By BRIAN CLOWES
Part 4
(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For a footnoted copy of this four-part article, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)
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So far, we have debunked six of the most popular media myths regarding homosexual “marriage.” The last three myths concern religion and race, and are not difficult to dispose of quickly and decisively.
Myth #7: “If You Oppose Us, You Hate Us.” Homophile propagandist Dan Savage likes to say that “loving Jesus means hating gay people.” This is simplistic nonsense and is easy to refute.
Let’s be clear about what this issue is and is not about. It is not about whether people with same-sex attraction are equal citizens who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. All human beings should be treated with equal dignity and respect. But while all people are equal, all ideas and behaviors are not. People have rights; ideas and behavior do not have rights.
People who say that those who oppose homosexual “marriage” are hateful have one purpose, and one purpose only — to shut down debate and discussion. If people think that they cannot oppose homosexual “marriage” without being verbally attacked, they will be afraid to speak or even think against it.
The homophiles not only know this, they are counting on it!
Anyone who attacks those who oppose homosexual “marriage” is either ignorant of the issues, or is simply the kind of person who has no respect for those who disagree with him. Simply accusing others of “hate” is an easy way to avoid having to defend the indefensible.
There are many examples of this. Rock musician and writer Henry Rollins said: “Don’t hide behind the Constitution or the Bible. If you’re against gay marriage, just be honest, put a scarlet ‘H’ on your shirt and say, ‘I am a homophobe’!” And in answer to a question asking what arguments against same-sex “marriage” he found compelling, New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, “None. There is no answer from the opposition. There really isn’t. Ultimately, it’s ‘I want to discriminate.’ And that’s anti-New York. It’s anti-American.”
Then, of course, there are Judy and Dennis Shepard, the parents of homosexual Matthew Shepard, who was murdered in Wyoming in 1998. Speaking of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), they said that “anyone that believes that the hatred behind this amendment is any different than the hatred that was the cause of our son’s murder is fooling themselves and doesn’t understand what is happening every day in our society.” In other words, the Shepards are equating support of natural marriage with murder!
The Southern Poverty Law Center is an $80 million-a-year extreme left organization that lists every organization that opposes homosexual “marriage” as a “hate group.” This web site caused Floyd Corkins to go to the Washington headquarters of the Family Research Council with the intent of murdering dozens of people with a handgun.
The problem is that homophiles are so completely inflexible and close-minded in their thinking that they cannot even begin to imagine that people who oppose them may be acting in good faith. They simply cannot grasp the concept that some people actually care enough about them to want to assist them in escaping a lifestyle that is deadlier than any other.
As atheist Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller fame so reasonably asks, “If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell, and that people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think that it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward — and atheists who think that people shouldn’t proselytize ‘just leave me alone, keep your religion to yourself’ — how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible, and not tell them that?”
We are all sinners. We don’t want homosexuals to burn in Hell, we want them to repent and join us in Heaven. It is not only our mission to reach out to others; our very souls depend upon it. This is a concept we should keep in mind at all times.
As God spoke to the prophet Ezekiel:
“If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand.
“But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you will have saved your life” (Ezek. 3:18-19, RSV).
If anyone calls you a “homophobe” or a “hater” for opposing them, simply stop him in his tracks by demanding that he produce evidence for such a silly charge, and a true discussion can then begin.
The Civil Rights Movement
Myth #8: “Gay Is the New Black.” The greatest talent of the homophile movement is its ability to create incorrect superficial perceptions among people, which they then repeat so many times that they become “common knowledge,” something that “everyone knows.”
Homosexuals cast themselves as helpless and brutalized victims, and part of this is their allegation that “gay is the new black.” The civil rights battle, with shocking images of police dogs attacking peaceful black protesters in the 1960s, is still vivid in the American consciousness. So the homosexuals compare themselves to the suffering of these protesters.
This perception has a double benefit, because they can then say that opponents of homosexual marriage are just as bigoted as the racists who opposed interracial marriages.
It does not take much thought to see how the civil rights and homosexual marriage issues are entirely different. Blacks were denied full rights as American citizens based solely upon the pigment in their skin. This had nothing at all to do with their behavior. First, they were enslaved as a race. Then they lived under a strictly limited form of “freedom.” They were not allowed to vote, sit, or eat with white people, or travel on buses or trains on the same rows with them. They occupied the lowest rungs of the social and economic ladder for more than a century.
Also, nearly 3,500 blacks were murdered through public lynching from 1882 to 1964.
To begin with, homosexuals have never been enslaved, and those who have been killed or otherwise mistreated suffered at the hands of individual people (usually other homosexuals), not an entire society. Second, nobody has ever “experimented” with being black in college, and nobody has decided to become black after being white all their lives. Homosexuals claim that they are “born that way,” so why are there thousands of people who call themselves “ex-gay” and say that they no longer have homosexual desires?
“Blackness” or “whiteness” are obviously genetic traits, and cannot be changed, no matter how much the person wants to be of another race. Even if homosexuality is a genetic trait, one does not have to commit homosexual acts; the temptation can be resisted, and many do indeed resist. But not many people have the will power to “resist” being black or white. I have never met a former Asian or a former black person. But I have met many ex-homosexuals.
The only difference between people of different races is their skin color. But there are huge and obvious differences between male and female human beings. This is why sports teams, clothing, public restrooms, and many friendships are divided by sex.
