Obama’s
Coming War on Historic Christianity over Homosexual Practice and Abortion
by Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Nov. 3,
2008
For printing use the pdf version
here
If Obama is elected
President this Tuesday he has made it a priority of his administration to
pass legislation that will make war against Christians and persons of
other religious convictions who believe that homosexual practice and
abortion are immoral acts. Persecution will take many forms, as indicated
by actions that have already taken place in parts of the United States,
Canada, and Western Europe:
-
Compulsory indoctrination
of our children in schools (kindergarten up), as also of ourselves in
the workplace, that abortion and especially homosexual practice are
moral and civil “rights” and that their opponents are bigots to be
excluded from polite society. As regards their children in the public
schools, there will be no parental notification or opt-out provisions.
For examples go
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here.
-
Job discrimination, termination, and
the imposition of fines on people who express
contrary views toward homosexual practice within, and even outside, the
workplace. For examples go
here (pp. 10-17),
here,
here,
here,
here.
-
Forced subsidization
of abortion and homosexual unions through taxes.
-
Forced offering of goods and services
that directly advance and promote homosexual practice and abortion,
irrespective of the degree to which the conscience of the provider may
be violated. This includes, but is not limited to, adoption services and
foster parenting, health care providers and counselors, justices of the
peace, those who provide wedding services, the legal profession, print
shops, and indeed all businesses with employees. For examples, go
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here (second half),
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here.
-
Severe restrictions in broadcasting
and the print media against “homophobic”
utterances as civil rights violations that would incur financial
penalties and loss of license. Limitations would also extend to free
speech in the marketplace. For examples go
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here.
-
Sanctions against Christian colleges
and seminaries that allow
“discrimination” against “gay, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders,”
involving fines, loss of federal funds for student loans and research,
loss of tax exemptions, and even loss of accreditation. In short, what
happened to Bob Jones University over racial issues will happen to all
Christian institutions that tolerate “homophobic” attitudes and
practices on campus.
Persons who express the
view that homosexual practice is immoral will be particular targets of
persecution. They will be likened to virulent racists and their civil
liberties will be attenuated accordingly. The appropriate comparison here
is not to the limited toleration that currently exists for moderately
different views on the role of women in the home and in the church. While
Scripture contains many positive views about women, it treats homosexual
practice as a gross violation of foundational sexual ethics. To combat
such “hatred,” which allegedly puts homosexual persons at risk of
violence, the state will practice a “zero” tolerance policy, citing as an
analogy the
state’s reaction to anyone who denies black persons their
rights or vocalizes a racist opinion. The
analogy is, of course, absurd because, unlike homosexual impulses, being
black is not an impulse to do what Scripture expressly forbids or what
nature shows to be structurally incongruous but rather is a 100%
heritable, absolutely immutable, primarily non-behavioral condition that
is therefore inherently benign. However, logic here will be irrelevant to
the enforcers of “sexual orientation” laws. Proponents of a homosexualist
agenda have been making an analogy to racism for decades. Don’t be
surprised when the analogy is codified into law.
How can Christians, as
well as other persons who share similar values, vote for a candidate who
wants to persecute them for their views and to compel them, against their
consciences and subject to civil penalties, to be indoctrinated and
participate in the affirmation of immoral practices? In short, how can
Christians vote for someone who will insure society’s regard for them as
bigots? Many persons of faith who rightly recognize homosexual practice
and abortion to be moral evils have justified support for Obama on the
basis of one or more of the following assumptions:
(1) Obama
is not so hard-left in his views in the areas of homosexual practice and
abortion.
(2) Even
if Obama were hard-left on these issues it would be politically impossible
to pass hard-left legislation.
(3) Even
if a “sea change” of hard-left legislation on homosexual practice and
abortion occurred, leading to the persecution of those who think
differently, other issues justify a vote for Obama.
Obama’s Will and
Power to Bring about a Legal Sea Change on Homosexual Practice and
Abortion
Let’s take the second
assumption first. If Obama is elected, the Democrats will almost certainly
control both the House and Senate, and do so by comfortable margins. The
2008 Democratic National Platform is strongly supportive of homosexual
and abortion “rights” and “opposes any and all efforts to weaken or
undermine” these rights (pp. 50-52). What will stop Obama from
implementing his agenda? He only needs a simple majority in both houses of
Congress. With a Democratic-controlled Congress and an opportunity for
Obama to appoint up to five Supreme Court justices and numerous federal
court appointments during his tenure as President, everything Obama wants
in these two areas he will get. This will result in a “sea change” in
morals in this country and a wave of intolerance for those who cannot
accept this sea change.
