It's not even about Mike Pence; it's about Christian faith, and eradicating it

In the roundup below, I link to an overall look at Jimmy Kimmel's fetid stew of ugliness, smugness and banality at last night's Oscars awards show.

One particular remark of Kimmel's has stuck with me throughout the day, namely, this:

"We don't make films like 'Call Me By Your Name' for money. We make them to upset Mike Pence," Kimmel said.

 This utterance demonstrates how thoroughly secularized Kimmel, his audience and his industry are. It's not as if some kind of personal preference of Pence's has been slighted by the making of such a movie. Mike Pence's views on the subject on the subject at hand - homosexuality - aren't a matter of finding it distasteful. He probably does - and would be spot-on for doing so - regard such a film as a cultural threat, but not because those who have cinematically disseminated its message deserve hate or ostracism. It's because of something that the likes of Kimmel would never have the occasion to discuss: sin.

This is the truly grotesque core of the lie being put forth by those who see themselves as our cultural betters: that actual Christians hate those with unorthodox sex lives. They don't. But you have to hand it to the arbiters of what's acceptable in 2018 post-America. They put Christians in the position that white Americans in the 1950s who were, with considerable awkwardness, emerging into an acceptance of racial integration were in. "Why, just last week, we had some of them over for dinner" went the refrain.

Occasionally I see Christians take the bait on this, but they need not. It's an entirely different set of circumstances. For that matter, black Christians are some of the most vocal defenders of the importance of making sin central to conversations about homosexuality.

I have no idea whether Mike Pence has any homosexual friends or professional associates, but I have met the man and know some of his family, and they are not anything like the caricature that has been his shadow since the 2013 religious-freedom dustup in Indiana.

St. Paul did not subject himself to stoning and shipwrecks for the sake of tepid abstract speculation. He had one of the most profound conversion experiences in history, and approached his spread of the Gospel and the building of the Church with an urgency that he sustained over decades. For that matter, what he had to say on what real love and fellowship look like are quoted by a wide spectrum of people and organizations.

But he did say these things about same-gender intimate relations:

"For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error" (Rom. 1:26–27).

"Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 6:9–10).

"Now we know that the law is good, if any one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, immoral persons, sodomites, kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine" (1 Tim. 1:8–10).

It has to be squarely faced.

The last two passages in particular speak of who will not inherit the kingdom and who is in violation of the law.

But Paul also writes prolifically about what supersedes the law: the grace of Lord Jesus, which is available to anybody and everybody.

Now, in a sociocultural climate such as we have descended into in 2018 post-America, it's understandable that a great many homosexuals are going to respond with, "Save that crap for somebody else. I don't need any forgiveness for the way I live out my sex life."

Fine, but you can't stop Mike Pence or any other Christian from praying for you.

And, by the way, they pray for themselves and all the rest of us, too. Sin takes many forms, and we all have a few.

But the idea that protecting the freedom of Christian business owners who want to conduct commerce based on the principles St. Paul clearly espouses somehow constitutes hate is ludicrous.

But you can get a big hardee-har-har out of a roomful of self-appointed cultural overlords who have deluded themselves into thinking that it does.