The Heterosexual Elect

Navigating the Predestination of Sexual Orientation in the Bible Belt

Christianity has long held a view called “predestination” – the idea that God plans out the entire moral course of human lives, and determines before birth whether a person is destined for salvation or damnation. The early church had detractors from this view, for example the fourth century Pelagian heresy espoused a more maximalist view of human self-determination (believing that it was principally human acts, not divine planning, that destined someone for heaven or hell), but ultimately ever since Saint Augustine of Hippo most brands of Christianity accepted the idea of Predestination.

A natural critique of the position that one’s fate is unalterable is to give in to anarchy and nihilism: why not  be an immoral rake, whoring, drinking and stealing to one’s heart’s content, if none of it matters anyway for one’s outcome? As a result of this natural critique, many theologians moderated the position in different ways throughout the ages, allowing some small role for human will to “desire” or “deserve” the salvation that was already chosen for them. With the renewed theological intensity of the Reformation, however, some reformist hardliners went back to the stark belief, none more so than the Calvinists. The early Calvinists promoted the idea of Unconditional Election (i.e. not dependent on any human will) of a select few, chosen by God to be saved, while most of humanity was condemned to hell. To avoid the loophole of amorality and nihilism, in the Calvinist view, the elect would naturally embody the values that had commended them to salvation, and as such would be morally irreproachable. For the zealous Calvinist, then, social interaction became a theater of moral one-upmanship, everyone going out their ways to demonstrate their moral superiority, even though such moral acts had no eschatological or soteriological consequences.

This belief has mostly faded from contemporary mainstream Christianity [don’t ever underestimate the extent to which antiquated theological extremes can persist in isolated communities for centuries or more], but the model of “immutable predetermined status begetting moral competition” remains one that we can see in other places and times. In my personal experience this model perfectly describes perceptions of sexual orientation during my adolescence.

I grew up in the American Bible Belt and was an adolescent in the early 2000s. I first learned from my peers, when I was about 10 or 11, of categories called “gay” and “straight”, and that one should definitely try to be “straight” and that essentially nothing was more ostracizing for an adolescent male than to be “gay”. As my adolescence went on, I learned increasingly that there were signs of one’s gayness or straightness, and that if one were incapable of properly replicating and affecting the signs of straightness, it would indicate one’s true gay nature. Growing up in this environment, every action, every gesture, every preference seemed to be scrutinized for clues about one’s “true” sexual orientation. I remember the subtle ways in which we policed ourselves and each other, seeking to conform to the expectations of an immutable reality. Among the list of signs I had to police myself for were the following:

• When carrying schoolbooks in the hallway, they had to be held at my waist by a straight arm; carrying them in the crook of my elbow at chest level was gay
• When crossing my legs while sitting, the raised shin had to be held horizontally across the other leg; having the leg folded over with the back of my knee resting on the lower thigh was gay.
• My socks had to be short or pushed down to my ankles; wearing my socks up too high was gay
• I had to demonstrate knowledge of appropriate musicians and sports stars; not liking sports or listening to “gay” music like classical music was a sure sign that one was gay

It should be noted that I was a bit more delicate, nerdy, “unmasculine” than many of my peers. I did prefer listening to classical music, drinking tea from a formal British tea set, and would have rather watched Lord of the Rings than sportsball any day. As such, I was in a state of constant torment through most of my teen years, horrified by the possibility that I might be, unbeknownst even to me, gay, even though I felt attracted exclusively to women. But the battle to Not Be Gay was so utterly consuming that it impeded me from considering the issue with any rational thought, and indeed I was stridently anti-gay even as many of my friends began supporting gay rights and signing petitions to launch a GSA chapter (Gay-Straight Alliance) at my high school – I recall ashamedly that a friend slid the petition to me at the lunch table, and I ostentatiously slid it immediately onward.

It was in this context that I first encountered an openly gay person. As one did, I was bantering with a friend and I, unable to think of a witty comeback, called out “oh yeah, well I think you’re gay!”. He responded with an accepting, almost bemused “yeah, so?”. I was rendered, for I believe the first and only time in my life, a speechless, mouth agape cartoon character, unable to process what I had just heard. I was the modern incarnation of a 16^th-century Calvinist whose neighbor had just told him he worshipped the devil. Someone had openly declared themselves anathema in what was then the most salient identitarian issue of my life.

It was only with great hesitation, delay, and reserve that I shed the arms and armor of that identitarian struggle. It required several people in my close circle of friends to come out, and I still look back with remorse on my initial incredulous, mocking reactions. In one sense my perspective was not truly my fault, for I was a product of my environment. But I would be a poor rationalist if I did not say that I was at least somewhat at fault for not being sufficiently critical of that environment.

The model of Unconditional Elect still holds, and can likely be seen in other places. I would welcome any input about where we can see it at work.