In the film, to defend her position on homosexuality, Susan Russell referred to Mark 12:28-31,  in which Jesus declares the two greatest commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Yet I am unsure as to how loving another person somehow translates into condoning any particular behavior. After all, we are called to love murderers, adulterers, liars, and thieves; that does not mean that murder, adultery, lying, and thievery are not sins. In fact, it would seem that practicing love includes condemning these sins.

1 John 5:3 tells us that love for God is “to obey his commandments.” When we consider this in the context of loving others, it appears that we should assist each other in obeying God’s commandments. In other words, when Christians sin, other Christians should point it out and try to help correct the behavior of their brothers. Hebrews 10:24 tells us to “spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” Jesus even provides a guideline for how to go about doing so in Matthew 18:15-18.

If loving each other means helping each other obey God’s commandments, then our arguments over gay marriage and homosexuality ought to focus on God’s commandments concerning homosexuality. It is a moot point to use the commandment to love each other as justification for any position on homosexuality. In fact, many of the people who signed the Ichthus’s statement “Choose Love” believe that engaging in homosexual behavior is immoral. The argument should focus on whether or not God considers it sinful by comparing the Bible’s treatment of homosexual behavior to its treatment of universally-acknowledged sins like lying, theft, and pride.

It seems that many Christians are using the command to love God and love others as an excuse to ignore God’s commandments about all sorts of things, including homosexuality. Instead, shouldn’t we use God’s commandments to understand what it truly means to love one another? Jeremiah 17:9 warns, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” When we rely on our heart to tell us what love means, we may be deceived to stop accepting God’s conception of love. As C.S. Lewis warns, “Love begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god.”

On March 20, 2009, members of the Westboro Baptist Church plan to stage a protest at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For several years, the Westboro Baptist Church’s anti-homosexual and anti-America protests at military funerals and elsewhere have received significant attention from around the world.

The Westboro Baptist Church claims to derive its beliefs from Christian and biblical principles. As such, its practices potentially reflect upon all Christians and even upon Christianity itself.

We, the Christian community at Harvard – Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox, liberal, moderate, and conservative – believe it is our responsibility to address the activities of the Westboro Baptist Church, especially those directed against the gay community.

The Poster from the Campaign

Our opinions concerning LGBT issues vary along theological, doctrinal, and political grounds. Nevertheless, we are united in our commitment to love and respect LGBT people as much as we love and respect anyone else. Any word or deed which does not reflect this commitment is fundamentally un-Christian.

The Scriptures teach that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans iii.23). This message is one of human brokenness, but it is also one of profound equality. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. We all need God’s mercy – and God’s mercy is graciously offered to every person.

Accordingly, Christians are called to love all people – regardless of sexual orientation – because we see that what connects us to every human being inevitably transcends that which divides us.

Though we cannot support the beliefs and practices of the Westboro Baptist Church, it is our duty to love and to forgive its members, just as we were once loved and forgiven.

G.K. Chesterton said, “Love means loving the unlovable – or it is no virtue at all.” As the Harvard Christian community prepares for the arrival of the Westboro Baptist Church’s members, we shall seek always to respond to hatred with love and to “overcome evil with good” (Romans xii.21). This is the example Jesus has given us.

While we do not agree with the message of the protests of the Westboro Baptist Church, we hope and pray that God will use even these protests to manifest His great glory to the world.

