Albert Mohler and the totally
botched moral crusade
of the Evangelical Right
The other day the subject of the relationship of science
and religion was discussed
in this forum in passing. Here is where the use of science
to reinforce religion-derived
morality could be of crucial importance. But, needless to
say, not once in the article
presented below, by Albert Mohler, is any such idea even
broached. For him
the only way to deal with the issue is in terms of a
Biblical worldview.
This is not to deride such an outlook. But it is to say
that modern men and women
want support for their traditional moral views from the
court of science. This is
how people ( usually ) simply are. If there isn't
scientific support then credibility
suffers. Indeed, it may suffer sufficiently that people
abandon moral particulars
because of the perception that the weight of science is on
the other side --
which is clearly the case, the perception, not the
science-- when the issue
is homosexuality. That is, the Left has pulled off a fast
one and has convinced
multitudes that it favors a "scientific" outlook, verified
by all necessary methods,
to the effect that homosexuality is psychologically normal
and, therefore, that
homosexuals deserve full legal rights as if they were
simply different,
not morally inferior or even morally criminal.
But there is no valid science to any such effect. None.
However, by conceding the field to the Left, that is,
refusing to become informed
and learning the actual science, the Right has set itself
up to lose. And it continues
to lose , again and again, to the extent that even some of
its lime-lighters, like
Ann Coulter, are now partly in the enemy camp.
This is pathetic.
Perhaps worse than the defection of Coulter, since this
isn't really much of a loss,
is the obvious and growing problem of erosion of support
from the conservative
intelligentsia. The first "big name" to become
pro-homosexual was William F Buckley,
but along the way it came to include a non-intellectual of
stature who had a lot of
influence among Right-intellectuals, namely, Ronald Reagan.
Nowadays it is common enough for "brains" in the
conservative cause to take
a position on the issue of homosexuality that is virtually
indistinguishable from
that of the Left. Why ? Because ( 1 ) they don't believe
all that much in the Bible
anyway, except maybe as a source for private devotions, and
( 2 ) they are
cowed into submission by the clamor of Left-wingers who use
all sorts of
scientific sounding arguments. But there also is ( 3 ) the
factor of libertarian
influence on the Right, which, leaving aside other
questions,
frames all issues of morality in terms of amorality.
That is, morals are not a factor of consequence for most
libertarians
since libertarianism is ultimately a simplistic philosophy
( akin to
Jeremy Bentham's version of utilitarianism ) which seeks
to reduce all
questions to some single principle, and nothing else really
matters , viz :
Self-interest is all you need to be concerned about.
Even if this view is absolutely necessary for any kind of
realism, it also
is incredibly short-sighted, irreligious or even
anti-religious, and fails
to take into account maybe 80% of every other consideration
which deserves at least some attention before making
decisions
that must be lived with for may years afterward.
Libertarian philosophy denies the value of all other
philosophies, moreover.
Not much of a problem since few Americans actually know any
other philosophies,
but it can be pointed out that it is a strange world where
Hayek, for all the good that
may be said of him, still does not elevate his ideas into
the philosophical stratosphere.
Does Hayek really trump Kant, Plato, Aquinas, and you name
it, a pantheon of
the greatest minds in history, each of whom had powerful
reasons to regard
homosexuality as defective or wildly dysfunctional or
otherwise
completely unacceptable. ? I don't think Hayek does any
such thing.
Not even close.
Hayek, on this issue, was flat out wrong. His argument was
that simply
because a majority favors something does not make it right.
Therefore, it must
be the case that homosexuals are bring discriminated
against unjustly. Furthermore,
homosexuals should have full rights the same as
heterosexuals.
This kind of reasoning is a joke. The majority also
disdains pedophilia.
Therefore legalize child molesting and give pedophiles full
legal rights ?
This is absurd, yet it is also the argument that has won
the day, when the issue
is homosexuality --since there was such a thing as
libertarianism-- among libertarians
and, in due course, among most conservatives who are
influenced by Hayek.
It is important to challenge Hayek head-on about such
matters. And the simplest
way to do so is to cut him down to size, as far less
profound and far less meaningful
and far less intelligent than Plato or Kant or Aquinas, to
name a few.
For that matter, far less intelligent than Thomas
Jefferson, who wrote Virginia law
which classified sodomy as a capital crime.
Hayek as a politico-philosophical "god," is a pipsqueak god
, and too often a false god.
In other words, it is high time to pull the rug out from
under Hayek.
--------------------------
Then there is the "slight detail" that to side with
homosexuals is no different than
declaring war on the religions of the world. Not all
religions, but most of them,
including all forms of traditional Christianity for which
the Bible is authoritative,
on all forms of Orthodox Judaism, on normative Buddhism,
normative Hinduism,
Confucianism, Taoism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, the Baha'i
Faith, etc, including Islam
Yes, on various issues we can take exception to any of
these faiths, and about
Islam in particular I , for one, take many exceptions.
But here is an issue in
which nearly all religions agree :
Homosexuality is morally sick, repulsive, stupid,
and damaging to society and ruinous to individual lives.
Alas, "fundamentalists" in many religions are loathe to
even see commonalities
between themselves and people of other faiths and,
therefore, make no attempts
at all to forge alliances between themselves and others.
