This Is Normal Now

The above landed on our doorstep yesterday morning. At breakfast, I held it up and asked the kids what they thought. They thought nothing. There was no change on their face, there was no “yuck factor,” there was no reaction of any kind. There was, instead, a sense from a 9-year-old and a 13-year-old that this gay kiss was normative.

Some will argue that even though this is now culturally normative, that doesn’t make it biblically normative. To those I say, we were also eating bacon at breakfast.

Meanwhile, over the weekend we heard from Rachel Held Evans and Scot McKnight that Bryan College (Rachel’s alma mater) is cracking down on profs who do not affirm so-called “young earth creationism.” While sad for Rachel, I think it’s not surprising that in the face of change, some institutions are retrenching. It will ultimately be a losing strategy (it always is, even for the church), but it seems that some people are incapable of learning from history.

I’ve been heartened in my recent travels that mainline groups I’m talking to are more open to transformation than they’ve been in the past — at least in my experience. And I fully expect that some evangelical organizations (colleges, seminaries, and the like) will continue to ask Rachel to speak. I even think that some that used to have the likes of Brian McLaren and Your Favorite Blogger will begin to invite us back as the stigma against gay-friendly theology fades.

In any case, I found it intriguing that at 9 years of age, I don’t think I’d even heard of gay people, and my 9-yo was completely unconcerned by two men kissing above-the-fold in the Sunday paper. I’d say that’s progress. I’d say that’s a victory for love, equality, and tolerance.