The Harvard Ichthus

Harvard College Alpha Omega
Harvard-Radcliffe Asian-American Christian Fellowship
Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Fellowship
LCMS Lutherans at Harvard College
Rev. Jonathan C. Page, Epps Fellow of The Memorial Church
Rev. Benjamin King, Episcopal Chaplain
Fr. Bill Murphy, Catholic Chaplain to Undergraduates
Rev. Russell J. Schlecht, Foursquare Chaplain to Harvard University
Adrian Tam, InterVarsity Chaplain, 2006
Rev. Rob Mark, McDonald Fellow of the Memorial Church
Daniel Cho, Asian Baptist Student Koinonia Staff, 1996
Carson Weitnauer, InterVarsity staff
Esther Eng, InterVarsity Staff
Samir Paul, 2010, Ichthus Editor-in-Chief
J. Joseph Porter, 2012, Ichthus Features Editor
KC Moore, 2010
Richard Kelley, 2010
Collin Jones, 2012
Horatio Thomas, 2011
Caroline Kovaleski, 2010
Katie Coulson, 2011
Helen Tsim, 2010
Penelope Smith, 2011
Victoria Mendoza, 2011
Judith Huang, 2009, Ichthus Fiction/Poetry Editor
Douglas Duquette, 2009
James Watts, 2010
Danny Kim, 2010
Amanda Klimczuk, 2010
Dany Thorpe, 2011
Andrés Castro Samayoa, 2010
Julia Fifer, 2011
Monique Wilson, 2009
Tzu-Ying Chuang, 2010
Katie Grosteffon, 2009
Cortni Nucklos, 2011
Jacob Buchholz, 2009
Daniel Rogers, 2012
Matt Gibbons, Harvard Community Member, 2012
Kevin O’Herin, 2009
Natalie So, 2012, Ichthus Asst. Fiction/Poetry Editor
Nico Kirk-Giannini, 2011, Ichthus Managing Editor
Danielle Kim, 2012
Hannah Horowitz, 2011
Michael Silvestri, 2010
Will Ramsey, 2012
Rachel Hawkins, 2012
Kylee Clyatt, 2012
Jason Sandler, 2012
Carl Pillot, 2012
Beñat Idoyaga, 2012
Kevin Mechenbier, 2012
Chris Higgins, 2011
Fanny Chen, 2009
Roger Mercado, 2009, QSA Co-Chair
Jason McCoy, 2008, Harvard Staff
Yijing Sun, 2011
David Orama, 2012
Harker Rhodes, 2009
Heidi Liu, 2011
Kristin Unruh, 2010
Eric Lang, 2009
Amos Tai, GSAS 2012
Kelly McPherson, 2012
Anne Goetz, 2011, Ichthus Books/Arts Editor
Amanda Gable, 2009-11
Jonathan Roberts, 2009
Phil Mongiovi, 2009
Paula Bu, 2012
Brian Na, 2009
Ann Chao, 2009
Isaiah Peterson, 2012
Rachel Esplin, LDS Association President, 2009/2010
Alice Chung, 2011
Katherine Han, 2009
Won Hee Park, 2009
Michael Johnson, 2009
Chris Jensen, 2012
Nicholas Tabor, 2009
Eva Lam, 2010
Victoria Lo, 2011
Emily Mott, 2007
Jordan Hylden, Ichthus Founding Editor, 2006
Elena Chit, 2012
Tae-Eun Kim, 2011
Monica Jun, 2010
Debra Chang, 2012
Patrick Liu, GSAS 2009
Conrad Zhuang, 2009
Tiana Williams, 2007
Phoebe Kuo, 2011
Hyo-Jung Hong, 2012
Jennifer Wolahan, 2007
Elizabeth Spira, 2011
George Thampy, 2010
Caleb Weatherl, 2010
Morgan Pope, LDS Association VP, 2011
Kathleen Benitez, 2007
Jacintha Tagal, 2011
Grace Yeh, 2009
Tim Reckart, 2009
Derek Lietz, 2009
Antonia Fraker, 2009
Matt Cavedon, 2011
Marlena Smith, 2012
Ann Chi, 2008
Meghan Cleary, 2011
Lisa Ackerman, 2011
Nathan Nakatsuka, 2012
Tracy Meng, 2010
Ivy Wu, 2009
Jessamin Birdsall, 2010, HRCF Executive Team
Jessica Luna, 2010
Rachel Flynn, 2009
Jon Staff, 2010
James Fuller, 2010
Ali Ahmed, 2009
Shana Caro, 2011
Jennifer Delurey, 2012
Janet Li, 2009
Annie Wang, 2011, Ichthus Design Editor
Gena Haugen, 2009
Blessing Oyeniyi, 2010, Girlspot Co-Chair
Nico Lewine, 2010, Vice-President for Social Justice, H-R Catholic Student Association
Christina Giordano, 2010
Florence On, 2011
Lauren Schwartze, 2009
Anna Pritt, 2011
Allan Hernandez, 2012
Miles Canaday, 2010
Rusty Mason, 2010
Allison Frost, 2008, Ichthus alumnae
Rachel Wilson, 2012
Will Quinn, 2010
Patricia Gnazzo Pepper, Currier House Administrator
Jordan Monge, 2012
John Frame, 2009
Genesis Vergara, 2012
Seth Bannon, 2010
Patric Spence, 2012
Michelle Sirois, 2012
Richard Alt II, 2012
Hannah Wallace, 2010
Sarah Littlehale, 2011
Roisin Duffy-Gideon, 2012
Stephanie Woo, 2012

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A few Saturday mornings ago at a local coffee shop, I overheard a group of middle aged men discussing Brokeback Mountain. One particular remark seemed to sum up the group consensus:

“There is absolutely nothing my wife could do,” one of the men said, with a glint in his eyes and a clearly sexual smirk across his lips, “that could get me to go to a movie to see two dudes have sex.” If box office receipts are indicative, most people, my coffee shop buddy included, have not seen Brokeback. Nevertheless, the film has been satirized on Saturday Night Live, protested at Wal-Mart, and discussed in coffee shops around the nation. Brokeback Mountain has made an indelible mark on American life.

