Doctor Robert Gagnon - PhD Princeton Theological Seminary and Masters from the Harvard Divinity School
Homosexual Practice is a Rejection of the Way God Has Made One - Part One
Download audio file 17 January, 12:57
Dr. Robert Gagnon has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Princeton Theological
Seminary and a Masters from the Harvard Divinity School. With the subject of single sex marriages being debated worldwide and the voices of those in the United States who are against it almost unheard, Voice of Russia correspondent John Robles decided to seek out the opinion and reasoning from the opposing side on the issue. Dr. Robert Gagnon, represents a theological view and presents arguments against such "unions" and states that in the current political climate in North America anyone who opposes the institution of marriage including homosexuals faces the danger of losing their jobs or being sued if they speak out.
Greeting
Robles: Can
you tell us a little bit about the church’s position in the United States
and the different faiths, for example Catholics, etc., on the issue of gay
marriage? And why has this become so accepted in the United States?
Gagnon: Well,
there are different views on the issue of gay marriage even within the
church many of the mainline denominations already accept gay marriage. Not
many but few, the Episcopal Church in the United States is one, the United
Church of Christ is another and the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of America
is the third and there are others that are considering it. The Presbyterian
Church USA of which of which I am a denomination, is entertaining that
possibility. Other denominations are not anywhere close to accepting it,
including the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Churches, Pentecostal Churches,
Evangelical Churches and even an occasional mainline like the Methodist
Church.
Robles: For
me, maybe I’m old-fashioned or something, but I always believed marriage was
a union between a man and a woman. How can you call a pairing of two people
of the same sex marriage?
Gagnon:Well,
I think that’s the problem, that it shouldn’t be called a marriage. The
Bible presents, from Genesis all the way up to the end of Revelation,
understands men and women as sexual counterparts or complements to each
other. In fact, that’s the image that is put forward in Genesis two, which
says that God will create for the Adam, for the human a helper as his
counterpart or complement, the Hebrew’s kenegdo, which uses a preposition
that means both corresponding to, a fellow human being, and opposite to, in
the sense of sex or gender.
And at
every level – anatomically, physiologically, psychologically – the
appropriate counterpart or complement to a man is a woman and a woman to a
man.
It is why
male-female marriages worked reasonably well, obviously with problems, but
reasonably well over the centuries is that the extremes of a given sex are
moderated in a union with a true sexual compliment or counterpart, a man
with a woman, a woman with a man. And not only the extremes of a given sex
are moderated but the gaps in the sexual self are filled appropriately. And
when you don’t have a true sexual compliment in a sexual union, when you
have a male-male or female-female union, those extremes are ratcheted up and
the gaps in the sexual self are not filled. And so you have
disproportionally high rates of measurable harm that attend such unions,
precisely because of the absence of a true sexual complement.
Robles: How
can the church forgive or counsel homosexuals if they cannot change their
behavior? Maybe, some people are saying this was physiological, some people
are saying it is psychological. But if a homosexual cannot change their
behavior, shouldn’t the church or can the church forgive them and allow them
to be accepted and if they love each other and are good to each other can
the church somehow forgive that and accept it?
Gagnon: It
is not so much a question of whether the church forgives or accepts it, but
whether God forgives it or accepts it. And God can forgive everything that
is repented of. For those who come to Christ, and we believe as Christians,
that Christ’s death makes amends for human sin and that his resurrection
makes possible a sharing of his life through his spirit, his resurrection
life to enable us to live the kind of life the God wants to live.
In areas
where we fall down, we make repentance, we express sorrow for what we’ve
done and a desire to follow God’s will. If we fall again, we repent again.
Even if…
Jesus said: if you have to repent seven times a day, or seventy times seven
times, or seventy seven, depending on how one reads the text in Matthew 18.
Some extraordinary number of relapses was possible, but you have to, at the
end of the day, repent! And if repentance needs to be done every day then
one must do it.
Gagnon: What
is not possible within a Christian Communion is to engage in serial
unrepentant conduct of an egregious sort and expect that it will be forgiven
simply because of what? That God is going to look the other way irrespective
of whether we want to be led by his spirit. That’s not a Christian view of
things.
