Christian response to Homosexual Lives
| The Demands of Love: A Christian Response to Homosexual Lives |  |  |  |
| Written by Dr. David Kyle Foster |
First Things First The first thing that love demands is that we repent for the unkind, unchristian and unloving ways in which Christians have in the past responded to those who struggle with homosexual confusion. We have condemned them in our hearts. We have reacted with revulsion and fear. We have considered ourselves better than they. Many of us have simply turned away and offered no help at all. We have sinned as great a sin against them as they may have sinned against God (provided they have responded to their homosexual inclinations in ways that make them culpable before God). Scientific studies have shown that people are not naturally born homosexual. But what is also true is that most people with homosexual neurosis never consciously choose to have it. In fact, many (perhaps even most) spend endless years begging God to take it away. It is a condition of arrested emotional development primarily caused by circumstances outside of the control of the person and against which most children and adolescents have little defense. It is true that at some point, many become co-conspirators in the development of their condition - through "sins of response" -e.g., judging, condemning, dishonoring, seeking identity, completion and fulfillment in the creature rather than the Creator, welcoming unholy fantasies or acting out immorally. However, the original orientation is mostly the fault of others who are beyond the control of the individual. Like the person with an inclination to alcohol abuse, they can either respond in rebellion against God through "sin tantrums" and self-medication or they can embrace the trial of their condition as an opportunity to grow in the knowledge of their absolute dependence on God and eventually find healing and transformation in Him. It is the call of the Church to show them the way that the Father has provided through His Son Jesus Christ. We must do this with unconditional love and with wisdom and knowledge. Until the Church reforms, how can we ever expect society to reform? Today, we elect pedophiles to Congress, we sell their books and frequent the stores that stock them; we make bishops, priests and pastors of men and women known to live sexually immoral lives; and we endow seminaries and colleges that teach their students not to believe the Word of God. On the other hand, when fellow believers waver and fall, we shoot them and bury their memory rather than lead them to repentance through grace and love; we teach and we model salvation by works, performance righteousness, and the dishonest posturing of sinless perfection. I do not believe that the so-called "gay church" would exist today if it weren't for these and other sins that we, the Church, have committed. And so our first task is to repent, crying from the heart:
The "Gay Community" is a Community in Crisis Love Demands that we respond to their plight. But like the alcoholic of 50 years ago, we have turned our backs on a population that is destroying itself. Now, however, as with today's alcoholic, we must love them enough to risk igniting their ire and losing their approval through acts of tough love and heroic rescue. Examine the statistics! The gay community lives with a death wish wrought from interior self-hatred. Their lives are ballads of self-destruction. From the way they've lobbied to prevent the reporting of sexual partners with AIDS to the way they continue to engage in behaviors known to cause death, this self-contempt exhibits itself throughout their numbers. In 1998, CNN Impact aired a story citing some frightening but telling statistics. They noted that in a recent CDC study conducted in 6 US cities over a 6 month period, 40% of gay men (15-22 yrs) were still engaging in the most high-risk, unsafe type of sexual behavior known - unprotected anal intercourse. Despite years of "safe-sex" messages and millions of condoms distributed throughout their community, they continue to defy expert medical advice in order to engage in this particular form of sexual behavior. The same study showed that 1 in 4 gay men (18-29) in South Beach (Miami) tested positive for HIV. Also cited was a recent study conducted by the South Beach Health Survey (a gay study), showing that 47% (that's almost half!!!) of young gay men had had high-risk, unprotected sex over the past year. It's like lemmings going over a cliff! In his brilliant book, Homosexuality & the Politics of Truth, Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, (a former Fellow in Psychiatry at Yale University and past president of the Carl Jung Foundation, with degrees from MIT, U Texas & Harvard University), cites even more frightening statistics. Quoting from Clinical Psychiatry News, Oct '94, he writes: "The APA Press (American Psychiatric Association) reports that 30% of all 20-year-old gay men will be HIV positive or dead of AIDS by the time they are age 30 because they are resuming unsafe sex anyway." Satinover continues: "Medical literature still speaks of homosexuality as the major risk-factor for AIDS (because) gay male anal intercourse and promiscuity created and preserves the American reservoir for HIV." In 1963 the New York Academy of Medicine issued this statement:
Satinover continues: "Just 10 years later, (1973) with no significant new scientific evidence - the APA voted to strike homosexuality from the officially approved list of psychiatric illnesses. Normally a scientific consensus is reached over the course of many years, resulting from the accumulated weight of many properly designed studies. . . . . The APA vote to normalize homosexuality was driven by politics, not science." "In 1978, the journal, Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality did a survey that showed that 69% of psychiatrists disagreed with the vote and still considered homosexuality a disorder." Satinover then quotes Ronald Bayer, (then a Fellow at Hastings Institute in New York), who commented:
In an article from a 1998 edition of the newspaper, The Tennessean -"Gonorrhea Cases Among Gay Men Skyrocketing", it says:
