In October 2023, I was invited by Andrew Allen, and the governors of Exeter College, Oxford, to become the Catechist for the College and Chapel. One of my greatest joys in life has been sharing the love I have found in Christ, usually by just loving people, occasionally when invited to preach, teach, educate, inform.
My goal has not changed in 43 years; to see lives transformed, as Christ has transformed mine, from being a homeless opium addict, begging for food on the streets of Old Delhi, India. I have watched many lives transformed by this same love, as people encounter Jesus Christ for themselves.
I guess the reason this cynic asked me if I still preached the gospel, was because I have spent several years calling out spiritual abuse in churches, and some folks see me as an ’embittered trans activist’, a convenient way to create a narrative to ease their own discomfort?
You cannot have love, without confronting injustice, and the people and institutions that perpetuate it. Anyways, you can choose for yourself whether my life, ministry, and preaching is Christ centred. Here is my first sermon of 2024, from Chapel Evensong, 21st January.
1500 words, a nine minute sermon;
Exeter Chapel Evensong Sermon. Sunday 21.01.24
We are in the church season of Epiphany.
Our Gospel reading today is from Luke, the story where Jesus has already gathered his disciples.
What is an epiphany, as it relates to our faith?
It could be said, in the strictest terms, it is the manifestation of Jesus Christ to the world, and to those who first behold him, but it in wider sense, it can be considered to be; those moments when we first realise exactly who Jesus Christ is.
How do you describe an epiphany, to someone who has never experienced one?
Epiphany. Just imagine for a moment, you are a student member of the choir here, and that you have fallen deeply in love, with a student from one of your tutorial groups. But you have been so deeply wounded by past relationships, you are hurting, full of fear of being hurt again, and even though you don’t want to, you are sending out all the wrong signals, all the wrong vibes, to this beautiful person. You realise you have become the prickly hedgehog, even though you are desperate for them to like you.
Unbeknown to you, this person too, is in recovery from a severed and painful relationship bust up. They too are sending out signals that they don’t want any sort of intimate friendship, but you don’t know that, and believe they actually don’t really like you.
They think you are aloof, cold, distant, and remote. But they too, have fallen in love with you.
For a year, you stalk each other, watching each other. Totally oblivious to the love you hold for each, or the pain you both carry in your hearts.
One day, a close mutual friend, a messenger from heaven, discovers the secret truth, the hidden love between you. They text you.
‘Fancy coffee.’
There in the coffee shop, they share the good news.
It hits you like a rugby tackle, a physical impact, yet it feels like pure liquid love has been poured into your soul, with all the gentle sensitivity and delicacy of the intricate heart that has been poured upon the crème of your latte. You go all weak and feint, your world dissolves around you,
everything you thought you knew, was in fact a lie.
You close your eyes, and gently begin to cry, tears fall like raindrops in your lap.
This my friends, is just a little bit what people feel like when they first encounter God’s love, and realise Jesus Christ is knocking on the door of their hearts. A divine romance, a sacred dance, a love eternal, sure, secure, unchangeable.
And who is not to say, that God is as intimately interested and active, in all your relationships, if God is indeed love, as we boast and sing at every chapel Evensong?
Peter has been fishing, all night, caught not a thing. He is despondent, glum, grumpy, grouchy, as a carpenter climbs into his boat, and starts telling him how to fish. Maybe his pride is stung?
They catch so many fish, the nets break, and the boats begin to sink.
It seems Peter, right here, is having an epiphany, in a moment, the blink of an eye, a nano-second, they realise one thing, it is a revelation, a manifestation, of such generous love, that Peter is totally awed, just like our friend in the coffee shop, but infinitely more so.
Are you not confused at Peter’s response?
He falls to his knees, and tells Jesus,
‘Go away from me Lord; I am a sinful man!’
A strange response to overwhelming love, and I do believe, in the context Luke has painted for us, that what Peter is encountering here is love, not any kind or hint of judgement. Peter has just realised the transcendent, eternal nature of divine love, expressed in Christ.
His response is one of unworthiness.
How many of us, every day, believe we are unworthy of God’s love?
We do not believe, not because we intellectually disagree with the love of God revealed in the gospels and in Christ, but because we cannot quite comprehend being overwhelmed by divine love. Such love appears to threaten Peter, just as it might us.
We might struggle to believe in a virgin birth, or in the miracles of Jesus, but we have no objections to the manifestation of love revealed in Christ.
Perhaps, like our student friend, so hurt by relationships, we send out all the wrong signals, to the one we love, because we too, can’t quite believe they might love us, that we are worth such love?
Let me take you to another epiphany that reflects Peters, one which we might find easier to relate to in a world that seems to be destroying itself, a world of fear, of hate, of death. Perhaps the love I have described is too saccharine, too much naive innocence for a cynical heart.
Isaiah Chapter Six.
Isaiah is serving as a priest in the temple in Jerusalem.
“I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
At the sound of his voice, the doorposts and the thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke.
‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’
Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he taken with tongues from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
“Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’
This is one mysterious, mystical, religious, transcendent vision, of awe, of love, of beauty, of holiness, of a man, physically encountering God, and finding God is love, grace, and forgiveness.
As we watch the horrors unfolding daily in the world, from Gaza, to Ukraine, from the homeless on our streets, to the unbridled greed of those in government, we recognise to, at times, our own cold hard indifference, even apathy, – it costs too much to care about all this. We switch off the news, we shut down our emotional defences before we are swamped, for we are hurting too.
We need our own epiphany, whether like Peter’s or Isaiah’s.
Epiphany, some say, a light bulb moment, others, a penny dropping moment, – ‘You could have heard a pin drop!’
I watched a 2,000lb bomb dropped on homes in Gaza.
It was an epiphany of sorts, left me asking, ‘Where is God in all of this?’
A two-thousand-pound, unguided bomb is accurate, give or take 30 metres. They might land on Hamas fighters, – or on innocent children.
To make that real to you; they might land either on this chapel, or upon the dining hall, the other side the quad.
If a 2000lb bomb was dropped on this chapel, none of us would survive, and all that would be left is a crater, as deep as this chapel is high.
This year, on Christmas day, I broke down and wept, in front of my family. Not something I wanted to do, in fact something I was trying to hide, but watching thousands of innocent children being slaughtered in Gaza, overwhelmed me, crushed me.
Was baby Jesus buried beneath the rubble?
‘Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do also unto me.’ Said Jesus.
It easy to despair, it is easy to fall into depression in such evil days.
But, I pick myself up, and tell God,
‘Here I am, send me, use me.’
All I want to do is to leave this world a better one than when I joined it.’
You may feel called to be a surgeon, a nurse, an aid worker in these war -torn nations. You may feel called to politics. You may be called to write and create music that is a healing balm for exhausted souls.
This God of love, lives in you and me, and maybe we are the only hands and feet he can use right now.
Those who serve every week in this chapel, need to know your words, your serving, your music, your song, and your presence, is a deeply healing balm in our troubled world. I feel God’s healing love wash over me, every time I soak in Evensong, the Holy Spirit dwells in the songs, and in the voices that make them come to life off the page.
As a servant of this college and chapel, I would say to you, I’m happy to sit and listen to you, anytime, in total confidence, in the knowledge that a burden shared is a burden halved. We each, and all of us, carry wounds and pain. We are but wounded healers.
May we all have an epiphany of the love of Christ, even if at first,
it is simply because we see and find that love in each other.
The Persecution of Gay People in Post World War II USA.
Part Two of my critique of Simon Ponsonby’s Sermon on ‘Homosexuality.’
Introduction.
Already we have had the entirely predictable knee-jerk reactions to Charlie Bell’s, and my own critique of Simon’s sermon. Stephen Foster came out all guns blazing in his following Sunday sermon, shooting from the hip, with both barrels, with great passion and zeal, drawing on Simon’s sermon introduction, and making it clear he felt Simon was being ‘stoned’, or attacked. Marcus Green similarly laid in with a short epistle, ‘Let’s all be friends.’ Both within just a couple of days of me publishing these critiques.
I would prefer some objective critical engagement with Simon’s sermon. Sadly, it is being swept under the carpet. It was removed from the internet, the day after I highlighted its existence to St Aldates friends.
When people calling out blatant and violent homophobia, (not physical violence, but spiritual, mental, and emotional violence), are then labelled as ‘attacking’ the preacher responsible, you know something has gone seriously wrong in the Priesthood. A cover up is happening, protecting their own. This is the ‘circling of wagons’ we expected.
Neither, I or Charlie were attacking Simon Ponsonby, we are simply calling out his sin, and the sins inherent within the sermon, and all that they represent. These principles of loyalty to leadership, and ‘do not touch the Lord’s anointed’, are standard fare amongst conservative evangelicals. We have watched them played out tragically in abuse cases involving conservative evangelical leaders. Furthermore, does Simon, or his sermon really needed defending, or hiding? I am sure Simon is man enough, when he considers it the right time, to respond in person to the critiques offered of his sermon. Or he will ignore them, and me, in the hope that we, like his sermon, simply disappear.
I stand by every word I have spoken regarding the sins manifest in this sermon. My words were not a knee-jerk reaction to this sermon. They were the result of many weeks of research, study, reflection, and night after night of being locked in prayer, over someone I once considered a precious and trusted friend. The devastation and betrayal I felt upon first hearing this sermon were total.
What seems at stake here, is a principle for the Priesthood; if Simon can be called out for his sin here, then no Priest is safe from being called out for their sin. No Priest should be above accountability. We can call out Trump for his sins, we can call out Johnson for his sins, but we are not allowed to call out a Priest?
The fact they have hidden the sermon, says everything you need to know; it was not the gospel.
The reason some feel Simon is under attack, is because of the violence embedded in his sermon. It is far easier and less painful to pretend the sermon is ‘not so bad really’, than admit to the painful reality: it is full blown homophobia being manifest by one of our most loved charismatic leaders and speakers. Each of us is thus forced to make a decision about the sermon, and the sins Simon has manifest, that means friendships might become strained, loyalties divided and exposed. Friendship and loyalty do not, and have never defined love, truth, or grace. They have proved, in many cases, to cover over a multitude of sins. Love, truth and grace, are principles which define the nature of friendship. Love does not tolerate abuse, but establishes boundaries. My friendships are not without boundaries, and Simon has violently transgressed them in his sermon.
In any other context than church, Simon would have been immediately suspended, had someone complained about his ‘lecture’. UK Law is very clear; homophobia, transphobia and racism are defined by the Crown Prosecution Service, as being determined by those who experience and suffer them, or by any other witnesses. Many gay people have already experienced and declared this sermon to be blatant homophobia, as have straight people, clergy, and bishops, as further witnesses to its ugliness and destructive nature. Whether they have the courage to publicly state that, is between them and God.
Homophobia is not determined by the sincerity, ignorance, or intent of the one who inflicts it. They may believe, as Simon does, that he is not homophobic, or being homophobic in his sermon. Fortunately, and rightly, he is not the one who gets to decide this. Fortunately for Simon, he is also protected from prosecution by UK Law, on the basis of exercising his faith, under the clause of ‘religious beliefs’.
Am I loyal to a leader, or to love, truth and grace?
This sermon was a perfect example of a Priest, embedding homophobia into a parish church. The sermon was applauded by the church. Until the sermon and embedded beliefs are repented of, by both Simon, and the church, it is only safe to assume they are still embedded within the church. By how many, we do not know.
When the Priesthood is unable to accept scrutiny and accountability, and dismisses it as attack, then it suggests the Priesthood is threatened by the truth.
Have no doubts, I love Simon, I have no choice, he is a brother in Christ. It so happens that I genuinely love Simon anyway, despite his sin. My love is genuine, sincere, and deep, but, our friendship came to an abrupt and shattering end, the moment I heard the horror of this sermon, and the depth of prejudice in it. I happen to love Simon enough to challenge and call him to repentance. Our friendship will not be restored until Simon has the courage, grace, and humility, to express repentance for the content of his sermon, and the sins he has indulged in preaching it. He has wounded many.
It is God’s loving kindness that leads us to repentance. I love Simon enough, to stand before him and ask him to repent. Such a stance has cost me reputation in this city, and will divide even the LGBTQIA+ community. My words may seem harsh to some, but they are commensurate to the violence Simon has levelled at myself, my family, friends, and community, not least the victims of the teaching and conversion therapy espoused and practised in the sermon itself.