So, if
somebody wanted to perpetuate having sex with a close sibling, like a sister
or a mother, or wanted to perpetuate an act of polyamory, of multiple sexual
partners concurrently, that can be forgiven, but a person must repent of the
behavior in question. So, that’s really what the church offers.
The
behavior itself is changeable. We are not automatons, we are not robots,
where we are compelled to carry out whatever desires we experience. Most
desires that we experience as human beings are not desires that honor God,
they are desires that can be innate, that can be given to us from birth on,
congenital desires, and we may not be able to… in most cases we cannot
eradicate those desires.
Basic
ones that we all accept… is greed, it is certainly an impulse all of us
experience jealousy is an impulse we all experience. These are not the
things we ask to experience but we do, but that doesn’t make them right,
doesn’t make them legitimate in God’s eyes. And we are not allowed to engage
in behavior consistent with these desires without repentance.
Same
thing with the sexual desires. Persons can have an array of heterosexual
desires, to do things that God says don’t do. And just because we experience
the desire to do them as an innate urge doesn’t mean that they remain part
of God’s will. In fact, Scripture defines sin in Romans 7 as an innate
impulse passed on by an ancestor running through the members of the human
body and never entirely within human control.
So, that
doesn’t characterize that it is being good simply because it is innate, but
rather usually it is sin which is why Jesus talks about discipleship as
taking up your cross, denying yourself and losing your life because we are
not fundamentally good human beings, good persons, but rather we are
fundamentally oriented to please ourselves rather than our creator or our
neighbor.
So, what
the church asks of persons with same sex attractions is not the demand that
they lose their attraction, but rather that they conform their lives
irrespective of the attraction to the will of God. This is true not only
with persons of same sex attraction but with any innate desires to do what
God expressly forbids to be done.
Robles: You
mentioned multiple unions and other, for a lack of a better word,
deviations, is there a danger that these things may be legalized by the
state sometime in the future? Do you think, or…?
Gagnon: Certainly!
We are already facing that danger in this country and it is well along and
much further along the spectrum in Canada and in Europe. And the dangers are
multiple. For one it is a danger to the participants, to the offenders
involved in the practice.
Homosexual practice is: in its essence, a rejection of the way God has made
one as a male or female, as a counterpart to the other sex that exists, not
to a counterpart to their own sex. And to attempt to unite sexually in a
union with somebody of the same sex dishonors or degrades the person that
God intended them to be.
And once
the state gets a hold of this and approves of something like gay marriage,
or even at a preliminary stage, civil partnerships, or even at a stage
beyond that, sexual orientation laws, it puts into place ultimately a
discriminatory system toward persons who do not accept that such unions are
moral and good, and ought to be approved by a society. The State Demanding Support for Gay Marriage - Part Two Download audio file 18 January, 15:11 In part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Robert Gagnon he talks about some of the ways in which members of society are being forced to accept, endorse and support homosexual behavior, even though not something that a majority considers to be acceptable. Dr. Gagnon discusses how the US is attempting to promote homosexuality and equate the acceptance of homosexuality the fight against racial discrimination.
So, even
in the US, we’ve had something like in New Mexico, a photographer did not
want to photograph a lesbian wedding. It was a freelance photographer. And
the lesbian couple, as a result, sued the photographer and won several
thousand dollars worth of damages in New Mexico because of sexual
orientation laws that they have. So, in effect, when such laws get passed
Christians are compelled in many different venues then to support, to
affirm, to promote forms of sexual behavior that they regard as immoral.
I see. Now, for the homosexual community, a lot of them just want to
be accepted, a lot are saying that they are beaten and even killed for their
orientation. And the thing with calling it a marriage, in my opinion
couldn’t the state have called it something else and allow them to have
their tax breaks or the same rights to hospital visitation and things like
that without having to call it a marriage. Would the church be against
something like that?
It would
if it extends basically all the rights. Like California right now, all the
rights were given to homosexual unions short of the title of marriage before
they decided to try to impose gay marriage on the citizenry and then the
citizen initiative overturned that. And now the courts are saying no, we are
going to go back to what we imposed on you despite the citizens’ initiative.
And this is the problem that comes about, if you give it all the benefits of
being married, essentially it is marriage.
The state benefits, not before God, but just sort of before
bureaucracy.
