A Matter of Conscience

Commentary by Robin G. Jordan

In his political testament Mein Kampf German dictator and mass murderer Adolf Hitler, a master propagandist who was able to manipulate the German masses through his demagoguery, outlines the basic principles of propaganda. The aim of propaganda, he writes, is to sell an idea to the masses. The goal is not to so much to win active support of an idea among the masses but to gain its passive acceptance. The larger the number of members of the masses who passively accept an idea, the smaller the number of active supporters who are needed to promote the idea. When an idea is widely accepted among the masses, the number of active supporters needed to promote the idea can be quite small. Since the 1960s gay activists have been promoting the normalization of homosexuality in the United States and other Western countries. At same time they have also been promoting the demonization of those opposed to the normalization of homosexuality, portraying them as homophobic, bigoted, and intolerant. They know that if they can sell these ideas to enough Americans, they can bring about the political and social changes that they are seeking to make. They have already gained passive acceptance and even active support in a number of federal and state courts, state legislatures, and county school systems and in one major political party. The widespread legalization of gay marriage by judicial fiat or legislative act will be a major step toward achieving their goal.

As has become evident in Alberta, Canada, the so-called gay rights movement is not just interested in promoting the normalization of homosexuality. It wishes to silence those who are opposed to the gay political and social agenda. It is prepared to trample upon the civil liberties of North Americans here in the United States as it is upon North Americans in Canada. The gay agenda makes no room for freedom of conscience that includes not only the freedom to hold certain beliefs but also to express those beliefs without fear of persecution. Freedom of expression involves more than voicing one’s beliefs in private. It includes but is not limited to making public statements about what one believes, encouraging and urging others to embrace one’s beliefs, and acting upon the beliefs that one holds.

Bible believing Christians who oppose the normalization of homosexuality in the church and in society do so not out of irrational fear or deep-seated hatred of gays and lesbians or preconceived ideas or prejudices toward them or an attitude of intolerance. They oppose the normalization of homosexuality on the grounds of conscience. Bible believing Christians believe that while the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament have human writers, the Holy Spirit is the author of the Bible. God inspired what they wrote. The Bible is more than its writers’ reflections upon the mind of God. God actually reveals his thoughts and will through its words. God is active and present in the Bible and meets the believing Christian each time he or she opens the Bible and reads its words. The Bible for them is a reliable guide to faith and life.

These same Christians believe in the Scripture principle. The beliefs and values a Christian holds and practices must be firmly grounded in the Scriptures. This is one of the core beliefs of Protestantism (and classical Anglicanism). The Bible teaches that homoerotic activity and even homoerotic thoughts and desires are outside the moral boundaries that God has set for humankind. Homoerotic activity is expressly condemned in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Jesus in his teaching on adultery in the Sermon on the Mount equates the thought or the desire with the deed (Matthew 5:27-28). The term Jesus uses for adultery porneia also refers to all other forms of elicit sexual relations identified in the Bible. It includes homoerotic activity. It is the same term that Jesus uses for sexual immorality in Matthew 15:10-20, listing it among those things that proceed from the heart – the innermost self – and defile a person. Jesus goes on to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his father and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate” (Matthew 19:4-6). In the New Testament homosexuality is used to exemplify humanity’s fallen sinful condition and the human race’s broken relationship with God. While homosexuality is not identified as the most grievous sin, it is identified as a sin of such gravity as to preclude the unrepentant homosexual practitioner’s admission to God’s kingdom. No Bible-believing Christian can in good conscience condone the blessing of homosexual partnerships or gay marriage. To do so would be to condone grave sin in defiance of God.

The gay rights movement has always regarded the Christian faith as a major obstacle to its aspirations. For the good part of two thousand years Christianity has influenced the cultural perception of homosexuals and homosexuality. Secularism has greatly weakened the influence of the Christian faith in Western countries. Yet many in the West continue to look to the Christian faith for moral guidance. In the Canada and the United States gay activists within the Christian community have sought to suborn Christian churches into adopting a theology friendlier to homosexuality and more congenial to gays. They and those within these churches sympathetic to their aspirations have promoted heretical new teachings that ignore or twist Scripture to those ends, causing a serious division not only in the Anglican Communion and its provinces but also in other denominations. Pro-gay theologians have gone as far as claiming a new revelation from God.

Gay activists outside the Christian community have sought to silence the voice of Christian protest against the homosexual assault on the American family and the moral fabric of the nation – gay marriage, pro-gay sex education curriculums in public schools, the alliance between gay activist groups and pro-abortion groups. In the United States they have sought to strip churches of their tax-exempt status if they advocate any kind of political action in support of marriage and the family. In Canada and the United States they have filed complaints against Christians and Christian leaders under those countries’ hate crime laws for “anti-gay activities.” They do not cease from pointing an accusing finger in the media and calling Bible-believing Christians homophobic, bigoted, and intolerant, stirring up hatred against these Christians.

With the passage of gay marriage legislation by the Canadian House of Commons and its likely passage by the Canadian Senate, US gays will be crossing the border to marry in Canada and then returning to the United States and demanding the recognition of their “marriages” in the United States. More than ever the United States needs a federal marriage amendment. This amendment will not only preserve the institution of marriage in the United States and protect it from further erosion; the amendment will also safeguard families and children from a dangerous and reckless social experiment. Such an amendment will secure the freedom of conscience for generations of Christians in the United States from attack from the gay subculture and the radical left. It will help to arrest the moral decay in the nation and to restore moral uprightness and decency.

Whatever happens, Bible-believing Christians must take seriously their Lord’s charge to be salt and light in the world. They must be examples of wholesomeness and moral virtue to those around them. They do great harm to their witness when their actual values – the values that they practice as opposed to the values to which they aspire - are no different from those of the culture in which they live. Only as more people come to know Christ and to experience the life transformation that comes with knowing him will Christians see a change in the deteriorating moral climate in North America.