Decision Making in the Voting Booth

Lesson #4

 

The early part of the 1600s, when a colonist first came to establish British colonies on this continent, it was a standard procedure in local assemblies, in colonial assemblies, and down through the decades and centuries up to the early part of the 20th century to have what was known as an election sermon.  Not dealing with the biblical doctrine of election but dealing with the fundamental issues that faced lawmakers, that faced a society, a culture, a nation.  In these sermons, the local pastors would be invited to the assemblies to address a sermon from the Word of God, not some 10 or 15 minute emotional devotional, but these were often very challenging, forthright sermons that revealed a tremendous amount of courage on the part of the pastors as they truly did challenge, did attempt to correct what they perceived to be flaws in governmental policy down through those ages.

 

This tradition of the election sermon, along with other sermons that were standard in most churches throughout this era, has sort of fallen by the wayside.  We do not always have these kinds of specials, and I thought it was important to address what the Bible says about fundamental issues that we can and should go to the Word of God to find a frame of reference in order to evaluate the candidates we select to govern our nation.  This has precedence biblically and historically.

 

We understand also that the Word of God, as the revelation of the one who created all things, addresses all things.  If God says anything about anything, He says something about everything.  That is something that is bedrock truth.  We can go to God’s Word, and while He may not be addressing a political treatise in some place or economic treatise in some place, the groundwork, the foundation of the parable, the laws are grounded in certain principles which are embedded in those laws or those parables.  Those stories, those parables, those principles that are being elucidated by a prophet or by the Lord or by an apostle in the New Testament do not work unless there is the assumption of the validity of the political and/or economic principles underlying those particular assertions.

 

I have a series of rationales last week that led to three conclusions.  First conclusion was that “all Christians who are citizens of the U.S. should vote wisely and intelligently to preserve and defend the Constitution for this glorifies God.”  Scripture says everything that we do, think, or say should glorify God, so that would involve any responsibilities we have in the civil arena.

 

“Therefore, the U.S. citizen, in order to vote intelligently and wisely, must understand the thinking embodied in the U.S. Constitution, so that he can vote in a way that preserves and protects our heritage.  By understanding this biblical framework, which informed the thinking of the founding fathers, a Christian can then vote more intelligently and wisely to preserve and protect the Constitution and the freedoms it recognizes.”

 

A foundational verse for our study is Proverbs 14:34 “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach [disgrace] to any people.”  Understanding that righteousness is something that is available, in terms of experiential righteousness and in terms of law, to any nation not just Israel.  Proverbs 29:2 “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice…”

 

There is one issue that is foundational to any election process, especially a national process, because it involves thousands of appointments to the judiciary.  There is a fundamental issue that faces the entire legislative/judicial process today, and that is the issue of interpretation.  The same issue you face in much of theology, that is, do you interpret the Bible literally, historically, grammatically as the writers intended or do we assign some new meaning to the text that did not even enter the thinking of the original writers.

 

With the advent of liberal philosophy and theology as a result of the Enlightenment shift that occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries, theology in Western Europe and America shifted in the 19th century rejecting  literal interpretation and original intent of the authors and replaced it with modern man’s ideas, assuming that modern man knew more, understood more, and could interpret things better than the original authors. 

 

This did not only affect theology but affected things across the board, including the interpretation of law.  Justice Clarence Thomas in a speech a week ago said “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.” 

 

That is the same issue in biblical hermeneutics and across the board that when you read a real estate contract, your contract with the credit card company, do you interpret it as they intended or do you just make it up.  We almost intuitively realize that original intent is significant.

 

This quote is from Senator Obama at a Planned Parenthood conference, who addressed the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, which upheld a ban on partial birth abortion.  “The Constitution can be interpreted in so many ways…  We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy  to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old.  And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”

 

See the contrast.  Thomas says interpretation is based on original intent, and Obama says it can be interpreted in so many ways.  Just like liberal theologians think that you can interpret the Bible in all kinds of ways.  There is a connection between liberalism in politics and liberalism in theology.  Obama is saying that the criteria are not legal education and ability to understand the law in terms of its original intent, but feelings.  Emotion, feeling and empathy now become the criteria for him for interpreting law rather than what the text says.