Well,
what happens is that the state winds up promoting a form of behavior which
is not good for the state to promote and still ends up compelling citizens
to promote it. So, in the end it gets taught, like again in California, in
the school systems as a civil right and children from the age of first grade
on are subjected to this indoctrination, and anyone who disagrees with it is
basically relegated to the category of “bigot” and ostracized, and
marginalized, and even at some level prosecuted in the society as a result
of that belief.
There is
no two ways or two options here. Now, in regards to violence – the state
prosecutes any form of violence. You are not allowed to be violent towards
anyone; you’ll be subjected to criminal prosecution for whatever the reason
is. And those laws are already in the books, so there is no need to add
anything to that. As far as hospital visitations occur – hospitals have
already long since become much more liberal in allowing the kinds of persons
that can be involved in visitation rights.
These
really are not issues anymore that we face. What really now is being thrust
on society is a demand that you support our relationships, that you provide
financial incentives for the relationship, that you support indoctrination
of children in the schools systems from first grade on and if you don’t do
that we are going to marginalize, ostracize and ultimately prosecute you.
For not accepting this behavior, right?
That’s
right, because they equate the non-acceptance of this behavior with racism;
it is the moral equivalent of racism. And think of all the ways in which
races will have their abuse attenuated in society. And if they say this is
the equivalent of racism, then anybody who opposes homosexual practice will
be relegated to the same position. That means loss of job. For example,
we’ve already had numerous situations in the US, for example, among
teachers, where if on your Facebook page, which is supposed to be your own
Facebook page and that’s something you do in private. If you say that you
are opposed to gay marriage, there’ve been several incidences where such
persons either had their positions terminated or they’ve been put on
probation.
And this
is extraordinary. Twenty years ago you didn’t have to be for gay marriage,
you could be for civil unions and that was enough. And now, if you are not
for gay marriage, you now receive the same kind of treatment.
I haven’t been in the US for a long time and when I left this was
not an issue, I mean nobody would have accepted that.
That’s
right. That’s how far this has progressed. And it is all incremental. When
you give us position A, we are going to move to position B, when you give us
be, we are going to go to C, until eventually it moves to the point where it
is now in places like in Europe and in Canada. The EU just came yesterday or
today with a ruling that in a charity where a Christian psychologist didn’t
want to counsel a homosexual couple about how to have good gay sex was fired
and now the UN courts have upheld that firing. It is an extraordinary kind
of thing.
Who was the counselor, who was fired?
This was
a Christian counselor in a charity in the UK who did not want to counsel two
men in a gay sex union on how to have good gay sex.
On sex? They went to a Christian counselor?
That’s
right. They were having “civil partnership troubles” and part of it involved
a sexual relationship and they asked for appropriate counseling for that.
And the counselor said – well, you know, I can refer you to somebody else,
but I myself don’t approve of this kind of relationship. So, it wouldn’t be
appropriate with my biases against your relationship for me to be the one to
be asked to counsel.
And he said that openly and got fired for that?
That’s
right. And still got fired for it, exactly. And we’ve had a couple of
incidents even in the US along those lines. Even when an attempt was made
for referral, but that wasn’t good enough because they say that’s
prejudicial, that’s discriminatory and you are not abiding by sexual
orientation policies, so therefore you’ll be removed.
And this
is where it is getting to. It is getting a sort of to be totalitarian like
state where it is not the question of simply now looking the other way and
saying you could do what you want to do in the privacy of your own home, but
rather we have to actually provide all the supports financially, in terms of
professional responsibilities, and we are not allowed to express an
alternative viewpoint.
Once you
have sexual orientation laws in place you have a right to all the services,
good services, societal approval that is expected of this and if you add
sexual orientation into the civil rights category, along with, for example,
race, then everything that would apply to racial discrimination would apply
in the case of homosexual relationships.
What do you think can be done? I mean, I like the idea, you do what
you want, that’s your business, but don’t ask me to accept it and don’t put
it on my face. Is there any way they can be integrated into society and
somehow accepted?
