The prospect of same-sex marriage (SSM) becoming law is troubling.
The reasons for this are largely unknown even among Christians. With a few encouraging exceptions (such as the excellent C4M), many evangelicals with a high view of Scripture, which forbids homosexual practice, remain oddly passive. They believe this issue can be addressed by ‘gospel preaching’ and actions which ‘build the Kingdom’. Neither adequately addresses the challenges.
Few Christian leaders publicly sound the alarm, investing in a plethora of ‘feel-good’, ‘safe’ ministries instead. And, to be sure, things can appear much as before. But the default position is rapidly shifting. With SSM, gay rights will become established as the new, non-negotiable norm, one which, whether we like it or not, touches us all.
Profound social change often takes years, even decades, to ‘land’. For example, 40 years or so on we now realise the high price paid (especially by millions of fatherless children) for ‘no-fault’ divorce.
But, for jurisdictions with SSM such as Massachusetts (with SSM in 2004) or Canada (2005), the gay rights juggernaut has gone from strength to strength, engulfing ever larger swathes of the legal, cultural and religious landscape. SSM was never the end goal!
And what is over there is beginning to be here in the UK. I am thinking of LGBT claims to the moral high ground, its views, strategies and organisations; the pivotal role of mainstream media and the institutional privileging of activist agendas; evangelical leaders’ and organisations’ fear of being labelled ’anti-gay’; the social and professional censure meted out to the handful of whistle-blowers, and an increasing state takeover of gay rights discourse.
A recent example is what befell young teen Sarah Crank, who pled for traditional marriage before the Maryland state senate. For her views, cyberworld was informed by a liberal-minded extremist: ‘If I ever see this girl I will kill her; that’s a promise’, and more of a vicious, sadistic nature.1 SSM supporters and colluders need not fear this kind of brutal attack.
Given space constraints, I will not reiterate the solid argument developed by C4M found here: http://c4m.org.uk/resources/
Gay propaganda works. Ideas get embedded in the national psyche and so even Christians get misled and remain silent.
‘Born gay’, ‘Once gay, always gay’
SSM is underpinned by the relatively new and wildly successful notion that people are ‘born gay’, that ‘gay is the new black’ and that to be ‘anti-gay’ is to be racist.
This is pure myth, a PR strategy launched by savvy media experts Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen. ‘We argue that, for all practical purposes, gays should be considered to have been born gay [emphasis theirs].’2
Identical twin studies disprove this theory (if one twin is gay the other most often is not), as does Frisch and Hviid’s massive 2006 marriage study of two million Danes, which found that ‘childhood family experiences are important determinants’ of future heterosexual or homosexual marriage decisions.3 Another myth sold to an ignorant public is that ‘once gay, always gay’. Research by Savin-Williams and Ream (2007) found that 75% of young people who identified as gay at 17 realised by age 22 that they were heterosexual.4
Though more could be said, for now it is vital that people understand that this emperor wears no clothes! Unless we address these arguments, even when the church speaks out, our hearers increasingly hear and, more importantly, experience us as nasty homophobes who don’t accept and love people like Jesus.
Even without SSM being legal as yet, gay rights has become the new status quo, with deeply alarming results.
Demise of freedom of conscience
As an example of what we are up against, I recount an incident from last autumn. An individual with an A5 flyer promoting traditional marriage (visible inside her car at Tesco’s) in Yorkshire returned with her groceries to find two police officers waiting for her (who it seems did not understand the current law). She was informed that the flyer could be potential hate speech and that it should be removed.5
Potential sanctions now ensure continuous self-censoring and colluding in many professional fields; to dissent is increasingly suicidal, as shown by the fates of Dr. Mike Davidson, Lesley Pilkington, Lillian Ladele and Gary McFarlane.
And for all those left thinking, ‘Surely, it is not that bad, this is Britain, after all!’ just try writing a letter to your local newspaper, explaining why you believe in traditional marriage and why you disagree with LGBT rights being included as a ‘protected’ category, like race or gender. If you have a job in the public sector or are in a profession like education or medicine, how long do you think you will last?
SRE ‘gayification’
The sexualising, even the ‘gayification’, of our children and young people is already occurring via school SRE programmes and sexual ‘health’ groups.
