Spiritual Pollution, Part 10: Purity Logic Case #2, Homosexuality

In my last post on Sexual Sins I could have discussed homosexuality but homosexuality is different enough to warrant its own post.

In my last post I noted that the metaphor of Sexual Purity is problematic for the following reasons:

1. It activates sociomoral disgust which is then directed at the self leading to a potentially permanent sense of guilt and shame.

2. #1 would be fine, theologically speaking, were it not that sexual sins are practically the only sins structured by the purity/contamination metaphor. Thus, many sins get off easy, psychologically speaking, whereas sexual sinners bear an unequal yoke in the church. This seems very wrong.

Staying with this theme, in today's post I'll focus on a special case of sexual sins: Homosexuality.

Psychologists know that homosexuality is a disgust elicitor in many North Americans (Haidt, McCauley, & Rozin, 1994). Thus, homosexuality isn't just governed by a purity logic, it is actually, for many, a powerful disgust stimulus. And many of these disgusted people are church-going Christians. Thus we have a large part of the Christian population who are strongly repulsed by homosexual persons. And, as I've noted repeatedly in this series, those strong visceral reactions make it difficult for the church to love homosexual persons and reason effectively about the status of homosexual persons in civic society.

I think it is pretty clear that homosexuality generates a qualitatively different kind of reaction with a quantitatively greater level of intensity (bordering on the hateful) than we see in many other Christian campaigns for righteousness. A host of sins in the larger culture are regularly pumped into Christian homes via the media that don't raise an eyebrow in the pews or pulpits. Yet a movie like Brokeback Mountain gets a lot of "righteous" anger and attention. Why? Well, it all has to do with the psychology of the sin. Homosexual sins activate our disgust psychology in a way most sins don't. Thus we see all the signs of the disgust reaction as the church approaches the issue of homosexuality: Strong, illogical, negative, and emotional reactions. And, since the church isn't practicing what she preaches by treating all sins the same, the homosexual population sees the church as full of mean, irrational, hateful, and hypocritical "Christians."

Recall in prior posts I noted that you cannot "balance" sociomoral disgust with love. It is one or the other. The mechanisms of each are reciprocally related. This tension is reflected in another quote I'd like to share from Walter Brueggemann's "Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, dispute, advocacy." After discussing the "profound tension" between the holiness and justice impulses, Brueggemann uses the case of homosexuality to illustrate this tension:

"[I]t is evident that the current and freighted dispute in the U.S. church concerning homosexual persons, especially their ordination, indicates the continuing felt cruciality of the tradition of holiness, even after we imagine we have moved beyond such “primitiveness.” It is my impression that the question of equal rights and privileges for homosexuals (in civil society as in the church) is a question that may be adjudicated on the grounds of justice. It is equally my impression, however, that the enormous hostility to homosexual persons (as to proposals of justice for them) does not concern issues of justice and injustice, but rather concerns the more elemental issues of purity—cleanness and uncleanness. This more elemental concern is evidenced in the widespread notion that homosexuals must be disqualified from access to wherever society has its important stakes and that physical contact with them is contaminating." (pp. 194-195)

I don't here want to comment on the status of homosexuality as a "sin." (I've done that already in my series "Theology and Sexuality.") All I want to note today is that if homosexuality is structured by the purity/holiness metaphor we see, as Brueggemann notes, real problems in trying to treat people in an ethical manner in American society. So, as I've noted from my psychological vantage, it is one or the other: Sociomoral purity or love? That is not to say that a person can't still deem homosexuality to be a "sin." It is simply to suggest that, in order for love to be the goal of the church in her dealings with homosexual persons, the sociomoral disgust psychology associated with this particular "sin" MUST BE DISMANTLED. As long as the disgust mechanism remains in place, the church will be full of those "mean-spirited hypocrites" because these people will always treat this particular "sin" in a qualitatively different manner.