Al Mohler, an influential Southern Baptist leader and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is releasing a new book this month that urges conservative Christians to boycott gay people’s weddings — including their own children’s — lest they signal “moral approval” of the marriage. But at the same time, Mohler is under attack from some on the Religious Right for being not harsh enough on LGBT issues because he recently criticized “ex-gay” therapy, saying that many people will face a “lifelong battle” with “these patterns of sin” rather than being easily changed.
Among those slamming Mohler is Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’s Peter LaBarbera, who told Janet Mefferd last week that Mohler was leading a “retreat” in the culture war because he suggested that sexual orientations are something that exist.
“Al Mohler has given credence to the idea of homosexual sexual orientation,” LaBarbera said. “And we know that sexual orientation is a political construct, it’s something that’s helped the homosexual movement advance. Because if people feel that people who struggle with homosexuality have a natural so-called orientation, they of course believe that they’re not really responsible for their behavior as much as they would be for any other sin. So, once again, we start treating this particular sin as a special sin needing all sorts of special terminology and semantics and caveats that are not biblical. And I think he’s starting to go down that route and it troubles me, because he’s probably regarded as the leading intellectual, one of them, in the evangelical Christian movement.”
