I think the homosexual movement is winning the argument over homosexual marriage, as well as homosexuality in general, in the United States. I expect acceptance of both homosexuality and homosexual marriage to increase in the coming years.
I just saw Don Schweitzer, a lawyer who opposes homosexual marriage, interviewed on "The O'Reilly Factor". Schweitzer's poor performance is typical for opponents of homosexuality. Bill O'Reilly began the interview by dismissing religious arguments as irrelevant. Schweitzer didn't object, and he went on to attempt, ineffectively, to make a non-religious case against homosexual marriage.
The best arguments against homosexuality and homosexual marriage are Biblical. Instead of accepting the ridiculous non-religious framing of the argument (God owns and is relevant to all of life, not just some portions of it), opponents of homosexuality should keep the Biblical argument against homosexuality at the forefront and expose the fact that their opponents are incompetent to address it. There's some merit in also pointing out some of the other problems with the pro-homosexual movement, but the Biblical argument should be at the forefront, not left aside as irrelevant. Have you noticed that the more opponents of homosexuality accept the dismissal of religious arguments as irrelevant, the more irrelevant the opponents of homosexuality become?
The opponents of homosexuality are not capable to address biblical arguments against homosexuality, but they respond to the arguments by dismissing them as irrelevant. How could they be effective if they are not given a hearing?
ReplyDelete"I think the homosexual movement is winning the argument over homosexual marriage, as well as homosexuality in general, in the United States."
ReplyDeleteIf that were to happen, then the we citizens of the United States fully deserve to reap we have sown.
Which ticks me off because I did my part in voting against gay marriage. I've told friends and family why gay marriage is bad and wrong. And I've also passed around a petition.
And then I'll be punished because gay marriage will be the law of the land and "gay is okay, and same-sex behavior is not a sin" will be taught to my children.
Yeah TU...AD, democracy has failed us b/c we're surrounded by generally unthinking heathens.
ReplyDeleteSigh. Come, Lord Jesus.
vytautas' claim that that proponents of gay marriage are unable to address biblical arguments against homosexuality is incorrect. There is no consensus in the community of Christian theologians that the Scriptures unequivocally teach that homosexual acts or relationships are immoral, and anyone familiar with the theological literature on this issue knows this. The following books argue, from a Christian perspective, that homosexual acts or relationships can be morally permissible or good:
ReplyDeleteChristine Gudorf -- Body, Sex, and Pleasure: Reconstructing Christian Sexual Ethics
Patricia Jung and Ralph Smith -- Heterosexism: An Ethical Challenge.
Marvin Ellison -- Erotic Justice: A Liberating Ethic of Sexuality
Check out the papers:
Saylor, Gwen (2005) "Beyond the Biblical Impasse: Homosexuality Through the Lens of Theological Anthropology" Dialog: A Journal of Theology 44, p.81
Gurdorf, Christine (2001) "The Erosion of Sexual Dimorphism: Challenges to Religion and Religious Ethics" Journal of the American Academy of Religion 69, p. 836 -- 891
Online, you can check out both
http://www.godmademegay.com/
as well my own own post here.
Timmo wrote:
ReplyDelete"vytautas' claim that that proponents of gay marriage are unable to address biblical arguments against homosexuality is incorrect. There is no consensus in the community of Christian theologians that the Scriptures unequivocally teach that homosexual acts or relationships are immoral, and anyone familiar with the theological literature on this issue knows this."
I doubt that Vytautas meant that proponents of homosexual marriage are unable to produce responses of any type to the arguments against them. Rather, he was referring to their inability to produce good responses.
And why should we be concerned with "consensus"? A position on an issue can be highly implausible, even if some people argue for it.
The earliest Christians who commented on this subject condemned homosexuality and did so in such a way as to suggest that there was consensus on the matter among the Christians of their day. See my post on the subject at:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/07/homosexuality-and-delusions-of.html
See also:
http://www.robgagnon.net/
TIMMO SAID:
ReplyDelete"vytautas' claim that that proponents of gay marriage are unable to address biblical arguments against homosexuality is incorrect. There is no consensus in the community of Christian theologians that the Scriptures unequivocally teach that homosexual acts or relationships are immoral, and anyone familiar with the theological literature on this issue knows this."
Luke Timothy Johnson, a major Catholic NT scholar, is far more candid than Timmo:
"The task demands intellectual honesty. I have little patience with efforts to make Scripture say something other than what it says, through appeals to linguistic or cultural subtleties. The exegetical situation is straightforward: we know what the text says. But what are we to do with what the text says? We must state our grounds for standing in tension with the clear commands of Scripture, and include in those grounds some basis in Scripture itself. To avoid this task is to put ourselves in the very position that others insist we already occupy-that of liberal despisers of the tradition and of the church’s sacred writings, people who have no care for the shared symbols that define us as Christian. If we see ourselves as liberal, then we must be liberal in the name of the gospel, and not, as so often has been the case, liberal despite the gospel."
"I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us. By so doing, we explicitly reject as well the premises of the scriptural statements condemning homosexuality-namely, that it is a vice freely chosen, a symptom of human corruption, and disobedience to God’s created order."
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=1957
This is not an issue over the interpretation of Scripture. The Bible is uniform in its condemnation of homosexuality. Even honest liberals can admit that. This, rather, is an issue over the authority of Scripture.
While we should not rely on extra-biblical material to defend what the Bible says, there is still a place for arguments from outside the Bible. In the case of homosexuality, the Bible itself indicates that one can argue against homosexuality without using the Bible. Paul says in Romans 1:26 that homosexual people are those who have pursued relations which are "contrary to nature." Such a thing, then, could be (and has been) demonstrated through natural law.
ReplyDeleteChristians should never abandon the Bible, however, and treat it as somehow irrelevant or unrelated to the discussion. Among other reasons, natural law is what it is because God made it that way, and we only learn that through the Bible.
"Yeah TU...AD, democracy has failed us b/c we're surrounded by generally unthinking heathens.
ReplyDeleteSigh. Come, Lord Jesus."
I heard on the radio this morning that "Shallow, Apathetic Christians" also bear a large responsibility for where our society, culture, churches, and country are headed towards as well.
I think it was Machen who said that he couldn't conceive of preaching truth without also exposing error and heresy.
In our politically correct climate it is taboo to preach against error. And if anyone does uphold God's biblical commandments, then you're caricatured and labeled as being "too negative" and not showing enough what you're standing for, and what you're positive about.
So you have church leaders who preach and teach about God's Love. And who speak less about God's Holiness and who speak less about Sin.
The bad news makes the Good News Good! But people don't want to hear the bad news. And so the Good News doesn't have the same impact. People are relatively indifferent to the Gospel because they're unaware of their sinfulness. (I gotta give credit to the Adversary. It's an effective strategy. An even many liberal Christians and Emergers have jumped on the bandwagon to loudly criticize historic Christianity and Christians who take up their counter-cultural crosses.