Derek: 00:28

Welcome back to the Fourth Way Podcast. At the time of this recording, I have been working on my propaganda season for about a year. Over the course of that year, my wife has been a real trooper. She's gotten to bear the brunt of all my brain dumping and has learned a whole lot of obscure facts about history in the world, many of them dark and despairing facts. While she loves to engage in discussions and learn along with me, never having discouraged me from learning and sharing more, there's one exhortation that she has uttered on more than one occasion.

Derek: 01:02

Be careful. I'm definitely feeling the weight of this season more than the others. To argue for pacifism like I did in season 1, it's kind of niche and cute, albeit perceived as idealistic and perhaps a little self righteous. To argue for Christian anarchism as I did 2 seasons ago is a bit more offensive, especially since it undermines Americans' favorite idol, the Christian nation. But that still doesn't hit too hard because while it steps on some toes, the anarchist position is a lightweight and doesn't step on toes very hard.

Derek: 01:38

Christian anarchism, at least at the moment, isn't too much of a threat to all that many Christians because the movement is so small. But in this season, the threat is real. In this season, I move from being a little idealistic and niche to being a threat and a pariah. What makes this season doubly dangerous is that it has the potential to infuriate both Poles. When I talk about patriarchy, racism, and systemic injustice, conservative Christians will label me as woke and liberal.

Derek: 02:11

But when I end up speaking out against the evil of abortion, the progressive and liberals won't have me either. When I speak out against the evils of, and overreaches of businesses and the problems of capitalistic systems, conservative Christians will want to kill me. But when I push on the other side and discuss the importance of elevating freedom and generosity rather than violent compulsion by the state, I'll be hated by progressives and liberals too. You can just listen through the season and hear this tension throughout, this balancing act of simultaneously speaking for and against each poll. Yet each poll will only hear my critiques against them and therefore label me as an enemy because if you're not all for them, you must be against them.

Derek: 02:57

In this season, I risk losing friends, supporters, and possibly even my job as my position is susceptible to the whims, interpretations, and inclinations of some very conservative people who could easily find enough sound bites in this season to interpret me in any way they wished. My wife is right. This truly is a precarious endeavor, but I don't think she's more right than when she warned me yet again in regard to preparing this particular episode. Be careful. Today, I'm going to talk about the false prophet as it pertains to medical propaganda.

Derek: 03:32

In particular, we're going to be discussing the church's relationship with the LGBTQ community. If there is a more volatile topic today in both the church and the world, I'm not sure I know what that is. Because of the volatile nature of this topic, I'm going to be taking a number of steps to avoid undue confusion. First, I'm going to be providing a deeper background on the topic than I've given in other episodes. Any given episode is really like an iceberg.

Derek: 04:02

What you see is only a small, small fraction of what exists. Much of what I do for an episode is figure out what information to whittle away so as not to inundate listeners with too much information, which isn't immediately relevant. While my focus in this episode is going to be the church's response to the world, I believe it is important for the sake of clarity that I paint a more detailed picture of the LGBTQ community than would otherwise be necessary. I found, especially with the topic of racism, that uncovering history often helps to provide clarity in regard to more recent events. You know, it's easy for a white suburbanite to view police action, not a systemic brutality and injustice, but rather a one off incident or a legitimate reaction to resistance and threat.

Derek: 04:51

When you understand the history of policing, particularly in black communities and see how far back the complaint of police and justice goes, it at least helps one to understand how the black community sees something like police violence very differently than most whites do. It's because they have eyes acclimated to the dark, to the dark recesses of a history long forgotten or probably better stated, a history oft ignored by whites. As I've delved into the LGBTQ history, I found that being aware of this historical understanding is no less important to the issue at hand. That may mean that for listeners, this episode is deeper into the weeds and more tedious than you want it to be, and that's fine. I'll be putting time stamps in this episode because of its length, so you can jump around or return to information as you'd like.

Derek: 05:43

However, I strongly urge you to listen through the whole episode because I believe the historical background is indispensable for a solid evaluation of the topic. Secondly, I'm going to be doing my best to avoid moral evaluations for or against the LGBTQ community. Maybe that's because I'm finally heeding my wife's advice, and I'm being a little careful. Maybe you think that's a cowardly thing to do. That's probably both of the above.

Derek: 06:10

But at least in my mind, the greatest rationale for avoiding a moral pronouncement in this episode is because it's really not the point of the episode. The point isn't for me to affirm or deny the morality of homosexuality. The point is rather to evaluate the church's response to the gay community and how that response has played into aspects of medical propaganda that we've discussed so far. If I were to affirm homosexuality here, all my conservative Christian audience would only see me as a heretic who hates God and can't say anything true. I mean, they probably already see me like that, but this would just put the nail in the coffin.

Derek: 06:47

If, on the other hand, I would have denounced homosexuality as immoral, then all that progressives would hear is a bigoted hate monger who can't say anything true, though they probably already think that because of my stance on abortion. Nevertheless, in affirming or denouncing homosexuality, one poll would hear only the good and get nothing else out of this episode, and the other poll would hear only the bad and get nothing out of it. And in that polarization, the church and the kingdom of God that it's to advance would get lost in the fray. My goal in this episode is not to polarize and pronounce moral judgments outside the church, but rather to critique and better the wayward church from within. Finally, I'm going to try to keep this episode free of what I believe is the very distracting discussion of whether or not being gay is biological.

