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By Dr. Patrick Jonston

July 5, 2008

NewsWithViews.com

When the California Supreme Court declared in a 4 to 3 ruling in May that California must allow homosexuals to marry under the same terms and conditions as heterosexuals, they caricatured the arguments against gay marriage as bigoted and unconstitutional. Nevermind that the voters in California overwhelming voted down gay marriage – “equality” trumps tradition, especially when you'll be hailed by the New York Times for your "historic" and "momentus" courage in this "victory for equality and justice."

The most useful part of this ruling is that it exposes a fatal flaw in the arguments conservatives have consistently brought forth, in jurisprudence and in legislation, to defend conservative ideals against assault from the left. Useful, that is, if we learn from it. Our strategy for protecting marriage was destined for failure from the beginning, just as is our strategy to fix public education, protect the preborn from death by abortion, and restore our God-given liberties. It's a bitter pill, but the diagnosis of severe maladies is always a bitter pill that must be swallowed before the remedy becomes palatable.

Under the political leadership of those anointed by conservative groups, we have:

1. Accepted "civil unions" as an alternative to gay marriage,

2. Reformed public education by increasing the funding of the government bureaucracy and programs that foster sexual immorality among school children,

3. Promoted a "culture of life" by regulating the child-killing and justifying abortion in cases of rape, incest, and maternal health,

4. Increased the size, power, and expense of the centralized government, and expanded the state's usurpation of parental rights.

And these were our successes! All this happened under the leadership of those politicians strongly endorsed by conservative Christian leaders. It's not the homosexual movement that is destroying marriage. It's the heterosexuals that have destroyed marriage, with gay marriage is riding in our wake.

The strategy of pragmatism will inevitably bring us defeat, even if we win every election! With this standard of success, the "lesser of two evils" is destined to gravitate to more and more evil. Incremental legislation that gradually reaches our goals may work as long as we are incrementally reaching our goals; on the contrary, we find ourselves incrementally sacrificing our liberties on the inevitable road to a Marxist empire. Instead of restoring liberties lost, conservatives are content to "conserve" what we have, or too frequently, content to lose less than the Democrats would have it.

Appeals to pragmatism and tradition work when the democratic consensus is on your side, but thanks to forty years of public education, the democratic consensus is evolving away from our Christian traditions. Moreover, the judiciary is not a good cross-section of society and, as this California case reveals, what works in the voting booth is less likely to work in the courthouse. The California Supreme Court that handed down this despicable decision was full of Republican appointees. The Massachusetts Supreme Court that gave us gay marriage was full of Republican appointees. The Supreme Court that gave us Roe v. Wade, that removed the Bible and prayers from public schools, that said states could not criminalize homosexual sodomy, had majorities that were Republican appointees. It has been under Republican leadership that we have witnessed the church-sanctioned institution of marriage undermined in favor of state-regulated civil marriage, and we have seen the judiciary deny the obligation and constitutional right of states to ban sexual conduct that is harmful to the public good.

The Bible says, "When the wicked rule, the people mourn" - all our traditions and good legislation notwithstanding. A society's laws and public institutions are only as wholesome as our leadership's will in maintaining and enforcing them.

I'm convinced that all the fuss from conservatives about protecting traditional marriage from "gay marriage" is a façade, little more than a fund-raising tool. Conservatives abandoned marriage long, long ago. No fault divorce was an invention of the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917, when they, for want of a godless society, replaced church-sanctioned marriage with the civil institution of marriage sanctioned by the state. It was under California Governor Ronald Reagan's leadership that "no-fault divorce" entered the United States when he signed the Family Law Act in 1969. From the social cesspool where we presently reside, it is hard to imagine a woman legally obligated to stay with a bad husband. Short of adultery, divorce is not justifiable in Scripture and our courts did not allow divorce except for adultery or extreme abuse. Up until California under Reagan's leadership, that is.

