Diversity and community: words for the church, not LGBT ism

There are two words that LGBT ism have hijacked: community and diversity. And it grates.

Whenever people talk about the need for diversity it is code for saying, there should be more homosexuals on the staff; or five-year olds should be taught about homosexuality; or this nasty group has to get rid of its anti-diverse (i.e. anti-homosexuality) views.

The LGBT lobby has grabbed this great word and made it into a battering ram to break down the walls of decency and normality and build a new city where everyone is happy because they are - diverse.

Or not.

That’s what grates. LGBT diversity is not diverse. It is rigidly conformist. Everyone must think as they think: sexuality is fluid and it really doesn’t matter where or how or with whom you choose to have sex with. If this wholly unproved dogma is questioned, the LGBT warriors will pounce. Remember Harry Miller and his ‘transphobic’ tweets which brought the police to his place of work for a thought crime.

And they will pounce with a snarling ferocity if it is suggested that  people are happiest if a man marries a woman and have children. 

And for the Christian what grates even more is that for two thousand years it is Jesus Christ and his followers who have by far the best track record for living out diversity. And still do. It was Jesus who sat with the Samaritan woman; who told the story of the good Samaritan, and who never bothered to answer his enemies when they accused him of having a demon, and being ‘Samaritan’. It was Jesus who let the woman with a reputation wash his feet with his tears. It was Jesus who chose fishermen, nationalists, and a Quisling tax collector as his disciples. It was Peter who broke the age-old taboo of Jews and Gentiles and visited Cornelius. And it was Paul who declared, ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ That’s a magnificent diversity manifesto. It belongs to the church.

The church was founded on diversity, and still today continues to bring diversity to others. Visit most churches and you will find people from all sorts of different backgrounds – racial, economic, and yes sexual. You will find people there who were porn addicts, homosexuals, cross-dressers, perverts, fornicators, prostitutes. They are all in the church. Thankfully they have not been told just to accept that they are a porn addict or whatever. They have been told to repent and believe in Christ and so have experienced the power of the Holy Spirit.

The church is a fantastic diversity success story, so it is like nails coming down a blackboard to for the LGBT people to keep on lobbing this word at Christians as if it is the followers of Jesus who are the enemies of diversity.

Another misused word is community.

All the time we hear on the news…the LGBT community this, the LGBT community that. You get the impression these people are meeting every week, know each other well, and have a hierarchy that is able to deliver opinions to the waiting nation.

This is what grates. It can’t be like that. Sure there are loads of LGBT clubs across the UK, and they would be communities of a sort. But they are not linked up. They have no overall leader who can speak in their name.

So the BBC and others are regularly delivering a deceit. The newsreader solemnly says something like, ‘The LGBT community are aghast at XY or Z’, and the listener gets the impression that this is the view of however many LGBT people there are in the UK who have all met and agree on a particular view. That has not happened. What has happened is that a journalist has talked to a few LGBT people who say, ‘The LGBT community’ this this or that, and the deceit is repeated without any questioning.

Using the word community to refer to sexuality also grates because it is tragic and weird. It’s tragic because it implies the most important thing about a human being is his or her sexuality, a very private matter. 

And it is weird. Imagine if heterosexual people got together - because they were heterosexual. Would that not be odd, edging around pervert territory? ‘Hello, my name is Fred, and I am heterosexual and I have come here to be with other heterosexuals and I want to campaign for the heterosexual community’. Creepy.

And of course for Christians it grates because again for two thousand years it is the Christians who have really been a community. There are millions of churches, groups of Christians, communities. They know each other. And unlike the LGBT groups, they are linked up; they have hierarchies; and when their leader speaks he really is speaking on behalf of a community.

Christians breathe community. Indeed they breathe diverse community. These two words belong in the church. Sure, let others use them, but only if they have solid meaning. I see no meaningful diversity in the LGBT movement, just grim dogma; and I see no linked-up community, just campaigners determined to rip down normality.