The New Paganism by Harold Lindsell (Harper & Row, 1987, 279 pp.) True Sexuality by Ken Unger (Tyndale House, 1987, 240 pp.)
by Dr. Ralph Blair
In the Old Testament, slander is denounced more than any other sin. The Ninth Commandment condemns false witness. From genesis through the New Testament, Satan is the arch slanderer, the self-righteous are his imitators, and God’s oppressed people are the victims. Jesus was maligned for partying with “sinners” and Paul was accused of promoting immorality. In the early Christian vice catalog slander was almost a terminus technicus. Yet here now are two books full of slander from the former editor of Christianity Today and a preacher from rural Ohio. Paraphrasing James’ epistolary exasperation at self-appointed judges, we might ask these two Fundamentalists: “Just who the Sam Hill do you think you are?!”
Does Lindsell want to be accused of placing sex ads in porno magazines and promiscuous sex acts that “are enough to make one cringe in disbelief?” How would he feel if rumors were spread that he has sex with little girls? How would Unger like it if a book asserted that he and his kind “are filled with hated for themselves and others”, “head into sadomasochism”, and “are frequently vicious with their own partners and with others”? Would they object if someone said that they commit most of the mass murders? How would they feel if someone wrote that Unger and all others like him are alcoholics, half of them have VD, and they each have sex with at least 500 people? They would be justly outraged at such lies. Yet they spread these falsehoods about homosexuals as such. And they do so in the name of Christ! Their books are full of the false witness of rumor-mongering, exaggeration, and guilt by association. It’s “Homosexuals” who “seek to condition society to make it believe that unnatural sex between male adults and boys is not wrong” and it’s “Homosexuals” who “do not hesitate to make their wares known to stangers”. But it’s never simply “Heterosexuals” who sexually abuse little girls or “make their wares known to strangers”. Some people do engage in these things but not homosexuals qua homosexual, not heterosexuals qua heterosexual.
Homosexuals aren’t these authors’ only victims. Lindsell tells us that “anything goes” in sex among Unitarians and that fellow evangelicals are not orthodox (as he repeatedly misuses theologians’ technical use of “myth” as though they have a more popular definition in mind). Homosexuality is linked with what Lindsell calls “The New Paganism” and Unger stereotypes as “The Road to Hell”. Lindsell sounds the alarm that all homosexuality is a symptom (such as prono, drug abuse, abortion, and “bastardy”) of the Enlightenment, Marxism and “the fall of the church”. Unger blames Freud, Maslow, and feminism (the latter for domestic violence!) and Lindsell blames Jefferson and Franklin, Kant and Barth. But in spite of castigating Barth for an entire chapter, he of course enlists as “distinctly biblical”, the Swiss theologian’s view of “the malady called homosexuality”.
In Lindsell’s nostalgia for a concept of sex that was neither consistently biblical nor universally Christian and was never as much practiced as professed, he shows little grasp of the Bible, history or human nature as enunciated by either the Bible or the social sciences. His fundamental ignorance of the nature of sexuality is betrayed by his granting that “No one could object to two homosexuals in a celibate state any more than one could object to two heterosexuals living together without sex”. He’s obsessed with juxtaposition of certain nerve endings, no matter how infrequently or inadequately such epidermal contact expresses the continuing homosexual intimacy of a couple. By Lindsell’s standard, he should have no objections to most long-term homosexual or heterosexual unions! On the other hand, Unger, who admits to a promiscuous past, gives the green light to heterosexual anal and oral se4x, although he does so by endorsement by other Christians.
Unger is careless. For example, he repeats Don Williams’ misquote of C. A. Tripp, attributes it to Ashley Montague, and calls Williams the author of Tripp’s book. But worse: he tramples the Golden Rule. Before giving “The Truth About Homosexuality” – he calls it “Gay Agony” – he notes his own need for intimacy with the mate of his own choice, appropriate to his own sexual orientation. He dedicates his book to his wife with “eternal thanks” for her “constant, dependable love and understanding”. He properly expresses the same love for her as gay people feel for their partners. But he argues against equally rewarding relationship for them. He fails even to see contradiction in his telling homosexuals to “struggle” for years toward weakening the “stubborn … bondage” that he labels “contrary to their own nature”. Jesus reproved such conservative religious leaders for loading people down with burdens too heavy to carry and Peter, at the Jerusalem Council, refuted the imposing of Mosaic Law on others — Law they themselves never were able to bear.
An ancient Hebrew proverb says: “Judge not your neighbor before you find yourself in the same situation”. When Jesus told his disciples not to judge others he warned that if they did, the very same measure they used would be used with them one day. It’s easy now for Fundamentalists who developed heterosexually to enjoy their own sexual intimacy, ignore the Golden Rule, and demand that those who developed homosexually spend a lonely lifetime denying who they are at their very core. But they should recall Jesus’ warning and realize that God does know how the hypothetically homosexual would have handled their own homosexuality had that been their lot. God knows whether they would or could have done as they preach others should or whether they would have been just as unprepared and imperfect. God also knows how the hypothetically heterosexual would have viewed gay people if homosexual orientation had not been their lot.