#STRask - Why Are So Many Christians Condemning LGB People Just Because of How They Love?

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Questions about Christians condemning LGB people just because of how they love, how God can expect someone to be celibate when others are free to marry and have happiness, and why Christians seem to hate people today.   If God sent Jesus to die for our sins, and all who believe in him are accepted into Heaven, why are so many Christians condemning LGB people just because of how they love someone? How can God expect you to be celibate when others are free to marry and have happiness? Can you explain the hate I see from Christians today?

This is Amy Hall. Thank you so much for joining me and Greg Kokel on the hashtag STRASC podcast. So today, Greg, we have a question. I don't know if we'll get past this one because there are actually four different questions within this question. So we'll go through this and see how it goes. It's important one too. So this comes from Tina. If God sent Jesus to die for our sins and all who believed in him would be accepted into heaven, why are so many Christians condemning? LGBT people just because of how they love someone. Mind you, a lot of the LGBT are in committed relationships. How can God expect you to live celibate when others are free to marry and have happiness? We were born out of incest and 1500 animals are bisexual and had no free will. So why? I just don't understand the hate from Christians I see today.

Before you answer, I just wanted to say something. I think this question is really important. And in the last couple of weeks, I've heard three stories about people who either I know or are connected to people I know. And one of them, someone walked away from Christianity because he didn't agree that homosexuality was wrong. Someone who's thinking of walking away from Christianity over this issue and someone who's in Christianity but thinking of walking away from the doctrine and changing their mind on that. And this is so hard for Christians to make sense of because it's prevalent in our culture. It's accepted. It's presented as fine. Everyone says it's fine. And there's a lot of pressure to agree with that. And so it's very hard for people to make sense of. And I think it's necessary, especially for people who are younger and have grown up when same-sex marriage was legal. And this, it just doesn't make sense to them. And this is a huge stumbling block. So I want, I, I, I, I want them to hear what you have to say on this topic.

Sure. And we'll see if we can help them out. Right. There is a lot here. There's at least four different items, maybe four and a half different items that need to be addressed. Some can be addressed fairly quickly. And maybe I'll start with that, Amy. I, I, but here's a broader principle. If we are going to be Christians, that means we are going to follow Christ. Christ had his own teachings. He also taught his disciples to follow after him, and that would include Paul, who according to Paul's testimony, confirmed by James, Peter, James, and John, was taught himself by Christ, had his own special appearance, and all of them, including Jesus, fully affirmed the Old Testament.

in its proper application. And so if we are going to be follows of Christ, we have to have the same view of these things that Jesus had, which would be what the scripture says because Jesus affirmed the scripture, his own in the Gospels, those disciples that followed him, and we see this detail in the upper room discourse in John 15 and 16, and we also see the affirmation many, many times of Jesus of the Old Testament. I just noted one differently. I think it was at the – I can't remember, but Jesus was making reference to something Moses said. He just said, this is God – by the Spirit of God, you know, kind of thing.

So anyway, with that in mind, the principle then is that we have to start with Scripture and a fair assessment of what the text says. and we need to take all the texts into consideration at both Testaments and understand them within their proper contexts, okay? And so the conclusion, I think, that is the proper biblical conclusion to come to for a number of reasons, is that God condemns homosexuality, homosexual behavior. He also condemns adultery. He also condemns fornication. He also condemns bestiality. He also condemns what else?

I think that pretty much covers the basis, all right? Now, those condemnations are important because they refer to all kinds of sexuality outside of the marriage relationship. Jesus himself talked about the nature of the marriage relationship in Matthew 19. and he is being asked a question about marriage and divorce, and can a person be divorced for any reason? It's interesting how he answers. He answers by going back to the beginning. In fact, his first words to the Pharisees are, have you not read?