He has exalted himself in this sermon, over the gay community as their judge. What he expresses in his sermon, is not ‘What God Says about Gay People’, but what Simon thinks about gay people. If he still believes what he has preached here, I, like Charlie Bell, have grave concerns about his pastoral role in a church full of young people and students, some, who we know, are LGBTQIA+. The fact that Stephen Foster keeps the normative theology of the church a closely guarded secret further adds to the risk, for LGBTQIA+ people in his church. Such practise is deceitful, dangerous, and potentially fatal for vulnerable LGBTQIA+ people.
My role is simply to help open Simon’s eyes to the homophobia within his chosen paradigms, heart and mind. I am not responsible for his, or anyone else’s responses. That is their choice to make and live by.
I have been asking for four years for St Aldates Senior Leadership to be honest, transparent, humble, and open about their beliefs regarding LGBTQIA+ people. For that, I have been frozen out of my own church. The only evidence I have about the normative theology of St Aldates Church, is this sermon.
Stephen Foster refuses to even speak to me, has rejected the mediation process, set up by the Diocese. I struggle to see how such a stance represents the Christ we both serve.
Sermon Critique. PART 2. HISTORY.
Simon is at great pains here in both his very limited understanding and portrayal of history and his careful use of rhetoric, to paint the ‘gay lobby’ as a dark and violent existential threat to humanity, the social order, and the church. He uses snapshots of history, wrenched out of true context, to try and prove the ‘gay lobby’ was a bullying, manipulative and destructive force against humanity and Christian morality and belief. He is embedding that phobia deeper and further into his church.
One needs a much wider, greater, deeper grasp of the sciences Simon is misusing, to understand the hopeless situation in which gay people found themselves from the end of the 19th century and into the middle of the 20th. Simon’s rhetoric subliminally suggests that all the ‘gay lobby’ he describes were interested in, was the freedom to indulge promiscuity and orgies, rather than the actual truth; that the majority felt they were fighting for their lives, after decades of violent persecution by the state.
A New Secular Priesthood supersede the gospel and the role of the Church as the source of ‘Salvation’ – or healing, wholenessfor the individual and for society.
The emergence through the 19th century of the science of the study of human experience, psychoanalysis, largely through the success of two of its most famous practioners, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, led to the creation of a new secular priesthood of the sciences; psychoanalysts. Their popularity, influence and authority grew at such a rapid pace, that in just a few years they changed the western world’s understanding of humanity. One of the main reasons for this success, was that psychoanalysis, psychology, and psychiatry became vital tools in seeking to heal people from the traumas of two world wars.
They also revolutionised the worlds understanding of those who experienced same-sex attraction, from Christendom’s two-thousand-year-old vision and diagnosis of it being a moral failing and sin, to it becoming a disease and sickness. It was a revolution in the understanding of gay people, that has led to a hundred years of intense persecution of gay people.
This new understanding, pathologizing gay people, ‘Homosexuals’, was without any criticism, and even the church welcomed it in as their new version of the ‘absolute truth’.
In May 6, 1868, the itinerant, Austrian-born writer Karl Maria Kertbeny wrote to fellow queer activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, coining the words for the first recorded time, of ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’. By the late 1930s these words were become familiar and frequently used within the new clinical studies and the science of psychoanalysis.
As the Nazi’s rose to power in 1930s Germany, with their obsession for both racial purity and creating a master-race or Übermensch, (Alpha males) or ‘supermen’, amongst the first people they targeted for extinction were the disabled, handicapped, gay and transgender people. The new science of psychoanalysis helped fuel the Nazi judgement of gay people as being sick deviants.
The leading humane psychoanalyst of homosexuality and transgender people of that time was Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin. The Nazi’s raided his premises, burnt all his books and sent his clients and friends to the death camps. Gay and trans people were amongst the first to be murdered in Nazi death camps, and they were forced to wear the pink triangle or star, to highlight their priority for destruction, from the moment of their diagnosis and arrest, – alongside the Romanies and Jews rounded up and sent to the camps.
These were the beginnings of the modern worlds pathologizing and demonisation of gay and transgender people.
When the Nazi’s destroyed Magnus Hirschfeld’s books and life-long, study, research, and work, the world lost an invaluable and huge clinical research project into gay and trans lives rooted in a humane and just ethos of their dignity, equality and inclusion.
In his place, the new science of psychoanalysis, psychology and psychiatry became fixated upon the judgement and diagnosis of ‘homosexuals’ and ‘homosexuality’ as a diseased and sick expression of humanity. This diagnosis was not separate from Christendom’s vision of same-sex attraction as a sin, or ‘abomination’, but superseded, reinforced and amplified it many times over, and stopped any more humane vision and understanding of same-sex attraction, being gay, from being a possibility, – until gay people finally began to organise and fight such violent oppression by state, church, and society, in post war USA during the late 50’s and early sixties.
Even today, most gay people still hear and view the words ‘homosexual’ and ‘homosexuality’ as pejorative and prejudiced labelling.
Post war USA and the social conditions gay people found themselves suffering under, was nothing less than persecution. It was a persecution rooted in several key factors, not least the psychoanalytical paradigm of Freuds many disciples, who had gained extensive social, medical, clinical, and political power, and had designated gay people as mentally ill, deviant, and perverted. Christendom simply absorbed these new beliefs without question or analysis. Being gay was now no longer just sin, it was to be mentally ill.
Section 28 in the US Military.
Two World Wars had seen the US military forces absorb the new science of psychology, and in some ways, placed them ahead of any other nation in the world. For example, the US Air Force was able to diagnose severe trauma in its bombing crews and allow them rest and recovery before returning them to active service and war, whilst the RAF and other nations, labelled those suffering extreme trauma and PTSD as cowards lacking moral fibre, sending them straight back into battle, even when they were in psychological breakdown, or subjecting them to Court Martials for ‘cowardice.’
For gay people in the US military, during the Second World War, the psychology and the state took the opposite view, holding ‘homosexuality’ to be both a moral evil, and a sickness, disease, and perversion, that warranted immediate discharge under Section 28, – a ‘Blue Card’. This blue card remained on peoples records for the rest of their lives, as constant as their age and sex markers, ensuring they could not gain employment in any government agency and most civil ones. It was the beginnings of a violent state persecution of gay people, regardless of their character, gifts, and abilities to perform their duty and service; an evil injustice.
This new exclusion and ejection of gay people from the military, was not dependent upon their behaviour, of having committed ‘a crime’. Their persecution was because of their ‘being’, for being who they were. This was the seismic shift in the western world’s view of gay people, which the church swallowed wholesale.
Simon is entirely blind to this historical truth, that the beliefs he holds about gay people being mentally ill, are not rooted in any orthodox Christian faith, but in the Freudian psychoanalytical school emerging in the early 20th century. A belief system he goes on to espouse and practise in his sermon.
Mistranslation of the word ‘Homosexual’ into the 1946 RSV Bible.
Even theologians in bible translation teams are influenced by the ‘secular sciences,’ and the societal politics and pressures around and upon them, in their work of translating words and meanings from millennia ago, into contemporary culture*. There is wide and scholarly consensus that the mis-translation and installation of the word ‘homosexual’, into the 1946 Revised Standard Version Bible, ‘the’ authoritative and most popular bible of its day, was a tragedy that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of gay people, from the ensuing judgement and violence that befell them, resulting in thousands of murders and suicides, which have arisen from the post World War Two systematic and homophobic theology, that ensued from this mistranslation.
In 1957, the head of the RSV translation team admitted that the use and insertion of the word homosexual into the 1946 RSV had been a tragic mistake. Even worse, they had only just signed a ‘no further changes for 10 years’ contract with the publishers, this did not expire until 1966. Between 1946 and 1966, all the other old and new bible translations simply and slavishly copied the RSV, in using the word homosexual in their texts. Around this new word in Christian language, a fist full of terror texts where gathered, to form a post war systematic homophobic theology. This systematic homophobic theology has been used as a weapon to attack LGBTQIA+ people with ever since.
The German Lutheran Bible, translated in 1522 by Luther himself, appears to have honoured a much older tradition and belief in Europe; that the two Greek words, translated ‘homosexual’ in the 1946 RSV, were believed to mean ‘abusers of boys’, referring to the ancient Greek and Roman evil of pedastry, which they believed Paul was addressing.
The conservative evangelical Church of England right now has hidden the evils of Smyth, Fletcher and Pilavachi, all abusing boys and young men, whilst simultaneously persecuting gay people. Is God trying to tell them something? To me it sounds like God is shouting at them, and the writing is on their wall. They persecute gay people and have protected abusers of boys, in their own midst. This is an evil.
*Today the leading scholars in the sciences of psychology, history, philosophy, anthropology, and theology, all admit that their own understanding is both limited and defined by the society and culture they exist within. Conservative evangelical theology, with its hermeneutics of ‘Scripture, Tradition and Reason’, seems unable, and unwilling to take this step of self-reflection and humility, which prevents learning, this is why it is become increasingly detached from reason, science, and human experience, anchored in hollow claims of being ‘The Absolute Truth’, that appear ever more absurdly authoritarian, protectionist and cultic, to most of us listening in from outside their bubble.
The 1946 RSV translation team which had been working for many years previously, had absorbed the both the secular science of psychoanalysis, and the paranoia of the state, and society, which regarding gay people as an existential threat to the moral and social order and a kind of virus that might destroy the discipline of the armed forces, the holiness and ‘purity’ of the church, social stability, and cause them all to collapse from within. They themselves were pickled in this societal paranoia; it had become ingrained in the American psyche. People like Simon, have developed their theology and world views, regarding gay people, from this lethal cocktail of paranoia, rather than from a researched, reflective, and objective understanding of history and science, which should inform and help shape their theology.
I highly recommend this book as laying a foundation for understanding the social, political and religious persecution of gay people in post WWII USA.
American Psychiatric Association and the DSM.
The situation for gay people in post war USA was about to get far, far worse. As thousands of gay and lesbian military personnel returned from the war and were discharged from service, many were reluctant to return to their own insular and conservative families and communities, whom they knew would not, and could not accept them, they did want to be so isolated or ostracised. Consequently, gay communities established and flourished in the port cities and often the YMCA, the Young Men’s Christian Association’s communal homes, became the centre of the gay community in these cities.
These gay men and lesbian women had formed deep camaraderie and secret networks within wartime and the military and auxiliary services, to protect themselves and survive the state persecution, and the risk of lifelong unemployment and subsequent poverty. These relationships, friendships and networks were the seeds of the organisations that became an inevitable response to their increasing persecution from state and society in post war USA. What Ponsonby denigrates in his rhetoric as ‘the gay lobby’.
The conservative and violent backlash against the now openly gay and flourishing communities was swift and predictable. With the new secular priesthood having diagnosed gays as diseased, sick, mentally ill, deviant, and perverted, AND the new popular bible translation telling church and society that any and all gay relationships were sexually immoral, and destined for hell, no matter how faithful and loving they might be, – the purge, and increased persecution of gay people was inevitable.
Two things cemented gays as an existential threat to post war USA’s survival and flourishing. ‘Cold War’, fear and paranoia were becoming ingrained into the American and Christian psyche. With this paranoia of potential imminent extinction from nuclear catastrophe, there were two supreme threats to the American Dream; Communists and Gays. One cannot underestimate the totality and conflagration of this paranoia in human hearts. It was in this fertile soil of fear in the human heart that state and social persecution of gays, and systematic homophobic theology was forged. Humanity always seeks a scapegoat.
Post war, the phenomenal growth of psychoanalysis as a means of healing from trauma, meant it experienced exponential growth as a science and industry. Its authority as ‘absolute truth’ rarely questioned, even by the church, and certainly the church had lost its monopoly upon both healing of the soul, and absolute truth. Welcome to post-modernism folks.
The concept of homosexuality as a pathological disease was accepted by the vast majority of the medical establishment. This included the American Psychiatric Association, which considered homosexuality to be a psychiatric disorder, mental illness. Homosexuality as sin, became very much a secondary consideration of post war USA’s obsession with the gay threat.
The first step to containing the gay threat was the creation of the new secular priesthood’s (American Psychiatric Association’s) bible, the DSM 1, in 1952. Gay people’s condition was diagnosed and classified as a ‘sexual deviation’ within the larger ‘sociopathic personality disturbance’ category of personality disorders. The sexual deviation diagnosis included ‘homosexuality, transvestism, paedophilia, fetishism and sexual sadism’, as examples.
