odd man out.

[WARNING: Spoilers from the most recent episode of Glee follow.]

On last night’s Glee, two of the show’s high school couples had sex for the first time.  One of the couples was a boy and a girl.  The other couple was a boy and a boy.

This isn’t a post about Glee, and that paragraph is all you need to know about the show in order to keep up with the questions I’m going to ask here.  I think last night’s episode of Glee provided a great case study for how we think about sex, sexual immorality, and heteronormativity in the church.

In my experience, many Christians who consider same-sex relationships sinful are guilty of handling homosexuality (and for that matter, homosexuals) differently from how they treat all other sins, reacting to LGBT issues more strongly than they do to other perceived variations from God’s design for humanity.  My fear is that they do so thoughtlessly, condemning LGBT people more than they do others due to ignorance, prejudice, or fear about sexual minorities rather than deep-seated, nuanced beliefs about sexuality and the nature of God.

The problem, of course, is that Christians can’t afford to be thoughtless, especially when being thoughtless results in the oppression or exclusion of an entire genre of people.  So, I think it’s time for Christians—and by Christians, I mean Christians in general, but I also mean any Christians who may read this post—to give thought to the question of homosexuality, if they haven’t, and I’d like our approach to the issue to be educated by theological reflection instead of ignorance, prejudice, or fear.

Take last night’s Glee, for example, where two unmarried couples had sex.  If you believe same-sex relationships are sinful, I would be willing to bet you also believe sex outside of marriage is sinful.  And if that’s the case, my question for you—and I mean it as a genuine question, since I imagine responses to this question will cover a wide spectrum, with the extremes on each end dumbfounded that I’m even asking—is whether the sex between Kurt and Blaine (the two boys) was any more sinful than the sex between Rachel and Finn.

It’s worth defining my terminology here, since “sinful” is a word that has received quite a beating in public discourse.  When I say “sinful,” I don’t have in mind a vindictive God who is waiting for us to screw up so he can screw up our lives in return.  Rather, I have in mind a God who composed the universe with particular rhythms and a certain key signature, so that certain attitudes and behaviors fit into that plan for the world and others don’t.  As much as we’d sometimes like the freedom of doing whatever we feel like doing, that kind of “freedom” would be about as enjoyable as the trumpet player breaking out the solo from “Louie, Louie” while the rest of the orchestra is halfway through Beethoven’s Fifth.

In other words, I’m concerned with the sin question because I think sin matters, and I have a sneaking suspicion that sexuality is particularly close to our most central essence as humans who reflect the nature of God (see, for example, I Corinthians 6:12-20).  I think it’s particularly important for us to get this thing right; not because God’s grace isn’t big enough for our mistakes, but because we should want to live in the way God wants us to live.

But the relative significance of sexuality is beside the point here, since what we’re comparing is two different kinds of sex.  Again, I will ask: If same-sex relationships are sinful, is sex between two unmarried males any worse, in God’s eyes, than sex between an unmarried male and female?  Are there degrees of sinfulness (i.e., Rachel and Finn are one degree sinful since they’re unmarried, whereas Kurt and Blaine are two degrees sinful since they’re unmarried and gay), or is behavior simply classified as  “sinful” or “not sinful”?

This post is not headed towards an answer.  This post is headed towards an exhortation: Let’s aim for consistency between our beliefs and practices.  If you are going to say same-sex relationships are foreign to God’s plan for humanity, give serious thought to whether they are any more foreign to God’s plan than premarital sex, adultery, abusive relationships, using sex for personal gain (even with your spouse), or—let’s not forget this one—lust in any context.  If they are more sinful, let’s make sure we have a strong, sophisticated theological grounding for that claim.  If they are not, let’s actually make the change and stop punishing LGBT people more severely than anyone else.  Again: We can’t afford to be thoughtless.

In the meantime, let’s concern ourselves with striving for sexual purity in our own lives.