I find that a fundamental problem interfering with this excellent discussion you're trying to have is willful ignorance on the part of conservative Christian leaders.
Despite overwhelming evidence and consensus among professionals that sexual orientation is not voluntary and cannot be voluntarily changed, many Christian leaders repeatedly offer up anecdotal evidence to the contrary.
They'll point to a person or persons they've known, whom they claim stopped being gay, and then they'll offer up the infinite power of God and prayer as obvious reasons why people can and should stop being gay.
They'll claim that people become gay because of abuse during childhood, not enough interaction with one's father, all sorts of things that empirical evidence tells us just aren't true.
They'll claim that gay people on the whole are mentally unbalanced and unhappy, again despite overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary, and without admitting that unhappiness gay people experience can often be put at the feet of religious family members and friends who reject us while claiming to love us.
This sort of willful ignorance permeates the Christian air.
My colleague Esther Spurrill Jones frequently writes articles rebutting columns in the quite mainstream Christian Post where mainstream writers repeat evidence-free nonsense every day. Either today or yesterday, she wrote an article about a Christian leader writing in the Post that people become gay because of abuse and weak fathers.
I don't know how or why the Christian Post editorial board gives its imprimatur to that kind of ridiculous falsehood, but they do so constantly.
They also encourage a different sort of falsehood rooted in willful ignorance — the idea that one's Christianity depends on accepting that homosexuality is a sin. They print articles by author after author claiming that acknowledging the sinfulness of homosexuality is definitional to Christianity.
This is patently not true, considering the number of quite mainstream Christian denominations and theologians who believe entirely otherwise.
Obviously, the definition of particular types of sins has never been definitional to Christianity. Ideas about what things are sins and what things are not sins have changed dramatically among conservative Christians even during my lifetime. Many things my Baptist community abhorred as sinfulduring my childhood are now looked on as just fine by even very conservative Christians.
Their line in the sand about the sinfulness of homosexuality is a form of willful ignorance.
Of course you can be a good Christian and not insist that gay people are sinners unless they become celibate. I say of course because, well, lots of good Christians do believe that.
And Jesus's message never depended on agreeing about the definitions of sins, fighting about it is a pretty anti-Christian attitude.
Judging people for their sinfulness isn't supposed to be part of Christianity. Insisting otherwise is willful ignorance.
