Welcome to the Alisa Childers Podcast on your host, Alisa Childers. We're continuing our discussion about homosexuality, specifically addressing the question today. Can Christians agree to disagree? We'll talk about it with a special guest in just a moment.

My guest today is Alan Schleeman, an author and speaker for Stand to Reason, which is a phenomenal apologetics ministry. We've had some stand to reason folks on the podcast before with Tim Barnett and Amy Hall.

Alan is a part of the Stand to Reason team where he blogs and has a podcast and does a series of videos that provide really good quick answers to complicated questions.

What I love about Alan is he really excels at making those complex and complicated issues really accessible to the average Joe.

He's known for teaching on some of the most controversial issues of our time. He is not shy. He talks about abortion, evolution, homosexuality, bioethics and a lot having to do with Islam. He has spoken to thousands of students in adults across the country at churches and conferences, college campuses, regularly is a guest on TV and radio.

There's basically no one more qualified to bring wisdom to the discussion we're going to have today to the question we're going to talk about today. So Alan, thanks so much for being here. I'm thrilled to have you on the podcast.

It's my pleasure, Lisa. Thanks for inviting me on and looking forward to our conversation.

Me too. And I'm deeply thankful for you, to you, for the ministry you do for the body of Christ. I'm glad you're willing to talk about some of these more controversial topics.

So today, we're going to start a two part series on the topic of Christianity and St. Sex relationships. So on today's episode, we're going to ask the question, should Christians divide over LGBT issues?

And honestly, this is one of the most common questions I get via email through my website. It's one that I get a lot of push back on people making assumptions about it or saying, hey, we need to remain in unity no matter what.

It's very confusing for people, I think. And of course, it's an incredibly relevant topic for our generation because our culture has already made the shift. And of course, this has caused many Christians to rethink the issue has the church gotten this right is this biblical what we believe about it.

Of course, all of us, if you're alive in 2020, we all have people in our lives who identify somewhere in on the LGBT spectrum, somebody who's gay or someone in our family who experiences same sex, sex attraction on some level.

So this becomes a deeply important thing for us to not only think about, but to really care about because how we think about this is going to directly affect the people that we love and care about.

So Ellen, what are just before we kind of dive into the question, what are some things to bear in mind as we think this topic through?

Well, I think like you, I would just add that I too also have friends and family. In fact, I would say close friends and close family who I see on a regular basis that identify themselves as gay or lesbian.

And who also people who I know that identity who would say they have same sex attraction, but do not try to satisfy those desires.

They try to identify themselves as Christians, they want to follow Jesus Christ, they want to obey the command of scripture, and they're not at all trying to satisfy those desires.

So I would say that I too have friends and family who are close to me. And so this topic is very personal to me because of these relationships.

And I think as you do, we value relationships because people are important. People are made in God's image.

And because of that, these people are intrinsically valuable like everybody else.

And therefore there's no place for degrading behavior or course joking, whatever.

And so I hope that as we go about this discussion and we talk about these things, that people will recognize that if we're trying to respond to a particular argument or we're trying to respond to a particular claims being made, we're trying to respond here to the reasons and to the arguments and to the facts that matter.

...