Derek: 07:38

I'm sure way smarter and holier people than me would disagree with me here, but I just don't think the discussion matters at all, regardless of if you're a Christian or an atheist. If homosexuality is largely or solely biological and you're an atheist, that doesn't matter one iota. Other things like alcoholism have biological components. I even saw a TED talk where this one scientist talks about biological components to certain serial killers and psychopaths. Some parents snap and kill their kids.

Derek: 08:10

Some species of animals cannibalize their competitors' children. There's a whole lot that is either biological or natural, which we could never consider approving of as humans. It's the naturalistic fallacy. I used to love giving this example to kids when I was teaching a philosophy of science class. You know, you see all of these products that are out there, and they say, all natural.

Derek: 08:34

So I was teaching a chemistry class, and I say, kids, I want you to look up at a s on the periodic table. Yes. That is arsenic. Arsenic is all natural. Right?

Derek: 08:47

It's a foundational element. Right? It's one of the one of the elements that is is a building block to the world, to the universe. You don't get more natural than the elements, at least the natural ones, not so much the man made ones. Yet we all know that arsenic is extremely toxic and will kill you.

Derek: 09:09

So natural, biological, none of that really matters. On atheism, everything is natural because nature is all there is. There is nothing that exists in this universe or happens in this universe which is unnatural. Things which are not normal, meaning things that are deviant from that which is statistically significant or probable, sure, those things exist, but nothing unnatural exists. So why would an atheist care if there's a biological or a natural component to homosexuality?

Derek: 09:45

I mean, I can see why one would want to know and learn about it. But as far as using this information as a justification or a condemnation of the gay individual or lifestyle, just seems meaningless to me. Simultaneously, I don't understand why conservative Christians think that they have to fight against the idea that being gay is tied to some biological component. What does it matter if individuals are born with gay identities, proclivities, or whatever conservatives wanna call it? People are born blind, born with various infirmities, mental and physical, or sometimes through epigenetics perhaps, children develop certain tendencies that become biological, a part of who they are.

Derek: 10:26

I remember this one kid that I taught who we were told had grown up in an orphanage overseas where he wasn't touched or held for a significant and formative part of his development. He developed, I forget what it's called. It's, some attachment syndrome or something. But he developed this condition where he could seem normal to us, but he was absolutely devious and had no empathy whatsoever. We heard about the things that he was doing to his brothers and sisters at home, and it was just tragic.

Derek: 10:57

But even if you can sympathize with that kid and recognize that he is the way he is in large part because of biological and environmental factors, we still believe that he's responsible for his actions, and we hold him accountable. We live in a fallen world, and it only makes sense that our minds and bodies would be fallen and imperfect in various ways. So in the end, it seems absolutely irrelevant to me from a moral standpoint as either an atheist or a Christian whether or not being gay has a biological component to it. Maybe I'm missing something, but that's at least my take at the moment. So even though we're going to be talking about the issue of being gay in the context of the church and medical community, I'm going to avoid coming down anywhere on the issue of biological and environmental factors.

Derek: 11:43

I'm just gonna avoid the discussion altogether because I don't think it matters. I think digging into that argument would detract from the conversation that I want to have. I know it's the conversation that everyone, especially conservative Christians, want to have, but But I just don't see the relevance here, and we're gonna avoid it. Okay. With those preliminaries out of the way, I wanna start setting up the main discussion point by exploring a bit of the history of the LGBTQ community in the US.

Derek: 12:12

I have to say that in exploring gay history, I was shocked by what I found, though not surprised. Again, I draw similarities here to my growth and understanding racism in the United States. When you uncover the prevalence and intensity of persecution with either racism or homosexuality, it's shocking just because of the sheer horror of the injustice that's been done. But it's not at all surprising that you find such things in history. Shocking, not surprising.

Derek: 12:42

When you uncover injustices and atrocity, it makes sense, yet it shocks the senses. We could probably start the history of the gay experience at any point in American history. But I think the best place to start it in regard to our discussion on propaganda would be in 1919. This is the perfect starting point for a number of reasons. First, World War 1 was when propaganda really took off and became a thing.

Derek: 13:08

For a detailed history on propaganda's inception into the government, check out the book manipulating the masses. Government influence and censorship became enormous at this point, with filmmakers even getting sentenced to a decade of prison time for painting American allies in an unfavorable light as we see in the case of the United States versus the spirit of 76. So 1919, right after the Great War, is the perfect time to take a look at how cultural views and information were formed in regard to a particular group of people. For this episode, namely, the gay community. 2nd, 1919 is a great place to start our history because that summer, known as the red summer, erupted in violence and really laid bare the ideological fault lines, which existed not only in the United States but across the world.

Derek: 14:00

Bolshevism was in full swing in Russia, and the American expeditionary force, which had invaded Russia less than a year earlier, was still stationed abroad with many American elites and citizens alike fearing an upheaval at home. The decade following World War 1 saw racial turmoil as well. One of the most famous incidents occurring in 1921 with the massacre at Black Wall Street in Oklahoma. There were new stricter legislations in regard to immigration, and the decade also ended with the infamous Buck v. Bell case we did an episode about in this section.

Derek: 14:34

With all this in mind, it seems like beginning our history around World War 1 makes a lot of sense. We'll be able to track much of today's ideologies from their source, which sprung up in the early 20th century. So 1919, navy secretary Josephus Daniels. As well as being a staunch racist and believing that blacks shouldn't have a vote, Daniels was also a moralist who sought to reform navy life. While there aren't any solid figures, it seems like homosexuality was quite commonplace in the military back in the day.

