In 1994 Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow, visited a gay & lesbian dance in Moscow to protest the event:

One time a man was handing out tracts at a gay and lesbian dance. Those attending the dance did not appear to be pleased, and someone apparently called a liberal Methodist pastor to come and deal with him. He came down, and in the course of the discussion, the Christian said that Leviticus condemns homosexuality as an abomination. The liberal pastor responded by saying yes, but the Old Testament allowed for slavery. The Christian responded by saying yes, it certainly did. “So what’s your point?” (Southern Slavery As It Was [Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1996], npn)

The person identified as “a man” and “the Christian” in this narrative was Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow. “The liberal pastor” is unidentified. And despite Doug Wilson’s representation that he was “handing out tracts at a gay and lesbian dance,” I suspect his goal that night did not include sharing the gospel with lost souls. His message “AIDS Inoculation Center” is a sign. Literally. This suggests to me that he planned to ridicule & antagonize, as well as pick a few arguments such as his exchange with the Methodist minister.

Mr. Wilson’s protest that night left a strong impression on the community, as witnessed by Friday’s Daily News article and by the Moscow Vision 2020 archive, which has several exchanges between Mr. Wilson and various people who witnessed his behavior that night. In this respect the Presiding Minister of the CREC resembles Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptists of “GOD HATES FAGGOTS” infamy. He states his message clearly and he enjoys tremendous attention when he delivers it. He just looks like a self-righteous cockroach, mostly because he’s wrong in the heart and in the head.

But when the Methodist minister said, “the Old Testament allowed for slavery,” he confronted Mr. Wilson with an argument he had not contemplated. The reasoning is specious, but Mr. Wilson bought it anyway. Scripture permitted indentured servitude among the Israelites for six-year terms and some versions of the Bible translate this as “slavery,” but it’s not slavery as the word is understood today. The Old Testament prohibited manstealing and slaveholding under penalty of death (Exodus 21:16). So instead of quipping, “What’s your point?” Mr. Wilson should have corrected the minister by noting the fallacy of equivocation: So-called “slavery” in the OT was not a wicked institution like the race-based chattel slavery for which the Confederate States of America declared war against the United States of America. It was a limited & regulated system of labor.

To be sure, Scripture does not teach anyone to mansteal millions of Africans; ship them overseas like cargo; sell them on the auction block; force them to work against their will without recompense to their dying day; all the while holding them and their children and their children’s children captive for a thousand generations. Only an idiot could believe that and only a confederacy of idiots would declare war against the largest industrialized nation in the world to defend it. But I digress.

Ever since Mr. Wilson bit the liberal pastor’s hook, he has proudly worn that shiny angle in his mouth. For twenty-two years to this day he refuses to admit his mistake and consequently homosexuality and the Peculiar Institution have become inextricably bound together in Mr. Wilson’s mind. The words “gay & lesbian” actually trigger a Pavlovian response in him. You can see the chain reaction take place in his head: “gay & lesbian” leads to “culture war” leads to a defense of “race-based chattel slavery in the antebellum South.” Boom. Happens every time. Ring the bell, watch Doug drool.

Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile successfully unwound Mr. Wilson’s thought process on this point when he engaged him on Black & Tan, wherein Mr. Wilson essentially duplicated his SSAIW argument, including the story about the gay & lesbian dance.¹ Pastor Anyabwile wrote:

Essentially, Wilson walks backwards from:

1. Our current cultural divisions over homosexuality, abortion, and feminism, to. . .
2. The Christians’ fidelity to and application of the Bible in such controversies (or lack thereof), to. . .
3. What he regards as a similar cultural conflict (slavery and the Civil War) that (a) featured the same crucial issue of the authority of Scripture and (b) in his opinion gave rise to an expanded federal government that arrests or opposes biblical resolutions for such problems.

Slavery gets a lot of air play, but it’s really a similarity heuristic for contemporary cultural engagement. . . . Does this chain of reasoning really hold? Personally, I don’t think so. (Does the Driving Logic of “Black and Tan” Hold Up?)

Pastor Anyabwile unwound Mr. Wilson’s logic but did not relieve him of his burden. Mr. Wilson cannot see, or refuses to see, the non-sequitur in his line of thought. He claims he is “up against the barriers of conscience” but this is a categorical fallacy. Something else is going on. Something drives Mr. Wilson to condemn homosexuality with the same vehemence that he defends southern slaveholders. He does it in tandem and insists they’re related. The common denominator appears to be the bullying, or the oppressor, factor. That is, Mr. Wilson bullies homosexuals and he defends southern slaveholders who physically oppressed an entire race of human beings for centuries.

Or there may be a much simpler explanation. I suppose it boils down to PRIDE.

¹ “On another occasion, a Christian man was handing out tracts at a gay and lesbian dance. Those attending the dance did not appear to be pleased with this, and someone apparently called a liberal Methodist pastor to come and deal with him. The minister came down, and in the course of the discussion, the Christian man said that Leviticus condemns homosexuality as an abomination. The liberal pastor responded by saying, ‘Yes, but the Old Testament allowed for slavery.’ The Christian responded by saying, ‘Yes, it certainly did. So what’s your point?’” (Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America [Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2005], 45)