Normalizing Lesbian Lust

Romans 1:26

My series on the heroes of Pride Sex Month has focused on homosexual men. You might be asking, what about the lesbians? Where does the “L” fit into LGBTQ? Below are some of the leaders in the American lesbian movement.

As we study the lesbians below, you will notice some important themes from my previous posts. You will learn about how they used public education to teach that lesbianism is good for society, and about the origins of critical theory and intersectionality as they were later used to promote lesbian relationships.

Audre Lorde: I’m crazy and queer. Barbara Gittings: we’re not crazy.

First, Here Are Some of the Main Points

1. The Shift from the Moral to the Psychiatric/Psychological

This makes their argument something like the following: we are wrongly labeled as mentally impaired because we can perform many useful tasks in society. They can be correct about that and yet still display an immoral character by indulging in lust with one another, or what the Apostle Paul says, “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones” (bold added for emphasis) Romans 1:26 says lesbianism itself is a proof of having been handed over to a darkened mind by God.

2. The Request for Equal Treatment Before the Law

This was often connected to the psychiatric diagnosis. Their argument is that since lesbianism does not imply incompetence, and some even argued it demonstrates heightened competence, there should be no diminished legal rights. One could agree with this 100% while still recognizing lust is morally wrong and harmful to the participants. A sinner is still a person made in the image of God. It is precisely because they are created as moral agents that they can be held morally responsible.

But is also sometimes true that these same persons/groups also sought to advance Marxist ideology and purposely undermine the government of the United States; one of their many self-contradictions in wanting to be subversives but acting shocked when they are treated as subversives.

3. Equal Protection and the Comparison to Heterosexual Couples

Their argument often moved from equal treatment under the law to the claim that lesbian couples should be treated the same as heterosexual couples. This does not necessarily follow and shows their confused thinking.

In fact, they appear to contradict themselves here. On the one hand, they argue that they are inherently different from heterosexuals. On the other hand, they want to be treated as though there is no relevant difference. Yet there is an essential difference between lesbian couples and heterosexual couples: all of us came from the union of a mother and a father, and none of us came from the union of two lesbians.

Two things that are not the same cannot be treated as if they are the same.

4. Two Different Meanings of “Natural”

Point number three highlights what, according to the Bible, is confused thinking. Paul says they are exchanging what is natural, but these lesbians say they are doing what is natural. These are two different uses of the word “natural.”

The second use, employed by many lesbian activists, means, “Whatever instinctively comes to me is natural for me.” The use of “natural” by Paul refers to the telos, or purpose, of a thing. But everyone knows that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it.

Humans are such that new humans come only from one mother and one father at a time. That is true for each of us, including lesbians. Lesbians may hope that science will eventually manipulate things to be otherwise, but all such science is attempting to imitate what a mother and father naturally do without scientific intervention.

Paul’s point is that lesbians have abandoned this sense of what is natural, not because of friendship, but because of lust for one another. Lesbians owe their own existence to a mom and a dad.

Conclusion

Humans should be treated equally before the law. LGBTQ individuals should be treated with the same respect and care owed to anyone made in the image of God. At the same time, the Bible teaches that lesbianism is evidence of a darkened mind under the judgment of God.

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Second, Let’s Look at Their Arguments

Barbara Gittings

One of the most important American lesbian activists. She worked extensively to pressure the psychiatric establishment, contributing to the 1973 removal of homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders. Empirical sciences change; the universal moral law does not.

Arguments

• “Homosexuality was normal and healthy.” Normal and healthy by what standard? Not by the standard of the nature of things as created by God. Lust is never healthy or normal.

• “The psychiatric profession was wrong to classify homosexuality as a mental illness.” This could be correct. Mentally healthy people can still sin. Yet, some lesbians claim to be “crazy” as their identity. They contradict each other yet also want us to take them seriously as coherent thinkers.

• “Visibility would reduce prejudice.” Everyone is prejudiced against what they believe to be morally evil. Lesbians are prejudiced against God and his Word.

• “Equal civil rights should be extended to homosexuals.” Yes. All humans are made in the image of God and should be treated equally under the law, including when they violate the moral law.

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon

Founders of the Daughters of Bilitis (1955), the first major lesbian organization in the United States. The group excluded non-lesbians, highlighting the human desire to gather with the like-minded and exclude everyone else.

Initially they pursued an assimilationist strategy, arguing that homosexuals were fundamentally like everyone else. Here, their contradiction becomes visible. They are not the same, their lust is not the same as love, and while they wish to be different, they also wish to be approved as though they were the same.

Arguments

• “Lesbians should not be forced into secrecy.” They are not forced to lust, but when they choose to indulge their lust, they often choose to hide it rather than confess it as sin. Their lesbianism also often went with other beliefs like Marxism.

• “Homosexuals should receive equal treatment under the law.” Yes.

• “Public education could overcome prejudice.” The takeover of the public education system to teach children that Romans 1 is false and that lesbianism is good is, according to Romans 1, an example of suppressing the knowledge of God. Now public education teaches students to be prejudiced against God’s Word.

• “Lesbian women were ordinary citizens deserving equal respect.” Respect as human beings, yes. That is precisely why they can also be held morally responsible for indulging their lusts.

Audre Lorde

A later but highly influential figure. Her work became influential in later intersectional and feminist movements. She said there can be “no hierarchy of oppressions” among” “those who share the goals of liberation and a workplace for our children” and that she was “crazy and queer” undermining the psychiatric claims of other lesbians (link). She didn’t explain how the lesbians came upon these children or where their dads were at.

Arguments

• “Sexual orientation, race, and sex must be considered together.” And also beliefs and values about what is good for a human being.

• “Traditional social structures often reinforce oppression.” Here is the introduction of critical theory: society is viewed as structurally biased against those who abandon what is natural for lust, as described in Romans 1.

• “Political liberation requires recognizing multiple forms of discrimination.” Here is the introduction of intersectionality. The central target of discrimination, in this view, becomes biblical teaching about human nature, sin, and redemption.

6. Adrienne Rich

A major intellectual influence on lesbian feminism.

Arguments

• “Many social expectations regarding sexuality are culturally enforced.” Yes, obviously. The lesbians themselves seek to create social expectations that reinforce their sexual values.

• “Society privileges heterosexuality in ways that disadvantage women.” Nature privileges heterosexuality because all humans come from the union of a male and a female. No society or human institution invented this reality; they merely recognize it. Homosexual lust can exist only because heterosexual unions exist.

• “Women’s relationships with other women can be politically significant as well as personal.” Friendship is not lust. Women must repent of sin just as men must.

Her essay Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence became highly influential in feminist and LGBTQ scholarship.

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And now you know some of the major lesbian influencers and what I regard as the incoherence of the ideas they introduced and that are now promoted through public schools and libraries. Romans 1:18 says that they “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve.