Is the legal prohibition of same-sex “marriage” analogous or equivalent to bans on interracial marriage?

The basis for the comparison of homosexual “marriage” to interracial marriage is based on the fallacious comparison of homosexuality to race. Race is, of course, a lousy analogue for homosexuality. Race is 100 percent heritable, in all cases immutable, and has no inherent connection to subjective feelings, desires, or volitional acts. Homosexuality, in contrast, is not 100 percent heritable, is in some cases fluid, and is constituted centrally by subjective feelings, sexual desire, and volitional sexual acts.

Here are some differences that the Left refuses to acknowledge:

• Bans on interracial marriage were wrong because they introduced a criterion wholly irrelevant to the nature and purpose of marriage, which is a sexually complementary relationship naturally ordered to reproduction and childrearing.
  
  
• Bans on interracial marriage were wrong because they were based on a flawed understanding of human nature. The erroneous assumption was that white men and black men were by nature different. Bans on homosexual marriage are based on the true belief that men and women are fundamentally different—a fact that homosexual men and women openly acknowledge when they express a preference for persons of the same sex.
  
  
• Bans on interracial marriage were wrong because they discriminated based solely on who someone was, whereas bans on homosexual “marriage” make distinctions among behaviors—which all laws do. A black man who wants to marry a white woman is seeking to do the same action that a white man who wants to marry a white woman seeks to do. But, if a man wants to marry a man, he is seeking to do an entirely different action from that which a man who wants to marry a woman seeks to do. A law that prohibits homosexual marriage is legitimate because it is based not on who the person is but rather on what he seeks to do.

Read more in this series:  Part 1        Part 2        Part 3       Part 5

For more help on questions related to homosexuality, I encourage readers to visit the Public Discourse website.

 Three Important Upcoming Events:

–>  September 14th – IFI’s 3rd Annual Fun. Run. Walk in Joliet 
(Click HERE for more info)

–> October 4th — IFI’s Fall Banquet with Dr. Benjamin Carson in Northlake 
(Click HERE for more info)

–> October 23rd — IFI’s Defend Marriage Lobby Day in Springfield  
(Click HERE for more info)

How would the legalization of same-sex “marriage” affect society?

• Religious liberty and speech rights will continue to erode. American Christians should play close attention to what’s happening in Canada in order to see with clarity what’s coming here. In the United States, we have seen already that Christian owners of businesses, particularly those in wedding-related businesses will be compelled by law to use their gifts, skills, and time to serve homosexual weddings or lose their businesses.
   
• Once the notion that marriage has no inherent connection to sexual complementarity or reproductive potential, but rather is solely constituted by love, there remains no intellectual justification for legally prohibiting plural or incestuous marriage. The legal prohibition of plural or incestuous marriage becomes arbitrary and discriminatory.
  
  
• Once marriage is severed from any inherent connection to reproductive potential, once the revisionist view of marriage as a private relationship constituted solely by the deep feelings of those seeking to marry, it becomes meaningless as a public institution. Eventually even heterosexual investment in it will decrease.
  
  
• As fewer heterosexuals choose to marry and increased numbers of children are raised by single mothers, greater numbers of children will grow up fatherless, which will increase the myriad and tragic harms that result from being deprived of fathers (click HERE  and HERE  for more information). 
  
  
• The law will support and propagate the radical, fallacious, and destructive idea that children have no inherent right to know and be raised by their biological parents. 
  
  
• The law will support and propagate the radical, fallacious, and destructive idea that mothers and fathers are interchangeable and that mothers or fathers are expendable. 
  
  
• Unethical ways of producing children (e.g., egg and sperm donation, surrogacy, and in vitro fertilization) will be further normalized and increase in frequency.

• Increasing numbers of children will be deliberately deprived of either a mother or father by homosexual couples, which will harm children in incalculable and numerous ways (click HERE , HERE  and HERE). 
  
  
• Public schools —including elementary schools—will expose children to non-objective homosexuality-affirming beliefs about homosexuality. 
  
  
• Public schools will censor all competing (i.e., conservative) views of homosexuality.
  
  
• Children will be taught that traditional beliefs about what marriage is are hateful, bigoted, and ignorant.
  
  
• Parents of children in public schools will lose the right to be the sole determiner of what their children learn about homosexuality and when they learn it.
   
• Laws currently presume that the spouse of a woman who has given birth is the father. When homosexuals are allowed to marry that presumption becomes irrational.

• The government will become ever more entangled in issues related to legal parentage.

For more help on questions related to homosexuality, I encourage readers to visit the Public Discourse website.

Read more in this series:  Part 1        Part 2        Part 4       Part 5

 Three Great Upcoming Events:

–>  September 14th – IFI’s 3rd Annual Fun. Run. Walk in Joliet
(Click HERE for more info)

–> October 4th — IFI’s Fall Banquet with Dr. Benjamin Carson in Northlake 
(Click HERE for more info)

–> October 23rd — IFI’s Defend Marriage Lobby Day in Springfield  
(Click HERE for more info)

Why is the government involved in marriage? Is the government involved in marriage to affirm love or to provide benefits to unions because of their love? Why shouldn’t platonic friends, two brothers, or five people of assorted genders be permitted to marry?

Although those seeking to marry may have a deep investment in the love they feel for one another, the government has no interest whatsoever in whether those seeking to marry love each other and no vested interest in the public affirmation of love between two (or more) people.

The government is involved in marriage in order to link parents to each other and to any children their sexual union may produce. This isn’t to say that the government makes or should make any attempt to ascertain fertility or compel procreation.  It means that the government recognizes and regulates the type of union (i.e., two people, one from each sex) that naturally produces children.

The government recognizes and regulates this type of union because it bears on the public good in ways that non-reproductive types of relationships do not.

Children have both needs and rights, chief among them is the right to be raised whenever possible by their biological mother and father (Adoption is a wonderful solution to the problems of couples who experience infertility and children who need parents. Adoption respects the needs and rights of children by honoring the natural structure that produces children.). It’s important to note that the criteria that concern the government are objective criteria—not subjective criteria like feelings.

Some on the left argue that they don’t want the government “in their bedrooms,” by which they mean the government should not concern itself with procreation. But if the government should not concern itself with matters related to the “bedroom,” that is to say, sexuality, then the left should have no problem with the government legally recognizing any loving relationships as marriage including polyamorous unions and platonic friends. What is the difference between homosexual couples and close platonic friends who love each other deeply, are committed to each other, and wish to access the benefits accorded to married couples and homosexual couples?