Derek: 15:09

A number of the books that I read on the topic gave example after example of homosexual encounters, many of them involving those in the military. Port towns are big places to cruise as a gay man. And I don't know if there was something about the military that was particularly attractive to gay men, if it just so happens that we have records of gay encounters from the military, or whatever other explanation there might be. But like I said, it seems like it was pretty commonplace there. Well, Josephus Daniels thought so too, which is why he supposedly, along with his assistant Franklin Roosevelt, decided to run a sting operation to catch gay military personnel and oust them from the military.

Derek: 15:51

Daniels was so moralistic about his pursuit in catching gay soldiers that he told sting operatives they could elicit sexual encounters to entrap gay men, even going so far as to submit to fellatio in order to catch and convict gays. There's some consequentialism for you right there. Homosexuality is so bad, you ought to engage in it to catch people. This hearkens back to Augustine's treatise entitled on or against lying when where, someone was asking Augustine if it was proper to catch heretics do lies. And Augustine said, absolutely not.

Derek: 16:26

You can't sin so that a greater sin than your sin, at least in your estimation, of course, should be stopped. This, of course, when it came out was a a huge scandal back in the day with, Daniels and Roosevelt and, how they were setting up gay men by by having people participate in, gay acts. It was it's interesting. We'll definitely be coming back to, to Augustine's work later in the season and making some more comparisons. And remembering Josephus Daniels, will be helpful in that time.

Derek: 17:00

But for now, know that Augustine's prohibition was Daniel's motto, essentially. Call evil good that good may prevail. Daniels didn't like blacks, and he didn't like gays. He probably thought God was on his side in all his endeavors to stop these plagues in society. Of course, the military wasn't the only place where there were gay men.

Derek: 17:21

There's a whole network of gays across the country. Well, I guess, at this point in time, network probably would not be the best word to use. There didn't seem to be too much outing at this time, too many gays who would form associations. You had some more openly gay people or people who everyone knew was gay, like Oscar Wilde and people like that. By and large, gays couldn't be open or associate, right, about their their gay relationships.

Derek: 17:50

Even Hollywood didn't see a lot of gays coming out because they had a written slash unwritten code called the Hays Code, which determined that films couldn't include things like interracial relationships, nudity, drugs, speaking badly against the clergy, or representations of homosexuality. Right there is the perfect example of media wielding its powerful tool that we identified this section. Right? Silence. By silencing the existence of things, you can, have a lot of power.

Derek: 18:21

Anyway, homosexuality was something that everyone wanted to ignore the existence of. But not only could gays at this time not be open about their relationships even in Hollywood, they also had to make sure they held up the appearance of normalcy and social stereotypes elsewhere. It wasn't good enough to hide one's overt sexuality. 1 also had to create appropriate social appearances. If 2 bachelors resided at the same location, that was a no no.

Derek: 18:49

In fact, a male bachelor who was never married was suspect in and of himself. This stigma of the male bachelor led many gay men to actually marry women for the sake of appearances. Yet these appearances didn't at all change the sexuality of an individual. While keeping up social appearances, many gays, married or single, would cruise and have sexual encounters with other other gay people. They would go to known locations in towns and cities where other gays were cruising and do a little social dance to test the waters.

Derek: 19:21

They'd pause by a particular shop, make a specific comment, and whatever until they finally felt confident enough that they could invite the other person home. Now sometimes the advances were welcomed, and sometimes the advances led to an arrest by an undercover cop. Criminals would also take advantage of known cruising areas and take advantage of stereotypically effeminate men. He would lure them into hotels then rob or kill them. Of the 2, being robbed and beaten or being arrested, I'm not sure which one was worse.

Derek: 19:54

And that's because being arrested could lead to jail time, but it could also lead to being housed in a psych ward, which was possibly far worse than straight up jail time depending on the time and place that one was arrested. For example, the infamous Atascadero State Prison in California, or as it was called, the Dachau for queers. The APA classified homosexuality as a disorder in the DSM 1 in 1952, and Atascadero opened its doors 2 years later in 1954. At Atascadero, gay men were not only confined, but con castrated, given electroshock therapy, and even given transorbital lobotomies. I remember watching a video of a transorbital lobotomy in my, my psych class It's a freshman or sophomore.

Derek: 20:41

If you don't know what a transorbital lobotomy is, then check out the links in the show notes. It's horrific. No matter your view on homosexuality, the treatment of gays was horrendous. It's horrendous that it happened to any human being, but it's made even worse when you hear the stories of some of those sent to prison. People who were doing everything they could not to buck the social order and to just keep up appearances, yet were entrapped and hunted down anyway.

Derek: 21:10

By and large, these weren't individuals seeking to maliciously undermine society or overthrow the world. There are people trying to lay low, fit in, and live their lives freely. What was going on in the religious sphere at this time? Well, just a year before Atascadero State Prison opened its doors to welcome the gay community in 1954, the first presidential prayer breakfast was held. In the same year that Atascadero opened its doors, Under God was inserted into the pledge of allegiance.

Derek: 21:39

And only 1 year after Atascadero opened, In God, We Trust was required on all US currency, both coin and paper alike. Josephus Daniel's moralistic fervor and Americans' patriotic fervor came to a pinnacle in the Cold War era. United States had come into its own after a period of relative isolationism. It was becoming accustomed to being the big man on the world campus. The military might and the financial position of the US after 2 world wars was staggering, and both the military and ideological threats that the Soviet Union posed had to be addressed.

Derek: 22:14

There's no better way to fight off the godless con communist than to make a strong turn towards God, at least in sacral fashion. Placing God's name on our currency rather than being viewed as blasphemous was just the thing that American Christianity needed to become subservient to the state. Whose image is on our coins? Well, Caesar's image, but now also God's name. The 2 became inseparable.