This embedded a deep revulsion of gay people within professional medical, clinical, and psychological analysis and care. It ensured the industry great wealth; gay people now represented a huge demographic to be ‘cured’ or ‘healed’. Psychiatry often walks hand in hand with the pharmaceutical industry, a booming industry, desperate for new markets and profit. Psychologists had a field day cultivating their theories about ‘homosexuals’ as the ‘open season’ was declared. Their demand as healers increased exponentially.
The roots and origins of all this lay in various emerging streams and schools of thought. In 1899, a German psychiatrist had electrified his audience at a conference on hypnosis, with a bold claim: He had turned a gay man straight!
All it took was 45 hypnosis sessions and a few trips to a brothel! Albert von Schrenck-Notzing boasted. Through hypnosis, he claimed he had manipulated one man’s sexual impulses, diverting them from his interest in men to a lasting desire for women.
He didn’t know it, but he had just created a phenomenon that would later be known as ‘Conversion Therapy’—a set of pseudoscientific techniques designed to quash LGBTQ people’s sexuality, and make them conform to society’s expectations of how they should behave. (Quash, Kosh – Kool-Aid).
Homosexuality, especially same-sex relationships between men, was considered deviant, sinful, and even criminal for centuries. This was the paradigm inherited from post Constantine Roman Christianity, again obsessed with the model of the ‘Alpha Male’, entwined in their new defining model of holiness; the ‘eunuch’ or, the celibate Priesthood, the ultimate imitation of Christ and godly masculinity.
In the late 19th century, psychiatrists and doctors began to address ‘homosexuality’ too. They labelled same-sex desire in medical terms—and started looking for ways to reverse, cure and heal it.
Whilst some in the late 1800’s believed homosexuality a disease or sickness, others believed that homosexuality was a psychological disorder instead. Sigmund Freud hypothesized that humans are born innately bisexual and that ‘homosexual people become gay because of their conditioning’. But though Freud emphasized that homosexuality wasn’t a disease, per se, many of his colleagues didn’t agree. They began to use new psychiatric interventions attempting to ‘cure’ gay people. (Simon uses Freud’s ‘conditioning’ theory in his anecdotal section of the sermon, using his own psychoanalytical beliefs to define the gay people he uses as his subjects to prove his role as their healer.)
Some LGBTQ people were given electroconvulsive therapy, others were subjected to even more extreme and violent techniques like lobotomies*. Other ‘treatments’ included shocks administered through electrodes, implanted directly into the brain. Robert Galbraith Heath, a psychiatrist in New Orleans who pioneered the technique, used this form of brain stimulation, along with hired prostitutes and heterosexual pornography, to ‘change’ the sexual orientation of gay men. Heath contended he was able to turn gay men straight. There is no proof that any of his evil cruelty ever succeeded in changing gay people’s sexual orientation or core identity. Many other gay people suffered chemical castration, an equally barbaric treatment.
An offshoot of these techniques was ‘aversion therapy’, which was founded on the premise that if LGBTQ people became disgusted by homosexuality, they would no longer experience same-sex desire. Under medical supervision, people were given chemicals that made them vomit when they, for example, looked at photos of their lovers. Others were given electrical shocks—sometimes to their genitals—while they were subjected and forced to look at gay pornography.
*Lobotomy is a type of brain surgery that became popular in the 1930s as a treatment for mental health conditions such as schizophrenia. It involves severing the connection between the frontal lobe and other parts of the brain by the insertion of a metal spike through the eye socket.
In 1949, the peak year for lobotomies in the US, 5,074 procedures were undertaken, and by 1951 over 18,608 individuals had been lobotomized in the US. Many of these were gay men. (The number of lobotomies performed in the UK was proportionately much higher.)
If you want to understand what gay men and lesbian women might suffer in arrest and incarceration, in attempts to cure them, try watching the movie, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, from the book by Ken Kesey.
The influence and combination of the 1946 RSV and the 1952 DSM1 in further cementing fear, paranoia, and revulsion of gay people into church and society is beyond measure in terms of the damage, ignorance, prejudice, and hatred they created right through to today, helping shape such beliefs and sermons like Simon Ponsonby’s.
McCarthy and the State persecution of gays.
In 1950 a deep Cold War paranoia gripped the USA, and Senator John McCarthy gave it full voice. The purge of Communists became conflated in this unholy inferno, with the persecution of gays. McCarthy was not the author of either the Communist or gay purges of government and civil services, but he is remembered as such. The purge of gay people alongside communists was the result of Republicans and Democrat politicians vying for control of government and state power, and using the presence of gay people within each other’s numbers and government positions, for political point scoring, to gain power.
In one year, 1950, ninety-one homosexuals in government services, were identified as a serious threat to national security. It was assumed being gay led one open to communist blackmail and extortion, even that homosexuality was a communist virus, and that gays were the most likely therefore to be communist agents. It was far easier to convict gays than it was communists, and the political scapegoating of gay people created huge political power.
Homophobia had gripped the US psyche every bit as much as their fear of Communism and nuclear annihilation, and were viewed by many as an equal threat.
On suspicion of being gay, you could be detained, interrogated, and removed from your job and position in any government or civil office, without warning. What followed, for over twenty years was the often-violent persecution of gay people. Law enforcement targeted gay people, imprisonment and incarceration in psychiatric hospitals, became common place.
In public places gay people became targeted by Law enforcement, and any show of affection to someone of the same sex, could result in arrest and incarceration.
Ponsonby rightly highlights the late sixties and early seventies as the peak of the conflict as gay people fought, firstly for their lives, rights, equality, and freedom from violent persecution by both state and society. He paints this in his sermon and rhetoric as a battle for ‘sexual freedom’ – to be promiscuous, this itself is a gross violation of history, gay dignity, love, and faithfulness in relationships, many of which were and are, like many marriages, never primarily about sex.
By the late sixties, the psychiatric movement and the APA had already started to move away from its pathology of gay people, and the resulting cruelty and violence which that had caused them, in both clinical and medical treatments and attempts to ‘cure’ them. They had already turned away from the previous dominant analysis of homosexuality being a mental illness to be cured, to one that considered being gay as a normal variation of humanity.
There were not an insignificant numbers of psychiatrists and psychologists, who were either gay or lesbian themselves, and knew themselves to be as normal and healthy as any other person. There were also many heterosexual members of the APA, who through study, and everyday observation, realised the overwhelming majority of gay and lesbian people they knew, or saw professionally were not sick, diseased or suffering any psychological deviance, any more than themselves. This was the natural, logical conclusion of the science of psychoanalysis, psychology and psychiatry, and human experience revealing that homosexuality was a normal, healthy part of being human.
The vote to remove ‘homosexuality’ as a disease, sickness, pathological condition and mental illness, from the DSM in 1973, was not as Ponsonby claims, won by what he paints as the bullying and threats of the ‘gay lobby’ from without. The vote within the American Psychiatric Association was won with a clear majority of 58% of its 10,000 members!
As professionals, they would no more change their beliefs because of political lobbying, than Ponsonby would change his, for the same reasons. To suggest so, is to slur and denigrate their integrity as a professional body. The external pressure of the gay lobby, only confirmed what they already knew to be true.
This reflected the growing consensus within medical, clinical, and scientific bodies, of homosexuality as a normal variation of being human.
What I find most disturbing about Ponsonby’s argument and portrayal of history, is that he appears to believe the removal of being gay as being a mental illness, from the DSM, as being a regressive step for the scientific, clinical and medical community. This is extremely worrying, but does explain how Simon views himself, as someone gifted to heal gay people from their mental illness or sickness. It is the explanation for his totally sincere and loving tone throughout most of his sermon. I’ll pick up on this in Part 3 of my critique.
What Ponsonby’s version of history does not tell you, is that as the psychiatric and clinical community moved away from ‘conversion and aversion practises’ as being both unethical, damaging, violent, harmful, and dangerous, the conservative evangelical church embraced these damaging beliefs and practises, and developed what became known as ‘Conversion Therapy’, a misnomer of demonic proportions, if ever there was one.
In order to validate the churches new adoption of failed science, to cure the disease of homosexuality, the church not only took a huge regressive step into secular ‘pop psychology’, and humanism, it turned its back on the authority and power of the gospel, and the ministry of Jesus, as the being the primary means of restoring souls to God and wholeness.
The ministry of Jesus is so evidently that of breaking shame from the lives of everyone he meets. The restoration of souls to God and wholeness can only be achieved by breaking shame from people’s lives. This is our gospel. This is our primary ministry of pastoral care towards everyone.
As we will see in part three of my critique, what Ponsonby does in his beliefs and exposition, in his sermon, or ‘lecture’, is lay crushing burdens of shame upon LGBTQIA+ people, in his insistence of holding onto, not ‘biblical’ beliefs, but the failed and flawed beliefs of Freudian psychoanalysis and the clinical practises which the scientific communities of Psychiatry and Psychology long ago renounced as dangerous and extremely damaging to the LGBTQIA+ community; conversion practises and ‘therapy’.
That he has failed to exercise due diligence as a ‘Pastor of Theology’, in researching history is shameful. He has used a carefully prepared, misrepresented, presentation of history, that lacks any wider objective or contextual study or reflection. In so doing he demonstrates clearly his prejudice and homophobia. His sermon, and his section on history, in which he claims to be ‘clearing up facts’, does just the opposite, distorting history to justify a homophobic narrative. His sermon’s use of history, is history as written by the oppressor.
It’s Oxford University Freshers Fayre this week, Wednesday and Thursday, October 4th and 5th. Let’s be honest, we all know freshers who have come to Oxford, with huge relief, despite the daunting challenge of what is ahead of them, academic pressure, in a city of pride and perfectionism. The relief? Because they are escaping homes, parents and siblings who hold religious beliefs that judge, condemn and exclude them. Yes, even in their own homes, they experience the deepest, costliest, most damaging rejection of all; their parents cannot accept them, for who they know themselves to be. They often live in fear, ‘in the closet’, or continually ridiculed for being ‘queer’, in homes where queer is meant as a curse.
The students behind the Oxford Safe Churches Project, have both watched, and experienced for themselves, being drawn into large city centre churches like St Aldates and St Ebbes, by the amazing worship, (goose bumps all over, – forget Coldplay or Nirvana, this is heaven on earth!), – by the huge student community that hugs you to death, by dedicated student pastors who love bomb you with pastoral care, (like you never had at home!), and pizza, cookies to die for, and even passable coffee. You’ve found your tribe, your family and what feels like your forever home.
There is only one tiny problem, but it seems almost insignificant, compared to the love and blessings being poured into your life. Rumours circulate the city, that this church has campaigned for many years against LGBTQIA+ people; their dignity, their equality, their rights and freedom. For sure, no one really knows what Senior Leadership believe these days, they don’t say, and won’t say. Students have asked, but all they are given is fudge, nice fudge though!
‘It’s compilcated’, said with a smile, as they brush you off.
At least Vaughan Roberts has now outed himself and admitted that he is willing to divide the Church of England over the issue of homosexuality. We are grateful to him for his courage and integrity in being open, honest and transparent. (We knew anyway).
For the last couple of years, since Stephen Foster took charge as the new Rector, it appears St Aldates Church is under the HTB Network Churches unspoken mantra, of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ A policy of secrecy and silence regarding the theology and pastoral care of LGBTQIA+ people, in HTB Network Churches, hangs heavy over them. LGBTQIA+ people quietly disappear, no one knows why.
Six weeks or so ago, the Oxford Safe Churches Project found a 45 minute Sunday sermon, preached to St Aldates Church, by Simon Ponsonby, Pastor of Theology. Most LGBTQIA+ people who have heard the sermon find it deeply homophobic, condemnatory and judgemental. Even allies and friends who are not queer, have concluded the same, including some not insignificant ministers and theologians.
We don’t know the exact date of the sermon, except it is pre-covid, and probably coincides with the campaigning and letter signings protesting against LGBTQIA+ inclusion in the church, 2016 – 2018.
It would appear the moment St Aldates Senior Leadership realised that the Oxford Safe Churches Project had found this sermon, they pulled it from the internet, where it had happily been platformed for several years. They are now hiding this sermon.
Why try and hide the gospel, as it pertains to the discipleship and pastoral care of LGBTQIA+ people? What do St Aldates Senior Leadership have to hide? Their courage to proclaim the gospel , within their own four walls is not in doubt.
The Oxford Safe Churches Project has to rate each of the city churches according to the last available teaching offered. Because St Aldates is currently engaging in an ‘operative theology’ that openly welcomes all LGBTQIA+ people, and the project has the testimonies of several LGBTQIA+ students, who have openly shared in their student fellowship groups, that they are both gay, and in a same-sex relationship, and been warmly affirmed, by both fellow students, and staff student workers, (their words), then there is a huge chasm of confusion, uncertainty and fear, as to how LGBTQIA+ students will be discipled in St Aldates, over the long term of their stay in Oxford and the church, what teaching are Senior Leadership suddenly going to throw at them?
If Simon Ponsonby, Stephen Foster and the Senior Leadership still hold to the ‘normative’ or traditional theology, as espoused by Ponsonby in his sermon on ‘homosexuality’, then St Aldates is a Safeguarding tragedy waiting to happen. The potential for spiritual abuse is extremely high. We are already pastoring one student who was felt forced to leave, after hearing the recent ‘Unscripted’ podcast, because they no longer ‘felt safe in church’. They had been a member for 18 months and had no idea that Senior Leadership held the beliefs preached in ‘Unscripted’.
What the Oxford Safe Churches Project has done, is shine a spotlight upon, and blow the whistle on a very deceitful, damaging and dangerous pastoral policy of keeping theology and pastoral policy about LGBTQIA+ people secret. The Oxford Diocese, Safeguarding Leads and Bishop Steven, appear to be looking the other way, pretending there is no problem.
It is tragic, that the students have had to take the responsibility for their own Safeguarding and pastoral care, into their own hands. The evils of Pilavachi, and the abuses of safeguarding and pastoral care principles in the Church of England, mean that young people and students, especially LGBTQIA+ students, have no confidence in the Safeguarding within churches like St Aldates and St Ebbes, but worse than that, they know that current safeguarding practise will re-traumatise them and deepen the sense of abuse they already feel. If my own experience of Safeguarding in St Aldates and the Diocese represents their treatment of LGBTQIA+ people, then they are right in the fears they hold.
Principles of secrecy and silence, surround all cases of abuse, and they are only possible because of unaccountable authority. All abuse is enabled and empowered because authority is not held accountable. Bishop Steven and the Diocese Safeguarding Leads need to step up, and speak up, at this time, not hide. They need to honour and defend the courageous work the students have undertaken. Let’s stop playing lip service to accountability, and start living it, creating a safeguarding culture of openness, honesty, transparency and vulnerability. That costs, time, money and means being present at the table. Bishop Steven needs to initiate the process, and include LGBTQIA+ victims of spiritual abuse at the table. At the moment Bishop Steven seems to be denying that we exist.
At present, the people most likely to wounded, damaged, and spiritually abused are LGBTQIA+ young people, freshers, and students.
In ‘The Six Pastoral Principles’, created by the bishops, in the wake of the evils of Smyth and Fletcher abuses of young people in their care, and to help create a safer culture in churches, surrounding Living in Love and Faith, and the war currently raging over LGBTQIA+ lives in the Church of England, they identify six evils currently being practised in and by the Church of England.
Two of the evils identified, are the abuse of authority and power, and the use of cultures of silence and secrecy. It is very difficult not to view the current culture within St Aldates Churches Senior Leadership, through these lens. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.
Until Stephen Foster and Simon Ponsonby make a public statement, and offer clear repentance, and clearly state their reformed theology, we can only assume, the sermon they are hiding, remains their ‘normative’ theology.
Here is the sermon. It needs a serious trigger warning if you are LGBTQIA+, and possibly, even if you are not. It contains the misuse of history and psychology, to prop up the usual fist full of terror texts we have come to expect from conservative evangelical charismatics. I would suggest reading the two critiques of the sermon, in last weeks blog, before you read the sermon itself.
This is transcript made by AI of the podcast.
The Truth Will Set You Free.
Sunday Sermon, St Aldates Church, Oxford.
Preacher. Simon Ponsonby.
(starts halfway through a sentence) … ‘those today struggling with those issues. Then we want to tell you that we love you. And if you have friends and family struggling with those issues, we want you to tell them that we love them. Okay. Let’s pray.
“Spirit. We ask that you would just come and rest upon us. We pray that you would give us clarity. Help me, Lord, to say something helpful. I pray that anything that I say that is chaff, Lord, that your spirit would just blow it away and take it away. Lord, let it die. But we pray that there would be a real sense of truth here this morning. The truth that sets us free. Amen.”
Let me just say that this is not going to be a sort of standard morning Sunday sermon where we’re just expanding a particular passage, and preaching and illustrating that. This is going to be more of a kind of teaching lecture presentation. And I understand if you get bored or if you want to leave. I know that’s certainly how I feel right at this moment. The latter that is.
Let me just put a few caveats around what I want to say this morning. I’ve already put one – that’s the big one. That’s what I want to say at the beginning. That’s what I’m saying at the end. We love you. If you’re a homosexual, we love you. If you’re struggling with it, we love you. Even if you’re not, we still love you.
When we discuss the question of homosexuality, we are not dealing with something that is abstract. We’re not dealing with some kind of vague, theoretical, conceptual idea. What we are addressing is people who have very real personal issues. Very often homosexuality is so enmeshed in their very existence that it feels that just to talk about it, they find their whole identity in it. And we want to say that this is not just some kind of doctrine that we can throw up and speak against. We are talking about people we all know, people who are homosexual. Many of us will have friends, many of us have family. In my own family, my brother, whom I love deeply, is an active homosexual in a committed (relationship). He recently got married, or covenanted, in his relationship, and has been an active homosexual for many years. I have a cousin who is also homosexual, so there’s something personal here. You know, we all have stories like that.
Secondly, what I want to say is that what I’m saying today and putting forward is what I believe is the normative and historic orthodox position. It is the one that comes from a plain, obvious, clear reading from the Bible. And yet I must, we must, acknowledge that other people who look at the same texts do come up with different conclusions and interpretations.
I’m going to be using the 19th century term, (we didn’t have it before then), of homosexuality, for men whose predominant sexual desire is for the same sex, with or without any homo erotic act. And whilst this talk will mainly focus upon homosexuality, the descriptions, deductions, and conclusions apply to lesbianism as well.
The controlling motif, for me, theologically, the controlling principle here, I think for me is from John 1 verse 14. If you’re taking notes, and there it says that Jesus came full of grace and truth. Full of grace and truth. Grace first, then truth. But grace and truth, not grace instead of truth. Not truth without grace, but grace and truth. And we see Christ manifesting this grace and truth in John Chapter 8. When he finds the woman who is caught in adultery, she has transgressed the law. The Pharisees are legalists. They know this. She deserves to be stoned. And Jesus, when she’s brought before Jesus, Jesus says,
‘Who is without sin, you cast the first stone before you start chucking stones. Recognise that you deserve to have stones chucked at you.’
And then after they go, the oldest first because they’ve committed more sins and they’re wiser. Jesus turns and says,
‘Where are they who condemn you?’ And she said, ‘They’ve gone.’
He says, ‘I don’t condemn you’. Grace, ‘but go leave your life of sin.’
Truth. And that is the position. I believe that we as Christians who are trying to be like Christ because after all, that’s what it’s all about. We need to be like Christ. How, you know WWJD
“What would Jesus do?”
He would be full of grace and truth. I don’t condemn you, but leave your life of sin.
He was often condemned by the Pharisees because he ate with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus stood with those who were outside. He stood with the marginalized, and the oppressed. Today, I think he would, he would happily, freely find himself in gay clubs and gay bars. And there he would be listened to because they would see that he was listening to them. And there he would be loved because people would see that he loved them. But he wouldn’t leave it there. Christ would be seeking to lead them into liberty and freedom. He would be seeking to bring a revelation of God and His kingdom, a revelation, and bringing people to a repentance of their sinful acts and seeking ultimately to bring a restoration and a liberation and a wholeness to their life. And we as Christians must be like Christ, what would he be doing? Where would he be? How would he be?
I’d like to first of all, set some facts straight. In 1948, Dr. Alfred Kinsey produced a groundbreaking study on sexual behaviour in America. And in it, he claimed that 4% of males were exclusively homosexual and 10% had some period where their primary sort of sexual proclivity was homosexual. And he claimed that 37% of people have had at least one homosexual experience By that homosexual experience, he allowed that to be even just a passing thought, once off, or a dream, or something like that. And though his findings have subsequently been shattered and dismissed as un-factual, and baseless. Kinsey’s report has been seminal in opening people’s minds not just to the possibility, but to the idea of the prevalence of homosexual activity. And this idea of the 10% has become, as it were, an urban myth. It’s suddenly become, it’s become orthodox, but it simply isn’t true.
In 1994, a rigorous survey done by the Social Organization of Sexuality in America claimed that 2.8% of men and 1.4% of women were exclusively homosexual. Wellings report, not that long ago, on sexual behaviour in Britain, showed that that we had a much lower incidence of homosexuality with only 1% of men and 0.5% of women being exclusively homosexual. Whilst homosexual experience, there may have been more of it around, it tended to be relatively isolated and generally a passing event. But it is fair to speak, I think, of a spectrum of sexuality and the vast majority of people will be heterosexual in their appetite, and in their actions and so on. And then there is a minority who will be exclusively homosexual, and then the rest in between will be somewhere along that spectrum, and depend upon nurture, dependent upon exigencies and experiences in life. It will move them, and sometimes they’ll oscillate somewhere along that spectrum.
I want us to think also, that’s just setting the facts straight, about the social and political context of homosexuality in my lifetime. I was born in 1966. I know I seem more mature and look younger, but that’s when I was born. There has been a real paradigm shift in our attitude to homosexuality. Previously, we were insulated by the sort of residue of a unique Judeo-Christian sexual ethic here in the West and in particular, in Great Britain, and this has collapsed in the late 20th century.
The late 1960s saw an intellectual and a social shift into what’s called a postmodern era. There was a rejection of the sort of canons and and the things that drove the Enlightenment, the pursuit of absolute truth, the working out of reason. And these things were rejected for various social and intellectual reasons, and they were replaced by relativism. Absolutes went, relativism came in. Everything was suddenly sort of DIY, you know, B&Q, pick and mix, and all that sort of thing. And that was applied not just to one’s leisure activities, but to one’s, you know, pleasure and one’s sexuality. Suddenly everything became a shade of grey, and we find ourselves in a kind of social context where intellectually it is acceptable to design one’s own ethic. And intellectually it is not acceptable to prescribe some form of absolute ethic.
In 1967, the Sexual Offences Act, which had declared that homosexual sex was illegal, was repealed, and homosexual acts between two consenting adults in private was made legal for the over 21-year-olds. Since then, the homosexual lobby have sought to reduce that law and change it on two key occasions. And now the age of consent for homosexual sex is 16, with safeguards to protect those who are under 18, from any sort of abuse from authority figures.
And though the homosexual community are a very small minority, they have a very powerful lobby. In just 35 years, they have totally changed the law and totally changed public opinion. So, for example, in 1997, a gay lobby organisation called Outrage had a campaign for full equality and justice on this issue. They sent 1 million postcards to this effect, to the Prime Minister, a million of them. They bombarded him with their claims. The recent struggle has been, we’ve seen it in the news in the last few months, to have homosexual partners accorded the same legal and financial privileges and rights as a heterosexual marriage spouse, but just because something is no longer illegal, doesn’t mean to say it is no longer immoral. And just because society’s opinion has changed, that doesn’t mean to say that God’s opinion has changed. In fact, God’s opinion never changes because he’s perfect. To imply change implies that he’s not perfect. What God has said is what God thinks. And God, as we will see, has said what He thinks about this.
The homosexual lobbyists have succeeded remarkably to the extent that anyone who may feel, on scientific, social, psychological, academic, or medical grounds, that the rightness of homosexuality is questionable, they are, they feel a sense of intimidation into silence. We’ve all felt it; to be thought homophobic, to be labeled, that is, to incur some form of social and intellectual vilification.
An insight into some of the tactics of some of the more powerful and persuasive lobbying of the gay community, was seen about 50 years ago with the American Psychiatric Association. The American Psychiatric Association had a handbook in which it declared that homosexual orientation and actions were the result of emotional or psychotic problems, that it was an emotional or a psychotic condition that could be treated. In 1970, at the APA annual conference, it was subject to gay activists who stood outside placarding and shouting and disrupting the meetings. This happened again in 1971, where they actually got inside the meeting, stole the microphone and didn’t allow the meetings to continue. Before the 1973 meeting, members of the APA, the leaders of the conference, met with the leaders of the gay lobby and they (the gay lobby), said,
‘We will picket your meeting every year. You will not be able to have it unless you scrap this condition from the book.’
So, they scrap the condition from the book in 1973, based on political and lobbying pressure.
And then it was no longer a recognised clinical condition, although interestingly, some years later they sent out a survey to the 10,000 members of the American Psychiatric Association. And of those who replied, I think about 2500 of them, 68% said, (2500 of 10,000 is not 68% but 20% -editors note.)
‘We still believe this is a psychotic or a neurotic disorder that needs treatment, but we’re no longer allowed to have that in the book.’
The church is one of the last domains where distinctions are made on the basis of sexuality, and she is a real target for the gay lobbies, and several denominations have already succumbed to this. And now there’s many, several denominations, mainline denominations, permit practising active homosexuals to be ministers. And the Church of England, which has held the line on this, is now here in England, although throughout the Anglican Communion it’s given up. So, in some places she’s under great pressure to follow the trend. And essentially, we need to understand that for the homosexual community, discrimination on the basis of sexual proclivity, you know what the Bible says is irrelevant. This is a matter of justice. This is a matter of human rights.
Okay. Well, that’s just a bit of kind of social political background to the context we find ourselves in.
What about the question of causation? Where does it come from? Why are people homosexual? Well, let me give three suggestions, that are normally presented. First is scripture.
It didn’t come from Scripture. The scriptural analysis. Romans 1 v 18 to 27. Romans 1 v 18 to 27, (and I’m going to come back to this), is the only text which carries both a description and a prohibition, and a claim and a suggestion, of a causation to homosexuality. And the argument is quite difficult, it has to be admitted. But the basic argument appears to say, and appears to link homosexuality and lesbian acts with idolatry. And Paul chooses homosexuality, because this was so normative and so prevalent in a Greco-Roman culture. And he says that homosexuality is an archetype. It is a fundamental symbol of rebellion against God, and against God’s divine order revealed in creation. And so if we read this Romans one, it says Paul speaks about an exchange, and this word comes up three times.
There is an exchange of God for idolatry. (verse 22). Okay, we have forsaken the glory of God for idols. Secondly, he says in verse 25, there is an exchange of truth for a lie. We’ve given up on God. We’ve taken idols. We then give up on truth. We then take deception or lies. And the consequence of this is that there is an exchange of natural, for unnatural sexual acts. Professor of ethics, Thomas Schmidt, from America says: Homosexual acts are revolting, because they epitomise, in sexual terms, man’s revolt against God.
And so what Paul seems to be saying in this passage is that homosexuality is a type, the outworking of a life that has deviated from God’s natural design and order. That has deviated from God’s decree. And as a consequence, there is idolatry, and there is a form of sexual immorality contrary to God’s design. So, Scripture posits that as one causation, then what about nature?
Many people have sought to find some form of genetic or organic determinism for this. You’re a homosexual. You have homosexual appetites because that’s what you are. And so, in 1991, a chap called Levi claimed that there were slight differences in the homosexual brain compared to the heterosexual one. He argued that one specific area of the hypothalamus of the homosexual brain, was smaller than that in heterosexual males, and corresponded to the size of the hypothalamus in female brains. And they said,
‘Oh, here it is. It’s all to do with connections in the brain between left and right or something and parts of the brain.’
But subsequent studies have completely dismissed that. And yet it becomes an urban myth.
In 1993, Haymer claimed that statistical evidence showed that a disproportionate number of homosexual men had homosexual uncles on their maternal side, and he posited that there was some form of a kind of chromosomal link that came through the mother’s side and into the, you know, the son. And yet. Similar studies again, simply say this is not true, ontologically, physiologically, we know that there is simply male and female, and 1 in 1,000,000 hermaphrodites, but they’re essentially male and female. That is what we are. That is one sex. That is one’s gender. There is no third category that we can find, you know, empirically to say ‘this is homosexual’. Irving Bieber, who wrote a classic text on this, said every homosexual is a latent homosexual.
Interestingly, even the homosexual community don’t want you to find some kind of organic or chemical or genetic code, you know, a cell for homosexuality. They want it to be a matter of personal life choice. And so, Darryl Yates, (Rist?), of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance, has called this pursuit of a genetic, or the argument for a genetic basis to it, ‘An expedient lie’. This is the postmodern era. You pick and mix, you do what you want, and then there’s nurture. And this, I think, is the core to it.
Gustav Jung said the homosexual man is not able to find the manliness deep within himself. Thus, he tries to find it on a biological and sexual level. Freud said homosexuality is rooted in overprotective mothers and punitive or absent fathers. Richard Cohen, who is a psychotherapist, has written widely on this and is himself, or was himself, a practising homosexual, but is now married and come into wholeness sexually. So, this; the homosexual love need, is essentially a search for parenting.
What the homosexual seeks to fulfil; our normal needs for bonding, that have been abnormally unmet in the process of growth, and so one often finds in, say, a homosexual male that there is a sense of inadequacy and inferiority, especially in young men in regards to other men. They feel weaker. They don’t fulfil the stereotype of what a young macho man should have. They feel different. They’re not like other lads.
I was talking recently to a chap who’s now changed, to be a priest, and was part of a homosexual community for ten years before coming out of it, being delivered, being transformed by Christ Jesus, and now wanting me to set him up with girlfriends. And he told me that at school he said he was the class weed. He felt weak, he didn’t feel like others, but he wanted to be like others. And somehow, as he went through puberty, he realised that there was this strange mixing of a desire to be more like men, mixed up with his sexuality through puberty. And suddenly he came to want those men, from wanting to be like them. He came to want them, and somehow there was a form of sort of “sexual cannibalism”.
‘By having sex with them, I was somehow gaining their maleness for me because I don’t feel like a man.’
So, we see, for example, a failure at key pubic stages to have appropriate gender role models. It could be an absent or an abusive or a weak father. And this might drive a young, resentful, or fearful, or a young man who feels a sense of alienation with his peers, to identify more with his mother. And they might develop then an unhealthy, effeminate gender identity rather than a masculine one. Or maybe, you’ve got a young man who begins to idolise other men, subsequently substituting, as I said, and craving their maleness for his own, or maybe another young man, subconsciously replacing his felt deprivation of a father, by becoming attracted to an older man.
I was talking a while ago with a young man who was part of the homosexual community, and we had a long chat, a really good chat with this dear man. And there he was, he was in his early 20s, but he told me he had a predilection for men who were in their 50s, the sort of age his father would be. That’s who he went with. And I said, ‘Well, tell me about your father’.
‘Oh, I grew up without a father’.
And suddenly and, you know, it just seems so obvious. And I said to him,
‘You know, to me this seems fairly obvious. You’re just longing for a dad.’
And he said,
“Well, whatever the cause, this is where I’m at, and thank you very much. I’m enjoying it.”
I believe that this emotional craving for a masculine identification at a key time in one’s pubic development can become a chemical and physiological craving, as the brain is formatted through sexual experience. When one who has that emotional desire, and all that pubic confusion, and all of that stuff going on, and then one has a “few fumbles and a sexual fumble” and suddenly the brain is formatted, the brain is programmed. It says, – ‘this makes you feel better’.
It makes you feel better about yourself. And suddenly one is into a kind of chemical programming. And so, what I believe with homosexuality, especially with men, what begins as nurture, soon, because of experience, becomes second nature. And when they say, ‘Look, this is who I am, this is part of who I am.’
We say, ‘Yeah, that’s certainly how the brain is’. It becomes a form of kind of chemical addiction.
Well, that’s three suggestions towards the causation.
What about the challenge to homosexuality? Well, have you got your Bibles? Let’s turn to them. Primarily, we as Christians are committed to God’s revelation in Scripture, and God has not left us ignorant of his opinion on these matters. Underlying the biblical perspective on homosexuality, are the foundational creation texts in Genesis 1 v 26, he made them, says God, in his image. He made them male and female. And then in 2 v 18, where God takes from Adam and creates Eve. And these support the divine design of a male and female monogamous relationship.
God puts them at the beginning. Genesis This is the beginning, and this is the basis for human relationships and society. And one could spend an hour just on these texts, and I’ve got about 2 minutes or 1 minute. Jesus and Paul, incidentally, both refer to these texts as foundations, for their instructions on sexual ethics. No suitable helper is found for Adam. So, God doesn’t make another Adam. God makes an Eve, and Eve is God’s divinely designed and presented helper, – help-meet, the one who stands alongside. The one who complements, the one who fulfils Adam, and they are fulfilled. And she is the one who is both the suitable partner, and also the sexual partner. And the two go together. It goes on and says and they were naked. And then it talks about leaving and cleaving and becoming one flesh.
The point is that God has designed, and God has decreed the most perfect, suitable fit, and that is a woman for a man, and a man for a woman. Male and female sexual relations are more than just kind of pragmatic. They are prophetic. A husband and wife together are prophetic. In Genesis 1, v26, it says He made them in his image. He made them male and female. And there is something about man and woman together, which speaks prophetically, and analogously of God in his own being. So, a man and woman, as God designed, is somehow an ontological analogy of God’s ontology. Okay? They reflect God’s being in their union, man and woman, two becoming one flesh, where there is mutuality, reciprocity, unity, and yet individuality. They model something of the same in God, his father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who knows himself in distinction, unity, and yet distinction.
And so a key interpretation, and theological undergirding, for our understanding of sexuality, must be the Trinity distinction, yet reciprocity and unity. Okay, not conformity. And so when we have a man with a man, or a woman with a woman, what we are seeing is not only is it not God’s design and best suitable partner, but we are seeing something that is in a sense idolatrous. It is something that is in a sense blasphemous. It is something that subverts what God has consecrated and ordained to be an analogy of the unity and diversity of the Godhead. Are you with me? Get the tape and follow it up. So, a marriage of man and woman speaks of God. A union of man and man, or woman and woman, subverts the image of God.
Then we’ve got the text in Leviticus. Everyone knows this text. Leviticus 18, verse 22 says,
‘You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female. It is an abomination.’.
And then two chapters, on, in 20, v 13 it says, Here’s the consequence,
‘If a man lies with another man as he would lie with a woman, he should be put to death.’
That was part of the Jewish law. But the interpretation of that seems fairly unequivocal.
Now, an objection is often made, and one hears this. Well, it was on Newsnight last week, week before last. It’s often made out that we are selective in citing these texts, but not others in Leviticus, which treat matters of diet and clothing. But the fact is the Old Testament law is very clear. There are three divisions. There is the ceremonial law, there is the civil law, and there is the moral law. Okay? And many of these things about dress and about diet are to do with ceremonial or civil law, but they are not to do with moral law.
How do we know this? When we get to Acts Chapter 15, verse 20, at the Council of Jerusalem, we see that when the report is given that Gentiles are becoming Christians, the instruction of these Jewish apostles is not, ‘They’ve got to obey all the law’. It says they’re freed from all the law, except those that pertain to idolatry and those that pertain to immorality. But don’t worry about eating all the food, and what they should dress, and whether they should be circumcised, and all of that stuff. – that’s civil, that’s ceremonial, but the moral, they stick by. No idols and no questionable morals.
We’ve already noted Romans 1 v 26 to 27. Let me just say a bit more about this here. Homosexual and lesbian sexual acts are Paul’s illustration. They’re an archetype of rebellion against God and of a world gone mad. It goes mad leaving God for idols. It goes mad leaving truth for a lie. It goes mad by leaving natural relations for unnatural. And Paul here in verse 18 calls it ‘Ungodliness unrighteousness and the suppression of truth’. He says homosexual acts, and he emphasizes ‘acts’, verse 26, are dishonorable, unnatural, and shameless.
And Paul makes it clear, that the sort of homosexual acts that are described here, because people say, ‘Well, there’s this particular sort’. People say it’s paederasty. It’s older men with, you know, younger boys or it’s just prostitution that’s at stake. No. Paul makes it clear that it’s wilful. They exchanged, there’s an act of the will. It’s volitional. He says it’s consensual with each other. It’s not someone abusing another one. It’s with each other. It’s mutual. It’s consensual. He says it’s unnatural, paraphrasis, against nature, and he says it’s ultimately harmful. You will receive in your body the due penalty, whatever he means by that.
Some people contend that the unnatural here, refers to gay men having heterosexual sex, or rather, heterosexual men having gay sex. But it’s very clear, the text is very clear on this, that the unnatural relations, contrary to nature, are based on a passion that both men have for each other. A member of the same sex. So, this is nothing to do with sex outside of your own particular taste. These are men who have a passion for sex with men, and women who have a passion for sex with women. There is no way that one can read into that, as many seek to do in this current debate, that this is somehow people acting against their nature – Well, it’s unnatural if a heterosexual has sex with a homosexual or something like that – why would you do it anyway? Why would Paul base such an argument on it?