There seem to be two differences: The first has to do with the difference in kind or intensity between the subjective feelings experienced by homosexual couples and the subjective feelings experienced by close platonic friends.  This difference, however, is meaningless in terms of the public interest and, therefore, government involvement. The government has no vested interest in formally recognizing distinctions between degrees of intensity of love.

The second and objective difference is that homosexual couples engage in (inherently non-procreative) sexual acts. But since “progressives” claim that the government has no business in the bedroom, whether a relationship is platonic or erotic should be irrelevant. Why does the left believe that the government has an interest in recognizing erotic same-sex unions as marriages but not platonic relationships? What about homosexual relationships render them deserving of government recognition and regulation whereas platonic relationships are not? The fact that the partners have sex?  That can’t be their answer since the left says sexual activity is not the government’s business. Moreover, since the sex is inherently (i.e., by nature and design) non-reproductive, the presence of this type of sexual activity is wholly irrelevant to any government interest.  Why would inherently sterile sex be important to the state? How are these relationships more deserving of government recognition and regulation than platonic relationships?

Progressives and their surrogates, the mainstream press, continually badger conservatives with the question, “If the government’s concern with marriage is procreation, should infertile couples be prohibited from marrying?” Well, turnabout being fair play and all, how about some intrepid reporters badger the left with this question: “If marriage is just about love, has no inherent connection to reproductive potential, and the government has no business in the marital bedroom, then why shouldn’t marriage be available to polyamorists, siblings, or platonic friends?”

Read more in this series:  Part 1        Part 3       Part 4       Part 5

For more help on questions related to homosexuality, I encourage readers to visit the Public Discourse website.

Help protect marriage & family!
Click HERE to support IFI’s work in the public square.

In more than a few articles, I have included questions regarding marriage that should be posed to our lawmakers by their constituents and the press, and which all conservatives—including conservative lawmakers—should be able to answer. We have received numerous requests for answers to these essential questions. Each day this week I will attempt to provide brief responses to each of the questions. Brevity and my own intellectual limitations guarantee a degree of inadequacy, but my hope is that even with those limitations, the answers will be helpful. Portions of these articles appear in previously posted articles by this author.

What is marriage? Does it have any inherent features or do we create it out of whole cloth? Why is marriage limited to two people?

When “progressives” argue that marriage is centrally or solely constituted by love and composed of two people, they are asserting that marriage has a nature that society merely recognizes. In other words, marriage in their view is not created out of whole cloth. Marriage, in their view, has an inherent nature, which is a claim with which conservatives would agree.

“Progressives” and conservatives disagree, however, about what those inherent features are. Conservatives argue that even more central to marriage than love is sexual complementarity. Conservatives understand that marriage is binary because there are two sexes and when one man and one woman come together in a sexual union, children often result.  The sexual union of one man and one woman is the type of union that produces children. If humans did not reproduce via this type of union, there would be no such thing as government-recognized/regulated marriage. Relationships distinguished by sex would simply exist as a different type of friendship with no need for government recognition, and no reason for either permanence or exclusivity.

In fact, by jettisoning sexual complementarity from the definition of marriage, “progressives” render both government involvement and the requirement regarding numbers of partners irrational. If, as “progressives” assert, marriage has no inherent connection to sexual complementarity and the reproductive potential related to sexual union between two people of opposite sexes, the government has no reason to be involved in marriage and the government has no rational reason to limit marriage to two people—or to prohibit incestuous marriages between siblings.

And if marriage has no inherent connection to sexual complementarity and its procreative potential, marriage becomes meaningless as a public institution.

Do children have a right to be raised by a mother and father?

As most Americans acknowledge, some rights are self-evident and unalienable. The inherent right of children to know and be raised by their biological mother and father is one such right. Historically, society recognized and respected this right and the needs of children whose biological parents could not raise them by placing children with a mother and father.

Homosexual couples, however, deny children this right without even an attempt to justify their arrogant abrogation of children’s rights. And the press is complicit in this abrogation when they refuse to ask homosexual activists and our lawmakers if they believe that children have an inherent, unalienable right to be raised whenever possible by their biological mother or father. Our liberal activists and lawmakers would have to answer either “No, children have no such right,” or “Yes, children have such a right, but the desires of homosexuals supersede it.”

President Obama has issued multiple Mother’s Day and Father’s Day proclamations in which he asserts that both mothers and fathers are critical to the lives of their children, and then he incoherently endorses a form of marriage that necessarily embodies the idea that mothers and fathers are expendable and interchangeable.

Deliberately creating motherless or fatherless children is a gross violation of children’s rights.

Read more in this series:  Part 2        Part 3       Part 4       Part 5

For more help on questions related to homosexuality, I encourage readers to visit the Public Discourse website. 

Help protect marriage & family!
Click HERE to support IFI’s work in the public square. 

Written by S. M. Hutchens 
(originally appeared in the July/August 2013 issue of Touchstone  Magazine) 

In homosexuality’s assault on the beliefs of churches that once unanimously identified it as sexual perversion—sodomy being “the abominable and detestable crime against nature”—its most potent weapon has been the counter-accusation that identification of homosexuality as sinful is a detestable offense against charity. By these presents, all who hold to the ancient interdict as God’s word may be numbered among the crowing yahoos of Westboro Baptist Church with its “God Hates Fags” placards. 

The churches, thus accused, have divided into those that hold to the Judeo-Christian teaching and those converted to regarding homosexuality as no sin at all, for where the question is posed, as the church homosexualists have pointedly and indefatigably done in the last generation, the winnowing fan comes into play and there is a division—for there is no third way. 

At the point where the question touches the resisting churches, however, there is often much confusion, which includes a genuine concern about whether the complete rejection of homosexuality is indeed uncharitable, whether those who bear the burden of homosexual lust are being unfairly singled out as greater sinners than those with other, no less sinful tendencies. They are troubled by the question of whether they, with a perverse desire to justify themselves by condemning others, fail to distinguish between sin and sinner so that the hate banners are really their own as well. 

These questions, if not resolved, lead to a kind of moral suspension in which questions like, “What about our homosexual brethren here in the church? Are we denying their existence, failing to hear them?” become askable, and, encouraged by “moderate” voices within these communions, are indeed asked in a form something like and affirmation has been crossed. 

The Apostolic Answer 

In 1 Corinthians 6, St. Paul gives vital clarification on a subject where there is much foggy thinking among those who ask questions like, “What should the Church’s approach to homosexual Christians be?” The apostolic answer is that there is no such thing as a homosexual Christian. There are brethren who struggle with various temptations, to be sure, and may on occasion fall to them before rising again. But believers who resist homosexual lust are not “homosexuals.” They are just Christians, as are the rest of us with our own besetting sins. 

