The daughter of a friend of mine recently told me she believes that “if you think a thing is right and commit yourself to it honestly, then it is right. And so then of course I brought up Adolf Hitler…[T]his principle that she announced endorses him, because he did very surely think that he was right. And I confronted her with that. And that was very hard for her. Implicitly, she had endorsed Adolf Hitler.…Now, you see, she’s got some thinking to do, but she didn’t have before. Because she just thought, ‘there’s a kind of person, and the person is sincere and is deeply committed to some values and pursues them honestly. That’s the right kind of person.’…That means that justification is all inside them.…God knows where that can lead!”
—Larry P. Arnn, President of Hillsdale College—
Note: In addition to highlighting two more myths that led to same-sex marriage in this country, this post sounds the alarm about dangerous legislation in the works in California. Occurrences in other places, including Illinois, also give us cause for concern. In my articles, I frequently drill down to discuss not only what is happening but also the philosophical underpinnings of these events. An excellent concise article on the situation in California, along with a clear explanation of why everyone, not just Californians, should be concerned, can be found here.
Key point: However well-intentioned its promoters may be, the LGBT lobby is taking America to a very undesirable place.
This week we conclude our series on myths that led the the recognition of same-sex marriage in America. We’re adding two more myths to our list, bringing our total to eighteen. Be aware that while our list is thorough, it isn’t exhaustive.
Go here for a review of all the myths we cover in this series.
Myth #17: Absolute truth does not exist.
Fact: Absolute truth does indeed exist. This includes immutable principles of right and wrong, which are not determined within individuals, but outside of them. Yet, whenever a culture rejects absolute truth, eventually a set of values—the values of an individual or a group of individuals—is brought to bear on that society—with potentially disastrous results.
For the next few moments, as we begin to consider the myth that absolute truth does not exist, I’d like to ask you to forget that we’ve been discussing homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Instead, consider the matter of absolute truth more broadly: What happens when individuals reject absolute truth? Inevitably, they make up their own truth and attempt to live according to it. They do this with varying degrees of success, because typically reality prevents them from living consistently according to the values they’ve decided to embrace. At other times, people may succeed in following the principles they’ve adopted, but it isn’t uncommon in such a situation for other people to be abused and violated.
Episode 4 of the 6th season of the original Hawaii Five-0 television series provides a great illustration. The episode is titled “One Big Happy Family.” In it, an unusual family arrives in Hawaii and commits a string of murders and thefts. Here is the closing scene. (Additional information about this installment, including a transcript of the concluding scene in Steve McGarrett’s office, is available here.)
On the show, Sadie Ferguson is the name of the woman who offered Steve McGarrett the family’s rationale for killing their victims and stealing from them. Her reasoning sounds bizarre to us, but there’s an advantage in its starkness: In this situation, Sadie’s case sounds every bit as ugly as it really is. Why? Right and wrong do exist, and Sadie and her family had violated universal principles of moral conduct. With the trail of blood and robbery so glaringly obvious, and with the Fergusons’ reasoning so blatantly and obnoxiously self-centered, no one would deny this family was guilty of egregious wrongdoing.
Noble-Sounding Lies
Far more often, reasons to do wrong are just as terrible but not nearly as obviously horrific. Think of some of the noble-sounding excuses people use to justify all kinds of wrong actions.
- Everybody’s doing it!
- I can only go around once in life; so I should go for the gusto!
- I need to be true to myself and follow my feelings.
- Surely God wouldn’t want me to be unhappy!
- If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with!
Now, all of us need to realize that no one—whether gay or straight, male or female, young or old—is exempt from falling into the trap of using faulty, crazy reasoning to justify doing whatever he or she want to do, even if God forbids it. Satan is a brilliant strategist, and as we have indicated, the kind of reasoning he uses to convince us to do his bidding often sounds attractive and even noble at first. Also, we often are shortsighted and foolish. Our hearts are evil! We entertain the notion, even unconsciously, that our way is better than God’s. It isn’t!
The good news is that when dangerous-but-noble-sounding “logic” is exposed to the light of God’s truth, those with minds that are open, even just a little bit, to His truth often can see just how foolish and even bizarre such reasoning is. It is, in fact, a lie. It’s also ugly—just as ugly as Sadie Ferguson’s justification for murder and theft. You see, the light of truth peels away the masks that hide the lie and that make the reasoning so attractive!