Notice how Jesus is addressing this question that pertains to a very intimate relationship that also includes sex by going back to the creation. order. Now, the creation order is made in a certain way so that human beings would flourish. You know, you buy a new car, you get an owner's manual. Here's the car for you to enjoy, but you're only going to enjoy it if you take care of it. If you use it in a way you're not supposed to use it, you aren't going to enjoy it. It's not going to work. It's going to fall apart. In the same way, by rough analogy, God made human beings in a certain way to function in a certain way in certain kinds of relationship so that they would flourish, be fruitful, multiply. And the first couple of chapters of Genesis outlined that.

And curiously, when Jesus is answering a question about marriage and divorce, he goes back to the beginning. Here's the, have you not read? It's almost like, what? You're asking me this question. you don't know the very beginning of the entire story. And what does Jesus say? He said, first of all, he made them male and female.

Notice, by the way, binary sexuality is built in, not into just the creation order, but after the fall, Jesus is acknowledging that legitimacy. And then he says, for this cause, and then he jumps to chapter two, a man shall leave his mother and father. notice the binary sexuality in that marriage relationship, and cleave to his wife, binary sexuality, and the two shall become one flesh. And for the uninitiated, he's referring to sex. That's the sexual union.

And then he says, what God has joined together, let no man separate. So now in this Matthew 19, Jesus is laying out the picture of what God wants, and that it goes back to the very beginning before the fall, so it is a function of the created order for the good of man. Now, this is very important that people understand. This is arranged this way for the good of us because we're built a certain way. And if we violate those aspects, anything in the creation order, things are not going to go well for us.

So it's the good God who made this kind of thing. That's the first point that I want people to get. And just for the sake of good pedagogy, there's a simple way of remembering Jesus' summary of God's view of marriage, and that is this, one man with one woman becoming one flesh for one lifetime. One man, one woman, one flesh, one lifetime. Very simple, straightforward. But notice all the bases it covers. It certainly speaks, to say it speaks implicitly, in this case, is to understate it. I think it's really explicit.

He speaks explicitly to all the sexual variations that are around now. And curiously, maybe not so curiously, when you get to the New Testament, all of those things that are prohibited implicitly by that command, or explicitly, if you will, are also explicitly prohibited in the New Testament. I don't think bestiality comes up, but certainly fornication, adultery, and homosexuality come up, and that's in 1st Corinthians, 9, which Paul just says straightforward, along with a number of other sins. These people will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, why are any of those things bad?

There's a whole bunch of other things, too, because they're contrary to God's desires and ordered in the way he made us to live. That's why. It isn't singling out homosexuality. Paul does in Romans one as an example. But it isn't like homosexuality is the worst sexual sin, and everybody can just shrug at, you know, fornication or adultery. It's curious, though, people who raise the issue like's been raised here, they don't make the same application to adultery. They don't say, well, you know, why are you hate adulterers?

you know, what if they're in loving relationships? And by the way, well, a lot of the adulterous relationships are loving relationships according to their standards. In fact, that's why they end up in adulterous relationships because they fall for each other emotionally, and then they fulfill that in a sexual way. But, yeah, but why isn't that also endorsed or affirmed? because it seems like almost everything else had raised here would apply there as well. The reason I think that homosexuality is such an issue, like in this question, it's raised, is because of the culture, just like you said.

It's just, look, we got a whole month. We celebrate this. Everybody's celebrating it. A whole month, a whole nation is celebrating it for a long time, even the government, even in other countries our government was celebrating at their embassies and flying the rainbow flag. So it just seems, well, it's so normal to everybody. The thing is we can't determine what's right and good and normal based on what the culture says. We have to do that based on what God says.

Now, I have a suspicion here that Tina is not a believer. I could be mistaken, but just the way she's wording things, why is it that you guys are so against it? Okay, that's fine. I'm just making an observation here. And also the way she ends, she says, I don't know. understand the hate for Christians, from Christians, I see today. But why would you characterize this moral distinction as hate? Well, that's cultural, because the culture has been taught that if you disagree with this and you think it's wrong, that is hate. Now, I thought,

you know, by now people would see through that and just get tired of this kind of nonsense. Are there haters? Sure. But I've seen a lot more hate on the side of LGBTQ crowd towards those who disagree with them. I mean, demonstrable hate. So why isn't there an objection there? If hate is if you disagree with their sexual view, well, then why are they hating us by disagreeing with us? And why are they hating us by the way they treat us? Now, I'm not, I'm just making a point there. I'm not all offended, like, how dare you hate me? I understand why they would say that, because it's a way of sanitizing the behavior with rhetoric and making those who disagree look bad. It's just a maneuver. But smart people should at least be able to see through that, regardless of what their view about homosexuality morally happens to be. The foundation for what I'm laying so far, and this goes to the first question, why are so many Christians condemning LGBT people? just because they love someone. Now, this is also a mischaracterization. This is a straw man.