It is also contended that Paul here is condemning Paederasty, which is, as I’ve said, sex with young men. But the Greek emphasizes mutuality, passion of men with men. And incidentally, the reference to women having sex with women makes it clear that there’s nothing here to do with paederasty.
There are a couple of other verses. One Corinthians 6 v 9 to 10. Here it says,
‘The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.’
And the NIV is wrong. Here it says male prostitutes nor homosexuals. There are two words here in the Greek. One is Malakoi, the other is Arsenokoitai. Malakoi, literally means soft, or effeminate. And according to Bauer, Arndt and Gingrich’s Greek lexicon, which is the definitive work on the matter, (cost £87.50), he says this is where a person is a passive partner who, quote, allows himself to be abused.
But there’s a decision. There’s volition. The second word is arsenokoitai. Arsen means male. Koité means bed or sex. And this refers to a more dominant partner in the sex act. And so Paul says those who practice homosexuality, you know, the dominant, or the or the passive, whatever. They are unrighteous and in their actions, if they continue in them, will not enter the kingdom of heaven. We also see this in 1 Timothy, 1 v 9 and 10, for your notes, and I ain’t got time to go into it.
I’ve already mentioned that my brother is ‘a homosexual’ and I remember sitting with him once. He took me out for dinner and I said,
‘Oliver, I said, why don’t you go to one of those churches that welcome and, you know, a very tolerant about gay sex, you know, a liberal Catholic sort of church?’
Now, I wasn’t trying to be a hypocrite and a fudge. I just thought I was being pragmatic, get him in a church, get him in a context of grace, get him in a place of worship, get him having the weekly Eucharist and maybe God will get him free.
And he just replied to me. He said, ‘Simon, I can read the Bible. I know what it says’.
My brother’s not a hypocrite.
This week I was with a dear friend of mine who is also practising homosexual, runs one of the college lesbian and gay societies, and we meet every week for coffee. He’s a great friend, and I really love him. And he asked me. I’ve never shown him after a long, long time, many, many times in meeting, he said,
‘What does the Bible say?’
I said, ‘Well, do you really want to know?’
He said, ‘Yeah’.
I said, ‘Well, I’m not sure’.
He said, ‘No, I want to know. Show me the verses, because maybe they’re ambiguous’.
So I opened up the Bible and I just, I didn’t comment on them. I said, ‘Here they are’.
And he read them very slowly, very carefully. He’s a very intellectual young man. And he finished it. He said,
‘Well, there’s no mistake in that, is there?’
I believe that only an a priori liberal commitment to the legitimacy of gay sex, and a casuistic slippery treatment of the texts, often which are incomprehensible in their argumentation to a trained Exegete, can evade and avoid the plain and clear meaning of the text. You could not read that out of the text, but you might be able to read it into it, – the biblical argument.
There are several other arguments. I’ll just give you headings. I haven’t got time to go into them. There is the traditional argument. This argument says, for a thousand years of Jewish history before the church came along, followed by 2000 years of Christian history, we’ve had these texts and the texts have consistently by the church fathers, and by the Jewish rabbis, and have been interpreted in the way I’ve just interpreted them as a prohibition against homosexual activity. And what we are being asked to swallow is that over 3000 years of consistent hermeneutics which apply the text as I’ve applied them; to prohibit gay sex, – are wrong. And now in the last 35 years, suddenly they’ve found the key, which actually means that they say the very opposite of what they say. And gay sex is permissible. And we say, we stand with, we’d rather stand with tradition and people who want to read the plain meaning of the text, rather than the 35 year old liberal view.
There is an argument of teleology. This is the argument from purpose and design. And, you know, as one bishop said on Newsnight, ‘The penis fits with the vagina.’ There are problems philosophically with some of the argument, but essentially it boils down to; that if one were a Darwinian determinist, one would conclude that homosexuality is a devolution of the species. Because if everyone were to be exclusively homosexual without the intervention of IVF, or science, or having to have sex against one’s own nature, with someone of the opposite sex, humanity would be extinct in one generation. And so I believe, that somehow inherent in homosexuality is a contradiction to life.
Ther is a medical argument. We make a value judgment against smoking. We make a value judgment against alcoholism. But I tell you, to be actively homosexual is to bring upon oneself physiologically, a whole host of illnesses, – to reduce one’s life span significantly, just ask an actuary, to have an increased likelihood of liver disease, hepatitis B, HIV, frequently fatal rectal and other cancers, bowel and other infectious diseases, and a much higher risk of suicide.
People say, well, that’s just because society doesn’t accept them. (laughs), No, society doesn’t accept the church.
Then there’s the psychological, which I haven’t got time to go in. But what I want to say is this, knowing that the consequence of a homosexual lifestyle leads to so much physical and psychological turmoil for that individual. Who would want to encourage someone in that? The loving thing, surely, is not to bless them in that, but to throw them a lifeline. And we as the church, that’s what we seek to do. We seek to reach out with the love of Christ and say,
‘Let us lead you to wholeness. Let us lead you to freedom. Let us lead you to be the person God has made you to be and called you to be. Come from the darkness into the light. Come into wholeness. And it’s through the cross. It’s through the blood of Jesus and the Spirit.’
Let me just finish with some headings. This is my last point. Just a few headings and then I’ll shut up. I started by saying ‘We love you homosexuals’, and God loves homosexuals. When it says in John 3 v 16,
‘God so loved the world that he sent his son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but should have everlasting life.’
He says he sent his son not to condemn the world, but to save it. Homosexuals are part of that world, a small part, but they’re a part of it and an important part. And God loves them.
My friend, not my friend, but someone who I’ve had quite a bit of correspondence with over the years and who deeply moved me. This is a chap called Martin Hallett, who runs True Freedom Trust, which is a ministry to help young men struggling with homosexuality to come into freedom. I once asked him, I said,
‘Do homosexuals need to be delivered? Is this a demon?’
I mean, this was a long time ago. I’ve subsequently read a lot more, and met a lot more. And he just said,
‘Yes, they do.’
But he said,
‘You don’t, it’s not some gay spirit, not a camp spirit or something like that.’
He said they need deliverance from a spirit of rejection, because essentially, they rejected themselves, or perceived themselves rejected by their parents. Whether they were or not, is a different matter, but they perceived it. So, there’s a perceived rejection and all that craving, and that neurotic compulsive disorder of sexual grabbing is to feed that sense of rejection.
And he says, ‘So we deliver them from a spirit of rejection.’
The problem is, so often the church puts another spirit of rejection on them. And we need to repent as a church. And we need to say, ‘Come, we love you.We welcome you. Come bring all your baggage. And I’ll tell you some of my baggage. And let’s together come to the cross’.
I believe the church must be a place where homosexuals are welcomed. And that this particular sin is not paraded. I don’t think it really is paraded, but there is a perception it is. So, we have to be very careful that we don’t single out this one sin. Incidentally, nowhere in scripture singles out this one sin, even in Romans, it goes on to talk about anger and judgement. So, this sin is always part of a list and God doesn’t isolate this one and say this is a real biggie. He says, you, you’re proud, arrogant so-and-so. That’s even bigger.
I have a friend who’s a vicar, a diocese missionary in Manchester. He says that he wants to put a big sign over the church saying, ‘All homosexuals are welcome’.
He says, ‘let’s have a chat’.
He said, ‘Let’s have a church, let’s have a service for them. Let’s just let them know we’re here, because they don’t believe it, and we need to let them know. Okay’.
Second, the church must be a safe place where people have time to work through to freedom. There are various organisations that seek to help people come through to sexual freedom, invariably run by people who were themselves homosexual. The idea that it’s nature, is simply not true. It’s nurture. But you can undo the nurture by the power of the spirit, and re nurture them into the image of Christ, as God intended them to be. And we need to be a place that sets people free. And I think that we need to be a place where there’s grace for slip ups, not condemnation.
Gay folk need positive male non-erotic friendships, where they belong and where they are encouraged. We need to foster something like with David and Jonathan, who talked of his extraordinary love for Jonathan. We need to foster that. We men need to work out how to do it. We’re not very good at it. But I think it’s a gospel issue.
The church must actively resist homophobia where it exists. I haven’t found much of it in the church, but it is there. And sometimes I see bits of it in my own soul. But we must resist it and bring and submit that to the the control of the love of Christ. I believe the church must out love the resentment and the anger, and the pain that many homosexuals feel. As we’ve said, it’s rooted in rejection, and we need to out-love it. We need to show more love, that just subsumes all that pain and rejection that they feel. But ultimately, loving, means to challenge with the truth. And to bring that spiritual surgery, that sets them free from that sickness that is there.
The church must be true to her biblical norms and sources, and we simply do not accommodate ourselves to a prevailing worldview. God sets the worldview for the church, not the world. And God has spoken. And you need to realise that when Moses gave his sexual ethic 3000 years ago, that was counterculture. And you need to realise that when Paul spoke out against homosexuality 2000 years ago, that was counterculture. And when we speak out against it today, it will be counterculture. But the kingdom is counterculture, and the Kingdom of God turns things that are upside down, right side up. And that’s what we’re about.
More things: The church must challenge the prevailing worldview. That which I think is like, ‘copula, ergo sum’. I don’t know if that’s right, but ‘I have sex therefore I am.’ And we need to say, actually, no, my identity is not in my sexuality. Jesus was a perfect man, a perfect human in every way, and yet went through life as a virgin. So, identity is, you know, I don’t have to be sexually active. And our identity is not in our sexuality. We need to teach that, and inculcate that it’s not whether I am, or I’m not having great sex. It’s whether I know that I am a child of God, redeemed and accepted in the beloved. That’s the more important worldview we must inculcate.
And lastly, the church needs to be a place of hope, where those who battle with this lifestyle orientation can be shown the way out. And there is a way out, we want to out the gays who are out. We want to get them out of it and help them out of it and lead them out of it through the cross, through Christ, through the power of the spirit, reformatting the nurture and nature that’s gone wrong. One Corinthians 6 v 11 talks about, lists homosexuality, and then it says, ‘Such were some of you.’ Tense – ‘You no longer are’. ‘Such were’. Christ sets people free. Christ makes people whole. He’s doing it for me. He’s doing it for you. And he can do it for the whole world outside our doors.
This week I told you I was with this friend of mine who’s a homosexual. Just a dear guy. And I told you we were looking at all these verses and he said,
‘Yeah, it was fairly clear’.
And then I wanted to find another one. So, I went to the back of the Bible where there’s a concordance, and I was looking up in the H’s for homosexuality. Next door were the L’s. And he said to me,
‘Look at all that love.’
There were three words for homosexuality in my concordance. There are about 300 on love. And I think we need that kind of a balance in our church. Amen. Amen?
*applause*
Thank you, Simon, so much. Well, let’s just reflect on that as we sing our closing hymn. We’re going to, as we finish the service, just be available to talk with people on Wednesday. We had a very good question and answer session, which we can’t have today, but we’re available to talk. We also offer prayer for those who would like prayer for any subject. As usual, we have a good prayer team who are trained to pray. So that’s what we want to do as we finish this service. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your attentiveness. Please remain prayerful and faithful, and I just want to underline this wonderful, wonderful sense that comes out of one Corinthians 6 that Simon just quoted. He’s talking about all these things that can go on that affect our nature, our lifestyle. And then he says, “and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God.” Let’s just stand up and thank God that he is the one who washes us and makes us holy and gives us His Holy Spirit..
There are so many problems with the academic, intellectual, scholarly, theological, and pastoral reasoning and lack of integrity in this sermon, it is almost hard to know where, or best to begin.
Such a sermon needs to be analysed simultaneously through multiple disciplines, including its theology, its pastoral implications and impact, and the wider effects of this sermon upon the local and national church, and lastly upon its part in writing history. This is not even a comprehensive list through which to analyse the sermon and Simon’s position.
The sermon is divided into three parts, of roughly equal length, and they, to a large degree, depend upon each other for their integrity, or rather lack thereof. Each supposedly informs and builds the argument of the other, in reality, the twisting of history, theology and psychology in each part, totally undermines the whole sermon.
The nature of ‘Absolute Truth’ in a pick and mix world.