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? [Then comes a list of sinners, including “sexual perverts.”] And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. 

Such were some of you. The apostle is writing to the baptized saints in the church of Corinth who are no longer these things. He does not say they are no longer susceptible to their old sins, nor that these old sins mustn’t be dealt with: addressing the problems old sins create is a large part of the epistle’s burden. Given this apostolic definition, however, we cannot—we dare not—say there is any such thing as a “gay (or lesbian, etc.) Christian,” for the Christian by definition has been cleansed of his homosexuality. He cannot regard himself as a homosexual—or idolater, or thief, or drunkard—nor can the Church affirm him, or the various acts associated with the old vice, as such. 

There is no “homosexual voice within the Church,” for the homosexual’s conversion entails a choice—This, or That—the sin, or the Faith. He cannot have both, nor can the Church in any way accommodate the sin from which he has been cleansed. It is wholly and actively and vehemently against it as a destroyer of the souls it has been called to save. It labors among the saints only in the accomplishment of what has already been done in Christ: cleansing, sanctification, and justification in the Name of the Lord. 

Its message to those who, in abandonment of hope, define themselves by some sin, and present themselves as though they, as so defined, should have a place in the Church, is and only can be that of complete rejection.

With respect to loving the sinner and hating the sin, which it indeed is called to do, what can it say to those who, in contempt of the saints who have fled their sins, declare their persons to be inseparable from the sin, identifying themselves with it—and then blame the Church for hating them as persons? It can only say to them that all perversion of what it is to be human has been destroyed in and by Christ, who makes those who love him straight and whole after his own image. To some, this is the promise of life; to others, who have bound themselves to that which is to be destroyed, it is the intolerable threat of destruction. 

No Satisfaction 

What do these latter have to speak to, much less teach or admonish, the Church upon? They have no voice among us. Christian authorities need to stop thinking and writing as though the categories of homosexual and Christian can be joined—as though the Church could tolerate or accommodate, or speak gently of, much less bless or sanctify, anything peculiar to the garment stained by the flesh that those who come to Christ throw off  in their baptism. 

In that baptism we become penitents, and as such divided from our sins. St. Paul tells us here that no penitent is to be named by, identified by, what he has abjured. Those injured people who have put on Christ have put on, in him, life, hope, healing of their diseases, and resurrection of their bodies in the image and likeness of the one who has saved them. 

The Church never can and never will give satisfaction—and the homosexualist knows it, for he knows the words against him are ineradicable—to the declared and impenitent homosexual, the person who, through an act of the vermiculate will, has identified his person with a sin, whether he demands acceptance of his sin through “love,” or vindication through identification of his perceived enemies as bigots. Whether he presents himself as an object of love or indignation, what he demands in either case is acceptance not of the person, but of the sin-bound and sin-defined person. He demands the declaration of spiritual authority that there is nothing objectively disordered about this binding of man to sin, and assurance that this monstrous amalgam can indeed enter the kingdom of heaven. This can never happen among Christians until they abandon Christianity, which is at war with every sin, and whose indelible constitution places all perversions of the perfect man at the muzzle of its canons.

Robert Lopez is married, a father, and an English professor who was raised by two lesbians.  His is a critically important new voice in the battle raging around issues related to homosexuality, including the redefinition of marriage and the needs and rights of children.

In his most recent article, he offers several critical insights on children being raised by homosexuals. He states the unvarnished truth that raising children in deliberately motherless or fatherless homosexual families constitutes a form of child abuse. Exacerbating that abuse is the societal climate in which influential social structures have conspired to render it socially and emotionally impossible for children to express truthfully how they feel about their homosexual family structures unless what they have to say is unequivocally positive:

Even the most heroic mother in the world can’t father. So to intentionally deprive any child of her mother or father, except in cases like divorce for grave reasons or the death of a parent, is itself a form of abuse… Every child has a mother and father, and when that figure is missing, there is a narrative that is experienced as pain, loss, and at times shame…Whereas single parenting and divorce have always been understood as a breakdown of the married mom and dad ideal, same-sex parenting is now being elevated as normal.

…

“Normalization” demands a kind of silence from multiple parties in a child’s life. The child’s lost biological parent(s) must keep a distance or disappear to allow two gay adults to play the role of parent. Extended family must avoid asking intrusive questions and shouldn’t show any disapproval through facial expressions or gestures, schools and community associations have to downplay their celebrations of fatherhood or motherhood (even canceling Father’s Day and Mother’s Day in favor of “Parenting Day”). The media have to engage in a massive propaganda campaign, complete with Disney productions featuring lesbian mothers to stifle any objections or worries. Nobody must challenge the gay parents’ claim that all is being done for love.

Does the silence of so many surrounding parties reverse the sense of loss? No. The child still feels the loss, but learns to remain silent about it because her loss has become a taboo, a site of repression, rather than a site for healing and reconstruction. The abuse comes full circle.

…

In a recent heart-to-heart talk with Dawn Stefanowicz, a Canadian woman who was raised by her gay father, she and I lamented that many children of same-sex couples will never speak openly about how unfair it was to be denied a mother or father.

Dawn’s experience resembles mine: most kids of gay parents we know are struggling with sexual identity issues, recovering from emotional abuse, fighting drug addictions, or are so wounded by their childhood that they lack the stability to go public and face the onslaught from an increasingly totalitarian gay lobby, which refuses to admit that there’s anything wrong.

Lopez describes what all conservative activists already know: The homosexual community and its ideological allies have become a tyrannical, oppressive, poisonous cultural force that compels conformity and compounds the suffering of children intentionally denied mothers or fathers:

Pro-[same sex marriage] people say gays have been unfairly stereotyped as child abusers, so any discussion of gay child abusers is adding to their oppression. Anti-[same sex marriage] commentators generally don’t want the added fuss of showing up on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of homophobes.

…

For many kids of same-sex couples…we only count when we make gay people look good.

Otherwise, we must shut up….Same-sex parenting has been efficient at traumatizing the inhabitants of its dark side, rendering them frightened and mute, so nobody will ever know about it.

The existence of a venomous LGBT lobby capable of all-out emotional warfare against anybody who doubts same-sex parenting is of course a great help to the cause.

Lopez urges right-minded thinkers to stop tying ourselves in knots about strategy:

After a year of being in this game, I have grown wary of strategy. I don’t have a silver bullet tactic for suddenly making low-information Americans aware that all the same-sex parenting propaganda—and more broadly our growing acceptance of non-traditional parenting—is really a cover for systematic abuse. My hunch, however, is that it might be time simply to drop all the masks, put away our strategies, and just state the uncensored truth.

