Essay: What does it mean to love LGBTQ+ people?
By: Mitchell Atencio
Tags: LGBTQ, Essay, Theology, Love, Christian

In some circles it is common to say things like: “You can’t love LGBTQ+ people and be non-affirming.” This, of course, generates a frustrated response from those who are non-affirming. They insist you can love someone without agreeing with that person’s beliefs or choices.

This creates a dilemma, with two people talking past each other without engaging the deeper question on the topic of love. Namely, the questions: What does it mean to love someone? Why does it matter if they feel that love? Where does love make itself visible?

Love, in my estimation, is acting toward the best outcome with all possible power and appropriate use of that power (authority) — or in the case of emotion, the wanting of that best outcome. (This definition can’t encompass all that love is — especially in the metaphysical, spiritual, noun sense — but I believe it is useful and accurate for this purpose.)

To love yourself is to act toward your best outcome, with all of your possible power. People who lack the power to act toward the best outcome, like people with addiction or depression, are not to be described as lacking love, but lacking the power to bring about that best outcome.

To love others is similar, but only with an appropriate authority. Sometimes we hold the authority to physically interrupt someone (like a parent carrying a crying child out of a conference), and other times we don’t. It might be best for your friend to not spend so much time playing video games, but it is not loving to destroy their game system because you do not hold authority over their life (additionally, it would be very damaging to the relationship.)

Returning to our dilemma, affirming Christians find it to be loving when they affirm LGBTQ+ people. Non-affirming people find the opposite to be true. Each side is convinced they are acting toward the best outcome of LGBTQ+ people (though, it should be said, one side is historically bad at knowing what is appropriate authority). What’s at contention here is not a disagreement on the definition of love, but a disagreement on what it means to love LGBTQ+ people.

Let’s take this to a more granular level. The affirmation of LGBTQ+ people is best described as a belief that no burden should be placed on LGBTQ+ people that is not placed on cisgendered and heterosexual people. If you only believe that sex acts that take place in cishetero relationships are good and God-approved, then you are non-affirming. If the action of, or attempt to accomplish (even in marriage), those non-cishetero sex acts would cause you to turn a person down for ordination or church leadership, you are non-affirming.

Non-affirming people firmly believe that non-affirmation is how they express love in these moments. In the moment where an LGBTQ+ person wants to marry into a non-cishetero marriage, love is to disagree with that decision, and maybe even voice your disagreement.

Fine.

But it cannot be denied that affirming people would not recognize this as love. Because affirming people believe that the best outcome for LGBTQ+ people is that they be affirmed, there is a fundamental disagreement as to whether the action is loving.

But imagine other situations. Imagine an LGBTQ+ person needs help changing a tire, what would it mean to love them in that moment? It would be to help them change the tire. Imagine an LGBTQ+ person who wants to vent about their terrible work conditions. Loving them would be to listen, commiserate and help if asked or if appropriate. In these moments there is no disagreement between the affirming and non-affirming as to what it means to love.

Non-affirming people sometimes cry foul when they are told they can’t love LGBTQ+ people because they’re thinking of such moments.

(Sometimes is a key word here. A good majority of non-affirming people jump to examples that imply a power-dynamic, like a parent loving a child or a teacher loving a student “without affirming their actions/beliefs.” These power dynamics imply that they actually are loving and LGBTQ+ people just don’t get it. It’s slightly demeaning, and it misses the earlier point that the disagreement is about what is loving, not what it means to be loving.)

Affirming people, however, are not talking about these moments when they mention loving LGBTQ+ people. They are talking about the bigger narrative, the bigger belief that one is improperly understanding themself and/or improperly aligning their life with God’s will. They believe the requirements placed on LGBTQ+ people are unnecessary and cruel, therefore to place those requirements on LGBTQ+ people is unloving.

Again, it is the inverse for non-affirming people. They find a lack of requirement or restraint to be unloving because it sends people toward an outcome that is not the best. So is there simply an impasse at which the two groups will continue talking past each other and disagreeing? Maybe not.

Historically, non-affirming people have been atrociously unloving and unkind to LGBTQ+ people. Non-affirming people subjected LGBTQ+ people to physical, emotional, and spiritual torture disguised as “therapy.” They cast LGBTQ+ children out of the home (and still do). They stigmatized, lied about, cast out of community and verbally abused LGBTQ+ people. This was not an aberration, it has been the norm. LGBTQ+ people with flat tires were more likely to find themselves beaten to death than helped for most of their existence. (I will stick with these pernicious examples and avoid the debate as to whether legal restrictions imposed by LGBTQ+ people were even attempts at being “loving.”)

Frankly, I place the burden on non-affirming people to prove that they can be loving in circumstances where they and affirming people agree on what it would mean to love.

Now, a very important element of love is the appropriate use of power/authority. More often than not, an appropriate use of power/authority starts with a respect of boundaries.

This is the hard pill that non-affirming people do not want to swallow: Many LGBTQ+ people are simply not interested in your love — in any moment — if you will not affirm them. They do not want you to host them for dinner one moment, and deny the goodness of their marriage the next. If non-affirming people truly love those LGBTQ+ people, they should respect that boundary and not attempt to cross it. Respecting boundaries is a subset of using appropriate power toward someone’s best outcomes; it is not appropriate (and therefore not loving) to cross other’s boundaries.

Sadly, a number of non-affirming people refuse to start here and therefore find themselves baffled at the “bitter” and “insular” LGBTQ+ people who refuse to embrace them and won’t “agree to disagree” on the larger matter.

But, for those LGBTQ+ people who are willing to enter relationships of various intimacies with those who disagree on the question of affirmation, a burden remains on non-affirming people.

It is very hard to love someone in those small moments if you believe them to be confused about their identity; it is very hard to love someone you don’t believe to deserve equal rights under the law; it is very hard to love someone you find yourself repulsed by, or someone you degrade and mock. You will find it harder to help a person with a flat tire if you call that person a fag or degenerate behind their backs. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that you are not loving people when you do these things to them.

The challenge is not for LGBTQ+ people to prove that they aren’t being loved. The challenge is for the non-affirming: Show us a love that makes us believe you want our best, not just that you want power over us. At least try and prove to us that you can love us in so many small moments that we can overlook the larger narrative. Frankly, I’m not optimistic that this is possible, but I hold on to hope.