Marriage and
Freedom in America – 4; Truth vs. Propaganda and What to Do About it
Before we get started we’ll have a few moments of
silent prayer so you can make sure you’re spiritually prepared to study the
Word this evening. To confess means to admit or acknowledge any sin to God and
instantly you’re forgiven of those sins and cleansed of all unrighteousness and
restored to your walk by the Spirit that you may continue to grow spiritually.
Let’s pray.
“Father, we’re so grateful that we can come together
this evening to study Your Word and be reminded that many things change on a
day-by-day basis in the world around us. Your will and Your Word never changes.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. With the vagaries in
the economy, the vagaries with the rulings of what the law means from one year
to another, and all of these things change. But You
never change and Your Word never changes. Father, as we continue this study
understanding the relationship of marriage and freedom and the implications of
this law, we pray that You might strengthen and
encourage us from the knowledge that we learn and that we might be able to use
that as we are engaged in conversations about why we, as Christians, take the
stand that we do. And Father we pray that you would help us to be a faithful
witness and shine as light in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation. We
pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”
Tonight I want to wrap up this study. The focus has
been on marriage and freedom in the United States. We derive our freedom
inherently because we are created in the image and likeness of God. This was
recognized in the Declaration of Independence. That verbiage is that these are
unalienable rights that are given to us by our creator so that language means
something. It is not just words on a page. It is not just something that just
an old bunch of dead, white guys wrote, but it has significance. These are
things that are ours regardless of government.
Our government has historically recognized that we
have these rights but these rights do not come from the government. Now that is
an important thing for us to understand. As I have gone through these lessons
what I am focusing on is the way the founding fathers thought, what their
framework was in terms of a Judeo-Christian worldview, a theist worldview. Some
of the things they said that should help us to think through how we think about
the law and how we think about the Constitution would be different from the way
a lot of people think about it, if they ever think about the law. They look at
the law as something that really is something that just represents the current
popular things to be in favor of but that is not the purpose of law or the
purpose of government.
So we are looking at that and we are looking at the
Word of God but we are also looking at specifics and understanding the divine
institution of marriage. We talked about the high value that the Bible places
on marriage and it defines marriage a specific way and that freedom flows from that marriage. When I talk about marriage and
freedom it is through marriage that we propagate the species, the next
generation in the nation. It is through that family that we have education to
pass on the values from one generation to another. The generation that fails to
do that is the generation that begins the slide into the chaos and collapse of
any national entity.
Hosea was a writing prophet in the Old Testament. He
is listed among what is sometimes referred to as the Minor Prophets but that is
only because they are smaller books. He writes in judgment, a statement of God
against the southern kingdom, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
When we do not know the Word of God and the principles of the Word of God, it
destroys us internally. Once a nation is destroyed internally, that leads to an
internal collapse. That internal destruction is the outgrowth of letting the
passions and the lust patterns of the sin nature run uncontrolled.
Part of the responsibility of the government is to
impose a certain level of morality, for law represents at some level morality.
That does not mean that the law is legislating every moral decision but that
laws reflect a moral or ethical framework and it is to provide for the rise and
pursuit of virtue as we have seen statements from the Founding Fathers in the
past. When we reject that as a people, as a nation, it eats away at the soul of
a nation. When that happens it leads to a nation manifesting the same
characteristics of arrogance and of self-absorption and self-justification and
self-indulgence that are indicated from an individual sin nature, and when a
nation turns to the pursuit of self the result is always going to be
self-destruction.
So Hosea announced, “My people are destroyed for lack
of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge [God said to Judah], I also
will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you
have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” This is
an announcement that the judgment of 586 BC would come. The 2nd
Temple would be destroyed. Jerusalem would be destroyed. The people of God,
living in what was left of the land of Judah, would be taken out of the land as
God’s punishment for their idolatry, but also because they were committing all
of the abominations. That is not just sexual sins because as we saw last time
the word abomination describes a range of sins, all the abominations of the
Canaanites. Just as God removed the Canaanites from the land, so God was now
going to remove Israel from the land.
When we get into the New Testament we see a statement
by Paul. At issue here is not just a lack of knowledge but there is a spiritual
dimension. 2 Corinthians 4:4, “Whose minds the god of this age has blinded.” So
there is a spiritual warfare component to this. As people give themselves over
to sin, then this opens the opportunity for Satan to have greater influence in
a culture. This is what we have seen recently. As has been my habit in the last
few lessons, I want to just review some more quotes from the Founding Fathers.
This is a quote from Federalist Paper #51. Remember the Federalist papers were
written as a form of debate in the process of adopting the current
Constitution. If you’ve never read them, I encourage you to read them and read
the Anti-Federalist papers to come to a better understanding of why we have the
form of government as a republican form of government, as a republic, not
republican in the sense of one party, but it is a republic.
Madison wrote, “But what is government but the
greatest of all reflections on human nature?” So what is human nature? Human
nature is both the pursuit of virtue from just a human viewpoint, human good in
terms of the sin nature, but it is also the pursuit of evil. The Founding
Fathers had a robust doctrine of sin. We do not have that any more. Because the
Founding Fathers operated within a Judeo-Christian worldview, they had an
understanding of the depravity of man. That is why they put safeguards on
government, because they knew that absolute power would corrupt absolutely. So
they put built-in safeguards to prevent any one branch of government from
becoming too powerful; so that the legislative branch would be checked by the
executive branch and the judicial branch and the judicial branch would be
checked by the legislative and executive branches.
