Neither did Jane Conoley, dean of the College of Education at Texas A&M, when she issued a statement declaring that faculty must “celebrate and promote all forms of human diversity,” including sexual orientation. Even at a typically liberal university you might find a few people to speak up against such a decree, and Texas A&M is fairly conservative as universities go. Eight professors formally objected, arguing that Conoley had no right to insist that Christian faculty “celebrate and promote” practices they held to be immoral.

And that’s when things got interesting.

A college committee sought to calm things down by rewording the statement a bit (changing “celebrate and promote” to “value and respect”). But Conoley got combative, charging the professors with being “pompous” and “arrogant.” More significantly, she took a swing at one of the key teachings of Christianity: “I generally consider distinctions that call us to love the sinner while hating the sin to be empty, rhetorical gestures at best and covers for persecution at worst.”

Take note of that last part; it’s what makes this story more than just a local dust-up with an overbearing dean.

Conoley’s giving voice to an attitude that’s widespread in modern America, but especially among teens and young adults. Let anyone (parents, siblings, friends) criticize the way they live their lives and they hasten to take it personally. I’m sure you know the words (maybe you’ve even spoken them): Don’t hand me that “love the sinner, hate the sin” line. If you love me you have to accept what I do. This is who I am, and if you reject what I do, you reject me. If you hate it, you hate me.

Now as a matter of logic that’s pretty sloppy. If you care about someone, you won’t blithely accept that he’s (say) destroying himself with booze. You may not have a clear-cut idea of how much you can do to stop it, but you won’t pretend his boozing is just another legitimate lifestyle choice. You certainly won’t “celebrate and promote” his self-destruction. You hate the behavior all the more because you love him.

To be fair, it isn’t always that simple. Some people — including more than a few parents — convey their disapproval of behavior in a way that comes off less as love than as bashing. Some are well meaning but clumsy communicators. Others have ugly motives in the mix. Maybe they like bullying. Maybe they want to feel superior or self-righteous. Maybe they want to divert their attention from their own sins to those of others. Maybe they’re just angry people looking for someone to vent their anger on. In any case, such people don’t do credit to the cause they invoke, especially if it’s Christianity.

But falsely invoking a good cause doesn’t keep it from being a good cause. The principle of “love the sinner, hate the sin” — in other words, loving in the same way Jesus first loved us — is at the heart of Christian life. Take it away and you take away the main thing Christianity has to say about relationships between human beings.

And that’s the whole idea.

When Conoley says sin-sinner distinctions are “empty rhetorical gestures at best,” she means to abolish any idea that homosexuality is sinful at all; she could hardly want to “celebrate” it otherwise, much less command everyone else to do the same. When she says (as she does elsewhere in her rebuttal letter) “sacred texts should be used to guide our personal lives and not used in judgment of others,” she means that religious moral teachings are strictly a personal preference.

Note that she doesn’t refer to the Bible per se here. She uses the generic, plural “sacred texts.” You get the idea, right? All religions are equally valid, none has an exclusive claim on the truth, each of us has our own truth, etc. This is how people talk when they want to undermine Christianity — and the entire concept of truth — without coming right out and saying so. They pretend to honor all religions while diminishing each to the level of a mere lifestyle choice.

Evasive as this approach is, Conoley’s still more candid than a lot of people, and maybe more than she meant to be. When she orders faculty to “celebrate and promote” homosexuality, she rips the mask off “tolerance” — the moderate, non-threatening word meant to imply that “we’re not asking you to approve, only to treat everybody nicely.” No, “tolerance” ain’t the agenda here. The agenda is to endorse homosexuality and to discredit all dissenting views.

That’s par for the course for gay activists and their allies. They want to define any challenge to their cause as innately cruel, both to the public and to themselves. In short (though they’d never put it this way), they want us to think loving the sinner means loving the sin.

Christians, however, should know better. We can both love homosexuals and oppose homosexuality itself; in fact, opposing homosexuality is a big part of how we love the people who practice it. The same goes for a host of other behaviors — drinking, drugs, sexual practices, gossip, what have you. If we do things right, we won’t celebrate sin, we’ll condemn it. And we won’t condemn sinners, we’ll seek to introduce them to the One Who can rescue them.

Then we’ll have something to celebrate.

Know anyone who’s struggling with homosexuality and might be open to a way out? Click here and here.