Macklemore and Morality: A Hip-Hop Take on the Gay Debate by Nate Corley

              It’s hard to turn on the radio in Seattle these days without hearing the pulsing rhythm and repetitive saxophone refrain of Macklemore’s hit song, “Thriftshop.” Last week, I actually heard the song being played simultaneously on two different radio stations – one a top-40 hip hop station, the other known for playing alternative hits.

The song is so catchy that apparently some people can’t stop singing it – even at the threat of bodily harm. A woman in Colorado was arrested last night for strangling (non-fatally) her boyfriend when he refused to stop singing the chorus of “Thriftshop,”[1] even though she had asked him “25 times” to stop. Clearly, Macklemore’s music has a strong appeal.

                While “Thriftshop” may be Macklemore’s signature tune nationally, he is best known in his hometown of Seattle for “Same Love,” his anthem calling for the legalization of gay marriage. Although Macklemore uses this song to call out lawmakers and hip hop fans for their apparent discrimination against the gay community, he devotes the majority of the lyrics to criticizing the response of the Christian church to the issue of homosexuality in general.

                Because of the profanity featured in most of Macklemore’s lyrics and his roots in the ultra-liberal Pacific Northwest, it’s easy for most Christians to dismiss “Same Love” as just another rant of a godless celebrity taking pot-shots at the church.

Such a flippant dismissal would be a sad mistake. Even though Macklemore’s broadside attack on the church is aggressive and inflammatory, the lyrics of “Same Love” reveal many of the assumptions Millennials have appropriated concerning the church and sexuality. If the church wishes to engage this generation in theological discourse, they need to know where they are coming from. You can’t give them an answer if you don’t what questions they are asking.

That’s where Macklemore’s “Same Love” comes in. In this song, Macklemore poses the questions that the church needs to answer. A discussion must take place, and “Same Love” reveals what issues ought to comprise the loci of that discussion.

The first question concerns the origins of homosexual desires. As Macklemore puts it,

“The right wing conservatives think it's a decision
And you can be cured with some treatment and religion
Man-made rewiring of a predisposition
Playing God, aw nah here we go
America the brave still fears what we don't know
And God loves all his children, is somehow forgotten”[2]

In other words, does God create people as homosexuals, or is it a choice that individuals make? Far too often, the church dismisses this question as blatantly obvious: “Of course God didn’t create people to be gay! It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” The non-Christian world deserves a better response than this, and it’s up to those in the church to thoughtfully provide that answer.

The next question Macklemore raises concerns the authority of Scripture. He notes, “We paraphrase a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago,” as if the quotation of old dead guys is enough to settle the issue. Clearly, the larger question is, “What is the Bible?” Is the Bible an accurate, trustworthy revelation of God’s will, or is it an outdated collection of documents with little relevancy to life in the 21^st Century? This question of Scripture’s authority must be answered before Christians start lobbing Bible verses at their pro-gay opponents.

Macklemore also raises the question of whether homosexuality is an unalterable predisposition. In the chorus, a lesbian woman repeats the refrain, “And I can’t change, even if I wanted to. My love, my love, my love, she keeps me warm.” Most evangelical Christians assume the possibility of change and recovery for homosexuals, but non-Christians are not likely to share this belief. You must convince someone of the reality of potential change before you start preaching repentance.

The attitude of the church is also criticized by Macklemore:

“When I was at church they taught me something else
If you preach hate at the service those words aren't anointed
That holy water that you soak in has been poisoned”

If Christian opposition to homosexuality is coming across as “hate”, then there is a flaw in either the manner in which the message is conveyed or the attitude of the one giving the message. Macklemore’s critique here may be legitimate for some tactless Christians, but it may also reflect a confusion of loving opposition to behavior and a rejection of the person. The church must heed Macklemore’s words and take care to ensure that their opposition to sin is not misinterpreted as hatred of the sinner.

                The final question raised by Macklemore follows necessarily from the issue raised above: “What is love?” Macklemore ends this anthem by repeating some words from 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient/Love is kind.” Clearly, Macklemore is calling the church to love homosexuals by endorsing their behavior. But is that really what love is?

Unless the church provides a good answer to the contrary in both words and action, Macklemore and those like him will assume Christians are motivated by something other than love when they call homosexuality “sin.”

                Clearly, the gay debate is heating up nationally. Supporters of gay rights are getting ever more vocal, and laws around the country are being changed to accommodate gay marriages. And somehow, the church’s voice seems to be growing less and less relevant.

                To a large degree, this is because the church is ignoring the questions that need to be answered. Only when we address the mistaken assumptions of the pro-gay community will Christians be able to provide a convincing defense of God’s standards for human sexuality.

                 Listen to Macklemore, and get in the discussion.

-Nate Corley

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[1] http://musicfeeds.com.au/news/woman-strangles-partner-for-singing-thrift-shop-non-stop/

[2] All lyrics quoted from: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/macklemore/samelove.html.