Harold pulls no punches:
Consider the dilemma of the Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and a leading figure in the Southern Baptist firmament.
Writing in his blog this month, Mohler acknowledged that " the direction of the research" increasingly points to the possibility that a "biological basis for sexual orientation exists."...how to reconcile a God who creates homosexuals with a God who condemns practicing homosexuals to hell? A mysterious God may be well and good, but a capricious or contradictory God can inspire so much doubt that He threatens the credibility of the entire religious enterprise.
After all, there are few American believers who don't profess at least some faith as well in the verities of proven science and the rightness of our national credo's commitment to human equality. By effectively insisting that God is a spiteful homo-hater, his followers saddle him with ancient phobias and condemn him to the backwaters of American moral life.
Snap! Though, frankly, this stuff doesn't seem particularly troublesome for religion. So much as there's an ongoing -- and loud! -- effort to remain culturally conservative, the nation's various churches and sects have proven nothing if not responsive to market pressures. Rock and roll, for instance, used to be devil music. Now there's Christian rock, rock and roll services, and pastors leading their flocks in loud renditions of "Let It Be." If the bulk of the nation's believers ever appear turned off by the church's discomfort with homosexuals, we'll find, rapidly, that that particular biblical admonition about as relevant as those surrounding it. Here, for those who forget, is Leviticus 18:22, the Bible's clearest statement on homosexuality:
20: Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour's wife, to defile thyself with her.
21: And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.
22: Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
23: Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.
Somehow, the churches get along without putting much emphasis on carnality with thy neighbor's wife. In a generation or two, they'll get along without making an overly big deal of homosexuality. And it will sound very, very weird when us old fogies recall the days when it was a dominant cultural concern.
