How would your life have been different if you had been born three or four decades earlier? The answer will vary for each of us, but for all of us, things would have been very different.
A lot can change in a short space of time, and that has been especially true in the last century or so. The pace of change in all sorts of areas has been incredible. And, of course, one of those areas is sexuality.
Go back 100 years in England and sex was very much a private matter. It was believed (if not always practised) that sex should be reserved for marriage. Marriage was the lifelong union of a man and a woman. Divorce was only legally possible in cases of adultery, and sexual activity between men was illegal.
None of that really started to change until the 1960s. To consider just same-sex sexual activity, sexual activity between men wasn’t decriminalised until 1967. That means that anyone over the age of 57 was alive in a time when men were being arrested, convicted and imprisoned for same-sex sexual activity.
That’s a lot of change in a relatively short period of time.
Civil partnerships between people of the same sex weren’t legalised until 2005. Anyone who is an adult today has lived at a time when same-sex couples couldn’t have their relationship legally recognised in England. Same-sex marriage became possible even more recently; the first same-sex marriages in England took place a decade ago this year. Only children whose age is in single digits have not lived in a time when same-sex marriage was illegal. That’s a lot of change in a relatively short period of time.
Now imagine you’d lived through all of those changes. Anyone you know who’s 60 or over has. That’s a lot of change to get your head around in the space of one lifetime. As someone who’s a fair bit younger than 60, I’ve found that helpful to realise.
Sometimes people who are a generation or two (or more) older than me, don’t always have what we might feel are the best attitudes or opinions about same-sex attracted people. They might feel uncomfortable talking about same-sex attraction or same-sex relationships. They might use language or make statements that don’t come across in the best way. They might say things that reveal attitudes that are simply ungodly.
Where there is sin in any of those, that’s not ok, but understanding what people have lived through does help us understand what might be shaping those perspectives, even if they are sinful. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be challenged – as Christians we are called to spur one another on to holy living and ever-increasing Christlikeness. But it should shape how we challenge and how we spur one another on.
As someone who has not lived through as many of the significant, fast-paced changes our society has gone through in relation to sexuality, I need to have an appropriate humility towards those who have and who have been shaped by what they have lived through. It’s hard to talk about something that for the first few decades of your life no one talked about. It’s hard not to think something is disgusting or abhorrent if everyone around you believed that for so long. Chances are, if any of us had lived through what they have lived through, we might say and think the same things in the same way.
While there is a place for those of us who are younger to engage with the older generation, we must do that with an appropriate humility and respect.
So, while there is a place for those of us who are younger to engage with the older generation if they are expressing ungodly attitudes in relation to people’s varied experiences of and expressions of sexuality, we must do that with an appropriate humility and respect (1 Timothy 5:1-2).
I think it’s particularly important that we help younger generations – those who can’t remember a time when same-sex marriage wasn’t legal – to cultivate humility towards the older generation when it comes to sexuality. Gen Z are known for having a keen interest in justice – and that is a good thing. For many, that includes justice in relation to experiences of sexuality – and there can also be good in that. But we must help them to enact that interest in justice responsibly and with necessary humility.
I was recently speaking on same-sex sexuality at a church where I knew a significant number of those listening would be over 60 (many by quite a way). I knew I needed to bring a firm challenge about our attitudes towards people with different experiences of sexuality. I did that, drawing on the truth that we are all created in the image of God and on the example of Jesus’s interactions with those who were thinking and living very differently to God’s design and desire.
After I had spoken, an older gentleman came up to me, tapped me on the shoulder, and with tears in his eyes told me that God had changed his heart while I had been speaking. He confessed that he had never understood how some men could be attracted to men and he had always hated gay people. But as I had sought to gently but clearly open up the Scriptures and challenge ungodly attitudes, the Spirit had convicted him and changed his heart. In that moment, I felt such admiration for a man who had been shaped by the culture in which he had grown up but had remained open to the Spirit of God reshaping him through the word of God. He was showing humility too.
We all need humility in our conversations about sexuality. Humility will help us to love one another which will in turn help us to love others.
