The Secrets of Our Sexuality by Gary R. Collins, Ed. (Word Books, 1976, 185 pp.)
by Dr. Ralph Blair
This book, edited by a professor of psychology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, contains some good chapters on marital gender roles and sex education, some mixed material, and two particularly poor chapters on homosexuality. Originally, these were papers delivered by evangelical leaders at the 1975 Continental Congress on the Family. Collins adds a study guide on each chapter at the end of the book.
Dennis F. Kinlaw, president of Asbury College, is the author of one of the chapters on homosexuality. He urges that the whole of Scripture be seen as what “is really binding” for the meaning of human life. However, he insists that the creation account in Genesis is “determinative” in studying homosexuality. Unbelievable as it may seem, he goes to the creation of one man and one woman to understand something that was impossible until another man or another woman came on the scene. He also confuses biological male and female with socialized masculinity and femininity. He tries to bolster his argument from the creation story by indicating that Jesus referred to the joining of Adam and Eve in response to the Pharisees’ asking about divorce. But, after all, was it not in answer to a specific question about heterosexual relations that Jesus spoke of male and female? Kinlaw fails to note that Jesus then went on to explain to his disciples that marriage such as that of Adam and Eve is not for everyone. As Jesus explained, some are never able to marry heterosexually – even “from their mother’s womb”. (Matt 19:12) Jesus himself cautioned that not all would be able to receive his teaching on this point.
Kinlaw repeatedly commits a fundamental error of all who try to read into isolated Bible verses a “homosexuality” which, for historical reasons, was unknown in biblical times. Because he admits that, “the prime argument against homosexuality lies … not in isolated texts nor in … the Sodom story, but in the biblical … norm … established in Genesis 1 and 2”, he again backs himself into a corner in arguing, in effect, that homosexuality is wrong because it did not exist with Adam and Even in Paradise, when it could not exist. Concluding that, “the ultimate purposes of human sexuality [are] to prepare human beings to find their fulfillment in someone beyond themselves and thus learn at the human level how we are supposed to relate to God”, (not procreate), he fails to observe that such purposes are being fulfilled every day in the lives of some heterosexual couples and some homosexual couples.
The other chapter on homosexuality was written by Guy Charles, a former gay rights activist [who would later become a gay rights activist once again, after a scandalous end to his “ex-gay” days]. Following his Christian conversion, he founded Liberation in Jesus Christ, Inc., claiming to be no longer gay and that God had taken away “the lusts, the desires, the fantasies, and the act” (his words from his Liberation newsletter). His “ex-gay ministry” was promoted throughout the evangelical world through such outlets as Christianity Today, Christian Life, National Courier, and this book edited by Collins. In his chapter, Charles warns churches to “be wary in supporting … equal rights legislation” for homosexuals, misinforms that “being homosexual is a choice of the will”, and outlines a rather vague plan to “divest … homosexual desires”.
But Charles claimed too much. There were secrets of his own sexuality. Recently, his board pressured him to resign and closed his “ex-gay ministry”. [He was engaging in what he rationalized as “David and Jonathan” relationships – but were homosexual in nature – with young men coming to him for the “ex-gay” experience. Ironically, it was his involvement with a young graduate of Kinlaw’s Asbury College that was his undoing.]
Charles, too, has suffered. He has suffered at the hands of homophobic handlers who encouraged him to deny his homosexuality and who exploited his “testimony” to suit the zealotry of their ignorance or bigotry. Now he, too, is a victim of that stupidity that masqueraded as miracle and that he himself was sucked into promoting. Unfortunately, his chapter in this book will continue to have a shelf life in the libraries and minds of Christians – as will all those other unretracted claims, holding out the false hope that gay Christians can become “ex-gays”.