Considering that only 2-3% of the population is gay, that is a telling statistic. In his new book, Sexual Politics, gay activist Gabriel Rotello gives a startling fact: "Young gay men entering into homosexual behavior today have a 50% chance of being infected by the AIDS virus by the time they are 55 years old." - based on a study by Donald R. Hoover, who said: "The overall probability of seroconversion (becoming HIV-positive) prior to age 55 years is about 50%, with seroconversion still continuing at and after age 55." Another indicator of the death wish that dominates the gay community is the fact that the suicide rate among gays (especially gay teens) is extremely high and going higher. The gay community would have us believe that they are committing suicide in record numbers because society disapproves of their behavior. However, societal approval of homosexuality has gone way up in the last 40 years, so if societal disapproval were the cause, the suicide rate among gays would be going down, not up. Ironically the reason young gays are killing themselves in record numbers is because the gay community itself is telling them they are fixed in their orientation and there is no hope for change. They have robbed confused youths of hope. The response of many a young gay is, "I would rather not live at all than to have to live such an unnatural, painful and immoral life!" One study has even shown that the average age at death for gays (not even factoring in AIDS deaths) is 42-45 years old (compared to 72-75 for heterosexuals). The numbers of gay victims (per capita) of venereal disease, AIDS, hepatitis, suicide, incontinence, etc. make nihilistic heterosexual Americans look like Puritans in comparison. And one other shocking evidence of gay self-hatred according to several articles in the Fall 1998 edition of Mission America:
The Bible teaches us that homosexual behavior is destructive to the bodies and souls of those who practice it. I cannot even say in public what I know from my own experience to be the sexual perversions common to homosexuals. The public is being shown a sanitized, "family-friendly" and grossly inaccurate picture of homosexual relationships. According to gay activist, Marshall Kirk, in his article, Waging Peace, from the December 1984 edition of Christopher Street magazine, depicting such a lopsided view of homosexual America is part of the strategy of winning over straight America. To quote Kirk: "Mr. and Mrs. Public must be given no extra excuses to say 'they are not like us'. To this end, the persons featured in the public campaign should be decent and upright, appealing and admirable by straight standards, completely unexceptionable in appearance - in a word, they should be indistinguishable from the straights we would like to reach." |
Finally, we must also deal with a most unlovely reality of homosexual neurosis - that it shares factors in common with pedophilia and thus produces a significantly higher incidence of pedophilia in its population than is found among heterosexuals.
Even some in the "ex-gay" community would like to ignore this fact because there is already enough fear and hatred of gays in the church without providing more ammunition for the fire. However, hiding the truth never brings healing. As long as we provide the additional truth that despite such commonalities, most people who struggle with homosexual neurosis will not "contract" the desire to use young people as sex objects, then it is helpful to uncover this dark secret of the homosexual world, so that those who do have this problem can get help.
It certainly explains why NAMBLA (a pro-pedophilia group) has been allowed to march in many gay and lesbian parades over the years and why during ten years in the gay lifestyle, I never saw anyone even bat an eye when someone brought an underaged person to a gay party.
To the contrary, their "finds" (usually a runaway kid) became such objects of lust and jealousy that they were never allowed out of the sight of the one who brought them. These were average gatherings that I witnessed throughout the country and at almost every level of the gay culture.
The largest and most experienced organization for helping those who suffer from homosexual neurosis, Exodus International, has observed in its 25 years of experience that over 90% of all gay men who've gone through Exodus programs were introduced to homosexual sex by an older man.
A 1990 study published in Insight by Jenny et al showed that 22% of child sex abuse cases were same-sex abuse. With 2% of the population being homosexually oriented, this tells us that taking into account their small percentage of the whole, it is 10 times more likely that any given person struggling with homosexual neurosis will also be struggling with the desire to be sexual with children or teenagers (more likely teenagers).
So, although most child molesters are heterosexual (because most people are heterosexual), taken on a per capita basis, homosexually oriented people have a much higher incidence of pedophilia and pederasty than do heterosexuals.
(Having noted that fact, it is important to understand once again that the majority of homosexually oriented people do not have a problem with pedophilia).
Why is this incidence of pedophilia and pederasty so much higher in the homosexual population? It is because of the profound identity confusion, lack of emotional stability, the idolatrous worship of youth and beauty and the need to recapture a childhood lost to sexual abuse and neglect that runs rampant in homosexual neurosis.
So you see - there is much work to do. At every level, the homosexual condition cries out for healing. It cries out for compassion, understanding and a willingness to sacrifice ourselves as tools for that healing.
Does the parable of the "Good Samaritan" teach us to pass by on the other side when we encounter such self-destruction, or does it tell us to sacrifice our own comfort for the good of those who are torn and conflicted? To love them is not to pass by on the other side. To love them is to risk their anger, their rejection, and even their sometimes ruthless tactics of personal destruction against those who dare cry out "The emperor has no clothes!"
Will you love as Christ loved? Will you give your life's blood to those who may try to crucify you? Or will you leave it to the next guy, or the church expert, or into the hands of those who hate and revile them?
One of the full-page ads that the gay community ran in last summer's newspapers stated: "All leading medical experts agree. . . . . . gay people are just as likely to be healthy and happy as the rest of us."
The denial is profound.
Let's love them enough to tell them the truth.
Final Plea
These are your sons and daughters, whether in the flesh or in the Spirit. Do not sit on the sidelines any longer, or pass by until some other good samaritan comes along.
Homosexuals are a community in crisis. Our culture is a nation in denial. Gays & lesbians need your aid, not dismissive and uncaring encouragement and support for their broken condition.
Stop listening to manipulated media sound bites and start looking at the facts. The scientific, the historical, the theological facts all point us to the need to love homosexually inclined people enough to tell them the truth and to stay with them during their personal discovery of the truth and lengthy journey into wholeness.
1from "Mastering Life Journal" # 28 |
