2.12.2005 | Separate but equal?

No, not the now infamous Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896. Rather, the strain of thought among some on the left that the so-called rights of homosexuals are somehow covered under the civil rights rubric.

Among the more reasoned supporters of a major part of the gay agenda is Colbert King, columnist for the Washington Post. Although he started his career in the urban-black news ghetto (typical of many mainstream media outlets), he has branched out into many areas. Often a doctrinaire liberal, he has also been a voice of reason and comes across as an honorable and God-fearing man. To a point. Today he passed that point.

On gay "marriage", Mr. King wrote in his column today:

I don't equate the long, bloody struggle of African Americans against racial injustice, ugly brutality and unjust treatment with the effort to give equal rights to lesbians and gay men.

On this, Mr. King is spot-on. However, he then goes on to very tenuous, and insupportable ground. He goes on to accept the Scripture-denying business of same-sex "marriage":

But I do believe that homosexuals are subject to prejudice and that they are forbidden the same rights and safeguards that heterosexuals enjoy, including the right to marry. That, in my book, is wrong.

Sigh. "The same rights and safeguards that heterosexuals enjoy." This is difficult for a believer to stomach. To legitimize homosexual liaisons with the same standards as marriage (between a man and a woman) is wrong. It violates Scripture. It violates thousands of years of practice. It violates the Judeo-Christian understanding, even among the deist founders of the United States.

None of what I wrote justifies denying any civil liberties to homosexuals. Or treating them with anything other than the full dignity that God has granted to us all. Let us be clear, however. Not awarding heretofore ungranted privilege is not the same as denying common civil rights.

Let's review Scripture, which is crystal clear on the subject. Homosexual behavior is wrong in the eyes of God. Really, really, wrong. First, Hebrew Scripture:

Leviticus 20:13 If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

This is God doing the speaking, by the way. The only way around this is to simply deny God. Moving on to the New Testament, Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, 6:9:

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders

Once again, Scripture is plain. One may deny Paul, or claim he was a secret, self-hating homosexual. Yet the Scripture attributed to Paul has stood the test of many church councils and some rather harsh reviews before, during, and after the Reformation. My instinct is to simply accept what Paul wrote at face value.

One of the things that those pushing the gay agenda will tell us is that Scripture was also used to justify slavery and otherwise deny full rights to blacks. Let's just say that those who did so were cherry-picking, and using verses out of context. Or, more accurately, simply misreading passages such as Ephesians 6:5 -- passages that simply acknowledged the current state of the world. What pro-slavery readers might have done is simply ignore the context, and concluding thought in Ephesians 6:9:

...masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

No favoritism. The clincher, of course, completely denies the rightness of any form of discrimination for those in Christ -- Galatians 3:28: There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

You are, indeed, all one.

| technorati tag | Christianity|