 

We move on to look at the basic criteria which were embedded in the thinking of the founding fathers.  And that comes from the Divine Institutions, which provide a framework for thinking about society and culture and making decisions.  Whenever you make a decision and go into the voting booth and select the candidate, you are making a determination that this person or that person is good, better, best or the other person perhaps is bad or worse.  You make these value judgments, and whenever you make a value judgment, you are assuming that there is an external standard by which you can evaluate a candidate’s positions and beliefs.  If you are going to say this person is better or that person is worse, you have to have some sort of guideline.

 

The Scripture says that it is the only guideline, the only framework for a believer to use in evaluating anything in life.  While the Bible is not a political science textbook, there are crucial passages in the Scripture that address political theory.  It is not an economic textbook, but there are crucial things in the Scripture that have been understood throughout the years to make certain economic assertions and implications.  These have been systematized and understood in terms of this category of the Divine Institutions.

 

Let’s make a couple of observations by way of review.  The term “Divine Institution” has been used by Christians and theologians to speak of absolute social structures established by God and embedded within the social structure of the human race from its inception.  Thus, these are for the entire human race – believers and unbelievers alike.  These are unbreakable realities.  Once you go in and try to start changing these things, there are all sorts of negative consequences.

 

In contrast, modern paganism or human viewpoint thinking views them as byproducts of man’s psycho-social evolution or “cultural conventions.”  Conventions can be changed, but institutions cannot be changed.  These Divine Institutions are, therefore, embedded in the Scripture.

 

As we look at these Divine Institutions, I pointed out that there are five.  There is a 6th criterion, and that has to do with how any Gentile nation relates to the nation Israel.  We have individual responsibility, marriage and family, which are established before the Fall.  That is very important to understand.  Prior to the Fall, these three are established, so this is part of God’s original intent for mankind before sin. 

 

Second, we have the establishment of two more Divine Institutions after the Fall and the Flood.   Government and judicial responsibility are delegated to man in the Noahic Covenant, and then nations, the distinction of nations, and national identity are established after the Tower of Babel.

 

The first three are pre-Fall, and they are designed to promote productivity and advance civilization.  When these three are working together in their most efficient way, then that society or culture is going to be advancing and is going to be productive.  The second two, which come after the Fall, are designed to restrain evil so that one, two and three can function efficiently. There is a real limitation there when you think of government and nations being designed to restrain evil so that individual responsibility, marriage and family can be promoted and go forward.

 

The first Divine Institution, individual responsibility, comes out of God’s initial mandates to Adam after He had created him (primarily Genesis 1:27-28; 2:15, 25).  Genesis 1:27 “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”  So male and female are both equally in the image of God.

 

Genesis 1:27 “God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ ”  Here you have five mandates: be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over basically all the creatures God set upon the earth.

 

In Genesis 2:15, God places Adam in the garden to tend and keep it.  The word “to tend” is the Hebrew word “to work,” and the word “to keep” is the Hebrew word shamar, which means “to keep or to protect or to guard.”  I believe that the idea here is he had work to do to serve the Lord; it is not laborious.  A lot of people just stumble over this because they think that Adam sat in the garden and twiddled his thumbs until he sinned.  But that is not what happened.  He had responsibilities to carry out.  This is the foundation for the doctrine of responsible labor. 

 

In a post-Fall environment, we cannot get past the idea in our little experience-oriented brain that work is laborious and that labor is toilsome.  But before the Fall, labor was not toilsome, and work was not difficult or hard.  That happens only as a result of sin when there is antagonism set up between creation and the creature outlined in the curse of Genesis 3.

 

Under individual responsibility, there are three key ideas that are developed from this.  The first is spiritual accountability and authority.  Man is under the authority of God, and every individual is accountable to God for what he does with the resources that God gives him.

 

The second thing that comes out of this is man is responsible in the area of labor to take care and protect the garden.  As he takes care of the garden and does what God has told him to do, a result of that is that it develops wealth.  It would develop numerous products as a result of responsible labor done correctly, and this then would lead to private property.

 

If you go back and read many of the early writers, such as Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, John Locke, or any number of other thinkers that came out of that period, they go back and locate the principle of private property in Genesis 1 and 2.  They understood that private property and individual responsibility were foundational to the whole concept of liberty.

 

Last class I pointed out that there are several principles that are articulated again and again in the Scriptures and are embedded within the teaching in the Scriptures.

