Michael Sam and Wheaton College and the Grammys

    Michael Sam is a football player who will be entering the NFL draft this spring.  I know nothing about him except that he is a homosexual.  I know this because it was the lead story on ESPN's website and its reporting  on its main cable channel on February 10, 2014.  Sam's is apparently the first high level college player to ever publicly state that he is homosexual immediately prior to the draft.  There will be inevitable hand-wringing among professional draft watchers and the commentariat at ESPN about how this will impact Michael Sam's status, how his NFL team will handle the publicity, and what it means for football and society at large.  There will also be comparisons to various civil rights leaders of the past. Having been a fairly avid NFL follower for many years, I always understood that what NFL people cared about was what guys "do on the field."  Thus, the Super Bowl loser gets no credit for being the second best team that year, they're just part of the group labeled "losers."  According to this kind of thinking, shouldn't Mr. Sam's sexual proclivities fall into the same category as what kind of soft drink he prefers - perhaps interesting to a very small number of people but otherwise unrelated to how he will perform on the field?  Despite this, ESPN is abuzz with reporting and commenting on what it all means.  Curious.

    Enter Wheaton College - yes that Wheaton College - bastion of conservative evangelicalism in Illinois.  Recently some students there engaged in what might be called a mild protest of speaker Rosaria Butterfield, a former lesbian, now a converted Christian who is a pastor's wife and homeschooling mother.  Apparently some LGBT students at Wheaton were concerned that Butterfield's invite was a cause for concern to them, given her story of conversion from lesbianism.  Presumably, these students were worried this was some kind of signal from Wheaton's administration that . . . I'm not really sure.  That Wheaton is a conservative evangelical school that actually believes homosexual behavior is sinful?  Can anyone who knows anything about Wheaton College claim that this is some sort of surprise?  Including students who attend?  Really?

     So irony surrounds us in these two apparently different, but really similar stories.  First, ESPN (and presumably other outlets) will applaud Sam's "coming out" even though it really has nothing to do with his ability as a football player (right?).  Implicit in the coverage ESPN is devoting (and which others will devote) to this is the idea that homosexuality is innate, cannot be changed, and, in fact should not be changed.
 
     Enter Wheaton College and Rosaria Butterfield.  She has been thrashed rather impolitely by some because she has dared to claim she has changed her sexual orientation.  So a conservative evangelical institution asks her to come speak and there are students who claim they are concerned?  There seems to be an underlying understanding, even in such places, that one cannot be anything other than homosexual if that is one's orientation.


     While the mass marriage at the Grammy's is now yesterday's news, the mindset remains.  Gay is not just okay, it's now a moral good.  Any suggestion to the contrary, no matter how principled, simply cannot be reconciled with Macklemore.  Oh well, guess everyone who holds a principled Christian conviction about homosexuality needs to just give it up - ESPN, Queen Latifah, Macklemore, and students at Wheaton have spoken.  Underlying this mindset is the rather bizarre philosophy that ultimate truth doesn't exist - that no one can really know if homosexuality is a sin.  Without belaboring the obvious, even my 15 year old son understands the utter logical failure of this mindset.  If you can have "your" truth and I can have "my" truth and somebody else can have "their" truth, which truth matters?

     We have decided as a culture that Rosaria Butterfield is to be protested (however mildly) because she dared make a truth claim running counter to the culture.  This is the ultimate irony here - there is nothing new, nothing counter-cultural, nothing shocking, nothing exceptional, and nothing particularly meaningful about Michael Sam publicly stating his sexual orientation.  What is completely counter-cultural is a willingness to stand for something absolute, something true beyond one's own feelings and experience.  Rosaria Butterfied is the real story here - the real counter-cultural pioneer.  And even those who you would expect to be with her are "protesting."