Brown isn't a bigoted homophobe

Some (lightly edited) comments I left on Randal Rauser's post "Is Michael Brown a Bigoted Homophobe? You Decide.":

Rauser is so myopic. He misses the forest for the trees. He can't see beyond the personal character contests or grudge matches to see there are far bigger stakes involved. Heterosexual sexual sins violate the moral standard, but homosexuality seeks to destroy the moral standard itself and raise up an entirely new standard. Homosexuality is fundamentally worse in that respect. It's never solely been about Trump and Mayor Pete as persons but their policies as well.

[The Atheist Missionary:] Homosexuality is pervasive throughout the animal kingdom and I submit that science will soon allow us to predict a child's sexual orientation with a remarkable degree of accuracy while a child is in the womb.

1. This runs into the is-ought problem on atheism and neo-Darwinism.

2. However my reply wasn't predicated on atheism, or even a debate between atheism and Christianity, but it was predicated on conservative Christianity inasmuch as Rauser is attempting to call the conservative Christian Michael Brown a hypocrite given Brown's beliefs. I'm responding as a like-minded conservative Christian as Brown. Rauser needs to put himself into the conservative Christian's shoes if he wants to understand our beliefs and values rather than constantly imputing his own beliefs and values onto Brown and acting like Brown violated his own beliefs and values when at worst Brown violated Rauser's beliefs and values.

[Randal Rauser:] Please say more about how you believe that a gay married man commits a more egregious sin with a greater adverse impact on the body politic than a man who repeatedly cheats on his spouses, sexually assaults women, lies, cheats, and brazenly seeks to subvert the rule of law. Why do you believe that?

Thanks for the question. Please allow me to say the following.

1. I'll answer from my perspective as a conservative Christian. Of course I doubt most people here would agree with me, but it's a peek into our mindset, which I think is badly needed if you're accusing another conservative Christian - namely Michael Brown - of hypocrisy.

2. Several things you say are ambiguous and use loaded language. Nevertheless I'll zoom in on "brazenly seeks to subvert the rule of law" because that's the one that's most relevant to the question. Now, I'm not entirely sure what you have in mind when you use the aforementioned phrase. Perhaps you're referring to Russiagate. Perhaps you're referring to the recent impeachment controversy over Ukraine. Perhaps you're referring to other things Trump has done. Perhaps you're referring to all of the above. I don't know.

However, from a conservative position, each of these is highly contestable. Sure, most liberals would tend to believe that's what Trump did, but most conservatives would tend to disagree and even vehemently disagree. I don't wish to rehash every single one of these issues and argue why I believe Trump does not "brazenly seek to subvert the rule of law" because that would be too time-consuming. Plus these are easy enough to Google if you want see arguments from the conservative side.

3. Rather my point is, if you're going to accuse conservative Christians like Michael Brown of hypocrisy, then at a minimum you'd have to get them to agree that Trump does "brazenly seek to subvert the rule of law", or something like it, and that they're somehow okay with that or excuse it or what have you, but the problem is I highly doubt most conservative Christians including Brown would concede such a thing in the first place. Obviously you'd disagree, and quite strongly I'd wager, but the most neutral way to put it is that we just don't see the evidence the way progressives see it. Hence why conservatives and liberals/progressives are often at loggerheads with one another. So I don't see how you can accuse Brown of hypocrisy when according to his beliefs and values he hasn't violated anything. At worst I think he's violated your beliefs and values, but since your beliefs and values aren't his beliefs and values, that's not hypocritical.

4. Moreover, most conservative Christians believe it's the Democrats and progressives in general who are attempting to wage a war against them. A war against their religious liberties in particular. That was well exemplified with Beto O'Rourke promising he'd remove tax exemptions from churches if he was elected. Of course, O'Rourke's campaign failed, but he's one example of what conservative Christians believe could quite plausibly have happened or will happen if a Democrat is elected. O'Rourke was far from the only Democrat making these sorts of promises to voters. Anyway these are the sorts of policies that would not only run counter to what a conservative Christian would want to see but would (from the conservative Christian perspective) seek to suppress their voice if enacted. That's how conservative Christians see things at least.

5. If Mayor Pete is elected, along with a majority Democratic Congress, then there's no doubt in the mind of many if not most conservative Christians that he would begin to enact policies favorable to homosexuals, lesbians, transgendered persons, and so on, because that's what he has said he will do. We take him at his word. Not to mention Mayor Pete's views on other issues. Like abortion where he tries to argue for the abortion of a child at (full) term but still inside their mother's womb. He tries to argue this from the Bible, based on the child not having taken their first "breath" yet. This doesn't convince conservative Christians about anything except for Mayor Pete's poor grasp of the Bible coupled with how radical he has become with regard to infanticide. Mayor Pete didn't explicitly say so, but he hardly denied it either.

6. Now, for all of Trump's considerable personal sexual and other sins, and other faults (and I agree he has sinned in many ways, though not necessarily in the same ways you may think he has), his personal life so far doesn't appear to spill over to his policies in a way that Mayor Pete's personal life would spill over into his policies. Indeed, as I've already mentioned, it's easy enough to search for what Mayor Pete has promised to do if he's elected president. Trump has cheated on his partners, for example, but so far he hasn't made a policy where cheating is perfectly acceptable.

By the way, as far as I'm aware, Trump isn't still cheating on his spouse (Melania), is he? If he is, then at worst he might be a philanderer like JFK cheating on his wife during his presidency. Yet I don't see how JFK's cheating on his wife influenced JFK's policy decisions, campaign promises, and suchlike.

7. By contrast, Mayor Pete is still living in sin, from a conservative Christian perspective. That's because homosexuality itself is a sin. Hence a homosexual who is monogamously married to another homosexual is living in sin. I'm sure most liberals/progressives including Mayor Pete would take serious issue with the statement that homosexuality is a sin, but again I'm speaking as a conservative Christian, which Brown is as well.

So Brown and other conservative Christians like me can argue, yes, both Trump and Mayor Pete have sexually sinned. Trump has sexually sinned in the past (unsure about the present), while Mayor Pete is still sexually sinning in the present. However, just because both have sexually sinned at one point or another doesn't necessarily mean their sexual sins will influence their decision-making as president, but in Mayor Pete's case it certainly will because he has said as much.

8. Anyway I'm sure there's a lot more that could be said. However here's a recent article from the National Review titled "Understanding Why Religious Conservatives Would Vote for Trump" that explains a lot of the conservative Christian perspective as well. I don't necessarily agree with everything, but I agree with it in the main. And from what I gather so would Michael Brown.