 

In Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 20:1-16 on a parable related to stewardship, this is a situation where a landowner is going out to the local labor pool and hires various people to work on his project at different times during the day.  He promised them at the beginning a denarius for a day’s work, and then each one after that, he just says he will do that which is righteous.  He hires the last ones about 5 pm, and at nightfall, he comes back and begins to pay off his workers.  The ones he hired last and only worked a couple of hours, he pays them a denarius, which is what he promised the ones he hired at the beginning of the day.  There are various principles being taught there doctrinally, but those do not work unless the underlying principles related to economics and employment are true.

 

At the end of His discourse, Jesus makes the statement “Is it not lawful for me [the landowner] to do what I wish with what is my own?  Or is your eye envious because I am generous?”  A business owner has the right to do what he wants to do with what are his assets.  He has the right to do that without interference of government regulation telling him what kind of insurance he should have, how long the workers should work, or any of the other things that hinder business and destroy capital today.  It is very strongly in favor of the employer, the landowner.

 

The second passage is in Matthew 18:23, which emphasizes a steward who owes money to his employer.  This just emphasizes the fact both of personal accountability of each one to the landowner (who in this case is God, so it reinforces the first Divine Institution) and of prerogatives of the employer to do what he will make the decisions to do.

 

The third passage in Matthew 25:14, we looked at the parable of the talents.  You have three different servants, each given a different number of talents.  The first two invest them and make a profit.  The third one is afraid of his master, so he is lazy and does not do anything with the talent and buries it in the ground.  When the master comes back, he digs it up.  Those who made a profit are praised and are given more.  The one who was lazy is called wicked and lazy, and what he had is taken away from him.

 

What we see here is the principle that those who risk and work should be rewarded, and those who do not are condemned.  Therefore, laziness is seen as a vice, and work is a virtue.  Jesus does not come back and say, “You poor person, you were afraid of Me.  Let’s take from the one who made and share the wealth and give it to the one who didn’t do anything.”  It shows that the Bible cannot be interpreted within a Marxist or socialist framework.

 

The fourth principle was that those who do not work, do not eat.  Ephesians 4:28 “He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need.”   In 2 Thessalonians 3:10-12, Paul says that if anyone is not willing to work, than he is not to eat either.  This is reinforced again and again.

 

The fifth point is that in the Scripture from the beginning to the end, there is an emphasis on various things related to taxes.  Inheritance taxes are condemned in Proverbs 13:22 and 1 Chronicles 28:8.  Inheritance taxes, by the way, were developed by Marx and implemented by Lenin in order to prevent wealth accumulation and take wealth away from the wealthy and transfer it to the poor.

 

Proverbs 13:22 “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.”  2 Corinthians 12:14 “Now for the third time I am ready to come to you.  And I will not be burdensome to you; for I do not seek yours, but you.  For the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children.”  In other words, parents should be accumulating wealth that they pass on through inheritance to the children, so that over time, the family accumulates wealth.

 

In the sixth point, we saw that there are no property taxes in the Mosaic Law because property taxes prevent wealth accumulation and imply that the government owns the land, and the people do not have actual true ownership.  In Israel, that was not allowed.

 

In the seventh point, we saw that the tithe related to the income tax in Israel was a flat rate tax of 10 percent that applied to everybody – rich or poor.  If you did not make much, you still gave 10 percent.  You did not have a progressive income tax.  It shows that there was an income tax – that is legitimate – but it is only legitimate if it is equal for everyone.

 

We take these principles and apply them to our two major presidential candidates.  We discover that both of them rate rather badly on this.  Senator Obama is worse because he is still proud of his share-the-wealth view, which he gave famously in that interview with Joe, the plumber.  When he was interviewed by some news person, he was asked if he would still give the same answer, and he rather proudly said that he would.  Obama believes that those who have should forcibly give it up for those who do not have. 

 

This whole idea of a progressive income tax was first attempted in the 19th century, but the Supreme Court declared that it was unconstitutional. It was not until 1913, with a Constitutional amendment, that it was made possible to have a progressive income tax. The idea that we get from socialism and Marxism is the whole theory of labor and wealth that is contradictory to the Scriptures and to the first Divine Institution, which has to do with individual responsibility.