The problem would be if any one branch got too much
power, then the liberty of the people would be threatened. The one branch that
has gained too much power because it seems to be the branch that does not
really have a check on it anymore is the judicial branch. The way the
Constitution was written, they recognized that they did not cover all the bases
and that there were weaknesses within the Constitution but they built in a way
of self-correction. That way was not to have the judiciary impose legislation
on the people. That is where we have come recently.
This is part of the problem that many of us have with
the Supreme Court decision a couple of weeks ago related to same-sex marriage.
It is legislating from the bench. It is not just making an umpire call and
saying that some law is unconstitutional and then throwing it back to the
states or to the legislature to fix it. They actually introduced legislative
verbiage into their decision. The process should have been thrown back to the
states and if there was going to be a change it should have been done through
an amendment with regard to how the people viewed same-sex marriage. This
should have been allowed to work itself out in a democratic process. The
judiciary stepping in and making the decision was, in effect, shortcutting the
will of the people and imposing the will of five on the nation. That is why
they are referred to as activist judges.
Another term that is sometimes used for this is positive
law. That is the technical, legal term. It comes out of the late 19th
century and it comes out of the idea that justices were to, instead of just
ruling that something was in bounds or out of bounds like an umpire or referee
in a game, they were to add new requirements to the law. They were to make
positive input into the law. That is crossing over into the role of the
judiciary.
Washington warned about this. He said, “If in the
opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional
powers be at any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment the way
the Constitution designates.” In other words if there is a problem there, such
as related to slavery and other things that have been corrected through
amendments, if there is “any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an
amendment the way the Constitution designates.” It has a self-correcting
mechanism. “But let there be no change by usurpation.” We’ve seen this, not
just in this recent decision, but there have been a number of decisions going
back into the early 19th century where there were decisions by the
judiciary. This decision, I believe, was arguably as bad as the Dred Scott decision.
He says, “But let there be no change by usurpation;
though this may in one instance be the instrument of good, it is the customary
weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” Just because it is a good
thing they did or people think it is, they are stepping outside their role and
responsibility and the end never justifies the means. So a right thing, and for
argument’s sake we’re going to say it was a right thing, done in a wrong way is
still wrong. And this was done in a wrong way.
Now Jefferson recognized the problem here. He says
that when we study the law and the Constitution we have to go back and
understand it within the original intent of the Founding Fathers. He said we
are to, “Carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted,
recollect the spirit in the debates.” That’s why we
should read these debates that are printed out in the Federalist papers and the
Anti-Federalist Papers and, “Recollect the spirit in the debates, and instead
of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it,
conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” See if I did that in the
pulpit with the Bible we call that eisegesis. You are
reading something into the text that is not there.
That is what happened in the decision related to Obamacare last week when they read into the regulations
into Obamacare that it was not just setting up these
exchanges in the states but they were to set up, even though you do not see it
written there, it also meant the federal government, as well. See they are
reading something into the text. That is what Jefferson is referring to here.
“Trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it,
conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” In other words, they are
trying to get their view into the document. He warned then that the Constitution
could be “A mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may
twist and shape into any form they please.” This is what we are witnessing.
Now Clarence Thomas stated the proper way of
interpretation in an address to the Manhattan Institute in 2008 where he says,
“Let me put it this way; there are really only two ways to interpret the
Constitution—try to discern as best we can what the framers intended or make it
up. Those are the only two options.” See, what the other side says is “There is
no way we can get into the heads of the writers of the Constitution.” Oh
really. We have the Federalist papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, their
diaries, their letters, and their speeches. We have more information about what
they thought and why they thought it the way they did than we have just about
any other period in history. We can get into their head and find out exactly
what they meant, just as we can get into the head of the writers of Scripture
and understand what the Scripture means. It is going back and taking things
apart, understanding the history, understanding the background, and
understanding the language.
So this is the issue. Are we going to be people of the
rule of law, going back to what the Constitution meant, or are we constantly
going to change it? If we change it, that leaves us in a position of legal
instability because what we think is true for today may not be true in five
years. We cannot plan. There is a certain level of instability and uncertainty
that begins to creep into a nation.
Last time we looked at what the Bible said. The Bible
talks about homosexuality as a sin. In Leviticus it says it is an abomination.
Now some people have taken this out of context as I pointed out last time and
they want to use this word abomination to try to reclassify this sin of
homosexuality as some type of unforgiveable sin or hyper-destructive sin and
they make it much worse than any other sin. That really distorts the Bible.
When we look at this word abomination and trace it
through the Scripture, as I pointed out last time when I gave many more
Scriptures, the word abomination the same word is used to describe seven things
the Lord abominates in Proverbs 6:16–19. A proud look, a lying tongue, hands
that shed innocent blood [murder], a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that
are swift in running to evil [someone always looking to cause trouble and
commit crime], a false witness who speaks lies [a sin of the tongue], and one
who sows discord among brethren [someone who uses libel and slander which are
also sins of the tongue].
The word abomination is used to describe a whole range
of sins and homosexuality is just one of those particular sins. Like adultery
and fornication it is a sin that is an attack and an assault on two divine institutions,
marriage and the family. Under the Mosaic Law, which was the constitution for
the nation of Israel, it was a capital crime. It was to be punished by death.
