On Tolerance, Hate Speech, and The Theology of Jodi Sta. Maria

By: Omar Rushlive L. Arellano

In this essay, our intention is to expose the theology that is prevalent in the Philippines that is common with progressives, and we also aim to talk about how their theology is contradictory with their supposed progressive values on tolerance and inclusivism.

The Theology of Jodi

A post from ABS-CBN News became viral in the Philippines last August 13. It was a picture of the actress Jodi Sta. Maria with quote: “What I know about the God we serve is that He is love. He is the kind of God that doesn’t condemn nor judge. So if He has that kind of character, then who are we to judge, to condemn, or to discriminate others? We are here to love one another.” She is introduced as someone who co-produced the BL series ‘Love Beneath the Stars’.¹

In the article written by Miguel Dumaual entitled, “Can religion and being queer align? ‘Love Beneath the Stars’ has a simple answer”², he describes the series as a love story between Dominic and Luke, and the setting is in an all-boys Catholic school. Adrian Lindayag, who is the actor behind Dominic, said that he resonates with Dominic’s situation as someone who grew up in a conservative Catholic environment. Dumaual quoted him saying that he grew up hating himself because he does not want to feel what he naturally feels, because it was taught as forbidden. Because of his discouragement through the teachings he received, he became an atheist for a certain time, but it did not work out for him because he felt that he is fundamentally a very spiritual person. And in the present, Lindayag said that he came to the point of merging the reality of his person with his relationship with God.

With that said, it’s clear that the point of the article is to argue that being an LGBT and being a Christian is possible. As they said, “They can co-exist”. What’s striking about Jodi is the fact that she went to Oxford to study Christianity with Hayden Kho and Piolo Pascual.³ It’s not clear however what things she has learned during her stay there, so let us not speculate and focus on her expressed theology whether it’s in line with what the Bible says.

I would like to start with a quote from Timothy Barnett, which is his own rebuttal of Jodi Sta. Maria’s theology. I got this from his page named, “Red Pen Logic with Mr. B”. He said, “In Psalm 50:21, God rebukes the people of Israel because they thought God was just like them. God says, “You thought that I was one like yourself.” But God isn’t like us. And we don’t get to tell God what He is like. Only God can tell us what He is like. And He has.”⁴ And in light of this, it is paramount for us to get our theology straight from the Bible.

To serve this purpose, let us share some Bible passages to show that contrary to Jodi Sta. Maria’s claim that God doesn’t condemn or judge, God’s Word says that He does condemn and judge, and yet it’s not contrary with God being love:

Isaiah 66:16: “For by fire will the LORD enter into judgment, and by his sword, with all flesh; and those slain by the LORD shall be many.”

Psalm 75:7: “but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another.”

Revelation 21:8: “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

1 Corinthians 6:9–10: “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.”

Romans 2:3–6: “So when you, O man, pass judgment on others, yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you disregard the riches of His kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you to repentance?

But because of your hard and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. God “will repay each one according to his deeds.”

Hence, it’s clear that God does condemn and judge. Now the next question is, “Is God’s judgement contrary to God’s love?” The short answer is no. Love is not apathetic to the injustices, oppression, and sin in this world. And in order for us to appreciate this kind of love, we must not equate God’s love exactly the same as our love. God is holy which means that He is in a league of His own, which means that God’s love is also in a different category.

The Yale theologian Miroslav Volf, had a change of heart when he saw the ethnic strife in the former Yugoslavia. He saw the destruction of churches, the raping of women, and the murder of innocents. This made him realize that his view of God had been too low:

“I used to think that wrath was unworthy of God. Isn’t God love? Shouldn’t divine love be beyond wrath? God is love, and God loves every person and every creature. That’s exactly why God is wrathful against some of them. My last resistance to the idea of God’s wrath was a casualty of war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come. According to some estimates, 200,000 people were killed and over 3,000,000 were displaced. My villages and cities were destroyed, my people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry. Or think of Rwanda in the last decade of the past century, where 800,000 people were hacked to death in one hundred days! How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandfatherly fashion? By refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators’ basic goodness? Wasn’t God fiercely angry with them? Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God’s wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn’t wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil. God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.”⁵

As this section on Jodi’s theology ends, I just want to request that we pray for her. That she would experience God’s mercy and grace for her to see the truth about God more clearly. Let’s pray that she will be loved and discipled by someone who deeply loves the Lord as well.