 

That brings us to the second Divine Institution, which is marriage.  Marriage is defined in the Scripture as being between one man and one woman.  This begins in Genesis 2.  What is interesting is if we look at Genesis 2, we see the details of what happened on that 6th day when God created man.  I pointed out from Genesis 1:26-28 that God created male and female in His image.  He does not create them at the same time according to Genesis 2.  First He created the man, and then He creates the woman.  In between the creation of the man and the woman, He gave the man certain guidelines related to his role responsibility to work and protect the garden.

 

By the way, the idea of protecting the garden is a foundational verse for understanding the right of self-protection, the right to protect your property with whatever you deem necessary and is foundational to the whole principle of the 2nd amendment that we have a right to keep and bear arms.  Senator Obama has a record of increasing gun control, whereas Senator McCain does not.

 

The principle of self-protection and being able to have weapons, even access to the latest technology to protect your property, is embedded in Scripture.  In Luke 22, Jesus made sure the disciples were armed with swords when they went to the Garden of Gethsemane in recognition of this right to have concealed carry without a concealed carry permit.  It is an embedded right, all part of that first Divine Institution.

 

The man was to keep and guard the garden.  He gives him the responsibility to begin to name the animals, as exercising his role to rule over and subdue the animals.  As Adam goes through this process, which God was using to show Adam he did not have a comparable mate, he gets to the point where God is now going to create the woman.  Genesis 2:21-23 “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.  Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.  And Adam said: ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ ”

 

When we look at this, what we discover is that the woman is created in order to be a helper to the man.  The word that is used for the woman being a helper in verse 18 is ezer, a word that is commonly used to refer to God.  It is a word that is even comparable to the word parakaleo or parakletos in the New Testament for the Holy Spirit, an assistant.  This is not a lowly position; this is a very high position.  In fact, the only being that is assigned the role of an ezer in Scripture, other than a woman, is God.  It is a rather high term, as opposed to the feminist agenda, which wants to make a helper into something that is subservient and low and of lesser value.  This is, again, just an agenda that runs counter to what the Word of God says.

 

It is important to understand the basic nature of God in understanding these things, because God exists as a Trinity, a triunity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  They are three distinct persons.  There are two different ways in which we can look at the Trinity.  One has to do with the essential (essence or being of God) relationship of the three persons in the Trinity, and that is sometimes referred to by theologians as the ontological Trinity.  Ontology is just the fancy word for essence or being.  You have three persons who are co-equal: They are equally righteous, omniscient, omnipotent, loving.  In their essence and their being, which shows a society of three persons, they are co-equal.  So you have one way of looking at the Trinity, which is a social dimension related to their essence.

 

On the other side, you can describe the relationship of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit in terms of what they do, in other words, their work or their labor.  When we look at it that way, that is called the economic Trinity.  You have the ontological Trinity and the economic Trinity, and you cannot separate them.  They are inseparably connected.  One has to do with the relationships – the social structure of the Trinity.  The other has to do with the economic structure of the Trinity.

 

We hear people today say they are a fiscal conservative but a social liberal.  That is the idea that you can separate the social from the economic.  You cannot do that in God, and you could not do that in man as he was created initially in the garden.  He is given an economic purpose to rule and subdue, to work the garden and keep it, and he is given a wife (that is social) in order to help him in the economic function.  As man and woman were originally created, they had both social and economic just as God did as part of being in the image of God.  The woman is created to help the man.  As an ezer, she is to enable him and to assist him in the fulfillment of these God-given mandates that we have seen in Genesis 1 and 2.

 

After the Fall, there are problems that enter into marriage because of sin, and only through salvation can those problems be overcome.  That is the purpose of the New Testament passages in Ephesians 5 related to husbands loving their wives and wives being obedient to their husbands – addressing areas of tension that result from the Fall.

 

What we see from the Old Testament is that God protects marriage through various laws that we have in the Mosaic Law.  The Mosaic Law is just one instance of a legal system that reflects a higher divine standard of righteousness.  Going back to that initial verse in Proverbs 13:34 “Righteousness exalts a nation…,” there is this assumption of righteousness that is defined in one way in the Mosaic Covenant.  The Covenant was given just for Israel, but it gives us a certain pattern and model for understanding the relationship of law.  It was a good thing.