Derek: 22:41

It isn't long after this, of course, only a little over a decade, that Reinhold Niebuhr penned his King's Chapel and King's Court piece that I referenced in our episode on the false prophet of media. I want you to think long and hard about this time in history here, especially if you're a Christian. From 1930 to 1970, United States government is disenfranchising blacks with the GI Bill. It's toughening immigration laws that kept Jews from being saved during the Holocaust. It is juridically upholding forced sterilization of the poor and imposing sterilization, especially on on, vulnerable groups like Native American women.

Derek: 23:19

They're lowering enlistment requirements to subject the lower class to conscription, like we saw in McNamara's Folly back in our section on race. The government is fomenting coups in Latin America and the Middle East, overthrowing democratically elected leaders and supporting ruthless dictators like Pinochet in Chile. The civil rights movement is going on, and a good portion of the country is desiring to keep blacks disenfranchised, with a number of blacks like Robert F Williams even fleeing to Cuba for more freedom. And now you learn that during the same time, the government isn't only undergoing a McCarthy and Red Scare, but a Lavender Scare as well, one in which homosexuals are targeted, entrapped, thrown in prison, fired from their jobs, and assaulted or mutilated. It's right smack dab in the middle of all of this that God gets his stamp under Caesar's image and a dedicated phrase in the middle of Caesar's pledge.

Derek: 24:15

So when Christian conservatives say that they wanna go back to the good old days to make America great again, This is it. This is America, the great, when all the leaders from Josephus Daniels to Dwight Eisenhower were, quote, Christians. And please believe me here. This this list of injustices and atrocities and evils is a very short list that I provided for you here. The whole list is much, much, much longer and darker.

Derek: 24:46

Coming out of the midst of the tumultuous cold war era, the gay community was rocked with a new threat. All of a sudden, not only was society against gays, but nature was as well. At first, the new disease was thought to primarily impact the gay community. That's why what we know today as AIDS was actually initially called GRID or gay related immune deficiency. AIDS came at a very unfortunate time for the gay community.

Derek: 25:14

Not too long after the California Stonewall at the California Hall in 1965 and after New York Stonewall riots in 1969, the APA removed homosexuality from its list of disorders. This post Stonewall world of the 19 seventies was 20 years out from having an opportunity to digest Alfred Kinsey's famous or infamous work related to human sexuality. Now there's a whole episode that we could do on the conspiracy surrounding Kinsey's work and the relevance or irrelevance of his findings in regard to sexuality. But whether or not you agree with Kinsey's methodology or findings, Kinsey revealed to the world that sexuality is far more fluid and divergent than the general populace realized. The supposedly Christian culture and supposedly Christian nation may have talked a big game, but when it came to sexuality, they were experimenting and deviating with some significance.

Derek: 26:11

Even if Kinsey's numbers are grossly inflated due to selection bias or sampling issues, he revealed to the world the existence of nonnormative sexuality. Sexuality ranging from adultery to homosexuality. Normal may still have remained statistically normal after Kinsey's work, but the normies were introduced to the fact that there were others, many others out there. By the 19 seventies, the world had had time to process that truth, not only intellectually in academia, but also firsthand in the sexual revolution. The rise of gay related organizations was also helping the gay community to organize at this time.

Derek: 26:52

One of the earliest and most famous organizations, the Mattachine Society, principled themselves after what they called the Mattachino or a Renaissance court jester who was able to speak truth to the king through their flamboyance, humor, and acts. The Mattachine Society, along with a number of other societies and organizations growing in number at this time, brought the issue of gay rights and discrimination to the national scene and helped other gay men and women feel supported, making them able to start coming out. But as the world was becoming more open to sexual fluidity, the AIDS crisis hit in the early eighties, stigmatizing a group that had just begun to feel they were able to stand up on their feet. Of course, many conservative Christians immediately embraced the AIDS epidemic as a good and just display of the wrath of God, a judgment on the immorality that was plaguing the nation. Some prominent preachers and evangelicals termed AIDS the gay plague.

Derek: 27:48

Conservatives in the White House, Reagan and his administration at the time, didn't seem to want to have anything to do with AIDS despite being hounded about it for years by journalists such as Lester Kinsleven. Many people in churches were fearful of AIDS, not knowing how it was transmitted, with some churches even turning away AIDS victims at the door, as you can hear in one of the interviews I've linked in the show notes. In the early nineties, as treatment for AIDS became more effective and more available, the gay stigmas still seem to linger. Stories of gays being attacked surface every once in a while with Matthew Shepard perhaps being the most famous story that I can personally recall growing up. It wasn't until the 2000 that many gay men and women felt safer to reveal their sexuality.

Derek: 28:35

And even still today, there's a strong fear for many depending on their family and social setting. So there you have it. A very, very brief history of homosexuality in the United States from 1919 on. What I want to do now is paint you a parallel history, a history of the church, and then bring these two histories to an intersection where we can finally start dealing with the false prophet. The barely early church was known for its radicalism.

Derek: 29:04

They were pacifists, largely spurned politics, radically generous, and willing to be martyred. This radicality extended even into the medical sphere. While famous Roman physicians like Galen fled from the plague that invaded Rome, you had many Christian leaders advocating that Christians meet death head on in service to their neighbors. Eusebius quoted Dionysus of Alexandria as just one example of this. Quote, most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another.

Derek: 29:38

Heedless of the danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy. For they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains. End quote. Cyprian, in his work on the plague, also has a fantastic quote, which gives us insight into the early church's position on the plague. Cyprian said, quote, but, nevertheless, it disturbs some that the power of this disease attacks our people equally with the heathens.