That was not necessarily true for other nations. The Mosaic Law was not
designed for other nations. It was only designed as a rule of law for Israel
and that law ended when Israel ended in AD 70. The Law, as a ceremonial law,
ended with the death of Christ on the cross and it is no longer in effect.
Christ was the end of the Law.
I pointed out some passages. Romans 1:18 is one of the central text identifying the role of
homosexuality of the decline and deterioration of a nation. When a nation
rejects God, Romans 1:18, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against
all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in
unrighteousness.” The more a nation suppresses truth, the more they live in
their own psychotic fantasy world, the more divorced from reality they are, the
more they try to redefine reality against what God has created, the more they
become like Romans 1:19 and following.
Men began to worship the creature rather than the
creator. They became fools. They may be bright in terms of their degrees they
have, in terms of their IQ but they are fools because they are living as if there is no God. So
what does God do? God says, “You want to live that way? Sure, I’ll let you go.
I will give you free rein and you can follow your head and do what you want to
do and you will see what the consequences are.” So in Romans 1:24 it says,
“Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts,
to dishonor their bodies among themselves.” This indicates sexual sin.
Romans 1:26, “For this reason God gave them over to
degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that
which is unnatural"—lesbianism. Romans 1:27, “And in the same way also the
men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire
toward one another.” What this tells us is that God is not going to judge us
for homosexuality or the legalization of same-sex marriage or the liberalism of
laws related to homosexuality. Those actions are the judgment of God on a
nation that has already turned their back on Him.
Do not get those things reversed. God gives us over to
those things because we have already rejected Him. They are the punishment.
They are the judgment of God because they will lead to further destruction in
the nation. Then I pointed out 1 Timothy 1:9–10 which lists two sins in verse
10, immoral men and homosexuals amongst a range of sins: those who kill their
fathers and mothers, murderers, kidnapers, liars, perjurers.
The word for immoral is the word PORNOS, from which we get pornography. PORNOS can refer to fornication or immorality. It is any kind of sexual act
that occurs outside the bonds of marriage, involves sex between two partners
who are not married, whether it is homosexual or heterosexual. The other word,
homosexual is the word ARSENOKOITES which refers to male and KOITE where we get our word coitus which is the word for sexual intercourse,
so this refers to sexual intercourse between two males. It is clearly
identifying homosexuality as a sin just like all of these other sins.
We find this same language in 1 Corinthians 6:9. Now this
is not talking about loss of salvation or salvation as I pointed out last time.
It is talking about rewards for believers. Those in Corinth came out of a
background that was quite permissive and licentious. Homosexuality, immorality,
temple prostitution were the norm. Everyone accepted it. It was the standard.
But when they became believers some of them continued in that licentious
lifestyle whereas some continued to grow and mature. This is what Paul is
talking about here. He says, “Do not be deceived.” Continuing to live a
permissive and licentious lifestyle, along with all of these other sins, is a
result of deception: Satan, the god of this age, blinding men to the truth. We
do not understand the gospel. We do not understand its implications.
So the warning is, neither fornicators PORNOS again, nor idolaters, nor
adulterers MOICHOS [distinct from fornication, unfaithful to a covenant, applied to those
unfaithful to God or spiritual adulterers]. That is what it means to be a
spiritual adulterer. It does not mean to listen to some other pastor-teacher.
It means to disobey God and be in pursuit of other forms of religion. So those
who are unfaithful to God are spiritual adulterers, sexually it refers to those
who are married and engage in sex with someone to whom they are not married,
whether it is someone of the same sex or opposite sex.
Homosexuals is the next word. It is a different word than we had earlier. It is MALAKOS, which was a term that referred to
someone who was effeminate or soft to the touch. It was used to describe
clothing that was made of soft materials or fine textures. So it was applied to
those who were homosexuals but were effeminate in their homosexuality.
Then the next term is sodomites, which is the term we
saw before ARSENOKOITES. So these terms are listed among those who are covetous, idolaters,
those who are drunkards, those who are revilers, extortioners
so it is listed in a group of sins.
What happened in this country is a switch from theism,
which is a worldview that recognizes that the world was created by an eternal,
omnipotent God; that God created everything in the world. How that is done can
differ within theism. It is a broad category but as the creator, God has the
right to set laws, physical laws such as the law of gravity, the laws of
thermodynamics, as well as laws related to morality. These laws related to
morality are embedded within the social structure of human beings because we
are created in His image and likeness even if that image and likeness has been corrupted
by sin.
When we ask the question of how we got to where we are
today from the views of the founding fathers we have to understand that we have
gone through at least three worldview shifts since the Founding Fathers. They
were theistic. We went through a shift to naturalism. We went through a shift
to modernism, which some could argue is a form of naturalism, and then we went
to postmodernism.
Naturalism, modernism, and postmodernism have a lot in
common. Theism looks at man this way in this chart. This is how the founding
fathers looked at man and the human race but they are all distorted by sin. We
are all corrupted by sin and if there are not certain restraints placed upon us
through education, through the law we will default to our corrupt position. We
will pursue that which lacks virtue. We will seek to unbridle our passions and
to create moral chaos.
In naturalism there is no such thing as sin.
