Pro- and Anti-GLBT Inclusion

Neat as it may be to think ethics as a response to a demanding situation, an acknowledgment of an event, it doesn't quite dodge the problem of how or by whom a demanding situation gets recognized as such. In Alain Badiou's philosophy, Events (the transformative experience that creates the demanding situation) are either simply and obviously there to be recognized plainly or they are fought for by die-hard, no-compromise true believers whose work makes the Event a capital-E affair (e.g., Paul making Christ's death/resurrection an Event that demands a whole new ethical way of life).

But which response to the Event is the ethical one?

It strikes me that the really difficult disagreements--the fundamental fractures I've been interested in--have to do precisely with how gets to define a response to an Event (or a demand) as such. In the near-schism-level conflicts over the status of GLBT people that plague mainline denominations now, the Event in question seems to be the realization that GLBT people exist, that they are, as it were, "self-avowed, practicing," and insistent that they are not by virtue of their sexuality in any way incompatible with the Way of Christ.

For the pro-inclusion side, the response to this Event seems obvious: just as similar recognitions of racial and gender diversity within the body of Christ demanded (and received) transformations in church stances, so too does the recognition of differing sexual orientations and gender identities demand that the church adapt to this understanding. Part of this change involves polity: gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgender people should be accepted as equal members of the church and granted the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexuals (e.g., becoming members, receiving communion/baptism, pursuing ordination, getting married). The deeper change involves theology; passages of scripture that decry same-sex erotic behavior are, like passages allowing slavery or approving of lesser status for women, considered as culturally and historically bound rather than eternally constraining.

The anti-inclusion side often gets represented doing little more than obstructing this inevitable response to the Event. Given the advent of GLBT people coming out as members of the church, the anti- side can seem like it's sticking its fingers in its ears and going "lalalalalala--I don't hear you!"

While I'm sure there are some in the church who are being willfully ignorant, I don't think this depiction accurately captures the anti-inclusion side. In fact, the narrative of GLBT people in the church as an Event is common throughout conservative Protestant discourse. Anti-GLBT sides on the Christian right regularly portray the GLBT issue as a recent and unwelcome challenge to the Body of Christ. Joe Dallas, a spokesperson for the "ex-gay" movement, has said that same-sex sin is not technically any more or less sinful than any other behavior. But the GLBT movement--the Event of GLBT people making a claim to equal membership--presents a challenge that requires a specific response. No other sin, Dallas argues, has so elaborated its own theology. Practitioners of this particular sin, in other words, have created a whole new way of being a Christian around the framework of GLBT inclusion.

In conservative Christian thinking, the Event that is the GLBT movement's transformational demand itself demands a response: retrenchment and revival. Churches and denominations must risk drawing their historical boundaries of orthodoxy ever more clearly and ever more carefully. That is (and of course I'm synthesizing here), Churches have to realize that following Christ and His Word requires them to resist cultural imperatives for wide-open inclusivity. The Christian message broadcasts universally, but the path that message lays out is singular and exclusive. Christians have to accept that their Way is narrow even if their love is wide. Many behaviors and attitudes we would like to declare non-issues simply cannot co-exist with fidelity to the Word of God. To be sure, the orthodoxy borders need to be drawn and maintained with sensitivity and love; the new revivalists of the anti-GLBT-inclusion movement are often quite honest about how the church has failed to present a loving face in the past. But against the Event of GLBT-inclusive theology, the church must say "no."

For Badiou, saying "no" to an authentic Event can constitute the very essence of unethical behavior. But here I would point out that "no"--the stereotypically "conservative" gesture--does not have to be stagnant or unproductive; "no" does not mean denying the event happened but responding to the Event as a challenge or threat. History offers multiple instances where a "no" to an Event produces new structures and organizations. The Protestant Reformation was surely an Event--an unignorable transformation that demands a response--yet the Catholic Church's "no" wasn't a refusal to respond but a robust Counter-Reformation that reformatted church practice and doctrine.

Now, of course the Protestant Event did drastically alter the Christian landscape. Instead of merely being "Christian" one (in Western Europe) now had to be a particular kind of Christian. It was not possible simply to pretend that the Event had not happened or that it was dismissible. But neither was it the case that the response to the Event of Luther et al. took only the form of full approval.

Here's where I feel that the push for the pro-inclusion and anti-inclusion sides of the GLBT debate "agree to disagree"--suspend or mute their arguments in favor of peace--runs into problems. To suggest that this disagreement is minor enough that it can be suspended is in a sense to deny the Event as such. Like it or not, the fact that GLBT people are making a claim that polity and theology have to change to include them is a move of great magnitude.

Paradoxically, both sides of the debate would agree that anyone who believes in the ephemerality of the argument isn't paying attention. It is not, for example, within the privileges I enjoy to be able to ignore debates about GLBT status in my church. If my church denies openly gay individuals the right to pursue ordination, that affects me. And--while it's difficult for me to see this sometimes--if my church were to openly affirm the right of GLBT folk to be ordained, the anti-GLBT side would feel similarly compelled to respond and unable to ignore this change.

It worries me, however, to think of the two sides to the GLBT issue as similar (though to a lesser degree) to the Counter-Reformation and Reformation. Divergent responses to an Event often presage intense and bloody conflict.

If "agreeing to disagree" is untenable, can there at least be a way to agree on how to disagree?

More tomorrow,

JF