Woodland Life Groups
Saturday, December 21, 2024
doing life together
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How do we address the Gay issue?At the opening of the 2011 Willow Creek Leadership Summit Bill Hybels modeled one of the most gracious responses, and yet explained God's standard without compromise.
What happened was that the Starbucks CEO was scheduled to be one of the speakers for the Summit. Rumor got around that Willow Creek was somehow a "gay bashing" church and so a group circulated a petition (which only got just over 700 signatures) and sent it to Starbucks threatening to boycott if the CEO spoke at the Summit. After a long conversation the CEO and team at Starbucks decided the business downside was so great they had to cancel. This short video is Hybel's remarks to the Summit and is an excellent model for speaking the truth in love, without compromise.
Ed Stetzer in his blog not only posts the above video, but adds this:
Andrew Marin tweeted that he was attending the Willow Creek as a "special guest of Willow Creek re: Starbucks CEO cancellation." Andrew's book, Love is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community, seeks to help Christians engage in grace-filled conversations. I believe it has won awards because so many are asking how best to engage in a conversation when so many have failed in the past. Much could be said here, but let me briefly suggest five principles to consider about the issue of homosexuality and evangelical churches:
Lee Grady in Charisma makes this point:
"It is very possible that gay marriage will become the law of the land in this country, just as the Supreme Court sanctioned abortion in 1973. Just because our government legalized the killing of an unborn baby does not mean I have to support that choice personally. But I do have to show love and extend Christ’s forgiveness to a woman who has aborted her child. Yelling at her or condemning her will not bring her to faith in Jesus."
The largest, most rigorous study, that done at the University of Texas, Austin, on how gay parenting vs. heterosexual affects children and family does not bode well for advocates of gay marriage.
"But it's a civil right!" How should we respond?
, Professor of Psychology Wheaton College,
"In our engagement with culture, we have to recognize and respond to one of the biggest challenges of all. Christians rightly frame questions of homosexual conduct around morality. In response, the world is saying to us "You just don't get it: This is not a question of morality but a question of civil rights." We have largely failed to address the reality that increasingly in the Western world sexual orientation is treated as the equivalent of race. Sexual identity is presumed to be a fundamental given of your very existence, determined before birth, and the bedrock of our identity. This is one area where being literate about science can help. For instance, many think homosexual orientation is genetically caused, even though the best science says “not so fast.” The latest and best behavioral genetics study of identical male twins looked at 71 twin pairs where one male co-twin could be defined as gay. How often do you think the other identical twin in the genetically-identical pair was also gay? They found that in only 7 cases out of the 71 was the second identical twin also gay. When it comes to race, 100% of identical twins match for race. Sexual orientation, whatever it is, is clearly not like race if only 10% of twin pairs match on this variable, so the analogy with race breaks down. This identical twin discordance suggests how little we understand about the homosexual condition, and how hasty it is to define personal identity around sexuality."
******
"Also, I mention a complex point that I cannot unpack for you, and that is that we should resist viewing the categories of homosexual and heterosexual as enduring creation realities, instead seeing them as our human constructions of the complex realities of our lives. It is real that some people engage in same-sex behavior. It is real that some people feel predominant and stable same-sex attraction. But our society's construction of these into the two definitive categories into which everyone falls - gay and straight - ignores much of the complexity of our human experience. We should resist using these labels as ways of fundamentally identifying all persons. You are not either a heterosexual or a homosexual; you are a person with complex proclivities and possibilities for choice."
"Marriage is not a civil right but a creational reality...between a man and a woman."
Myth: If you don't accept homosexuality as "normal," or if you believe it is immoral you are a hater, bigot, etc.
The fact is, however, people simply disagree, and disagreement with someone does not mean you hate them or are a bigot. This is often thrown back at anyone who doesn't fully accept in every way the gay agenda, including gay marriage. In fact, there has been considerable coercing of those who do not embrace the redefinition of marriage.
Take for example the Christian wedding photographer who refused to shoot a gay wedding on religious/moral grounds (Elane Photography, LLC vs. Willock). It was highly offensive to the teachings of her faith and shooting the wedding would be participating in what she believed was an unholy ceremony. Despite her clear first amendment rights, and despite there being many dozens of other photographers the gay couple could choose from, and despite their premeditated and deliberate targeting of this one photographer to try to make a case, the judged ruled that somehow she had violated their civil rights and she was forced to pay a hefty fine! Such politically correct coercion is bigotry of the first order. An actor was allowed to unnecessarily foist their civil rights on a reactor and crush her own civil rights.
It would make just as much sense for a Baptist to go to a Jewish deli and demand they make a BBQ pork party platter and come serve it at the church fellowship. If the deli owner refused we would all say he was within his rights. Do Baptists have a right to eat ham? Yes. Does that mean, therefore, that every deli or caterer must serve it to them or be accused of violating their civil rights? No. In fact, we would say that even if there were only 1 deli in a vast geographic area, and it was Jewish, they would still be within their rights to refuse. Why? Based on their religious convictions long established in their Scriptures. The argument that they sell "meat" but are biased against the kind of meat we feel is our right to eat also would not prevail. They could even put up a sign in the window saying, "We believe pork is not Kosher," and still be within their rights to refuse to sell or even handle it, or to assist anyone trying to do the same. But let a Christian photographer refuse to materially aid and participate in a gay wedding, something he firmly believes is against his religion, and despite an equally well documented and ancient taboo in Scripture, going back to Genesis, long before the Kosher laws--well he can just forget it.
Christianpost.com reports that regarding the above case, the president of the Alliance Defense Fund (a group that defends religious freedom cases and represented the photographer) remarked, "To add insult to the outrage, a justice on the New Mexico Supreme Court has even gone so far as to tell the Huguenins that surrendering their freedom is "the price of citizenship"
What happened? In 2006, Vanessa Willock sent an email to several wedding photographers in New Mexico asking if they would be willing to photograph her same-sex "commitment ceremony." (New Mexico did not redefine marriage to include same-sex couples until December 2013.) "This is a same-gender ceremony. If you are open to helping us celebrate our day we'd like to receive pricing information," the email stated.
Elaine Huguenin informed Willock via email, "We do not photograph same-sex weddings, but again, thanks for checking out our site! Have a great day."
In court testimony, Huguenin made clear that she would serve the couple in other contexts. She was not declining to serve gays. She was declining to serve gay weddings because she believed that doing so would be in violation of her religious beliefs. Huguenin had also previously declined service to clients who asked her to photograph nude images and violent images.
Willock filed a complaint against Elane Photography, arguing that the company violated an anti-discrimination ordinance. The case made its way to the New Mexico Supreme Court, which found Elane Photography guilty and ordered the company to pay close to $7,000 to Willock.
"The injustice is difficult to overstate," Sears of ADF stated. "Make no mistake, this issue is all about the government forcing a citizen to communicate a message against her will and against her beliefs."
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