve been asked to revisit the backlash theory, giving more weight to the perceived seriousness of the threat. In doing so, it has been suggested, I should also revisit the demagogue theory, giving more consideration to the possibility that there really are barbarians at the gate — big, gay, fabulous barbarians, apparently.
Those who have asked me to reconsider this — in a series of e-mails that included some which were quite civil — seem to think I’ve been going about this question all wrong. They don’t deny the accuracy of the recent findings from the Barna Group —
The most common perception is that present-day Christianity is “anti-homosexual.” Overall, 91 percent of young non-Christians and 80 percent of young churchgoers say this phrase describes Christianity. As the research probed this perception, non-Christians and Christians explained that beyond their recognition that Christians oppose homosexuality, they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians. One of the most frequent criticisms of young Christians was that they believe the church has made homosexuality a “bigger sin” than anything else.
— but they see this alteration in the very identity of American Christianity as the legitimate and necessary response to a very real life-or-death struggle over the meaning of Christianity and America. To get a sense of how they view this threat, let’s turn again to G.K. Chesterton’s mind-bending thriller The Man Who Was Thursday. Chesterton’s ultra-anarchist, Gregory, explains his true aim:
“To abolish God!” said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. “We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honor and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights and we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong.”
Proponents of the backlash theory believe that this is exactly what is at stake in their effort to reinforce legal, moral and cultural condemnations of homosexuality. They may not all believe that this “radical homosexual agenda” is motivated by Gregory’s deep hatred for society, but they believe the consequences of this agenda succeeding would be the same. If homosexuals are accorded legal equality and cultural acceptance, or even tolerance, then, according to this view, every distinction between vice and virtue, between right and wrong, will melt away, the Bible, religion, morality and the rule of law will lose all meaning and society will crash to the ground like a kite without a string.
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together — mass hysteria.
They really believe this.
Pam Spaulding highlights a WorldNetDaily post from J. Matt Barber titled “Homosexuality: What’s all the fuss?” that lays this out clearly (or at least as as clearly as Barber’s prose allows). Barber starts with the “they started it” claim of the innocent backlash theory, but quickly works himself up into a Stage 4 case of exegetical panic:
Unlike the sin of homosexuality … other sins … do not have the benefit of a tremendously powerful and prosperous lobby that is blindly supported by people in positions of political influence, and other leftists in media and elsewhere who have been duped by the crafty and disingenuous rhetoric of “tolerance” and “diversity.” Proponents, practitioners and enablers of homosexual sin demand that we all renounce God’s express condemnation of such conduct and embrace this spiritually and physically destructive behavior as virtuous — as a wholly equal, alternative sexual “orientation.” …
And so, fervent and relentless homosexual propaganda goose-steps along, trampling upon those who observe traditional notions of sexual morality. This sets homosexual sin worlds apart from the other sins you reference. Therefore, we Christians are left no choice but to assign homosexual sin significance commensurate with that which it demands.
Thus we find ourselves — back against the ropes — in a fight we did not pick, struggling in a culture war we did not ask for. It’s a clash of worldviews in a zero-sum-game. Make no mistake; the sin of homosexuality is the bunker-buster bomb in this war against morality.
The very firm response by defenders of biblical truth …
As Barber grows firmer in response to this struggle, let’s try to remember that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a massive penetrating weapon that thrusts deep before exploding is just a bunker-buster bomb.
I would say that Barber is confusing the categories of ethics, morality and the law, but that gives him too much credit. He does not accept that these are separate categories. For Barber, all that is immoral must also be illegal, and all that is legal is explicitly endorsed. This is the logic of Prohibition. It is also the logic of Blue Laws and adultery statutes. In a different cultural and religious context — but an identical spiritual context — it is the logic of the Taliban.
Those of us from the Baptist tradition of religious liberty cannot help but be embarrassed for Barber because we recognize this for what it is: a confession of a frail and flimsy faith and of a moral character that is wholly dependent on external crutches. Barber argues, explicitly, that his understanding of right and wrong cannot be sustained without the active support of the state, the courts, the police. (“Lord I believe. Help thou Caesar my unbelief!”) Take away legal prohibitions to homosexuality, he says, and morality itself is destroyed. Thus for Barber it is wholly appropriate and necessary to reinvent the meaning of Christianity in just the strange way that Barna shows it has been reinvented. That is the only way to ensure victory in the “culture war”/”clash of worldviews”/”war against morality.”
The tragic irony here is that for all of his obsession with being a culture warrior, Barber has himself been wholly assimilated by the spirit of the age. Christianity, he says, is at war — and that means Christians must do whatever it takes to win. Even if that means fundamentally altering your character. Even if it means demoting, disregarding or dismissing the texts that tell you who you are in favor of new approaches that contradict them. Whatever it takes to win. Yes or No — do you want to win the culture war? Yes or No?
Sound familiar? He didn’t get that idea from the Bible. The Gospel According to Cheney isn’t in the Bible.
Earlier we discussed what I called the inner-demons theory — the dynamic demonstrated by the seemingly endless parade of closeted, self-loathing homosexuals desperately clinging to a vehemently anti-gay agenda in the hopes that they can fake it ’til they make it as heterosexuals. Despite the Freudian minefield of his rhetoric, I don’t think J. Matt is that kind of closet-case. I think, rather, that he is a closeted, self-loathing nihilist, desperately clinging to a vehemently anti-gay agenda in the hopes that he can fake it ’til he makes it as a religious believer.
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