GAY TRUTH

Wading through the entire emerging church milieu is incredibly complicated. In this article I seek to provide a simple but accurate means of navigating the emerging church highway by focusing on its four lanes and their leaders. For the purposes of this article I will define them as Emerging Evangelicals, House Church Evangelicals, Emerging Reformers, and Emergent Liberals. What the first three lanes have in common is theological orthodoxy. Churches in these lanes are not interested in reconsidering major Christian doctrines such as those that view the Bible as God’s Word, God as triune, Jesus as God and the only means of salvation, humanity as sinful, all sex outside of heterosexual marriage (including homosexuality) as sin, and heaven and hell as literal, conscious, and eternal. In the fourth lane are the Emergent Liberals, who are most controversial and are not theologically evangelical. The three main leaders of this lane are Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, and Rob Bell. The Emergent L...

Homosexual Marriage November 3, 2008 I was reading an article in Newsweek titled "Will My Marriage Last?” David Jefferson of Newsweek writes “On Tuesday, Californians will head to the polls. How millions of strangers cast their votes will affect the most intimate parts of my life.” He goes on to say, “I got married on Saturday. I'm just hoping it lasts through next week. Few newlyweds enter a marriage with such low expectations (except for maybe Britney Spears, whose 2004 Vegas quickie was annulled after two days). But my new spouse, Jeff Bechtloff, and I are gay men living in California, and like thousands of couples who've tied the knot since the state Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage this spring, we rushed to get wed before voters could decide on Nov. 4 whether or not we should.” He goes on to say, “It's difficult to explain how it feels now, as Jeff and I face the possibility that our marriage could lose its validity come next Tuesday. The absurdity of hav...

WHAT IS HOMOPHOBIA? Homophobia is defined in The Kinsey Institute New Report on Sex as the "fear, dislike, or hatred of homosexuals." 3 The Greek word phobia denotes an "irrational fear." The word homo literally means "same," but the word is frequently used as a shortened form of homosexual — one who is sexually attracted to his or her own sex. Thus, strictly speaking, homophobia denotes an irrational fear or hatred of homosexuals. However, the gay rights movement (and, by-and-large, the media) places this label on anyone who opposes any of the movement's goals and objectives; specifically, anyone opposing the full acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle as healthy and "normal." While indeed there are many people who hate or irrationally fear homosexuals, to say that anyone who opposes the homosexual lifestyle or disagrees with the gay rights political agenda is a homophobe is simply not true. This tactic is clearly intended to divert a...

Summary Same-sex marriage proponents defend their position by arguing that government neutrality is violated when the state allows only people of different genders to marry one another. Yet the same-sex marriage position is far from neutral. It asserts that government ought to prefer a view of human nature that sees human institutions, such as marriage and the family, as artificial social constructions ruled by personal subjective preference. Because proponents of this view try to establish marriage on the basis of adult consent and desire rather than on marriage’s intrinsic value and the natural teleology (purpose) of the body (or person), numerous counterintuitive and irrational consequences result. Although the original mission of the homosexual rights movement called for social tolerance rather than social approval , it is now demanding the latter. It is doing this by questioning the state’s partiality toward heterosexual monogamy by claiming that such partiality is inconsistent w...