Everything is good. It just differs on its relative impact upon society,
whatever is, is okay. So there is absolutely no sense of right or wrong in
terms of anything other than a pragmatic sense. Under theism homosexual
attraction is abnormal. There are cases in the Continental Army when George
Washington brought men up on charges of homosexuality and they were kicked out
of the army. This was their view at that time. In naturalism, they believe
homosexual attraction is normal. Under theism all homosexual activity is sin. A
person may have a proclivity in that direction but unless he acts upon it, it is
not sin just as someone may have a proclivity toward adultery but it is not
adultery unless it is acted upon. Someone may have a proclivity to murder, but
unless they actually murder someone they have not committed a crime. In
naturalism all homosexual activity is okay.
In theism there is forgiveness for all sin and change
is possible because sin is the result of individual choice and personal
volition. Therefore the individual is responsible for the choices that he
makes. Under naturalism there is no guilt and change is not possible. It is
just the way you are. These views on naturalism are often promoted in
classrooms where the professors are completely dominated by naturalistic
worldviews and they seek to promote these views to students and to convince
them of their ways.
As they do that they communicate a number of myths
about homosexuality. Thirty or forty years ago these myths were beginning to
really ramp up and a lot of people did not have answers to them so some people
began to be convinced. As the decades went by more and more people became
convinced because these myths became promoted by the
mainstream media. The gay rights groups were very effective in the way
they promoted their propaganda.
In a lot of ways conservative and Bible-believing
Christians were not very effective in the way they communicated what the Bible
taught. Among Christians, part of that problem is that a lot of Christians are
just plain arrogant and legalistic and judgmental. That just made matters worse
rather than improving anything. What I want to do is just look at some of these
myths.
The first myth is that homosexuality is normal,
healthy, and desirable. What is, is okay. That is
naturalism. There is no such thing as sin so it is normal and it is natural because
this is the way they are born. That is the second myth that homosexuals are
born that way. They just had that homosexual gene. It does not matter that no
one has discovered it, that there is no study to support it. Everyone just
seems to think there is a gay gene out there and we just have not looked long
enough or hard enough to find it.
Another myth is that there really are a lot of
homosexuals. Up until recently the view that was usually promoted by the
mainstream was that homosexuals make up about 10% of the population. They have
been so effective in their propaganda that in several recent polls over the
last ten years since at least 2002 the American populace, which does not really
look in to these things very closely, has shown that they are of the opinion
that there are a lot of homosexuals in America, somewhere between 23–25% are
homosexuals. That has a great impact on people. They may be like this and
maybe, if I have four children, one of them is going to be gay and I want them
to be happy and fulfilled and be married. I may not like it. I may not like
homosexuality but I want my son or daughter who is going to be born this way
and cannot do anything about it; I want them to be happy. That just sounds so
loving and so caring. That is how they’ve been educated by our culture. But
this is actually just a myth.
The fourth myth taught is that change is impossible.
So let’s look at the first one, that homosexuality is normal, healthy, and
desirable. A statement from Peri Jude Radecic, a member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task
Force as stated on Nightline, homosexuality is not an illness, it
is not something that needs to be cured. We are normal, natural, and healthy
people. That is the myth they promote. That is their view.
The Bible says not so fast. Romans 1:24–32, as I’ve
mentioned already states that every human being is distorted. They are
corrupted. They are warped by the fall. They are sinners. All have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God. Every Christian is a sinner. They are just
forgiven because they trusted in Christ as Savior. Just because something feels
“right” does not make it right.
How many times have we heard people say, “I love
so-and-so and it just feels right?” This statement is made by
homosexuals, heterosexuals, puppy love, or whatever it is. They think
the feeling is so overwhelming that it has to be right because it feels right.
That is applied to homosexuality. But the Bible says just because something
feels right does not make it right and homosexuality is neither natural nor
normal.
Up until 1973 the American Psychological Association
(APA) classified homosexuality as a mental disorder in their big book of mental
disorders. Due to pressure from the Gay Rights Movement, and it was intense pressure,
the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. A lot of this goes
back to understanding of what it means to be normal. They were trying to say
that homosexuality is really normal. To someone who is born blind, blind seems
normal. To someone born with any defect, that defect seems normal to them. They
have never known anything different. Just because it feels normal does not make
it normal. They tried to take their disorder and make it normal and they
succeeded.
This decision was preceded by three years of protests,
disruptions, and chaos. Psychologists were called up and threats were made.
They were intimidated and when the vote finally came, only 25% of the APA voted
and 58% of those voted in favor of removal so it would not be classified as a
mental disorder anymore. Now anyone with any sense of objectivity realizes that
is a terrible circumstance and is not objective.
Dr. Charles Socarides, who
was at the meetings and was an expert in the area of homosexuality and had
treated homosexuals for over 20 years, describes the atmosphere leading up to
the 1973 vote. He said, “Militant homosexual groups continued to attack any
psychiatrist or psychoanalyst who dared to present his findings as to the
psychopathology of homosexuality before national or local meetings of
psychiatrists or in public forums.” They were threatened and intimidated. In
fact, he said the final decision was “the medical hoax of the century.” That is
quite a claim.
In 1977 there was a survey of 10,000 members of the
APA and here are the results of the survey. 10,000 members were polled at
random. 69% said that homosexuality is a pathological adaptation. That means of
those 10,000 69% still thought it should be classified as a mental disorder.
