Sexual and trans ethics

Dear Editor,

I was deeply moved by the anonymously written ‘I am same-sex attracted, committed to celibacy: please hear my voice’ (en February 2022).

However, I would want to push back on a couple of points in the article. Towards the end we are exhorted to put the pastoral before the doctrinal. This is impossible, as our doctrine tells us how to be pastoral. Our pastoral medicine is true doctrine. If we don’t define our terms and don’t do so Biblically, we get in a mess, as in fact the article demonstrates. The author rightly stands by homosexual actions (and wilful thought patterns) as being sin (missing the mark) and transgression (crossing a line), but by identifying as ‘gay celibate Christian’ may be obscuring what the Bible says about iniquity (staining/disordered). For this reason, Rosaria Butterfield and others have warned against this sort of language.