The Public Display of Affection (PDA) rule in my High School was simple: keep it consensual, keep your hands in sight, keep it out of the classroom. Nowadays the rule is more restrictive. You must keep your hands to yourself. Teens will be teens however, and after school the other day I saw a couple leave Osbourn High School grounds and walk down Main Street past the Unitarian Church where they turned the corner and were lost from sight. They were holding hands, then draping their arms around each other, sometimes leaning a head on the other’s shoulder. The level of public affection the couple was showing would have drawn no notice at my High School, but the couple would have.
In the first place they were bi-racial. One was most definitely brown, and the other so lily-white as to be almost translucent. We were all lily-white translucent in my High School, but my hometown was not monochromatic, and there were regular (if infrequent) fights. Thankfully we, as a society, are generally beyond such prejudices. The Bible is clearly against any distinction of race or class (Galatians 3.27, Colossians 3.11). There was a more obvious reason, however, why this couple would have been shunned (more likely beaten) at my High School. They were both guys.
I was shocked to see such an openly gay, High School couple strolling down Main Street after school. I knew that gay and lesbian couples openly attended proms and dances, but for some reason this seemingly mundane walk was more disturbing. I had to pick up both my daughters who attend OHS from after-school activities. When I described the couple to them they knew both their names, their dating history, and some details of their lives. They knew these guys, liked them, and were not at all shocked at their walking down the street hand in hand.
Now let us be clear about a few things. The New Testament says plainly that a man partnering with another man (or a woman with a woman) in this way is sin (Romans 1.26ff, I Corinthians 6.9-11). My girls know this, believe it unequivocally, and do not hesitate to say so. But they have learned, in public school, the distinction between the sin and the sinner.
Some of you may wish we’d go back to the good old days when openly gay men were shunned, or beaten. That response may satisfy our shocked sensibilities, but it would not have been what Jesus would do. It is certainly not what Paul did.
In the I Corinthians passage I cited above (6.9-11), Paul lists gay prostitutes, and the men who visit them as among those sinners who have repented and been saved by the blood of Christ. This means, of course, that those men stopped those practices. It also means that Paul evangelized gay men. How did he do that? By shunning them? By secretly approving when someone pummeled them with their fists? Did he say “Why don’t you fellows do a Bible Correspondence Course, because honestly, I’d rather evangelize you by mail.”?
Paul tells us how he evangelized: “We preach Christ crucified” (I Corinthians 1.23). “I determined to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (I Corinthians 2.2). Paul believed that the gospel was God’s power to save everyone. The Holy Spirit inspired him to communicate this as absolute, normative truth (Romans 1.16). God hates sin, but loves every sinner – among whom I am the worst (although Paul thinks he is the worst – I Timothy 1.15). In my High School I was taught to despise certain groups of people – not to despise the things they did, or the things they promoted – but the people themselves. This is sin. I was not taught to regard such hatred as sin at church. And so, to this day, I struggle to draw a line - a Biblical line – between the sin and the sinner. It is a line my girls draw naturally. They learned to do so when their Biblical values were no longer theoretical, but lived in the real world. It is a lesson they learned in public school. I am glad they have learned it. I pray God will help it come naturally to me as well.