18% disagreed. That’s an exceptionally small number. But if 25% voted the first
time and 58% of that 25% approved it that would pretty much come close to the
18% that disagreed in this particular study. 13% were uncertain. This idea that
it is normal is only classified that way through a fraudulent move to force it
out of the manual of mental disorders.
Another example of why they are not normal, healthy,
or desirable is that only 12% are “relatively monogamous” or “relatively less
promiscuous” according to the Institute for Sex Research. 60% have more than
250 lifetime sex partners. It boggles the mind. 28% have more than 1,000
lifetime sex partners. 79% admit that more than half are total strangers.
Lesbians are less promiscuous than men, but are more volatile and unstable in
their relationships. Let me suggest this is not normal or healthy.
The Bible says that any sexual activity outside of
marriage is fornication and sin. It is not to be accepted or legitimized. There
are 44 references to fornication in the Bible in the context of sin.
Homosexuality is never mentioned in a positive context. We really had a
worldview shift when homosexuality was declassified as a mental disorder.
Homosexuals began to think of themselves in a different way. If what you are
doing is not a sin, then you are really okay.
Congressman William Dennemeyer
commented, “If homosexuality is a perversion of what is natural, then
homosexuals must look at their own conduct in an entirely different light and
explain it in less satisfying terms.” If you’re ok and I’m ok and our sins are
not a problem, then we do not have to think about improving our lot and
pursuing virtue. What I have shown here it that it is not normal. It is not
healthy and it is not desirable.
The second myth about homosexuality is that homosexuals
are born that way. We have all heard that. We have heard it in news media, a
lot of television shows and if you even question that today you are looked at
if you have just grown a pair of devil’s horns. You are an idiot from the
backwoods of some hilly state with a lot of hillbillies in it. You are
backward. But there is no evidence of a gay gene at all. Just think of it
biologically. If there were a gay gene, it would not get passed on to the next
generation. If it did manage to get passed on to a couple of generations, it
would soon die out.
This claim that there was a gay gene
was based in a 1991 study by Dr. Simon Levay. A couple of things that you should know about this is that it was a
flawed study. His research consisted of studying the brains of 41 cadavers. So
he has 41 dead bodies, including 19 homosexual males. So he has a hair less
than 50% of homosexual males. He found “a tiny area believed to control sexual
activity” [notice the key word there is believed], the hypothalamus was less
than half the size in the gay men than in the heterosexuals. The question there
is what comes first, the perversion or the smaller hypothalamus? All you can do
is maybe note that something is there.
The study was seized by many as irrefutable evidence
by many that homosexuals were born gay; something that the homosexual community
had been claiming for years. However, instead of resolving the debate, it just
intensified it. Johns Hopkins University psychologist, John Money, sometimes
called the Dean of American sexology, said the real question was when did it
get there. Was it prenatal, neonatal, during childhood, or during puberty? We
do not know. Other problems with the study include that all 19 of the
homosexual men had died of AIDS; something that many researchers believe could very well account for or
contribute to the difference.
Second, there was no way to know the sexual history of
the heterosexual men. Third, there is no way to discern if the smaller
hypothalamuses were the cause or the result of homosexuality. Fourth, Dr. Levay, a homosexual himself, admitted that his study was
not entirely a dispassionate, scientific endeavor.
Furthermore we have twin studies. There have been
eight major studies. This came out in December of last year that
eight major studies of identical twins in Australia, the United States, and
Scandinavia during the last two decades all came to the same conclusion that
gays were not born that way.
Here’s a quote from William H. Masters, co-director of
the Masters and Johnson Institute [a name that should be familiar to us who
lived through the 70s and 80s], “The genetic theory of homosexuality has been
generally discarded today.” Who knew? Somebody ought to call up ABC, NBC, and
CBS and let them know.
John DeCecco, professor of
psychology at San Francisco State University [notice the location, not Houston,
Texas or Nacogdoches, Texas or Baylor in Waco, Texas in the heart of the Bible
belt.] This is a professor of psychology at San Francisco State and the editor
of the 25-volume Journal
of Homosexuality in a 1989 USA Today article stated, “The idea that people are born into one
type of sexual behavior is entirely foolish. Homosexuality is a behavior, not a
condition, and something that some people can and do change, just like they
sometimes change other tastes and personality traits.”
Somebody needs to tell some of the higher courts about
this that have found some of these groups that seek to help those who are
homosexual and wish to become heterosexual to change their identity that this
is possible. The idea today is that it is not possible and anyone who wants to
do this are refuted by some very successful groups,
like among Orthodox Jews. There are successful groups among Christians who
succeed in this.
In 1991 there was a study by Bailey and Pillard that said that there were “self-admitted
methodological flaws.” The subjects were recruited through advertisements in
homosexual periodicals and so that study has been discredited. Then, as I
stated earlier, findings from eight major twin studies in Australia, the U.S.,
and Scandinavia over the last twenty years concur: gays were not born that way.
Let me just read a little bit from this article. Dr.
