Let's Talk about Homophobia and Transphobia in the Church: Part 1

Queer inclusion isn't a sin. Exclusion is.

Public Theology is based on the work of Zach W. Lambert, Pastor of Restore, an inclusive church in Austin, Texas. He and his wife, Amy Lambert, contribute to and moderate this account. Zach’s first book, Better Ways to Read the Bible, will release on August 12, 2025, and is available to preorder today.

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Trigger warning

This post, which is an excerpt from a sermon I preached in 2022, contains information of a sensitive nature pertaining to the abuse and mistreatment of many within the LGBTQ+ community. If you or someone you know has been hurt by the church due to queer identity, please proceed with care and caution.

For those who are not part of the LGBTQ+ community, especially for anyone who is skeptical about or even opposed to LGBTQ+ inclusion within the church, I ask that you try to read the following with a compassionate heart and an open mind. It may make you uncomfortable or even angry, but that is a risk worth taking if even one queer person comes away feeling that they are abundantly loved and infinitely treasured by the God who created them, and that they are equally welcomed to fully participate and express their gifts within the Church.

No matter how you feel, please know that unkind comments will not be tolerated on this forum (something we take very seriously). We welcome civil dialogue and questions asked in good faith. If you have a question that you would rather not ask publicly, feel free to message me directly.

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Part 1

Restore, the church we started in Austin in 2016, was originally affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA), a self-described “big tent” denomination where we were assured our inclusive and justice-centered values did not violate any denominational rules.

You can probably tell from the tense of those words that Restore is no longer a part of the EFCA. It’s important to know that this was not by our choice: we were kicked out after I baptized a lesbian. Seriously. It’s a very long story, but I went down kicking and screaming, demanding scriptural evidence to support the notion that the baptism of anyone who wants to follow Jesus is “sinful.”

After a year of back and forth with the denomination, the district rewrote their doctrinal statement surrounding marriage and gender identity, and we were officially kicked out in March of 2019. The EFCA stripped me of my ordination and I had to mail my Ministry License back. (Amy kept me from burning it and sending an envelope full of ashes.) Sometime within this timeframe, I also received an email from the Executive Director of Theology for the entire international denomination who told me he was “concerned for [my] salvation and the salvation of those to whom [I] minister.”

This is not the only time something like this has happened due to our support of full inclusion for the LGBTQ+ community, although, ironically, we were not an overtly affirming or inclusive church at that time. We’ve been called an apostate church. We’ve been kicked out of a denomination, a number of church networks, and an office space. We’ve lost over $100,000 in promised funding and I’ve been told that I’m going to hell more times than I can count.

But honestly, none of that comes close to the joy we’ve experienced from seeing LGBTQ+ folks who have come to faith at Restore, come back to faith at Restore, or found a church where they can fully participate for the very first time in their lives. The conversations, messages, hugs, and tears, the weddings, kid dedications, and other major milestones I’ve been able to share with people from the queer community make all of the hate completely worth it.

More importantly: I know that what we’ve been through is nothing compared to what LGBTQ+ folks have endured.

The queer community has been called “abominations.” They have been disowned by their families, condemned to hell, and even tortured and manipulated through conversion therapy and physical abuse. And all at the hands of Christians.

These are not just statistics, these are stories. And these stories didn’t just happen to random people, they happened to people I love, people whom I consider to be my closest friends.

One of these friends was locked in a basement and repeatedly assaulted during her “Christian” conversion therapy.

One of my friends was kicked out of church during their transition and the pastor told everyone in the congregation to “treat him like he’s dead until he repents of his perversion.”

Another one of my friends came out to her parents and the first words out of her dad’s mouth were, “You’ve ruined our family and brought the wrath of God upon us.”

But do you know what I find most incredible about these folks? Somehow, through it all, they didn’t given up on Jesus. The faith of LGBTQ+ Christians astounds and inspires me.

Almost five years ago, I met a gay man who’s been pastoring for over twenty-five years. He grew up in fundamentalist churches and was a student at Bob Jones University, one of the most prominent Christian colleges in America, when their president, Bob Jones III, marched in Washington DC to oppose granting Civil Rights to LGBTQ+ people. Jones gave a speech in front of the White House in which he said, “I guarantee it would solve the problem post-haste if homosexuals were stoned.”

This gay pastor has experienced more hate than I can imagine, and yet he still follows Jesus with everything he has. When I asked how he has faithfully persevered all these years, he said:

“I’m not going to let anybody take Jesus from me.”

Those words still affect me. For far too long, churches and Christians have tried to take Jesus from LGBTQ+ people. This group of people has been marginalized, excluded, and even violently attacked in the name of Christ, and that’s why we must address the problem of homophobia and transphobia in the church.

I grew up in churches where queer people were called abominations and considered beyond the grace of Christ. I even ignorantly participated in the marginalization and exclusion of LGBTQ+ folks in my younger years.