If you think child abuse is wrong, then say so.

And still most Christians—and shockingly their leaders—say relatively little. Ever anxious that the non-believing world in its relentless misuse of Scripture will excoriate them for judging (rightly), speck-looking, or stone-casting, Christians opt instead to become complicit in child abuse.

I recently met with an Illinois congressman who surprised me with his humility and honesty. He admitted that the one issue that he is unable to discuss with facility is homosexuality, which actually encompasses multiple policy issues including same-sex “marriage,” homosexual adoption, comprehensive sex ed, “hate” crimes legislation, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), and the Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA).

Many Christians want to know what they can do to try to stop the homosexuality-normalizing freight train.

First, we need the humility and honesty to acknowledge we don’t know how to discuss issues related to homosexuality with facility.

Second, we need to get educated. Our young Christians are becoming more affirming of homosexuality, not because the arc of the moral universe is bending toward justice, but because they are unwitting victims of cultural indoctrination, intimidation, and demagoguery. Go to your pastors and priests imploring them to teach the adults, high school students, and middle school students in your church about issues related to homosexuality. The church needs to step in and help its members understand and refute the utterly specious arguments used to normalize homosexuality, which if accepted will erode religious liberty, speech rights, parental rights, and children’s rights and will expand the role of government in the lives of families. If you cannot discuss with facility the following issues, you will by default become complicit in our cultural degradation:

1. What is marriage? Does it have any inherent features or do we create it out of whole cloth?
2. Why is the government involved in marriage?
3. Is the government involved in marriage to affirm love or to provide benefits to unions because of their love?
4. Why is marriage limited to two people?
5. Why shouldn’t platonic friends, two brothers, or five people of assorted genders be permitted to marry?
6. Do children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and father?
7. How would the legalization of same-sex “marriage” affect society?
8. Is the legal prohibition of same-sex “marriage” analogous or equivalent to bans on interracial marriage?
9. Does the prohibition of same-sex “marriage” violate the separation of church and state?
10. Does the Constitution prohibit citizens from having their religious beliefs shape their political decisions?

Third, we need to be prepared to suffer for Christ and his kingdom.

Fourth and finally, we need to participate in the public dialogue on issues related to homosexuality even when it’s profoundly uncomfortable and may lead to personal or professional repercussions. We need to speak the truth without compromise, awkwardness, or self-consciousness.

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The question has been asked “how does same-sex ‘marriage’ hurt anyone?” It’s one of those deceptive arguments designed to emphasize personal narratives over smart public policy and facts in the marriage debate. After all, if it doesn’t “hurt” anyone else, or keep anyone from living their heterosexual life, surely it can’t be wrong.

But, as the Gospel Coalition has made clear, same sex “marriage” will in fact be harmful in a number of ways. Voddie Baucham says the current discussion on marriage “explodes that myth” that homosexuality and same-sex “marriage” is a private issue.

He goes on to say that legal decisions are generally based on principles and legal precedent, and that right now the push to redefine marriage seems to be based on an “all you need is love” principle. If that is the case, Baucham says, what about the 50 year old man and the 12 year old girl, or the man and his daughter?

He’s got a valid point. In fact, he’s not the only one talking about this “slippery slope” the Supreme Court has put us on in the redefinition of marriage. The slippery slope is one of the main concerns traditional marriage advocates have for the push to redefine marriage. And while some call it a straw man argument, evidence says it is more than legitimate.

What I’ve said, and will continue to say is that if the government redefines marriage for homosexuals it will have to redefine marriage for any other group or be guilty of the same “discrimination” it now accuses traditional marriage supporters of. Put simply, the government and homosexual advocates accuse traditional marriage supporters of being anti-gay.

So if the government doesn’t redefine marriage for polygamists, it will be called anti-polygamist. Take that argument to the end and you can see the legalization of not just polygamy but polyamory, pedophilia, bestiality, and more.

Matt K. Lewis recently wrote:

“The arguments are essentially the same. For example, Sen. Al Franken recently issued a statement saying, ‘Our country is starting to understand that it’s not about what a family looks like: it’s about their love and commitment to one another.’ Polygamists couldn’t agree more…I mean, who are we to say that two or three or even four consenting adults — who want to make a lifelong commitment to love one another — shouldn’t be allowed to do so? What’s magical about the number two?”

The logic is airtight. If you can use arguments such as love, commitment, privacy, and civil rights to justify same-sex “marriage” then they can be used to justify any other lifestyle and its accompanying relationships. But don’t take my word for it; listen to what a long-time advocate for polyamory (multiple partner relationships) has to say about redefining marriage.

“Illig [a long time polyamory advocate]  believes there is indeed a ‘slippery slope’ toward legal recognition for polygamy if the court rules in favor of nationwide same-sex marriage, an argument typically invoked by anti-gay marriage advocates. ‘A favorable outcome for marriage equality is a favorable outcome for multi-partner marriage, because the opposition cannot argue lack of precedent for legalizing marriage for other forms of non-traditional relationships,’ she said.

The “slippery slope” argument for marriage isn’t all that outrageous after all. In fact, it’s what advocates of marriage redefinition want to happen. It’s not merely about granting any real or perceived rights to homosexuals, it’s about dismantling the traditional family, along with marriage, and replacing it with groups of people “committed” to one another.

Then again, perhaps advocates of marriage redefinition aren’t’ even interested in people being committed to one another. Recently, during a debate on same-sex “marriage in the UK, a government representative made this statement:

“Lady Stowell…replied for the Government: ‘In terms of the law, marriage does not require the fidelity of couples. It is open to each couple to decide for themselves on the importance of fidelity within their own relationship.’”

Well, it seems another oft-cited fear; the loss of marriage components, such as fidelity and commitment is also more than inevitable if marriage is redefined.

The disconcerting reality here is that it’s not just me, a traditional marriage advocate saying these things. These are polygamy and polyamory advocates speaking for themselves and those they represent.

If no one else was making these statements maybe the rebuttal that I’m out of line would be appropriate. Since they are the ones saying these things and I’m just repeating what they’ve already said they seem less like “straw arguments” and more like realistic consequences.

In the end advocates for marriage redefinition are assuring us that homosexuals won’t be on the only ones seeking or granted the right to their lifestyle and components of traditional marriage such as fidelity and commitment will be erased.

Perhaps we ought to now consider traditional marriage advocates’ arguments of the de-emphasis on mother’s and father’s and threats to religious freedom as more than “straw man” arguments as well. 

