This reel turned up on my Facebook timeline today, complaining because the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty [!] Committee ruled against acceptance of gay or trans Baptists in the SBC.
My answer is: Nobody does. Everybody has an opinion, of course, but luckily in this country their opinions have no legal weight. The SBC gets to draw the line on doctrine as it likes, but no sensible person should take them seriously. You do know that the SBC was founded to protect slavery (a perfectly biblical and Christian position, then and now), and when that became untenable threw its weight behind Jim Crow until, as I recall, the 1990s? I'm critical of gay or trans Baptists who want to belong to such a sect in the first place. They can work within it to try to change its position, and in a century or two they might succeed. But there is no reason why non-Baptists should give a damn.
I should add: the SBC isn't deciding who is Christian. It's still the largest single Christian denomination in the US, but there are plenty of other denominations that welcome gay and trans believers, so it's not like they have no alternative. The SBC doesn't even decide who is a Baptist. When the schism took place in the 1800s, the SBC broke with other Baptists who were anti-slavery. There were alternatives even then! I don't know the position of other Baptist denominations on gay and trans believers, but I doubt they're all as hardline as the SBC. So this person is just being dishonest. Color me surprised.
