The beauty of this nation has always been the willingness of the citizens to allow one another considerable latitude in matters of opinion. For example, even though two political parties dominate US politics, numerous other parties exist and thrive despite the fact that the viewpoint of each little party represents a tiny minority of the population. The right of each individual to hold his own views has always been respected culturally and protected in the Constitution. There have certainly been instances when violence erupted over issues, but in the big picture of American history, there has never been a time so chaotic that people across the nation felt that they would be in danger if they expressed their opinions.
The LGBTQ activists don’t want to continue in this tradition.
They obviously desire to be able to feel that everyone likes them. They don’t want to feel threatened. But there is a deeper reason. The deeper reason is that the LGBTQ activists want to be perceived as normative and authoritative in their superior understanding of human sexuality. The culture used to believe heterosexuals were normal and other sexual practices were considered to be mental illness. Since the beginnings of the church, Christians have taught that homosexuality is sin, and they certainly considered that treatment for it as a mental illness was a compassionate attitude. The LGBTQ activists have come up with some wishful scientific thinking that they use in order to claim that nobody actually has a gender or any gender-specific traits. They claim that people acquire all their traits and their entire gender identity from the family, and they want this all to stop. They want children to choose their gender identity the way they choose their hairstyles – by experimenting with various options till they find one they like. That sort of an upbringing is diametrically opposite to the kind of family life most people consider normal. People who advocate that marriage is the union of a man and a woman almost always include in the justification for that norm the fact that it is better for children to be reared in a home with a married father and mother. The values normally expected to develop in a child reared that way would be the values their parents held. This is not what the LGBTQ activists want for families.
The truth is that the LGBTQ agenda is not about permission to get married. It is about ending the institution of marriage. If you do not believe this could be the agenda, then here is what Masha Gessen had to say on the subject of the LGBTQ agenda for marriage and family:
It’s a no-brainer that (homosexual activists) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. …(F)ighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there — because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.
The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist.
If the institution of marriage ends, then families are just whoever happens to be together at the time, with no commitments and no protections for the children. But then, if children are supposed to figure everything out for themselves without any sharing or guidance from parent to child, then who needs marriage? Who needs families?
Christians who want political popularity are announcing one by one or in droves that they can’t find anything in the Bible to be a basis for disagreement with the LGBTQ agenda. But they all seem to think that this agenda is about the quaint idea of “marriage equality.” It isn’t. If Christians give up the definition of marriage by using the term “marriage equality” as if they think they know what it means, then they have already given up the ground on which to defend marriage and family and the right of parents to teach their values to their children.
Fortunately, Christians still have the right to disagree, at least in the words of the Constitution. Christians are still free to speak up and assert the truth that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. They may be laughed at or they may be cursed. Those things do not matter. Christians still have the right to speak and they still have the right to vote. Those things do matter.
Christians also have the right to take their case to the throne of God. When James wrote about the power of fervent prayer, he spoke from experience. James knew two things: 1) he knew that when human beings are not living in relationship with God, they are subject to take aggressive action to persecute Christians, something that is incipient in the behavior of the LGBTQ political agenda; and 2) he knew that when Christians pray, God hears them. God’s response is not always what Christians expect, but it is always good. If something good is to come of the current activism to legitimize homosexuality and various other sexual practices, then God will have to make that something good happen. It won’t happen as a consequence of Christians giving up their commitment to the Bible as God’s all-sufficient guide for faith and life. It will only happen when Christians are willing to be completely submitted to Christ and willing to love, bless and pray for the people who want to persecute them.
When I was a child we used to sing a little chorus that said, “God can do anything … but fail.” The chorus may have sounded trivial to some people, but it is completely true. If you believe the Bible, then you believe that God cannot fail. Pray with that conviction in your heart, and something good will happen. The disciples prayed once for boldness to speak the good news, and it landed them in jail, so don’t assume that prayer will bring a fairy tale ending. Don’t even assume that you will live to see God’s good outcome. Just live the way Jesus told us to live. Put him on the throne of your heart and go where he leads.
The LGBTQ activists have an agenda. So do Christians. The Christian agenda is:
- Love God and love people with all our hearts
- Speak the truth, even if it is not popular
- Love, bless and pray for everyone who disagrees
- Always give faithful testimony to Christ in every setting.
Speaking the truth may put us in opposition to views with powerful support. We must trust God and our Constitution to protect us when we speak truth and stand firm in our convictions.
Living On Tilt 
I think the key is recognizing that denial is a stage of grief.
I don’t know any way to say this that doesn’t sound patronizing, if not insulting – and that’s not my intention – but homosexuality really has to be viewed as a disability. People are born with desires that make it impossible for them to have all of the things that other people expect in marriage and family.
I don’t think gay people are the primary agitators, politically. I see them as being used. The real agitators are people who want the government, not the family (and not the church), to be the center of American economic life. By redefining “family” so that there is no way to distinguish kinship ties from mere bonds of affection, family becomes much weaker – just as no-fault divorce, promiscuity, on-demand abortion, and handing out contraceptives all also work to weaken the family unit.
In all these cases we are told to imagine the suffering of the person with the sexual desires, while ignoring the larger impact. But in all cases, it’s not at all clear that the person with the sexual desires is better off for having indulged those desires recklessly.
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You make an excellent point when you accuse political activists of hijacking the whole discussion. They certainly do that. This is an excellent reason for Christians to turn the conversation to Christ. Christ, God in flesh, spoke on the subject. He said that people were created male and female, and that God’s intention (his intention) was for them to be joined together in marriage. This is not a law that everyone must marry, but it clearly defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Nothing else fits the definition.
Marx actually hated the whole idea of families, because he felt that family authority undercut the authority of the state. Recently a family tried to leave Germany and come to the USA as refugees, because Germany threatened to take their homeschooled children away from them. Germany has a law going back to Nazi days that makes homeschooling illegal, because a home school might teach a different moral code than the state. That, of course, was the entire motivation of this family. They did not approve of the state’s version of morality. The US Department of Justice rejected their application for refugee status on the grounds that a law that applied to everyone was not persecution. (Incidentally, that definition means that most of the state suppression of religious freedom around the world would not be classified as persecution. That says a lot about the current administration’s view of the state.)
In the US, many people who don’t even know who Karl Marx is have adopted his notion that the government should teach children everything they need to know and the parents should stay out of it. The activists for this ideology are very active in the debate over the definitions of marriage and family.
Thank you for your comment.
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