Now as to the first
assumption: “Obama is a moderate man in his views on homosexual practice
and abortion.” Obama was ranked the most left-of-center Senator in
2007 by the non-partisan
National Journal, assessing 99 votes made by Obama that year (his
running mate Joe Biden, finished third, just edged out for second place).
This hard-left standing is certainly secure as regards his stances on
homosexual practice and abortion.
As regards homosexual
practice:
-
Obama
wants to do everything that he can to foist “gay marriage” on all 50
states.
Obama wants the 1996 Defense of Marriage
Act repealed, going so far as to call it
“abhorrent” even though its main purpose is merely to prevent “gay
marriage” adopted in one state from being foisted on all other states.
In
Obama's own words: “Unlike Senator [Hillary] Clinton, I support the
complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)—a position I have
held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate. While some say we should
repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute
altogether.” Under Obama’s influence, the
2008 Democratic National Platform also calls for its full removal
(p. 52). Obama also strongly opposes
California’s Proposition 8, which merely limits the definition of
marriage to a “marriage between a man and a woman,” and any other
amendment to a state constitution that would prevent the courts from
arbitrarily imposing “gay marriage” on the people. He says that
he “respects” the California Supreme Court
decision foisting “gay marriage” on the state and opposes any federal
constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and
a woman. Obama
strongly endorses granting every single marriage benefit to homosexual
unions.
-
Federal
“sexual orientation” legislations.
Obama states, “I will place the weight of my administration” behind the
passage of
every “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” (i.e. transsexual)
special-protections law imaginable, including “hate crimes”
legislation (which will make every statement against homosexual practice
and transsexualism an alleged “incitement to violence” that will hold
the speaker legally liable), “employment non-discrimination” legislation
(which turns out to be “employment discrimination” legislation against
any who disapprove of a homosexualist agenda in the workplace), removing
the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military (meaning now that all
military personnel must now embrace homosexual practice in their midst),
and full adoption rights (making no distinction whatsoever between
homosexual and heterosexual families, even though the former is
constituted by immoral behavior and almost invariably ends in short-term
dissolution). “Sexual orientation” laws constitute state endorsement of
homosexual practice as a valid form of sexual union deserving special
societal protection. Imagine a “sexual orientation” law broadened to
include two other sexual orientations, polysexuality (inclination toward
sexual relationships with more than one person concurrently) and
pedosexuality (or pedophilia). Few would stand for it because such a law
would be rightly recognized as establishing official state endorsement.
Sexual orientation laws encompassing homosexuality, bisexuality, and
transsexuality by definition make civil and cultural bigots of everyone
who espouses a male-female prerequisite to sexual relations, in the
workplace, at school, in the media, and throughout the public sector.
-
Obama’s and Biden’s big lie: “We do
not support gay marriage.” Obama and Biden
have attempted to deceive the public by claiming that they are only for
granting civil unions that contain all the civil benefits of marriage
without the name “marriage.” It is impossible for any reasonable person
acting reasonably to oppose every attempt at preventing courts or other
states from imposing “gay marriage” on a state, to insist on the full
equality of homosexual unions to marriage, and then to claim non-support
for “gay marriage.” It is a big lie. In his book, The Audacity of
Hope (Crown, 2006), Obama
coyly stated that he wanted “to remain open to the
possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided.”
This “unwillingness” was, at any rate, based only on political
expediency, not moral conviction, for he gave as his reason for not
advocating for “gay marriage” only this: “In the absence of any
meaningful consensus, the heightened focus on marriage [is] a
distraction from other attainable measures to prevent discrimination
against gays and lesbians” (p. 222). In short, if “gay marriage” were
“attainable” without doing harm to his own political aspirations or to
other homosexualist goals, he would come out in favor of “gay marriage.”
As soon as he becomes President with a Democratic-controlled Congress he
will “discover” his former “unwillingness to support gay marriage” to be
“misguided.”
This is clear also from a presentation that he made
before the so-called “Human Rights Campaign” (the country’s major
homosexualist organization) where he compared the withholding of “gay
marriage” to miscegenation laws in the South in the early 1960s (for
video go
here):
I would have supported,
and will continue to support, a civil union that provides all the benefits
that are available for a legally sanctioned marriage and it is then,
as I said, up to religious denominations to make a determination as to
whether they want to recognize that as marriage or not.
