“TOLERANCE, ACCEPTANCE, EMBRACE”

 

Neal Pollard

One of the feature stories in today’s USA Today is a glowing feature about a homosexual couple getting married in Maryland, one of the states to legalize homosexual marriage in the last election.  The article is also about changing attitudes in our nation.  Chuck Raash, the author, states in the course of writing that 53% of Americans surveyed say they think that same-sex married couples should enjoy the same rights as heterosexual couples.  Perhaps the statistic I found more interesting was that 36% of people surveyed have changed their mind about this issue during their lifetime.  While those numbers are not further analyzed, the tone of the article would suggest that most, if not all, have changed from opposing to accepting it.  One of the grooms summed up the “three stages” homosexuals often face when they reveal their preference to the people in their lives–”tolerance, acceptance, embrace” (USA Today, 1/9/13, A-1).  I do not doubt any of the statistics in the article, nor do I disagree with the fact of such gradual change in thinking in people’s minds toward matters like homosexuality.

Yet, I would disagree with this man and those who support his lifestyle that such change is positive.  Sin is very often met with such a gradual, changing attitude.  The 18th Century English poet, Alexander Pope, is actually the originator of the thought from the afore-quoted groom.  In “Essay on Man,” Pope said, “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, as to be hated needs but to be seen. Yet too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.”  The idea, especially in context of the whole, is that people’s attitude toward sin soften through the attrition of exposure.  That is, the more we are exposed to sin, the more comfortable and desensitized to it we become.  When a sin is increasingly portrayed as positive and right and people stop speaking against it, that society inevitably moves from disapproval to embrace.

Isaiah speaks of people getting things spiritually backward, calling evil “good” and good “evil” (5:20).  Consciences get seared (1 Tim. 4:2). They become callous, having “given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness” (Eph. 4:19).  Someone may deny God’s existence or that the Bible is His inspired Word, but those who claim faith in both cannot consistently do so but tolerate, accept, or embrace what He says therein is sin!

3.5%

Picture is unrelated to article; one of Kathy’s great pics of Yellowstone N.P.

Neal Pollard

It is difficult to believe, based on media portrayals and activist organizations, that the percentage of homosexuals in America is only 3.5%.  I asked my two younger sons what they would guess, and one said 20% and the other said 30%.  Popular thinking reflects their estimate.  We are so bombarded by the message that the homosexual lifestyle is prevalent.  Gary Gates, “demographer-in-residence” at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at U.C.L.A., giving an educated guess based on five different studies, says 1.7 percent of Americans over 18 admit to being homosexual while another 1.8 percent say they are bisexual (David Crary and Terry Tang, via Huffington Post, 4/7/11).

Brett and I have clearly taught what the Bible says about homosexuality, that while God loves sinners He hates sin, that homosexuality is sin, and that we must teach against it.  However, consider this fact.  Activists and advocates in that community have done the job of spreading their, howbeit perverse, message.  They have worked long and tenaciously to legitimize and normalize homosexuality.  Consider their success.  It has long since been removed from the American Psychological Association’s classification as mental illness.  “Gay” TV characters are virtual heros and heroines.  There is a constant push to legalize homosexual marriages.  There is wide acceptance and great reservation to condemn in the public forum.

What can we learn from this vocal minority?  They are single-minded in their message.  They refuse to give up, regardless of opposition.  They have been willing to endure ostracism and ridicule in pursuit of their cause.  They are passionate.

In the spiritual, eternal sense, they represent a losing cause.  Sins for which people do not repent bring spiritual death (Rom. 6:23).  Yet, what about those of us who are to represent the only ultimate winning cause?  New Testament Christianity comprises a very small minority of even the religious world.  Are we vocal?  Are we focused on our message?  Are we unwilling to surrender?  Are we willing to suffer persecution? Are we passionate about the salvation message?  In these specific regards, may we have the boldness to pursue lost souls like these pursue their unrighteous goals.  Heaven and earth will be blessed to the extent we do so.

What Is God’s View Toward Homosexuality In 2012?

Neal Pollard

In 1998, Lisa Bennett, then a fellow at Harvard University’s Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government, wrote a research paper on perceived prejudice in the press toward homosexuality.  She noted that immediately following World War II, “all the major religions condemned it as a sin against God and nature. Psychiatrists treated it as a serious mental disorder. Almost every state in the nation had a law against it, with many calling for a prison term for convicted homosexuals” (Bennett 2).  She credited Alfred Kinsey’s reports for revealing how much of what the Bible calls sexual immorality was being clandestinely practiced by Americans (though it has been widely noted that Kinsey skewed and manipulated his results to match his own, private agenda; opponents include the American Legislative Exchange Council, Margaret Mead, Karl Menninger, Eric Fromm, and a who’s who of Kinsey’s contemporaries in science and psychology).

Even in the last 30 years, attitudes toward homosexuality have changed dramatically. Gallup indicates that in 1977, Americans were evenly divided over whether or not homosexuality should even be legal (43% for and against).  In 1983, only 34% thought homosexuality should be considered an acceptable alternative lifestyle. In 1996, only 27% favored homosexual marriage (www.gallup.com/poll/108115/Americans-Evenly-Divided-Morality-Homosexuality.aspx).  These and similar findings are radically different in 2012.

Whatever the exact numbers are now, it is safe to say that many, many more Americans accept, if not embrace, homosexuality in our society than in the years immediately following World War II.  This cannot all be laid at the feet of one man, but at a few elite institutions.  One is higher education, where professors in academic isolation surrounded only by like-minded peers can pursue carnal theory and philosophy with seeming earthly impunity (i.e., free from consequences).  Incidentally, many of these professors have taken their places in seminaries and other religious graduate schools, softening and changing the positions of religious teachers and preachers across the religious spectrum.  Another is the media, whose message has long been an influencer and molder of thought rather than a reflection of it.  Its story-lines, role models, and biases continue to push the moral envelope.  Yet another is politics, where legislators, judges, and others pander to activists and special interest groups who pressure with money and power.

All of this is presented, not to argue for changing our positions on homosexuality or any other moral issue, but to help us take a look at the moral slide so many are riding.  No matter what percentage of Americans, academicians, politicians, or media types, call homosexuality or other sin natural, normal, and acceptable, God’s Word stands firm.  It will not change, for it is the expressed will of God.  In short, though God loves every sinner, homosexuality is, and forever will be, a sin (Rom. 1:24-27; 1 Cor. 6:9; 1 Tim. 1:10).