The phrase “love is love” became widely used as a rallying cry for the LGBTQ+ rights movement primarily in the mid-2010s, with its popularity significantly increasing around 2014, signifying that love between any two people should be equally valued regardless of their gender or sexual orientation.
“Love is love” is a tautology. This is a phrase or expression in which the same thing is said twice in different words (think, “It is what it is”). Tautology, in logic, a statement so framed that it cannot be denied without inconsistency.
This phrase sounds like a completely logical statement, but it isn’t. Furthermore, it’s not even a biblical idea.
Because God created the Universe, He created the emotions that mankind experiences. Arguably, the greatest or most significant of all of them is love. God’s able to define love. He’s able to direct love. He declares that love is expressed between a man and woman (Genesis 2:24-25), between a parent and child (Psalm 103:13), and between friends (1 Samuel 18:1).
Same-sex love is prohibited by God. Describing the Old Testament period, Paul said, “For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due” (Romans 1:26-27). When we come over to the New Testament period, Paul wrote, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites … will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).
Contrary to the spirit of our day which says that every type of love should be equal, the Bible proclaims that love is only love if it conforms to His will for mankind. Sure, His ways are different than man’s ways (Isaiah 55:8-9), but they’re also perfect, fully satisfying man’s needs.
Kyle Campbell