Kadee Wirick Smedley
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Writing on the Beautiful Ordinary

What If Accepting LGBTQ People is a Matter of Life and Death?

3/6/2019

1 Comment

 
Last week the United Methodist Church, a sister denomination to my own, voted to reject a “big tent” proposal that would allow those clergy and congregations who fully affirm their LGBTQ brothers and sisters to remain in communion with those who do not. For those who hold traditional, non-affirming positions on the subject, the vote was hailed as a victory. For those on the other side (if sides there must be), it was a day of heartbreak and grief.

A month earlier, my own denomination–which is non-affirming in that it officially does not allow LGBTQ people to hold positions of church leadership–reissued its own statement on the sanctity of all human life. This came in response to a set of American laws recently passed; not on the rights of LGBTQ people, but on abortion. As a denomination we condemn abortion because, in our view, abortion involves the termination of life; life that is valuable to God and, therefore, valuable to us.

​In the confluence of these two decisions I wonder: why don’t we evaluate our doctrines on gender and sexuality through the same lens with which we evaluate abortion? What if our theological perspective on our LGBTQ brothers and sisters was filtered through an affirmation of the sanctity of life and its corresponding repudiation of practices that lead to death?

Read the rest over at The Wisdom Daily.

1 Comment
Calvin Black link
5/22/2019 12:32:27 pm

Kadee,
I'd love to hear more about your perspective on how our denomination might respond in more affirming ways and if you think that we are reaching a point in our history where we have room to distance ourselves from a fundamentalist interpretation that leads to this kind of damage. In a conversation today with a group of therapists I work with, we were sharing the tension we feel in meeting with LGBTQ+ clients whose parents are conservative christians and expect therapy to "de-gayify" their kids rather than helping them integrate their sexuality with their faith and family. I reflected on the fact that it is hard to truly appreciate the need to make changes until we have heard and seen the effect that our stances have had on peoples lives. When we're so disconnected with people's real experiences it is difficult to see how they are harmed by faith practices which we are complicit with. How could our churches listen and acknowledge queer voices in a greater way?

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