Neal Whitehead, a PhD who worked for the New Zealand Government as a scientific
researcher for 24 years and then spent four years working for the United
Nations International Energy Agency, said “at best
genetics is a minor factor.” He pointed out that identical twins have the same
genes and the same DNA. They are nurtured in identical conditions. If homosexuality is caused
by genetics or prenatal conditions, if one twin is gay, then the co-twin should
also be gay. Because they have identical DNA it ought to be 100%, but the
studies reveal something else. If an identical twin has same-sex attraction,
the chances that the co-twin has it are only about 11% for men and 14% for
women.” This puts the nail in the coffin for the idea that there is a genetic
condition that makes you homosexual. It is an interesting article. You can
Google it and come up with all of the different statistics and all the
different conclusions that they come up with. His conclusion is that sexual
orientation is not set in concrete. “If genetics were the determinate, then the
results would need to be 100% in concordance.”
Recently the American Psychological Association [the
same group who said homosexuality was not a disorder back in 1973] has said,
“There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an
individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation.
Although much research [notice that they have been researching this for 40 or
50 years and they cannot come up with any connection whatsoever. None. Zero.] has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental,
social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged
that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any
particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex
roles.”
Now there is an article that
was published on the Federalist website put up within the last
couple of days. I put a link on the Dean Bible Ministries Facebook
page this evening and the argument from the author of this is that it is not
nature, which would mean that you are automatically determined to be homosexual
and it is not nature [which would put the blame on the way the parents trained
you or some environmental factor.] We need another hypothesis. Let’s try
something that scientists refuse to accept. They do not have any evidence that
what they want to say, nature or nurture, but it cannot be volition. That is
what he argues.
It is volition. It is not that there is a moment when
a young child says, “I like boys and I’m a boy or I’m a girl and I like girls.”
They make hundreds of thousands of other emotional decisions along the way that
sort of sets the stage for that kind of attractions later on in life. It is the
result of hundreds of thousands of micro decisions. We all make them. We are
not volitionally conscious until we are two or three and then it is just
minimal. We know if we make the wrong decision we might get spanked or might
get sent to our room or we might have some kind of quiet time, whatever they
call it. That is when we begin to become volitionally conscious. But we have
already made thousands of decisions by that time. We have reacted to things. We
have seen things we like and do not like. We have seen people do things that we
like or we do not like and that sets the stage for situations that occur later
in life. It is very complex. This guy does a great job of at least presenting a
hypothetical model for how this develops on the basis of volition.
Now the third myth is that homosexuals make up 10% of
the population. In USA Today about 10 years ago they said there were 25 million
homosexuals in the United States. That is roughly the number of conservative
evangelicals in the United States. The Washington Times said that about 10% of men
and 5% of women were homosexual. The American Psychiatric Association said it
was about 10%. So this was an accepted number until recently.
This number comes from a 1948 study by William Kinsey
where 25% of the 5,300 people he studied turned out to be prison inmates. 44%
had had homosexual relations in prison so he has a tainted group to begin with.
In fact, he included several hundred male prostitutes in his study so he
misrepresented the number. He concluded that 10% of white males were more or
less exclusively homosexual for at least three years between ages 16 and 65.
Then there was the Forman study in 1984–1988 that said
it was 1.7%, which is what they concluded studying the culture. What is
interesting is that a recent poll came up that I’ve read within the last month,
a Gallup poll that said that Americans today believe that the number is between
23 and 25%. Well, of course they do. One out of every 4 actors on any
television show has to be homosexual. This has been going on since at least
Will and Grace as a sitcom about 10 years or so ago. It had a main character
that was homosexual. This has colored the way Americans look at homosexuality.
Americans are basically good, fair-minded people. If
25% of us are homosexual, then, goodness, we do not want to take away their
rights. But if only 1.7% are male homosexuals and
fewer than that are lesbians, then we have got a really different story. So the
gay community has managed to propagandize the American people into thinking
that one out of every four people, just look around at your house and the house
next door, and probably one person ought to be homosexual. But they are not.
Then there is the 2013 NHIS study, which gained a lot of
coverage in the media. It was collected in 2013 from 34,557 adults aged 18 and
over, 96.6% of adults identified as straight. Who knew? We do not have that
many homosexuals. 1.6% identified as gay or lesbian. That fits with numerous
studies over the last 40 years going back to Kinsey. He got the number wrong
because he had a tainted pool from which he was taking his information. 0.7%
identified themselves as bisexual. The remaining 1.1%
of adults identified as “something else” [0.2%] stated, I don’t know the answer
or refused to provide an answer.
CDC caught a lot of flak for this, as well,
because they were asked what business it was of theirs to collect information
on sexual information. Well, there is a lot because there is a high level of
sexually transmitted diseases that occur within the homosexual community. It is
the CDC’s job to track diseases and in tracking diseases they are tracking the
populations most likely to transmit those diseases. “More specifically, the
study indicated, 1.8% of men self-identified as gay and 0.4% as bisexual, and
1.5% of woman as lesbian and 0.9% as bisexual.” The authority for this is that
"conservative" newspaper, The Washington Post, published in an article on
July 15, 2014. So that is the third myth.
The fourth myth is that change is impossible. This is
just flat not true. There are a huge number of testimonials from ex-gays. They
will tell you that they changed and that it was possible to change because the
ultimate issue is volitional. I have an email here and I want to read this email
because I think it is indicative of at least one person. This is a person who
spent a lot of time in her formative years being taught the Word of God. Then
as she got into her adolescence she became tempted in the area of lesbianism
and when this ruling came down a couple of weeks ago, a male friend of hers,
normal, heterosexual male, was just saying this is a really good decision. She
wrote this e-mail to him to explain why it was not a good decision. This was
sent to me and she gave me permission to use it.
