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Reformed Thought for Christian Living
There is a gathering storm against religious freedom in Australia. In many ways it is already here. In the past four months, Christians have lost a flurry of foundational freedoms […]
There is a gathering storm against religious freedom in Australia. In many ways it is already here. In the past four months, Christians have lost a flurry of foundational freedoms including the right to pray, counsel and seek the conversion of peoples ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’. At the heart of this issue are several fundamental questions that Christians now must grapple with:
In response to the recent passing of the NSW Conversion Therapy Laws, The Pastor’s Heart released a podcast titled, ‘Navigating New Laws on Conversion Practices’ which addresses these key issues. The episode was rather concerning as it deals with Conversion Therapy Laws and religious freedom more broadly.
The interview involved Neil Foster, Associate Professor of Law at Newcastle University, the Anglican Bishop of North Sydney, Rev. Dr. Michael Stead—who also chairs Freedom for Faith—as well as the Rev. Matt Aroney, Acting Minister at Watsons Bay Anglican Church.
To begin with, here is a short summary of where Conversion Therapy Laws are currently stand in Australia. Legislation banning conversion practices has already been passed in Victoria, NSW, and the ACT, while Tasmania and South Australia are considering reforms:
• The laws make it illegal to intentionally pray, counsel or give medical advice with the intentional purpose of converting someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
• The laws provide a pathway for “survivors” to take legal action against organizations previously involved in conversion practices.
• The Tasmanian Law Reform Institute has published its Final Report that would make it a criminal offense to “attempt to change or eradicate the sexual orientation or gender identity” of a person in a way that causes physical or mental harm to the recipient.[i]
The Pastor’s Heart is one of the largest podcasts in the Australian Evangelical media scene, and as such, it is highly influential for pastors and church leaders in presenting contemporary issues. The episode in question has already amassed over one thousand views on YouTube alone, despite being a very narrow topic. It is therefore all the more important to understand what was said.
What follows are twelve reasons why Christians in particular should be concerned about such a response to Conversion Therapy.
First, Matthew Aroney argues that the NSW Conversion Therapy laws do not change anything about pastoral practice. Aroney says: “I read the legislation and I thought, ‘Is anything that I’ve done over the last ten years going to be different?’…I actually thought, ‘No, nothing at all.’” However, this would not be the conviction or experience of most other clergy.
This is because the legislation surrounding conversion therapy changes everything. Not only is the State now trying to tell the Church how it should preach the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ, but it will be illegal to intentionally pray for and counsel someone to change his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.
This means that encouraging someone to practise sexual abstinence until marriage to a person of the opposite sex, praying for God to change sexual desires in regard to their homosexuality, and counseling obedience to the Bible’s teaching on gender and sexuality could well become illegal now.
Second, Bishop Michael Stead argues that the NSW conversion therapy laws are not an issue for Christians because they are targeted at a person’s inner orientation and not their outward behaviour. Bishop Stead says: “The things which the Act is explicitly targeted at are actions directed at an individual seeking to change their sexual orientation or gender identity.” I wish it were true, but Bishop Stead can only speculate how lawyers and judges will interpret ‘intentionally changing sexual orientation’.
The current law is open to the possibility that if a Christian prays for or advises other believers to change their homosexual practices or desires, it could be viewed as an attempt to change their identity and orientation. Put simply, homosexual practices, behaviours, desires and actions are all implicit within the framework of converting someone’s orientation. Criminal penalties are not just a remote possibility.
Third, Bishop Stead creates a straw man fallacy when describing what an illegal conversion practice actually is. He says: “So if I say that I’m going to pray for you, that you might be released from the spirit that is causing you to be homosexual, and I’m going to pray so that you turn from gay to straight—to use that kind of language—that’s what the Bill is designed to address.”
However, by giving the most extreme Pentecostal practice of seeking to cast out a ‘gay’ evil spirit, Stead obfuscates the more alarming issues with the legislation. As has already been explained, the restrictions include prayer, counseling and medical advice if done with the intent of converting someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It is unhelpful—and even somewhat disingenuous—to use the example of an exorcism and the language of ‘pray the gay away’ as the specific practices which the legislation addresses.
