A Middle Ground on LGBT Issues?

In responding to a NY Times opinion piece by Frank Bruni, “The  Worst (and Best) Places to Be Gay in America”, Dr. Mohler answers the author’s complaint that places like Alabama and Texas “don’t exactly brim with love” for LGBT people with the brush-off: “Well ... that’s his language, pointing to this very big moral divide in the country.” That’s the short shrift this Christian gives to love. From listening to Dr. Mohler you wouldn’t guess the actual content of the article. It presents many personal instances in which gay people are made miserable in places that don’t respect them – by expressions of disgust, threats, social exclusion – and contrasts these experiences with those of gays who thrive in places that greet them with acceptance.

Yes, there is a very big divide in the country over the morality of non-heterosexual orientation and behavior. But it seems to me there are really two different kinds of moral disagreement here.  One is over the morality of being LGBT. The other is over how people who identify as LGBT should be treated. Should they be treated with love and respect, or with hatred and disgust? Should it be legal to treat them as pariahs, denying them employment and service in public accommodations, on the basis of their sexual orientation? Or should they be protected from such treatment? These questions are quite apart, it seems to me, from the question of whether homosexuality itself is sinful. In Christian terms, is it virtuous or sinful to make gay people’s lives miserable because you believe they are sinners?

The Times article notes that 28 states don’t have laws protecting LGBT people from discrimination in employment. Dr. Mohler often expresses vehement concern about the supposed dangers that laws protecting LGBT people pose to the rights of Christians. But to my knowledge he never expresses any concern for the suffering LGBT people are subjected to by the discriminatory behavior such laws would prohibit.

Even given our moral divide over sexual morality, it seems to me there is a middle ground we all might be able to agree on – that LGBT people should not be mistreated on the basis of their sexual orientation, and that, as Americans and as human beings, they should be accorded legal protections against such mistreatment. You can continue to tell gays they are living in sin while at the same time recognizing their right to live on an equal footing with others in society.

I would like to hear Dr. Mohler express clearly his position on LGBT non-discrimination employment laws, and his rationale for it.

Awe

Dr. Mohler is fond of claiming that secular people are incapable of accounting for basic features of the human condition, features that can only be explained, according to him, by the Christian worldview. On Tuesday (8/22/17) it was guilt. On Wednesday it was awe. In discussing the eclipse, Dr. Mohler said,

“Frankly, one of the difficult things for Christians is to truly understand that there are people around us, operating out of a secular worldview, who are trying to explain why they feel awe and to whom this kind of awe would be directed if indeed the universe just happened. But of course the universe didn’t just happen and that’s the whole point, and even those who are trying to explain this purely in secular terms found themselves using emotional and even spiritual language because it was just unavoidable.”

Awe is a complex natural human emotion. Here is the opening of the Wikipedia entry on awe:

“Awe is an emotion comparable to wonder but less joyous. On Robert Plutchik's wheel of emotions awe is modeled as a combination of surprise and fear. One dictionary definition is "an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like.  [Examples]: in awe of God; in awe of great political figures.” Another dictionary definition is a "mixed emotion of reverence, respect, dread, and wonder inspired by authority, genius, great beauty, sublimity, or might. [Examples]: We felt awe when contemplating the works of Bach. The observers were in awe of the destructive power of the new weapon." In general, awe is directed at objects considered to be more powerful than the subject, such as the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Grand Canyon, or the vastness of the cosmos.”

It is understandable that a Christian like Dr. Mohler would associate awe with his relationship to God, but awe is not restricted to that unique object. If there is a God, he inspires awe because he has characteristics which naturally inspire awe in humans: he is great and powerful, in comparison to which we feel small and powerless. Dr. Mohler believes secular people must have a problem understanding “to whom this kind of awe would be directed,” falsely generalizing his awe for God to all experiences of awe, concluding that awe must always be directed toward some revered divine person who is the author of that which inspires awe. But this is by no means the case. Here is an example sentence from a dictionary: “They were both awed by the vastness of the forest.” This has nothing to do with who planted the forest or if it “just happened”. It’s a response to the forest itself, just as people who felt awe in the presence of a total eclipse were experiencing themselves in relation to an awe-inspiring universe.

The Wikipedia article does go on to consider various naturalistic theories intended to explain the existence of the emotion. None of them seems particularly compelling, though each may have some truth to it. The theory described as having the most empirical support proposes that awe is a positive emotion that “serves to draw attention away from the self and toward the environment ... when in the presence of novel and complex stimuli that cannot be assimilated by current knowledge structures” resulting in “increased systematic processing” (as opposed to jumping to conclusions) that would have been adaptive for survival. At least that’s the kind of guess whose exploration can lead to increased understanding, as opposed to the Christian worldview “explanation” which is ... what? We feel awe because God wants us to?