The Sane, Biblical View of Homosexual Marriage and Gay Unions If, as Protagoras asserted, “Man is the measure of all things,” then the yardstick gauging the boundaries of marriage can be moved whenever a consensus is reached amongst men that a brave new world requires it. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts, for instance, has mandated the provision of marriage for gay couples, holding that the state “may not deny the protections, benefits and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry.” Gavin Newsome, mayor of San Francisco, has presided over the issuance of over 3700 marriage licenses to same sex couples in the last few weeks, since Valentine’s Day, our nation’s maudlin revelry in sentimentality. If we are free to determine our own moral boundaries, then why not nudge them further out, if it hurts no one? Technically, there is nothing – save the arbitrary consensus of a debauched populace – which in the future restrains polygamy, bigamy, or beastiality from achieving societal approbation. The gay lobby has suddenly adopted a states rights position to further their agenda. How exquisitely ironic that they have adopted a Jim Crow strategy to advance a so-called “civil rights” platform. They realize that they will never persuade Americans as a whole of their ideas. They do, however, have several state strongholds. The liberal states of California, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington each have same sex marriage cases pending before their courts. Other states (Alaska, Nevada, Hawaii, and Nebraska) have constitutional amendments that ban gay marriage and deny same sex marriages made elsewhere. There are 15 other states in which constitutional amendments are pending, restricting marriage to a one woman, one man union. Yet, there is a double standard at work here. For, when the opportunity arises to gain a victory at the Federal level, the strategy quickly changes. Last year, for instance, the Supreme Court handed down its decision on Laurence and Garner v. the State of Texas in which, under Texas’ sodomy law, Laurence and Garner were prosecuted for homosexual conduct, discovered while the police were investigating a weapons disturbance. Flying in the face of longstanding established legal tradition, Justice Kennedy – who wrote the majority opinion for the Court – said that homosexuals “are entitled to respect for their private lives. The state cannot demean their existence or control their private sexual conduct a crime.” Never mind the state’s responsibility to reflect and sanction moral norms and integrity; never mind the state’s responsibility to support and under gird the very institutions of culture and society which determine its existence (i.e., marriage and family)! Rather, according to Justice Kennedy, we must stand blithely by while every species of perverted, twisted behavior passes by our collective eyes and not only tolerate but approve and “respect” it! In his eloquent and forceful dissent, Justice Scalia noted that “the Court has been co-opted by the homosexual agenda; it has taken sides in the culture war.” Taken sides, indeed! It seems that our own Supreme Court has blissfully fallen prey to historical amnesia, enabling us to act in complete contradiction to the founding principles that constitute us as a distinct, constitutional republic. Religion, marriage, and family are integral to a constitutional republic as envisioned by our Founding Fathers, and these institutions are under direct assault by the gay lobby throughout our land. Matt Coles, director of Lesbian and Gay Rights Project at the ACLU said, “This is unquestionably their most important court case ever.” If we as Christians do not recognize this fact, understand that those who would destroy our foundations do understand the importance of this case quite clearly! How important was it? • It struck down in one sweeping blow the sodomy laws of all 13 states that have them on their books. Are we Christians just full of hate, or are there sound, biblical reasons for opposing the gay agenda in America today? We believe there are several such reasons. They include: 1. It is sheer rebellion against the image of God in man – in the beginning, God created man in his image: “When God created man, he made him in the image of God. HE created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them ‘Man.’” (Genesis 5:1) In the union of two opposites do we find the one image of God in the nature of man. In the union of male and female do we find the one, true image of God in man. The one is not complete without the other; the one is not fulfilled without the other. “The Lord God said ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’” Homosexuality is a deliberate assault upon the image of God in man. It is a direct extrapolation of Adam and Eve’s deliberate rebellion in the Garden of Eden. Do not be deceived; those who attempt to twist and pervert the meaning of the Bible by saying that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality do not understand the clear picture painted there. There is one image of God: male and female. All others are perversions, and monstrous configurations of damnation, not mere natural alternatives to the accepted norm. The Old Testament book of Leviticus lists in excruciating, painful detail all the perverse, “alternative” lifestyles that quickly bring the judgment of God. Why? Because they are all a perversion of the one true image of God in man. When God looks at man, he expects to see a faithful image of himself reflected there, not a perverse mongrel staring back at Him. What does he say after detailing all of the sick variations which the pagan nations had devised, those nations which had evolved into great “tolerance and diversity”? “Keep all my decrees and laws and follow them, so that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them…I am the Lord your God, who has set you apart from the nations.” (Leviticus 20:22-24) Make no mistake about this, Christian: the Church has maintained in doctrine and morals and our Christian Republic has codified in law the utter perversity of homosexuality because it is a travesty of the One true image of God in Man! 2. It is in sheer rebellion against the mystery of Christ and the Church – the union of one man and one woman profoundly pictures the union of Jesus Christ, which is often pictured as a bridegroom with his bride, the Church. In speaking of the love a husband must have for his wife and the submission a wife must render unto her husband, the apostle Paul says of their union: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and t he two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church.” Ephesians 5:32 O Christian husband! You are to tenderly love your wife and be faithful to her and her alone not only because that is the very thing for which you were created, but also because you divinely act out upon the stage of life and creation the profound, wondrous mystery of Jesus Christ and the beauty of his way with his bride, the Church. What is the model of how Christ loves his Church? It is pictured for all the world to see in you, the Christian husband, as he loves and cherishes his beautiful bride, his wife! O Christian wife! You are to reverently submit to your husband in all things, and be faithful to him and him alone, not only because this is that for which you were created, but also because you divinely act out upon the stage of life and creation the profound, wondrous mystery of the Church and the holy beauty of her way with her husband, Jesus Christ. What is the model of how Christ loves his Church? It is pictured for all the world to see in you, the Christian wife, as she respects and submits unto her loving bridegroom, her husband! Every marriage is theology writ small, a living, miniature model of a profound, heavenly mystery – the mystery of the oneness and organic unity between Christ and his Church! This is a thing for each and every Christian couple to celebrate and relish and cherish in every generation. Additionally, it falls to our generation to be impelled to protect it, as well. What does the homosexual “relationship” say about what “God has joined together,” which no man must put asunder? It utterly perverts and desecrates it; the holy bond of Christ and his Church is severed and short-circuited. The profound mystery of two opposites becoming one in flesh and soul becomes instead a profane miscreant of two narcissists destroying their flesh and damaging their souls! Make no mistake about this: one of the chief goals of the homosexual agenda is to twist and pervert the biblical model of marriage to further the acceptance of the gay lifestyle. This is becoming increasingly evident as the gay agenda progresses. The literature and web sites of gay advocate organizations are becoming openly bold about their plans for marriage as we have known it, i.e., for marriage as it has provided the context for raising and nurturing the next generation of Americans. Author Steven Baldwin, a contributor to a recent issue of Whistleblower Magazine, said, “It is difficult to convey the dark side of the homosexual culture without appearing harsh. However, it is time to acknowledge that homosexual behavior threatens the foundation of Western civilization – the nuclear family. An unmistakable manifestation of the attack on the family unit is the homosexual community’s effort to target marriage and children, both for their own sexual pleasure and to enlarge the homosexual movement.” Gay marriage is not just another alternative for loving couples who just happen to be of a different sexual orientation. Marriage is not an institution based upon love. If love were the criteria, then we would long ago have seen marriage inclusive of polygamist relationships, or incestuous relationships between brother and sister or mother and son or some other such relationship, or even bestial relationships. After all, if I love my cocker spaniel, and love is the only criteria, then there is no barrier to wedded bliss