While nearly all evangelical Christians would disagree with the practice of exorcising ‘gay spirits’ out of someone, it is important to point out that the government still does not have the right to tell churches how they should pray for people struggling with these issues, particularly if the person concerned has given his or her consent.
Four, Bishop Stead—in my opinion—concedes the most important argument against the evangelical church by accepting, without qualification, that conversion therapy practices have “caused harm in the past.”
Which churches have performed harmful conversion practices? Was it the Sydney Anglican church? If so, how many people were affected? How long did the practice go on for? Was it widespread or was it just one church leader who caused offense? These questions are essential to ask before giving the LGBTIQ+ lobby a free pass in framing the debate. In fact, in response to a Law Reform institute report, the Australian association of Christian schools found no form of coercive SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) conversion practices.
Bishop Stead also fails to affirm the positive good some of the conversion practices—which the law now deems as being illegal—had on people who were genuinely helped by them.
The tragic reality is that it is ‘gender therapy’ practices, not Christian conversion practices, which are harmful. One of Australia’s leading pediatrics, Professor John Whitehall, has persuasively argued in this interview that puberty blockers are not only unnecessary but especially damaging to children.
Five, Bishop Stead and Matthew Aroney fail to acknowledge how novel the idea of sexual orientation is and that the ‘science’ is once again changing. Bishop Stead says:
The reality is that it’s one thing to say, if you are same-sex attracted, don’t act on that out of faithfulness to Jesus. It’s another thing entirely to say Jesus’ will for you is to change your sexuality from gay to straight if you just believe Jesus hard enough [or] if you just pray this prayer, you’ll change.
We need to stop and clarify, ‘What is sexual orientation?’ Rosaria Butterfield, a converted lesbian and influential Christian author, helpfully explains:
Homosexual orientation is a man-made theory about anthropology, or what it means to be human. It comes from atheistic worldviews that coalesced in the nineteenth century in Europe. Homosexual orientation is not a biblical concept, nor can it be manipulated in the service of Christian living. Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin (1809-1882) both contributed to the general idea of sexual orientation, the idea that human beings oriented-aimed, directed, pitched-by sexual desires, understood as an internal, organic drive over which we have no control…The actual phrase “sexual orientation” became the twentieth-century articulation that who you are is determined by the objects of your sexual desire. Under the worldview of homosexual orientation, homosexuality is a morally neutral and separate category of personhood, rendering the homosexual a victim of a world that just doesn’t understand sexual variance.[ii]
For most of human history, ‘homosexual’ referred to an act which someone performed rather than a category to which someone belonged. As Nancy Pearcey explains:
When was the meaning of the term changed? In the nineteenth century, as Christian moral influence waned, medical science took over the definition of sexuality. The moral terms right and wrong were changed to the supposedly objective scientific terms healthy and deviant. Under this new “medico-sexual regime,” says Foucault, what had been a “habitual sin” now became a “singular nature.”[iii] What had been a “temporary aberration” now became “a species”. Science cast hetero- and homosexuality as divergent psychological types, innate and unchanging.[iv]
The ramifications of the above insight are significant. As Pearcey goes on to explain:
But today science is changing once again. Recent studies have found that sexual desire is more fluid than most people had thought. Lisa Diamond, who identifies as a lesbian, is a researcher with the American Psychological Association and discovered (to her own great surprise) that sexual feelings are not fixed. They can be influenced by environment, culture, and context. People with exclusive, unchanging same-sex eroticism are actually the exception, not the norm. The Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling, which declared sexuality to be “immutable,” is already out of date. Diamond states bluntly, “We know it’s not true…Queers have to stop saying: ‘Please help us, we were born this way and we can’t change’ as an argument for legal standing.”[v]
Six, It is important to affirm, as Bishop Stead has stated elsewhere, the traditional Christian understanding of concupiscence which posits that not only a person’s actions but one’s disordered desires are also sinful (See Romans 7:8, Colossians 3:5, 1 Thessalonians 4:5). As Denny Burk and Heath Lambert explain:
The heretic Pelagius—a contemporary of Augustine—denied that human beings inherit the sin of Adam. Pelagius and his followers held that we are sinful only insofar as we make sinful choices and that we do not inherit a sinful nature from Adam. Augustine famously contended against the error of Pelagianism in favor of a thoroughgoing doctrine of original sin. He argued that every human being ever born (except One) inherits both Adam’s guilt and Adam’s sinful nature. That sinful nature consists not merely of sinful deeds, but also of sinful desire and inclination (also known as ‘concupiscence’).[vi]
While it might be a popular mantra to say that ‘Love is Love’, the Bible teaches that it is possible to love the wrong person or thing. For instance, a married man should not desire (i.e. covet) to be married to another man’s wife (Exod. 20:17). Augustine therefore defined sin as being a manifestation of “disordered loves”.
