Adjusting your moral compass

I have a prediction. In about fifty years, assuming western culture doesn't get wiped out by a Great Plague or an asteroid or something, homophobia will be about as socially acceptable as racism is now. That is to say, plenty of people will still think that way, and some will be quite open about it, but it'll be a career-stopper in politics. So of course those politicians who want to appeal to that part of the electorate will develop a dog-whistle vocabulary.

But that's not the prediction. That's just the way things are going. I'm not exactly sure when that will happen - it might happen in my lifetime, or it might take a century, but the trend is unmistakable. When it does happen, most churches will cope just fine - same as they coped with divorce, and racial equality, and allowing Catholics/Protestants/Jews/whoever to have equal rights, and not being in charge of the government.

That's not the prediction either. Churches have coped with vast changes over the millennia, and this is a relatively minor one.

The prediction is that when it does happen, church theologians will argue that equality for homosexuals is biblically based. And they will point to religious campaigners for equality, and completely ignore all the religious campaigners for inequality. Just as they did for slavery and racial inequality and women's rights.

Because obviously, if a thing is good, the church has always been in favor of it.