Well, not
really. Not once you get it put in the legal system. Once you say sexual
orientation is a civil rights category, then you’re pretty much down the
road where it’s going to be forced on everybody because then the state has
essentially taken a decision on this question and made the choice to say
that anyone who opposes such unions, or anyone who finds such unions
offensive, is essentially a bigot and will be prosecuted accordingly.
So, if
they don’t provide them goods and services, again in Canada, a retail store
did not want to provide Xeroxes for people who were holding a homosexual
celebration of some sort. They recommended them to go down the street to
this next copier and that will be fine. That wasn’t good enough, he wound up
getting sued. Obama Equates Opposition to Gay Marriage with Miscegenation Laws - Part Three Download audio file 29 January, 09:53 In part 3 of our conversation with Dr. Robert Gagnon he tells us about some of the consequences people face in the workplace and in society for speaking out against gay marriage. Dr. Gagnon also reveals that for the most part the US educational system and the media are places where it is forbidden to say anything against gay marriage, not speaking against gays in general, but about gay marriage, and how this is a reason for which one might lose their job.
Robles: I
mean, I kind of like the idea where, you know, you do what you want, that’s
your business, but don’t ask me to accept it and don’t put it in my face. Is
there any way they can be integrated into society and somehow accepted?
Gagnon: Well,
not really. Once you get it put into the legal system. Once you say sexual
orientation is a civil rights category, then you are pretty much down the
road, where it is going to be hoisted on everybody, because then the state
has essentially taken a decision on this question and made its choice to say
that anyone who opposes such unions or anyone who finds such unions
offensive is essentially a bigot and will be prosecuted accordingly.
So, if they don’t provide the goods and services, again in Canada… They had
somebody who had a copying place, in Canada, and he did not want to copy
literature for promoting a homosexual, I think it was like a sex party, it
was virtually an orgy, homosexual sex orgy. And he recommended: “Go down the
street there are other copiers you could find there”, and the persons would
have certainly had access to, but they sued him, as a result of sexual
orientation law in Canada. And he subsequently had to pay over $10,000 in
his own legal fees and their fees. I think they might have fined him $10,000
plus his own fees, plus he had to pay the fees of those who were suing him.
And a counselor, a teacher, in the British Columbia School System, as a
private citizen, wrote a letter to a newspaper when they were having a gay
pride celebration: saying that he didn’t think it was something they should
be celebrating because of some of the medical consequences of homosexual
behavior. He was immediately suspended without pay and then it went all the
way up to the British Columbia Supreme Court. The British Columbia Supreme
Court ruled that if you are in a white collar position, and if you even say
anything that can be considered discriminatory, by the legal system of the
state, then it is perfectly ok if your employer were to terminate you, even
if the action does not come in the context of your employment.
Robles: Wow!
Gagnon: So,
Big Brother reaches out. I mean this is what it is coming down to. It is
Orwellian, essentially.
Robles: Really.
What would your solution be, I mean to: dealing with homosexuals and their
behavior in society?
Gagnon: My
solution will be the same way that we basically view promiscuous behavior,
or persons who want to have non-promiscuous unions consisting of three or
more persons concurrently. Really, nothing is being done about that. But we
are not going to grant state licenses for it, we are not going to provide
state endorsement of the behavior, we are not going to subsidize it in any
way, and we are not going to persecute anyone who is opposed to it, and it
can be taken into consideration in certain employment situations.
If you are employed at a certain responsible white collar position, and
let’s say you are the face of the company in effect, and it is known that
you are in a sexual relationship with your mother, consensual relationship,
or with three other persons concurrently, this reflects on the corporation
and that can be taken into consideration. As it is now though, it is in the
reverse.
I have friends for example who are in the banking system, who are high up in
particular bank companies, and now they have, in those companies,
affirmative action policies for those who describe themselves as gay,
lesbian or bisexual, or transgender, so that the company actually now gives
incentives for hiring persons who act out in that way. And it puts a person,
like my friends, in a difficult position because if they don’t go along with
the affirmative action policies for this, then their own jobs become in
jeopardy.
So, now we are at a point where in the corporate world, in many corporations
if you don’t actually promote homosexual behavior, if you don’t actually
give greater benefits to those engaged in homosexual practice, as you would
to those engaged in a normal heterosexual union or marriage, then you are
going to have your job put in jeopardy.
