Author: Ron Belgau

C. S. Lewis to Sheldon Vanauken on Homosexuality

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When I was an undergrad, my friend Matt Canlis introduced me to A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken’s spiritual memoir about falling in love with his wife Davy, their studies at Oxford and joint conversion to Christianity under the influence of C. S. Lewis, her premature death at the age of 40, and his struggle to come to terms with it.

The book explores the danger of idolatry in romantic love in a particularly poignant way, but I won’t try to summarize that lesson here.

Instead, I want to focus on a letter from C. S. Lewis which Vanauken excerpts in the book. Vanauken taught at Lynchburg College, and he and his wife led an informal ministry to students there. Less than a month into the fall term in 1953, Vanauken writes,

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C. S. Lewis on Homosexuality & Disgust

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In the last few days, there has been an extensive debate over a post by Thabiti Anyabwile arguing that Christians should have done more to invoke people’s “gag reflex” about gay sex in order to oppose same-sex marriage. I responded directly to this yesterday, and also published a response by Kyle Keating.

Today, I want to highlight C. S. Lewis’s most extensive comment on the subject of homosexuality.

Lewis is probably the most effective, clear-headed communicator of Christian belief to unbelievers the Church has produced in a century. He understood how to appeal persuasively to his readers’ heads, hearts, and imaginations. His perspective is worth listening to when it comes to one of the most difficult communication challenges the Church faces in America today.

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The Problem with the “Gag Reflex”

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A couple of days ago, Thabiti Anyabwile put up a post on his Gospel Coalition blog entitled The Importance of Your Gag Reflex When Discussing Homosexuality and “Gay Marriage” (warning: post contains graphic language).

There are a number of problems with this post. Before criticizing, however, I want to make a couple of points.

First, prior to reading this blog post, I knew relatively little about Anyabwile; however, the only contexts in which I had heard of him had been overwhelmingly positive. So I want to be clear that the negative things I say about this particular post are not intended to be an overall judgment of Anyabwile. I know too little to make such a judgment, and, aside from the problems with this particular post, everything else I have heard about him has been positive.

Second,  many of those who have criticized this post have done so because they disagree with Anyabwile about the morality of gay sex. However, I agree with him that gay sex is contrary to God’s plan in creation, and have written extensively on the subject (see, for example, The Great Debate, this speech at Georgetown University, or, for a briefer statement, this speech at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette). I share his concern about the way American culture has ceased to respect the sanctity of marriage, and have been defending the traditional Christian understanding of marriage for many years now.

(I will add that as a Lord of the Rings fan who loves to fly, the photo of the Air New Zealand 777 in painted in the Lord of the Rings livery was a pleasant distraction in an otherwise disappointing post.)

Having said all that, however, this post is one of the more problematic discussions of homosexuality I have seen in a serious Christian publication in recent years.

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Arduous Goods

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Duck-Rabbit Illusion

Celibacy has a kind of duck-rabbit quality, at least in my experience.

If you catch me in one mood, and ask me what celibacy is like, I will be inclined to point out that one needs to be honest about the struggles and frustrations that go with it, and recognize how difficult a burden Christian teaching places on gays and lesbians (in saying this, of course, I do not mean that chastity outside marriage or fidelity in marriage are easy for everyone else). But after babbling on in that line for a while I will catch myself, and say that, of course, celibacy is also probably one of the most beautiful things in the world.

If you ask me the same question in another mood, I will tell you a great deal about the beauty of chastity, and how much I have grown spiritually through the discipline of celibacy. But after waxing lyrical on the beauties of celibacy, I’ll pause and say that, of course, there are terrible frustrations and difficulties, as well, and one shouldn’t have sentimental illusions about it.

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Talking about Bicycles

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One of the common criticisms of a traditionally Christian sexual ethic is that it forces a lot of gay people into involuntary celibacy, which some find very lonely, painful, frustrating.

I want to start by saying I think this critique is at least partially right. Trying to be faithful to a Christian sexual ethic without the support of either a spouse or a religious community is difficult. When you add misunderstanding by many in the Christian community, the task is only made more difficult.

In this post I want to focus in particular on how to be honest about all that is painful and difficult, while still holding firm to the hope that obedience to Christ is good for us, that by conforming our lives to His will, we will blossom and flourish in some meaningful sense, even if we also face significant struggle.

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No One Is “Doomed” to Celibacy

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Back in July, I happened to be in Dan Mattson’s home town visiting friends. Dan and I got together over beers for a really good evening talking about our experiences as same-sex attracted Catholics committed to chastity.

This isn’t to say that we see eye-to-eye on everything. Dan has sometimes been critical of writers on this blog for their use of language. As should be clear from various posts about language this week, I take a more pragmatic approach to language than he does.

However, despite our differences, I have a lot of respect for Dan. I thoroughly enjoyed our time together in July, and I hope our paths will cross again soon.

This weekend, Dan posted a really great reflection, titled No One’s “Doomed” to Celibacy, on his blog. In it, he recounts a conversation he had on an Internet message board. Another participant wrote:

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Rowan Williams Tells ‘Persecuted’ Western Christians to Grow Up

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Since blog traffic tends to be lower on the weekends than during the week, most of the serious blog content—full posts written by our bloggers—will be posted during the week. I will use the weekends to post brief, thought-provoking excerpts that I think will be of interest to readers of the blog. For the most part, these will be posted with only brief commentary.

The first excerpt comes from a recent story in The Guardian about some comments by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams at the Edinburgh International Book Festival:

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“Gay”: Clarity or Obfuscation? (Part 2)

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In my last post, I pointed out the way that some Christians have exploited the ambiguous meaning of the word “gay” to make misleading promises (like “You don’t have to be gay”) to others.

Today, I want to look at how the word is sometimes used to mislead others—including other Christians—about the speaker’s own life and experiences.

Consider, for example, the sad case of Dr. George Rekers. He helped co-found the Family Research Council, and was for many years a member of the board and scientific advisor for the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). He was a leading opponent of gay rights and advocate of reparative therapy for several decades.

In 2010, he hired a man who worked as a male prostitute to accompany him on a trip to Europe. Allegedly, his travel assistant provided him with daily sexual massage services during the trip.

When these accusations became public, Dr. Rekers denied that he was gay.

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“Gay”: Clarity or Obfuscation? (Part 1)

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In contemporary culture, “gay” is the most common word for describing homosexual persons. This has become so much a part of the default language that Pope Francis used it as a neutral description of a person’s sexual attractions in response to a question at a recent press conference.

I think a lot of the language debates that go on around homosexuality make mountains out of molehills (I could link to examples, but why give traffic to posts I think are hurting the discussion?). I am more interested in talking about vocation, friendship, celibacy, and other questions which I think address more important needs.

Still, language can cause confusion, and stirs up a lot of debate. So I’m going to say something about it, even though I think the arguments have been blown out of proportion.

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