Gay-Marriage Proponents Expand Fight to the South

An article appearing in the USA Today on January 16^th indicates that gay-marriage proponents have deliberately focused their efforts on expanding this fight to the southern states. After all, the southern states have been known for years to be “the Bible belt.” The movement has taken a different strategy. Rather than debate the issue or dialogue about the subject of gay marriage, gay couples have descended on clerk’s offices thoughout the southern states applying for marriage licenses.

According to the article, responses have “touched some and angered others.” Agree or disagree, at first glance, the strategy appears remarkably brilliant. Take the abstract out of the debate and make it real, make it experiential, make it emotional. After all, Americans have become more and more removed from the theoretical and much more influenced by experience.

As Jasmine Beach-Ferrara (called a Rev. in the article) says, "The action is intended to shine a light on what happens when a discriminatory law is enforced and how that impacts real people in their hometowns." This is the gay movement’s way of making it real! However, one has to ask if this same strategy might be employed to turn the gay movement upside down on its head. Ferrara also said, "The message you get in the South is that it's not safe to be completely out as a gay person." I cannot help but wonder what she means when she says “safe.” Are homosexuals in physical danger in these southern states? By the way, the targeted states include Virginia, North & South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Once more, the homosexual movement, resorting to emotional manipulation, refuses to consider how their actions affect the state employees of these local offices. In their demand that others care about their feelings and emotions, they feel completely justified in ignoring the feelings of others. One example of this is the notion that people “should not” find homosexual displays of affection offensive or grotesque. Heterosexuals are expected to view gay sex and gay affection the same as we do heterosexual affection. But no one can tell us why our natural inclination is to recoil when we see two people of the same sex kiss and even more so when they kiss passionately. No one can explain why the homosexual urge for perverted sex is a natural part of DNA while others’ recoil toward that behavior is not a natural part of our DNA. It is even more puzzling when one considers the sheer number of humans engaged in homosexual sex compared to the number who experience this internal recoil phenomenon. Hence, irrationalism enters this discussion masquerading as love. If we have evolved from nothing at all, into complex beings, and survival of the species is the primary purpose of human existence, then it follows that homosexual behavior, since it does nothing to propagate life and much to shorten and weaken it, should be purged from the species, not promulgated and encouraged.

What if we exposed American culture to the truth about the homosexual lifestyle? I don’t mean the biblical truth about the morality of such behavior. I mean the actual truth about the large numbers of promiscuous sexual encounters that occur within that community and the health consequences that follow. For example, one study revealed that over 70% of homosexuals admitted that over half of their sexual encounters were one-time events. Another study indicates that homosexuals have a range between 20 and 106 partners each year. One study indicates that 43% of homosexuals admit to over 500 partners in a lifetime.

The homosexual agenda has three fundamental strategies: desensitize the public to gay sex, affirm the lifestyle as being natural, and isolate biblical Christianity by painting it as a hateful and bigoted religion. They carry out this strategy by infiltrating sitcoms where they are portrayed as normal, loving, fun individuals no different from the rest of society. Studies on the homosexual community present a much darker world than the one most Americans are privy to, however. In addition, Secular Christianity, which is the brand that most Americans are familiar with, has long ago abandoned anything remotely resembling genuine Christian beliefs or values. Hence, secular Christianity is a friend and proponent of gay-marriage, but an enemy of God. This brand of Christianity is a tool in the hand of the homosexual and it is used to counter biblical Christianity and will be utilized a great deal as this fight is expanded into the southern regions of the United States.

Civil employees have the right to do their job without suffering harassment from a group of obnoxious and sexually perverted homosexuals. That these perverse individuals and groups would resort to this sort of tactic is an indication of their values. They have no regard for the taxpayers who are paying the increased expense that their tactics produce by way of wages and inefficiencies in that area. Their behavior speaks for itself. As I said earlier, the strategy is really quite effective. That is why I say quid pro quo is in order. The conservative segment of society, if they wish to counter the homosexual movement, should respond with a similar tactic. They should allow the public to really get to know the homosexual lifestyle and what it is really about. The American public has no idea what the facts really are. The only thing they know about homosexuality is what the liberal media and Hollywood wants them to know. The conservative component has to be more honest and more direct about the facts if they wish to stem the tide. The radial sensitivity and fear of offense has overtaken any sense whatever of stating and admitting the facts.