She says, “First things first. God is our creator. We
are made in His image. When He created us, He gave us free will, volition to
accept on our own accord His merciful gift of salvation or to decline it. Now
that being said, as newborns, we are sinners but until we reach the age of
accountability where we can fully understand who Christ is and what He has done
for all mankind, He does not condemn that child before that happens. God does
not predestine any child to be marked with a specific sin. What it is, is that every single person is born with something. We
are all born with a sin nature. Every person in this world is unique so
naturally everyone’s sin nature tempts him in different ways. Everyone struggles
with certain sins more than other sins because Satan knows that is where they
are weak.”
She continues, “My biggest weakness is homosexuality.
I struggle with it the most because I’m so weak there. Lying to myself, which I
still do as everyone does, is not as big a deal because it’s my biggest
weakness. Just like other people are lifelong thieves, that’s their biggest
area of weakness. We’re not born gay. We’re born with weakness, which we choose
to give into, especially if someone has lacked the proper teaching. Since we’re
made in God’s image, saying we’re born gay, is implying that God is a
homosexual which is absolutely horrible. I say that because if we’re born that
way, it’s in our DNA, it’s not a problem of our sin nature which makes it acceptable
sounding because it would be part of the image God created us. That is
unacceptable because God is perfect and He has no sin. I grew up knowing what
was right and wrong. I had the right teaching.”
Then she goes on to say, “I threw up after my first
homosexual experience because I was so conflicted about it. Even my body knew
how wrong it was but I gave in and kept distancing myself further from God
where it now feels normal. If I ever tried to reverse it, I would have the same
physical reaction. Now my sexual immorality has such a hold on me that it has
changed the chemistry of my brain and makes it feel normal.” There’s a way to
reverse it because God says you can. Just like you can get addicted to drugs
and other things that have a bio impact on your brain, you start making the
right decisions and it reverses things and goes in the other decisions. This is
a young woman who is trying to make those very courageous decisions to turn her
life around.
There are numerous Christian ministries that help
those with sexuality. We have to realize that with the Spirit of God and the
Word of God all sin can be dealt with. If you are still alive and you are
homosexual and giving into those desires, then God can change you. That is what
grace is all about through the power of the Word of God and the Spirit of God.
Why are same sex relationships wrong? First of all,
they are an attempt to meet legitimate needs for acceptance, approval, and
affection in illegitimate, ungodly ways. They are outside God’s created
intention for sex: the complementarity of male and
female, physically, emotionally, and spiritually is God’s design. That is the
only way you can have the true union that God is talking about when He says
that the two are to leave father and mother and become one flesh. And third,
marriage is an earthbound illustration of Christ and the Church—the unity of
two different entities. To claim that homosexual marriage is legitimate is a
blasphemous statement against the nature of the Church and its relation to the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Same sex relations are wrong because they are
idolatrous according to Romans 1. It is the worship of the creature through sex
instead of the Creator. This makes them destructive and dangerous and legitimizing
it creates a façade of normalcy.
What I want to do here is show that the homosexual
lifestyle is not parallel to a heterosexuality. This
is what the culture wants us to think: that they are the same; that they are
interchangeable. But they are not. In heterosexual marriage 57% of marriages
last over twenty years there is stability. In homosexual relationships the
average length is 2–3 years and only 5% last over 20 years. There is no
stability there, so when you think about rearing children in that environment
it is an environment in which there is no stability and no permanence and
therefore it is harmful to children.
In a heterosexual marriage 77% of men and 88% of woman
are faithful to marriage vows. In homosexual relationships promiscuity rules, they
have hundreds of sexual partners over their lifetimes. In a heterosexual
marriage the two are in a committed relationship. It is faithful and it is
stable. But in homosexual relationships, men have 3–5 outside partners
according to studies in the U.S. and 8 in Holland that last less than five
years and not one monogamous relationship. Lesbian relationships are extremely
volatile and they have a lot of domestic and emotional violence.
According to a study I read the other night on lesbian
marriages in Scandinavia they are less than half as stable as male homosexual
marriages, which are less stable as heterosexual unions. Reverend Troy Perry,
founder of the Metropolitan Community Church which is a gay Christian
church—that is not your Spring Branch Community Church or your Alvin Community
Church, it is a homosexual church—comments: “Monogamy is not a word the gay
community uses. We talk about fidelity. That means you live in a loving,
caring, honest relationship with your partner. Because we can’t marry, we have
people with widely varying opinions as to what that means. Some would say that
committed couples could have multiple sexual partners as long as there’s no
deception. Each couple has to decide.”
Heterosexual marriage couples live longer and have happier
lives. In homosexual relationships they have problems with AIDS, high risk of STDs, 3× the rate of alcoholism and drug
abuse, much more promiscuity and domestic violence, and a shortened lifespan. In
heterosexual marriage, marriage is the best possible place for children but
homosexual relationships puts kids at risk. Not risk for sexual abuse per se,
but risk at growing up in an unstable and uncertain home. That is not going to
be true of everyone, but it is true in the vast majority.
