Let me tell you about one of my best friends.
About two years ago, I was in a really dark place. All I could do to mark the passage of time was to see the shadows cast by the sun as it moved overhead, This friend let me call her and cry even when I couldn't explain what was wrong. She made me promise each night that I would text her in the morning so that she would know I was all right. She watched as I bared the worst parts of myself, and never looked away. All she did was to express her support for me, her confidence that I was a decent person, and her promise that if the world burned down, she would stand in the ashes at the end of it all and still be there for me.
In short, Indigo was the very real, very human and very necessary presence of Christ in my life when I most needed him.
Did I mention that she is gay?
She is not just slightly gay, she is completely gay. She is so gay that she leaves rainbow smudges as she walks down the street, and gets followed by a trail of unicorns even when she goes to Target.
Indigo is not gay by choice. If she were, she would have chosen to stop sometime during the week after her parents discovered that she was gay and put her through hell over it. If she were gay by choice, she would have chosen to stop some time in college when she saw how society provides all sorts of mechanisms for men and women to meet each other and date, but far fewer for gay couples to meet. If she were gay by choice, she would have chosen to be straight all the lonely years of her 20s.
Do you know what Indigo wants more than anything? She wants to be loved She wants to spend her days with someone who loves her, and come home at night to that person. She wants to chase dreams with someone who loves her, have someone there to hold her hand when it gets frightening, to snuggle with for the nice parts, and to make the big decisions for her when the time comes.
She wants the same thing you want. She wants the same thing I want.
Now, morally, according to the Nashville Statement people, what she wants is a horrible thing because Indigo is gay and cannot find that level of connection and intimacy with a man. The Nashville Statement signatories tell her that she needs to be alone, never have sex, and never have the sort of emotionally intimate life partner that they take for granted.
It's not enough for them to say she can't have the sacrament of marriage with another woman. They don't even want her to have the legal protections and benefits of a state-recognized union.
And yet the chief issue for people of faith is not morality but justice. That's the major theme of Scripture. Pursue justice above all else.
And what the signatories of the Nashville Statement are after is not a moral issue, it is a fundamental injustice. As such, it is something I cannot in good conscience as a follower of Christ accede to.
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