with my animal companion! No! Marriage is an institution with built-in social sanctions: positive sanctions for those who make genuine contributions based upon certain expectations (i.e., a stable family which will re-produce other compatible members of the society) and negative sanctions for those who do not make genuine contributions (i.e., those who are parasites to the society, drawing from without re-producing for that society). This is tacitly acknowledged in the very language of the gay community, who derisively refer to heterosexual couples as “breeders.” After all, left to their own devices, no homosexual community will re-produce itself when left alone. The homosexual community is, by definition, a parasitic community dwelling amongst and draining from the larger, re-productive community. The built-in negative sanctions against homosexual unions (rejection and denial of rights) must be maintained if we are to preserve a self-propagating union! Do not relinquish for a moment the biblical model of marriage, which portrays the holy and wondrous union of Christ and his Church. It is built on the structure of creation and the very structure of the New Creation: “I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, prepared as bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” Revelation 21:2 3. Homosexuality is a manifest form of a degenerate idolatry – idolatry is the worship of the creature in place of the Creator, God Himself. I have a test for you: What holds the highest place in your soul? Is it money? Sex? Power? Security? Love? Any and all of these can be idols, and you an idolater; sometimes, in the ancient world, they bore names and actual physical images: Molech, Baal, Ashtoreth, in the Scriptures. The Greeks had Zeus and Apollo; Hindus, over eight million gods; Muslims have Allah. All are idolatrous, all are gods worshiped in place of the One, True Trinitarian God of the Bible. All idolatry is rebellion against God, the very same rebellion manifest by Adam and Eve in the Garden. When they obeyed the Serpent by eating of the forbidden fruit, they transferred their covenant loyalty from God to the Serpent and became his subjects, worshipping the creature instead of the Creator. Since then, every form of persecution and idolatry has descended from that first act of idolatry. The apostle Paul is very clear on this point. He identifies homosexuality with idolatry – a very advanced, degenerate form of idolatry: The dishonoring of God leads to futile thinking that leads to foolish behavior that degenerates into idolatry that leads to dark, debauched sexuality, including God giving them up to “dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.” (Romans 1:26,27) The apostle Paul was writing to the church located in Rome. The Roman Empire – which endured for 1000 years – was in an advanced stage of decay and rottenness. What was the Empire’s chief evidence of collapse? It was the rampant acceptance and practice of homosexuality. The Roman satirist, Juvenal, comments in verse upon a strange disease that had swept through the populace, especially the homosexual community of his day: Infection spread this plague Homosexuality comes at the end of the list of corruptions in Romans; homosexual rape comes at the end of the days of Sodom and Gommorah; towards the end of every list (1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1) of sins comes homosexuality, as a kind of nadir of sin in any given culture. In a culture that is self-absorbed and corrupt, “homosexuality is recognized not as ‘liberation’ but as a symptom of moral malaise.” (R.E.O. White, The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology) The mark of a dead and dying culture is the rampant spread of this last sign of corruption and death - homosexuality. How will a society respond? It is not only the homosexual who pays the penalty for this sin, but those who tolerate and let stand a culture’s practice of it. Make no mistake about this: God will exact a tragic judgment upon a people for their tolerance of such perversity and “diversity”: He will give you over into impurity and degradation (Romans 1:26,27). He will give you the true penalty for your perversion (Romans 1:27). We are witnessing these things overtaking a debauched, insensate culture. We refuse to act, and God refuses to bless; we refuse to sanction and punish such sin, and God refuses to let it slip by unnoticed. Just because a lawless city mayor in San Francisco gives these monstrous unions his office’s imprimatur does not mean that God’s law approves of it. We can pretend that homosexual “marriage” is the equal of heterosexual marriage, but strident, hysterical catcalls do not substitute for the voice of God! Remain true to the mystery of Christ and the Church. O husband! You must love your wife as Christ loves the Church. O wife! You must obey your husband as the Church does Christ. May you be blessed in your union! © 2008 NGOPC - All Rights Reserved
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