Love your neighbor as yourself–unless they’re gay

Last updated on: October 14, 2016 at 9:13 am by Lynette Cowper

Love your neighbor as yourself–unless they’re gay 2016-10-14T09:13:33-06:00 Lynette Cowper

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Jesus and the disciples who carried his message to the world had a lot to say about love. I think it’s important when dealing with any question of how to behave toward LGBT people that we take into account the following verses:

This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister. For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another…. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. (1 John 3)

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (Colossians 3)

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22)

The Golden Rule—Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—establishes a clear guideline on how to follow Christ’s injunction to love your neighbor as yourself.

Would you want to be denied hospital visitation to and medical decision-making for your hospitalized spouse? Would you want to know that if you died your spouse would be taxed on your shared property—on the life the two of you built together as partners—as if he or she were a total stranger? Would you want to be treated as if you couldn’t possibly be co-parent to your spouse’s children? Would you want to be fired from your job because you are straight? Would you want someone to refuse to rent an apartment or sell a home to you because you for the same reason? Would you want to be constantly bullied, harassed, and assaulted in school to the point that you no longer felt safe? Would you want to be refused service in restaurant or other place of business? Would you want to get beaten up for holding your spouse’s hand in public? Would you want to be told you couldn’t take communion or be baptized or join a church unless you lived your entire life single and celibate?

We look the other way when gender nonconforming children are bullied in our schools, neighborhoods, and churches, because for so long now so many pastors in their pulpits have implied, if not outright preached, that they deserve it. But deserve it for what? Are we seriously suggesting that the 7-year-old tomboy who gets bullied for supposedly being a lesbian, or the 5-year-old boy who wants to wear pink tennis shoes and a $1 princess tiara, have actually engaged in sinful sex acts? That the 13-year-old who hanged himself after years of relentless bullying in school, in social media, in his neighborhood, and in his church was living some sort of sinful “homosexual lifestyle”? Yet some of the most outspoken “Christian” “family” organizations have opposed anti-bullying measures at every turn.

This is not love. This is not treating others as we would want to be treated.

Even if we do (mistakenly) believe that the Bible condemns physical expressions of gay love, LGBT people still deserve legal protections to work, live, learn, and exist without fear of violence, harassment, loss of job, housing, and medical insurance. They deserve legal protections for their families. We do not deny civil liberties to any other group of “sinners,” and we would certainly not deny them to ourselves. So we should not deny them to LGBT people.

If Christians were truly following the Golden Rule, we would be at the forefront of the fight for LGBT equality. We would be outraged at the passage of draconian laws in Russia and Uganda. We would be offering sanctuary to LGBT teens driven from their homes, to LGBT citizens of nations where it is illegal to be gay. Christian charities would be pouring money into finding a cure and better treatment for HIV and AIDS.

We would not be standing back. We would not have “Christian” “family” organizations that receive millions and billions of dollars to oppose anti-bullying legislation and marriage equality, that send speakers to Uganda to urge the passage of laws that criminalize being gay, that celebrate the deaths of LGBT people by suicide, murder, and AIDS.

But we do have those abominable organizations.

We have them because we ignore the one rule we’re supposed to follow: love God by loving our neighbors and treating them as we ourselves would want to be treated.

Lynette Cowper is a Christian who is active in her church’s worship and drama ministries. As a parent of two children, one on the LGBTQIA spectrum and one on the autism spectrum, she has a deep passion toward justice for those society too often sees as outsiders. Lynette blogs at A Rindle of Words. For Unfundamentalist Christians she also wrote Top 7 claims for why homosexuality is “unnatural” refuted.

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Lynette Cowper

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