From Closet to Mainstream: The Homosexual Agenda

The change in Western culture has been astonishing. Homosexuality has gone from a taboo subject, rarely discussed or acknowledged in public discourse, to a topic commonly treated in television sitcoms. The venerable newspaper of record in American journalism, The New York Times, has recently begun printing notices of homosexual unions right among the wedding announcements! Such a development could hardly even have been imagined a decade ago, yet now it has been introduced with scarcely a ripple of complaint.

Make no mistake about it: this is not the result of accident or happenstance. It is the result of a clear agenda to transform Western culture and redefine normal!

To understand how homosexuality has moved into the mainstream, we must look at the role of the establishment media in the United States. Major news organizations are well represented in the leadership of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association; its recent officers have worked for prominent establishment news organizations including the New York Times, the Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Newsday, Newsweek, The Arizona Republic, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The San Francisco Chronicle, Time Inc. and USA Today. Truly, individuals whose goal is to advance the homosexual agenda are hard at work in the newsroom!

What is the homosexual agenda? It is nothing less than full acceptance of homosexual relationships on a par, both morally and legally, with heterosexual marriage. Not only is this agenda clear and specific; it is succeeding far beyond what could have been imagined a mere three or four decades ago.

Is objection to homosexual behavior really "The Last Prejudice," as a Newsweek article recently suggested? Newsweek's June 3, 2002 issue reported the return to Ford Motor Company of executive Allan Gilmour, who had retired from Ford in 1995 as vice chairman. After his retirement, Gilmour "went public" in proclaiming himself a homosexual. The media touted Gilmour's return to Ford as Chief Financial Officer as evidence that anti-homosexual attitudes are diminishing in society.

For all of the mainstream media's objection to "prejudice," a careful observer will see certain prejudices that remain. "Tolerance" has become the greatest of virtues in today's society, and anyone who labels sin as sin is branded as intolerant. Ironically, the "tolerant" often fail to extend their tolerance to Bible-believing Christians with whom they disagree. Indeed, they disparage anyone who claims to take seriously the Bible as God's Word, and therefore as a guide for life.

We need to understand whether homosexuals have any choice in their condition, and whether it is really possible for them to change. We also need to understand the inevitable consequences that befall a society as the homosexual agenda advances. Did you know that this current state of things in the Western world is not a new phenomenon, and is addressed directly in God's Word?

The Transformation from Perversion to "Normal"

Various segments of the human race have approved of and practiced child sacrifice, cannibalism and witchcraft down through the centuries—not to mention virtually every imaginable form of sexual behavior. Who has the right to make the distinction between what is right and good on the one hand, and what is degraded and perverted on the other?

When the ancient Israelites were preparing to enter the Promised Land, God instructed Moses that certain vital guidelines were to be passed on to the people. It was God's purpose that Israel be very different from the surrounding nations. Both in Egypt, where the people had dwelt for more than two centuries, as well as in Canaan where they would be settling, a multitude of sexual perversions were common. Detailing many of these practices in Leviticus 18, God emphasized that Israel was to be different from the nations around them. The fornication, incest, homosexuality and bestiality that were commonly practiced by the Canaanites had caused the land to "vomit out" the inhabitants, declared the Creator (Leviticus 18:28). If Israel fell into these degenerate practices, God warned, the same consequences would come upon them.

Ancient Canaan not only approved of perverted sexual practices, but also included them as part of their idolatrous religious rites. And they were far from alone in their approach. The classical cultures of Greece and Rome had a very tolerant attitude toward homosexuality. Plato, the famous pupil of the Greek philosopher Socrates, wrote in his Symposium of a banquet at which a speaker calls the homosexual Socrates' attention to the "fair boys and youths, whose presence now entrances you." Considering ever-greater manifestations of love, Plato describes love between men as higher than love between man and woman. This attitude was commonplace in Greek civilization.

It was against this background that the Apostle Paul wrote a scathing rebuke of first century Greco-Roman civilization. Paul emphasized that the founders of that vaunted civilization had not wanted to retain God in their knowledge and had been given over by their Creator to minds devoid of judgment, utterly incapable of drawing proper distinctions in life (Romans 1:28).

In the centuries after Paul wrote, the morality of the Bible had a profound effect on the Western world. Previously accepted practices such as infanticide, abortion and homosexuality came to be considered beyond the pale. Eventually, they were forbidden by law wherever Christianity in its various forms held sway.

