Today the following notice appeared on the website for the Marriage Bureau of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia:

NOTE: Pursuant to the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009, A18-248, effective March 3, 2010, same sex couples may apply for marriage licenses in the District of Columbia.

Yes, the notice is in red font. The color seems to highlight the alarming content. As of today, Wednesday, March 3, 2010, our country’s showcase city–the seat of American culture, politics and influence in the world–takes a huge step backward, to a morally primitive time. It is not “progress,” as the proponents of same-sex legal pairings assert; it is the opposite. It recalls a period in human history where sexual behavior was indiscreet, unbridled, animalistic and injurious.

The revelation of God’s moral law on Sinai and the subsequent charge to mothers and fathers to model and instruct their children in right and wrong behavior was the cure to an otherwise self-destructive impulse. Research has shown that the human drive towards sex is stronger than the drive for food–and it’s not terribly discriminating. A big part of “civilization” has to do with curbing, controlling and steering this “power” into positive, constructive and ethical directions.

I’ve been engaged for a long time in the conversation and debate on same-sex sexual relationships–and the attendant proposals for publicly sanctioning them with laws and certificates. The argument goes something like this, “There’s no difference between heterosexual and homosexual relationships, therefore gay and lesbian people should be allowed to express their love just like straight people do.” I agree–to a point.

Men should not only be allowed to love other men, but encouraged to do so. In fact, the Bible says this is the only way we can know for sure that we are “saved,” part of the redeemed; indeed, that we are Christians at all, “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren.” (1 John 3:14) Obviously, the same is true for women. Love between men and men and women and women is part of the experience of knowing God, who is Himself “Love.” (See 1 John 4:7-11) However, this love of God, and by extension, this “love of the brethren,” is not expressed sexually. In fact, most love bonds do not–or at least should not–have a sexual component. Love for children, for example, is never to be expressed sexually. The same is true of love between siblings.

“Well, of course not!” I hear the celebrants of today’s same-sex marriage licensing saying. “Everyone knows that!” Well, not true. Sadly, there are plenty of people in the world–even in our own country–who don’t respect these moral boundaries on sex. Recent headlines bear that out. Sexual predation of children is on the rise and often includes unspeakably horrible acts, including torture and brutal murders. We think of these things as frightening aberrations, but that’s only true of human culture in the recent past. For example, in ancient times–in fact, in Bible times–pederasty and incest were rampant; inbreeding was practiced as a genetic purifier for royal family lines; and girls were routinely seized and held as sexual slaves by much older men.

Religious, moral and legal governors of sexual behavior are relatively recent innovations. They are only a few thousand to a few hundred years old, and there are plenty of places left in the world where they either remain unknown, non-practiced or are ignored. Just yesterday I sat in on a heart-breaking briefing on the current state of world-wide human trafficking, much of it driven by the sex-trade. My wife, Cheryl, is in training now to be a counselor to victims of child sexual abuse. She’ll tell you just how devastating and life-long these injuries are to soul, mind and body.

All this to say that human sexual behavior cannot be left to simple impulse. Human beings are built for a certain kind of sexual interaction. The body’s architecture alone makes that quite plain, but the soul and psyche even more so. Children are not built for sexual interaction with each other or with adults; and men are not built for sexual interaction with men, neither are women with women. And that grand result of God’s exquisite sexual design, the conception and bearing of children, can only happen between a male and female, wether through intercourse or in a test tube. It’s simple yet profound: It takes a daddy and a mommy to make a baby.

Let me remind everyone that there’s nothing new about what happened today at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia Marriage Bureau. In fact, it’s very old. Thousands of years ago, the world at the base of Mount Sinai looked very much like Indiana Avenue, NW, the street outside the Marriage Bureau office. Actually, it was far worse. On the Day of Pentecost, when the Christian Church was born at Jerusalem, Greco-Roman athletes competed in the nude and engaged in homosexual acts to titillate insatiably wild crowds. Worse, Roman men of stature kept wives to sire children by, but young boys as sexual play toys. Temple prostitutes were used and abused as an act of worship.

It was into this kind of moral abandon that the Jews first taught God’s moral code and Christians later were called to evangelize. Both remain our challenge today. It was this kind of sin-sick, miserably wretched, often shockingly coarse and even frightening world that “God so loved,” and to which He “gave His only begotten son.” (John 3:16) This is the solution to the backsliding of human culture. It’s not to cower, shrink back, denounce or scold, but to love with the love of God; it’s to make known the Truth that alone can “set you free.” (John 8:32)

If there’s anything to be disappointed about today here in the Nation’s Capital, it’s that we thought human progress had come so far, but, in fact, it has regressed. Should that surprise us? The preacher in Ecclesiastes doesn’t think so: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) This is why the wise Apostle would later write to us, “[L]et us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.” (Galatians 6:9)

With the help of God, let us get on to the work at hand . . .

Rob +

OK, somebody has to say it. It’s uncomfortable and it makes whoever says it open to being called a “Pharisee,” a “homophobe,” a “bigot,” a sanctimonious hater, a benighted troglodyte, or worse. Somebody has to endure that, though. We need to act like grown up, secure people who can talk about difficult things and resolve them.

So, to quote one of my favorites, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, “Call me a relic, call me what you will. Say I’m old-fashioned, say I’m over the hill,” but here it goes.