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Written by Linda Jernigan

It is the opinion of some that the ex-gay movement is dead or near death following the cowardly retreat of Exodus International. I am here to declare emphatically that nothing could be further from the truth. Ex-homosexuals are more focused and more determined than ever to ensure our message is transmitted globally to the ears and hearts of homosexuals everywhere. 

Many have concluded that because many homosexual transformations include setbacks (as virtually all change from sin to rejection of sin does), they should all be viewed as utterly fallacious. I disagree. 

There are ex-homosexuals, including me, whom God has freed from the bondage of homosexuality, and we have remained free of this sexual sin since our conversion. There is a concerted effort to suppress our testimonies in hopes that we will go away. But we will not go away until every person who desires to be free of homosexuality knows there is a way of escape. The way is Jesus the Christ. He is The Way, The Truth, and the Life (John 14:6).  

The homosexual community would love for everyone to believe that homosexuality is the one thing in all of life’s experiences that has absolutely no exit. How ridiculous. The conversions of alcoholics, drug addicts, gamblers, fornicators, porn addicts, and adulterers are never disputed or challenged. When someone exits homosexuality, however, they are not merely challenged; they are maligned and rejected as liars from the community that preaches acceptance and tolerance.  While the homosexual community accepts the transformation from heterosexuality to homosexuality as truthful and morally legitimate, they reject any transformation in the other direction and the value of chastity for those who never experience heterosexual attraction. How is that possible?  

It is possible because they believe that we have stuffed our fingers in our ears and covered our eyes so we cannot hear or see the double-standard and the preposterous rhetoric they spew in their speeches. 

Alan Chambers said of Exodus International, “We’ve ceased to be a living, breathing organism.”  Although vitality seems to have escaped Alan Chambers and Exodus International, the ex-gay movement is a living, breathing organism because of the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit, and we have the testimonies of others to confirm the fact that God is transforming and converting homosexuals into ex-homosexuals because He loves us.  

I am reminded of the story in 1 Kings when the prophet Elijah thought he was the only one left. God reminded Elijah that He had over seven thousand people who had not bowed their knees (succumbed to the pressure to conform). As a member of the ex-gay community, I shout at the top of my lungs that even though Exodus International bowed out of the fight after over three decades of positively affecting lives, the ex-gay community is not weakened, confused, shaky, or capitulating. Our message will not change because God does not change.  Homosexuality is sin. God disapproves of it, but He made a way of escape through His Son Jesus Christ.  

Ex-gays are here, we are involved, and we will not quit.

Editor’s Note:  Help Linda spread her powerful testimony of deliverance from homosexuality (19 years) by supporting her effort to distribute her new DVD and book nationally.  People need to hear the truth:  Homosexuality is a behavior that can be changed.  Click HERE to learn more and/or support her work.

Yesterday, we re-posted an important piece by theologian and pastor Peter Leithart on the necessity of Christian commitment to truth on the issue of sexuality, particularly homosexuality, an issue that will lead ineluctably to the persecution of the church.

Today, we urge readers to watch this video in which British pastor Sam Allberry discusses his new book  about homosexuality and the church, a discussion made all the more compelling because he shares his own struggle with same-sex attraction.

In his book Allberry echoes Leithart’s message about self-denial, something of which many Christians seem to have lost sight.  Allberry, like Leithart, affirms that in order to be followers of Christ, all of us are called to deny ourselves:

…what Jesus calls me to do is exactly what he calls anyone to do….:“Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’” (Mark 8:34). 

It is the same for us all—“whoever.” I am to deny myself, take up my cross and follow him. Every Christian is called to costly sacrifice. Denying yourself does not mean tweaking your behaviour here and there. It is saying “No” to your deepest sense of who you are, for the sake of Christ. To take up a cross is to declare your life (as you have known it) forfeit. It is laying down your life for the very reason that your life, it turns out, is not yours at all. It belongs to Jesus. He made it. And through his death he has bought it. 

Ever since I have been open about my own experiences of homosexuality, a number of Christians have said something like this: “the gospel must be harder for you than it is for me”, as though I have more to give up than they do. But that fact is that the gospel demands everything of all of us. If someone thinks the gospel has somehow slotted into their life quite easily, without causing any major adjustments to their lifestyle or aspirations, it is likely that they have not really started following Jesus at all. 

This self-denial will be painful and costly. It means, among many other things, that Christians who experience same-sex attraction must be willing to deny those particular feelings, and that all Christians must be willing to endure the costs of discipleship as they bear witness to truth in a hostile culture. Leithart calls for Christians to “continue to teach Christian sexual ethics without compromise or apology” warning, however, that “There will be a cost for speaking the truth, a cost in reputation, opportunity, and funds if not in freedoms.”

Leithart warns too of the broader implications for the church, of which we can already discern the darkening outlines:

Many churches have already capitulated to the Zeitgeist, and many others will. Some Christians and some churches won’t be up to the challenge. For those who heed Paul’s admonition not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, things are going to get sticky. But we are servants of God. He opens our ears to hear, and he gives us tongues to speak truth. If that means we are insulted and marginalized, if it means we yield our back to the smiters and our face to those who spit on us, so be it.

This will force a major adjustment in conservative Christian stance toward America. We’ve fooled ourselves for decades into believing that Christian America was derailed recently and by a small elite. It’s tough medicine to realize that principles inimical to traditional Christian morals are now deeply embedded in our laws, institutions and culture. The only America that actually exists is one in which “marriage” includes same-sex couples and women have a Constitutional right to kill their babies. To be faithful, Christian witness must be witness against America.

God has his winnowing fork in his hand, and he’s ready to use it. There’s likely to be a lot of chaff, blown away like mist. But there will be a harvest. We’re being sent into an oven, but Jesus will crush the grain of the harvest so that, baked in the fire of the Spirit, it will become bread for the life of the world.

Embedded in this portentous warning, however, is the hope that is found in Christ, a hope that is flush with the glorious blessings that Sam Allberry describes: 

And just as the cost is the same for all of us, so too are the blessings. Over the past few years of wrestling with this issue, this has become one of my favourite sayings of Jesus: “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). 

This is a wonderful promise. Jesus assumes that, left to ourselves, we are weighed down. Life out of sync with God does that to us. But as we come to Jesus we find rest. Not just rest in the sense of a lazy weekend afternoon or a long sleep—in on a day off. Jesus means something far deeper: rest in the sense of things with God being the way they’re meant to be. Rest in the sense of living along the grain of who we really are and how God wants us to live. Rest in the sense of being able truly to flourish as the people God made us to be. 