Seven, It is argued that homosexual people will never experience a significant change in their desires, unless something unique or ‘miraculous’ occurs. As Bishop Stead states:
I’m not saying that God can’t do miracles, but that’s in the category of the miraculous transformation for most people…for most people their sexuality is strongly homosexual or strongly heterosexual [thus] to promise that God will change that is not a promise that’s in the Bible.
However, this unproven statement or assertion goes against both human experience as well as the clear teaching of the Bible. For instance, the organization of Free to Change has found that over 48% of respondents experienced a change in their sexual desires. Likewise, the psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and physicist Dr. Jeffrey Satinover also observed that, “Three out of four boys who are gay at 16 are not by 25”.[vii]
In keeping with this statistical finding, the Bible teaches that all conversions are a supernatural act of God bringing a person from death to life.[viii] This experience enables us to repent of our old desires while being supernaturally empowered to pursue new ones (e.g. Ezek. 36:25-27; Eph. 2:8-10; 1 Cor. 6:9-11; 1 John 3:9). As the Apostle Paul writes:
At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life’ (Titus 3:3-7).
This also brings into question the issue of addiction to other sins. What about an alcoholic, a gambler or a porn addict? As seen above, the Bible teaches that all believers have in Christ the grace to repent of all sin by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Gospel can and does change everyone who is born again (John 3:5; Titus 3:3-7).
Eight, The underlying assumption behind this evangelical view is the idea that homosexuality is ‘inborn’ or ‘innate’. But the ‘born this way’ argument is highly suspect, as pointed out by numerous academic papers[ix] and even homosexual people themselves. For instance, Peter Tatchell a prominent gay rights activist points out:
There is a major problem with gay gene theory, and with all theories that posit the biological programming of sexual orientation. If heterosexuality and homosexuality are, indeed, genetically predetermined (and therefore mutually exclusive and unchangeable), how do we explain bisexuality or people who, suddenly in mid-life, switch from heterosexuality to homosexuality (or vice versa)? We can’t.[x]
Likewise, E.J. Graff — also a gay rights activist — asks the question, What’s Wrong With Choosing to Be Gay? Brandon Ambrosino, writing in 2014 in The New Republic, unequivocally states, I Wasn’t Born This Way. I Choose to Be Gay. Ambrosino’s argument is worth quoting at length:
It’s time for the LGBT community to stop fearing the word “choice,” and to reclaim the dignity of sexual autonomy.
The aversion to that word in our community stems from belief that if we can’t prove that our gayness is biologically determined, then we won’t have grounds to demand equality. I think this fear needs to be addressed and given up. In America, we have the freedom to be as well as to choose to be. I see no reason to believe that the only sexualities worth protecting are the ones over which one has no control.
