What is love? This is one of the ultimate questions of our race: one explored by Andy Hayes earlier this week. Originating from a similar background to mine (we’ve even worked for similar employers), after reading around it seems geographical miles don’t count for much when it comes to the application of ‘good Christian values’ we have both experienced. You know the sort: claim to be focused on the family yet, on occasion, wrench families apart.

They talk a lot about sin. Here’s my question to evangelical Christians: where are your gay supporters? You will struggle to find them. Not because they don’t exist (they do in infinitesimal numbers) but because, where they are happy with the word gay (and that eliminates most), they are in hiding, too fearful to be honest with their closest friends and family, let alone themselves.

I have a third question. If love is profound tenderness and passionate affection, to what degree have Christians succeeded in loving gay people? Since I class myself as a Christian, I stand as accused as anybody else. My answer would be that I have failed, that is to say I am still learning. Some would insist that the application of their personal prejudices was an act of love (Christians talk of “speaking the truth in love”); to those people I ask, can you be sure of your deep-seated motivations?

Gay people, or LGBT people, are a people group. Whatever your opinions (and they are only opinions, whatever it is that you may think) about where sexuality comes from, the observed fact over generations has been that it rarely changes substantially in the course of a lifetime and never overnight and never by choice. Think of another people group (Afro-Caribbean, Romany Gypsies, Eastern Europeans); consider whether it would be acceptable to speak to a member of that people group in the way you have spoken of gay people in the past, even when you think none of them can hear you. Forgetting anybody else, would you personally feel it was justified to treat a gypsy that way, simply because they were a gypsy?

When an entire people group is at odds with a religion, there is an acceptance issue on the part of that religion. It is no more a sin to be a gay person any more than it is to be a black person, a gardener, a Jew or a male human. Insofar as sexuality is a part of human identity, loving others means seeing beyond others’ people group to exhibit tenderness and affection to an extent that it could be described as profound and passionate. Fancy giving that a try?