The main thing I knew about the film Finding Dory before I belatedly got round to watching it was that it featured (dun dun daaaa...) a lesbian couple. The reason I knew this was that some Christians got very vocally very upset about it in the run-up to its release.
I say 'featured' ... Given the strength and volume of the outcry (none of which I cared to read in any detail [1]) I was on the lookout from the start for Pixar's controversially courageous nod to diversity. Would it be that Dory falls in love with another lady-fish? or that the parents she's looking for turn out to be two moms? And then, about halfway through, there was this bit with two women walking along next to each other. And one of the women happened to have (to quote a disgruntled Ellen DeGeneres) "a very bad short haircut". And my heart sank, watching it, with the horrified suspicion that this was it. This was the controversial edge of 'representation'. This was what got all those evangelical brothers and sisters of mine so exercised... A handful of ambiguous, inconsequential, stereotype-dependent seconds.
I kept a pessimistic eye out during the remainder, just in case the film arrived at something more substantial and worthy of comment after all – something to make LGBT+ people feel genuinely included, and/or conservative evangelicals genuinely 'concerned'. But no. As my post-viewing Google searches confirmed, a woman with short hair and a female companion really was the whole deal [2].
This particular outburst is sadly just one of many examples of the intensity of anti-LGBT+ sentiment among conservative evangelicals. I remember the uncomfortable silences and surreptitious channel changes whenever a "known gay" came on the television (even if all they were doing was playing sport, or talking about current affairs, or acting in a straight role); the awkwardness when a family friend, seeking to encourage my sophisticated reading habits, presented an ~11 year old me with the complete works of Oscar Wilde. As though the only thing that LGBT+ people were interested in was 'turning' the rest of us, and as though they had mysterious powers to somehow accomplish that by means of a tennis match, or a short story, or the mere sight of them.
Surely, even for those with a normative theology of gender and sexuality, such disproportionate fervour to condemn non-conformativity is deeply suspicious. Why are we nowhere near as exercised about gossip, greed, lying, or even adultery? – sins mentioned in the same 'breath' as same-sex fornication (see, e.g. 1 Cor 6:7-10, Rom 1:26-32). In the run-up to the 2004 US election, some Christian 'family values' groups went so far as to push for states to be allowed to criminalise fornication, with the accompanying recommendation that such laws only be enforced against same sex 'perpetrators' [3]. Or how about our comparative indifference to the exploitation, abandonment and marginalisation of people in need? – sins afforded far more scriptural column inches than same-sex fornication (e.g. Lev 19, Jas 5:1-6). I mean, there are household-name Christians literally campaigning against de-gendered toys and toilets whilst at the same time maintaining that the refugee crisis is "not a Bible issue". Err...
And don't get me started on the relative tolerance on the part of Christian leaders and communities towards sexual crimes and abuses perpetrated by straight men against women and girls. Loving homosexual partnership relationships are not fit to be depicted in movies, but heterosexual predators and child molesters are apparently fit for the Senate, or the White House.
Part of the clue to (some) Christians' inordinate hang-up on "LGBT+ lifestyles" is, I suggest, that they represent a conveniently minority 'problem'. Come down too hard on gossips and liars, or those complicit in perpetuating structural disadvantage, or even those with heterosexual 'peccadilloes' (*ahem*), and there'd be no-one left in the pews. Taking a firm normative stance on gender and sexuality is a very visible way of signalling unswerving 'Biblical values' without actually impacting at all on the lived experiences of most Christians, and especially not on those of the cishetero males who have 'traditionally' populated the ranks of our leadership hierarchies. It does wonders for your sense of complacent self-righteousness to focus on 'sins' that you're not tempted to commit.
Another motivation, especially for said cishetero male leaders, is that the very notion of same-sex relationships threatens the clear separation and ranking of gender roles in marriage and ministry that have been so strongly emphasised by large portions of the evangelical church. It is natural for those favoured by the status quo to resist changes likely to erode that privilege; it is also, sadly, all too easy, since the balance of power is a priori so much in their favour.