History clearly records that throughout the ensuing centuries, there were many in positions of power—both secular and ecclesiastical—who considered themselves above the law, and indulged their sexual tastes regardless of the law. Even so, the Bible was acknowledged as the source of standards, and became a fundamental source of law in Western society.

As intellectuals in western countries have sought to abandon the concept of a real God, and with it all God-imposed restraints, the pace of moral decay has picked up speed. One of the watershed dates in this process was the 1948 publication of the Kinsey Report. The New York Times Book Review later described Professor Alfred Kinsey of Indiana University as the man whose studies started the "sex revolution." His conclusions still form the basis of much of what is taught in sexual education classes in schools across the U.S. Even in the last 20 years (1982–2002), the Kinsey Report has been cited as evidence more than 600 times in court cases involving child custody, rape and homosexual "marriage."

Kinsey, Crimes and Consequences is a remarkable book that lays bare many facts about Dr. Kinsey and much of his so-called research. Its author, Dr. Judith Reisman, has also served as consultant to three U.S. Department of Justice administrations. Among the startling facts that she reveals are that Kinsey was a sadistic bisexual who seduced his male students and coerced his staff, their wives and his own wife into performing in pornographic films made in the family attic. Kinsey is also alleged to have recruited pedophiles in America and abroad to sexually violate as many as 2,000 infants and children to obtain his data on "normal" child sexuality. Dr. Reisman also shows that much of Kinsey's supposed scientific data was intentionally falsified. He secretly trashed approximately three-quarters of his data, and based his statements about "normal" male sexuality on a group that included 200 sexual psychopaths, 1,400 sex offenders and hundreds of other prisoners, male prostitutes and promiscuous homosexuals. In short, according to Dr. Reisman, Kinsey was a fraud who "suffered an untimely death due, at least in part, to 'orchitis,' a lethal infection in his testicles that followed years of sadistic, orgiastic 'self-abuse.'"

Based on "research" by Dr. Kinsey, and on pressures from an increasingly powerful homosexual lobby, the American Psychiatric Association decided in 1973 to remove homosexuality from its list of emotional and mental disorders. Behavior previously regarded as deviant was suddenly considered "normal"—even though using Dr. Kinsey to determine "normal" sexual behavior was akin to "letting the inmates run the asylum"!

The So-Called "Pedophilia Crisis"

In the last year, the Roman Catholic Church has received much negative publicity regarding what has been called a "pedophilia crisis." In fact, this misnomer tends to cover up the real nature of the crisis, which could more accurately be called a homosexual predator crisis. The overwhelming majority of young people who were abused (by some estimates, as many as 90 percent) were boys. A majority of the abused boys were adolescents. What has most commonly occurred is predatory homosexuality—not pedophilia, which by definition involves prepubescent children.

A May 20, 2002 Newsweek article titled "Gays and the Seminary" noted several startling facts. Newsweek observed that while homosexuals "constitute just over 5 percent of the population, gay men may make up half the student body at the 76 [Roman Catholic] high-school, college, and graduate-level seminaries across the country, according to broad estimates."

Yet the mainstream media have mostly avoided discussing the true nature of the so-called pedophilia scandal—and have avoided it for a reason. The real problem is the abuse carried out by predatory homosexuals in positions of authority, who abuse their positions in order to obtain perverted sexual favors from young people under their charge. Most mainstream news outlets are uncomfortable addressing this fact, and prefer not to call attention to the true nature of the homosexual culture.

Former California State Assemblyman Steve Baldwin observes that "mainstream homosexual culture commonly promotes sex with children.… Indeed, the homosexual community is driving the worldwide campaign to lower the legal age of consent" ("Homosexuality: Truth Be Told," Regent University Law Review, vol. 14 #2, 2001–2002). In the Netherlands, for instance, the age for legal sex has already been lowered to 12! Quoting from various pro-homosexual publications and Web sites, Baldwin documents that child molestation is often promoted under the euphemism of "intergenerational love."

While such an approach was quite common in ancient Greece, as we learn from writings by Plato and his contemporaries, the Western world has for many centuries recognized it as a perversion. Baldwin details the efforts to reverse the Western world's condemnation of homosexuality, spearheaded by such groups as NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Love Association), which wrote to the head of the Boy Scouts in the U.S. urging the organization "to cease its discrimination against openly gay or lesbian persons in the appointment of its scout masters." A major part of NAMBLA's agenda is the legalizing of adult-child homosexual relationships. Another of those protesting the Scouts' policy is an ex-Scoutmaster and convicted child molester, John Hemstreet, who serves as president of the Toledo, Ohio chapter of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), one of the groups at the center of legal challenges to the Scouts.

