D.C. Comics announced earlier this week that it is bringing back the classic Batwoman comic book character… and that she will be a lesbian. Batwoman will make her return to comic book pages in July as part of a weekly series. The original Batwoman was started in 1956 and killed off in 1979. The editors at D.C. Comics suggest that they just wanted to make Batwoman a more unique personality that is different from the others in the “Bat-family.” They insist that this move is not "just about having a gay character” but is rather an effort "for overall diversity" in the D.C. universe. One critic suggested that having an ugly or overweight or male-pattern balding superhero would be much more inclusive.
The world that we live in today has certainly changed. When I was a child, homosexuality was still considered to be a mental disease and aberration today it is a normal and healthy alternative lifestyle. And when I was a child, superheroes were champions of good who fought for “truth, justice and the American way.” But the world in which I grew up is history… my girls would say “ancient history.” It does us no good to point to how bad things are compared now to how things were then. That world no longer exists. And what is more, that world was nowhere nearly as pure as we might remember. When I was a child, George Wallace ran for president on platform of racism and segregation. Yes, the world has changed, and not all the changes have been of the “hell-in-a-hand-basket” variety.
Ours is a postmodern, post-Christian world in which every idea passes as true and nothing is accepted as ultimate truth. And that is precisely the kind of world in which Christianity was born. What early evangelists faced as they took the gospel across the Mediterranean was not a world that denied the idea of God but a world where many ideas masqueraded as gods. In that world, they proclaimed the truth of God and called people to holiness despite the many competing ideas that all claimed to be true. They did not wait for the world to behave, they simply stood in the shadow of the cross and pointed people to its Savior and its lifestyle.
What should we think of comic books recasting Batwoman as a lesbian? She should think that we live in a sinful world, and we should ask ourselves how our lives are shining in the darkness to bring light. What should we do? Well, if you run into Batwoman swooping down a dark alley looking for crime to fight, why not invite her to church with you.
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