 

Deuteronomy 4:5-6, 8 is a crucial passage for understanding this.  God, through Moses, is addressing the people and says, “See I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it. [You are going to take this law code, and you are going to implement it when you are in the land as a nation.]  So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples [the nations, the Gentiles] who will hear all these statutes and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ [They did not say, “What a rigorous, legalistic, servile system.  They are just enslaved to God.”]  Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law which I am setting before you today.”

 

He was defining the law as righteous.  Does that mean that other nations should just come and take the Mosaic Law whole hog and apply it to their government?  No, of course not.  There were certain things that were unique and distinct about the Mosaic Law related to Israel because Israel was the select people of God, and He was entering into a specific kind of contract with them.  What is embedded in the Mosaic Law for our purposes is it reflects certain universal principles that God embedded within society and within the human race that endure and should be applied without respect to culture, nation or background.

 

One of these has to do with the protection of marriage.  There were prohibitions against adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bestiality because they would attack the basic institution of marriage, which is foundational to family.  If marriage and family collapse, then ultimately government and the nation collapse.  So each of these Divine Institutions we see build upon previous ones, and when the foundational ones start to fragment, then those that are built on them fall apart.  We see that historically in our nation for the past 150 years, the move has been away from personal accountability and holding people responsible to work and to provide for themselves.  We have seen marriage and families fall apart, and this just escalates from one decade to another.

 

In the Mosaic Law, there was the 7th commandment – you shall not commit adultery.  Within the Mosaic Law itself, there were various other laws related to fornication, adultery, and other sins that attack marriage.  A key passage on this is Leviticus 20:10-15, and the key verse here that relates to homosexuality is verse 13.  I want you to notice that it is within a context.  In the current debate over gay marriage, same-sex marriage, they respond to this as if it is just singled out as some heinous, horrible sin.  There is no understanding of what sin is, and that sin includes all kinds of things, not the least of which is homosexuality.  It is not some super sin, but it is an attack against basic Divine Institutions of both marriage and family.

 

Leviticus 20:10 “If there is a man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, one who commits adultery with his friend’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”  It is a capital offense.  Why is it taken so seriously?  Because if allowed permissively to continue, it will destroy marriage, destroy the family, and fragment the culture.

 

Leviticus 20:11-15 “If there is a man who lies with his father’s wife, he has uncovered his father’s nakedness; both of them shall surely be put to death, their bloodguiltiness is upon them.  If there is a man who lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death; they have committed incest, their bloodguiltiness is upon them.  If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death.  Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.  If there is a man who marries a woman and her mother, it is immorality; both he and they shall be burned with fire, so that there will be no immorality in your midst.  If there is a man who lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death; you shall also kill the animal.”

 

All of these relate to the foundation in the Mosaic Law, restated in the New Testament.  Romans 1:26-27 states that homosexuality or sodomy is an ongoing part of God’s judgment on a nation that has already rejected Him.  “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.”  It is a self-judgment.

 

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 lists this, but it is in the context of a grocery list of sins.  “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? [not salvation but has to do with rewards in eternity]  Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” It is not singled out as some sort of unique, special sin; it is though listed in a series of sins.  Just as we do not want to legitimize thieves and murderers and idolaters, we do not want to legitimize homosexuality or being effeminate, which has to do with the female side of homosexuality.

 

1 Timothy 1:9-10 “Realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching.”

 

The point that is understood from the Scripture is that these are acts of sins.  In the New Testament, they do not have a death penalty imposed upon these particular sins of homosexuality, adultery or fornication.  The reason is that in the Old Testament that is part of the law code for a nation, but in the New Testament, the issue is giving ethical principles that are to be instantiated in the lives of believers.  It is not related to a nation.  Does that mean that they should not be death penalty?  That depends on the nation and how they want to make their laws.  The New Testament is not making the statement that the death penalty is removed because it is not addressing that question.  It is addressing another issue and that is the ethical foundation of what is sin and what is not sin.  It is not providing a constitution for a nation or a law code.  A nation could make them capital offenses or might not make them capital offenses, but the principle is that marriage and family have to be protected legally because that is the role of government.  Those last two Divine Institutions – government and nations – which are given after the Fall and after the Flood are designed to protect the first three Divine Institutions so that productivity can be ensured.

