[Note: This is Part 2 of a 2-part series examining how contemporary movements offer counterfeit community. Part 1 explored political tribalism and the MAGA movement. Part 2 examines identity-based movements and what the gospel calls the church to be in response.]
In April 2025, researchers at UMass Amherst made a startling discovery. After surveying over 1,000 Americans and tracking their responses over time, they found that political beliefs don’t just flow from identity—sometimes identity flows from political beliefs. Liberal Democrats who initially identified as straight were twice as likely as conservative Republicans to later identify as LGBTQ. Meanwhile, conservative Republicans who had identified as LGBTQ were more likely to stop identifying that way.[1]
The researchers weren’t questioning the reality of sexual orientation or gender identity. Rather, they were documenting something profound about how modern identity functions: for some people, the categories we use to describe ourselves are not merely descriptive but aspirational, shaped as much by ideology and community belonging as by internal experience.
This finding opens a window into the complex dynamics of contemporary identity movements—and raises crucial questions about the difference between genuine community and what we might call ideological solidarity.
Before we proceed, an important clarification: This examination of the LGBTQ+ movement is not an attack on LGBTQ individuals, whom we recognize as people created in God’s image and deeply loved by Him. Nor is it a defense of the cruelty, rejection, or violence that LGBTQ people have experienced—including, tragically, from those claiming the name of Christ. Our concern is pastoral, not political. We’re examining how movements organized around shared identity—whether sexual, political, racial, or otherwise—can promise community while delivering something more like a crowd. The church has often failed LGBTQ people by offering neither genuine welcome nor gospel truth, leaving them to find belonging elsewhere. That failure is its own indictment. But recognizing the church’s failure doesn’t exempt us from examining whether what fills the void is ultimately satisfying.
The Movement as Identity
The LGBTQ+ movement in America has achieved remarkable legal and cultural victories over the past several decades. From marriage equality to anti-discrimination protections, the movement has successfully secured rights and recognition that seemed unimaginable a generation ago. These are significant accomplishments that have materially improved many people’s lives.
But the movement has also become something more—and perhaps something less—than a coalition advocating for legal protections. It has become, for many, a primary source of identity and belonging. The phrase “LGBTQ+ community” appears constantly in advocacy literature, suggesting a unified collective bound by shared experience and common purpose. Organizations like the Human Rights Campaign speak of LGBTQ+ Americans as a “powerhouse” and emphasize their “tremendous political power.”[2]
Research from the Movement Advancement Project reveals that LGBTQ community centers function primarily as political advocacy hubs: 92% engage in advocacy, public policy, or civic engagement activities.[3] More than one-third listed anti-transgender legislation as their top priority. The Brookings Institution notes that LGBTQ+ voters form a consequential bloc, with 95% registered to vote and 93% motivated to vote specifically for Democratic candidates.[4]
These statistics reveal a movement structured primarily around political solidarity and collective action against perceived threats. The language of “community” pervades the discourse, but the substance often resembles something quite different—a coalition united less by deep mutual knowledge than by shared identity markers and common political enemies.
The Politics of Belonging
What makes the LGBTQ+ movement compelling as a case study isn’t that it’s unique in offering counterfeit community—it’s that the dynamics are so transparent. Sexual orientation and gender identity become not just personal characteristics but political commitments, tribal markers, and entry points into a ready-made “community”.
The movement explicitly frames itself through identity politics. Sociologist Mary Bernstein’s research on LGBTQ movements documents how activists have “adopted a kind of identity politics that sees gay, bisexual and/or transgender people as a fixed class of people; a minority group or groups,” aspiring to “liberal political goals of freedom and equal opportunity” and aiming “to join the political mainstream on the same level as other groups in society.”[5] This approach has achieved legal victories, but it also creates a particular form of belonging: membership based on categorical identification rather than intimate knowledge.
Consider what this means in practice. Someone questioning their sexuality or gender identity doesn’t just grapple with personal questions; they encounter an entire apparatus of community, advocacy, and political engagement waiting to receive them. Coming out becomes not merely being honest about oneself but joining a movement. Pride celebrations aren’t just personal affirmations but political demonstrations. Supporting LGBTQ+ rights becomes inseparable from broader progressive politics.