As for the Church, what should she do in light of this new expansion of the homosexual war on Christianity and conservative values? The Church should remain engaged in the culture through the gospel message, through living her values before the culture, through making disciples, and through good deeds when there is opportunity. She should continue to love homosexuals and every other sinner equally. She must love all sinners enough to rebuke godless behavior with honesty and with all humility. We were all alienated from God, enemies of the faith, blind despoilers of truth, and perverse in our behavior when the Hound of Heaven found us, gave us a new heart, and applied the blood of the precious Redeemer to our decrepit souls.

The Church must speak the truth in love without fear of repercussion. She must assert that homosexual behavior is a sin against God and an egregious perversion of nature. That kind of sex is not only unlawful before a holy God; it is an unnatural perversion of human sexuality. Homosexual sex is unhealthy and abnormal. Those who engage in the practice are not only vile sinners like the rest of human kind, but they are also obdurate in their desires, desperately in need of rescue, redemption, and regeneration. This is precisely what the homosexual hates about Christianity. Christianity does not teach that homosexuality is natural, sexual sin. In other words, homosexuality is not men engaging in sexual behavior against God’s law alone. It is men engaging in a very vile and corrupted form of sex, which is also against God’s law. This truth must remain part of the Christian prohibition against this behavior. Christians are responsible for disseminating and preserving the purest and fullest expression of truth known to them. What is more, that expression comes to us in Scripture as it reveals the person and work of Jesus Christ!  In Romans, Paul informs the Roman Church that God gave men over to these passions as a consequence of His wrath. Gay sex is the result of God’s righteous curse on men who insist on rejecting a righteous, holy, loving Creator!

It seems to me that American culture will eventually accept and embrace gay marriage. The values of American culture continue at a pace of degradation that most churchmen would not have predicted even twenty years ago. Therefore, the focus of the Christian community must be on the mission that has been clearly handed down to her from Christ Himself. The Church has the witness of Scripture as the ancient holy apostles carried out Christ’s commission from the beginning. God has provided us with an inspired and perfect history of the message, method, and mission of the Church. There is nothing abstruse about Christ’s instructions to His Church, nor in the historical record about how the apostles went about getting on with it. A lack of focus on the mission of the Church has led to all sorts of problems within the Christian community. We mix secular psychology with biblical discipleship and call it Christian counseling. We mix humanistic philosophy with theology and call it philosophy of religion, or worse, philosophical theology. We intermingle Gadamer and Heidegger with biblical hermeneutics and exegesis and wonder why people’s view of Scripture is what it is.

What is the church to do? “Depart, depart, go out from there, Touch nothing unclean; Go out of the midst of her, purify yourselves, You who carry the vessels of the Lord.” (Isa. 52:11) “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, “I will dwell in them and walk among them; And I will be their God, and they shall be My people. “Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate,” says the Lord. “And do not touch what is unclean; And I will welcome you. “And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” Says the Lord Almighty.” (II Cor. 6:14-18) From what I can tell, the Church has completely ignored the clear antithesis that exists between her values, her reasoning, her morality, her state of being and that of the world’s values, reasoning, morality, and state of being. It is one of light and darkness, life and death, righteousness and unrighteousness, morality and immorality. Nothing will change that! God has said it is so and it will be so until the end. We must start acting like it and stop pretending that unregenerate human beings have something to say to us about how things are or should be. We begin with loyalty to God, they begin with hostility to God. Is it any wonder we will not agree on matters like gay marriage?

Should Christians spend tons of time and money fighting gay marriage? I don’t think so. I think we should spend our time preaching the gospel, condemning all sin wherever it is found, making disciples, baptizing believers, and doing good to all men where possible.