The focus on sex. . .

While some might insist that orthodox Christianity with its focus on male/female gender, marriage as the shape of our society's God-given order, and children as the natural fruit of marriage as a sex issue, the reality is that sex has always been part of the equation since Eden.  After the Fall, Adam and Even could not even look at each other in the same way.  They were always naked but that nakedness became a problem only after sin too hold of desire.  They worked to handle it all themselves by covering up what they thought was the problem -- nakedness -- forgetting that sin was inside them and not living simply on the surface of their bodies.  

Sexual desire and intimacy between man and woman as God created them has always been keep to who we are and how we see ourselves.  Indeed, the sexual act is Biblically rooted and a gift of God in creation and not some secret information which man stumbled upon.  It is central to the basic social bond God established in creation (Gen. 2:24) and the very mandate given to man by God is to be fruitful and multiply -- because God made them male and female (Gen. 1:28).  We reproduce not out of instinct but as fulfillment of the divine command.  How we see this and judge it all is not an strange focus upon sex but getting God's creative will and purpose exactly right.  Sex lies at the heart of being human -- of being made male and female.  We are not focusing too much on sex but those who use free desire and gender identity are doing exactly that.  They are focusing on sex without seeing it as part of God's gift in creation or His order.

When churches celebrate the LGBTQ+ genders and the disordered desires, they make it exactly about sex and not at all about God's gift of creation nor the order established for us not as punishment but as the protection and blessing of that godly desire for the sake of all.  Pornography is not wrong because the body is meant to be hidden but because it makes trivial, inconsequential, and lurid the gift of God and His divine purpose.  Porn makes light of it all not for fun but for money and that taints the desire and its use as wrong.  In the end, however, it is not even that the various forms of desire and gender identity wish to be allowed to live and let live but have harnessed the machinery of the state precisely to demand that they receive approval, acceptance, and legitimacy.  They do not want privacy but public sanction for every desire and not just the ones championed now.

When Christianity affirms and celebrates the alphabet soup of sexual desire and gender identity, the Church gives sanction to it in God's name -- whether they pay attention to the voice of God in His Word or not.  In effect, the rainbow becomes part of the liturgical calendar of the Church, yes, but of the whole world.  Because of this, the Church must address sex issues or become an accomplice in the moral confusion of the day in which nothing is wrong except the denial of desire.  The Church is not interested in what goes on in the bedrooms of this world because of prurient interest but for the sake of setting free from the bondage of desire and for the sustenance of the will and purpose of God manifest in creation.  But those who celebrate the bedroom and move it into the most public sphere of all have made it all about the sex.  Period.  

This is not new.  In the earliest of days Christianity manifested a distinct ethic with regard to sex and marriage and children -- one that which immediately in conflict with the mores of the world then (as well as now).  Among these, the Old Testament condemnation of same sex relationships of any kind -- one repeated in the New Testament.  It is no less than St. Paul who insists that the man who sleeps with a prostitute has not only sinned for himself but for the wife left at home and the prostitute herself.  The begins with the insistence that it is possible to sin against your own flesh and that this sin is not refusing to be unbound by constraints but rather indulging them.  Sex is central to who we are as human beings and to our embodied selves not by accident but by intent.  Within the post-apostolic world, you find in the Didache, one of the earliest extant post-canonical writings, a rejection of abortion that has become a central cause of morality for the Christian community both then and now.  It was certainly no easier for the Church to stand against Rome and the remaining vestiges of its culture than it is today but, remarkably, that did not preclude the Church from growing but contributed to it.  To stand out and stand forth for the cause of God's creative gift and order will hardly be the death of Christianity but to ignore God's Word in this may well do just that.