Ambrosino goes on to write:
One of the reasons I think our activism is so insistent on sexual rigidity is because, in our push to make gay rights the new black rights, we’ve conflated the two issues. The result is that we’ve decided that skin color is the same thing as sexual behavior. I don’t think this is true…. In other words, one’s sexuality isn’t as biologically determined as race.[xi]
What’s more, as Jeffrey Satinover points out in his book Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, a large proportion of homosexual men have experienced unwanted sexual experiences as children and have estranged relationships with their fathers. What’s more, Satinover explains that there is no such thing as a ‘gay gene’ or any biological predisposition that is particularly unique to homosexuality. Satinover explains that the only study done on identical twins who were separated at birth which recorded the sexuality of the participants showed a concordance rate of zero (meaning there was no set of twins where both participants were homosexual, despite having identical genetics).[xii] Assertions are not scientific conclusions. One researcher points out:
“That if the trait was 50 percent heritable and each family in the (initial) study had ten members (4 grandparents, 2 parents and 4 children), detecting one of the genes would require studying… 2000 people. Replicating that finding would require studying… another 8000 people. To find and confirm each additional gene (for a polygenic trait), researchers would need to go through the whole business again. “Suddenly you’re talking about tens of thousands of people and years of work and millions of dollars.”[xiii]
To put this into perspective, research into the genetic influences of schizophrenia still has not reached these scientific standards.[xiv] One of the most authoritative pieces of research ever conducted on the gay gene which summarizes over 135 different academic articles, books, chapters and studies concluded:
Because such traits may be heritable or developmentally influenced by hormones, the model predicts an apparent non-zero heritability for homosexuality without requiring that either genes or hormones directly influence sexual orientation per se.[xv]
This ideological position of homosexual people rejecting the idea that their sexuality is not a choice is actually an old one. Michel Foucault, one of the world’s leading homosexual intellectuals, rejected the notion of ‘coming out’ as gay and conforming to one’s inner innate true self. Instead, Foucault believed that “It is a question, I do not say to rediscover, but indeed to manufacture other forms of pleasures, relations, coexistences, links, loves, intensities.”[xvi]
This is because being gay was not about ‘discovering’ your inner self, but of intentionally manufacturing it. Dean Mitchell and Daniel Zamora unpack the final years of Foucault’s life, where he visited America and rejected many of his original ideas about sexuality. They explain that Foucault “criticized… the gay liberation project of ‘coming out, of which he was suspicious lest it become a renewed public confession of one’s inner truth”.[xvii]
In summary, there is no such thing as a ‘gay gene’ or innate homosexuality.[xviii] Many homosexual activists and intellectuals describe their sexuality as a choice which is consistent with a biblical view of sin. Christians should not assume it is biologically innate and subsequently irreversible.
Nine, When dealing with the issue of pastoral care, Matthew Aroney argues almost exclusively from experience and not from the Bible. Matthew Aroney states:
I’m always there listening to people’s stories… hearing their anger at church, their frustrations with people who’ve let them down with comments they’ve heard in sermons that have really hurt them… and bearing them with them.
When people are grieved and frustrated by past experiences, the answer is not always or only to affirm them, but to also challenge, rebuke and encourage (2 Tim. 4:2-3). Often their own sin can be the issue. In regard to the issue of homosexuality, Matthew Aroney is implying that the way same-sex attracted people feel is primarily a problem with the church and not the individual.
This is not to say that Christians are infallible or have always responded in love, but we need to also share with those struggling with same-sex attraction what the Bible actually says about repentance even if we risk offending them or making them feel excluded (See 2 Cor. 7:8-10). As The Westminster Confession of Faith teaches:
People should not be content with a general repentance, but everyone is obliged to aim to repent of their particular sins, particularly (WFC, Chapter 15, Paragraph 5).
In this modern age it is particularly difficult to share with people what the bible says about homosexual sin because it is so inflammatory. But no one can be made aware of his need for forgiveness unless he is first convinced by the Holy Spirit as to the eternal seriousness of sin (John 3:19-20; 16:8-9).