But over a decade ago, things started to shift. I met a few gay people who were faithfully following Jesus but didn’t conform to any of the stereotypes I’d heard about them. This caused me to start digging deeper into Scripture and reading widely from various perspectives.

Since then I’ve read countless books and articles, listened to numerous sermons, and heard hundreds of stories from or about this community. In an attempt to synthesize the information I’ve ingested and hopefully help someone who has either been hurt or has perpetuated hurt in this area, I’m going to use Scripture to help us understand how God sees sexual and gender minorities. I’ll also talk about the handful of verses commonly used to justify excluding or marginalizing LGBTQ+ folks in the church.

But first, let’s define our terms.

I’m a big believer in common language helping to facilitate discussion, so we’re going to start by defining some terms. These are from Merriam-Webster:

Heterosexual:
A person who is sexually or romantically attracted to people of the opposite sex.

Cisgender:
A person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex that person had or was identified as having at birth.

Heterosexual and cisgender people, sometimes called “cis-het” for short, make up most of the population. They are the sexual and gender majority.

There are also a few terms used to describe people people who are not cis-het:

LGBTQ+ (or LGBTQIA+), Queer, or Sexual and Gender Minority:
Terms used to describe people who are not heterosexual and/or cisgender.

Most of us know what it means to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual, but there is a lot more confusion about being transgender or intersex. We see this playing out in public discourse and in politics where trans people are being weaponized for political gain. Because of the complexity and prevalence of this conversation, I’m going to spend a few minutes talking about sex and gender.

The first thing you need to know is that biological sex is not a binary. This is not a political statement, it’s a scientific one. Biologically, there are three major categories of sex: male, female, and intersex.

Intersex:
An umbrella term used to describe a variety of variations that affect genitals, hormones, chromosomes, or reproductive organs.

Sometimes these characteristics are visible at birth, sometimes they appear at puberty, and sometimes they are not physically apparent at all.

Biological males and females make up the majority of people, but intersex folks do account for a significant percentage of the population. Studies vary, with some saying that intersex people make up as little as .02% and others as much as 4%. The American Journal of Human Biology estimates that 1.7% of the population fits under the umbrella of intersex, which is roughly the same as the number of people with red hair.

From both a biological and linguistic perspective, sex and gender are not the same thing. Sex is rooted in the things I listed above: genitals, hormones, chromosomes, reproductive organs, and secondary characteristics which usual develop during puberty.

Gender is different. While gender is influenced by physiology and brain structure, it is also impacted by and expressed according to social and cultural patterns, meaning that the characteristics which define masculinity or femininity vary significantly depending on time, place, and context.

We see this all the time. Masculinity in Paris might look like wearing high heels, but in the Deep South it might look like wearing cowboy boots. Femininity in some African communities means fixing the roof of your cottage, but in Austin it might look like meal-prepping for your family.

My favorite modern example of this is pastors preaching about the decline of “biblical masculinity” while wearing tight leather pants and earrings, things they wouldn’t have been caught dead in a decade ago because they would have been considered feminine.

The degree to which gender is or should be influenced by someone’s assigned sex at birth is debated. What should not be debated, however, is the call for all Christians, regardless of sex or gender, to Christlikeness, which is exhibited by the Fruit of the Spirit. Dallas Theological Seminary professor and gender studies expert Dr. Sandra Glahn said it this way during our Summer Mixtape sermon series in 2020:

What God is interested in is the fruit of the Spirit. For some it’s going to be the fruit of the Spirit in a female body, for others it’s going to be in a male body, and for others it’s going to be in an intersex body. But it’s going to be the fruit of the Spirit no matter what your body is.

Dr. Sandra Glahn

The call to Christlikeness is never gendered in Scripture. There are no verses that say, “Here’s what it means to be a Christlike male and here is what is means to be a Christlike female.” In much the same way, there is nothing in the Bible that talks about being transgender or gender nonconforming.

The verse some people reference when trying to make this leap says:

God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27

We already know that “male and female he created them” can’t mean there are only two biological sexes, because intersex people exist. So why include that phrase in this verse? Because of hierarchy. This verse emphasizes the fact that, in God’s design, there should be no hierarchy between humans based on biological sex or gender.

So then how do transgender folks fit into all of this? First, two more definitions:

Transgender:
A person who feels a sense of disconnection between their sex assigned at birth and their gender identity.

Gender Dysphoria:
The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, commonly referred to as the DSM-5, calls this sense of disconnection, “gender dysphoria.” A clinically significant distress or impairment related to a strong desire to be of another gender, which may include desire to change primary and/or secondary sex characteristics.

There is overwhelming consensus in the medical field that gender dysphoria is real. It is not up for debate; it is settled science and psychology.

The majority of folks who identify as transgender, whether they have begun transitioning or not, have gender dysphoria that they most likely began experiencing as children. According to a study recently published in the American Medical Association journal, 73% of the transgender women and 78% of the transgender men first experienced gender dysphoria on or before age seven.