The UMass Amherst research illuminates how this works. For some people—not all, but some—claiming an LGBTQ+ identity becomes a way of signaling political allegiance, expressing solidarity with a marginalized group, or finding a community that shares their values. The researchers found that LGBTQ+ individuals hold more left-wing views even on issues unrelated to sexuality or gender: they’re more likely to support gun control, government-run health insurance, and increased immigration.[6]
This isn’t to suggest that sexuality and gender identity are mere political choices. Rather, it’s to observe that the movement has created a form of belonging where identity categories function as much like political affiliations as personal descriptions—where being LGBTQ+ means joining not just a community but a comprehensive ideological framework.
The Crowd Dynamics of Identity Movements
Like political tribalism, identity-based movements offer powerful counterfeits of community. They provide clear boundaries (LGBTQ+ versus cisgender/heterosexual, allies versus bigots), shared symbols (the rainbow flag, pride celebrations), common enemies (anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, religious conservatives), and a sense of collective purpose (achieving equality, resisting oppression).
They also offer something particularly appealing: unconditional affirmation. In a world where LGBTQ+ individuals often face rejection from families, churches, and traditional institutions, the movement promises complete acceptance. Organizations like GLAAD frame their work around “Protect Our Pride” and emphasize creating “judgment-free spaces.”[7] The implicit message: Here, you will be accepted exactly as you are.
But here’s where crowd diverges from community: the acceptance is conditional on maintaining the correct positions. The movement’s unity depends on ideological conformity. Those who identify as LGBTQ+ but hold conservative political views, question transgender ideology, or maintain traditional religious beliefs often find themselves marginalized within the very community that promised unconditional welcome.
Research has documented internal tensions within LGBTQ communities. A 2016 Australian study by James Roffee and Andrea Waling found that LGBTQ individuals “often face microaggressions and exclusionary behaviors from others within their own community,” with tensions stemming from “misconceptions and differing beliefs about what constitutes LGBTQ identity.”[8] The movement fragments along lines of race, gender expression, political ideology, and tactics—revealing that shared identity markers alone cannot sustain genuine community.
Moreover, the movement’s structure around oppositional identity creates the same dynamics we observed in political tribalism: unity maintained by opposition to a common enemy rather than by shared commitment to one another. When the Human Rights Campaign speaks of “defeating hate, discrimination and bigotry at the polls,” when 90% of LGBTQ young people report that politics negatively impacts their wellbeing,[9] when the movement’s coherence depends on continuing to face threats—what happens to “community” when the threats diminish?
The Failure to Satisfy
The most telling evidence that identity-based movements offer crowds rather than communities comes from the persistent loneliness within them. Despite finding a “community,” despite being surrounded by others who share their identity, many LGBTQ+ individuals report profound isolation. The Trevor Project saw a 700% spike in crisis calls following the 2024 election,[10] suggesting that political belonging cannot substitute for deeper forms of connection.
This isn’t unique to the LGBTQ+ movement. It’s the nature of counterfeit community. You can be part of a massive Pride parade, surrounded by thousands who share your identity, and still be utterly alone. You can have affirmed your identity, joined the movement, posted the right hashtags, and yet remain unknown. You can fight alongside others against common enemies and never experience the costly, sacrificial love that marks true community.
The movement promises that embracing your identity and finding “your people” will satisfy the longing for belonging. But identity alone cannot build community. Shared opposition to discrimination cannot replace shared life. Political solidarity cannot substitute for covenant commitment. Being part of a categorical group cannot satisfy the soul’s hunger to be known.
The Gospel’s Uncommon Ground
The gospel offers something the LGBTQ+ movement—like all identity movements—cannot: a community that transcends our identities rather than being constructed by them.
In Christ, the most fundamental thing about us isn’t our sexuality, our gender identity, our race, our politics, or any other characteristic. The most fundamental reality is that we are sinners saved by grace, adopted into God’s family, united to Christ, and indwelt by His Spirit. This identity doesn’t erase our particularities, but it radically reframes them.
Paul’s declaration to the Galatians strikes at the heart of identity politics: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). The categories that divided the ancient world—and divide ours—are transcended by union with Christ. Not ignored, not erased, but subordinated to a more fundamental reality.