Ten, It is unclear whether we are prepared to preach the whole counsel of God. Matthew Aroney states:
Our preaching from the pulpit can either open gracious space or close it down for people. I think often and a lot of same-sex attracted Christians in churches. I’ve talked to people who feel that when their life and what they’re working through is brought up in a sermon, it’s generally only brought up negatively, or its just not mentioned at all, and so the issues around their sexuality are kind of social issues or abstract issues but not personal ones and so they leave church feeling condemned.
How can a preacher of God’s Word ever raise the topic of homosexuality in a ‘positive’ way? Especially when the Bible only has negative things to say about it, even calling it an ‘abomination’ (Lev. 18:22) as well as ‘against nature’ (Rom. 1:21-27)? Any Christian struggling with sexual sin e.g. pornography, lust, homosexuality or sexual desire outside of the biblical design for marriage, should feel convicted by the Holy Spirit about their sin, and subsequently repent of it. Rosaria Butterfield points out that there is a biblical pattern of true repentance.
Christian leaders should not be ashamed of sharing the truth of God’s Word, lest the Lord Jesus Christ be ashamed of us when He comes again (Ezek. 3:16-21; Acts 20:26-27; Luke 9:26). What was noticeably absent from Matthew Aroney’s answers was any reference at all to the Bible regarding homosexuality. Instead, he simply exhorted people to act with the meekness and gentleness of Christ.
Eleven, There was no mention of any positive conversion stories of homosexuals who have been genuinely helped by a clear presentation of the Gospel. I recently interviewed four Christians—who were once homosexual—and they said that they’d all be dead (through self-harm) if it was not for the prayer, counseling and guidance of the Christian church.[xx]
Twelve, The current legislation on gay conversion therapy also restricts some forms of medical advice. (There is an exemption in NSW for registered health practitioners in a clinical context. However, I mentioned above in point two, it is up to the courts to decide what the definition of practice, treatment or sustained effort is for the rest of the population). Bishop Stead and Matthew Aroney fail to acknowledge the numerous health risks associated with homosexuality and how these issues should be lovingly addressed. This is something which the Rev. Dr. Peter Jensen, the former Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, confirmed was a controversial issue as far back in 2012. Jensen stated:
”It’s very hard to get to the facts here because we don’t want to talk about it, and in this country censorship is alive and well.
As far as I can see … the lifespan of practising gays is significantly shorter than the ordinary so-called heterosexual man … what we need to do is to look at why this may be the case and we need to do it in a compassionate and objective way.”
Scientific research from the LGBTIQ community itself has observed the numerous health risks associated with homosexual behaviour and below is a summary of their findings:
1. Life Expectancy. Gay and bisexual men have a life expectancy of on average 20 years less than heterosexual men.
2. Suicide. LGB people have a rate of suicide up to 3 times higher than the rest of the population and comprise 30% of all suicides in Canada.
3. Smoking. Up to 3 times higher than the national average and in one particular study of young lesbians in the Southern United States up to 78% smoked.
4. Alcoholism. Up to 7 times higher than the rest of the population.
5. Illicit drug use. Up to 19 times higher than the rest of the population.
6. Depression. Up to 3 times higher than the general population.[xxi]
7. HIV. Of all AIDS cases 76% are gay / bisexual men.
8. Obesity, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and Type 2 Diabetes. These are all higher in lesbian women and transgender people.
9. Cancer. There are increased risks of cervical and breast cancer amongst lesbian and bisexual women as well as higher rates of anal cancer in gay and bisexual men.
10. STD’s. Young Australian bisexual women are more likely to report abnormal pap tests, sexually transmitted infections, urinary tract infections, and Hepatis B or C virus infections compared to young lesbian or heterosexual women. Gay and bisexual men also report increased rates of sexually transmitted infections such as chlamydia.
