Biblically Speaking

The Real Agenda
 
By Joe Graber
 
Well, it has finally happened.  The local paper has tried to brand our church as "anti-gay".  I don't understand why since I love a good party.  I have joy unspeakable in Christ.  We are the gayest church around.  I guess that they don't like that face that we stand up and speak the truth.  We point out that homosexuality (just like adultery, fornication, theft, and murder) is sin before the almighty God of heaven and earth.  We point out that sinners are commanded to repent and put away their sinful ways. 
 
As we have been involved in a petition drive to place an issue on the ballot in order to remove the Grand Ledge ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on sexual preference, I have been struck by the real target behind the scenes.  The target of the homosexual rights group is not the enhancement of their own rights.  It isn't job security or laws against harassment.  The target is the God of scripture.
 
The homosexual community wants to have their lifestyle accepted as normal in order to prove that the God of scripture is false and a mythical fantasy.  The main argument is that if we are naturally and genetically created (or evolved) to this depraved lifestyle then obviously the God of scripture is a Mickey Mouse cartoonish character.  Their argument is that such a God as the God of scripture would not have created an inherently homosexual person then pronounce that person's created and predestined lifestyle as an abomination. 
 
If the homosexuals can assert by any means possible that their sinful lifestyle is not the result of the lusts and desires within them, as James 1:13-14 clearly tells us, and if they can be affirmed by the clergy and church, then they can point to a supposed error or missing link in our scriptures.  We as the church are left defending the position that God made something that was not good. 
 
The sexual preference, homosexual marriage, and partner-benefits campaigns are really just tools to bring the lifestyle into the mainstream and force the shiftless church to capitulate on the issue.  Once the church has capitulated on this issue, then everything we have to say is mere relativity. 
 
You see, homosexual rights isn't the issue.  Christianity is the issue.  Either the church is relevant and homosexuality is sin, or homosexuality is normal and the church is irrelevant.  Let us thus enter the battle with all our might!