This means gospel community can include people with vastly different experiences of sexuality and gender. The person who experiences same-sex attraction and chooses celibacy. The person who identifies as transgender but submits their gender identity to Christ’s lordship. The person whose sexuality has never caused them a moment’s confusion. The person struggling with pornography. The person whose marriage reflects God’s design. The person whose marriage falls far short of what they envisioned. The person wrestling with desires they didn’t choose and wouldn’t have wanted.
All are welcomed not because they share an identity category but because they share a Savior. All are called not to affirm every impulse and desire but to submit everything—including sexuality and gender—to Christ’s lordship. All are offered not conditional acceptance based on ideological conformity but unconditional acceptance based on Christ’s finished work.
This is radically different from the movement’s promise. The movement says, “Come as you are, and we’ll celebrate everything about you.” The gospel says, “Come as you are, and I will transform you into the image of my Son.” The movement promises a community built around affirming your identity. The gospel promises a community built around a Savior who gives you a new one.
The Church’s Tragic Failure
But we must face an uncomfortable reality: the church has often driven people toward counterfeit communities by failing to offer genuine gospel community.
For generations, the church’s treatment of LGBTQ individuals has too often been marked by cruelty, rejection, and dehumanization rather than by costly love and gospel truth. We’ve made people choose between honest acknowledgment of their experience and belonging in the body of Christ. We’ve offered condemnation without compassion, moral pronouncements without pastoral care, doctrinal positions without deep relationship.
When a teenager realizes they experience same-sex attraction and knows that acknowledging it will result in rejection, where will they turn? When a person wrestling with gender dysphoria finds in the LGBTQ+ community the first place anyone has treated them with dignity, why wouldn’t they embrace it? When the church offers only isolation or dishonesty while the movement offers belonging and affirmation, the choice seems obvious.
The church cannot simply critique identity-based movements while failing to offer true community ourselves. We cannot denounce the counterfeit while providing nothing genuine in its place. If we want people to reject ideological solidarity in favor of gospel community, we must actually become gospel community—places where people can be honest about their struggles, where they are known and loved even when they fail, where they find belonging that doesn’t require ideological conformity, where they’re welcomed as whole persons rather than as embodiments of particular sins or temptations.
This requires the church to hold two truths simultaneously: the biblical sexual ethic and profound love for those who struggle with it. The lordship of Christ over all of life, including gender and sexuality, and deep compassion for those experiencing dysphoria or confusion. The call to holiness and the patience to walk with people over years and decades as they learn to submit their desires to Christ.
A Better Offer
The LGBTQ+ movement, like the MAGA movement, like every tribal identity, offers a powerful but ultimately unsatisfying counterfeit. It provides the feeling of community without the substance. It creates belonging based on shared characteristics rather than deep knowledge. It promises unconditional acceptance while demanding ideological conformity. It unites through opposition rather than common mission.
The church is called to offer something immeasurably better. Not a community constructed around shared identity markers, but a community created by the gospel. Not belonging based on affirming particular desires, but belonging based on common need for a Savior. Not solidarity through opposition to enemies, but unity through shared submission to Christ.
This community acknowledges that all of us—regardless of the particular shape our brokenness takes—need transformation. It recognizes that sexuality and gender, like everything else in our fallen world, have been distorted by sin and need redemption. It calls everyone, not just LGBTQ+ individuals, to submit their desires and identities to Christ’s lordship.
But it also offers what no identity movement can: a God who knows us completely and loves us still. A Savior who entered our brokenness to redeem it. A Spirit who transforms us from the inside out. A community where belonging doesn’t depend on getting everything right but on being united to Christ. A family where we are known, not just as members of categorical groups, but as particular people with names, stories, struggles, and hopes.
This is the community the world desperately needs. Not another crowd masquerading as fellowship. Not another identity tribe promising what it cannot deliver. But the body of Christ—messy, costly, beautiful, real.
The question for the church is whether we’re offering it. Are we creating spaces where LGBTQ+ individuals can be honest about their experience without fear of rejection? Where they can wrestle with hard questions without being pressured toward predetermined answers? Where they’re loved as whole persons, not reduced to their sexuality or gender identity? Where they encounter both truth and grace, both holiness and compassion, both the call to submit everything to Christ and the patient love that walks with them in that submission?
Or are we offering our own counterfeit—a religious crowd that requires conformity without offering genuine knowledge, that demands moral performance without providing grace, that speaks truth without love or love without truth?
