I continue from where I left off in last week’s edition. For those who did not read the previous article my purpose is to respectfully present rational and Scriptural grounds for opposing gay marriage. By the way, the Bible’s positions are rational. It is for us to discover (to some degree) the profound reasoning of the divine.
5.Homosexuality depends on artificial tools in order to survive, and therefore cannot be normal nor right. According to WebMD, “Anal intercourse is the riskiest form of sexual activity for several reasons… Studies have suggested that anal exposure to HIV poses 30 times more risk for the receptive partner than vaginal exposure.The anus is full of bacteria.”
Dr. Wayne West, senior lecturer in the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the University of the West Indies and consultant radiologist says the following. “France, according to the World Health Organization in 2000, has one of the best health care systems in the world. France decriminalized sodomy since 1791, and is a very liberal and tolerant society. Its health care system allows MSM (Men Who Have Sex With Men) to come in and be tested, and are given very highly active anti vecto-viral therapy. Yet in 2010 studies showed that HIV among MSM is out of control…The Lancet, the world’s leading general medical journal and specialty journals in Oncology, Neurology and Infectious Diseases said, ‘In all countries, the one group in which HIV is increasing, regardless of income is men who have sex with men’.
According to the US Center for Disease Control (CDC), ‘In 2010 HIV among the homosexual community is out of control. From 2006 – 2008 among heterosexuals for every 100,000 people there were 8 new cases, whereas for gays it was 1006 new cases for every 100,000.006.’ In 2011 the CDC stated that, “The sexual health of gay and bisexuals in the US is not getting better despite considerable social, political and human rights advances. Instead of improving, HIV STD’s remain disproportionately high among men who have sex with men, and have been increasing for almost two decades. The disproportionate and worsening burden of HIV and other STD among MSM requires an urgent reassessment of what we have been doing as a nation to reduce these infections, how we have been doing it, and the scale of our efforts.”
Professor Ronald Stoy of the University of Pittsburg has published extensive research among MSM. At the 2008Rectro Viral Symposium he pointed out that among MSM a male who at 18 is HIV negative, by age 40 has a 41% chance of being HIV positive. These are the stark epidemiological realities. Anal sex increases the risk of HIV infection 18 times more than vaginal sex. The anus has one layer of cell compared to the many layers in the vagina. The vagina was made for sex, so it lubricates, whereas the anus does not lubricate because it was not made for sex. (Anybody has a clue as to what it was made for?) It therefore tears easily, thereby drastically increasing the risk of infection.
Someone reading this is saying, “But some heterosexuals engage in anal sex. Even some husbands and wives.” True. But every single medical article that addresses sexual health warns that anal sex is extremely risky and should never be engaged in without a condom. Condoms are not naturally occurring. Nature cannot produce them. There are no condom trees. They are manufactured. So what if condom production were to cease? Then many sexual activities would become suicidal. On the list would be sex with more than one person – sex with an infected person – but highest on the list would be anal sex. So if homosexuality is natural and good why has not nature provided for its safety? Yes, there are many other forms of sexual activity among gays (some are horrific to say the least, like inserting rats into the anus) but anal sex is the most common.
So in today’s diseased societies, take away the artificial – condoms – and have gay sex the way that gays insist is natural, and see the death rates skyrocket.
6. The justification for a position is seen by asking the question, “What would happen to this job, home, church, government, society, if everybody were to do what I do?” So if everybody were to engage in only heterosexual behaviour what would happen to civilization? If everybody were to engage in homosexual behaviour what would happen to civilization? To answer the last question – extinction. Without the (non-nature, man made) use of artificial insemination, gays cannot continue the human species.
7. There can be no fence straddling on this issue. Many in the church today are performing grotesque surgery on the Scripture to make it say that homosexuality is acceptable to God. Let us allow God’s word to speak for itself. “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools …24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.” (Romans 1:21-28.) Can this be any clearer? There are several other New Testament passages as well.
Either the Bible is true and is our guide and rule of practice, or it is false and we live as we please. In a sense one can understand an atheist’s objections. People whose religion allows anything can also object. But one cannot be a born again Christian and approve what God declares is an abomination. This is a dividing line for the church. This is truth or deception.
8. Gay marriage will usher in a wave of persecution of people who oppose homosexuality, and the true church. Even now one can see politicians, business persons (even powerful billionaires like Donald Trump), stars, and athletes desperately apologizing for offending gays because of the feared political and economic repercussions. Imagine when gays have full legal rights in all areas. Our seven-year-old children will be compelled to read textbooks that describe a family as a man, a woman and their children, or two men or two women and their children, or any number and combination of men and women and children, and if we oppose we will be charged with bigotry.
In Canada, Dr Chris Kentlin, an exemplary science teacher, was sentenced to thirty days and fined $10,000.00 Canadian dollars, all because he wrote to the local newspaper protesting the inclusion of homosexual material in the education curriculum.
Let’s look at England, our “mother country”, which is set to legalize gay marriage by April next year. On October 13, 2001, Harry Hammond, a 60-year-old street preacher had a sign saying, “Jesus gives peace, Jesus is alive. Stop homosexuality. Stop lesbianism. Jesus is Lord”. He was physically attacked and beaten by a group of thirty to forty persons, including gays and lesbians. Police intervened and arrested the preacher alone (!), and charged him for breach of the public peace. At his hearings several of his attackers testified against him. Mr Hammond was convicted, fined £300, and ordered to pay costs of £395. He died within a year of his attack.
A BBC article dated February 12, 2011, detailed how in Derby, England, a Pentecostal Christian couple opposed to homosexuality lost a battle over the right to become foster carers.Eunice and Owen Johns, 62 and 65, from Derby, said the city council did not want them to look after children because of their traditional views.They say they were “doomed not to be approved”. “All we were not willing to do was to tell a small child that the practice of homosexuality was a good thing.”
The High Court ruled that laws protecting people from sexual discrimination should take precedence.At the High Court, they asked judges to rule that their faith should not be a bar to them becoming carers, and the law should protect their Christian values.But Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson ruled that laws protecting people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation “should take precedence” over the right not to be discriminated against on religious grounds.
The case is likely to be seen as a landmark decision, as senior judges ruled so decisively against any idea that attitudes might be justified purely because they were Christian in origin. The court discriminated between kinds of Christianity, saying that Christians in general might well make good foster parents, while people with traditionalist Christian views like Mr and Mrs Johns might well not.
As citizens of an Overseas Territory pastors in Anguilla will be governed by whatever goes into law in England. So come next year April, and increasingly after, preaching against homosexuality will be seen as hate speech, a violation of basic human rights, and such pastors can be sued. I wonder if adulterers, gamblers, prostitutes, drunkards, corrupt politicians, corrupt lawyers and corrupt clergy will soon sue pastors for preaching against their lifestyle.
I end here for the moment. Let me bring balance to all I have said last week and now. God loves us. He loves the liars, fornicators, adulterers and homosexuals, and we must love them too. Just like Rastafarians get upset at how marijuana use is opposed (I oppose it myself!) while alcohol is accepted and celebrated, we cannot be hypocritical and oppose homosexuality while we drown ourselves in every other sin. God loves the sinner, but hates the sin. The same Bible that condemns homosexuality and lesbianism is the same Bible that condemns lying, greed, hatred, drunkenness, rape, fornication and adultery.
Christians must oppose all forms of sin/wrong, regardless of the price we have to pay. However, we must win those whose behaviour we oppose. We win them not by argument or slurs but by sincere love.
Editor’s note:
The views expressed in the above article are those of Pastor Philip Gumbs and not necessarily those of The Anguillian newspaper.