[Homosexual questioner
cuts in: “But on the grounds of civil marriage can you see to our
community (i.e., the gay community) where that comes across as sounding
like ‘Separate but equal’?”]
Well, look, you know, when
my parents got married in 1960, ‘61, it would have been illegal for them
to be married in a number of states in the South. So obviously this is
something that I understand intimately. It is something that I care about.
But I will also say this: If I were advising the civil rights movement
back in 1961 about its approach to civil rights, I would have probably
said that it is less important that we focus on an anti-miscegenation law
than we focus on a voting rights law and a non-discrimination employment
law and all the legal rights that are conferred by the state. Now it
is not for me to suggest that you shouldn’t be troubled by these issues. I
understand that and am sympathetic to it. But my job as President is going
to be to make sure that the legal rights that have consequences on a
day-to-day basis for loving same-sex couples all across the country that
those rights are recognized and enforced by my White House and by my
Justice Department. (emphases mine)
To compare the legal requirement of marriage between a man and a woman to
miscegenation laws in the American South prior to the late 1960s, as Obama
does here, certainly indicates that Obama believes that “gay marriage” is
a moral necessity. His only reason for delaying public support for “gay
marriage” is a tactical reason (i.e., not wanting to make passage of other
“gay rights” legislation more difficult when there is as-yet insufficient
support in the country for “gay marriage”), not a moral reason.
-
What to expect in the first half-year
of Obama’s administration on homosexual issues.
Obama has made it a priority in the first months of
office—taking a page from Bill Clinton’s playbook with regard to the
military—to get passed in the Democratic-controlled Congress a series of
“sexual orientation” laws that will make clear the state’s endorsement
of homosexual unions, offer special legal protections to such unions,
provide civil penalties against those who oppose the legitimizing of
homosexual unions, and extend all the benefits of marriage to homosexual
unions. At the same time he will get Congress to remove the federal
Defense of Marriage Act, which is the only thing preventing the
application of the “Full Faith and Credit Clause” of the Constitution to
require that “gay marriage” adopted in one state be respected and
accepted in all other states. Within two years all states would be
required to accept “gay marriage,” which carries with it the ultimate
governmental and cultural seal of approval. All newspapers will have to
post “gay weddings.” Any time the subject of marriage is taught in
schools or institutions of higher learning “gay marriage” will have to
be embraced as the law of the land and as equal in all respects to
male-female marriages. Churches that allow couples to use their
buildings to get married will have their tax-exempt status put at risk
for not allowing “gay marriages.” Those who believe in a male-female
prerequisite for marriage are immediately institutionalized civilly and
cultural as bigots. American society is not likely ever, this side of
heaven, to return to the view that homosexual unions are intrinsically
immoral.
As regards abortion
(see further the online articles by
Robert George and
George Weigel):
-
Obama would be the most extreme
abortionist ever elected to high office. Obama as a state legislator was
so extreme on this issue that he opposed the
Born Alive Act—which would mandate medical aid to infants who an
abortion—even when assurances were given that it would not impact
abortion law. Even when all the major abortion groups supported it Obama
continued to oppose it. And Obama and his campaign staff repeatedly lied
about his actions here and attempted to cover it up.
-
According to
Obama, “The first thing that I’d do as President is sign the
Freedom of Choice Act.” This act, with one stroke of the President’s
pen, would throw out every state and national pro-life law. It would
establish abortion as a “fundamental right” for all nine months of
pregnancy for any unspecified “health” reasons. It would strike down
parental notification laws, non-use of taxpayer money to fund abortions,
conscience clauses to protect health-care workers from having to
participate in abortions, and the federal partial-birth abortion ban.
-
Obama wants to end any government funding
of crisis pregnancy centers and has even opposed the Pregnant Women
Support Act, which would provide assistance for women facing crisis
pregnancies and insurance coverage for unborn children (a provision that
even hard-left abortion advocate Senator Ted Kennedy supported).
With a
pro-abortion Democratic-controlled Congress, a rabid pro-abortion
Democratic President who may have the opportunity to appoint up to five or
six Supreme Court justices the damage that could be done on the abortion
issue would be incalculable and might never get turned around.
Why Obama’s
Homosexualist and Abortion Agendas Should Be the Main Concerns for
Christian Voters, Not Iraq and the Economy
This leads to
the third assumption made by many: No matter how bad things could get
under an Obama administration as regards the persecution of those who do
not support homosexual practice and abortion on demand, other issues
justify a vote for Obama. Let’s consider briefly the two biggest issues
other than homosexual practice and abortion.