We Christians need to think deeply and talk honestly about what we are actually willing to sacrifice for Christ who sacrificed everything for us when we deserved nothing. We need to think about what our cowardly acquiescence to a destructive culture teaches our children—who are watching. And we need to think about the cultural oppression our acquiescence and silence ensures for our children. 

Click HERE to support the work and ministry of Illinois Family Institute. 

Written by Peter J. Leithart

Sudden as it seems to some, the Supreme Court’s endorsement of gay marriage in Windsor was a long time in coming. In cultural terms, of course, it is the fruit of fifty years of sexual liberation with all its attendant institutional, technological, and psychological shifts.

In terms of Constitutional interpretation, the foundations were laid decades ago in decisions that discovered and developed a Constitutional right to privacy. According to Duke’s H. Jefferson Powell (The Moral Tradition of American Constitutionalism: A Theological Interpretation), the key decision was not Roe but Eisenstadt (1972), which revived a new version of substantive due process. During the nineteenth century, substantive due process arguments had been used in cases involving state regulation of business. That notion of substantive due process was eclipsed by what Powell describes as the “Modern Theory,” under which the Court’s aim was to protect decisions arrived at through democratic processes. In Eisenstadt, the court revived substantive due process, applied now to state restrictions on the distribution of contraceptives.

Justice William Brennan argued in the decision that the “right to privacy” must mean “the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwanted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.” Powell calls this “an intellectual milestone” since the Court rejected the statute “solely because the Court believed the state’s moral choice was an unreasonable intrusion into individual matters the Court considered ‘fundamental.’” It was a return, Powell says, to the jurisprudence of the common law, which regularly issued “substantive judgment about moral-political matters.”

In the light of Eisenstadt, one has to conclude that the Court’s DOMA decision was not only virtually inevitable but also, given the current state of Constitutional interpretation, correct.

Brennan’s argument adapts perfectly to Windsor: The right to privacy must include the right of an individual “to be free from unwanted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as sexual orientation and the desire to marry.”

And it won’t stay put. Justice Samuel Alito was exactly right when he wrote in dissent that Windsor was a decision between two alterative notions of marriage – one a traditional, conjugal definition and the other a consensual, romantic, emotional definition. The latter is, in the Court’s opinion, the Constitutionally-approved definition. Justice Scalia is correct too that the very same reasoning is set up to strike down State statutes and Constitutional provisions defining marriage in traditional terms. Challenges are already coming from several of the thirty-some states that currently do not recognize same-sex unions as marriages. We know what this Court will decide when those cases get to them.

President Obama quickly reassured us that religious liberty will not be infringed. And he’s technically right. Nearly every state that has passed same-sex marriage legislation has made exceptions claiming that no pastor will be required to perform same-sex marriages. But as Robert George has pointed out, the protections are thin indeed. Tax exemption will be challenged, and so will accreditation for Christian colleges and schools that hold to traditional views of marriage. Once opposition to same-sex marriage is judged discriminatory, no institution that opposes it will be unaffected. If you want to see what the future looks like, consider what Paula Deen has been through the past few weeks.

All this means that Windsor presents American Christians with a call to martyrdom. In Greek, martyria means “witness,” specifically witness in a court. At the very least, the decision challenges American Christians to continue to teach Christian sexual ethics without compromise or apology. But Windsor presents a call to martyrdom in a more specific sense. There will be a cost for speaking the truth, a cost in reputation, opportunity, and funds if not in freedoms. Scalia’s reference to the pagan Roman claim that Christians are “enemies of mankind” was probably not fortuitous.

Many churches have already capitulated to the Zeitgeist, and many others will. Some Christians and some churches won’t be up to the challenge. For those who heed Paul’s admonition not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, things are going to get sticky. But we are servants of God. He opens our ears to hear, and he gives us tongues to speak truth. If that means we are insulted and marginalized, if it means we yield our back to the smiters and our face to those who spit on us, so be it.

This will force a major adjustment in conservative Christian stance toward America. We’ve fooled ourselves for decades into believing that Christian America was derailed recently and by a small elite. It’s tough medicine to realize that principles inimical to traditional Christian morals are now deeply embedded in our laws, institutions and culture. The only America that actually exists is one in which “marriage” includes same-sex couples and women have a Constitutional right to kill their babies. To be faithful, Christian witness must be witness against America.

God has his winnowing fork in his hand, and he’s ready to use it. There’s likely to be a lot of chaff, blown away like mist. But there will be a harvest. We’re being sent into an oven, but Jesus will crush the grain of the harvest so that, baked in the fire of the Spirit, it will become bread for the life of the world.

Originally posted at First Things.

It is clear from reactions to the U.S. Supreme Court rulings on same-sex “marriage” that many Americans do not understand the public purpose of marriage.

Marriage has a public and a private purpose. The public purpose of marriage is to unite men to women and both to any children they produce.  Governments recognize marriage because it is an institution that benefits society and children like no other relationship.  Where marriage declines, government grows, intrudes, and steps in to pick up the pieces.

Throughout history, in diverse cultures on every part of the globe, governments have understood that marriage is not just any kind of love.  It is the special union of a man and a woman.  Still today, 94 percent of all the countries on earth recognize marriage as a man and a woman. Contrary to perception, not one of America’s 38 state laws upholding natural marriage were just struck down. 

Marriage is about the established needs of children, not merely the desires of adults or the demands of activists. Changing the foundation of marriage from the set needs of society and children to the various desires of adults is a dangerous move.

Less than 24 hours after the rulings, those with other desires claimed their agenda.  The polygamists see their long awaited opportunity for multiple partner marriages.  As Practical Polyamory spokeswoman Anita Wagner Illig said “We polyamorists are grateful to our [LGBT] brothers and sisters for blazing the marriage equality trail.”   They know that once society walks away from the logical, time tested boundary of one man and one woman there is no stopping point.

Those who defend natural marriage are not seeking to change anything or to force a new view of marriage upon others.  Without the fixed standard of one man and one woman, anyone will be able to remold a marriage as if it were Silly Putty and force their view upon schools, churches and other institutions.

Homosexuals in all 50 states are free to live together, buy property together, enter contracts, and have their unions blessed by a religious community, but redefining marriage for all of America based simply upon their personal desires goes too far.  Rather than what some may want or feel, the public purpose of marriage should be based upon what we know to be true about the needs of children and society.

