Wednesday, April 24, 2002
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Wednesday, April 24, 2002 |
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Oh, Lord, of all the '-phobes' I am . . . By CAL BEVERLY
We've run a couple of columns recently to which at least two readers have objected. Their letters appear in this issue. One of the writers accuses us of having an "anti-gay agenda." It's time to fill in a few blanks, lest more erroneous conclusions be drawn. It is more precisely accurate to define my position this way: I am "anti-agenda-espoused-by-some-homosexual-activists-and -some-of-their-apologists." This agenda to which I am opposed is militantly in-your-face and uncompromising. It says this: Tolerance is not enough. It says you must acknowledge and even promote homosexuality and its accompanying sexual practices as not just normative but as a morally equivalent and equally desirable lifestyle. And, furthermore, it says you must teach your children that homosexual behavior is not just a tolerable activity; you must declare that homosexual behavior is just as good and moral a choice as the historic and traditional Christian marriage. Political correctness and the AJC editorial board notwithstanding, I reject that agenda. And this paper will stand for nothing less than a rejection of that activist agenda. Do I "hate" homosexuals? No. But I intensely dislike and actively oppose the cultural and political agenda described above. Am I a "homophobe"? Other than my objection to the misuse of otherwise perfectly good Greek prefixes and suffixes (homo = man, phobe = fear), I am not afraid of homosexuals. Using the mindless criteria some activists and apologists employ, I could as equally well be labelled the following: A "liberal-phobe" because I object to some of their public giveaway policies and weak-kneed foreign-policy stances. A "Democrat-phobe" because I disagree with some of their political platforms. A "Gov. Barnes-phobe" because I dislike how he dismembered Georgia political boundaries in his quest to win at any cost. An "adulterer-phobe" because I think heterosexual married folks should remain sexually faithful to their spouses. A "16-year-old-driver-phobe" because I worry about inexperienced teen drivers operating a ton of metal aimed in my direction just a few inches away in the oncoming lane. Using the gay rights activists' criteria, I am a "phobe" of anything that I disagree with or don't care to indulge in or don't have a taste for. Call me a "watermelon-phobe" if you want to; I still won't eat the stuff. In the spirit of this debate I should add further: I am more than a "divorce-phobe." I hate divorce. And I am a divorced and remarried person. And a sinner, saved by grace. That will factor into the argument in a moment. Let me say what I am for: an historic Judeo-Christian worldview, which includes traditional norms of social and cultural morality. (May I note this fact: The whole notion of "gay rights" is a recent development in Western civilization, 40 years at the most; in terms of the West's "moral history," it has no precedent.) My belief system is based on Martin Luther's Reformation. And with 1,900 years of Christian history behind me, I stand solidly with the early Church Fathers, Luther and the Reformers and Christian theologians until the 20th century, in stating categorically: All willful sexual activity outside of the marriage of a man and a woman is sin. The One who made us set limits on our sexual expression. Western morality is foundationally Biblical in origin. Laws were enacted to reflect that origin. Only in the past 50 years or so has more than a sliver of society challenged that foundation. And the challenge is as old as the apple in Eden: "Did God really say ... ?" And thus sin. Sin. What a quaint concept. How judgmental. How dare you say that my behavior is SIN! Aren't we all getting better and better every day in every way? Well, no. Not without outside help. Way outside. With others of the Reformed persuasion, I believe with Saint Paul: "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." So, we're all in this sin thing together. We all do it. A believer in Christ simply says with St. John, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Yes, God made us all, but he did not make us to sin. He didn't create me to be an adulterer, although my fallen nature tends in that direction. He didn't create us so that my wife and I had to divorce, but we did, anyway, despite His admonitions against divorce. He created us humans with that most frightening of all the things in creation: A free will, the ability to choose to go our own way. He had to send his only Son to die on a cross to rescue us from going our own ways, including our own sexual ways. What is sad is that the activists who still hold to a concept of God, however removed that concept is from the Biblical revelation of the One who made us, contort familiar scriptural concepts to conjure up the reverse of the passages' plain meaning. It is simply that age-old attempt at self-justification. We try to find some warrant for our lust rather than calling it what it is. The plain truth is that both adultery and homosexual sex are sinful acts and cannot be made unsinful by appealing to "love" or, "He made me this way." And I suggest that to denounce as "bigotry" what have been gold-standard moral standards for nearly 2,000 years denotes an overweening arrogance of an especially high order. So smart have we become, have we? So morally advanced, so intellectually enlightened as to throw off 19 centuries of Christian belief because we 21st centurions are so much more morally advanced than that poor, benighted Paul of Tarsus? Who do we think we are? It's laughable, were it not so sad. Don't believe in all that religion mumbo-jumbo, you say? Religious beliefs have no claim on my sexual preferences or practices, you say? I was born this way, you say? May I turn your attention to the "science" of evolution, then. By all definitions of natural selection and the "reproductive imperative" of modern evolutionary understanding, homosexuals are an evolutionary dead end. Homosexuality cannot be explained in any scientific terms as a "biological" or "genetic" imperative. In humans, there is no same-sex reproductive capability. In strictly evolutionary terms, those who practice purely homosexual sex select themselves out of the gene pool in a remarkably short time. Thus, unless homosexual "nature" is a "mutated" development of the past 100 years or so, then homosexuality as some kind of dominant inherited trait would have simply faded out of the human gene pool. Any argument that homosexuality is a fixed, inherited, biological imperative shipwrecks upon the immutable scientific rocks of Darwin's natural selection theory. Thus, we get back to free will, choices and decisions, lust. And that's where the activists start calling names and abandon all pretense of a "debate." Homophobe. Bigot. Prejudiced. Cruel. Neanderthal. Genocidal. Oppressor. Hater. Religious nut. Right-wing crazy. Blind. Stupid. Any other permutations? Send 'em on. But please, state your authority for your argument. I appealed to two very different authorities above; what's your authority?
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