Dear Mr. Moore,

You came to our attention when the Family Action Council began posting about your April 23 discussion of faith and sexuality. 

Though I won't agree with you, I think you should be free to offer your message anywhere you want.  I think it is destructive within the Church, but your rights to freedom of speech and religion are not in question.  Do not imagine or use language that you are being persecuted because you're a Christian.  You're not.  Your rights are not being taken away.  Your voice is in NO danger of being silenced. 

So let's look at what you did by participating in the April 23 event and probably several others around the country.  You are colluding with an organization that lobbies the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee for discriminatory LAWS and against LAWS that would protect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

If you believe that God has more in store for LGBT people than heterosexuality or living lives according to the gender they were assigned at birth, then why not just try to persuade people of that?  Why must you enable the use of state power in that enterprise? 

Is it that your message is not powerful enough?  Is it that the Holy Spirit is not allowing your teaching to bear fruit?  Is state power necessary to fill in the gap of your less than persuasive teaching?  Does God bless the discriminatory laws in place and use divine power to thwart the advance of equal rights in states like Tennessee?

In other words, what is your theology of the state and your theology of God's providential involvement in how legislation is passed or defeated?

I can tell you that we're fighting like Hell in Tennessee and it's a long, slow fight.  If God is telling you to use the power of the state against us, please say it because I like to know what I'm up against. 

Your connection with organizations that lobby against civil equality and for civil inequality is pernicious.  Let me give you an example from the very night you were offering your teachings.  A lesbian couple on the news talked about being denied housing in Nashville.  And there is no legal remedy for them in Tennessee, even though legal remedies have been proposed in our State Legislature.  Does God use prejudice in the world to give LGBT people an inducement to stop being LGBT?  Come clean with your real theology. 

If that's not an accurate characterization of your beliefs, then I fully expect you to admonish your friends at Family Action and let them know that God doesn't need the help of discrimination to make LGBT people as you would like us to be. 

Let's see how many people you could persuade to stop being LGBT without the sanction of legal discrimination and social shunning that results in statistics of 40% of homeless youth being LGBT. 

Is your faith in your message strong enough to stand without the prop of state-sanctioned discrimination?  Your performance tonight makes me wonder.

Yours,

Chris Sanders

Executive Director