Let’s look at Scripture. Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe to
those who call evil good, and good evil. Who put darkness for light, and light
for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet and sweet for
bitter.” Woe is an announcement for judgment from God in the Scriptures.
Can a homosexual be saved? Of
course. Homosexuality is not an issue in salvation. No sin is an issue
in salvation. The issue is believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. If you are saved, the issue is learning to walk by the Spirit. It is
not what your trends are, what your passions are, what your lust patterns are.
Every Christian struggles with “sins that easily beset us” [Hebrews 12:1]. We
have to recognize that Christians can be bigots, adulterers, liars, thieves,
and murderers.
Now to take us back to a point I made at the very
beginning. The problem with this law is the law. The First Amendment of the
Bill of Rights says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion of prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” What are we going to do
about this because you already have cases, one case in Mississippi, another in
South Carolina where civil servants, county clerks, have resigned their jobs
because they are Christians and they do not want to perform same-sex marriage. I do not know their situations but if we as
believers cave in, guess who is going to win? There are legal groups out
there—Liberty Legal, the Alliance Defense Fund, and a number of other
groups—who will take on these cases. They will go to court and they will take
you through the court. We have to be willing to follow the patterns of the
signers of the Declaration of Independence. We have to be willing to pledge our
honor, our fortune, and our lives for freedom. You may be a Christian that is
living in a situation where you are going to have to decide if you are going to
serve the Lord and quit or serve the Lord and stand your ground in an extremely
difficult challenging situation where you will be vilified and you will be
targeted but you will be serving the body of Christ and the cause of liberty in
this nation. There are a couple of country clerks in Kentucky that I read about
the other day who are standing their ground. More power to them because they
want to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.
There is this situation with these folks who had a
bakery in Oregon where the judge told them to sit down and shut up. He put a
gag order not to talk about it after he had imposed the fine, not a gag order
during the court. They are not going to follow suit. That is a violation of
their 1st Amendment rights. They are going to do the right thing.
This has to be adjudicated in the courts. Just because a
decision is made by the Supreme Court it does not mean it is set in
stone. The Dred Scott decision was overturned. The
amendment for prohibition of alcohol was overturned. Just because this has
happened does not mean it is the end, folks. It may be the beginning of the end
or it may be the beginning of a turn-around. Maybe it had to go this far before
things could turn around.
The real challenge with this decision is the free
expression of religion. It is the free exercise thereby. What the world around
us wants us to do is to say you can exercise your religion on Sunday morning.
You can go to church and you can worship freely. But if you take your Christian
values outside the four walls of your church and try to live on that basis at
Exxon or the bank where you work or the hospital where you work or the school
where you work, you cannot do that. That is limiting the free exercise of your
religion. We have to understand that is where the battle is, on the free
exercise of our convictions in the marketplace of the real world.
Justice Scalia pointed this out on the majority
decision. He said, “According to the majority decision, Christians can continue
to advocate and teach their views of marriage at church. The First Amendment
guarantees the free exercise of religion, and that, he points out, is a word
the court ominously did not use.”
So what can Christians do? First of all we have to
pray. We have to pray like we have never prayed before. We have to pray for our
leaders and for our nations according to 1 Timothy
2:1–4. Second, we have to be armed with the facts. I have given you a lot of
facts, some of which you may have never known. You need to know this and
control the data. We have to know what the Bible says. We have to know the
history of the United States and we have to know the myths about homosexuality.
Hosea 4:6, “My people perish for a lack of knowledge.”
Third, do not give up. Do not lose hope. We live in
the devil’s world. What do you expect it to do? We need to have a positive
mental attitude based on faith in Christ. 1 Peter 3:15, “We are to be able to
give an answer for the hope that is in us.” Lamentations 3:21, “This I recall
to mind [doctrine] and therefore have hope.” Titus 2:13, “We’re looking forward
to the blessed hope in the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Fourth, we are to increase our civic involvement. Whatever
you are doing, you are not doing enough. We have to make time, develop
relationships with your state and national representatives and senators. Write
them letters. Send them e-mails. Call them. Put their phone numbers in your
smart phone. Put them on speed dial. When you hear about things, call them and
let them know so that your name becomes known in their office.
Fifth, we need to support sound legislation. Find out
who the candidates are who will appoint strict constructionist judges, and vote
for strict constructionist judges, that is judges who will interpret the law
literally. Vote for them in those local elections where we have a vote for
judges. Sixth, after we do everything else, give thanks and continue to pray
without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5:17–18. Let’s close
in prayer.
“Father, thank you for the opportunity to study these
things and to be reminded that we do believe the truth. The truth is validated
by the studies conducted in the real world that homosexuality is not innocuous.
It is not normal. It is not a harmless lifestyle, but it is very harmful in
many different aspects and in many different ways. Many of things said about it
are just flat lies and distortions and are used to justify and to legalize
immoral and sinful behavior. Father, we recognize that we are all sinners and
we are not to judge others. On the other hand, neither are we to allow sin to
be legalized and act as if it perfectly legitimate and perfectly acceptable.
Father, we pray that in these coming days, months, and years that as we face
the new situations that as believers we can stand firm for the truth of your
Word. We can demonstrate a gracious and kind and loving attitude to those who
disagree with us and that we may always be ready to present the gospel and to
encourage others that there is genuine true forgiveness at the Cross. We pray
this in Christ’s name.”