In about 1968, Prime Minister Trudeau (not our current disaster, a previous one) famously declared that “the government has no business in the bedrooms of the nation”. Even then it was a touch asinine when you really thought about it, for it all depended on precisely what was happening in those bedrooms. The sexual molestation of children, for example, doesn’t happen on the front lawn, but in the bedrooms of the nation, and when it does it is very much the business of the government and its police forces. But in his own political way, he was trying to make a valid point—namely that not all sin was criminal, and that sin is not the business of government or a proper subject for its laws. Thus, for example, adultery is a sin, but it is not a crime, and should not be criminalized. Greed is sinful, but it is not criminal, and so unless greed results in attempts at tax evasion or money laundering, it is none of the government’s business. It was on this basis that homosexual activity was de-criminalized in Canada by Prime Minister Trudeau in the bill passed after 1968.
It is indeed hard to argue that this decriminalization of homosexual activity was wrong, or that sex between two consenting adult men should result in their incarceration. But the then Prime Minister, being a politician and not a student of the rise and fall of nations, did not see (or possibly could not imagine) what might happen afterwards. He did not see that what one generation quietly allows the next generation will openly celebrate, and that the generation after that will begin to persecute those who refuse to join in the celebration.
That of course is the point of Gay Pride Parades and Gay Pride Week. The parades are not (and perhaps never were) protest parades, defiantly demanding safety for homosexuals and the decriminalization of homosexuality, for in Canada that legal victory had long since been won for them by Prime Minister Trudeau. The point and goal of the parades were the cultural normalization of homosexuality, and the erasure from our culture of the traditional view which regarded it as sinful.
The equation (too often made) of the struggle for “gay rights” and the American Civil Rights Movement is spurious—and, by the way, deeply disrespectful to the original workers for Civil Rights for the American Black. When Dr. Martin Luther King and others marched, they risked physical harm in the form of barking police dogs and water cannon. No such dangers attend any Gay rights parade—which is of course why aspiring political candidates are keen to be seen marching in them. In fact, to decline the invitation to march along in the parade is to risk political suicide.
The present ascendency of homosexual ideology (with its ever-increasing alphabet of concern for LGBQT+) is now working towards the effective overthrow of any fixed understanding of gender. It used to be that the movement was content to declare when two men had sex with each other this was not sinful. It has now reached the point where it is becoming dangerous to declare that the persons having sex are two men. What if one of them identifies as a woman?
When a woman who has taken drugs so that she can grow a beard gives birth, it is becoming socially risky in some circles to call her a mother, (see inset photo) and a cultural offense to automatically link pregnancy with being a woman. The fact that scientists and doctors know that such transgenderism is scientific nonsense and yet refuse to speak up for fear they may lose their jobs testifies to the triumph of homosexual ideology—and of the insanity now reigning in the West.
I suggest that at back of it all, perhaps unbeknownst to many LGBQT+ supporters, is an undeclared war against Christianity and the cultural institutions which took root in its soil. I further suggest that the ultimate source of this aggressive warfare is spiritual, not social. When we observe people outside an asylum proclaiming that it is important not to automatically link pregnancy with being a woman, we may conclude (in the words of the parable in Matthew 13:28), “An enemy has done this.” Specifically, the Enemy, the head of the world rulers of this present darkness and of the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies (Ephesian 6:12). In short, the source of the insanity is demonic. This is clearer when we peruse examples of homosexual ideology transposed into a theological key.
Consider, for example, the online journal “Q Spirit” [i.e. “Queer Spirit”]. Its Advent edition last year in November 2021 featured an article entitled, “Waiting for the queer face of God”, which began by explaining that “A favorite Advent theme for lesbian artists is Mary and her female lovers, sometimes with references to the virgin birth and its similarity to artificial insemination.” The article opened with a picture done by Atlanta painter Becki Jayne Harrelson of a lesbian couple cuddling the Christ child in her work “Madonna, Lover and Son”. The article explains that “In Harrelson’s version, the Madonna has a classic stylized halo while the landscape forms a natural sunlit halo around her blonde lover…The contrasting halos are Harrelson’s way of saying that lesbians are a natural part of creation, as opposed to the roles of wife and mother imposed by patriarchal religion.” It also explained that “Lesbians sometimes identify Mary’s virgin birth with using artificial insemination to have babies without heterosexual sex.”
If you click on the link detailing the list of “LGBTQ Saints, Queer Saints”, you are treated to yet another picture, this time of “John the Evangelist” adorning the title of the article, “John the Evangelist—Beloved Disciple of Jesus—and maybe his lover”. I will spare you the image. As an example of the level of scholarship we have the article entitled, “Gay Centurion: Jesus heals a soldier’s boyfriend in the Bible”, referring to the story found in Matthew 8:5-13. The article insists that the centurion’s servant was his “boyfriend” because the text describes the latter as his πᾰις/ pais, a Greek word meaning “servant, child, boy, son,”, the word used to describe Christ as God’s servant in Acts 4:25. Again we are treated to a photo of a man dressed as a Roman soldier with a largely naked man resting his head on his knee.
What can be said about all this? Only that “an enemy has done this”. It would be laughable if it were not blasphemous. And it is the blasphemous nature of it that betrays its true spiritual origins.
It must be said in fairness that not everyone in the LGBQT+ community approves such things. My point is not that everyone applauding Gay Rights embraces journals like Q Spirit, but that once rebellion against the Christian faith takes root culturally it eventually leads to oddities like Q Spirit. Those who applaud the normalization of homosexual activity and the resultant new definitions of marriage need to be aware that these things are part of a cultural trajectory. It begins with a Prime Minister opining that the government has no business in the bedrooms of the nation. It ends with Q Spirit—and the time between the two was astonishingly and significantly brief.
Where does this leave us Christians? Not—let me stress—wanting to turn back the cultural clock or denouncing the original decriminalization that took place after 1968. Rather, it leaves us where we always were—a people who are not of this world and not rooted in this age. The world always was a madhouse, with stupid wars, lying politicians, sexual violence, and rich elite grinding the face of the poor. But after our baptism, this world is no longer our home. After baptism we are strangers and sojourners in this age, pilgrims on our way through the howling wilderness pressing forward toward the Promised Land.
Just as the ancient Christians renounced the insanity reigning in their society in the form of idolatry (which is what they meant when in baptism they renounced “Satan and all his works and all his angels and all his service and all his pride”), so when we now make the same baptismal renunciation we are renouncing (among other things) the sexual insanity reigning in our society. In former days, Satan’s “works” meant the statues of the idols. In our day, those “works” mean some online journals and websites. When we peruse such sites as Q Spirit, our heart yearns for home, and we murmur the ancient words found in the Didache: “Let grace come, and let the world pass away.”
Note: My thanks to the reader who passed along to me the eye-opening link to Q Spirit.
About Fr. Lawrence Farley
Fr. Lawrence serves as pastor of St. Herman's Orthodox Church in Langley, BC. He is also author of the Orthodox Bible Companion Series along with a number of other publications.