A kind of absurd! It is not even now an equal playing field where those in
homosexual unions get the same kind of benefits as those in heterosexual
unions, but they actually get affirmative action programs, because they are
now viewed as “quote-unquote” sexual minorities.
The state really should say: “Look, we are not going to approve it, we are
not going to prosecute for your homosexual relationships, like the former
sodomy laws that were in place. But we are not going to also approve it.
That’s the position that the US was in about ten years ago, but we are way
passed that now.
Robles: Why
has that happened, I mean is it because the gay lobby has so much money, or
they are powerful? Why is that?
Gagnon: That
is a big part of it. For example, those who run Amazon.com are major
supporters of homosexual rights issues (so called). Bill Gates has been a
major supporter of it, and on and on goes the list of billionaires and
millionaires who have expended enormous amount of money. Some of them
expended enormous amount of money to support candidates who identify as gay
or lesbian, or supporting of gay or lesbian causes and to get rid of
congressmen and senators who were not. And a lot of good Christians who
should have spoken up about issues like this and should have made it an
issue of voting concern, have decided to relinquish that responsibility.
Robles: And
why is that? I mean, why couldn’t the church come out stronger?
Gagnon: Many
people within the church are fearful of being labeled a bigot. So, they hide
in closets themselves. And there is usually a price to pay. For example, I
came out with a book on Bible and homosexual practice just before I came up
for tenure, I teach at a Presbyterian Church USA Seminary. Even thought the
position that I was upholding at that time, (It’s a 500 page book, very well
reviewed by biblical scholars and theologians and church historians around
the world. I got blurbs from about 30 different people, top-notch scholars),
but even so it made it a very difficult attempt for me to get tenure at my
institution, even though at the time I was basically supporting the official
position of the Presbyterian Church USA because; it is a sort of
take-no-prisoner-kind-of-approach.
Those who claim to be tolerant on this issue are very often highly
intolerant on this and their view of tolerance is that: we are tolerant
about those who support homosexual unions, those who don’t we have to get
rid of.
So, that kind of thing that people have experienced in the workplace, in
society generally, and certainly in educational systems, certainly in all
the media outlets, certainly in Hollywood: if you indicate that you are not
absolutely, 100% supportive now of gay marriage, you are likely going to
lose your job.
Robles: That’s
everywhere in the United States now?
Gagnon: Not
everywhere, but in particular places more so, than in others. Again in the
entertainment industry, the media industry, educational institutions…
Robles: Exactly
gay marriage, you have to support gay marriage, not just gays?
Gagnon: Yes,
that’s right! It is not good enough anymore that you are only for civil
unions. You got to be completely for gay marriage, otherwise you are a
bigot.
Robles: I
mean I can say I’m ok with homosexuals, they can do whatever they want but
I’m against…
Gagnon: It
is not good enough anymore. It is not that way everywhere, but it is
certainly that way in many avant-garde institutions of the United States
right now. And it is only going to get more so that way with Obama’s
statement about gay marriage. Obama has been long for gay marriage, even
before he was elected as president. He basically made equivalent opposition
to gay marriage with miscegenation laws in the south in the 1950s and early
1960s. So, that tells you where he is on the issue. And when you think about
persons who were supportive of miscegenation laws in the US…
Robles: I’m
sorry, can you explain (for our listeners) that term?
Gagnon: Yes,
miscegenation laws are laws that were passed in the South before the Civil
Rights Legislation, of the mid and late 1960s in the United States, which
forbade marriage across races. So, an African-American could not marry a
white person, for example. Now, I myself, I’m married to a Jamaican woman
who is mostly of African descent. So, for me to hear this equation that
somebody like Obama did, between those who oppose homosexual practice and
those who oppose interracial marriages, I mean this is the height of
offensiveness, this is absurdity.
Robles: Yeah
Race is a benign characteristic, it doesn’t lead somebody to do things that
are inconsistent with their embodied existence as a male and female. To
compare race with an innate urge (sexual urge) to unite with somebody who is
not a true sexual complement, well this is absurd.
But when you have a President making those kinds of connections and
essentially equating anyone who does not support gay marriage with persons
who support miscegenation laws, then you are going to get this kind of
vitriolic reaction in society now, to those who don’t support gay marriage.
|