In a world of competing tribal identities, the church has the opportunity—and the calling—to demonstrate what genuine community looks like. Not crowd, but community. Not solidarity, but fellowship. Not affirmation of all our desires, but transformation by the One who makes all things new.
May God give us grace to be what He has called us to be: a community that offers not ideological conformity or categorical belonging, but the costly, transforming, grace-filled fellowship of the gospel.
For Reflection:
- How has the church in your context responded to LGBTQ+ individuals? Have we offered genuine community, harsh rejection, or something else entirely?
- In what ways might identity movements (whether LGBTQ+, racial, political, or otherwise) be offering something the church has failed to provide?
- What would it look like for your church to hold both biblical sexual ethics and profound love for LGBTQ+ individuals? How can we avoid the errors of affirmation without truth and truth without love?
- Where in your own life do you seek belonging based on identity categories rather than union with Christ? What counterfeits are you tempted to embrace?
- How can the church create spaces where people with diverse experiences of sexuality and gender can find genuine community rooted in the gospel rather than in shared identity markers?
Prayer Points:
- For LGBTQ+ individuals: Pray for those who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria—that they would encounter both the truth of God’s design and the overwhelming love of Christ, and that they would find genuine community in the body of Christ rather than settling for ideological solidarity.
- For the church’s repentance and transformation: Pray that the church would repent of cruelty, rejection, and failure to love LGBTQ+ individuals well—and that we would become communities marked by both gospel truth and costly love, where everyone can be honest about their struggles.
- For wisdom in cultural engagement: Pray for wisdom to engage cultural debates about sexuality and gender in ways that honor both biblical truth and the dignity of every person made in God’s image—refusing both the cruelty of rejection and the deception of affirmation apart from transformation.
- For all who seek counterfeit community: Pray for everyone finding their primary identity and belonging in movements, causes, or tribal affiliations rather than in Christ—that God would reveal the insufficiency of all counterfeits and lead them into the fullness of gospel community.
[1]Daniel A. Cox and Sam Pressler, “Does Politics Make People More Likely to Identify as LGBTQ?” The Survey Center on American Life, August 22, 2024, https://www.americansurveycenter.org/does-politics-make-people-more-likely-to-identify-as-lgbtq/.
[2]“LGBTQ+ Youth Wield Significant Power in the Upcoming Elections,” Human Rights Campaign, October 25, 2024, https://www.hrc.org/magazine/2024-winter/the-power-lgbtq-youth-hold-in-the-upcoming-elections.
[3]“2024 LGBTQ Community Center Survey Report,” Movement Advancement Project, October 2024, https://www.lgbtmap.org/policy-and-issue-analysis/2024-lgbtq-community-center-survey-report.
[4]“LGBTQ+ voters are a consequential voting bloc in the 2024 election cycle,” Brookings Institution, September 9, 2025, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/lgbtq-voters-are-a-consequential-voting-bloc-in-the-2024-election-cycle/.
[5]Mary Bernstein, “Identities and Politics: Toward a Historical Understanding of the Lesbian and Gay Movement,” Social Science History 26, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 535, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249880577_Identities_and_Politics_Toward_a_Historical_Understanding_of_the_Lesbian_and_Gay_Movement.
[6]Daniel A. Cox and Sam Pressler, “Does Politics Make People More Likely to Identify as LGBTQ?” The Survey Center on American Life.
[7]“GLAAD Announces Pride 2024: ‘Protect Our Pride,’” GLAAD, June 3, 2024, https://glaad.org/releases/glaad-announces-pride-2024-protect-our-pride-with-lgbtq-community-research-hub-and-glaad-pop-up-shop/.
[8]James A. Roffee and Andrea Waling, “Rethinking microaggressions and anti-social behaviour against LGBTIQ+ Youth,” Safer Communities 16, no. 1 (2017): 11-19; see also James A. Roffee and Andrea Waling, “Resolving ethical challenges when researching with minority and vulnerable populations: LGBTIQ victims of violence, harassment and bullying,” Research Ethics 13, no. 1 (2017): 4-17.
[9]“LGBTQ Americans and the 2024 election: ‘I don’t feel welcome here,’” CBS News, November 29, 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lgbtq-americans-voting-demographic-2024-election/.
[10]“LGBTQ Americans and the 2024 election: ‘I don’t feel welcome here,’” CBS News.
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