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Thank you, Grace. You are worthy of your name.

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : March 28, 2013
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Category: Archives, Homosexuality

Grace Evans is an 11-year old Minnesota girl who testified earlier this month before a Minnesota statehouse committee as it deliberated on a bill to permit gay marriage. (The committee subsequently approved the bill which was sent to the full house. A similar bill is in the state senate.)

Speaking against passage of the bill to allow gay marriage in Minnesota, Grace talked of the importance of each of her parents and that each parent provides something unique to her life that can’t be provided by the other. “Even though I’m only 11 years old, I know that everyone deserves to have a mom and a dad. If you change the law to say two moms and two dads can get married, it would take away something very important for children like me across the state.”

Grace’s approximate two-minute address included twenty-one seconds of silence as she twice asked the committee members, “I know some disagree, but I want to ask you this question: Which parent do I not need – my mom or my dad?” She waited, but no committee member answered her question.

Even though Grace is only eleven, she recognizes that marriage between a man and a woman is a cultural universal. It transcends time and space because it is a reflection of the nature of God. To give a better understanding of what I mean and what Grace understands, I quote from my book:

As one reflects on how humans have organized themselves over time, there is and has been a great diversity of societal forms in different cultures and periods of history. However, underlying this variety is a structured order or arrangement that reflects the “creational givens.” One of these givens is that the family structure is a societal institution established by the Creator. And the family structure consisting of “…a father, mother and children living together in bonds of committed caring is not an arbitrary happenstance; nor is it mere convention that can be dismissed when it has outlived its usefulness.” This ordered family structure is a part of the human constitution and is ingrained in man’s nature in all of its facets—biological, emotional, social and moral. This structure allows for variety but sets definite boundaries, i.e., lines that cannot be crossed without being in opposition to the structured order of the family. [Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp.307-308; quoted portions are from: Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained, 2nd Ed., (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), p. 95.]

In Christianity, the marriage relationship was of such importance that it is described in terms of Christ’s relationship with the church (his bride) and is a reflection of the character or nature of God. And that marriage relationship is unmistakably to be between a man and a woman for the Bible gives a very clear understanding of God’s view of homosexuality in the book of Romans.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. [Romans 1:24-27 RSV.]

Even though the legitimization of same-sex marriage is relatively new, its devastating effects are already being felt in those countries that have allowed it. Documenting 10 years of same-sex marriage and civil unions in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, Hoover Institution researcher Stanley Kurtz has found that it has led to far fewer marriages and soaring illegitimacy in which “80 percent of firstborn children are born out of wedlock, and 60 percent of children born thereafter are born to unwed parents. This has a devastating impact on children since unmarried parents are much more likely to separate.” Kurtz wrote, “Marriage in Scandinavia is in deep decline, with children shouldering the burden of rising rates of family dissolution. And the mainspring of the decline—an increasingly sharp separation between marriage and parenthood—can be linked to gay marriage.”

Of course Grace and her parents have received much attention since her testimony. She has been called many things including a “stupid indoctrinated child” and an “11-year old bigot” (a favorite word for those who defend gay marriage). Her parents have been described as spoon feeding the script to Grace and that they need to check into a mental hospital. Given the amount of vitriol spewed against the opponents of the bill, my guess is that we can’t depend on the assurances of supporters of gay marriage that its passage won’t affect religious freedom or freedom of speech.

Should the bill become the law of Minnesota, one can easily envision parents such as the Evanses being charged with child abuse or having their children removed from their home for teaching the biblical view of homosexuality and marriage. If one is doubtful of the intentions and reach of bureaucrats and judges with a humanistic worldview, review the case of a 10-year old New Hampshire girl. A New Hampshire court ordered the home-schooled girl into a government-run school because “her religious beliefs (Christian) are a bit too sincerely held and must be sifted, tested by, and mixed among other worldviews…” The court agreed that the 10-year-old Christian girl is “social and interactive with her peers” and “intellectually at or superior to grade level…” However, the court found that the girl “appeared to reflect her mother’s rigidity on questions of faith” and that her interests “would be best served by exposure to a public school setting” with “different points of view.” [“Home-Schooler Ordered to Attend Public Classes,” Pentecostal Evangel, November 15, 2009, 23.]

One of the definitions of “grace” found in Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary reads as follows: “That [quality] in manner, deportment or language which renders it appropriate and agreeable; suitableness; elegance with appropriate dignity. We say, a speaker delivers his address with grace…” Grace, your name fits you well. You are a true Culture Warrior. Thank you for your courage.