Derek: 30:14

As if the Christian believed for this purpose, that he might have the enjoyment of the world and this life free from the contact of ills. And not as one who undergoes all adverse things here and is reserved for future joy. It disturbs some that this mortality is common to us with others. And yet, what is there in this world which is not common to us with others? So long as this flesh of ours still remains according to the law of our first birth, common to us with them?

Derek: 30:44

So long as we are here in the world, we are associated with the human race and fleshly equality, but are separated in spirit. Therefore, until this corruptible shall put on incorruption and this mortal receive immortality, and the spirit lead us to God the father, whatsoever are the disadvantages of the flesh are common to us with the human race. Thus, when the Earth is barren with an unproductive harvest, famine makes no distinction. Thus, with the invasion of an enemy, any city is taken. Captivity at once desolates all.

Derek: 31:18

And when the serene clouds withhold the rain, the drought is alike to all. And when the jagged rocks rend the ship, the shipwreck is common without exception to all that sail in her. And the disease of the eyes, the attack of fevers, and the feebleness of all the limbs is common to us with others, so long as this common flesh of ours is born by us in the world. End quote. Cyprian's words here remind me a lot of the letter to Diomedes, a letter in which the author argues that Christians are the soul of the world.

Derek: 31:50

Just as the soul of our bodies prophesies to our bodies, pushing our bodies to discipline and health despite our bodies' desire for comfort and indulgence, in like fashion, Christians are to be the soul to the world. While the pagans of Rome were fleeing the plague out of physical self interest, the Christians of Rome were, by and large, staying to face death head on because that's what the soul does. It cares for the body even in the face of harm. And notice that Christians weren't simply staying in harm's way to help other Christians. Now many of those that they assisted were godless pagans.

Derek: 32:27

They were, in essence, enemies of the Christians, perhaps even some of the very people who would have gladly paid tickets to see these same Christians being killed and devoured in the Colosseum's games. Yet the soul of Rome, the soul of the world, was showing the body what the eternal looked like. They were displaying the kingdom of God and selflessness, sacrifice, and enemy love because Jesus was both their model and their king. When we fast forward church history to intersect with AIDS and the crisis of the eighties nineties, I think you can already see where the wayward church comes in. While there were churches stigmatizing gays, turning them away from their doors, and calling their disease the gay plague, a divine judgment that they deserved, you can't get much farther away from the early church's handling of plagues.

Derek: 33:16

Just think about the first part of Cyprian's quote earlier. Quote, nevertheless, it disturbs some that the power of this disease attacks our people equally with the heathens, as if the Christian believed for this purpose that he might have the enjoyment of the world in this life free from the contact of ills and not as one who undergoes all adverse things here and is reserved for future joy. That's rain falling on the just and the unjust alike. Right? Just like plagues fall on the just and the unjust alike, We're like towers in Siloam fell on the just and the unjust alike.

Derek: 33:51

Suffering is an aspect of a fallen world and is not meant to be. Yet its presence is always an opportunity for Christian and non Christian alike to reflect on the nature of reality and existence, and hopefully, to repent and turn to God. I remember last year talking with Hannah Nation of China Partnership and having her share that the very first thing many Chinese Christians do when they get picked up by the police is to repent, to draw nearer to God. Think about that. They're being persecuted, yet that suffering drives them to self reflection and repentance, not to blame and judgment.

Derek: 34:28

But what conservative Christianity did during the AIDS crisis, to a large extent, was to stigmatize sufferers. And I'm not just talking about Christian stigmatizing through mean words here about name calling and judgmentalism. Sure. Words are bad because they sting, but their power, as we've seen this season, is that words convey ideas, and ideas have consequences because they lead to action. Christian words became Christian sticks and stones, with conservative Christians ready to line up and cast the first ones.

Derek: 35:00

One heartbreaking example was given by Ted Karpf in an interview that I've linked in the notes. He told a story that he had an AIDS sufferer come to his church and ask him if he could die in his church. He had no family to turn to, and no other churches would take him in because of the fear of AIDS or the judgmental of judgmentalism of his lifestyle. So rather than turn in to face the plague and love even ideological enemies, the evangelical the conservative church in the eighties nineties was, by and large, fleeing and leaving the gay community to suffer and die. Christians were quarantining themselves in their isolated and padlocked city on a hill rather than being the light that emanated out from that city.

Derek: 35:44

While the world was dying, Christians were digging a moat. Perhaps a story that shows how representative such a Christian response was is a story that I pulled from Richard Stearns' book, Lead Like It Matters to God. Stearns was the head of World Vision during the AIDS crisis and describes his experience trying to get Christians to support AIDS victims across the world. You can find his story in chapter 11 of his book entitled, Courage. Do Not Be Afraid.

Derek: 36:12

Stearns describes how his exposure to the problem of AIDS caused him to seek raising funds for AIDS victims, but that he was discouraged from pursuing the issue by fellow Christians. He was told that World Vision was a g rated ministry, and AIDS was an r rated issue. To test the waters, Stearns put out a questionnaire to donors and asked how many would give money to help. And this next part is important here, to help children orphaned by AIDS. Stearns wasn't even asking about adults with AIDS, let alone gay people with AIDS.