Following on from this, there are also well documented psychological, and in particular, interpersonal problems. As research conducted by the National LGBTI Health Alliance has found:
The National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (2007) found that “homosexual and bisexual” people had a higher incidence of all types of mental illness in the previous twelve months compared to heterosexual people. 31.5% of “homosexual and bisexual” people had an Anxiety Disorder, compared to 14.1% of heterosexual people; 19.2% of “homosexual and bisexual” people compared to 6% of heterosexual people had an Affective Disorder, and 58.6% of “homosexual and bisexual” people reported no mental health disorder in the previous 12 months compared to 80.4% of heterosexual people. Transgender and intersex people also have a high risk of poor mental health, with rates of distress higher than that of bisexual, lesbian or gay people.
What’s more, take the tragic issue of domestic violence within the LGBTIQ community. According to the Australian Government’s own website, over 40% of homosexual men and almost 30% of lesbians have experienced DV within a same-sex intimate partner relationship.
Further, according to the LGBTIQ community itself, this is twice the rate for men and almost three times that for women, respectively, with a history of only opposite-sex cohabitation. Officially the government declares that rates of DV are the same between the two groups but they also report, no less than fifteen(!) different reasons as to why within the LGBTIQ community, it is being under reported.[xxii]
What it means to truly act like Christ
Ultimately, Christians believe that all people deserve the opportunity to hear the Gospel, and this is what motivated Jesus in His ministry (Luke 19:10). And as the example of the apostle Paul demonstrates, God always does this against our wills! (See Acts 9:1-6; Rom. 5:10; Eph. 2:1-5; 2 Cor. 4:4). Hence, if we are to be like Christ, then we must seek to persuade people of the Gospel even when they are initially reluctant. As King Agrippa said to the apostle Paul: “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian? To which the apostle Paul replied, “Short time or long—I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains” (Acts 26:28-29).
Despite the fact that the government believes that sharing with people the message of hope that the Bible offers to everyone is something that harms not helps, the fact is, if you were to ask people who have become believers, they would all tell you that hearing the Gospel has been a life-changing experience which has brought wonderful blessing to their lives.
There comes a time when Christians cannot obey unjust laws. In short, we must obey God rather than man (Acts 5:29).[xxiv] For we believe that we have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. And if we cannot defend and stand up for this truth, then we can expect to lose every battle for religious freedom going forward.[xxv]
[i] https://ap.org.au/2022/12/07/the-armour-of-the-lgbtqi-warriors/. It is likely that the final bill will include practices like “support, assist, care and guidance.” Public consultation for the bill closed on February 16, 2024.
[ii] Rosaria Butterfield, Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age (Crossway, 2023), 65-66.
[iii] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol 1(Random House, 1976), 42-43; Jenell Williams Paris, The End of Sexuality (IVP, 2011). Quoted in Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body (Baker, 2018),166.
[iv] Pearcey, Love Thy Body,166.
[v] Pearcey, Love Thy Body,167; Lisa Diamond, Sexual Fluidity (Harvard University Press, 2008).
[vi] Denny Burk and Heath Lambert, Transforming Homosexuality (Presbyterian and Reformed, 2015), 42.
[vii] David van Gend, Stealing from a Child: The Injustice of ‘Marriage Equality’ (Connor court publishing, 2016), 109. Quoted from Dr Jeffrey Satinover.
[viii] For a personal story of transformation, see Christopher and Angela Yuan, Out of a far country: A gay son’s journey to God. A broken mother’s search for hope. (Waterbrook press, 2011).
[ix] van Gend, Stealing from a Child, 124-134.
[x] Somewhat contradictorily though, Tatchell goes on to argue, “Sexual orientation is not a choice like choosing which biscuits to buy in a supermarket. We don’t have free will concerning the determination [of] our sexual orientation. Our only free will is whether we accept or repress our true inner sexual and emotional desires.” Tatchell seems to deny biological determinism but replace it with something else, albeit ill-defined but just as determinative (i.e. “true inner sexual and emotional desires”).
[xi] Ambrosino concludes, ‘Whenever someone accepts me merely because she feels obligated to do so by my genetic code, I feel degraded rather than empowered. It’s like saying, “You can’t help it, sugar. You were born this way. Me? I was born with astigmatism and a wonky knee. We can’t change our limitations even if we wanted to.’
