No, not the Pope but Alexander Pope, the turn of the 18th century English poet who some consider better than the Bard. He told us how we would come to embrace LGBTQ. And boy have we.
I heard on the radio that 70% of the country approves of gay marriage. World magazine quoted a USA Today op-ed where the author opined about the Cinderella of the 2021 NCAA tournament, Oral Roberts University. He claimed that the school had standards that are “’wildly out of line with modern society and the basic values of human decency” (5/08/21, 69) because they don’t accept the world’s LGBTQ lies.
I thought the NCAA itself would tap the breaks on some of this nonsense when they saw record after record in female athletics going to biological males who think they are females. But World blew my Pollyanna mind out of the water saying that “the NCAA Board of Governors released a statement in April saying it would only hold championship games in states that are ‘free of discrimination’ toward transgender athletes’” (Ibid.).
Like I said, Pope foretold how we would get here. (I used this in a April 6, 2015 blogpost. Hey, if all of Hollywood can’t come up with new material and so turn to comics and 70’s TV, don’t look at me askance or askew.) Pope said in the early 18th century: “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien/ As to be hated needs but to be seen;/ Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face/ We first endure, then pity, then embrace” (An Essay on Man: Epistle II, V, 1-4).
Austin has, next to San Francisco, the highest % of LGBTQ, 5.6%, of any city in America. First, we endured the gay pride parade becoming ever more prideful. Then Leslie the drag queen drew forth pity for his homeless lifestyle. Now LBGTQ-ism is embraced as less prejudicial, more opened minded, a better way to be.
Pity always leads to embracing unless we pity them enough to maintain the truth: No matter if all the world accepts, promotes, and praises LGBTQ-ism, and it does, we must continue to maintain that it is Satan’s lie that you can embrace such sin and sinfulness and be saved. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 is very clear and warns specifically about being deceived in this area: “Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God” (NASB77).
This gives no hope, no encouragement, no peace but only certain judgment to those defending, accepting, and promoting any of these sins. But it gives the comfort that you can be so thoroughly washed, so completely sanctified, so totally justified in Jesus’ Name and Spirit, that these are in your past. You were at one time one or more of these but not anymore.
George Orwell said, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.'” That time is now. G.K. Chesterton said while a few prigs on platforms are talking about “oneness”’ and “The All”, in the valleys of ancient earth the truth is renewed that “a woman is loved for being unmanly, and a man is loved for being unwomanly” (In Defense of Sanity, 372-3). Even the reprehensible pagan Roman poet Ovid knew the truth. He, speaking for one of them, says that the parents of both parties approved of a gay marriage. “’Nature alone says no, and her voice drowns out all the rest, and she alone subverts me.’” Then a god asks another, “’Why should you attend these rites that aren’t right, where there is no bridegroom; both of us are waiting to be carried across the threshold’” (Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, 376)?
As for taking the path of starting with mercy (i.e. a kind of pity) or lamenting our sins, that’s a surefire shortcut to embracing. Joe Dallas, a one time gay activist but now a happily married man and father out there on the frontlines speaking the truth in love on college campuses, says that many who confess to being unloving toward LGBTQ’s aren’t helping if they don’t clarify. “‘We’ve been unloving,’ without qualifying whether ‘unloving’ means rude or insulting, or whether it means speaking words that someone preferred not to hear, creates more problems than it solves.” And while it’s true that some believers have been truly unloving, it’s not fair to say all have. And so a general apology for all is wrong (Speaking of Homosexuality, 56).
Pope would agree.