And this is a kind of a characteristic response that is, I think, genially offered, but it's from a non-Christian perspective. That's why I think it's a non-believer. Because the objection isn't, have anything to do with love. This statement here equates heterosexual, I mean, same-sex sex as love. And we know, I mean, let's face it, the gay community, most of the same-sex sex sex that goes on in the gay community is not love. Okay, but there's not going to be any condemnation. It's just sex.

I mean, this is quantifiable. This is obvious for anybody who knows anything about that community. I'm just making an observation, and I'm not slandering anybody, putting anybody down. I'm just saying that's the way it is. So to characterize it as love is really stretching it. But there are loving relationships, no question. And by the way, those are the kinds of relationships that are usually characterized in movies. Not the seamy side, which is characteristic of the movement, but the beautiful side.

Okay, it's just more, you know, campaigning to distort what's actually going on, all right? It's not a pretty picture for that community. And I'll just leave it at that because anybody who's had any exposure to the broader community knows exactly what I'm talking about. out, okay? The objection isn't loving. The objection is behavior. It's not whether we love, it's how we behave. People who commit adultery, many of them have a very strong love for each other. Why are we condemning love? Because it's not the kind of love expression that God is ordained, and it is destructive to not only the individuals involved, but also to families and two cultures. I mean, there's a domino effect to this.

All right. Amy. Well, I just wanted to say something about the first part of this, where Tina says, if God sent Jesus to die for our sins and all who believed in him would be accepted into heaven, then why are they condemning LGBT people? And I just want to make a couple points about that. First, I don't want anyone to hear that if I am attracted to someone of the same sex, then I'm condemned. Right.

That's not the Christian view. It's not that you are – It's not that the Bible puts you into a category that now you're unsavable. That is not the case. All you have to do is go listen to someone like Christopher Yuan or Beckett Cook. I mean, there are so many out there, Rosaria Butterfield, and these were all. all people who experienced that and they were not rejected by God, they were not condemned, they were not kept from heaven. But what they did do was believe in Christ and follow him. So all who

believe in him will be accepted in heaven. Absolutely 100%. Even people who are attracted to someone of the same sex, they will also be in heaven if they believe in Christ and they follow him. And following him requires that we put certain of our desires to death. And this is true for every single person. We put our desires that are not in line with God's desires to death, and we live by following Christ. And everyone who has a spirit of Christ will be doing this, even if they struggle or have problems or sometimes fail. it's not, so I just wanted to make sure no one heard that someone is in a special category where they can't be saved. Right. And this is why there's, I think, a lot of confusion in this question that makes, with confusion, unless clarified, makes the classical, orthodox, biblical, ethical position and homosexuality look unreasonable. And if you make it look at unreasonable in the context of the culture that is applauding it, it's going to be very hard to take it seriously.

So the plausibility structure, what sounds like it would make sense to me, is having a big influence on whether people accept this or not. And this is why some of the friends you mentioned are probably leaving or thinking about leaving because it doesn't fit their plausibility structure, and some of the details of that are expressed here. Like if Jesus died for all of our sins, well, then we go, how does that work? And you just clarified it, okay? Why are many Christians condemning LGBT people for loving people? That isn't what's going on here.