The list of openly homosexual groups, and the details of the agenda that they are promoting, could go on and on. Because homosexuality is not normal (and people really are not born that way, in the way that some are born with blue eyes and others with brown eyes), the homosexual culture has always relied on recruitment in order to continue and to grow. Older homosexuals, holding out promises of acceptance and love, entice at-risk young people—often insecure in their own identity—into homosexual behavior. As our society cultivates a public environment in which homosexual behavior is divested of any moral stigma, this creates a climate in which the young are more easily seduced into a destructive lifestyle. Once enmeshed, most find it very difficult to extricate themselves, despite all of the pain and self-hatred that usually marks the very "un-gay" side of the homosexual experience.

Solving the Problem

The mainstream media have not been of real help in addressing the moral problems of our culture. In the words of the ancient prophet Ezekiel, they have built up walls that they in turn have whitewashed, thereby concealing how flimsy the edifice truly is (cf. Ezekiel 13). For all of the talk about homosexuality being genetic, there is too much hard evidence that proves otherwise. An extensive study of twins, the Bailey-Pillard Study, showed that when one of a pair of identical twins is homosexual, only about half the time is the other sibling homosexual—not all the time as purely genetic programming would dictate. Neurologist Mark Breedlove of the University of California at Berkeley emphasized that 30 years of research "have made it clear that experience can dramatically alter the structure and function of the brain" (Newsweek, Nov. 13, 1995). The structure and activity patterns of the brain reflect experience, not just the biology one is born with.

If homosexuality is not entirely a matter of biological destiny, then where does it originate? A variety of factors contribute. The influences of family, community and individual experience, as well as inherited temperament, all interact to make us what we are. Today, many young people are in the throes of gender and sexual confusion because they have never developed a healthy gender identity. They are vulnerable, and are prime candidates to become entangled in homosexuality. Jaded adults, ever seeking some new thrill to satiate the senses, may also turn to bisexuality or homosexuality as they search for a new "kick."

Jesus Christ described marriage between one man and one woman as the basis of the family unit (Matthew 19:4–6). From the beginning, the family was the basis of society itself. The Creator made the first human beings male and female, and designed the marital roles necessary to produce a healthy society. He equipped man and woman so that each might uniquely fill his or her role. The characteristics associated with sexual and gender identity were designed to equip men and women for success in their respective spheres. The intact family, produced by the "till-death-do-us-part" union of a man and a woman, is the social unit that God designed to shape and prepare the next generation.

Because of the vital importance of the family—both to the individual and to the community—God warned anciently, in the strongest possible language, against the destructive and immoral conduct that undermines the family. God designed the human sexual drive to help bind one man and one woman together for life in a unique relationship as "one flesh" (Genesis 2:24), to promote the kind of love and closeness necessary to cement a permanent social unit—the family. The misuse of sex, which results when the pursuit of pleasure is viewed as the ultimate good, is horribly destructive. It is destructive to individuals, to families, and to nations. Those who are caught up in the ongoing pursuit of ever-new sexual thrills will never know the joys that can only exist in a happy marriage based upon God's laws.

God's laws are living laws that produce sure results. Violation of the divine laws intended to channel sexual desire into that which produces love, peace and joy can only result in horrible penalties. These may come either in the form of physical disease or in the emotional and psychological pain of empty, tormented lives (Romans 1:26–27). The emotional and spiritual emptiness within the human heart and mind can never truly be filled by the pursuit of momentary hedonistic thrills and illicit excitement.

Homosexuality was rampant in the Greco-Roman society of Paul's day, but the Apostle never sought to minimize or rationalize away its sinfulness. Instead, he held out help and hope for individuals willing to repent of homosexuality—or of any other sin. "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites… will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:9–11).

Paul emphasized that sexually immoral Corinthians actually overcame their sinful lifestyles. With the help of God's spiritual power, they became able—like all genuinely repentant sinners—to clean up their lives and walk in "newness of life" (Romans 6:4).

The homosexual agenda is designed to seduce individuals and nations, and its end results are horribly destructive to those who are deceived by it. However, for those who genuinely want to change their lives and surrender to their Creator, there is help—and there is hope.