Was that an obstacle for Governor Reagan to attain rock-star status in the Republican Party? Not at all. Then under Reagan's leadership, we got the fulfillment of his promise to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court: Sandra Day O'Connor. Under her leadership the Court perpetuated legal abortion in key judicial decisions when all was right for Roe v. Wade to be toppled and the preborn finally protected. For example, she voted in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey in 1992 to uphold Roe v. Wade, as did another Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy and the first President Bush appointee David Souter. She also joined with Souter in concurring with the 6-3 ruling in the landmark Lawrence vs. Texas ruling in 2003 in which the Supreme Court disallowed states from criminalizing sodomy. We rejoice in Reagan's more conservative appointments, but even Scalia and Thomas refuse to recognize the preborn child's right to live in the Constitution.[1]

Under the leadership of the Bushes, we got more tax-subsidization for Planned Parenthood, the leading proponent of homosexual experimentation and early sexual activity, condom distribution, chemical contraception without parental consent, and when all that fails, abortion without parental consent. It was Planned Parenthood that led the charge against Texas' anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence vs. Texas. George W. Bush appointed more homosexual activists to government positions than any previous president.[2] He campaigned beside his Vice President's lesbian daughter and publicly endorsed "civil unions," which is basically marriage by another name.[3] Under Republican budgets, government-controlled education continued to employ the guidelines designed by Planned Parenthood and the Sexuality Education Information Council of the U.S. (SIECUS) for early sexual education in public school - teaching children that mutual masturbation and oral sex with a condom is "safer sex."[4] Republican budgets continue to give more welfare money to a pregnant woman or single mom if she remains single; what is this but financing fornication? All of this, plus a record amount of budgetary pork and earmarks, mind you, generously paid for by the taxpayers in our Republican budgets.

To gain the support of conservatives, all we required was their pro-family, pro-life rhetoric. George Bush bowed his head to pray, and we fell into a swoon; he gave over 200 million to Planned Parenthood every year and we crucified his conservative critics as irrelevant idealists and religious wackos. We were so intoxicated with the kiss on the cheek that we couldn't hear the thirty pieces of silver jingling in his pockets.

The Supreme Court justices we gained under the leadership of the Bushes were par for the course: Roberts had done pro bono work to support gay rights causes [5], and Alito had previous ruled New Jersey's Partial Birth Abortion Ban unconstitutional and cited Roe v. Wade approvingly in the process.[6] But hey, his grandmother said he was pro-life, so we were convinced. After all, Bush appointed him, and Bush was pro-life, right?

Conservatives were all in an uproar when the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 that the constitution disallowed states from prosecuting homosexual sodomy. But what conservative group was previously endorsing the enforcement of Texas' anti-sodomy law? Was Focus on the Family encouraging the prosecution of sodomites in Texas? Was Family Research Council criticizing the reluctance of Texas' leadership to prosecute sexual deviants in accordance with state law? Anybody? Was the ACLJ, the Heritage Foundation, or Concerned Women for America encouraging states to defy judicial activists and re-criminalize sodomites and adulterers to protect marriage? Which conservative leader has publicly insisted that candidates commit to outlaw sexual behavior that is harmful to the public good with a penalty sufficient to discourage the crime, as God instructs in His Word? Was any noteworthy pro-life group like National Right to Life publicly committing not to support any candidate who did not defund Planned Parenthood and SIECUS and defy the unconstitutional and immoral Roe vs. Wade decision and prosecute all murderers of preborn children? What was the conservative' remedy for our 50% divorce rate, for the social tragedy of over half of our babies being born to unmarried parents with its predictable increase in crime, drugs, and poverty?

We're a nation of polygamists, America - we just don't have a lifelong commitment to the mates with whom we copulate. When the politicians that conservatives endorsed were in charge of the executive, the judicial, and the legislative branches of government, how did they remedy these social tragedies? For that matter, what did the church propose? We have to face it: our remedy for our nation's ills was more of the disease (although perhaps less of it that the democrats proposed). Our candidates were the lesser of two plagues.

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The typical conservative's argument against "gay marriage" is as follows: "What gays do in the privacy of their own home is their business, but when they propose to change the definition of marriage to accommodate homosexual activity, it affects us all and we must intervene to protect traditional marriage." Do you realize how this argument stands in opposition to the Word of God, which says that homosexuality is an abomination to God and is criminal? What is the basis of right and wrong? Our democratic consensus? Our traditions? What is the basis of justice? What someone does in the privacy of their own home should matter to us if they engage in activity that God says in his Word is criminal, for which activity He has destroyed entire cities in the Bible.