Derek: 36:45

He was asking if people would help those who had nothing to do with contracting AIDS, vulnerable children with no parents. Only 3% of respondents said that they definitely would contribute, while 52% said that they definitely wouldn't help. Almost all other demographics in the population, those who weren't conservative Christians, had a higher willingness to help orphaned AIDS victims. Now I don't think these numbers would be any less palatable if we were talking about gay AIDS victims than talking about orphaned AIDS victims because the church is supposed to be love even to those, maybe even especially to those who it may feel are its enemies. Yet when it comes to AIDS and homosexuality, conservative Christians harbored such an extreme hatred that most wouldn't help even those who had an association with the issue.

Derek: 37:35

The evangelical conservative church was a far cry from the church of early Christianity as it pertained to love, justice, and self sacrifice. During the same period of time, Christianity saw the creation and rise of many conversion therapy organizations and practices. Well, I know that there are still some Christians defending conversion therapy or practices like it. In fact, I actually just saw a new paper that came out a few months, maybe it was a year ago, out of, I think, Redding, California. But, you know, the general consensus from both anecdote and research at this time, even among conservative Christians today, a lot of them anyway, seems to be that conversion therapy has not only been harmful to individuals, but it just doesn't work.

Derek: 38:22

You're hard pressed to find any significant numbers of people for whom conversion therapy has, quote, worked. Mark Jarhouse, possibly the most famous sexual researcher amongst Christians, has described in length how many who are considered successes of conversion therapy often recant not too long down the road. Change rarely happens. And if it does, it's a facade or a temporary change. So during the AIDS crisis, not only not only were, conservative Christians largely ostracizing and stigmatizing the gay community and leaving them to languish without help and love from the church, but they were also inflicting harmful medical or psychological treatment on gay in an attempt to cure them.

Derek: 39:06

Now I do understand that we could spin conversion therapy a particular way here and and put a good face on it. Now if homosexuality was immoral, if it was not the way that the world was supposed to be, if it does go against the grain of the universe that God created, then it does seem like a loving thing to help those who are gay to change. Right? Now I would have thought that a while ago. But what I'm realizing now after reading and listening to a number of gay individuals from the far left all the way to conservative Christians is that, by and large, conversion therapy was an objectification of the gay individual.

Derek: 39:43

Much of conversion therapy was focused on getting the gay individual to conform to gender norms and to fit in with the heterosexuals and what it they thought it should be like to be a man or a woman. Greg Johnson, a celibate gay conservative Christian, in his book Still Time to Care, talks about how some of these conversion therapies focused on teaching gays things like how to throw footballs or how to change the oil. You know, how to be a real American man. While I'm sure many Christians thought that they were doing something good for gay Christians, what they were actually doing was objectifying them. Discipleship would look like coming alongside a gay brother or sister in community, learning about them, participating in the things they enjoyed, inviting them to be involved in the church and communing with them as equals as they are.

Derek: 40:35

But what conservative Christian culture and conversion therapy in particular did was objectify the gay individual as a deficient object, a project in need of fixing. Now it may seem like a small difference. Maybe you don't see it. It it might take our future episodes on discipleship towards the end of the season to flesh this out a little bit more, but the difference between fixing and fulfilling, between objectifying and discipling, is huge. When you seek to fix a car, for example, you identify the part of it that's messed up, and you fix it.

Derek: 41:10

You replace the part or cover up the scratch, whatever it is that you need to do. A paint job is a superficial fix and just covers over a problem, whereas replacing a gasket is more of a mechanical and more permanent fix. But either way, the car is your object, and the goal is specific functionality. But fulfilling is something completely different. You can't fulfill objects.

Derek: 41:34

Fulfillment is something that happens through experience. It's a filling up of the soul, something which often happens in relationship to 1 or more people, something that only happens in relationship. Fulfillment is finally graduating from high school after dropping out as a young single mom. Sure. Mom gets a degree, and perhaps that's a fix in a sense.

Derek: 41:57

Right? And that it might help her financial difficulty a bit. But that degree is the result of a long process of hard work, of grandparents watching mom's baby, of friends covering her shifts, of sleepless nights of selflessness as mom stays up to do her homework amidst countless feedings of her child. The degree isn't something that happened to mom, nor is it something that she did herself. It's something that's done with her, alongside her.

Derek: 42:25

That degree is representative of a community empowering and loving that mom unto the achievement of that degree. That fulfillment is very different than being fixed. Just handing mom a degree, that will give her an easier time getting a job, and it would terminate in the same end financial result. Right? Because it would make mom more hireable.

Derek: 42:50

It would fix her financial situation. But the end result in terms of community, self image, and a whole host of other things would be significantly different. A degree earned within a community is more representative of discipleship or a communal process than it is of being objectified as a problem that needs to be solved and merely handed a degree. So let's think back to this conversion therapy as objectification. What Greg Johnson and many of the other gay voices I listened to said was that, by and large, the church objectified them as objects that needed to be fixed while failing to come alongside them in loving community.

Derek: 43:29

They wanted to do a paint job over what they perceived as the gay man's flaws. Hey. If he throws a football well, maybe he can blend in as normal, as nondeficient. Yet on Thanksgiving Day, that single gay man may have no family or friends or church inviting him into fellowship. While the conservative Christian community has been focusing so singularly on fixing the negative desires it views gays as having and objectifying approach, it has failed to foster the positive filial love of discipleship in the community of family.

Derek: 44:03

Objectification typically seeks to fix negative loves, whereas discipleship seeks to form positive ones. And in forming positive loves and fulfilling through discipleship and community, one finds that those loves which don't belong, while perhaps never disappearing, are subdued and eclipsed. The church is the false prophet here is something that kept popping into my mind as I read and listened to a variety of books, interviews, and articles on this topic. So many gay individuals throughout history were harassed for being bachelors and not married, for being effeminate men, etcetera. They were objectified by society and by Christians.

