The Equality Act (read a quick summary here) is a threat to people of faith across the country. But are evangelicals partly to blame for it? Evangelical theologian Matthew Lee Anderson has a long piece in Christianity Today (May/June 2021) arguing that evangelicals must realize our own role in the rise of the militant LGBT movement and its political successes. The story that evangelicals are (merely) victims of progressive aggressors not only fails to account for the ways in which the LGBT movement was shaped by populist evangelical rhetoric and tactics. It also forgets that the gay liberation movement was a direct response to the systemic and pervasive exclusion of lesbian and gay individuals from the structures of our public life—including from America itself. Anderson, a professor of ethics and theology at Baylor University, expands on his point. The Christian right, he writes, rose in the 1970s in opposition to the cultural excesses of the sexual revolution. It is surprising that he does not mention Roe v. Wade, which was certainly a larger motivator for the religious right than gay rights. As the Christian right rose to a position of political and cultural influence, Anderson argues, it weaponized biblical truths about sexuality (which Anderson accepts) in a way that “demeaned and disrespected our LGBT neighbors.” As an aside, it’s interesting that evangelicals often speak about “our LGBT neighbors,” as if deserving biblical neighbor-love was what made LGBT people distinctive from other people, instead of one of the things they have in common with all mankind. Anderson tells us of Anita Bryant, an early figure in the Christian right who campaigned against an early nondiscrimination ordinance in Miami in 1977. Bryant’s organization, Save our Children, “aimed at restricting LGBT rights,” in Anderson’s words, because she saw gay people as a “threat” to children. Christianity Today asked Billy Graham about Bryant at the time. While rejecting some of her language, he lauded her for “emphasizing that God loves the homosexual.” It’s interesting that Anita Bryant, one of the earliest campaigners for what came to be known as “family values,” earned praise from Graham for emphasizing God’s love. This seems to be at odds with Anderson’s narrative of Christians “demeaning and disrespecting” LGBT people. Another quote from Graham is key to Anderson’s argument: he “was also fearful that her campaign might galvanize and bring out into the open homosexuality throughout the country, so that homosexuals would end up in a stronger position.” This, Anderson, argues, is precisely what happened. Anderson says that the opposition of Bryant and others to the Gay liberation movement “reinvigorated what had been an increasingly dormant movement, giving it a more militant and oppositional edge than it had previously.” In fact there is no evidence that the movement was “increasingly dormant.” Municipalities and states across the country were actively passing LGBT nondiscrimination measures because they were pressured to do so by an increasingly vocal and confident LGBT rights movement. (. . . CONTINUE READING) | 