[**WARNING: Not for younger readers.**]

In 2010, the Australian press, as in thrall to the homosexual community as our ignorant, sycophantic America press is, told the foolishly titled story “Two dads are better than one,” about a homosexual couple who went to Russia to adopt a child. These “fathers” described the obstacles they faced in trying to find a surrogate in the U.S. and the scrutiny they faced when they returned to Australia with their child, all because of the suspicions of authorities who feared that two homosexual men might be pedophiles. The article concluded with this heartwarming quote: “’We’re a family just like any other family,’ [one of the fathers] said with pride.”

Fast forward to 2013. One of these two proud and ostensibly loving fathers, U.S.-Australian citizen Mark J. Newton was just convicted in an Indiana court of “conspiracy to sexually exploit a minor and conspiracy to possess child pornography” and sentenced to 40 years in prison.  Newton’s partner Peter Truong awaits trial on similar charges.

Multiple news reports state that there is video of one of the “fathers” performing a sex act on their son when he was two-weeks old. In addition, these men made their son sexually available from age 2-6 to at least eight other men in three countries. They also videotaped these sick crimes, posting the videos on the homosexual pedophile website “Boy Lovers Network.”

This story follows the 2012 story of Kenneth Brandt who adopted three boys and a girl and then raped and prostituted the boys.

And the Brandt story follows the 2011 story of “married” Connecticut couple George Harasz and Douglas Wirth who adopted nine boys, five of whom have accused the men of raping them.

I’m going to make the wildly politically incorrect statement that the male homosexual community has a serious problem with pedophilia, including its various incarnations like hebephilia and ephebophilia. To the uninitiated, those terms refer to the predator’s favored age of prey.

The Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal was primarily homosexual in nature. In other words, all of the predators were male and the vast majority of their victims were male.

The Boys Scouts of America sex abuse scandal revealed in 2012 was entirely homosexual in nature, which is to say, male predators were preying on male children and teens. 

Though male homosexuals constitute between 3-4 percent of the population, multiple reports suggest they commit a statistically higher rate of sexual abuse than do heterosexuals.

And let’s not forget that in virtually every society in history that accepted homosexuality, the dominant form was between adult males and pubescent boys. If you have a spare minute and a strong stomach, wander around a “gay” website. You will see photo upon photo of youthful, hairless boys who appear to be teens.

Sexual crimes against children are certainly not limited to the homosexual community. And I’m not arguing that all homosexuals are pedophiles. I am arguing, rather, that the homosexual community is not immune to the infection of pedophilia—or what some euphemistically refer to with the neologism “minor-attraction,” which to “minor-attracted persons” is just another “sexual orientation.” (And “sexual orientation” is itself a euphemism concocted to efface the difference between rightly ordered sexual impulses that are consonant with biology and anatomy and disordered sexual impulses that result in sterility and disease because they oppose biology and anatomy).

It just may be true that the community that pridefully celebrates that which is worthy of shame has an even more serious perversion problem than just the sexual desire of men for men.

I wonder if the poor little Russian boy whose mother sold him for 8,000 pieces of silver to evil men who used him as their sex toy will grow up to be sexually attracted to men. Oh wait, that can’t happen because the homosexual community says they’re “born that way.”

For multiple reasons children should not be placed in the homes of homosexuals. First, homosexual acts are inherently immoral. Second, there is evidence that many homosexuals find nothing problematic about sex between adult males and minors of diverse ages. Third, homosexual couples are more unstable than heterosexual couples. Fourth, for many male homosexual couples, fidelity does not include sexual monogamy. And finally,  children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and father—roles that Barack Obama has publicly declared are essential to the lives of children even as he incoherently declares his support for a form of marriage that necessarily presupposes the expendability of either mothers or fathers.

Click HERE to support Illinois Family Institute. 

Written by Rachel Aldrich, WorldMag.com

“Seems like not much has changed in the world of Chick-fil-A,” declared a Huffington Post article after Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy, perhaps predictably, tweeted his opinion about the Supreme Court’s ruling on DOMA and Proposition 8. The ruling will extend federal recognition to same-sex marriages in the states where they are legal.

“Sad day for our nation; founding fathers would be ashamed of our gen. to abandon wisdom of the ages re: cornerstone of strong societies,” Cathy wrote on Wednesday, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Apparently not much has changed in the social media world either, where anything short of full support of gay marriage is still “homophobic.” Huffington Post contrasted the “anti-gay” post with those who were “celebrating equality.” The response on Twitter was less forgiving, calling Cathy a bigot and hateful, with renewed decisions to avoid Chick-fil-A.

Cathy later deleted the tweet. In a statement, Chick-fil-A said, “Dan recognizes his views do not necessarily represent the views of all Chick-fil-A customers, restaurant owners, and employees, so he removed the tweet to eliminate any confusion.”

Cathy has become infamous for his public stance on gay marriage, which has caused controversy for the company in the past. Last year, Cathy told the Baptist Press that the company was “guilty as charged” for backing “the biblical definition of a family.” He drew even more fire for his comment that the nation was “inviting God’s judgment … when we shake our fist at him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.’”

In response, public officials in Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago told the company it was not welcome to open restaurants in their cities. But it didn’t hurt the company too badly—it apparently set a one-day sales record after its supporters held a “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” last year. Gay marriage supporters held a “Kiss In” at the restaurants to protest Cathy’s views.

Perhaps one tweet put it best: “Looks like Dan Cathy CEO of Chickfila didn’t learn his lesson the first time about putting his opinions out as a public business figure.”

It seems Cathy still can’t accept that if you’re a public figure, it’s best to support the agenda or keep your mouth shut.

Though open containers with alcoholic beverages are illegal during the Gay Pride Parade, missing in official police and parade rule announcements, however, are warnings against violating the Chicago Public Morals Laws, which have been on the books for years and rarely, if ever, enforced in the Boystown gay district throughout the year. 

WARNING: Offensive pictures from other parades HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE.

The month of June was designated as LGBT “Pride Month” by proclamation from Mayor Rahm Emanuel featuring dozens of social, cultural, athletic and political events scheduled by various sponsoring groups, culminating with the 44^th annual Chicago Gay Pride Parade on June 30th at noon. The grand marshal for the parade is former NFL player Wade Davis. Parade organizers claim to attract hundreds of thousands of onlookers each year, including young children.

TAKE ACTION:  Click HERE to use IFI’s advocacy system to contact Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and 19th District Commander Elias Voulgaris and respectfully urge them to enforce Chicago Public Morals Laws. People with same-sex attraction insist on equality but don’t want to be held to the same standard of law as the rest of us. No one person, group or organization should be above laws that protect all citizens from public indecency and lewd behavior.

Chicago Public Morals Laws

Chapter 8-8-080     Indecent exposure or dress.

Chapter 8-8-090     Indecent publications and exhibitions.