[xii] Jeffrey Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth (Baker Books, 1996), 84-86.
[xiii] Brian Suarez, a researcher at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Cited in Mann, ‘Behavioral Genetics in Transition,’ 1688.
[xiv] Research has found a relationship between child sexual abuse and homosexuality. One study found that 37% of gay men had been forced to have sexual relations with an adult before the age of 19. L. S. Doll et al., ‘Self-Reported Childhood and Adolescent Sexual Abuse Among Adult Homosexual/Bisexual Men,’ Child Abuse and Neglect 16, no. 6 (1992), pp. 855-64
[xv] William Byne and Bruce Parsons “Human Sexual Orientation: The Biological Theories Reappraised,” Archives of General Psychiatry, Columbia University, p. 228-39. The full quote reads, “Recent studies postulate biological factors (genetic, hormonal) as the primary basis for sexual orientation. However, there is no evidence at present to substantiate a biological theory, just as there is no evidence to support any singular psychosocial explanation. While all behavior must have an ultimate biological substrate, the appeal 1 of current biological explanations for sexual orientation may derive more from dissatisfaction with the current status of psychosocial explanations than from a substantiating body of experimental data. Critical review shows the evidence favoring a biological theory to be lacking. In an alternative model, temperamental and personality traits interact with the familial and social milieu as the individual’s sexuality emerges. Because such traits may be heritable or developmentally influenced by hormones, the model predicts an apparent non-zero heritability for homosexuality without requiring that either genes or hormones directly influence sexual orientation per se.”
[xvi] Foucault, L’origine de l’herméneutique de soi, p. 114. Quoted from Dean Mitchell and Daniel Zamora, The Last Man Takes LSD: Foucault and the End of Revolution (Verso Books, 2021), 141.
[xvii] Mitchell and Zamora, The Last Man Takes LSD, 177.
[xviii] For an excellent summary of the relevant academic literature see van Gend, Stealing from a Child, 124-134.
[xix] Butterfield, Five Lies, 78.
[xx] John Macarthur in a sermon here also shares the powerful conversion story of a leading gay activist in the United States. If this had occurred in Australia today then Macarthur would have broken the law multiple times.
[xxi] Van Gend, ‘Nobody denies that same-sex attracted people suffer disproportionately from depression and emotional distress, but never once, in my experience as a GP, has a patient’s depression or distress been due to the “bigoted opinions” of straight society. It has always been due to something private and personal: perhaps the trauma of domestic violence from a lesbian partner, or self-disgust at their own compulsive sexual behaviour, or unresolved anger at childhood sexual abuse, or the spiritual grief of holding values that conflict with their unwanted sexual impulses—not to mention the trauma of a diagnosis of HIV or other STD so heavily focused on the male homosexual population. This is what drives their depression and distress, in my experience, not whether or not there are laws out there for gay ‘marriage’. 118.
[xxii] Significantly, the reason given by the homosexual lobby for all this is that they are being discriminated against socially. However, the trend of these health statistics has continued in countries such as Sweden and Canada long after same-sex marriage had been legalized.
[xxiv] John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, ‘But since this edict has been proclaimed by the heavenly herald, Peter—“We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29)—let us comfort ourselves with the thought that we are rendering that obedience which the Lord requires when we suffer anything rather than turn aside from piety. And that our courage may not grow faint, Paul pricks us with another goad: That we have been redeemed by Christ at so great a price as our redemption cost him, so that we should not enslave ourselves to the wicked desires of men—much less be subject to their impiety (1 Cor. 7:23)’. 1521.
[xxv] In the sovereignty of God, sometimes the church faces scenarios where we cannot obey the State. A pertinent example is found in Daniel 6 where King Darius issues an unalterable decree—in accordance with the laws of the Medes and Persians—which cannot be repealed regarding prayer. Significantly, Darius’ decree was only for thirty days.