The good news is that when dangerous-but-noble-sounding “logic” is exposed to the light of God’s truth, those with minds that are open, even just a little bit, to His truth often can see just how foolish and even bizarre such reasoning is. It is, in fact, a lie.
Shedding the Light of Truth on Noble-Sounding, but False Ideas
The Ideas
Now, let’s consider several of the points typically made to justify homosexuality and same-sex marriage today. These ideas are about love, relationships, sexuality, and marriage. Take note—they probably won’t sound all that bizarre initially, partly because we’ve heard them so much, and partly because they appeal to our sense of fairness. In reality, however, they too are ugly—because they deny God’s established truth and His design for humanity. Furthermore, if left unchecked, they inevitably will produce very ugly results.
In June of 2013 after the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, Joshua Bowman wrote an article for catholicvote.org pointing out the weaknesses of several arguments being used to promote same-sex marriage. The arguments included these four, which are quoted below directly from the article.
- Gay Marriage Doesn’t Hurt Heterosexuals
- If We Accept Gay Marriage, Peace and Love Will Reign
- Marriage Is About Love and Commitment
- Couples that Don’t Have Children Still Get Married
In another article, Dennis Rainey and Bob Lepine of Family Life offer reasons for opposing same-sex marriage. They begin, however, by citing three rhetorical questions often used in favor of it. Here they are.
- If two men are in love, and want to declare their commitment, why should we keep them from marrying each other?
- If two gays want to be married, aren’t they upholding the institution of marriage rather than weakening it?
- If a pair of homosexuals want to marry and provide a home for children who would otherwise be without a family, then how can that be wrong?
In addition to these and many more arguments, we often hear this: I was born that way. We addressed this argument in our last post.
The Truth
We have sought to lovingly yet forthrightly push back against many of these ideas in previous articles. Here, suffice it to say that both God and nature speak clearly about what marriage is. Moreover, God states clearly in Scripture that homosexual activity is sinful. In addition to offending God, it also is ultimately harmful in this life to those who engage in it.
You may strongly disagree with me on this. If so, then for the sake of our discussion, please consider for a few minutes the possibility that the points so often made to defend and justify homosexuality and same-sex marriage are indeed lies. I’m not saying they are intentional lies; in fact, most people don’t recognize them as lies at all. If this is true, people have become deceived and have been swept away in a very dangerous direction.
Who Is Imposing Their Morality on Whom?
There’s something else. We don’t have to reach very far back in our memories to recall the loud and forceful objections of militant gay rights advocates to laws criminalizing homosexual behavior and upholding marriage as an institution of one man and one woman for life:
What right to you have to impose your morality on me?
Yet, now that homosexuality has been decriminalized and marriage has been transformed into an institution that also includes same-sex couples, militant homosexual rights advocates are attempting to impose their on morality on the rest of society.
Years ago, Josh McDowell predicted this would happen.1 This clip comes from a presentation he gave prior to October of 2002. In the soundbite, negative tolerance refers to the old definition of tolerance—respecting those who disagree with us—and positive tolerance refers to the new definition—that all beliefs and values are equal.
We don’t have to look far for evidence of what Mr. McDowell said. On Thursday, April 12, 2017, Mike Pompeo, President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, was raked over the coals (also go here) by Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ). Watch the exchange.
Ben Shapiro observes that
according to Booker, you must celebrate sin in order to believe there is a right for people to commit sin that has no externalities in a free society. This makes sense from a Leftist point of view, where government is the great instrument of the good, not a mere protector of rights—the same people who try to stamp out dissenting thought through “hate speech” legislation are likely to believe that religious Americans feel the same way about using government to stamp out sin. But they’re wrong. And they’re religious bigots.
Yes, those on the left loudly pushing the militant homosexual cause are religious bigots. Just how bad is it? Currently, in ten states, with a good possibility that Maryland will become the eleventh, minors cannot legally receive professional counseling from a pro-heterosexual perspective to help them deal with same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. Such counseling has been outlawed! Regina Griggs, executive director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), explains part of the reason: Gay activists have misrepresented and demonized legitimate counseling approaches (also go here)—often called reparative therapy—to help encourage heterosexuality. They have overtaken many professional groups and insist on pro-homosexual counseling regardless of the clients’ desires. The American College of Pediatricians stands out as the rare exception.