That's part of the rhetoric of that movement. But you have to make sure that the words that are being used by the movement to condemn a view fit the people and the view itself. This doesn't, and we just made that clarification. The issue isn't love. If the issue was loved, then all kinds of sexual behavior would be approved. And let's just keep it with, you know, let's leave bestiality out for a moment. But it certainly would approve adultery. It would approve fornication. It would also approve pedophilia if you had consenting adults, consenting people, not consenting adults. They're, you know, right there. Well, why not? if there is a love relationship, because that's the qualifier here.

So that's a straw man, and it has bad, the consequences if you'd use taking the roof off tactic is to show that this isn't going to work. And just to add one more thing about God creating opposite sex unions here in marriage, not only is this, men and women are different, and we bring different things to the table we when we have children the woman contributes something different than the man all of these things are necessary for a functioning society and I think this is by design yes and the woman ends up affecting the man the man ends up affecting the woman we bring the parts together that we need to be well-rounded people and also so that's that has to do

with our own flourishing. But there's also a sense in which marriage was created to reflect Jesus and the church. Not the same, but different, coming together. And this is why, in Romans 1... I'm not sure you meant by not the same but different. So it's Jesus joining with the church to not... It's... It's unity and unity.

Is that what you mean? Well, let me get to, let me finish the point. And then maybe it'll make more sense. When you look at Romans 1, what it says is that because people turned away from worshiping God towards worshiping themselves, God gave them over. Their punishment was to turn towards each other sexually because originally the marriage is supposed to represent the joining of Christ and the church. So when they turned away from God, not only did they turn away from him in worship, but they turned away from the opposite sex in their sexuality.

That's part of the punishment on society that God has given to us because it represents turning away from God. So I think this is a more kind of esoteric point. But it's something to think about, too. I think there's not only a purpose for our flourishing, but there's also a purpose for God's glory. So anyway, I just wanted to throw that in there before we wanted to the next one. I wanted to say something about Romans 1 because this fits in what you're saying. Why is it wrong? And the language, I'm reading out of the New American Standard, which is the most precise in terms of its very precise, clear representation of the Greek words here.

And it says regarding homosexuality, by the way, this passage deals not just with, male homosexuality, but also female homosexuality, lesbianism. It's the only place in scripture where lesbians are mentioned. But it fits the point that's being made here for verse 25 is the operative verse. People would read the whole passage, but it's talking about human beings in rebellion against God. And then they exchange the truth of God for a lie, okay, and worship the creature rather than the creator. That's a more general sense. And then he goes into specifics.

So he uses same-sex behavior. as an example of rejecting the truth of God. And verse 26 in following, for this reason, God gave them over. Because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, God gave them over. He just let them go to what he calls degrading passions for their women exchanged the natural function

for that which is unnatural. Notice that where he's talking, that's the Greek word creesis. translated function, and it means function. He's talking about plumbing, how the parts are meant to fit together. And they exchanged something natural for something's unnatural, and then the next verse 27, the same thing, in the same way. Also, the men abandoned the natural function of the woman.

Okay, just think about that phrase. God made men to function with women a certain way, sexually. That's how you can be fruitful and multiply. no, duh. And what men said, in this particular context here, the men are saying no to God's provision, we don't want what you made for us. We want what we want. And so they're saying no to God's provision for their sexuality, which is exactly the same thing that happens in fornication, in adultery and in bestiality, the other three things that are prohibited in Scripture. It's saying no to the kind of provision God made for human beings sexually.

In this case, he's identifying actually a functional distinction. Your plumbing doesn't fit is kind of what Paul is getting to here. and they abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men, committing indecent acts. Why are they indecent? Because they're an abrogation of God's purposes for men and women and the function of the organs that God made. Now, other translations, you don't see this so crisply, but it's really obvious the New American Standard, and it fits the larger picture.

So this is to underscore the point that this is God made something for our good, and people in all the sexual variations from God's purposes are saying no to God. God, no, no, I'm doing it my way. So this is an act of rebellion. And by the way, that's just one of the immoral acts described their enrollments. One, you keep reading and you have now a much larger paragraph. with all kinds of nasties. Curiously, the way it ends is not only do they do these things, but they give hearty approval to those who do them.

