Issues LBGTQ

What I know about Chicago politics I could write on the back of a business card. But even an outsider can't help take note at what happened this week in the Windy City, when a former federal prosecutor named Lori Lightfoot, who'd never run or held public office, defeated a candidate far more closely associated with traditional Chicago-land politics.

Both candidates are African-American. Both are women. Ms. Lightfoot ran a campaign that put strong emphasis on localities within the city, not simply downtown. She's interested, she says, in renewing Chicago's neighborhoods, not just dressing up the lakefront.

Her daughter was there for the celebration, as was her wife--that's right, her wife. Lori Lightfoot, who won big--with 97 percent of precincts reporting, she had received 73 percent of the vote and was leading in all 50 City Council wards--Lori Lightfoot is gay. She's a lesbian.

There's more. You must have heard of Mayor Pete, the man with the almost unpronounceable last name. In a Democratic Presidential primary race already full to overflowing, surprisingly, he's distinguished himself by emerging from the pack of other long-time potential candidates with more name recognition far behind.

His only political experience is being the mayor of a small, Indiana town known, far and wide, for football. Mayor Pete's got some cred. He's a Rhodes Scholar with educational pedigrees that won't quit. He's a vet, who spent more than his share of time in Afghanistan. He's a confessing Christian and regular church-goer, an Anglican.

Did I mention, he has a husband? Mayor Pete is gay, and wide-0pen about his gayness.

I don't know what "American evangelicals" are going to do about all of this. For many, the line in the sand is one's attitude toward what they like to call "the gay agenda." If you want to know who's a Christian, you ask people where they stand with regard to LBGQT questions. The answer is a GPS that'll get you on "the straight and narrow."

What "American evangelicals" plan to do with Mayor Lori and Mayor Pete is yet to be determined, but what will be determined is going to be interesting.

Consider this. Will Mayor Pete and his husband be invited to speak at Dordt College? Will the college President welcome them to the stage with a handshake? 

That should make the screamers howl. But then, of course, not so long ago their man was up there--three marriages, plenty of affairs, lots of them public, two of them when his wife was pregnant.

Are Mayor Lori and Mayor Pete symbols of cultural decadence? Or do their successes suggest a democracy still slowly opening to all of its citizens? Or how about this?--we can accept them as leaders. Just don't come to our church.

The "American Evangelical" is facing worldview complexity it simply cannot address with traditional arguments or the attitudes their fearless leaders have forever trumpeted. Just today, Thursday, April 4, the Church of the Ladder-Day Saints (LDS) determined that children of LGBT parents can now be blessed or baptized, overturning a ruling implemented in 2015 that kept those children from rituals until they were 18. What's more, no longer will same-sex marriage be labeled "apostacy."

The times, they are a'changin'.