Putting the Chicken before the Egg: Evangelical Perspectives on LGBTQ Suicide

Last updated on: January 6, 2015 at 12:39 am by Libby Anne

Putting the Chicken before the Egg: Evangelical Perspectives on LGBTQ Suicide 2015-01-06T00:39:31-04:00 Libby Anne

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Remember what I said yesterday about evangelicals blaming the suicide rates among transgender teens on anything other than the bullying and lack of acceptance they face? Since writing that piece I have come upon several quotes from evangelical sources that back up what I was saying and shed further light on the lens evangelicals have constructed when viewing LGBTQ issues.

First, this from Charisma this past week:

I personally know individuals who once identified as transgender and who no longer do, and they are so thankful to God that they found a better way. They emphatically discourage parents from affirming their children as transgender (while even more emphatically urging those parents to show unconditional love to their kids). Should we ignore what they have to say?

In this mindset, affirming a child as transgender would be akin to affirming a child’s kleptomania instead of seeking help. From this point of view, it is affirming teens as transgender that is the problem. This perspective has been around for a while now. Here’s something I pulled up from 2010:

Conservative religious groups such as Focus on the Family want to stop what they see as an attempt by gay rights organizations to get a foothold in public schools. Tony Perkins, president of the evangelical Family Research Council, says gay activists are exploiting the concern over bullying — and twisting the facts.

“There’s no correlation between inacceptance of homosexuality and depression and suicide,” he says.

Rather, Perkins says, there is another factor that leads kids to kill themselves.

“These young people who identify as gay or lesbian, we know from the social science that they have a higher propensity to depression or suicide because of that internal conflict,” he says.

Homosexuality is “abnormal,” he says, and kids know it, which leads them to despair. That’s why he wants to confront gay activism in public schools. For example, his group supports the Day of Truth, when Christian high-schoolers make their case that homosexuality is a sin.

Finally, this from WORLD Magazine this past weekend:

WORLD believes good science is vital, so we want to contribute to the effort to keep research on the straight and narrow. Here’s our own list of seven unscientific claims from the past year.

. . .

3. Denying the dangers of the gay lifestyle

When Bloomberg last January reported that gonorrhea and syphilis are rising significantly in the United States, mainly among homosexual men, it opened by saying the problem was something “the government said is linked to inadequate testing among people stymied by homophobia and limited access to health care.” Quoting a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official and an epidemiologist, Bloomberg suggested that “homophobia” was the major cause behind the rise in these two sexually transmitted diseases. Not until the final paragraph did the news organization mention a rise in “unprotected sex among gay men.” Bloomberg gets a spot on this list for helping perpetuate the myth that the high risks of mental illness, sexually transmitted diseases, and substance abuse among homosexual men and women are mostly due to oppressive societal attitudes rather than the gay lifestyle itself.

These evangelicals place the blame for higher suicide rates and other negative outcomes on being gay (or transgender) rather than on bullying, discrimination, or lack of societal acceptance. And as a result, they also place blame on LGBTQ activists and support groups, as they “promote” and “encourage” that “lifestyle.” Without LGBTQ activists and support groups, the argument goes, these children would never have had being gay or transgender presented to them as options in the first place.

While we’re at it, I feel compelled to mention that if STDs have gone up among gay men, the problem is unprotected sex, not the “gay lifestyle.” This really isn’t something I should have to spell out!

Now, one commenter on yesterday’s post asked how we counteract these narratives. It’s one thing to know how evangelicals are viewing these issues, but another entirely to challenge their perspective in an effective way. I don’t have all the answers, but I do have a few suggestions.

1. In general conversations on LGBTQ issues, point out that they could not simply choose to have same-sex attractions or to feel inside that they are members of the opposite gender. Tell them that this is how it is for LGBTQ individuals as well.

2. Point to the huge variety of sexual preferences and gender identities; challenge simplistic binary understandings and introduce the idea of a spectrum.

3. On the specific topic of the negative effects of the “gay lifestyle” (and of being transgender), point out that stigma and bullying create distress and alienation, and that it therefore makes sense that LGBTQ individuals would have higher rates of suicide and depression.

4. Point out that there are LGBTQ Christians, which suggests that the Bible is not as straightforward as evangelicals might claim.

Of course, the fundamental problem here, underneath all the trappings, is the evangelical obsession with sexual and gender binaries. There is man and there is woman, and they are completely different, and complimentary to each other (in spite of the fact that each gender is home to a huge diversity of temperaments and interests). Men want sex, women give sex. Men are born men, women are born women. Men are sexually attracted to women, and women are attracted to men.

For evangelicals, anything outside of these binaries is deviant and dangerous—forbidden by God and punishable with divine consequences. Getting evangelicals to lay aside these simplistic binaries is extremely difficult, because they have constructed their beliefs in a way that can make them impervious to question. As an example, evangelicals are more likely to simply dismiss LGBTQ Christians as false Christians who are distorting the Bible than they are to actually reexamine their own beliefs and Biblical interpretations.

Perhaps what may help the most is knowing LGBTQ individuals personally and closely, and finding a contradiction between the teachings of their religion and the people they know and love. Of course, this requires them to get close enough to LGBTQ individuals for them to really open up, and evangelicals’ opposition to “homosexuality” and their view of transgender individuals as deviants serve to prevent such relationships.

Like I said, I don’t have all of the answers. It’s frustrating, it really is. But at the same time, I am living evidence that change is possible. I was raised in an evangelical home and espoused evangelical beliefs on LGBTQ issues myself until I was a young adult. It’s hard to say what changed exactly, because I changed my position on other issues first, and by the time I came around to reexamining my position on LGBTQ issues I had already come to have serious misgivings about evangelicalism and evangelical positions.

How about the rest of you? What thoughts do you have?

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