First, for the President to use the State of the Union to call on Congress to repeal the current policy on gays serving in the military was wrong. It is incendiary, provocative, distressing and contrary to the most deeply held religious and moral convictions of millions of Americans. Second, if he really believes passionately in this, he has other means to accomplish it. He can use the budget process, or, even quicker and cleaner, he can simply issue an executive order.  He used such an order last night for something far less consequential. The President obviously thought the deficit so important he by-passed the Congress and created a Deficit Commission by fiat.

If, in fact, allowing gays to serve openly in the military is, as the President said, “The right thing to do,” then why not simply do it? What the President actually did was lob an explosively contentious grenade into the public square. Gay activists were instantly in knots about it—disgusted the President didn’t do what they really wanted, but only renewed a campaign promise by punting to the Legislative Branch. And a whole lot of ethnic and cultural groups, moral conservatives, religious people, and, yes, military men and women, are now left to painfully wrestle with what is surely another divisive, corrosive and likely dead-end issue.

Why is this? Because no matter how you cut it, gays-in-the-military does not present the same set of questions as blacks-in-the-military, or latinos-in-the-military. There is near universal belief that it is always wrong to use race, color or ethnicity to judge a person’s character, ability or willingness to serve. (For that matter, there’s no debate the data eliminate whether a gay person can serve admirably or is willing to serve admirably. In fact, not only have gay persons done so, they have given the ultimate sacrifice in doing so.)

The question really is whether it is appropriate for the military to be used to validate a dubious sexual practice. Lets face it, that’s what this is really all about. To the gay rights activists, please be at least that transparent. Tell us what you’re really thinking so we can have an honest conversation. This is about validation of a lifestyle that has as its defining feature a sexual attraction and even a set of sexual acts. After all, isn’t that what on the opposite side makes a heterosexual?

The fact is, well-considered, well-informed, carefully researched and fully contemplated moral and religious philosophies hold that sexual acts between persons of the same sex are injurious to the individuals involved and the society around them. These convictions cannot be dismissed as veneers for irrational hatred or the base animus of the uneducated and ignorant masses. There are plenty of Ivy League PhDs in this camp, along with caring, compassionate, even loving pastors of souls; there are also the vast majority of those who embrace one of the earth’s three great monotheistic faiths. Which brings me to the next point.

A former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told me chaplains are “critical to good order and morale, and therefore to the success of our military.” As a board member of an organization that fields a large number of chaplains to the military, I interact with them regularly and I routinely hear about the things that concern them, and this is definitely one. And this doesn’t only affect Evangelical or Catholic clergy. I’m also talking about Jewish, Muslim and Mormon chaplains. In each case, their religious systems teach homosexual behavior violates God’s intended purpose for human sexuality and is therefore not allowed. You don’t have to have a Harvard degree (though many of these chaplains do) to know there will be conflict between what these chaplains are charged to teach and preach, and the President’s proposed policy change. It’s a huge—read that HUGE—problem for morale and good order.

And there’s another thing. Come ‘on, let’s be grown ups. There’s a reason the military doesn’t have men and women showering together. Please don’t dismiss this one as a childish vestige of a now distant Victorian past. The fact is you don’t generally want people around you in a shower that are erotically stimulated by your naked body. Now, I may be betraying my naïve ignorance here about how gay people get excited, but none of my gay acquaintances have ever said it works terribly different for them then it does for straights. The site of an attractive nude body probably does for gays what it does for straights. (Unless, of course, you are gifted with a disinterest in sex, period. That’s another matter.) For most of us, testosterone, estrogen and libido are forward moving forces that need at least a modicum of external controls, including segregated showering and dressing spaces.

I’ve purposely left until last the most incendiary element of this State of the Union attack on personal, moral, social and religious sensibilities—its affect on our relations with the Muslim world. When I participated in my first face-to-face formal dialogue between Christian and Muslim leaders in an Islamic country, I was asked at the start, “Do you accept homosexuality?” Homosexuality is a deal-breaker for the vast majority of Muslims. I know, we don’t want to kowtow to oppressive religions, no matter how many adherents they have, but, again, if we’re looking to solve problems, this is not the way to do it.

Surely the President knows these things. He told us during his campaign he’s a man of deep and considered Christian faith; he had a Muslim father and a partial Muslim upbringing; he has a Harvard law degree and an IQ off the charts. Surely he’s not ignorant of the considerable and principled convictions held by so many on this subject; and of the dangerous pitfalls it presents given the already tense environment military women and men sacrificially occupy.

Let’s grow up and have the big conversation before President Obama’s proposal brings about unintended, irreversible and even terrible consequences for our valiant American heroes.

I’d really like to hear from you on this.

Rob +

Is Mormonism on par with Christianity? Are Mormons Christian? I’ve spent the last few days in Salt Lake City, where among many other things I visited the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), the official name for the “Mormon Church.” This came in the midst of an ongoing dialogue I’ve had with seasoned LDS church leaders going back nearly two years. I’ve done a lot of reading on LDS history, beliefs and practices. It’s fascinating. People have different experiences with Mormons, but mine have been overwhelmingly positive.  (I’ve got to tell you one thing–the LDS Church has a very, very impressive division called “Humanitarian.” They dispense an enormous amount of life-saving humanitarian relief to indigent and suffering people around the world. According to them, regardless of a person’s or group’s religious, ethnic or national origen. They also say it comes without the quid-pro-quo of proselytization.) Interesting and complex bunch of people.