Gay activists have misrepresented and demonized legitimate counseling approaches—often called reparative therapy—to help encourage heterosexuality.
—Regina Griggs, executive director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays—
And now, things are growing even worse. The gay lobby has become a powerful and arrogant player in American life—so powerful and arrogant, in fact, that it is in the process of imposing it’s own “absolutes” on society at large.
For some time, California has been futile ground for coercive LGBT legislation. Now it could become the first state in the nation to ban reparative therapy for everyone! If payment is involved, all forms of this kind of therapy, even counseling given through the sale of a book and in a religious setting from a religious perspective, would be outlawed. In a Facebook post, former Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon calls the proposal “the biggest effort at book banning, the banning of counseling services and church conferences, the banning of academic courses, and a general banning of free speech in the history of the United States.” He warns, “Any counselor that suggests to clients that homosexual practice or transgender identification is in any way wrong or unhealthy, irrespective of whether they offer ‘orientation change’ services will become a criminal in the eyes of the state.”
Any counselor that suggests to clients that homosexual practice or transgender identification is in any way wrong or unhealthy, irrespective of whether they offer “orientation change” services will become a criminal in the eyes of the state.
—Robert A. J. Gagnon—
On television, Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Matt Sharp sounded the alarm.
As we have seen in the past, what happens in California has implications for the entire country. Since when does the government have any business preventing an adult from receiving a counseling service he or she wants and is willing to pay for? We may be on the cusp of entering a day when, even though the government has no business whatsoever doing this, it does it anyway! I would encourage you to find out more about AB 2943 here and here.
And be aware: It is especially significant that while AB 2943 prohibits pro-heterosexual counseling to help anyone with unwanted same-sex attraction or gender issues, another proposal AB 2119, “adds the mandate that ‘foster care kids struggling with transgender feelings [must] have access to ‘gender affirming’ counseling, puberty blocking drugs, and sex-change operations.'”
The new tolerance, therefore, is a one-way street down which a steam-roller is barreling, squashing everyone standing in its way!
The new tolerance, therefore, is a one-way street down which a steam-roller is barreling, squashing everyone standing in its way!
Make no mistake. This is tyranny! But it is the inevitable place to which society will go when it abandons absolute truth and one group becomes powerful enough to impose it’s own morality on the whole.
Myth #18: Since absolute truth does not exist, government can manipulate the meaning of marriage to mean whatever it deems appropriate.
Fact: This myth returns us to the place where we started in this series. In part 1 we considered four myths that related to the courts, government, law, and the US Constitution. I encourage you to return there for that discussion.
With Malice Toward Note; With Charity for All
As Abraham Lincoln did during his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865, I convey these ideas “with malice toward none [and] with charity for all.” We began this post with a quote about the fact that a failure to affirm absolute truth essentially gives a green light to tyrannical actions like those of Adolf Hitler. We next cited an episode from Hawaii Five-0, the original series, that demonstrates what can happen when an individual or a group comes up with their own absolute truth. Let me be clear. I am not saying the leaders of the LGBT community are like Hitler or that the thefts and robberies depicted on a television crime show present a picture of exactly what the gay lobby wants to accomplish.
I am saying that these represent the kinds of ends to which a society’s or an a group’s abandonment of absolute truth will lead. And significantly, one parallel between AB 2943 and Nazi Germany is glaringly evident: the censorship of books! Without question, the militant LGBT lobby is becoming more and more coercive and tyrannical.
Their agenda must be opposed, lest America be held for generations to come in bondage to all myths that led to same-sex marriage.
Updates on AB 2943:
Thursday, April 19, 2018: Assembly votes to violate the 1st Amendment
Monday, May 7, 2018: Here is a history of AB 2943, and information about two other dangerous bills in California.
Monday, May 7, 2018: A rally is planned at the California Capitol to express opposition to AB 2943, to be held Tuesday, May 15, 2018.
Go here for summaries of all the articles in this series.
Copyright © 2018 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
top image: California State Capitol in Sacramento, California, by Andre m
Note:
1 Josh McDowell, “Tolerating the Intolerable,” Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, aired on March 21 and March 22, 2013. The clip presented here comes from the broadcast on March 21. Mr. McDowell’s talk had aired earlier on Focus on the Family. A CD copy of the Focus on the Family broadcast indicates that the program “last aired in October of 2002.” Josh’s website is www.josh.org.
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