Orthodoxy: Is This Really the Hill We Want to Die On?
Ideological and Theological Battlegrounds Are Claiming Lives
A Reflection on the Fear Beneath the Culture War Against LGBTQ People
By Lisa Salazar, MAPPL, SHP **** One of the things that troubles me in conversations about gender identity, same-sex relationships, and scripture is the assumption that we can lift words, prohibitions, and social structures from 2,000 or 3,000 years ago and apply them directly to modern life as though nothing has changed. To me, that overlooks just how profoundly different their world was from ours. At best, it is careless history. At worst, it is cultural and intellectual arrogance. We are not living in the same intellectual, scientific, social, medical, or cultural universe as Paul, the writers of Leviticus, or the audiences who first heard these texts read aloud. The ancient world had no framework for human sexuality, orientation, genetics, hormones, fetal development, psychology, neurology, gender dysphoria, or intersex variations as we understand the...