Love = Love

I have a t-shirt that says, "Gay? Fine by me." I have another t-shirt with stick figures in 3 pairs—one a man and a woman, another two men, the third two women—with the caption "Love = Love." I was raised to love people no matter what they look like or what they think or do, and for that I am grateful. But I don't wear those shirts often, because, for the first time in my life, I seem to be on the fence on an issue.

As seminary and possibly ordination waver on my horizon, I am finding that I have to think much more seriously about issues that I previously took quite lightly. As I have observed the strife in the Anglican Communion over the issue of ordaining a gay bishop and, more importantly—and at the heart of the argument—scriptural authority, I have begun to see how much is at stake. More recently, the question of ordaining gays has been brought very close to home as a young woman I know who wants to be ordained in the Methodist Church has come out as a lesbian.

To see people that I know and love being denied the fullness of their pursuit of what they perceive as God's call on their lives is troubling at the very least. I cannot ignore my church's stance on the issue, much less the scriptural basis in which it is grounded. The fact of the matter is that the Methodist Church, of which I am a part, does not ordain gays. Especially if I pursue ordination myself, there will be times when I will have to adhere to the tradition of my denomination, which may mean denying support to friends who want to be ordained. It breaks my heart to think about having to do so.

The church I attend in Durham, NC is a diverse congregation, and that includes diversity in sexual orientation and gender identification. I know that there are some people in that church who believe that homosexuality is a mortal sin, but they still share hymnals with our gay members and hug them during the passing of the peace—they may not agree with their life choices, but they love them unconditionally.

It seems to me that this is the church's best response to the question of homosexuality. A person's sexual orientation—not to mention race, age, gender, etc.—should never prevent them from being included in the worshiping body of Christ. I have seen myself what it can look like for a church to, as the old adage goes, love the sinner and hate the sin. If it were not possible to do so, how could any of us ever relate to one another? We know all too well that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

But several questions still linger. Why is homosexuality portrayed as so grievous a sin by the church when adulterers and the like, even among the clergy, are not always dealt with consistently? Is the issue of ordaining gays eventually going to follow the trajectory that the question of ordaining women did (at least among most Protestant churches), or is this a different kind of question? Are we really accepting gays into the body of Christ if we love them unconditionally but do not allow them to be ordained?