In February 2007, a colleague of mine attended the annual fundraising dinner for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the world’s largest gay activist organization. As a Christian man deeply committed to righteousness in our nation, he wanted to see how the HRC operated firsthand.

Next to him at the table was a homosexual couple, and as my friend was talking to one of the men in the couple, he suddenly had a vision—and he is not prone to such things—of a snake wrapped around the man’s neck. He knew he had to kill it before it strangled the man to death, but he also knew if he didn’t exercise extreme care in killing the snake, he would kill the man in the process.

That, in vivid pictorial illustration, is the predicament we find ourselves in today in the church. On the one hand, we see the real dangers of gay activism affecting virtually every area of our society. In fact, it can be said without exaggeration that gay activism is the principal threat to our freedoms of speech, religion and conscience. And we see how our kids are being negatively influenced in their schools and through the media by curricula and programming produced by gay activists and their straight allies.

At the same time, we want to reach out to those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender with the love of God and the compassion of Christ, recognizing how much rejection many of them have suffered and being fully aware they perceive conservative Christians to be their greatest enemies, viewing us as hateful, bigoted, intolerant and homophobic—as condemning all of them to hell.

How then do we stand against gay activism without hurting our witness to gay individuals? And how do we reach out with sensitivity without softening our stance for righteousness? How do we walk in both grace and truth together?