One of the main and blatantly obvious psychodynamics of this sermon; it is a gross example of self-exaltation, achieved by the demonisation and scapegoating of ‘others’, in this case, a much maligned, oppressed, and vulnerable people group, the LGBTQIA+ community. In doing so Simon elevates his own righteousness, holiness, and authority. This is done, in part by the bold proclamation that he, (Simon Ponsonby) is the oracle or avatar of the divine message; ‘absolute truth’. There is no sense of humility or self-reflection on his part, either upon his own very limited understanding, his own deeply sinful nature; the conservative evangelical notion of the human heart (even his own), being wicked and deceitful and bent towards pride. He perpetuates here, the myth of the holiness and divine authority of the Priesthood, the ordained, and of his own position – as being somehow able to contain this ‘absolute truth’. The self-exaltation is not just an idolatry itself; it is the desperate attempt of a dying tradition of theology and ecclesiology to maintain its power and control over the church, and over the already oppressed; to control the beliefs, behaviours, and bodies of those who are his subjects.
This is the myth that the Priesthood are the guardians of their ‘absolute truth’. His fear of the post-modern era is that it has seen the erosion of patriarchal truth, by virtue of the sciences. When they talk, as Simon does here of ‘absolute truth’ it is coded language for the justification of their own ultimate authority, power, and control over the church. What they, and Simon fear, as being the immoral, unethical soup of post-modern relativism, is in fact the encroachment of the sciences, and the truth of science, and human experience, praxis, and wisdom, upon their own authority, which they claim is a manifestation of their absolute truth.
If their absolute truth, is not absolute truth, then their authority is lost. As I and others will show, Simon in his sermon here is not teaching or preaching absolute truths, but a very poor manipulation of truth, in history, theology and psychology. Whilst he points the finger at the ‘liberalism and relativism’ of modern theology, informed by both science, praxis, and human experience, labelling it ‘a pick and mix’ of whatever truths you choose to believe, he is indulging exactly this ‘pick and mix’ approach to truth, in his own versions of history, theology, and psychology. It is a shameless hypocrisy of the worst possible kind, because he is using his failure to apply academic, intellectual, scholarly rigour and discipline to the arguments he presents as ‘absolute truth’, and he is doing so, in order to exalt his own authority as a theologian, preacher and teacher and stigmatise, demonise, pathologize an already marginalised, vulnerable and oppressed people group.
This is a priest, using his considerable privilege, platform, and huge influence within his own tribe, to curse another people group, as a community and as individuals. I will return to his use of cursing towards the end of this critique.
The Dunning Kruger Effect.
To achieve this self-exaltation at the expense of others, there are two obvious contributing factors. The first is known within psychological analysis, as the Dunning Kruger syndrome or effect. This syndrome afflicts many who assume themselves to be experts or authorities in one field, science, or discipline; to believe they are therefore an authority in other sciences or disciplines. They may not even be an expert or authority in their own discipline. What matters in the psychoanalysis of the Dunning Kruger syndrome, is that they believe they are an expert and authority. This self-belief corrupts both their true analysis of their own ability, and their character, they believe themselves and their understanding, to be greater than they are.
I have heard Simon preach many, many times, and one of his biggest failings and weaknesses, has been a continual dismissal of the liberal theology and theologians of the last thirty years, often men and women of far greater intellectual, academic, scientific, and scholarly rigour, research, and theological depth than his own. I have heard him dismiss with disdain, liberal theology, theologians, and thought, too often. This is rooted in several things, Simon’s personal insecurities, the frailty of his arguments, and again the attempt to exalt himself, and his own understanding, as being greater, better than theirs, and, as he claims in this sermon, that he is preaching ‘absolute truth’ inferring all else is lies.
The Hermeneutics behind the Sermon.
Behind Simon’s dismissal of the theology, and the science, disciplines, and scholarly rigour of the last thirty years, are his own hermeneutics. Simon’s theology is rooted in the Anglican tradition of ‘Scripture, Tradition and Reason’. As such, there is a consistent refusal on his part to acknowledge the reality and rapid advancement within most sciences, and of the development of the sciences by virtue of technology, medicine, research, and the knowledge sharing that has created such rapid advances; the world wide web, or information highway.
A Reformation of Protest against a dying Patriarchy.
The church is going through a Reformation, in its theology and practise, every bit as great as the Protestant Reformation. This time the reformation is being technology and science led. Simon is still abiding in the mindset and theology of modernism, an almost equivalent anachronism, as being unable to see the significance of the printing press in reforming theology and the church during the first protestant reformation. He is part of a second reformation of protest, yet seems unable to grasp that science is truth, as much as his version of theology might be truth.
The Reformation may have felt it had dispensed with the Pope and a Magisterium, but the Pope was not replaced by the sole authority of, ‘Sola Sciptura’, but by the interpretation of ‘Sola Scriptura’ in the hands, hearts and minds of tens of thousands of little popes; the pastors and priests. Each six-foot above contradiction, in their pulpits. These are the days of transparent Perspex pulpits, which we accept, as if they subliminally suggest a transparency in the preachers position, a shift from didactic authoritarianism? A hint at vulnerability, or learning together?
Not a chance. The preacher preaches, the church claps in obedience and acquiescence.
Theology is often referred to as the queen of the sciences, and is highly dependent upon them all, if it is to be truly authoritative. Simon’s misuse of history and science, as Charlie Bell has already pointed out, is abysmal.
In each of Simon’s three sections of, history, theology, and psychology, he indulges both flawed science, history, and experience, to substantiate his argument, whilst his reasoning in each is deeply flawed, if not deliberately, and intentionally skewed to favour his presupposed starting point.
This is the preaching, teaching and theology of someone trapped in the cyclical, closed circuit/heart and mind thinking of their own tribe, echo chamber, and his closely guarded and sealed bubble and church subculture; the dogmatic of a very narrow school of theologians, priests, and pastors. As such it lacks any ability to be either self-reflective and aware, or self-critical, the kind of blindness that stops one seeing the gaping holes and flaws in one’s own argument. Someone too frightened to admit that they might be wrong, or to the use contextual analysis of a much wider sphere of disciplines and sciences, by which to reflect on their own limited vision, opinion, findings, and understandings. Simon here suffers a classic case of Dunning Kruger syndrome.
The use of professional oratory and rhetoric skills.
One last glaring dissonance which jars heavily upon many listeners who are either LGBTQIA+ or allies, to the extent it leaves one almost stunned in unbelief, is the chasm between Simon’s compassionate tone of voice and delivery, and the words of hate he uses to describe us. I was dumbfounded on first hearing this sermon, and have had to go back and study it, several times over, to begin to understand how such a gulf could exist in a person’s lack of self-awareness and reasoning, to find an explanation for it.
Ponsonby’s tone, oozes compassion. This draws the listener and audience in, because it soothes the listener, making them believe this is God’s heart of compassion, being reflected by the preacher and teacher. I know the preacher well, perhaps better than many. In every other sermon I have heard him preach I know this to be a genuine and authentic reflection of his heart. Simon is a man of deep compassion.
I am so shocked and sickened by this sermon and its content, that I have had to question whether in this case, the compassion is real, or feigned?
The problem is, whilst the preacher’s voice oozes, and conveys a stance of compassion, his words drip hatred, judgement, condemnation, exclusion, and rejection, towards us as LGBTQIA+ people. Ponsonby is demonizing, stigmatising, and pathologizing us, pouring shame upon us, all in the name, and supposedly for the glory of his God?!
There are two possibilities; either his tone and compassion is genuine and authentic, or it is feigned. Priests have a long history, as masters of rhetoric and oratory, for being able to put on a ‘personal voice of piety’. I have a local priest who does this powerfully, and the gulf between his voice used to lead communion in a worship service, in solemnity, gravity and supposed awe and reverence of God, is a world away from the voice he uses with his mates whilst watching the rugby in his local, they could not be further apart. In one, he is trying to impose reverence of an imagined wrathful God, in the other he is trying to bond with a pub full of working-class labourers and factory workers, (to save them). Neither is authentic. There is a measure of appropriateness, but there is also a measure of acting. In charismatic circles, cultivating a speaking voice of ‘compassion’, is de-riguer. (The charismatic church, is supposedly, all about healing – one has to be seen as being compassionate, for a congregation to trust the preacher as God’s instrument of healing.) Yet this cultivated voice becomes natural with repetition, and with enough hours in the pulpit, as natural as flying a plane.
Welcome to the new church order of platform and celebrity speakers, it is an art form, and religious theatre, at its very best and worst.
Saving Gays from Hell? A theology?
The other alternative is that Ponsonby is being totally authentic, sincere, and true to himself here. If that is the case, how can he not see that the cursing, hateful words he speaks, to his LGBTQIA+ listeners and their allies, conflicts, and jars totally with the tone of his voice, so much so, as to create both confusion and revulsion in them?
His continual refrain in both introduction and conclusion, of ‘We love you’, simply does not wash, it is meaningless, a clanging cymbal, after we have been so cursed by his authority, power and words.
I happen to believe here that it is not an either/or situation, but that both theories are applicable.
I believe Ponsonby is being sincere and authentic in both his tone and his choice of words, and this is only possible, because he, like so many of his tribal mates, genuinely believes that by converting gay and LGBTQIA+ people to being straight; he/they, are saving us and gay people, from hell.
One of his tribe, former principle of Wycliffe college proclaimed,
‘95% of this nation are going to hell if they don’t have the gospel preached to them’.
Another of Simon’s, ‘mates’ whom he has frequently boasted of being close with is, Ian Paul. Paul on his blog site only this week was enthusing with one of his fans, who wrote in response to his article on Matthew 21,
‘The CoE is chock full of worldly sin lovers who, very often, live lifestyles that God has made clear he will punish with hell-fire.’
These anecdotal snapshots of the church sub-culture Simon Ponsonby belongs to, are of vital importance in understanding him, and his motivations. Whilst Ponsonby and Paul, would perhaps never be so crass, as to preach hell as the final, destiny for those who enjoy same-sex relationships, it is their cultural and theological position and home. Ponsonby was clearly alluding and pointing forwards to hell as the destiny for those who enjoy same-sex relationships, in his recent St Aldates Church, ‘Unscripted’ podcasts. Using Ephesians chapters 4 and 5, and their verses on sexual immorality, to equate that same sex relationships of any kind, are sexual immorality and anyone who enjoys them, therefore cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.
He knows, we all know, that the binary biblical literalism and fundamentalism he is trapped within, inevitably leads to Revelation 21, and the sexually immoral being thrown into hell. Let him tell us otherwise?
If we believe in the eternal separation of those who enjoy same-sex relationships for eternity, then of course, its easy to believe in segregation and separation in the here and now, ‘for the purity of the church’. Yes, these are things some would happily be martyred for, or at least willing to tear the Church of England to pieces over.
For sure, passions run high, and I will, no doubt be reviled as heretic.
Simon sounds so compassionate, and is being compassionate in his preaching of this violently homophobic sermon, because he believes he, as God’s anointed and appointed, is saving us, LGBTQIA+ people, from hell. He has convinced St Aldates Church that it is their mission too.
The applause for this sermon, froze me to the very core of my being.
This sermon is a classic case of ‘messiah complex’ or, ‘white saviour syndrome’. Here, I am using ‘white’ not in any racist sense, but in the long analysis of empire and colonialism, where whiteness has always been understood to be superior. It is self-evident that Simon believes he holds the superior revelation and absolute truth regarding queer people, in the same way colonialists believed their ways, their theologies, their beliefs, were far superior to any indigenous peoples, that they felt duty bound to convert, or erase them, their identities, language, culture and beliefs.
This sermon is homophobia being embedded, maintained, and perpetuated in a parish church.
One of the largest, most successful, student outreach churches in the country.
I don’t know exactly what year this sermon was preached in St Aldates Church, Oxford, except that it is pre-Covid and pre the new Rector, Stephen Foster. What it does do, is create and prove the justification of the 18 years of campaigning against LGBTQIA+ people, their dignity, equality, rights, and spiritual freedom, by the previous Rector, Charlie Cleverly and Simon Ponsonby, as his right hand man and ‘Pastor of Theology’. There is so much evidence of this campaigning, readily available online. Letters, articles in the press and media, both local and national, even a ‘Pray Away the Gay’ conference, all of which confirm the deep prejudice and the ignorance of the church leaderships stance towards us.
The Oxford Student LGBT Societies, Safe Churches Project.
The students who created the Oxford Safe Churches Project, to maintain any kind of objectivity, have to rate churches on the hard evidence of the churches and leaders last available teachings. I think it totally reasonable, rational, and logical, that St Aldates was rated as Red, and a 1, in the light of this homophobic sermon and the podcast teachings.
