The Last Shall be First to Leave

Taking a few moments from their 30-year-old discussion on whether women are capable of being spiritual leaders (currently, women's ordination is viewed as a "mistake" by the General Conference, because people with penises are always pointing forward), the Seventh-Day Adventist church recently decided it was time to revise their position on homosexuality.  They are very proud to announce that they have changed one adjective in describing the brokenness of homosexuals to be slightly less condescending and caustic.  They have decided not to describe homosexuality as a "disorder" and instead label it a "disturbance" (like we're the dark side of the force).  The statement now reads:

Homosexuality is a manifestation of the disturbance and brokenness in human inclinations and relations caused by the entrance of sin into the world.

Yes, thank you for stating your prejudice in slightly less inflammatory terms.  They also are now willing to refer to the homosexual as "loved by God" instead of just a "children of God", although there's only a hair's difference between those two statements and "homosexuals exist", because Adventists believe God loves everybody.  They are now also excited to announce that they have taken the great risk of including compassion in the closing statement, which now reads:

As His disciples, Seventh-day Adventists endeavor to follow the Lord’s instruction and example, living a life of Christ-like compassion and faithfulness.

Which is a funny cap to put on a public statement about how there's totally a splinter in that other guy's eye, because that's what Jesus would have done.  Made sure you knew you were broken, and needed to  grovel before him before he would allow you into his community.  My favorite are the quotes from the committee members.  First, the old inspirational hymn, "we are good, and are persecuted":

The institutions of marriage and family are under attack.

Somehow, they are under attack.  We'll get back to you on just exactly how straight christians are going to be prevented from marrying whomever they choose in their churches any day now.  Followed by the response to a committee member suggesting they eliminate the "disturbance" line:

Though many of us have family members who are homosexual, we understand the thought process, we still embrace them, we still love them, we still care for them.  However, as a church, we must take a stand for what is right. 

What could be more right than declaring that two men loving each other above all else has no historical or biblical precedent (*cough*  *cough* David and Jonathan *cough*).  But especially the line, "we understand the thought process," because no, they don't.  They certainly think they do.  In the Adventist world, not living according to the cherry-picked "rules" found in the bible means living "apart from God" and it is their contention that no one can live happily apart from God.  And not just the gays, anyone living outside of Adventism is considered fallen, led astray by the devil, and doomed to a live of darkness and depression unless they submit to divine authority, by casting all notions of self aside, and instead living by their very poorly argued and maintained rule system.  So, if you're gay, you're not playing by their rules, and are by default living outside of their rule-system, and therefore must be unhappy. Because only living by the rules makes you happy  Ipso facto.

Except, they're so busy running gay people out of their congregations, they never let them stick around to see that that's not exactly true.  Nor do they every seem to notice that there are a wide variety of people leading happy, moral lives outside of their church.  And if they'd actually deign to talk to gay people, they might hear how happy dating the gender they're attracted to actually makes them.  Even then, in my experience, they don't really hear gay people (or me) when they say that kind of thing.  That there's nothing inherently unhappy about being gay.  It's kind of great!  It's just as great to find a fulfilling, exciting homosexual relationship, as it is to find a fulfilling heterosexual relationship.  But, since that can't be true according to their belief system, the average Adventist is still likely to believe you are either deluding yourself at best, or led astray by Satan and soon the other shoe will drop or in the worst-case, that you are an agent of the devil, actively seeking to undermine God's Holy Authoritarian Bureaucracy.  Knock, knock.  Who's there?  Gays out to destroy your marriage by being happy.

So no, they don't understand the thought process, otherwise they could not say it is not "right" that gays be in happy marriages of their own.  For one thing, you'll notice they don't specifically state just HOW marriage is under attack by gay people.  Will straight people leave the institution of marriage in disgust if gays do it too?  Is marriage really a form of group think?  Are most married people looking around to see how other marriages are doing it and modifying their own accordingly?  Do polygamists ruin it for everybody?  Why or why not?  Are marriages more concerned with people outside the marriage or more concerned with the people within it?  What does it mean to not be in the "right" marriage?  What specific harm does two dudes hitching up cause your community?  What great evil comes from two men declaring their life-long commitment to each other?  They do not say.  It is just "understood" that first gays marry, then ???, then the church and marriages everywhere are poisoned forever.  Exactly how, is left as an exercise for the bigoted reader.  How gay marriage hurts marriage more than divorce and infidelity is left as upper level Cognitive Dissonance Jujitsu, for the advanced irrationalist.

Look, I have no interest or investment anymore in the acceptance or approval of the Adventist community.  Not only would they NOT have me, as a openly and unrepentant homosexual who will just not stop loving other men (and all the horrors increased tenderness brings), but I don't believe in any of the 28 fundamental beliefs anymore, and I have no interest in being part of an institution that insists you abandon the empirical evidence of your life experiences and your critical thinking when it conflicts with poorly interpreted, and cherry-picked biblical passages.  And I don't see what hope their is for an institution that still thinks it's a mistake to have women as leaders (because they can't bring themselves to see them as equal).  But as someone who's still deprogramming myself from a lot of the terrible ideas I was told as a kid, and has a large amount of friends and family who still consider themselves Adventist, this shit drives me crazy.  The truth is, I've found substantially more acceptance and compassion outside of the church than within it.  Ironically, I see Adventists chafing under a poorly maintained rule system as pretty unhappy people.  My parents are currently having a very hard time because their religion insists I'm a bad person, even though that dramatically conflicts with their experience with me.

And what's especially frustrating about all of it, is it doesn't need to be this way, even from within their system.  They allow every other open sinner among them.  They allow people with anger problems, with gossip problems, with forgiveness problems, with compassion problems (clearly), with fidelity problems to sit among them every week in the pews without complaint.  Even from the viewpoint of "homosexuality is a sin", what is the logic of excluding the gays, while allowing the meat-eating, jewelry-wearing, freely divorcing remnant to remain?  They either believe in the power of Holy Spirit to change lives, to cure anger problems, eating problems, pride problems and "gay problems," or they don't. And they shouldn't believe in ex-gay therapy, of course, God continues to choose to not cure even those desperately trying to be straight, and even ex-gay organizations are admitting that now.

 Personally, I think they exclude gays because having happy, committed homosexuals week after week in their congregations, would show the "gays are inherently depraved and unhappy" rhetoric to be a lie.  They can't allow gays to exist among them, because they have no confidence that any of their rhetoric around homosexuality is even remotely true (quite rightly, considering they don't actually take the experience and knowledge of gay people into account).  White people can't tell black people what their experience as black people is, men can't tell women what their experience as women is, the religious can't tell the non-religious what their experience is, and straight-people CERTAINLY can't tell people what their experience as gay people is.  The only way any of those groups get to know what the other group's actual experience is is to interact with them and listen to them and BELIEVE them when they relate those things.  And until the Adventist church is wiling to put their belief system where their mouth is, and let their rhetoric stand against actual contact and socialization with Adventist gay people, they don't know SHIT about homosexuality and should not claim to.

Or would socializing and making friends with people their community normally shuns and looks down upon be too un-Jesus-like?  Ah, modern christianity:  followers of Jesus, as is comfortable and convenient.