We all know that there is constant discourse around transgender issues, and the questions being asked are important. Things like:

Is medical transition an ethical treatment for gender dysphoria? If so, at what age is it appropriate? And who decides? Children, parents, consenting adults, legislatures?

Should trans athletes be allowed to compete in sports? If so, what transition steps must be taken before that is permissible?

And so many more. Answering these questions isn’t easy. Like anyone else, I have views that are informed by my faith, but I’ve never been a decision-maker in one of these situations (or someone affected by the decision), so my opinion doesn’t matter very much.

What we must remember above all else is that these questions are much more than issues— they are issues that deeply affect transgender people, people who were made in the image of God and are deeply loved by Jesus.

I often come across two polarized responses when it comes to questions regarding transgender people: those who think it’s gross and those who think it’s glamorous. As someone in close relationship with a number of transgender folks and parents of transgender kids, I can tell you it’s neither of those things.

Gender dysphoria is real. It’s not gross or sinful. And dealing with it, whether through transitioning or not, is not glamorous. It’s really hard. So be kind to people who are transgender. Listen to them and learn from them.

Also, be kind and patient with people struggling to understand this stuff. Don’t condemn people just because they ask a question or voice confusion. (Remember this as you interact with people in the comments— you will know a good faith question vs. an angry response.)

Here are a few pieces of advice I’ve gotten from trans friends and parents of trans youth that I’ve been told I can pass along to fellow cisgender people, regardless of how we feel about any of the complex questions we’ve been talking about:

1. Don’t post hot takes about trans people online.

2. Don’t approach trans people and tell them how awesome it is that they are trans.

3. Don’t rush to judge families of trans kids. You have no idea what they are going through. Have compassion for parents who are doing the best they can for their kids while working through their own struggles and experiencing tremendous external pressure from various (often conflicting) sources.

4. Don’t tokenize or stereotype trans people for the purpose of virtue signaling.

5. Don’t share or tolerate disrespectful jokes about trans people. If someone is being a jerk, call it out.

6. Don’t associate LGBTQ+ people with higher rates of things like abuse and pedophilia by calling them “groomers” or “predators.” It’s simply not true and it leads to violence. In fact, transgender adults are four times more likely to be the victim of violent crime than cisgender people, and Texas (where I have lived my entire life) leads the nation in transgender murders.

Lastly, don’t purposefully misgender people. You’re not going to get it right every time and that’s okay. If you don’t know what to say, then ask. If you make a mistake, apologize. Do your best to use people’s pronouns just like you’d use someone’s preferred name.

Think about it like this: if you had a friend named Dave and one day he came up to you and said, “I’ve decided to start going by the name Tim, so could you please start calling me Tim?” You wouldn’t say, “Heck no, Dave! And if I ever see you trying to write Tim on a name tag I’m going to come rip it off your chest and slap one on that says, DAVE in all-caps!” Using someone’s preferred name and pronouns isn’t political or theological, it’s just basic human decency.

And it saves lives, especially for young people. 1.8 million LGBTQ youth seriously consider suicide each year and at least one attempts suicide every 45 seconds. It’s even worse for trans youth, who are 2.5x more likely to attempt suicide than their queer classmates. Shockingly, acceptance from just one adult decreases the risk of LGBTQ youth attempting suicide by 40%.

This is truly a matter of life and death, and Jesus came to give abundant life.

There is nothing remotely Christlike about treating trans people, or anyone in the LGBTQ+ community, as anything less than a sibling made in the image of God. This cruelty is often referred to as homophobia and/or transphobia.

So what are Homophobia and Transphobia? One last definition: The fear of, aversion to, and/or discrimination against sexual and gender minorities.

This is really important: phobias are not the same as believing something isn’t God’s best. For example: I can believe Christians should abstain from alcohol without discriminating against people who drink. We can all understand the difference.

At their core, homophobia and transphobia are discrimination against sexual and gender minorities manifested in ways that restrict them from participating in society with the same freedoms that cisgender and heterosexual people do.

In Christian spaces, this discrimination plays itself out in a number of ways based on the specific church or organization. Sometimes it looks like barring the LGBTQ+ community from attending church entirely, sometimes it’s a denial of membership, and other times it’s restriction from serving or leading or receiving sacraments like communion, baptism, and marriage.

Regardless of where the line is, a restriction from full participation exists because of someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. This is discrimination. Someone can claim it’s God-ordained discrimination, but it’s discrimination nonetheless.

So let me be clear:

I believe that homophobia and transphobia are wrong.
I believe that any kind of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is wrong.
I think LGBTQ+ people should be fully embraced and included in the church because of what I see in Scripture.
I believe that the words and actions of both Jesus and the first church amount to a complete rejection of homophobia and transphobia, as well as a complete acceptance of sexual and gender minorities.

Let me show you what I mean.

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Part two is coming next week! Stay tuned.

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