And that means hardy approval to same-sex behavior, which we have a whole month in our culture that's dedicated to hardy public approval of homosexuality. And even Tina's approach here is hardy approval. Why are you guys objecting? Well, those are the reasons from a, biblical perspective. Those are the reasons why we're objecting because God is ordained and designed something entirely

different for our good and going any other direction in any kind of sexuality is a rejection of God and a rebellion of God. To create life, by the way. So the union of a man and a woman not only brings them together in ways that are good for society, but it creates life. This is a very unique union. Yeah. And this actually is a good segue into the next question, because I have something to add on to what you just said.

How can God expect you to live celibate when others are free to marry and have happiness? Well, the assumption here is that is the way to happiness. But the problem is that obedience is always better than disobedience. our problem is that we do not trust God, and so we decide to reject his words and go try to find our own happiness in other ways. And that doesn't work. We are always better off giving certain things up, even if we think, I'm going to need that for my happiness. If we trust God, we are always better walking in obedience, even if without that thing, then we are to get that thing and be in disobedience. And this is something I think you have to learn over time because sometimes

it's hard to trust God enough to believe that he really wants what's good for you. And I think here is where we have to look at the character of God. We look at it. We see it objectively on the cross. We see his love for us. We see his wisdom. We see his power. We see his justice. We see all of those things on the cross objectively, and we know if God gave his own son. Tina even mentions this here. Then he's not going to hold out on your happiness. He has something in mind for you, and sometimes it means a more difficult life in one way or another. And for every one of us, we have to, I already said this, we have to give up certain desires that we think will make us happy. And we may feel sad about that for a time.

But God is always doing something. He has promised that he is always working all things together for our good to make us like Christ. And he does that in loss and he does that in grief. And all of those things are working towards this greater goal, which is to make us like Christ and to bring us close to him so we know him. And we're enjoying him and glorifying him. And all of those things happen even when we're not doing exactly what we think we need. But we have to trust him. All well said, this line here we're discussing right now seems to me to be kind of the happiness here, and this is not a disparagement or a judgment, but it's a, I think this is kind of way it's being understood, is really kind of a hedonistic perspective.

In other words, I want what I want and what I think I will enjoy, what will bring pleasure to me. And I certainly think good marriages do bring pleasure, good relationships, good sexual relationships bring pleasure, okay? But that all has to be understood within the larger context of what is morally appropriate. And what the assumption is that if people get married, they're all going to be happy. This is not the case. There are massive numbers of marriages that are struggles and they're difficult. And frankly, and I thought about this a lot before when I was single, is, will I be happier, married, or single?

And the answer that I came up with us, it depends on the quality of the relationship. You are much happier being single than being unhappy in a marriage relationship that's really hard. And that's robbing you of what you think your happiness is going to be. There are all kinds of good sides of even those challenges. I don't want to just lump it all together with unhappiness. But I'm just simply saying, if you're thinking marriage is happiness and singleness is unhappiness, there's a lot of people that would be much happier single than they are being married, all right? And by the way, this would lead right into the objection.

Why wouldn't God allow them to get divorced and find happiness? Yeah. It's the same thing. It's the same question. And why can't I seek my desires to find happiness? Why do I have to submit to God? Which is the specific thing Jesus was addressing in Matthew 19. Okay, we've gone a while here.

I want to just move quickly into these other ones. So we've already covered the last one, the hate from Christians. That's right. Here is the last one here. We were born out of incest and 1,500 animals are bisexual and had no free will. So why? Okay, so that we were born out of incest, there's not many choices. there. When you have Adam and even children, it may be bunches of children, then, yeah,

at that level, you're going to have to intermarry. There's no other choices. Okay, so we're not talking about incest here. We're talking about homosexuality. And we're not even talking about bisexuality or, okay, this comes up here. We're not talking about incest. And there was a practical need for that. But then there were other problems with it. And this is why in the law, much later, it becomes prohibited. And this is what Dennis Prager makes a great observation. Incess is prohibited in the law, not because of genetic reasons, but because it's meant to protect children in the family. So family should be a safe place from children being sexually, have sexual predators on them.