Instead, the entire
area of interfaith relations, if not 100 % surely in excess
of 90 %, is
ceded to the religious Left.
This attitude is contemptible.
It is especially contemptible because alliances are also
thinkable on other issues
of importance, like opposition to abortion, about which
pretty much the exact
same list of religions also agree.
Instead we get, take your pick :
Christianity is always right and all other
religions are wrong
Orthodox Judaism " " " " "
" " " "
"Pure" Hinduism " " " " "
" " " "
and so forth for most ( even if not all ) of the others.
This is ridiculous and utterly dumb.
Well, now we are in a situation where much of the Right is
in full retreat
on the issue of homosexuality precisely because of how
ill-advised its
strategy has been , how wrong-minded and unself-critical.
I could not be more disgusted.
-------------------------
There is a need for me to get my house in order, literally,
to complete
a massive reorganization of hard copy files and my library
and other such things.
And there is a pressing need to complete my book on Islam,
currently
in limbo, maybe 3/4ths finished. Then several much shorter
projects
that have also been in limbo far too long , also each well
along
toward completion. All of which means several more months
to clear the decks.
After that ? Well, lets put it this way : I
probably have sufficient material
to write a 500 page book on the subject of all the
empirically-based
reasons why it is inescapably true that homosexuality is a
grievous
mental illness. Not my intention to write anything like 500
pages
on the subject, needless to say, but enough for a serious
book
of respectable length. For me this is crucially important.
I intend, in so many words, to declare war on homosexuality
and to use each and every weapon at my disposal to utterly
destroy all arguments made on behalf of each and every
public position taken by homosexuals and their flunkies.
Yeah, I'm angry --really, really angry.
My thanks to Albert Mohler for reminding me of how angry I
am.
Billy
============================================================
Evangelicals and the Gay Moral Revolution
To many onlookers, this seems strange or even tragic. Why
can’t Christians just join the revolution?
And make no mistake, it is a moral revolution. As
philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University
demonstrated in his recent book, “The Honor Code,” moral
revolutions generally happen over a long period of time. But
this is hardly the case with the shift we’ve witnessed on
the question of homosexuality.
In less than a single generation, homosexuality has gone
from something almost universally understood to be sinful,
to something now declared to be the moral equivalent of
heterosexuality-and deserving of both legal protection and
public encouragement. Theo Hobson, a British theologian, has
argued that this is not just the waning of a taboo. Instead,
it is a moral inversion that has left those holding the old
morality now accused of nothing less than “moral
deficiency.”
The liberal churches and denominations have an easy way out
of this predicament. They simply accommodate themselves to
the new moral reality. By now the pattern is clear: These
churches debate the issue, with conservatives arguing to
retain the older morality and liberals arguing that the
church must adapt to the new one. Eventually, the liberals
win and the conservatives lose. Next, the denomination ordains openly
gay candidates or decides to bless same-sex unions.
This is a route that evangelical Christians committed to
the full authority of the Bible cannot take. Since we
believe that the Bible is God’s revealed word, we cannot
accommodate ourselves to this new morality. We cannot
pretend as if we do not know that the Bible clearly teaches
that all homosexual acts are sinful, as is all human sexual
behavior outside the covenant of marriage. We believe that God
has revealed a pattern for human sexuality that not only
points the way to holiness, but to true happiness.
Thus we cannot accept the seductive arguments that the
liberal churches so readily adopt. The fact that same-sex
marriage is a now a legal reality in several states means
that we must further stipulate that we are bound by
scripture to define marriage as the union of one man and one
woman-and nothing else.
We do so knowing that most Americans once shared the same
moral assumptions, but that a new world is coming fast. We
do not have to read the polls and surveys; all we need to do
is to talk to our neighbors or listen to the cultural
chatter.
In this most awkward cultural predicament, evangelicals must be
excruciatingly clear that we do not speak about the
sinfulness of homosexuality as if we have no sin. As a
matter of fact, it is precisely because we have come to know
ourselves as sinners and of our need for a savior that we
have come to faith in Jesus Christ. Our greatest fear is not
that homosexuality will be normalized and accepted, but that
homosexuals will not come to know of their own need for
Christ and the forgiveness of their sins.
This is not a concern that is easily expressed in sound
bites. But it is what we truly believe.
It is now abundantly clear that evangelicals have failed in
so many ways to meet this challenge. We have often spoken
about homosexuality in ways that are crude and simplistic.
We have failed to take account of how tenaciously sexuality
comes to define us as human beings. We have failed to see
the challenge of homosexuality as a Gospel issue. We are the
ones, after all, who are supposed to know that the Gospel of
Jesus Christ is the only remedy for sin, starting with our
own.
We have demonstrated our own form of homophobia-not in the
way that activists have used that word, but in the sense
that we have been afraid to face this issue where it is most
difficult . . . face to face.
My hope is that evangelicals are ready now to take on this
challenge in a new and more faithful way. We really have no
choice, for we are talking about our own brothers and
sisters, our own friends and neighbors, or maybe the young
person in the next pew.
There is no escaping the fact that we are living in the
midst of a moral revolution. And yet, it is not the world
around us that is being tested, so much as the believing
church. We are about to find out just how much we believe
the Gospel we so eagerly preach.
-- 