Wednesday, August 4, 2010

How Same-sex "Marriage" is Changing Marriage

What does support for homosexual "marriage" mean? Many naive people assume that it simply means that the institution of marriage remains unchanged while people who were previously excluded from it are now included. This is wrong. In fact, the only way homosexual relationships can be considered as "marriage" is if marriage is re-defined drastically.

The re-definition of marriage did not start with the push for homosexual "marriage." It began with the rise of promiscuity, the widespread acceptance of contraception, the advent of no fault divorce and the acceptance of cohabitation as "equal" to marriage. This is just another step (maybe step 5 of 10) in the complete and total destruction of marriage as the basis of society.

Canada's re-definition of marriage in Bill C-38 leaves out permanency as an essential part of the definition of marriage in addition to making marriage into a union of any two persons. Next on the agenda is the weakening of monogamy as the ideal. An article by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman shows that this is well underway:
Forty-seven percent of gay couples in a recently published study said that they had "sex agreements" with their partners, which clarify how often and in what circumstances they are permitted to have sex with others. Only 45% said that their relationships were monogamous, while another 8% disagreed about whether their relationship was "open" or exclusive, according to an ongoing study by the Center for Research on Gender & Sexuality at San Francisco State University.

The Gay Couples Study said that the couples interviewed typically put a positive spin on "open" relationships, with three out of four participants describing non-monogamous agreements as "positive" because it eliminates the need to lie to one's partner.

The authors also claimed that, "we found that couples make sexual agreements because they want to build a strong relationship rather than for HIV protection."

"With straight people, it's called affairs or cheating," according to Colleen Hoff, the lead researcher for the Gay Couples Study, "but with gay people it does not have such negative connotations."

"Agreements about whether or not to allow sex with outside partners covered a wide range of types, including 'traditional' monogamous arrangements as well as those that permitted sex with outside partners," the study's authors write. "For those couples who allowed sex with outside partners, most placed rules or conditions limiting when, where, how often, and with whom outside sex was permitted."

The study's authors note that examining homosexual relationships is important because "previous research shows that gay and bisexual men in relationships engage in substantially higher rates of unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) with their primary partners than do single men with their casual partners."

Anal intercourse and other forms of homosexual behavior are associated with a variety of diseases and syndromes, including high rates of sexually transmitted diseases such AIDS, syphilis, and hepatitis, which homosexuals suffer at rates many times higher than the general population. It is also associated with damaged rectum linings and a variety of anal and intestinal diseases that were once known in the scientific literature as "gay bowel syndrome," until the term was dropped following pressure from homosexual activists.

The New York Times, writing about the study in January, before its release, noted that the study tends to vindicate those who have warned that homosexual "marriage" will lead to a redefinition of the institution itself, destroying its traditional meaning.

Noting that "gay nuptials are portrayed by opponents as an effort to rewrite the traditional rules of matrimony," the Times added that "quietly, outside of the news media and courtroom spotlight, many gay couples are doing just that," citing the Gay Couples Study. The Times also noted that the homosexuals they tried to interview were worried about what would happen to the gay "marriage" movement if the truth were known about homosexual behavior.
For once, the New York Times (even the New York Times!) gets it right. Read the rest here.

David Fitch thinks the Church should adopt a stance of "welcoming and mutually transforming" toward homosexuals and refrain from saying that homosexual behavior is wrong. He is basically adopting the position adopted by the Anglican Church of Canada in the 70s, which is a step toward embracing the heretical position the ACC takes today. The constant calls for "dialogue" and "listening" are really meant to facilitate desensitization toward sin and soften up the Church for the radical step of calling good what Scripture calls evil.

A reader asked me what I thought of Fitch's position. I have read four or five of his posts and I think the whole trend of his thought is just a replay of the thought process through which liberal Protestantism moved to get to the culturally accommodated position it is in today.

Of course condemning what "everybody" says is good is unpopular, but Jesus did not say that discipleship was supposed to be easy.

6 comments:

David Fitch said...

Craig,
Although I agree with much of your post here, I disagree with your opinion that I am in any way adopting a stance remotely protestant mainline liberal. There isn't a cultural acomodationist bone in my body. I am arguing for a tranformational hermeutic which takes the transformation of people's lives seriously.And taht includes their sexuality. I seriously can't get how youthink I'm going liberal if you read this post http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/being-missional%E2%80%9D-and-the-glbtq-2-mission-and-the-nature-of-desire/
I asked this question "Can anyone enter the redemption of the new creation in Christ apart from submitting all desire to Christ for His purposes? On what basis might we withhold any desire in our entire beings from submission to Christ?"

as for my own stance, it's stated clearly in the recent post that I assume the Christian prohibition against same sex relations. In fact much of that post if you read it clearly, affirms what you've written in this post.
I think you are took quickly prone to polarizing me in this issue ...
peace bro ... I'm in Toronto in a couple weeks ... should we talk?

Gordon Hackman said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gordon Hackman said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gordon Hackman said...

Dr. Carter,

As a regular (pretty much daily) reader of and frequent commenter on this blog I feel I cannot be silent concerning your comments on Dave Fitch. For the last eight years Dave Fitch has been my pastor, friend, and spiritual mentor. I have learned as much about what it means to follow Christ from Dave Fitch as I ever have from anyone. I therefore, find you remarks about him to be inaccurate, overly harsh, and personally hurtful.

It is one thing to disagree with the approach another person takes to a particular issue. It is another thing altogether to acuse a fellow Christian of facilitating "desensitization toward sin" and claiming that their intention is to "soften up the Church for the radical step of calling good what Scripture calls evil." Whatever can be said about Dave Fitch, nothing could be further from the truth than what you have said here.

You told me not that long ago that you respect my fair-minded comments here. As such, I respectfully request that you reconsider what you have said here about David Fitch and that you give an answer to his comment above. I hope that maybe the two of you can meet when he is in Toronto in a couple of weeks.

In the end, you may still disagree with his appraoch to this issue, but I just don't think it necessary to impugn the motives of a fellow Christian or to accuse him of trying undermine the church and the scriptures.

Craig Carter said...

David,
I'm just back from vacation and am getting caught up on blogging. I'd love to get together with you when you are in TO. My email is ccarter@tyndale.ca Give me a shout.

Gordon,
I will re-read David's blog posts on homosexuality and write a response to his comments here. And as you can see from the above, I'm ready and eager to meet and talk with him.

I don't know what any other person's motives are; all I can do is look at the actions and guess. What I saw is someone saying the same kind of things the liberal Anglicans were saying a couple of decades ago before they evolved to their present heretical stance. It is a question of not wanting to see another Evangelical drift out to sea on this issue. There is a lot of drifting going on right now in the Evangelical Left; wouldn't you agree?

Gordon Hackman said...

Dr. Carter,

Thanks for responding here to my comments. I hope you and Dave were able to meet in Torronto. I agree there is a lot of drifting going on on the evangelical left, but it's not clear to me that's what's going on with Dave. I think his approach to ministering to homesexuals comes more from both a missional concern for reaching out to a group that is often alienated from the church and the gospel, and also from a pastoral concern for the people in his congregation, to see there lives lived under the Lordship of Christ. I think he is especially concerned that we come to see that we all have disordered desires in our lives and that just because some of us do not experience same sex attractions does not mean that we have no disordered desires.