Derek: 44:43

They had to marry or die quite literally in certain cases. It makes me wonder if that's in part why the priesthood has long been known as a place that harbored, quote, inverts, as one of the books I read mentioned. If one would be harassed unless they became the objects everyone thought they ought to be, masculine men who struggled with locker room talk and heterosexual lust, And the only place a single man could fit in was the priesthood. It makes sense that the church essentially created an institution that enticed gay individuals to enter the priesthood by giving them the only socially acceptable place to be a bachelor in community. Now things aren't any better for conservative protestants today.

Derek: 45:23

Large families are popular in my denomination, and I have 4 kids myself, which is almost on the low end for our church. I've heard plenty of Christians talk about how we are in a culture war and have more than once heard Christians jokingly, but not really jokingly, say that we just need to have more kids than them, meaning atheists and secularists, I guess. Though simultaneously, these individuals recognize that the Muslims are out doing us Christians, and we wish that the strategy wouldn't be so easy to fulfill. Now maybe we'll find some WMDs in the Middle East and solve that problem the easy way. I don't know.

Derek: 46:01

But, seriously, this is something that I've heard a lot of Christians prop up. The family is idolized in many Protestant circles because it's our power for the next generation. Our little mini mes. Not mini Christs, not Christians, but mini mes. Many Republicans, many conservatives, many Presbyterians.

Derek: 46:23

God help us if there were many Christs, celibate, self sacrificing people who moved out to the margins and loved enemies. We'd lose all our political clouds, power, and comfort. This is the type of culture that we have in conservative Protestantism. Whereas Paul said he desires that Christians could all remain single so that we could focus on God's work, Protestant Christians elevate the family and build churches with singles largely written out of them. There's no place for gay people in conservative churches because there's no value in singleness.

Derek: 46:55

Because there's no value in being single, there's no opportunity for singles and celibate gays to be fulfilled unless they can throw a football with you and change your oil, I suppose. And this is exactly the objectification I discussed earlier. Conservative Christianity has long propped up the idol of family and built its church around that. Objectifying gays and trying to get them to conform to our idea of family. A mom, a dad, 2 kids, a dog, and some window decals on the back of your SUV.

Derek: 47:24

We've been trying to get gay people to conform to us so that we don't have to humble ourselves and meet them where they're at, serving and fulfilling them in community. But Jesus gives us a different depiction of family. Who are my mother and my brothers? Or perhaps for this episode, we could ask, who is my spouse and my children? We are the bride of Christ.

Derek: 47:46

Jesus is our spouse. Those in the church are my mother, brothers, sisters, and children. Yet that's not how we have fashioned the modern church to be, and therefore, that's at least in part why gay men and women cannot find fulfillment in it. We are not the hands and feet of Christ to them. At this point in the episode, I guess we ought to probably tie it all into our section on medical propaganda.

Derek: 48:12

How has the church been a false prophet in the field of medicine? I think there are 2 major connections that we can make in regard to the false prophet of medicine here. 1st, as we've explored in this section, the medical and scientific communities often hide behind a facade of benevolence, either because they really truly believe that they're being benevolent or because benevolence is an effective disguise. As we discussed in our true conspiracy episode, the United States legalized forced sterilization largely under the guise that it was being benevolent both to those imbeciles being sterilized and to society as a whole. Of course, to us, it seems clear that objectifying people in this manner is atrocious.

Derek: 48:54

Yet in a similar vein, the conservative Christian community has often objectified gay men and women as impediments to Christianity and as objects in need of being dealt with, not as contributing members of the church body in need of and able to love. Christian methodology in regard to science and medicine was paraded about as benevolent when in reality, it was largely self seeking and often harmful to gay individuals. 2nd, we see that the false prophet put some very strong words into the great physician's mouth. They proclaimed a medical illness, AIDS, as God's judgment on the gay community. So just was this judgment that most Christians were unwilling to help even the most vulnerable of those innocence on the periphery of the issue, children orphaned by AIDS.

Derek: 49:44

Unlike Cyprian and much of the rest of the early church who ran to love even their pagan enemies in need during the plague at great cost to themselves, modern conservative Christians fled to the hills to leave the dying without hope, locking and barring the church doors behind them. There doesn't seem to be a greater blasphemy than this in my mind. To proclaim oneself the hands and feet of Christ while using those hands and feet to run away from love and to throw down one's cross, all the while praising God with our lips. If ever the words of Isaiah and Jesus were true, they are true here when they said, these people draw near to me with their mouths and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. What an empty and vain sacrifice it is to offer praises on the altar before God while refusing to love the poor, the naked, and the hungry.

Derek: 50:32

Christ himself. Conservative Christians found it convenient to use both the Bible and medicine to judge those suffering and in need and to elect leaders who did little and cared little about said suffering. Rather than setting the example for what light does when chimed into darkness, we Christians fled from those in need and allowed others to be light while our own souls were darkened. As I finish writing this episode, relations between conservative Christianity and the gay community aren't all that much better today. AIDS may be a bit less stigmatized than it used to be, but the Christian response to gay people is still much the same.

Derek: 51:11

We don't love, fulfill, disciple gay people. We don't reach out to the margins. We objectify. We try to assert dominance and power through the sword of the state and legislation. Our bad record on this issue in the past and our current handling of the issue today is, in part, why I titled this episode what I did, rage against the Mattachine.