Biblical Christianity and Queerness Does Not Align

Now that we are able to show that God condemns and judges, and that God’s wrath is not unworthy of God’s love, let us give a brief commentary to Miguel Dumaual’s message which affirms that being religious and being queer aligns.

In his article, we can see that the message being affirmed is that being religious and being queer can be reconciled. Nevertheless, it seems that there is no argument being presented to justify this view. Adrian Lindayag is cited to show that he had an atheist phase but it did not work out because he is fundamentally religious, but it’s based merely on his experiences and does not necessarily show that it applies to others. Nevertheless, we can see that Lindayag is under the assumption that straight religious people live their life easier (which is a wrong assumption because following Jesus requires our whole selves), and that his purpose is to inspire young boys to not repress who they are because of their religion. As I quote Dumaual’s quotation of Lindayag:

““Ang purpose ko is to live out my truth, so that I can show other people na, sila rin, they can live their truth, as long as wala kang natapakan at nasasaktan na ibang tao. Iyan ang purpose mo sa mundo, to spread love,” he said.”⁶ [Translation: “My purpose is to live out my truth, so that I can show other people that they could also live out their truth, as long as we don’t step on another person and hurt them. This is your purpose in this world, to spread love.”]

My response to this is that the slogan that “you can do whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone” is wrong. Paul Copan has an example where talks about a person mocking a patient in a mental hospital whose minds are no longer connected to reality. Such mockery does not hurt the patients because their condition can no longer process the hateful words that are being said to them, but these actions are said to damage the soul of the mocker. Another example of something that is wrong and harmful even if done in private is pornography.⁷ It could be argued that homosexual acts destroys the souls of those who participate in it because it’s considered sinful in Scripture (Gen. 19; Lev. 18:22; Rom. 1:26–27; 1 Cor. 6:9–10; 1 Tim. 8–11), and therefore if the religion in question is Christianity, then it’s clear that queerness does not align with it.

In addition, Paul Copan talked about similar slogans such as, “You can do whatever you want–as long as it’s between two consenting adults”, and “You can do whatever you want–as long as it’s in the privacy of your own home”. He answered the former by showing consenting adults doing sadomasochistic acts, and the latter by showing child abuse and wife-beating being done in the privacy of one’s home.⁸ This shows the absurdity of the slogans themselves, aside from Copan exposing the self-refuting assumption of relativism itself.

For this reason, even if homosexual acts are not harmful for the person physically, because God declares them as sin, then it is still wrong. Nevertheless, this is not merely spiritually harmful but physically harmful as well. Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, in their book, “Legislating Morality”⁹, they cited objective data from the Omega Journal of Death and Dying on 1994 where a comparison is made on 6,737 obituaries from eighteen U.S. homosexual journals with obituaries from two newspapers. The intent of this study is said to discover the effect of the homosexual lifestyle on their lifespan compared with heterosexuals. And the results is that the median age of death for married men is 75 and 79 for married women. Then the median age of death for homosexuals from 1980–1993 is 42 for those who do not have AIDS and 39 for those who have AIDS. The median age for lesbians in the study is 44. For married people, the study showed that married heterosexual men live an average of 18 years longer and married women live about 8 years longer than their single or divorced counterparts, and the median age of homosexuals did not improve, for it’s 39 for those with AIDS and it’s 41 for those without AIDS. The Omega study, noted by Geisler and Turek, did not give a substantiated answer why the presence of a long-term partner shortens the lifespan of homosexuals. However, they said that at least five studies discovered a negative health benefit from long homosexual relationships, because the couple tends to practice more anal intercourse and more anal/oral sex than those who do not have stable partners. Geisler and Turek then explains that this means that those who are “married” or those who have a long term relationship tend to engage more in more intimate and risky sexual encounters than their “single” counterparts.