Until Simon Ponsonby and the new Rector, Stephen Foster make a clear and definitive statement about their theology, beliefs and pastoral policy and practise towards LGBTQIA+ people, we can only assume that this sermon and the podcasts are their normative and operative theology.
It appears to most of us observing closely, that Stephen Foster is employing HTB Network Churches policy of secrecy and silence over St Aldates Church, about their theology and practise, is for the purpose of sucking in as many students as possible, to convert them from their gender, identity, and sexuality, to being heteronormative, and/or celibate.
This sermon is definitive apologetics for conversion therapy, almost identical, but even worse than Gumbel’s Alpha pamphlet on ‘The Christian Attitude to Homosexuality’. Until both are openly and publicly repented of, I remain convinced St Aldates Church is a dangerous place to be if you are LGBTQIA+, believe in the joy of same-sex relationships, and do not want to be sworn to life-long celibacy, or at some stage, suffer coercive teaching and efforts to make you straight?
In my work I frequently work in a pastoral, mentoring role, with young people and students who have been severely wounded, their lives damaged and broken, by spiritual abuse in conservative evangelical churches. Recently I was approached by a student forced to leave one of the cities churches, after hearing teaching, attacking same-sex relationships. They had no idea the churches leadership held such views. They had been affirmed as a gay person in the church, and no-one, even student pastoral staff, had challenged them in their relationship or identity. Hearing the teaching in podcasts, was a total shock, and they felt unsafe and sick. They enjoy a same sex relationship, and their partner has previously experienced very damaging homophobia within a conservative evangelical church.
I began to research a little deeper. I listened to the podcasts. Yes, the teaching would be totally shocking and traumatising if, like this young person, you had been led to believe you were in an inclusive and progressive church.
Six weeks ago, I found a sermon, by the same theologian and preacher. It is Sunday sermon. It is not mildly homophobic, it is violently homophobic. The Oxford Safe Churches Project, created by a team of Oxford students over their summer holidays, rates Oxford churches, according to the last available teaching, statements, letters, and policies they have either heard, or found online. Churches have to be rated not on subjective experience, but hard evidence.
This sermon was so bad, there was no way I could subject the students to it. It made me physically ill, as I spent a week, repeatedly listening to it, to transcribe it, and try and understand the horror of it. I needed some critiques of the sermon, that would take the poison and toxicity from the sermon, before passing it onto the students as evidence.
The first critique of Simon Ponsonby’s homophobic 45 minute Sunday Sermon, applauded by the congregation of St Aldates Church is by someone well qualified to make that critique.
Charlie Bell will need no introduction to many, he is dearly loved, and his book, Queer Holiness, The Gift of LGBTQI People to the Church, has been widely read, and deeply healing, for many of us.
Charlie Bell is a priest and a doctor. He is the John Marks Fellow, College Lecturer, and Director of Studies in Medicine at Girton College Cambridge, a Module Leader for the University of London’s Global MBA programme, and practices as a Specialist Registrar in Psychiatry in South London. He holds a PhD in medical genetics and a Masters in both natural sciences and theology. He is an Associate Tutor and Research Fellow at St Augustine’s College of Theology and serves his title at St John the Divine, Kennington.
Charlie’s Critique of Simon Ponsonby’s homophobic sermon. Written first to help the students of the Oxford Safe Churches Project, but which we all agreed, probably needs to be read, before anyone suffers listening to, or attempting to listen to the sermon.
Unfortunately, this sermon is full of a lot of guff – in many ways, much of the usual guff. However, there are a number of clearly inappropriate uses of science and scientific literature here, and it’s worth addressing those specifically. Some of that is just factually inaccurate, some of it more intentionally (or unintentionally) misleading. To use science correctly in a sermon is laudable – to use it incorrectly is harmful. Of note, this is presented as ‘a lecture looking at anthropology, using studies, research and the Bible’. Unfortunately, it does not deliver.
There are a number of really basic errors presented. He misrepresents Kinsey’s 1937 study which suggested that 37% of his male participants had a homosexual experience. Ponsonby states that Kinsey meant by homosexual experience ‘even just a passing thought’. This is categorically untrue – what was described was ‘a sexual experience leading to orgasm’.[1] Similarly, it is simply not true that his results have been ‘shattered’, shown to be ‘un-factual and baseless’. His use of statistics on homosexuality is scattergun – studies pulled out in an unsystematic way, which do not reflect contemporary thinking or up-to-date epidemiology, and shows little to no critical engagement with the differences between identity and sexual experience (for example, referring to ‘isolated’ ‘passing events’ without any serious engagement with what this means).
His treatment of the biological science in his introduction is near to zero – he talks of ‘nurture and exigencies’ without any clear comment on their relationship with genetics, neurodevelopment, evolutionary biology, psychology, and so on.[2] He also does not make even a limited attempt to tease out the cause of changing social attitudes to homosexuality, referring solely to the influence of a ‘gay lobby’. He argues that scientists and medical professionals speaking from their expert position who think homosexuality is ‘wrong’ have been vilified, without presenting any evidence of who these people are or what their evidence is. He similarly suggests that the APA changed their view in the DSM (diagnostic manual) on homosexuality entirely because of gay lobbyists (‘based on political and lobbying pressure’ – a cursory understanding of history makes clear this is not the case.[3] He is also plain wrong that the referendum of APA members supported ongoing classification of homosexuality within the manual – the APA’s decision was upheld by a 58% majority of returned ballots. His reference to ‘neurotic’ and ‘psychotic’ in the context of the APA is just plain bizarre, and incorrect. More scientifically accurate information is available here.[4]
There are too many factual errors in this presentation to capture them all, but his reference to homosexual ‘orientation and actions’ in APA’s DSM-I as being a ‘psychotic’ or ‘emotional’ problem is egregious. The DSM-I (1952) stated that homosexuality was a ‘sexual deviation’ within the context of ‘sociopathic personality disturbance’ in personality disorders – and DSM-II stated specifically that this was ‘nonpsychotic’. As a psychiatrist, these definitions do not fill me with pride, but for someone to present ‘psychosis’ as the DSM’s understanding of homosexuality is plain wrong.
He goes on to speak about nature and nurture – or rather, tells the listener that he intends to do so. His coverage of nature is extraordinarily thin – footnote two above gives a good source to start proper investigation of this, but he once again selectively and inappropriately chooses particular studies that fit his broad-brush claims. This is a totally unacceptable and unjustifiable misuse of the scientific literature. For example, he states that studies suggesting ‘brain differences’ in homosexuals have been discredited, showing not only an ignorance of the difference between macro- and microscopic differences, or indeed differences at the cellular level, but also an ignorance of the fact that the literature is far from clear on even macroscopic differences.[5] He shows no engagement with genome-wide association studies or any real understanding of how genetic traits, risk, predisposition or gene-environmental interactions occur. This is not unforgiveable for a non-scientist, but to selectively present science like this in such an inappropriate manner in order to back up a preconceived set of ideas is misleading, amateur, and entirely unacceptable.
We hear that ‘physiologically we know that there is male and female, and one in a million hermaphrodites’. This is wrong.[6] We hear that there is male and female, and ‘there is no category we can find to say ‘this is homosexual’’. The sheer lack of intellectual coherence here is staggering – a deliberate (or otherwise) aligning of sex, gender, and sexuality, without even drawing breath. Later we hear of the brain being ‘formatted through sexual experience’ without any evidence being provided. We are told, too, that gay people ‘want this to be a choice’ – again, an assertion without any reference or backing whatsoever. Unfortunately, this is the entire tenor of the sermon – simplistic, uninformed, broad-brush – and wrong.
He then turns to discussion of ‘nurture’, which he introduces by telling us ‘this, I think, is the core to it’. Unfortunately, what follows is a random selection of entirely outdated or discredited psychological literature, or pure anecdote. No reference to scientific understandings of nurture are presented (for example, epigenetics, or brain neurochemistry and anatomical development). Snippets of Jungian and Freudian theory are presented entirely uncritically – theories which, on a wider scale, would be entirely rejected by someone of a similar theology, showing the same old pick and mix process which litters this lecture. Of particular note is the use of Richard Cohen as an exemplar of psychological excellence! Readers may find this rather bemusing.[7]
We then hear Ponsonby’s own prejudices surface, which he presents as theory based entirely on anecdote. He tells us that ‘one often finds inadequacy and inferiority’ in the lives of gay men (once again, the entire lecture seems to focus on men and penises), and suggests that homosexuality may be a form of ‘sexual cannibalism’ (which he states is where male-hero-worship becomes homosexuality). Bizarrely, he also suggests that not only are male role models problematic, but the lack of male role models is also problematic, talking about how there is a ‘failure at key pubic stages’ of role models, and how it is absent, abusive or weak fathers that are likely to be responsible – with no evidence provided, of course. He speaks of ‘unhealthy, effeminate gender identities’ developing – betraying the role of his own prejudice and suggesting that disgust plays a rather large role in his own understanding of homosexuality. The work of Martha Nussbaum is absolutely key here,[8] and it is interesting that he makes reference to gay sex being ‘revolting’. This section on ‘nurture’ dressed up in psychological language is a disgrace.
We hear some of the usual nonsensical pseudoscientific claims used by the most scurrilous to undermine same-sex relationships, such as ‘the penis fits into the vagina’ and the idea that homosexuality is anti-Darwinian (unsurprisingly, there is no engagement with critical scientific understandings of Darwinian evolution or its role in human development). It is, perhaps, a relief that we hear that he does not have time to go into the psychological arguments against homosexuality.
A few pernicious and – frankly – shameful thing are said towards the end of the sermon. Firstly, he makes reference to a ‘medical argument’ against homosexuality, stating ‘to be an active homosexual is to bring upon oneself a whole host of illnesses, to reduce one’s lifespan significantly’ and makes reference to homosexuals frequently suffering from rectal and other cancers. This is a downright lie – a disgraceful one. It is not dissimilar to the absolutely abysmal use of science both earlier in this sermon and in the Robert Gagnon book ‘The Bible and Homosexual Practice’, and Ponsonby should be ashamed of himself.
Yet perhaps more scandalous – and frankly, what suggests this speaker should be considered extremely unsafe around LGBTQI young people – is the denial of the role of stigma and discrimination in the increased suicide risk in LGBTQI young people. He implicitly suggests that it is something about the ‘homosexual lifestyle’ itself that is to blame. This is point blank untrue, as attested to by every serious scientific and psychological organisation (for example[9]). Most chillingly is how he chuckles as he says that of course it can’t be because of stigma, as ‘society doesn’t accept the church’. This is a fundamentally unsafe thing to say.
We then hear the pinnacle of the talk – he rises to a crescendo, stating ‘the consequence of a homosexual lifestyle leads to so much physical and psychological turmoil for that individual’, and suggests that this comes from the ‘rejection or perceived rejection’ felt by gay people. He states that homosexuality is a ‘craving, neurotic, compulsive disorder of sexual grabbing’ that ‘feeds that sense of rejection’, and then ends on a high, suggesting what appears to be conversion therapy, a ‘sexual freedom’ which he has seen in people who ‘were themselves homosexual’, from ‘nature and nurture that have gone wrong’. In so doing, this sermon discredits whatever little credibility is left.
The sermon is a mixture of banal, unconvincing, disreputable, disingenuous and insulting. It is presented as the ‘normative’ and ‘orthodox’ position on homosexuality, despite a recognition by the speaker that such a term didn’t exist prior to a few centuries ago (fascinatingly we hear that St Paul speaks ‘out against homosexuality’, which even in the speaker’s own terms is fallacious rubbish). We hear that God has been very clear in God’s ‘opinion’ on homosexuality (again, a fascinating idea from a whole host of different perspectives), and yet the entire diatribe is couched in inaccurate, inappropriate presentation of science, a clear lack of empathy (despite protestations of loving gay people at the start), and a refusal to recognise the sin of institutional Christianity in the ever present persecution of LGBTQI people.
There is no question at all that such a sermon is damaging and dangerous, with false information presented with confidence by an authority figure. Ponsonby should apologise and I struggle to see how such a person should be granted a license to preach unless the issues referred to here are addressed. This is not about theological disagreement – this is about the active promotion of mistruths by someone who should know better.
[1] As clearly described here from a reputable source, the American Psychological Association, who also offer a more nuanced and reasonable critique of the original paper: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/10/research-kinsey.
Chrissie 