Chapter 8-8-100     Sale of literature represented as immoral.

Chapter 8-8-110     Material harmful to minors unlawful.

Chapter  8-8-010     House of ill-fame or assignation.

Chapter  8-8-020     Directing persons to houses of ill-fame.

Chapter  8-8-030     Prostitution or lewdness in conveyances.

Chapter  8-8-050     Soliciting – Penalty.

Chapter  8-8-060     Street solicitation for prostitution.

Quoting from the MassResistance website which features a multi-part series titled, What Boston “Gay Pride” Reveals About the LGBT Movement in America:

Everything you’d want to know about the homosexual-transgender movement in America– its goals, its dark and destructive sides, its targets, its supporters (including many you’d be surprise by) — is brought out in the open during the huge public “gay pride” events in major US cities. In many ways, these are their public statements to the rest of us… Most of America is shown “gay” life on television and in the media in a very sanitized way, as if it were natural and that the latest “civil rights” struggle… Besides “gay marriage,” a major goal of the homosexual movement is normalizing “transgenderism” throughout society, including changing our basic foundations such as the family structure. Make no mistake: This movement is well organized and focused. We all see it through the intense lobbying to push “non-discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity” through legislatures and court rulings. It’s also pushed hard in schools, large corporations and government bureaucracies. On the federal level, the Obama administration has brought it into most top federal agencies… Making a dysfunctional and dangerous behavior the “new normal.” If the transgender movement achieves its goals, this is what people in your businesses, government offices, classrooms, and public facilities will look like — whether you like it or not.

Parade participants include law enforcement, lawmakers and other elected officials, churches, schools, various organizations, agencies and businesses. The entire list is here.

Sources:  http://chicagopride.gopride.com/    http://chicagopridecalendar.org/

Written by Weston Gentry, Christianity Today

Exodus International president Alan Chambers has, in the past week, explained the Orlando-based ministry’s recent U-turn on reparative therapy to everyone from The New York Times to NPR to MSNBC’s Hardball.

And while the organization’s stance remains acceptable to most evangelicals, some scholars fear that Chambers’s theological convictions—sprinkled throughout those interviews—have not.

“It’s not that he is simply not saying the warnings [against homosexual activity] in Scripture. I could live with that,” Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor Robert Gagnon said of Chambers’s recent comments. “It’s that he is saying the exact opposite of what Scripture clearly teaches … . He’s preaching an anti-gospel.”

The theological heresy in question is antinomianism. The term was coined by Martin Luther to refer to those who believe that since faith is sufficient for salvation, Christians are not obligated to keep God’s moral law.

Gagnon, author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice and a plenary speaker at Exodus’s 2009 Freedom Conference, said that a June interview in The Atlantic shows that Chambers’s views have veered. “Some of us choose very different lives than others,” Chambers said of gay Christians in same-sex marriages. “But whatever we choose, it doesn’t remove our relationship with God.”

When asked to clarify whether or not that meant “a person living a gay lifestyle won’t go to hell, as long as he or she accepts Jesus Christ as personal savior,” he replied, “My personal belief is … while behavior matters, those things don’t interrupt someone’s relationship with Christ.” In the course of the interview, Chambers made it clear that he believes that homosexual acts are sinful.

A 35-page response written by Gagnon called into question not only Chambers’s soteriology, but also his ability to continue his 11-plus years of leading Exodus, which boasts some 260 affiliates domestically and internationally.

According to Gagnon, Chambers’s statements unwittingly affirm that active homosexuals need only make an “intellectual assent” or “pray a prayer” to guard against eternal punishment, instead of stipulating the importance of repentance and change.

“I am not saying [Chambers] has to—in a sort of callous, unloving way—shout from the rooftops, ‘You are going to hell,'” said Gagnon. “But he does need to make clear that there are these warnings [against homosexual behavior] in Scripture. It would be unloving and ungracious for him to assure people of things that Scripture does not.”

Echoing the criticisms of “cheap grace” popularized by the late German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gagnon said that Chambers’s remarks “provide assurance to people that all is well when they live a life not led by the power of the Holy Spirit, but are led by the controlling influence of sin.”

“In reality, all is not well,” he said. “[Chambers] unintentionally deceives people into extending this philosophy of ‘cheap grace’ in their life, which puts them at risk of not inheriting the kingdom [of God].”

Defending his public remarks, Chambers told Christianity Today, “If someone tells me that they have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ—in the way I understand it and have experienced it—they still know Jesus regardless of what types of behavior they’ve chosen to be involved in.”

“I don’t know how anyone could call grace cheap when it cost Jesus everything,” said Chambers. “I find it disheartening that we [evangelicals] are so inconsistent and over-focused on one group of people over another. We aren’t talking about this in any other subculture of people except this one [the LGBTQ community].”

Chambers says he isn’t advocating that gay Christians simply “lie down and give up.” The 40-year-old ex-gay husband and father of two maintains that celibacy is a gay Christian’s most biblical option. But he prefers encouraging people to “seek Christ” over “shaming them into a particular set of patterns of behavior.”

“Our focus should never be on how good we do, but on how good God is,” Chambers said. “When we are focused on the truth of his word and the grace that he embodied, I don’t think your life can help but be changed.”

Some critics traced their concerns over Chambers’s soteriology to his home church, Grace Church Orlando. Senior pastor Clark Whitten, who serves as Exodus’s chairman and recently published Pure Grace, could not be reached in time for comment. But he explains on the church’s website that only God can judge those “who say they are Christian yet continue in their sin,” so “the best thing we can do for that person is to keep loving them and telling them about our awesome King who died for them.”

Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, finds Chambers’s motives commendable but his doctrine problematic.

“I can only imagine the sort of situation he finds himself in—trying to speak in a winsome sort of way to people who feel hated by evangelicals,” said Moore. “I just think that he has uploaded some really bad, reactionary tendencies from popular evangelicalism.”

“There is something going on in evangelicalism where everyone is always reacting against whatever error they encountered in childhood,” said Moore. “A lot of people who grew up in legalist, performance-based churches are over-reacting with an antinomian, repentance-lacking gospel.”

“The problem biblically is: legalism sends people to hell and antinomianism sends people to hell,” he said. “Reacting against a hellish-legalism with a hellish-antinomianism is still sending people to hell.”

Unfazed by the accusations of theological error, Chambers addressed his detractors with some pointed words.

“It’s disappointing to see Christians drive personal agendas at the expense of other human beings,” he said. “We’ve received a tremendous response from men and women who are desperate for grace.”

(Read Laurie Higgins’ take on this controversy HERE.)

Originally posted at Christianitytoday.com.