For instance, the NHS-endorsed SRE programme, ‘Respect Yourself’ for 13s+ in Warwickshire secondary schools, tacitly or openly endorses high-frequency sex, promiscuity, human-animal sex fantasies and anal sex experimentation.6 The CGP Key Stage Four PSHE curriculum for 14s+ (which in other ways is highly commendable) actually promotes receptive anal sex for lads.?7 The NHS-endorsed ‘The Sexy Stuff’ for gay lads 13+ offers similar advice, with promiscuity and multiple partners tacitly endorsed.8
What is not mentioned is that anal sex is at least 20 times more risky than vaginal sex for reasons of human anatomy and physiology; high-frequency sex, multiple partners, etc. are also high-risk, especially for kids, with false assurances offered on condom effectiveness.9
The gay agenda also eroticises early gender development of all children because those who ‘love’ same-sex best friends (a vital phase of normal child development) are being conditioned to think that they are gay. Who dares complain about this in public now?
If SSM becomes legal, it will be harder to discuss the negative aspects of kids doing sex, because once gay sex is introduced — and it must be in order not to ‘discriminate’ — negative (but true) comment sounds homophobic.
As sex is seen as being central to the life and identity of gay kids, so it is by extension to everyone else, though there are caveats to the contrary: ‘Only do it because you want it and are ready!’ Because kids need to ‘find themselves’ and establish their sexual identities, they end up experimenting to see what suits. However, this means sex is prioritised in developmentally inappropriate and potentially damaging ways. At least youngsters deserve to know what kind of future is in store for them if they embrace a gay lifestyle, such as the fact that it is estimated that their chances of getting infected by syphilis, gonorrhoea and HIV/AIDS are around 50 times greater than for heterosexuals.10
If SSM passes
We will all have to sign up (publicly, at any rate) to the view that SSM is ‘equal’ to and the same as traditional marriage. Even on its own terms, however, this is highly problematic. The former abandons the category of adultery for outside sex with same-sex partners and also the need for consummation. So, in theory, best platonic friends could wed for the benefits and a great party! And the notion of adultery, which has provided a vital protective role in traditional marriage, will have to go because it discriminates against ‘straight’ marrieds. This will damage the concept of marriage itself.
Lisa Severine Nolland, MA MCS PhD (University of Bristol), is Convenor, Marriage Sex and Culture Group, Anglican Mainstream (ls.n@talktalk.net).
For examples from Canada and America of how critics of SSM have got into trouble, see the extended version of this article on our website.
Footnotes
1 http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/14-year-old-homeschooled-girl-receives-death-threats-for-defending-marriage
2 Kirk and Madsen, After the Ball (1989), 184
3 Bailey, Genetic, J of Person, (2000); Frisch et al, Childhood Family, Arch Sex Behav (2006): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17039403
4 Savin-Williams and Ream, Prevalence and Stability, Arch Sex Behav (2009)
5 Private Communication, Anthony McCarthy, SPUC, April 5 2013
6 http://www.respectyourself.info/your-questions/#
7 The popular CGP Key Stage Four PSHE Curriculum (2001) for 14s+ says: ‘Oh My ___ They do…that? A lot of people are really grossed out by the idea of anal sex. Some people like it, and here’s a reason why: men have a gland called the prostate, near the rectum. If they’re on the receiving end of anal sex, this gland is stimulated, causing sexual pleasure.’ (6)
8 http://www.rainbowbournemouth.co.uk/pdf/sexy_stuff_guys.pdf
9 See for instance Miriam Grossman MD, You’re Teaching My Child What? (2009)
10 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmpublic/marriage/memo/m102.htm
Examples of how critics of SSM in Canada and the USA have got into trouble
Over Easter Lord Carey bravely spoke out about the persecution of Christians in Britain today.
But further afield and less well-known cases of Christians in trouble over this matter include:
Arlene Stutzman, Washington State florist
Though Arlene has done business with gay customer Robert Ingersoll over the years, in 2013 she told him she could not do his ‘wedding’ flowers. She is now looking at $2000.00 (plus) in fines and a compulsory policy-change.