Some people wonder if denying “gays” the right to marry is similar to denying people of different races the same right to marry.
The purpose of miscegenation laws was to promote white supremacy. Racists did not think that blacks and whites could not form marriages; they just did not want such marriages to take place. Race is not a relevant factor in marriage, but sex is. Two people of the same sex can never form an authentic marriage.
This debate is also interesting from a historical viewpoint. In the five millennia of recorded human history, not one great philosopher or thinker has advocated homosexual “marriage,” from Moses to Jesus, from Buddha to Mohammed, from Gandhi to Aquinas. To say that opposition to homosexual “marriage” is immoral is to argue that all of these great men were also immoral, as well as every religion and social movement in the history of mankind until about 20 years ago. Only the most extreme “gay rights” activist will assert that “Jesus was a homophobe.”
Homosexuals claiming to be the heirs of the civil rights movement are cynical manipulators of emotion who care nothing about history or facts. They cheapen the struggle that blacks went through to obtain equality and trivialize their great suffering with this comparison.
As a statement by black American pastors said, “We find the gay community’s attempt to tie their pursuit of special rights based on their behavior to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s abhorrent.”
Indeed it is.
One Technically True Myth
Myth #9: “Jesus Said Absolutely Nothing About Gay Marriage.” This last myth about homosexual “marriage” is the only one that is true — technically true, that is.
It is certainly true that Jesus made no literal statements condemning either homosexuality in general or homosexual “marriage” in particular.
Jesus also said nothing about pyramid schemes. Does this mean that someone who bilked others of millions of dollars could offer this as a defense? He also said nothing about carjacking, kidnapping, or terrorism. Could carjackers, kidnappers, and terrorists allege that Jesus said nothing about their activities, so they must be all right?
This claim is like saying that Jesus said absolutely nothing about suicide bombing, so it must be all right, despite the Commandment that says, “Thou shalt not kill.”
This type of negative argument makes no sense at all.
Of course, Jesus did not have to say anything about homosexual “marriage,” since such an idea was ridiculous 2,000 years ago.
However, He still had plenty to say about marriage.
Most dramatically:
“But Jesus said to them, ‘For your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two but one flesh’” (Mark 10:5-8).
Jesus did not say, “A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his husband,” and He certainly did not say, “God created them female and female.”
There are 55 mentions of the word “husband” in the New Testament. In every single case, it is used in conjunction with the words “wife” or “bride” or the name of a woman, and the same goes for the word “wife,” which is always used in conjunction with the word “husband” or the name of a man.
Of course, homophiles say that people who have been divorced but oppose homosexual “marriage” are hypocritical if they quote the Bible, since Jesus Himself stated quite clearly that whoever divorces their spouse and marries another commits adultery.
On this count, at least, they are absolutely correct.
Homophiles often sneeringly refer to the Old Testament, claiming that anyone who opposes homosexual “marriage” and eats shellfish or wears clothing made out of more than one fabric is being a hypocrite. One of their favorite Old Testament passages is Deut. 22:20-21, which states that, if a woman is not a virgin when she is married, she should be stoned to death.
These self-appointed “Bible scholars” are obviously ignorant of the fact that Christians live by the New Testament, not the Old. St. Paul tells us, “For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion for a second. . . . In speaking of a new covenant He [the Lord] treats the first as obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.”
The “New Covenant” of Jesus Christ is mentioned repeatedly in the New Testament. So the only people homophiles could legitimately use this argument against are observant Jews — but they don’t dare, for fear of appearing to be anti-Semitic.
It is a curious characteristic of the homophile personality that it seems not only content to disregard reality, but feels entitled to create it as well.
Since so many homosexuals have called the Bible itself “homophobic,” they decided to publish their own version, the so-called “Queen James Version,” which was released in November 2012. It was named after “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” and of course, the homophiles took this phrase literally, broadly implying that both Jesus and John were homosexuals.
All of the “homophobic” verses in this “bible” have been “reinterpreted.” For example, in a breathtaking display of theological gymnastics, the writers decided that sodomy in the Temple of Moloch was condemned, but everywhere else and at all other times it was fine. So Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 have the words [in brackets] added, altering the original King James Version verses like this:
“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind [in the temple of Molech]: it is an abomination….If a man also lie with mankind [in the temple of Molech] as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: They shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”
We must ask the most obvious question: If the Bible says nothing about homosexuality, why the apparent urgent need to “reinterpret” it to make it more “gay friendly?”
A Man And A Woman
In conclusion, even if Jesus Himself explicitly stated to His apostles, “Amen, Amen, I say to you: Homosexuality is sinful and homosexual ‘marriage’ is an abomination,” would homophiles heed His admonition? Of course not!
The Bible, when considered as a whole, cannot honestly be interpreted as anything other than teaching that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. In both the Old and New Testaments it never speaks of marriage as anything else. When it speaks of sexual unions outside of marriage, it always condemns them.
If the Bible does not affirm that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, then it does not affirm anything. If the Bible can be interpreted to affirm same-sex marriage, then it can be interpreted to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean.
The advocates of same-sex marriage want the government to teach children that same-sex “intimate relationships” are not only right, but a “right.”
To do that, they must reject the natural law, the Old Testament, the New Testament, and more than 2,000 years of Western tradition.
They must teach that the God of Genesis, who created all things, was wrong about marriage. They must teach that Jesus Christ was wrong about marriage.
This shows that the “battle of the Bible” is just another diversion.
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