Interview With a Christian

APRIL 4, 2015

Ross Douthat
AFTER watching the debate about religious freedom unfold over the past week, I decided to subject myself to
an interview by an imaginary but representative member of the press. Here is our conversation:
Happy Easter!
Thank you.
O.K., enough pleasantries. Youre a semi-reasonable Christian. What do you think about the terrible Indiana
religious liberty bill?
I favored the original version. Based on past experience, laws like this protect religious minorities from real
burdens. As written, the Indiana law probably wouldnt have protected vendors from being fined for declining
to work at a same-sex wedding. But I would favor that protection as well.
Seriously? Shouldnt businesses have to serve all comers?
I think they should be able to decline service for various reasons, religious scruples included. A liberal printer
shouldnt be forced to print tracts for a right-wing cause. A Jewish deli shouldnt be required to cater events for
the Nation of Islam.
But those are issues of belief, not identity. Denying service to gays is like denying service to blacks under Jim
Crow.
None of the businesses facing sanctions are saying they wouldnt serve gay people as a class; they just dont
want to work at nuptials. This isnt a structural system of oppression, a society-wide conspiracy like Jim Crow;
were talking about a handful of shops across the country. It seems possible, and reasonable, to live and let live.
I think discrimination is discrimination. What about you? Would you bake the cake?
Honestly, since so many of my friends arent religious or conservative, Ive always taken for granted that being
part of their lives meant accompanying them through life choices that belong to a different worldview than my
own. (And Im very grateful that theyve accompanied and tolerated me.) My family has its share of divorces
and second marriages; my friends romantic paths are varied; my closest friend from high school just exchanged

vows with his longtime boyfriend. Im going to a party celebrating them next month. If they asked me, Id bring
a cake.
So why cant other believers do the same?
First, these issues are difficult and personal, and I dont presume that my approach is always right. Second,
details matter. My closest gay friends are fairly secular. But I would be uncomfortable attending same-sex vows
in the style of a Catholic mass or being hired to photograph such a ceremony. I dont think that discomfort
should be grounds for shutting down a business.
Well, that discomfort may seem religious, but segregationists felt justified by scripture too. They got over it;
their churches got over it; so will yours.
Its not that simple. The debate about race was very specific to America, modernity, the South. (Bans on
interracial marriage were generally a white supremacist innovation, not an inheritance from Christendom or
common law.) The slave owners and segregationists had scriptural arguments, certainly. But they were also up
against one of the Bibles major meta-narratives from the Israelites in Egypt to Saint Pauls neither Jew nor
Greek, slave nor free.
Thats not the case with sex and marriage. The only clear biblical meta-narrative is about male and female. Sex
is an area of Jewish law that Jesus explicitly makes stricter. What we now call the traditional view of
sexuality was a then-radical idea separating the early church from Roman culture, and its remained basic in
every branch of Christianity until very recently. Jettisoning it requires repudiating scripture, history and
tradition in a way the end of Jim Crow did not.
Except we know now, in a way people writing the Bible couldnt, that being gay isnt a choice.
I take a different view of what they could have known. But yes, the evidence that homosexuality isnt chosen
along with basic humanity should inspire repentance for cruelties visited on gay people by their churches.
But at Christianitys bedrock is the idea that we are all in the grip of an unchosen condition, an original
problem that our wills alone cannot overcome. So homosexualitys deep origin is not a trump card against
Christian teaching.
I know smart Christians who disagree with you.
So do I. I just think their views ultimately point in a post-biblical, post-Christian direction. And I also know
very smart gay Christians the Anglican theologian Wesley Hill, the Catholic writer Eve Tushnet, others
who take the orthodox view, and try to live with the tension between their attractions and their faith, with (one
hopes) their fellow Christians assistance.
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Theyre prisoners of a cruel delusion. I dont see how a loving God could put them in such an impossible
position.
Then you can add this to the popular arguments against Christianity. But again, the Christian idea is that God
asks the seemingly impossible of all of us and, fortunately forgives us when we fail. Nobody has to accept
this idea, but if you do its compatible with a lot of pain, struggle and mystery where humanity encounters God.
Especially in a faith whose Happy Easter cant be separated from the cross.