Derek: 51:35

Of course, I talked a little bit about the Mattachine Society, which to my knowledge doesn't exist anymore. But it was influential in starting the gay rights movement, and therefore, it represents the false prophets raged rage against gays. For those who grew up in the eighties nineties, you probably get that the title is also a reference to the famous band, Rage Against the Machine. Rage Against the Machine is known for their songs that push back against government, religion, and the establishment. For this particular episode, I had the song testify in mind.

Derek: 52:06

While the song isn't specifically about what we mentioned in this episode, the general idea of it still applies here and especially to the season in general because testify is kind of about propaganda. This idea that our views and our perceptions are shaped by what we consume. Conservative Christians have long been fed a narrative that the world is on fire, at least from the early or mid 20th century on. We are the righteous ones. The others are pagans deserving of God's righteous judgment.

Derek: 52:38

And that's what you consume. You get exactly what you got with the Christian response to AIDS and the gay community we saw in the eighties nineties. But I like Cyprian and the early church's approach better. Maybe I like it better because it looks like Jesus? I don't know.

Derek: 52:54

But there's something about embracing suffering in cross, something about using suffering as an opportunity for repentance, for taking the log out of our own eyes that feels more compelling to me. For me, the recent conservative Christian response here isn't a good testimony. Rather, when I think of someone that I want to testify, I think of someone like Salvian, the author of On the Government of God. Salvian wrote his work as the Roman Empire was about to fall. Now that time, there's a lot of blame going around as there always is when empires begin to crumble.

Derek: 53:29

The pagans were blaming the Christians for forsaking the gods, something which actually brought Augustine to write his famous work, City of God, defending Christianity from these charges. But Salvian took a different route than Augustine as far as I can tell. Salvian didn't defend Christianity. Rather, he excoriated his fellow Christians for being bad ones. Aren't those who know better more culpable than those who don't?

Derek: 53:53

Doesn't God require more of those whom to whom much is given? For Salvian, it made sense that Rome's decline was being allowed by God because the barbarians who were bringing Rome down were more godly than the Roman Christians. Salvian held his own people accountable rather than demonizing and blaming the other. Like the Chinese house church of today who uses suffering and persecution to look inward and repent, so it was with Salvian. And I think we could learn a thing or 2 from them.

Derek: 54:22

Right? At least that's where I'm at today. I feel ideological kinship with conservative Christianity. But so often, as we've seen in our false prophet episodes, I just can't find justification in their practical form of Christianity. In that way, I often feel like something reminiscent of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in one of his prison letters.

Derek: 54:45

Bonhoeffer said, quote, I often ask myself why a Christian instinct often draws me more to the religionless people than to the religious, by which I don't in the least mean with any evangelizing intention, but I might almost say in brotherhood. While I'm often reluctant to mention God by name to religious people because that name somehow seems to me here not to ring true, and I feel myself to be slightly dishonest, to people with no religion, I can, on occasion, mention him by name quite calmly and as a matter of course. Religious people speak of God when human knowledge has come to an end, when human resources fail. In fact, it is always the deus ex machina that they bring on to the scene, either for the apparent solution of insoluble problems or as strength in human failure. Always, that is to say, exploiting human weakness or human boundaries.

Derek: 55:40

End quote. Bonhoeffer has some good words to chew on there, along with the good words of Cyprian and Salveon. We've seen how all 3 have elevated the other, the non Christian, the pagan, the enemy, Now all 3 have critiqued their own and, in some ways, found it difficult to to deal with their own. That's what I think Christianity could use right now. Not more alarmist Christians talking about how they, the left, the Marxists, the Democrats, the immigrants, the others, how they are going to ruin us.

Derek: 56:17

No. Those are specks. Rather, we need lumberjacks like Cyprian, Salveen, and Bonhoeffer who help us to extract the logs from our eyes to purify us. We who are so often the false prophet. For if our eyes are healthy, our whole body will be full of light.

Derek: 56:35

But if our eyes are unhealthy, our whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within us is darkness, how great is that darkness. The world needs light. Not walled up cities on distant hills. But for our light to shine, our eyes have to be opened to those in despair rather than busheled by our closed eyelids.

Derek: 56:57

And for our light to shine, we must remove the logs from our eyes. Let us open our eyes and read Jesus's writing in the sand, and let's drop our stones. In this way, the answer to Christianity's historical rage against the Mattachine, a rage against homosexuality, ought to become something else. If I can run with the cheesy wordplay theme here, maybe we could call it rage against the deus ex machina, as Bonhoeffer mentioned. Followers of Yahweh have long been good at becoming false prophets through self righteousness, moralism, and consequentialism.

Derek: 57:34

We justify all kinds of evils in God's name. When a situation is hard, rather than bear cross, jump into the fray, and do what's right even when it hurts, rather than endure, even at cost to ourselves, we evoke God's name rather than live his lifestyle. But this deus ex machina isn't God's MO. God is a God of time and processes and rarely snaps his fingers to get things done. That's because God isn't a God who objectifies.

Derek: 58:05

He doesn't seek to instantaneously fix. Rather, he seeks to fulfill and to disciple through relationship. We often have to go through the sea, to the cross, and endure the suffering in order to get to the resurrection in the promised land. There's no deus ex machina there, though God is always Emmanuel, and he is always preparing the way and going before us. The conservative Christian church would have done well to rage against the deus ex machina in relation to the gay community, to have entered into the suffering with them when nobody else heard their cries, or to have sat with them while they were dying, or when nobody loved them as they were.

Derek: 58:48

Those wouldn't have been easy answers. It wouldn't have produced immediate results. It wouldn't have fixed anything or resolved the problem. But they sure would have testified. Christian, you are the soul of the world.

Derek: 59:04

Testify.