A recent study released by George Barna found that 39% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 identify as LGBTQ and that 30% of adults under the age of 37 do. The study’s findings also point to a significant shift that is taking place in the worldview of younger Americans, especially when it comes to how they think about identity — the study reported that 75% of young adults are searching for a purpose and that, while over half describe themselves as religious, 74% believe that all faiths are equal.
While Barna’s numbers are significantly higher than those reported by Gallup earlier this year, both studies show that the number of young Americans who identify as LGBT has increased dramatically in recent years. Writers like Abigail Shrier have pointed out that social contagion plays a significant role in the number of young people suddenly identifying as LGBT, and especially in the rise of transgenderism. As school curricula, the entertainment industry, woke corporations, and other champions of the LGBT movement insist on reducing male and female to rigid and cartoonish stereotypes, young people are encouraged “to look constantly for landmark feelings or impulses, anything that might point toward ‘genderfluid,’ ‘genderqueer,’ ‘asexual,’ or ‘non-binary.’”
Additionally, recent years have seen the rise in an increasing number of “sexual identities” including, for instance, “demisexual,” which refers to someone who is sexually attracted only to people with whom they are emotionally intimate. As John Stonestreet commented, while reconnecting emotional attachment and sexual intimacy is an improvement, viewing it as an identity rather than simply a measure of relational maturity is not. With many young adults turning to sexuality as a source of identity and meaning, the number of sexual identities one may choose from to categorize oneself continues to grow.
We were not created to live meaningless lives, which is why, when we lose sight of what we were made for, we search for a source of identity elsewhere. For many younger Americans, that means attempting to find identity, purpose, and meaning in one’s sexual desires. Whatever “identity” one chooses to craft for oneself around his or her sexual desires can never satisfy as a source of purpose and meaning because God did not create us to find our purpose and identity in sex. He created us to find our identities in Him because He made us for Himself and nothing else can satisfy us.
This is not, by any means, to say that sex does not matter. Andrew T. Walker has pointed out that, “What we believe about sex has never been peripheral… God knit sexual design into the very fabric of creation, and it is our glad acceptance of that created order where humanity will prosper.”
Our culture is in the middle of a reversal — rather than submitting to God’s design for sexuality revealed in His Word and His creation, our culture is allowing its beliefs about sex to shape its beliefs about God. As this happens, many have come to view religious beliefs as something personal and private, while sexuality has come to be seen as central to a person’s identity.
A.W. Tozer once remarked that what we believe about God is the most important thing about us. When the majority of young adults believe all faiths are equal and that no religion can make exclusive truth claims — in other words, that God is who they say He is, not who He says He is — then anyone who tells them otherwise or who understands that their faith is more central to their identity than their sexual desires will be seen as backward, judgmental, and disruptive to social norms.
When the Supreme Court declined to hear the case Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who faced jail time when she refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Justices Thomas and Alito remarked that the Court’s Obergefell ruling, in which the Court redefined marriage, resulted in a “cavalier treatment of religion” and that Davis "may have been one of the first victims" of the decision, "but she will not be the last.” In a culture that views religious beliefs as personal and private, rather than central to how we live our lives, cases like Davis’s will only become more common.
The majority of young Americans are searching for meaning, and many of them are hoping to find it in their sexual identity. This is not without consequences, and one consequence that has become increasingly evident in recent years is the corrosion of religious freedom that inevitably takes place when sex is seen as central to one’s identity and religious belief is seen as something that should be kept quiet.
(Image: Unsplash, Sharon McCutcheon)
