Andrew Walker: A topsy-turvy construct

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 4th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: WORLD Opinions commentator Andrew Walker on the Christian response to what many Americans call “Pride Month.”

ANDREW WALKER: December is no longer America’s most religious month. At least, not if we define religiosity by what truly grips the affections of the country’s elite.

Instead, our most religious month is June, when we see parades and symbols of America’s primary religion of sexual transgression. It is not just about homosexuality or transgenderism. It is now about the worship of sensuality and nerve endings. We shouldn’t be shocked by this. After all, the Apostle Paul warns against sexual sin in Romans 13.

But we Christians don’t worship our nerve endings. We don’t worship our sexuality. In fact, now, at the start of so-called “Pride Month,” it’s a good time to say this aloud for everyone to hear: The modern idea of homosexuality is a myth born of ideology. In other words, it is a “construct”--a humanistic way of seeing and organizing the world.

The problem for modern sexual identitarians is that homosexuality, as our society understands the term, doesn’t actually exist.

“Homosexuality” is the word sociologists give to the phenomenon of experiencing same-sex desires. To make it an ideology is to wrap an individual’s entire existence around it. To make it another ism. But our bodies tell us that homosexuality does not really exist as an all-defining construct. Why? Because our bodies are inherently other-oriented, regardless of our desires.

Homosexuality is really just homosexualism. It is an ideology. It is not who you are. Regardless of the pattern of your sexual desires, if you are a man, your body is meant for a wife. If you are a woman, it is intended for a husband.

That’s not to deny that some people experience same-sex desires. And we are to love all human beings, regardless of their sexual desires. But those experiences are not normative or morally praiseworthy.

Same-sex desire is intrinsically disordered. It is sinful. A homosexual-identifying man or woman is not a homosexual. They are homo sapiens whose desires are at odds with the telos or purpose of their bodies.

Many on social media today bring up the fact that there are homosexual animals in the African safari. Their point is that homosexuality just is a fact of nature. If you deny their logic, you’re diagnosed as “homophobic,” and it’s homophobia that is unnatural in their view.

The problem is that Christians don’t look at nature from a naturalist perspective. We don’t grant that every natural desire tells us how to act carte blanche. The fact that some animals eat their own excrement does not tell us that we should do the same.

But that all comes back to the controversy at hand: We don’t go looking to the experience of our desires to validate our identity. We go to Scripture. The fact of “naturally occurring” experiences or desires tells us nothing about the appropriateness of those desires. You’ve probably heard someone say, “If it feels good, do it.” That phrase is devastating and unsustainable as an ethic. But for many secular Americans, it’s their new John 3:16.

I’m Andrew Walker.

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