1. Iraq
war. Regardless of whether one believes that the United
States should have become involved in a war in Iraq in the first place,
the question is: What is the best strategy now? Obama’s rigid commitment
to pulling American troops completely out of Iraq within a relatively
short window of time could risk something much worse: the development in
Iraq of an Islamic terrorist state comparable to Iran. Do we really want a
man like Obama with absolutely no military experience in charge of such
matters? Even Obama has had to admit that the “surge” of American troop
strength in Iraq this past year has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams—a
surge that Obama strongly opposed and that McCain advocated at great
political risk to himself. Moreover, Obama is hardly a “peace” candidate.
He has expressed willingness to take military action in Pakistan and to
step up the war in Afghanistan.
It seems to me
that an evaluation of the Iraq war depends largely on whether the outcome
is a Turkey-style democracy in Iraq or a fundamentalist Islamic state.
Most political pundits in early 1780 or in the summer of 1864 argued that
Washington and Lincoln, respectively, were disasters and that serious
thought should be given to getting out of the war against Britain and the
war against the southern secessionists. History has proven both groups of
pundits wrong. I’m not saying that I know for certain what we should do as
regards the Iraq war. I’m saying that nobody at the present time has a
clear vision about the future. And whether we stay in Iraq as long as
there is reasonable hope for achieving a Turkey-style democracy or get out
before such reasonable hope fades, it is not likely that the United States
is going to turn into a rogue militarist state or a pacifist nation. I
think that the greatest military risks lie with Obama’s strategy because
he appears willing to pull out of Iraq no matter what the outcome of a
pullout, even if it leads to the victory of radical Islamic
fundamentalists, which presents the further risk of encouraging terrorist
activity around the globe. However, I don’t see any evidence that an Obama
victory would result in a “sea change” on foreign policy for the better or
that a McCain victory would result in a “sea change” on foreign policy for
the worse. No matter who wins, the United States will still reserve the
option to intervene militarily around the globe. People are not going to
be persecuted or regarded as bigots as a result of their stance on the
Iraq war or any other war.
2. The
economy and the poor. No one has a crystal ball on this
one, neither campaign. I’m not a big “cut taxes” guy and in that sense am
not a convinced Republican. I think that there are good arguments about
how to handle the economy in both parties, and failings in both parties.
For me this consideration is a wash. Republicans have a reputation for
disregarding the poor, favoring big corporations, and making the rich
richer. Democrats have a reputation for thinking that the government can
fix everything, overspending and overtaxing, and creating bloated and
wasteful bureaucracies. Obviously there has to be a balance between
helping the poor and exerting fiscal restraint. If McCain gets elected,
there will still be hundreds of millions of dollars spent on social
programs. If Obama gets elected I would hope that we don’t turn into a
socialist state, though Obama has talked about enforced redistribution of
wealth and has hobnobbed with socialist radicals. Again I don’t see a “sea
change” for the worse if McCain is elected or a “sea change” for the
better if Obama is elected. I don’t see myself or other Christians being
persecuted on the issue of the economy no matter who gets elected. There
are obviously a lot of voters who think that they will be better off
economically if a Democratic administration is in power. History, however,
does not always bear this assumption out. The conservative Reagan
administration, for example, was characterized by an economic boom that
took us out of the Carter malaise.
In conclusion, the only
sea change for the worse that Christians are likely to experience is the
sea change on homosexual practice and abortion that an Obama victory would
bring. The country’s legal and moral stance on abortion and especially
homosexual practice will deteriorate rapidly and likely remain in a
deteriorated state for at least decades to come. Should the issues of
homosexual practice and abortion, then, be paramount in this election? Or,
to put it in a different way, can you vote for a candidate who will turn
your family into persecuted and marginalized outcasts of the state? Can
you vote for a presidential candidate who thinks you are a bigot and will
codify that belief into law? In doing so, would you be taking a page from
the story of Jacob and Esau--selling one’s birthright in the hopes of some
bread and lentil stew (Gen 25:29-34)? I do not presume to tell anyone for
whom they should vote. Nevertheless, these are difficult questions that
Christians should seriously reflect on before casting a vote.
See also my article: "Barack
Obama's Disturbing Misreading of the Sermon on the Mount as Support for
Homosexual Sex"
here
Click
here for a response to an evangelical
British biblical scholar who had strong reactions against the article.
Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon is Associate
Professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and the author of The
Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Abingdon Press,
2001). The views put forward in this essay are the author’s own and do not
claim to represent the official views of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.