The movie unfolds like this: Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhall) spend the summer of 1963 herding sheep on Brokeback mountain, just outside Signal, Wyoming. Despite their different personalities, the two develop a friendship. After a night of drinking and laughing by the campfire, the two engage in a sexual encounter marked by both violence and tenderness. As the summer progresses, the two explore their sexual attraction, all the while reminding each other that they “ain’t queer.” When the summer ends, Ennis and Jack part ways, both marry, and both have children. After a few years, Jack sends Ennis a postcard and the two set up a series of “fishing trips” – their cover story for twice yearly sexual trysts in the wilderness. As the years go on, Ennis divorces but continues to rebuff Jack’s repeated proposals to build a life together. Jack begins to admit his sexual identity and has encounters with other men; Ennis, on the other hand, tries to date, but finds himself perpetually confused and unfulfilled.

In the New York Times, reviewer Steven Holden writes that Brokeback Mountain “is ultimately…about love: love stumbled into, love thwarted, love held sorrowfully in the heart.” Roger Ebert says that the film is about the “forbidden love” of two men “forced” (by a repressive culture, one assumes) to “deny the only great passion either one will ever feel.” And, in The New Yorker, Anthony Lane claims that Brokeback is “a study of love under siege.”

What all these eminent reviewers assume is that Brokeback is a love story. Because love, to these critics, looks like it always does in a Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts movie. Two people meet and feel an incredible sexual and/or emotional connection. Something conspires to keep the lovers apart – cultural constraints (Mona Lisa Smile), personal doubts (When Harry Met Sally), social status (Pretty Woman), the difficulty of celebrity (Notting Hill), romantic unavailability (Runaway Bride) or geographic distance (Sleepless in Seattle). This formula even applies to such seemingly insurmountable barriers as marriage (Closer), the limits of linear time (Kate & Leopold) and, yes, death (City of Angels). The movies have taught us that if there isn’t a spark felt and an obstacle overcome, it mustn’t be love. Or, more fittingly in this case, because there was chemistry felt and complications to encounter, it must be love.

What we, as followers of Christ, should be worried about is not that people are talking about Brokeback as a gay love story. We should be concerned that anyone can see this movie and think that it is a love story at all. At every turn our society tries to persuade us that attraction, lust, economic or political compatibility, common interests, shared experiences, and even legitimate affection are tantamount to love. I’m sure this isn’t unique to our postmodern experience; after all, St. Paul had to remind some of the very earliest Christians that their understanding of love was skewed. In writing to the believers at Corinth he says, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). That passage has been read at countless weddings, and for good reason. It is beautiful, inspirational and true. But, it is not what our society tells us love is. In fact, this Christian conception of love is remarkably countercultural.

Jack and Ennis give us glimpses of patience – they are able to wait years to be with one another. But when they do come back together they don’t even have time for coffee before they find themselves in a dirty hotel room. There are moments of kindness, but they are always punctuated with outbursts of violence. Trust never develops, in large part because of the envy each harbors for the way the other one lives—Ennis is jealous of Jack’s other sexual encounters; Jack longs to leave his wife and have the freedom that Ennis experiences. While there isn’t much boasting or pride in their relationship, they both suffer from the equally sinful inversion of those crimes—self-loathing and mutual denigration. Both men have pent-up anger that, while mostly about one another (what does this mean? They’re angry that they can’t be together?), is only occasionally directed toward one another. Jack lashes out at his fatherin- law; Ennis starts (and loses) a bar brawl. They both lie to their wives and neglect other obligations to pursue their secretive encounters. Their relationship, unfortunately, is almost the exact opposite of Paul’s exhortation to the believers at Corinth.

And why? Because just as in Paul’s time, we don’t understand what it means to love. In his recent encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI tells us that while erotic human love is initially “covetous and ascending,” through the process of developing a mature relationship “the element of agape thus enters into this love.” Without agape (self-sacrificing love), “eros is impoverished.” Jack and Ennis never move from the eros into the agape. This is not because they weren’t serious about their Christian faith. Or because they lived in Wyoming during a repressive era. Or even because they were gay. This is because it takes faith, grace, and deliberate commitment for any of us to move beyond our selfish and fallen desires into true life-giving relationships.

