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.