For this reason, it seems that Christians who tell others that queerness is not in line with the Bible, are those who really love their neighbor, because they tell them to repent of a sin which is detrimental for them spiritually and physically.

On Tolerance and Hate Speech

In light of Jodi’s message, of course, there are Christians all over the internet that reacted strongly against it. One example is Juilian Red Bautista. Whether you agree or not with his manner of presentation, you have to admit that he presented the gospel clearly. He talked about mankind being sinners, and he does not single out people that are LGBT, for he shows that even heterosexuals are sinners. He also preached that Jesus died on the cross to pay for the penalty of our sins, so that those of us who repent and believe will experience God’s forgiveness, and that they will receive the righteousness of Christ.¹⁰ I wanted to talk about this, because it seems that regardless of the manner how a Christian makes their case, it seems that the experience is similar with those people I see in the West. Julian’s post was made hidden by Facebook. It seems that someone had reported his post for violating Facebook’s community standards. I can resonate with this. I remember experiencing my speech being silenced by a classmate in my bioethics class by just calmly enumerating different studies that debunk her notions on homosexuality. These kinds of responses are not new.

One good example in the West is from Doug Wilson’s talk entitled, “Sexual by Design”.¹¹ In his talk, you can see different people sneering and jeering while he is talking. Some of them even protested with loud chants that what he is saying is hate speech. And sadly, this seems to be characteristic of people in the Left. Nevertheless, the United Nations defines hate speech as,

“There is no international legal definition of hate speech, and the characterization of what is ‘hateful’ is controversial and disputed. In the context of this document, the term hate speech is understood as any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity factor. This is often rooted in, and generates intolerance and hatred and, in certain contexts, can be demeaning and divisive.”¹²

Furthermore, the UN also said:

“Rather than prohibiting hate speech as such, international law prohibits the incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence (referred to here as ‘incitement’). Incitement is a very dangerous form of speech, because it explicitly and deliberately aims at triggering discrimination, hostility and violence, which may also lead to or include terrorism or atrocity crimes. Hate speech that does not reach the threshold of incitement is not something that international law requires States to prohibit. It is important to underline that even when not prohibited, hate speech may to be harmful.”¹³

For this reason, it seems to me that when Christians preach the gospel and mention that someone is a sinner, they are not committing hate speech. Because first, it does not meet the ‘threshold of incitement’ that international law prohibits. Second, even with the definition of hate speech that is not prohibited by international law, it is not rooted in hatred and intolerance, but because of love and concern for the eternal welfare of the person. The other aspects of the definition is hard to pinpoint objectively because what could be deemed as a pejorative or a discriminatory language is subjective, and though the tone of the person may seem offensive, it could not be the intent of the person to demean the other person that they are talking to.

In light of this, it’s tragic that progressives boast about tolerance and being inclusive. And yet Christians are being silenced for just talking about their religious views which are deemed as hate speech. It seems that to be labeled as tolerant and inclusive by these people, is that you should agree with everything that they will say. Or else, you will be labeled as an intolerant, bigoted, homophobic, or a transphobic religious zealot.