Larry G. Johnson

Equality – The Homosexual Agenda’s Trojan Horse in its Battle for Cultural Acceptance

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : March 6, 2013
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Category: Archives, Equality, Homosexuality

The “Trojan Horse” is a term used to refer to someone or something intended to undermine or subvert from within. The term derives from a tale of the Trojan War in which the Greeks built a giant wooden horse and hid forty soldiers inside. Then, the Greeks, appearing to have abandoned the fight and wooden horse, sailed their ships over the horizon. The unsuspecting Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy. That night the hidden soldiers crept out of the horse, opened the gates for the Greek army that had returned under cover of darkness. The Greeks invaded and destroyed Troy, decisively ending the ten-year siege.

America is in the midst of a battle for supremacy in the central cultural vision of the nation. The battle between the biblical worldview and the humanistic worldview (under the guise of secularism, liberalism, progressivism, etc.) is popularly known as the culture wars and has been ongoing far longer than ten years. One of those battles centers on the homosexual agenda’s quest for legitimacy, respect, recognition, acceptance, and affirmation by American culture. The battle has escalated, and the homosexual agenda now requires the removal of all bans against gay marriage.

This past week President Obama, citing the principle of equality that drove the nation’s founding, spoke out against California’s ban on gay marriage and said that the Supreme Court should strike it down.

This tactic has been very effective and successful is casting the proponents of homosexuality and same-sex marriage as commanding the moral high ground. They present themselves and their cause as morally superior to their opponents who are cast as villains in the morality play widely disseminated in popular culture. To oppose homosexuality is deemed the moral equivalence of racism, bigotry, ignorance, and homophobia. Those persons who are not accepting of homosexuality are labeled as intolerant.

But William Bennett identifies the humanists’ perversion of the concept of tolerance. He calls it “…the disfigurement of the idea of tolerance at the hands of the agenda-pushers of our day…that would brand as bigots those of us who exercise our elementary responsibility…to make firm moral judgments in matters touching on marriage and the raising of our children.” The humanists would force all to worship at the shrine of tolerance, but their price of admission is a tolerance rooted in moral relativism with no room for finding truth or judging something based on the concept of right and wrong. For those that fail to enter the humanist shrine, they become the objects of intolerant harassment through restrictions on free speech (speech codes), coercion, and intimidation. To the proponents of homosexuality, tolerance means forced acceptance, and such acceptance necessitates “normalization, validation, public legitimation, and finally public endorsement.” [William J. Bennett, The Broken Hearth, (New York: Doubleday, 2001), pp. 105-107, 121, 138.]

Effectively, the advocates of gay marriage are using the Trojan horse of equality as a means to breach the gates of American culture built on the foundation of a biblical worldview. But the case against homosexuality entails far more than just the argument that it is contrary to the cultural traditions upon which America was founded. The accumulated weight of history speaks loudly against the homosexual agenda.

The ordered family structure is part of the human constitution, a universal truth, one of the permanent things, and exists in every known society. The family attains status within society—legitimacy, social identity, legal recognition, cultural tradition, and an estate. Humans have fashioned numerous methods by which to organize their societies, but the common link to all is the family unit—a father, a mother, and children living together in bonds of committed caring. It is the fundamental unit upon which societies are built.

By contrast, homosexuality is a disorganizing concept with regard to human relationships and ultimately disorganizing in building stable, enduring societies. Proponents wish to lift the status of homosexuality in society through its attainment of legitimacy, legal identity, and respect as a cultural tradition, a place at the table so to speak. These efforts involve court challenges to long-standing and culturally established norms, enactment of laws which favor the homosexual agenda and that diminish marriage, and promotion of homosexuality in the popular culture.

As marriage is the central organizing concept in society, it is critical for proponents of homosexuality to redefine what it means to be a family, and this has become the primary field of battle. There are two general conceptions of marriage in society. The first is that marriage is at its core about the children born of that marriage and by default is limited to heterosexual marriage relationships. The second concept held by the humanists is that marriage is essentially a private relationship. This is from whence comes the attack by the proponents of the homosexual agenda. The legislative and legal efforts to redefine marriage to include homosexual couples of either gender, whether under the law or in culture, would weaken the idea of a mother and father for every child.

This is a seismic shift not only in how one views life but of culture itself. We have stated that culture is the central vision that binds, unifies, and gives direction to society, without which a society disintegrates. Individuals may think, feel, and act upon their personal and private liberties in any society as long as their actions fall within the limits of the laws that express the central vision of that society.

Heterosexual marriage is a universal, and the strength and unity provided by traditional marriage is the foundation of a strong and enduring society. Although traditional marriage is in broad disarray, as it is in most Western societies, that does not disprove the truth of the heterosexual marriage universal but rather speaks of the ravages caused by the ascending humanist worldview. Where traditional marriage declines, so do those societies decline that allow it to occur. America continues to invite cultural disintegration if we endorse homosexual marriage hidden within the Trojan horse of equality.

Larry G. Johnson

[This article includes excerpts from Mr. Johnson’s Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011)]