Anxieties about gender and sexuality have also proved useful politically: there's nothing quite like a common enemy to rally the masses. Coordinated resistance to LGBT+ rights has been an effective tool of mobilisation for the US religious right and, to a lesser extent, among UK Christians. Growing legal recognition for same-sex marriage has been interpreted as a sign of the church's waning influence. In response, the focus of Christian campaigning has shifted away from (increasingly futile) attempts to suppress LGBT+ rights towards attempts to defend supposedly-endangered Christian rights of "religious freedom" (see, e.g., Deborah Jian Lee's Rescuing Jesus). All of a sudden, Christians have become a persecuted minority, forced to bake cakes for / employ / accommodate / refrain from vilifying proponents of an 'aggressive gay agenda'.
Hmmmm. There are many very real and heart-breaking examples of people around the world facing violence, intimidation, discrimination and imprisonment for seeking to follow Jesus. But Christians in 'Christian' countries have a history of, well, quite frankly, being on the oppressor side of oppression, if anything (see, e.g. Trump's buddies, as well as the examples above). In all honesty, is it really the case that the rights and human dignity of adherents are being jeopardised by recent social developments? or are we Christians simply experiencing the loss of accustomed privilege? As far as I'm concerned, attempting to claw back privilege in the face of slow and hard-won progress for the genuinely oppressed is the domain of men's rights activists. And white nationalists. Come on, Christians. We follow a person who, "being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant" (Phil 2:6-7a, NIV). We don't honestly want 'in' on the whole struggle-to-recoup-privilege thing, do we?
Besides, the "LGBT+ issue" is a massive distraction from the real LGBT+ issue, which is that it's not an issue. It's people. People made and loved by God. People among us (sometimes secretly) in our Christian communities, and in the wider communities that we are tasked with loving and serving. We say "hate the sin but love the sinner," but the reality is that those of us who have most got the hang of doing the former are often too terrified to attempt the latter – because the two together generate way more cognitive dissonance than your average head and heart can handle. It is much easier to "hate the sin and politely ignore the sinner": boycott Disney, turn over when QI comes on, hide your child's copy of The Importance of Being Earnest ... and above all, be careful not to get to know any LGBT+ people personally...
[1] The noise mostly reached me via Twitter, and I'm struggling to find a comprehensive reference that captures the seeming strength of it at the time, but here are some indicative examples.
[2] Protesters weren't to know that from the trailer. Which ameliorates their reaction precisely to the extent that getting indignantly worked up over a speculatively constructed film plot is less ridiculous than getting indignantly worked up over an actual one...
[3] See Deborah Jian Lee's Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women, and Queer Christians Are Reclaiming Evangelicalism (p70).
[Thumbnail image cc from Swinburne University of Technology on Flickr].
I say 'featured' ... Given the strength and volume of the outcry (none of which I cared to read in any detail [1]) I was on the lookout from the start for Pixar's controversially courageous nod to diversity. Would it be that Dory falls in love with another lady-fish? or that the parents she's looking for turn out to be two moms? And then, about halfway through, there was this bit with two women walking along next to each other. And one of the women happened to have (to quote a disgruntled Ellen DeGeneres) "a very bad short haircut". And my heart sank, watching it, with the horrified suspicion that this was it. This was the controversial edge of 'representation'. This was what got all those evangelical brothers and sisters of mine so exercised... A handful of ambiguous, inconsequential, stereotype-dependent seconds.
I kept a pessimistic eye out during the remainder, just in case the film arrived at something more substantial and worthy of comment after all – something to make LGBT+ people feel genuinely included, and/or conservative evangelicals genuinely 'concerned'. But no. As my post-viewing Google searches confirmed, a woman with short hair and a female companion really was the whole deal [2].