Greg Koukl, in his article, entitled, “The Intolerance of Tolerance”, gave a similar observation when he mentioned that the postmodern definition of tolerance makes us egalitarian in our dealings with ideas but elitist in our dealings with persons.¹⁴ He expounds that since they view all ideas as equal, we are automatically accused of disrespecting another person if we disagree with them. Koukl argues that this ironically results to the very elitism that relativists try to avoid, because the person that is deemed as intolerant could be labeled as “bigoted, disrespectful, ignorant, indecent,…intolerant” and they could even by sued or punished because of it. As Koukl observed:

“Tolerance has thus gone topsy-turvy: Tolerate most beliefs, but don’t tolerate (show respect for) those who take exception with those beliefs. Contrary opinions — especially politically incorrect ones — are labeled as “imposing your view on others” and quickly silenced.”¹⁵

To escape this trap, Koukl talked about the classical view of tolerance, which is where we are egalitarian with our dealings with persons and elitist in our dealings with ideas. Basically what this means is that we treat all human beings with equal standing in value and worth, that we respect them and give them space in the marketplace of ideas, but we strongly disagree with their ideas, in a sense that if an idea is not respectable, then none is given for if it is not merited. Furthermore, Koukl comments:

“Notice that we cannot truly tolerate someone unless we disagree with her in some way. This is critical. We don’t tolerate people who share our views. They’re on our side. There’s nothing to put up with. True tolerance is reserved for those we think are wrong, yet still choose to treat decently.”¹⁶

In light of this, I implore progressives and every Filipino who disagrees with Christians, that you practice your principle of tolerance and inclusivity. I urge you for your tolerance for I believe that this embodies what it means for us to be a Filipino in a democratic society that is true to our Constitution (freedom of speech and freedom of religion is in Section 4 and 5 of the Bill of Rights).

As I end, I just want to say that a theology that disagrees with you does not necessarily count as hate speech, thus it should be tolerated.

References:

1. ABS-CBN News (@abscbnNEWS), ““GOD IS LOVE.” #LoveWins at hindi dapat husgahan ang same-sex couples, ayon kay Jodi Sta. Maria,” Facebook, August 13, 2021, https://www.facebook.com/abscbnNEWS/posts/10159704236145168
2. Miguel Dumaual, “Can religion and being queer align? ‘Love Beneath the Stars’ has a simple answer,” accessed August 24, 2021, https://news.abs-cbn.com/entertainment/08/13/21/love-beneath-the-stars-aligning-religion-and-being-queer?fbclid=IwAR1PmdThqjpzi0ZLk6s5E9sKvcICS7Brh_eP_pQyVndiu6BC_nDNvObuVXI
3. EJ Salut, “Instastalker: Jodi Sta. Maria, Hayden Kho and Piolo Pascual classmates in Oxford,”accessed August 24, 2021, https://push.abs-cbn.com/2016/7/7/fresh-scoops/instastalker-jodi-sta-maria-hayden-kho-and-piolo-p-100465
4. Red Pen Logic with Mr. B (@redpenlogic), “Timothy Barnett corrects Jodi Sta. Maria’s quote through a picture,” Facebook photo, August 24, 2021, https://www.facebook.com/redpenlogic/photos/a.1058331631330714/1182684875562055
5. Copan, Paul. Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God. (Michigan: Baker Books, 2011), 192.
6. Dumaual, “Can religion and being queer align?”
7. Copan, Paul. When God Goes to Starbucks: A Guide to Everyday Apologetics. (Michigan: Baker Books, 2008).
8. Copan, When God Goes to Starbucks.
9. Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. Legislating Morality. (Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1998), 131–135.
10. Juilian Bautista, “Juilian Red Bautista’s response to Jodi Sta. Maria’s quote through a caption”, Facebook, August 13, 2021, https://www.facebook.com/juilian.bautista/posts/4548465931844634
11. Wilson, Doug. ”Sexual by Design Pt. 1 | Doug Wilson,” October 8, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZotiSgc3fI
12. “United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech,” United Nations, accessed August 24, 2021, https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/UN%20Strategy%20and%20Plan%20of%20Action%20on%20Hate%20Speech%2018%20June%20SYNOPSIS.pdf.
13. “United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech”
14. Greg Koukl, “The Intolerance of Tolerance.” Stand to Reason. https://www.str.org/w/the-intolerance-of-tolerance.
15. Koukl, “The Intolerance of Tolerance.”
16. Ibid.