So why don't you address this? The animals are bisexual. Well, I've heard. I've heard those kinds of things before. I don't trust those, for one, because what you'd have to show, well, maybe, you know, you have asexual amoebus divide asexually, you know. But that's not, has no bearing whatsoever. What is appropriate for animals has no bearing on what's appropriate for human beings.

That's the most significant pushback here. All right, maybe, I just trust that, but let's just say you're entirely true. 3,000, maybe 3 million. That's irrelevant to how we're supposed to behave as human beings, because we're not just animals, okay? And also, this is bisexual, and that's not the issue that's being presented. It's homosexuality. But that would also fit morally under our concerns, okay? And I do want to say one thing about being celibate. Look, I was not celibate as non-Christian. When I became a Christian, I got celibate. And I was still a bit for 25 years.

I had no guarantee that I was ever going to be married. I ended up getting married when I was 48, basically. But I had my 48th birthday and my honeymoon. But maybe I'd go longer. Lots of people live their whole lives without getting married. So are we going to say, oh, poor you. That's just too bad. I'm one of them.

Yeah, there's, okay, there you go. And so lots of people do that. But at least you have the possibility, I guess. We've got the possibility. We don't have the possibility of having our sexual desires fulfilled. Right. What you have is different than what we have. So it's harder?

Okay, it's harder. That doesn't change the moral equation. It doesn't change anything just because it's harder. There are all kinds of details of life that are hard, especially if you try to live a virtuous life. And so, go ahead, Amy. Well, I would say God gives different joys to different people in different situations and different hardships to different people and different hardships to different people and different situations. The key is to live obediently in whatever situation you're in.

Yeah. By the way, you meant Rosario Butterfield. You mentioned earlier. She's written a lot of stuff about this. So is Christopher Yuan about holiness. I just want to end with this thought, okay? Having covered all that ground, there are going to be people listening. And maybe, Tina, this is your feeling, too, that this is not satisfying to me. I don't like that. Okay, then you don't. Then Christianity is not for you. I want you to think of John chapter 6, the Brite of Life discourse. Jesus said a lot of things towards the end that lots of people did like, and they left.

And Jesus didn't beg them to stay. He laid it out the way it was, and that's it. Then you let the chips fall. Now, I don't want people to leave Christianity. I want them to follow Jesus and accrue the benefit of eternal life for doing that. But if they decide, nope, that's not good enough for me. I want to do it my own way. I don't, whatever.

Then Jesus didn't beg people to leave. In fact, he told the disciples, are you going to go? And Peter said, and I don't think Peter was any happier with what Jesus said, because it was really kind of grating on everybody's spiritual nerves, drink my flesh, eat my blood. But Peter said, where are we going to go? You're the one who has the words of eternal life. That's the question any person has to answer first. is Jesus the one he claimed to be? If he is, he is Lord and Savior. And that means if we enter into a

relationship with him, then we follow him, even if we can't make sense of all the things, and even if we don't like it all, and even if we're lonely, and even if we're sexually unsatisfied. That's the price of taking up your cross, putting your hand to the plow, and following Jesus. So ultimately, what it comes down to is, do you love God about? all else. If you don't, something will bring you away from him. You have to love him above all else, or none of this is going to make sense, and you're not going to make it through this. So on that note, Greg, and thank you for those final thoughts. I think those are really helpful, and I just really hope that this will help people to think through this just a little bit more.

This is just one episode. I mean, we went pretty long, but it's just one. episode. We have much more available on our website at STR.org. So if you want to look more into what we're talking about, I encourage you to go there. I also encourage you to get to know God better because if you do not love him above all else, something will pull you away from him. Your suffering will pull you away from him because you'll try to get your own relief on your own terms. And there's so much more I could say about that, but we better leave it there, Craig. We've gone twice as long as we should. This is the longest show we've ever done.

So thank you, Tina. We really appreciate your questions that this has been very helpful. And we'd love to hear your questions to send them on X with the hashtag STR Ask or go to our website at STR.org. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kogel for Stand to Reason.