Nevertheless, Brokeback Mountain is a brilliant movie, mostly because it captures the brokenness of two men desperate to be known and loved. This film is too complicated to be a polemic. Jack and Ennis care too much about their wives and children, talk too much about their fathers, and hate themselves too much for this to be homosexual propaganda, as some of the film’s harshest critics would have you believe. Instead, Brokeback is a realistic account of the devastation that comes when we try to fulfill our desire to be satisfied instead of the call to satisfy one another. In retrospect, perhaps this movie is a great love story for our time. But, if it is, it is only because we have absolutely no idea what it means to love.

Mattie Germer AB ’03 is a Government graduate from Kirkland House. She is currently completing an MA in Christian Spirituality at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.

I say this because I fear that I and many other Christians have had the misfortune of leaving our knowledge and our faith in separate categories. If “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), why do we treat the written Word as separate from the living Word? The two are one and the same, and it is fruitless to consider the one without the other. One literal message of the Gospel, for example, is to give sustenance to the needy (e.g. Mark 10:35-45). This is just an objective command. But unless this practice cultivates a loving and generous heart, it is worthless, for Christ’s greatest commandment with respect to other humans is to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Christians’ responsibility to add faith to their knowledge can be illustrated using the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30). Just as the master gives money to his servants to protect but also wants them to invest it to make a profit, Jesus gives us commands and examples about bringing people out of degradation, but would also have us use those commands to develop our own convictions about the importance of doing so. This is the point of all of Jesus’s acts of healing and generosity on Earth. Moreover, all of the most forceful Christian moral movements have worked towards this goal, including the anti-slavery movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s suffrage movement, and the work of inner-city black churches and Christian missionary-aid workers today. People with non-straight orientations currently suffer from all the aspects of ostracism, dehumanization and social poverty that Christ condemned, and many are struggling with HIV/AIDS. Countering these evils is a necessity for all who would live by the convictions of their faith in Christ.

If it could be shown that living according to a non-straight orientation keeps people in a state of degradation, then it would follow that Jesus would want people to deny these orientations. But by no means can such an assertion be proven with scripture. The oft-quoted passage of Romans 1:24-27 states that homosexuality is connected with the moral decline of humanity, and from this Christians derive the notion that homosexual acts and thoughts should be discouraged today. Yet many forget that this passage is part of a thematic overview of the decline of man, which is described in much greater detail in the opening chapters of Genesis. Here, the story of Adam and Eve paints an overwhelmingly clear picture of the connection of heterosexual sexuality with humanity’s decline. Adam and Eve ate the fruit given them by Satan in violation of God’s wishes, and immediately “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves” (Genesis 3:7). It was only the result of Adam and Eve’s sin that they even had a heterosexual drive that would make them aware of their sexual characteristics. Sex until that point could only have been pleasureless and absent of a heterosexual drive, or they would have had to cover themselves earlier. Moreover, the gender traits that some assert make males and females necessarily “complementary” are in fact punishments as a result of the fall: the tendencies toward female subordination and male bread-earning are created in Genesis 3:16-19. Procreation in Eden is itself doubtful, since Eve was not given her name (“mother of all the living,” Genesis 4:20) until after the fall. Yet as modern humans we do not condemn heterosexuality; we recognize sexuality as a mortal condition, yet we celebrate our humanity, our healthy enjoyment of physical pleasure, and the romantic relationships that sex engenders. Condemnation of other orientations based on their connection with the moral fall of man overlooks our lenience toward heterosexuality, and implies that we should avoid romance and sex altogether.

We do not do so, and for good reason. Adam and Eve’s human response to their downfall is to create a family, “with the help of the Lord” (Genesis 4:1). Cain worked the fields and Abel tended the sheep to provide for their parents. The family is the social unit that enables humanity to survive the dreadful state of decay in which it currently finds itself. Sex, to the extent that it helps form a family, is good. Only heterosexual couples can reproduce, but sexual attraction facilitates the romantic bonds that encourage any two people to start a family, and sex helps keep the family together once it is created. Those who believe in the sanctity of the family are absolutely correct; their failure is in their false assumption that heterosexuality is uniquely blessed.

Stephen Dewey ’07 is a Government concentrator in Wigglesworth. He welcomes comments at sdewey@fas.harvard.edu