This particular outburst is sadly just one of many examples of the intensity of anti-LGBT+ sentiment among conservative evangelicals. I remember the uncomfortable silences and surreptitious channel changes whenever a "known gay" came on the television (even if all they were doing was playing sport, or talking about current affairs, or acting in a straight role); the awkwardness when a family friend, seeking to encourage my sophisticated reading habits, presented an ~11 year old me with the complete works of Oscar Wilde. As though the only thing that LGBT+ people were interested in was 'turning' the rest of us, and as though they had mysterious powers to somehow accomplish that by means of a tennis match, or a short story, or the mere sight of them.
Surely, even for those with a normative theology of gender and sexuality, such disproportionate fervour to condemn non-conformativity is deeply suspicious. Why are we nowhere near as exercised about gossip, greed, lying, or even adultery? – sins mentioned in the same 'breath' as same-sex fornication (see, e.g. 1 Cor 6:7-10, Rom 1:26-32). In the run-up to the 2004 US election, some Christian 'family values' groups went so far as to push for states to be allowed to criminalise fornication, with the accompanying recommendation that such laws only be enforced against same sex 'perpetrators' [3]. Or how about our comparative indifference to the exploitation, abandonment and marginalisation of people in need? – sins afforded far more scriptural column inches than same-sex fornication (e.g. Lev 19, Jas 5:1-6). I mean, there are household-name Christians literally campaigning against de-gendered toys and toilets whilst at the same time maintaining that the refugee crisis is "not a Bible issue". Err...
And don't get me started on the relative tolerance on the part of Christian leaders and communities towards sexual crimes and abuses perpetrated by straight men against women and girls. Loving homosexual partnership relationships are not fit to be depicted in movies, but heterosexual predators and child molesters are apparently fit for the Senate, or the White House.
Part of the clue to (some) Christians' inordinate hang-up on "LGBT+ lifestyles" is, I suggest, that they represent a conveniently minority 'problem'. Come down too hard on gossips and liars, or those complicit in perpetuating structural disadvantage, or even those with heterosexual 'peccadilloes' (*ahem*), and there'd be no-one left in the pews. Taking a firm normative stance on gender and sexuality is a very visible way of signalling unswerving 'Biblical values' without actually impacting at all on the lived experiences of most Christians, and especially not on those of the cishetero males who have 'traditionally' populated the ranks of our leadership hierarchies. It does wonders for your sense of complacent self-righteousness to focus on 'sins' that you're not tempted to commit.
Another motivation, especially for said cishetero male leaders, is that the very notion of same-sex relationships threatens the clear separation and ranking of gender roles in marriage and ministry that have been so strongly emphasised by large portions of the evangelical church. It is natural for those favoured by the status quo to resist changes likely to erode that privilege; it is also, sadly, all too easy, since the balance of power is a priori so much in their favour.
Anxieties about gender and sexuality have also proved useful politically: there's nothing quite like a common enemy to rally the masses. Coordinated resistance to LGBT+ rights has been an effective tool of mobilisation for the US religious right and, to a lesser extent, among UK Christians. Growing legal recognition for same-sex marriage has been interpreted as a sign of the church's waning influence. In response, the focus of Christian campaigning has shifted away from (increasingly futile) attempts to suppress LGBT+ rights towards attempts to defend supposedly-endangered Christian rights of "religious freedom" (see, e.g., Deborah Jian Lee's Rescuing Jesus). All of a sudden, Christians have become a persecuted minority, forced to bake cakes for / employ / accommodate / refrain from vilifying proponents of an 'aggressive gay agenda'.
Hmmmm. There are many very real and heart-breaking examples of people around the world facing violence, intimidation, discrimination and imprisonment for seeking to follow Jesus. But Christians in 'Christian' countries have a history of, well, quite frankly, being on the oppressor side of oppression, if anything (see, e.g. Trump's buddies, as well as the examples above). In all honesty, is it really the case that the rights and human dignity of adherents are being jeopardised by recent social developments? or are we Christians simply experiencing the loss of accustomed privilege? As far as I'm concerned, attempting to claw back privilege in the face of slow and hard-won progress for the genuinely oppressed is the domain of men's rights activists. And white nationalists. Come on, Christians. We follow a person who, "being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant" (Phil 2:6-7a, NIV). We don't honestly want 'in' on the whole struggle-to-recoup-privilege thing, do we?