In the same way, the mainstream pro-life movement's remedy for abortion on demand makes us accomplices in the crime. In our arguments against one type of late term abortion, against abortions performed on minor mothers without parental consent, in our arguments for twenty-four hour waiting periods and mandatory ultrasounds, and in our endorsement of candidates who continue to fund Planned Parenthood or who justify abortion in cases of rape, incest, maternal health, and fetal handicap, we become accomplices in all the abortions that our legislation and legislators justify.

Jesus, in Matthew 7, said that we were not to judge another if we were guilty of the same thing. Don't try to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye, He said, if you have a log in your own. In verses 3 through 5, He said that we first should clean up our own act and then we can see clearly to help our neighbor. In our opposition to gay marriage, conservatives are hypocrites: with our tax-payer finances prophylactics for fornicators, with our apathy about legal adultery and homosexual sodomy, and with our no-fault divorces and our remarriages - all of which are much more of a threat to traditional marriage than "gay marriage."

If we could only see clearly, as Jesus said, it would be so much easier to take the mote out of our neighbor's eye. What the California Supreme Court did not realize, and what the conservative defenders of marriage were reluctant to show them, is that homosexuals can already marry. They just can't marry each other. There's nothing unlawful about a homosexual man marrying a homosexual woman. What is forbidden homosexuals is the same thing forbidden heterosexuals - there is no inequality here. Neither homosexuals nor heterosexuals can marry whoever or whatever they want. Homosexuals and heterosexuals alike are not allowed to redefine marriage to pervert it, nor are they allowed to legalize that which the Creator has outlawed. God is the source of right and wrong, and He has not amended His law to adapt to the prevailing perversions of the day.

But if the standard of God's law were brought forth as an argument against gay marriage, our hypocrisy would have been our undoing. Both homosexuality and adultery are capital crimes in the Old Testament, you see, and both acts are re-affirmed as sins in the New Testament. The remarriage of a divorced adulterer that resulted from adultery was another act of adultery.[7] Unfortunately, rather than repent of our own heterosexual abominations, we have sought to preserve our moral superiority over those that we deemed more degenerate than we. So we kept the sword of the Lord, which is the Word of God, in its sheathe and we resorted to pragmatic arguments based upon compromised principles that are just as much an affront to the Creator as they are to our homosexual opponents.

To restore civil justice and God-given liberties, to protect marriage, and to protect the preborn, we must return to the Word of God. The sword of the Lord is our offensive weapon against spiritual wickedness (Ephesians 6). Our standard of success must be His Word and His good pleasure. Acquiring His favor must transcend any pragmatic standard of electability, for "without Him we can do nothing." Our nation is doomed without His blessing, which he gives to nations who serve Him (Psalm 9:17 & 33:12). According to His Word, civil authorities are obligated to be ministers of God and execute wrath upon them that do evil as our Creator defines it (Romans 13:3-5). States should prosecute homosexual acts and adultery in accordance with Biblical mandates, in defiance of judicial tyranny. Pragmatic doubters be reproved, for "with God, all things are possible." Politicians and judges are not exempt from the constraints of God's law, despite their futile attempts to fight against Him (Psalm 2).

If the church of Jesus Christ will not lead the way to liberty and justice, who will? Have we betrayed our dear Savior to be in the good graces of the 501c3 regulations of the IRS? Have we dulled the two-edged sword of the Spirit to delight the deniers of God? The Bible says that which is highly favored among men is an abomination in the sight of God, electability notwithstanding. The church must be the salt of society, or traditional marriage will not be preserved and the preborn will continue to be slaughtered in the name of choice. If we lose our saltiness, Jesus said we are good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under the foot of men. Then the Democrats, the ACLU, and married gay couples will be the least of our worries, for judgment will first begin at the house of God.

Footnotes:

1. $10,000 Offer to National RTL from American RTL to Name One Pro-Life Justice"
2. George W. Bush on Sodomy
3. George Bush Endorses Civil Unions and Legal Benefits of Marriage for Gay Couples
4. Effectiveness of Abstinence Education also see SEICUS website
5. John Roberts Helped on Gay Rights Case
6. Sam Alito Is Not Pro-Life
7. Matthew 6:31-32, 19:3-9, and Luke 16:18

� 2008 Patrick Johnston - All Rights Reserved