 

This was understood by our founding fathers.  Zephaniah Swift, who was the author of one of America’s first legal texts in 1795, wrote “It [sodomy], though repugnant to every sentiment of decency and delicacy, is very prevalent in corrupt and debauched countries [No country has ever legalized homosexual marriage and been productive or survived.  I do not think any nation has ever legalized it anyway.] where the low pleasures of sensuality and luxury have depraved the mind and degraded the appetite below the brutal creation.”

 

Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence, recognized as did many other founders that “without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time.”  Morals are related to responsibility, and if people do not live responsibly, then a government based upon people acting responsibly cannot survive, and government has to turn itself into a “nanny state.”

 

James Otis, another founding father, wrote “When a man’s will and pleasure is his only rule and guide, what safety can there be either for him or against him but in the point of a sword.”  When everyone does what is right in their own eyes (as stated in Judges), which is pure post-modern cultural relativism, then the fabric of the culture will completely deteriorate.

 

The early decisions of the courts of this country upheld this kind of thinking consistently throughout the 19th century.  New York’s Supreme Court said “The morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity.  The people whose manners and morals have been elevated and inspired by means of the Christian religion.”

 

Florida’s Supreme Court in the early 20th century said, “The Christian concept of right and wrong, or right and justice, motivates every rule of equity.  It is the guide by which we dissolve domestic frictions and the rule by which all legal controversies are settled.”

 

Johann David Michaelis, who wrote a legal text in 1814 called Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, wrote “For if it [sodomy] once begins to prevail, not only will boys be easily corrupted by adults, but also by other boys; nor will it ever cease – more especially as it must thus soon lose all its shamefulness and infamy and become fashionable and the national taste; and then …national weakness (for which all remedies are ineffectual) must inevitably follow; not perhaps in the very first generation, but certainly in the course of the third or fourth…  Whoever, therefore, wishes to ruin a nation has only to get this vice introduced for it is extremely difficult to extirpate it where it has once taken root because it can be propagated with much more secrecy…and when we perceive that it has once got a footing in any country, however powerful and flourishing, we may venture as politicians to predict that the foundation of its future decline is laid and that after some hundred years it will no longer be the same…powerful country it is at present.”  How prescient of him to observe exactly what has happened over the last hundred years or so in the history of this nation.

 

In reference to this, in light of scriptural framework and in light of the political history of the U.S., we can evaluate our two prominent candidates.  What I am going to read to you is Senator Obama’s open letter to homosexuals, which is located on his website.

 

“Throughout my career, I have fought to eliminate discrimination against LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] Americans.  In Illinois, I cosponsored a fully inclusive bill that prohibited discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, extending protection to the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation.  [A church is a workplace.]  In the U.S. Senate, I have cosponsored bills that would equalize tax treatment for same-sex couples and provide benefits to domestic partners of federal employees.  As President, I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully-inclusive employment non-discrimination act [That applies to any organization - churches and Christian organizations, as well – that employs anyone.] to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.  As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws.”

 

In another place, he writes “I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate.  While some say we should repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether.  I have also called for us to repeal Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, and I have worked to improve the Uniting American Families Act so we can afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system.”

 

In 1996, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act by a vote of 342 to 67 in the House and 85 to 14 in the Senate.  President Bill Clinton then signed that into law.  What Senator Obama wants to do is completely overturn that.  Even though he says he is in favor of traditional marriage, what happens here is once you lower the bar, open the door to, in effect, civil union (letting same-sex couples have all the legal privileges and rights that married couples do), it does not matter what you call it – marriage is marriage -and it leads to the further collapse of the culture.

 

Along with this, Senator Obama supports Gay Pride celebrations and school curricula that promote homosexuality.  He also opposes parental involvement in education where they could stop that.  He opposes traditional marriage amendments that are currently on the ballot in both California and Florida.  Although, Senator Biden, his running mate, made the comment that he supports traditional marriage, when he was in California and asked what he would do if voting on the amendment, he said he would vote against traditional marriage.  That gives their position.

 

In contrast, the views of McCain and Palin are really not all that great.  Both of them hold to traditional marriage, but they have both allowed for certain civil union benefits to same-sex partners, which just begins to gradually eat away at traditional marriage.  However, they both oppose supporting Gay Pride celebrations and education curricula that promote homosexuality.

 

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