Besides, the "LGBT+ issue" is a massive distraction from the real LGBT+ issue, which is that it's not an issue. It's people. People made and loved by God. People among us (sometimes secretly) in our Christian communities, and in the wider communities that we are tasked with loving and serving. We say "hate the sin but love the sinner," but the reality is that those of us who have most got the hang of doing the former are often too terrified to attempt the latter – because the two together generate way more cognitive dissonance than your average head and heart can handle. It is much easier to "hate the sin and politely ignore the sinner": boycott Disney, turn over when QI comes on, hide your child's copy of The Importance of Being Earnest ... and above all, be careful not to get to know any LGBT+ people personally...
I was talking to some Christians and they were talking about how they invited these gay children to come into their home and to come into the church and that they were wanting to influence them. And I thought to myself, they’re not going to influence those kids; those kids are going to influence those parent’s children. What happens is we think we can fight by smiling and being real nice and loving. We have to understand who the Enemy is and what he wants to do. He wants to devour our homes. He wants to devour this nation and we have to be so careful who we let our kids hang out with. We have to be so careful who we let into the churches. You have immoral people who get into the churches and it begins to effect the others in the church and it is dangerous. (Franklin Graham, speaking on James Dobson's 'Family Talk')Now, I'd like to think that most of the evangelicals I know have sense enough not to put too much stock in Franklin Graham's Views. But you have to admit, he's onto something here. For starters, it's certainly true that young minds are prime targets for manipulation. (I for one was sufficiently exposed to the influence of the likes of Franklin that, by the time I hit puberty, I was almost as afraid of finding out I was a lesbian as I was wracked with guilt over my rampant hormonal fixation on boys). And secondly, there is nothing so liable to shake one's faithful anti-LGBT+ convictions (at any age) as personal interaction. Start putting human faces to the labels and you risk losing sight of the caricatures. Hear or read the stories of those willing to share them – stories, too often, of heartache, loneliness, marginalisation, stress-induced illness – and you'll forget to be afraid of that aggressive agenda they warned you about. Consider the types of love relationships that same-sex couples are seeking recognition and support for, and you'll be tempted to question whether the descriptor "sexual immorality" really applies. Bible verses denouncing idolatrous, self-gratifying, community-destroying sex acts – whilst not losing any of their truth or import to your understanding of Christian discipleship and community – will seem less and less relevant to the question of which partnerships can bless and be blessed. And don't think you won't suffer for it: regret at assumptions you once held; shame at your own complicity in persecution; embarrassment at having once believed yourself persecuted by pressure to desist(!) Meanwhile, the voices entreating you to stand firm against "liberalisation" and "secular assimilation" gain volume and urgency; that cognitive dissonance you'd been hiding from in your cishetero bubble starts to catch up on you; it's most uncomfortable and not at all fun and rather unclear what you are supposed to do next and now you come to think of it none of this would have happened if only you'd just stayed put and closed your doors like Franklin Graham said. In short, loving your neighbour is a slippery slope. It's a wonder Jesus wasn't more cautious in his wording...
[1] The noise mostly reached me via Twitter, and I'm struggling to find a comprehensive reference that captures the seeming strength of it at the time, but here are some indicative examples.
[2] Protesters weren't to know that from the trailer. Which ameliorates their reaction precisely to the extent that getting indignantly worked up over a speculatively constructed film plot is less ridiculous than getting indignantly worked up over an actual one...
[3] See Deborah Jian Lee's Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women, and Queer Christians Are Reclaiming Evangelicalism (p70).
[Thumbnail image cc from Swinburne University of Technology on Flickr].
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