http://www.nomblog.com/ entry, April 10 2013
The Citizen Coalition, Protect Marriage Washington (PMW) Campaign, 2011
For the James Madison Center for Free Speech, Washington DC: ‘Together with its briefing to the court, Protect Marriage Washington presented hundreds of pages of documented examples of threats and reprisals directed at supporters of traditional marriage, not only in Washington but across the country. The evidence includes death threats, extensive vandalism, overt threats of destruction of property, arson and threats of arson, intimidating emails and phone calls, hate mail, mailed envelopes containing white suspicious powder, blacklists, loss of employment and job opportunities’.1 Threats include: ‘Oh my God, this woman is so f... stupid. Someone please shoot her in the head, again and again’. And again: ‘You conservative Christians are f... poison’; ‘Can someone in CA please go burn down the Mormon temples there, PLEASE. I mean seriously. DO IT’.2
1 http://www.jamesmadisoncenter.org/press/citizens-to-federal-court-do-not-allow-government-to-release-peti tion-names.html
2 http://www.jamesmadisoncenter.org/cases/files/2011/06/209-Plaintiffs-Motion-Brief-for-Summary-Judgment.pdf
Don Mendell, Maine School counsellor
Don was a highly-regarded mental health professional with over 35 years of experience in school. In 2009, after a gay English teacher publicly promoted SSM (the political advertisement was filmed on school premises), he did one for traditional marriage outside of school, with a particular focus on the needs of children for their mothers and fathers. Complaints were lodged against him and he eventually lost his job. The other teacher is still in post.
http://marriageada.org/marriage-anti-defamation-alliance-don-mendell-maine-school-counselor/
Stephen Boissoin, Alberta pastor
In 2008, father of two and youth pastor who has worked especially with at-risk kids, Stephen wrote a letter to a local paper on his concerns about homosexuality and young people which left him £7,000 poorer in fines, with an order to both apologise to gay activist Darren Lund, and never ‘go public’ again. ‘I am not allowed to hold my views, but the Lunds of the world are allowed to bring gay ministers into schools, they are allowed to present scientifically baseless teachings to kids that people are born gay.’
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive//ldn/2008/jun/08060902
Bishop Fred Henry, Calgary
Canadian A.B. Prendergast relates Bishop Fred Henry’s ordeal in 2006: ‘You are summoned to a tribunal where you cannot have a defence lawyer and you cannot record the proceedings, nor have a witness present. The people judging and prosecuting you have no legal qualifications… The penalties could include fines equal to several thousands of dollars, public recanting, and rehabilitation classes. You are a bishop. This is not China. This is Canada. The offence: explaining why homosexual relations are a sin’.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/canadian-archbishop-warns-u.s.-of-dire-consequences-of-gay-marriage?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b9f45f625b-LifeSiteNews_com_Intl_ Headlines_10_12_2012&utm_medium=email
Are you aware of the Christian (or other) press mentioning any of the below?
1. Publicly-funded RC schools in the Yukon have just been forbidden by the state to tell students the Catholic Church's teachings on homosexuality (2013).
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/yukon-education-minister-forbids-catholic-schools-to-teach-catholic-doctrin/
2. It is estimated that between 200 and 300 official proceedings (not to mention casual firings) have taken place against SSM critics in Canada since SSM was legalised (2012).
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/301641/canadian-crackdown-michael-coren
3. The launch (2012) of ‘a global first’, an anonymous ‘registry of homophobic acts’, funded by the Quebec Government’s Justice Department. Homophobic acts are any negative ‘word or act’ about homosexuality or towards homosexuals.
http://www.newswire.ca/fr/story/994695/une-premiere-mondiale-deploiement-d-un-registre-d-actes-homophobes-anonyme-et-confidentiel
4. Eight- and nine-year-olds were ‘married’ to a same-sex friend in a mock Canadian elementary school SSM rite by a pro-gay minister (2012), and celebrated afterwards with cake and ice cream.
Phil Lees of the Ontario CA PEACE, communication to LSN November 9 2012
5. 1,500 Vancouver kindergarten children and young people up to 18-year-olds celebrated sexual minority rights through a music and dance routine to Born This Way (Born Gay), entitled the Pink Project 2012.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/watch-the-pink-project-2012-video/article643626/
6. Sexual ‘health’ and ‘education’ programmes of Planned Parenthood, Toronto [PPT], Canada, are active now in many state schools. Its official website for 13-year-olds+ recommends extreme sex practices such as ‘Fingering’ and ‘Fisting’ to young teens of all sexualities and ‘orientations’. It states these behaviours are ‘low risk’ for STI/STD transmission(!) and ‘can be very enjoyable’.
http://teenhealthsource.com/sex/fingering-fisting-101/
7. In Toronto schools, posters informed pre-teens that straight, LG or bisexual trio ‘couples’ were equally valid (2012).
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/09/26/threesomes-on-toronto-school-board-posters-not-polygamous-spokesman/
8. For Canadian educator and family activist Phil Lees, ‘Experience shows that whenever homosexual marriage becomes law, children will be exposed to an increasingly sexualised curriculum and school environment at an early age, as early as kindergarten’ (2012).
http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/mask-off-canadians-now-warning-americans/
