GAY TRUTH

The stakes could not be higher in the homosexuality debate, because — to put it rather bluntly — homosexual activity is a sin that parallels idolatry. The Apostle Paul seems to draw this connection in Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5, and he certainly does in Romans 1:18–27. Robert Gagnon, a leading scholar on sexuality in Scripture, says these themes are closely related for Paul because both idolatry and same-sex intercourse equally oppose the designs of the Creator . He sees several strong connections that link Romans 1 to the creation account in Genesis 1–2. In his acclaimed book The Bible and Homosexual Practice , Gagnon writes, " Idolatry and homosexual behavior are in some measure parallel (not just successive) phenomena since both are presented as willful suppression of the obvious truth about God and God's design in the natural world." 1 Pagan idolatry is twisted because it is the act of rejecting the Creator and replacing worship of him with the worship of

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness.… to vile passions.… to a debased mind  (Rom. 1:24–28). How does God reveal His wrath against sinful human beings in the here and now? The answer is simple, Paul says—He abandons them. He simply lets them do what they want to do. The irony, as Dr. James M. Boice points out, is that “this is precisely what man has been fighting for ever since Adam ’s first rebellion in the Garden of Eden.  Man has been wanting to get rid of God, to push Him out of his life.” God’s response is to give man what he wants. But things do not work out quite the way man plans. “Instead of happiness we find misery [apart from God],” Boice writes. “Instead of freedom we find the debilitating bondage of sin.… When we run away from God we think our way will be uphill, because we want it to be so. But the way is actually downhill. We are pulled down by the law of moral gravity—when God lets go.” Paul outlines three stages of the human descent into depravit